The Leaders of the Congress Can Go Eat a Bag of Dicks.

They'll let Billy Graham lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda.

Which is an honor that they denied the the last American veteran of the First World War.

China "Disappears" Relatives of American Reporters

If you're an American reporter with relatives back in China, writing critical reports on China will lead to your relatives being arrested and disappeared.

Hostage-taking in order to pressure those who have emigrated is a time-worn tactic of totalitarian states and criminal gangs.

Shorter CNN: "We Big He-Men Know You Wimminfolk Can't Handle Guns."

What a blithering MCP is Tom Fuentes.

H/T with some good links

A Real Non-Shocker

A top national security official told lawmakers on Tuesday he had not been directed by Donald Trump to disrupt Russian efforts to meddle in US elections, and that Vladimir Putin had come to the conclusion there was “little price to pay” for such actions.

Adm Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency and chief of US Cyber Command, told the Senate armed services committee: “Clearly, what we’ve done hasn’t been enough.”

Asked if he had been granted the authority by Trump to counter Russian cyber-attacks at source, Rogers said: “No, I have not.”

Gee, remember when the Right called Obama "timid"?

Well, Dear Reader, here is a situation where a hostile nation has been caught attacking our electoral system, has continued to do that, and the response from Our Glorious Commandante is utter silence.

So it would seem to be reasonable to posit that Putin has Trump by the balls. Why else would Trump refuse to defend this country from cyber attacks? You can bet your next paycheck that if the very same cyber attack was coming from an adherent of Islam, that Trump would be exhausting the inventory of ordnance that is droppable from Predators and manned aircraft.

But not a peep out of Trump when the perpetrators are Russians.

Maybe it's time that we impeach this traitor and lock him up! Lock him up! Lock him up!

It's Like the Menendez Brothers Bleating About Being Orphans

The White House on Tuesday slammed Senate Democrats for what it claimed to be “historic obstruction” to President Trump’s nominees compared to previous administrations.

Were they in a fucking coma from `09 through `16?

The article notes that one of the reasons why the Trumpists have had so few appointees confirmed is that they're not nominating people. That's because Donnie thinks he can do it all by himself, in between his eight hours of TV a day.

To Conservatives: Toljaso

I've been telling you guys for nearly three years that Donald J. Trump's word is not worth a pile of cooling shit. But no, you would not believe that. Almost a year ago, the NRA magazines proclaimed that they "had Trump's back".




Well, guess what, sports fans? The NRA may say that, but Trump won't return the favor. He is a completely untrustworthy fuck. His word, his promises, are not worth a goddamned thing. He will shiv you right in the back on a whim.

That's how he has run his business empire, as the piano guy found out. He fucks everybody he ever deals with.

You'd have to damn near be an anacephalic to expect otherwise.

Except for Those Pesky Bone Spurs

President* Trump on Monday claimed he would have run into a Florida high school to prevent a gunman from carrying out this month's mass shooting.

"I really believe I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon,” Trump told a gathering of governors at the White House.

So give him a parade.

I know of no episode in Trump's life to indicate that he would have the courage to go charging in, even if he was fully-kitted out with body armor and a carbine. His only known acts of physical violence in his adult life have been allegedly sexually assaulting women.

Meanwhile, in Florida, the Sheriff of Broward County says that he's an amazing leader, even though (a) his department refused to take the warnings about the Asswipe of Parkland High School seriously and (b) his deputies allegedly hid out behind their squad cars and effectively let Asswipe kill as many kids as he could.

So I guess we could call the Broward County Sheriff a "mini-Trump".

Officer Safety Refuses to March Toward the Sound of the Guns

You've probably heard, by now, that some cops sat outside the Parkland high school in Florida and did nothing. One of them was the "school resource officer", the guy who's supposed to be Johnnie-On-the-Spot in the event of a school shooting.

The tactic for dealing with school shootings has been known since Columbine: Go in, find the shooter, and kill him. March toward the sound of the guns. School shootings start and end in a handful of minutes. Each minute the cops dither means that more kids and more teachers die. There's no time to gather intel or wait for SWAT. It's an emergency pickup game: Whoever is there has to cowboy up and go in immediately. The one who should be the first in is the cop who is already there, the "school resource officer".

When it comes to dealing with an active school shooter, to paraphrase the old Coast Guard saying: You have to go in. You don't have to come back.

The cops may like to talk about how officer safety is all, that their goal is to go home at the end of their shift. But there are times when being a cop isn't only running speed traps, hassling kids, shooting Black folk and scarfing down coffee and donuts. There are times when they have to take their guns and go into harm's way.

If they can't do that, they need to find another line of work.

Dictators Gotta Keep Dictating

China's governing Communist Party has proposed removing a clause in the constitution which limits presidencies to two five-year terms.

The move would allow the current President Xi Jinping to remain as leader after he is due to step down.

There had been widespread speculation that Mr. Xi would seek to extend his presidency beyond 2023.

Past 2043 is more like it.

This bodes well, in the long run, for those nations antagonistic to China. Cults of personality tend to lead to stagnation and risk-aversion. Making bold decisions are terribly risky things to do when the Big Daddy may not agree, or may use you as a scapegoat if the project doesn't pan out.

NORK Talks?

A North Korean envoy making a rare visit to South Korea said Sunday that his country was willing to open talks with the United States, a rare step toward diplomacy between enemies after a year of North Korean missile and nuclear tests and direct threats of war from both Pyongyang and Washington.

You might ask yourself why the North Koreans are now so interested in talking.

Well, it's not because of Trump's bluster and sanctions. Nobody, outside of his base, takes that tweeting poltroon seriously.

It's more likely because of an intelligence coup that North Korean hackers pulled off last year. They hacked into South Korean military computers and stole a bunch of operational plans for a war with North Korea. Apparently, what they then read and analyzed scared the shit out of them.

Is that really the truth? Beats me.

Heh. Heh. Heh..

Today's Non Sequitur.

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

A Sikorsky H-34

If you're of a certain age, you'll remember the day when the UH-34 was the typical military helicopter, before being replaced by the UH-1.

Caturday

Chip awaits either attention or food.

He Saw Himself as the Next Trump

But he might beat Trump to the Big House:

Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, who was swept into office in 2016 with a vow to clean up a corrupt state government, was indicted and booked Thursday on a felony invasion of privacy charge for allegedly taking and transmitting a non-consensual photo of his partly nude lover shortly before that campaign started.

Because It's Friday

A working steam crane in Bangladesh:

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Please surf the blogrolls and check back later.

Regular features may be posted, but not many posts regarding commentary on issues.

Ihre Papiere, Bitte

The Gestapo, err, Customs and Immigration, is setting up more and more checkpoints to stop people and to search their cars without any probable cause whatsoever. If you get on an intercity bus or an Amtrak train, some goons may come up to you to demand to see your papers.

No word as to whether or not they're wearing black leather trenchcoats and carrying PPKs or P-38s. But they might as well be doing that.

Did You Want a New Cessna TTx?

Well, they're not making them anymore.

I've heard that the TTx was nicer to fly, but that the SR-22 was just a better overall airplane. The market seems to agree on that.

Both are way above my price range.

Gillibrand the Turncoat Hates Democracy

Kirsten Gillibrand was on the Late Show lamenting the NRA's "chokehold" on Congress.

She's a political turncoat. When she was a congresswoman representing the NY 20th Cong. District, she was a very strong supporter of gun rights. She was rated "A" by the NRA and she made sure that the voters in the 20th knew that. The 20th was largely Republican, so she ran to the right, railed against illegal immigrants and supported gun rights. As a lawyer, she had represented one of the big tobacco companies. She raised, for her district, a lot of money from tobacco company employees and she had no problem with taking their money.

When she wanted to run for the Senate seat that was vacated by Hillary Clinton, Gillibrand was questioned by Michael Bloomberg about her stances on gun rights. Gillibrand all but told Bloomberg that she was a believer in gun control and only supported gun rights to get elected to Congress. She has also flipped to supporting "pathways to citizenship", which is at odds with her past stance on illegal immigration.

Which means that Gillibrand is a consummate politician whose only true belief is that she should be elected. She's not "for" or "against" anything other than that. If her flip-flops on guns and immigration are any indication, she'd support necrophilia if there were enough voters interested in promoting it.

Second, what the NRA does is called "being better at the democracy thing than its opponents". They raise money, they mobilize people to go to the polls. Enough people turn out to vote that they make a difference.

Funny how this all seems to hinge on a person's political viewpoint. People who are fine with the NRA, the Koch Brothers and the Walton family pouring money into PACs and into the coffers of politicians are upset when labor unions, George Soros and Michael Bloomberg do the same, and vice versa.

So there's the deal, folks: That's how the game is played. Proponents of a particular point of view raise money and try to turn out voters. If the other side does it better than you, there's nothing unfair about it. They're just better at it than you.

This, Kids, is Why You Should Never Talk to a Federal Agent Without Your Lawyer Present

The special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election has charged an attorney with lying to federal investigators about his interactions with a former Trump campaign official, according to court papers made public Tuesday.

Alex van der Zwaan, who worked at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom until he was fired last year, was to appear in court later Tuesday at a plea hearing.

Lying to a Fart, Barf and Itch agent is a felony. Unless you're a gangbanger, a felony conviction will fuck up your life.

And the Grift Goes On, And the Grift Goes On

The president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is making what has been dubbed an unofficial visit to India to promote his family’s real estate projects. But he’s also planning to deliver a foreign policy speech on Indo-Pacific relations at an event with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
...
Indian newspapers have been running full-page, glossy advertisements hyping his arrival and the latest Trump Tower project under the headline: “Trump is here — Are You Invited?” The ads also solicited home buyers to plunk down a booking fee (about $38,000) to “join Mr. Donald Trump Jr. for a conversation and dinner.”

We've descended a steep slope from the days when the big outrage was about a presidential relative selling lousy beer.

(The funny thing is that they would have rather had Ivanka show up.)

Hey, Kid! Didn't Your Momma Tell You to Never Take Candy From a Stranger?

St. Louis Public Safety Director Jimmie Edwards is hoping to sweeten relationships between police officers and the residents they serve by having cops hand out candy to kids while on duty.

Right, that'll help counteract the stories from their fathers, uncles, cousins and older brothers about their interactions with the cops while WWB and DWB.

"Snitcher-Pops", anyone?

Facebook is a Russian Tool

In 2014, Russians working for a shadowy firm called the Internet Research Agency started gathering American followers in online groups focused on issues like religion and immigration. Around mid-2015, the Russians began buying digital ads to spread their messages. A year later, they tapped their followers to help organize political rallies across the United States.

Their digital instrument of choice for all of these actions? Facebook and its photo-sharing site Instagram.

The question is what is Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of FB's management going to do about it.

I'll bet that, at the end of the day and in spite of their fine words and promises, the answer is: "Not much."

Trump's Drain Bamage is Worsening

President* Trump late Saturday suggested the FBI could have stopped the shooter who killed 17 people and injured 14 others at a Florida high school this week if the bureau spent less time working on the Russia investigation.

That is just so jaw-droppingly narcissistic/stupid that anyone who buys into that, other than the anacephalics on Fox & Friends, probably should seek professional help.

Another Trumper Flips

A former top aide to Donald Trump's presidential campaign will plead guilty to fraud-related charges within days — and has made clear to prosecutors that he would testify against Paul Manafort, the lawyer-lobbyist who once managed the campaign.

The change of heart by Trump's former deputy campaign manager Richard Gates, who had pleaded not guilty after being indicted in October on charges similar to Manafort's, was described in interviews by people familiar with the case.

Meat keeping being added to the "nothingburger" of the Right.

(H/T)

Why Trump is Against "Chain Migration" (aka Family Reunification)

Maybe it's because that's how his current wife's parents got to the U.S.?

Otherwise, Trump's in-laws would be stuck in Slovenia and he wouldn't have to deal with them glaring at him for being a philandering jerk.

It'd be just like Trump to screw over thousands and thousands of people because of a personal beef.

Your Sunday Morning Big Prop Noise

An Avro Anson:

The Anson was designed in the early 1930s to be a maritime patrol airplane. By the time the war began, it was obsolete for that role. But it excelled as a multi-engine trainer and a utility aircraft; so well that it remained in production for twenty years and served in the RAF for over thirty years.

It likely was the Brit analogue to the Twin Beech.

So Much for Trump's Denials About Russia

You might recall that Trump and his acolytes on the Right have been claiming, for over a year, that the allegations of Russian meddling were a hoax.

But now, after a couple of limo-loads of Russians have been indicted for election meddling, that claim is, in the words of a former administration, no longer operative.

Shepard Smith, who is a bit of an outlier on Fox News, admitted that the story is not a hoax.

If they gave an award for Biggest Lie of 2017, Trump's "the Russian meddling story is a hoax" would win the Golden Turd Award.

Now he says that the indictment of thirteen Russians for, you guessed it, meddling in the election proves that there was no collusion.

At this point, anyone who believes what Trump said is either a willful puppet or they need to be watered twice a week.

Caturday

Varmint at work:

Chip knows damn well he's not supposed to be up there.

Not Just Stormy

Not long after his third wife gave birth, Trump commenced an affair with a former Playmate of the Year. One of his buddies, who owns the National Enquirer, bought the rights to the story and then killed it.

None of this will matter to the self-styled evangelical moralists. They got unhinged about Bill Clinton's infidelities, but they're absolutely mum about Trump's.

They'd stick with Trump if there was footage of him fucking a sheep or murdering a child.

Poor Widdle Snowflake Had His Feelings Hurt!

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s security team decided last year he should fly first class to avoid confrontations with angry individuals on planes and in airports, an agency official said Thursday as EPA sought to explain the chief’s penchant for pricey travel.

“He was approached in the airport numerous times, to the point of profanities being yelled at him and so forth,” Henry Barnet, director of the agency's Office of Criminal Enforcement, told POLITICO.

Awwww. Poooor baabeeee.

That doesn't pass the "so, what" test. He's going to be on the same airplane and in the same terminal as the rest of the public. People are still going to see him, recognize him and yell at him.

What a fucking snowflake.

And There Goes the 400-Series Twin Cessnas.

The FAA has published an Airworthiness Directive affecting an estimated 2,147 Cessna twin-engine airplanes, requiring the owners or operators of high time aircraft to inspect the spar caps, and if cracks are found, replace the carry-through spar.

So effectively, every oil change, there will be an additional AMU for a spar inspection, with the chance of another 73+ AMUs to fix it. Having a spar fail in flight could be a Very Bad Thing.

On the other hand, decent 400-series Cessnas are a half-mil or so. Those will be fixed. But the flying beaters will more likely be parted out and scrapped, or pushed back into Corrosion Row.

Because It's Friday

Mountain steam in South America.

What's cool about this are the switchbacks.

And There Goes Amtrak....

Amtrak is considering suspending service on tracks that don’t have sophisticated speed controls by a Dec. 31 deadline, the railroad’s top executive said Thursday, threatening to disrupt operations across the U.S. in a push to strengthen safety after a series of deadly wrecks.

I'm going to guess that would include every long-haul Amtrak route outside of the Northeast Corridor.

Conservatives have been pushing for a very long time to kill off Amtrak. They hate the idea of mass transit, figuring that if people can't afford cars, they should walk. The fact that Amtrak supplies an important service to a lot of places where people who can't drive happen to live makes no difference to them. Government, to conservatives, should not be in the business of helping people do anything other than make money. They'd kill off the Post Office if it wasn't mandated by the Constitution.

So I see this sudden emphasis on safety as the conservatives not letting a crisis go to waste.

Nice Work if You Can Get It, Eh?

The odor of grifting is hanging over the Trump Inauguration.

I'm pretty sure that if anything similar had happened for the Clinton or Obama inaugurals, that we'd still be hearing about it.

What the Hell?

This is a recent comment left on another one of my blogs:

Ahaa, its pleasant dialogue on the topic of this paragraph at this place at this weblog, I have read all that, so now me also commenting here.

That makes no sense. My guess is that they are trying to game the spam filters, so they can then sneak through comments with links.

USS Ford and EMALS

EMALS is the electromagnetic catapult on the USS Ford, which replaces the steam catapult that has been in use for the last sixty years.

It's not going very well. The EMALS's launch dynamics apparently is oeverstressing the wings of airplanes with external fuel tanks and the system is not capable of operating for extended periods of time.

Without EMALS, the Ford is merely a ten-billion dollar ship that can transport airplanes from one naval base to another (if there is a crane to offload them) and do semi-major repairs to the airplanes while in transit. Without a functioning catapult, the ship is like having a box of ammunition without having a rifle to shoot them with.

Back in the day when responsible adults ran things, they'd have said "OK, this is a new idea and it might not work operationally. So let's put in one of them and three of the things we know that work, and design it so that if it works, we can swap out the old stuff and if it doesn't, we can put in the old stuff."

You might recall, for example, that the Navy didn't stop buying piston-engined airplanes until it was damn sure that those newfangled jets would work.[1] (The Air Force had enough Mustangs left over after the war to run the risk.) A past SecDef ordered the whole-scale switching over to a new rifle in the middle of a war and a lot of men paid the price for that.

NavAir has thrown all of is eggs into EMALS. If it doesn't work and if it can't be kept in working condition, then the USS Ford is a neutered carrier.
______________________________________
[1] The F4U Corsair was in production until 1953, which was when it was retired from USN frontline service. Corsairs were in use by other nations, especially France, for many years afterwards.

Where's My $130,000, Mickey?

Let me get this straight: Mickey Cohen, one of Trump's lawyers, paid Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels, $130,0000 to keep quiet about an affair that Donald Trump denies ever happened.

(Oh, for the days when wearing a tan suit was a scandal.)

But anyway, I haven't discussed whether or not I have ever had sex with Donald Trump. I'm pretty sure that Trump would deny it. (For the record, I've never met him, nor would I want to ever be in the same ZIP Code with him.) But I'll be happy to not talk about the fact that I've never had sex with Donald Trump, if I'm adequately compensated.

Sounds ludicrous, right? But that's the story that, basically, Team Trump is peddling: Trump's personal lawyer paid a porn star $130,000 out of his own pocket to not talk about an affair that never happened.

FBI Throws Trump WH Under the Bus (and Other Trump Stuff)

Contradicting the White House, the FBI said Tuesday it gave the Trump administration information on multiple occasions last year about a top aide accused of domestic abuse by his two ex-wives, and the investigation wrapped up in January.

That account by FBI Director Christopher Wray challenged the White House assertion that Rob Porter’s background “investigation was ongoing” and officials first learned the extent of accusations against him only last week, just before he abruptly resigned.

In normal times, a FBI director would have found a way to have soft-pedaled, if not tap-danced, around that topic.

But these aren't exactly normal times.

The Trump White House has been furiously trying to throw the FBI under the bus with regard to the Mueller investigation. This time, the FBI returned the favor.

One of the more amusing things with regard to how the Trumpist Administration has been handling the issue of staffies abusing their wives and girlfriends is the toxic mix of misogyny and hypocrisy. For the length of the overhyped issue of how Hillary Clinton handled her emails, the Trumpanzees have been chanting "Lock her up! Lock her up!" Trump told Clinton to her face that if he was president, she'd be in jail.

It goes back further, of course. During the "Central Park Five" case, Trump took out at least one full-page ad, before a trial was held, calling for them to be executed. After they were exonerated by DNA evidence, Trump didn't change his position. As far as he was concerned, all five should have been executed immediately.

But, when it comes to accusations of sexual abuse, Trump has been whining that his guys have not been afforded due process.

Also, this is what The Self- Proclaimed Pussy-Grabber and The Guy Who Allegedly Beat and Raped His First Wife, Allegedly Raped a Child and Whom Allegedly Tried to Rape Another Woman had to say: “I am totally opposed to domestic violence of any kind. Everyone knows that.”

Yeah, now he is. Or so he says. His history would indicate otherwise.
-----------------------------------------------------
Come a change in power, expect somebody is going to jail over this.
-----------------------------------------------------
Anyone who believes this has mush-for-brains:

President Donald Trump’s personal attorney said Tuesday he paid $130,000 out of his own pocket to a porn actress who allegedly had a sexual relationship with Trump in 2006.

Michael Cohen said in a statement to The New York Times that he was not reimbursed by the Trump Organization or the Trump campaign for the payment to Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

Riiight. Out of the goodness of his heart, that guy coughed up 130 large of his own money to protect Trump, and he didn't ask for any repayment? Not from Trump, personally, or one of Trumps kids?

Yep, that is totally believable.

Trump Wants to Legalize Robbing the Workers

Labor Department leadership scrubbed an unfavorable internal analysis from a new tip pooling proposal, shielding the public from estimates that showed employees could lose out on billions of dollars in gratuities, four current and former DOL sources tell Bloomberg Law.

The agency shelved the economic analysis, compiled by DOL staff, from a December proposal to scrap an Obama administration rule. The proposal would permit tip pooling arrangements that involve restaurant servers and other workers who make tips and back-of-the-house workers who don’t. It sparked outrage from worker advocates who said the move would permit management to essentially skim gratuities by participating in the pools themselves.

Senior department political officials—faced with a government analysis showing that workers could lose billions of dollars in tips as a result of the proposal—ordered staff to revise the data methodology to lessen the expected impact, several of the sources said. Although later calculations showed progressively reduced tip losses, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta and his team are said to have still been uncomfortable with including the data in the proposal. The officials disagreed with assumptions in the analysis that employers would retain their employees’ gratuities, rather than redistribute the money to other hourly workers. They wound up receiving approval from the White House to publish a proposal Dec. 5 that removed the economic transfer data altogether, the sources said.

When most people tip their server, they're rewarding that person for their service. The restaurant owner, previously, was supposed to pay the cooks and the rest of the staff.

Trump wants to change that so the tips go to everyone, including the owner's kid who is sleeping in the stockroom. And if the owner happens to dip his or her toe into the business from time to time, maybe acting as the hostess or whatnot, then they get to glom onto a piece of the action. And guess who gets to decide who gets what, boys and girls?

Hint: It's not the person whom you tipped. They're only the person that Trump is allowing to be robbed.

(H/T)

It'd Be Warmer, But the Skiiing Isn't as Good and the Food's Probably Worse

A Chicago TV station apparently couldn't tell the difference between PyeongChang and P.F. Chang’s.

"Principled" Conservatives

So Trump is submitting a budget that will increase the deficit to over a trillion dollars a year.

This is in supposedly good times, too. When the yearly budget deficit was last over a trillion, the Obama administration was trying to jump-start the economy. And boy oh boy, were the Republicans and the Tea Partiers and the "principled" conservatives were having a collective cow over it.

But now, in supposedly good times, the Republicans are going to run the yearly budget deficit over a trillion dollars.

And what do we hear from the Tea Partiers, the GOP budget hawks, and the "principled" conservatives?

Crickets.

Well, Foo; BHP Ed.

The Hi-Power is one of John Moses Browning's finest designs. And although it is possible to still find a few Hi-Power pistols at dealers across the U.S., the Hi-Power is technically out of production. Current dealer inventories will be the last available from Browning for the foreseeable future.

Say goodbye to the granddaddy of the wonder-nines. So I'd expect prices will start creeping up.

I have a Mk.III. The sides of the hammer are sharp enough to cut with, which I'll get around to remedying one of these days.

The biggest knock of American pistoleros against the Hi-Power is the magazine safety. Because it presses against the side of the magazine, magazines won't drop free when the release button is pressed. Browning/FN never seemed to bother about trying to do some minor updates to make the gun more competitive-- a flared magazine well would have been a good start. Like another maker of an iconic John M Browning, Jr.'s designs (I'm looking at you, Colt), they were content to rest on the basic design and make few, if any, updates over the years.

Another fine gun that basically died from corporate neglect.

C'est la vie. {shrug}

Let's Have a Quick Investigation, Followed by a Slow Execution (or Fifty)

California's insurance commissioner has launched an investigation into Aetna after learning a former medical director [Dr. Jay Ken Iinuma] for the insurer admitted under oath he never looked at patients' records when deciding whether to approve or deny care.

What's the point of Aetna having paid that clown a good salary if all he did was rubber-stamp the recommendations of the nurses.

This all came out in a messy litigation, of course. Aetna maintains that Dr. Tinuma "made the right decisions", when in point of fact, he never decided a fucking thing, other than to pick up his rubber stamp (and what to have for lunch, one presumes). Tinuma said that sometimes he'd ask the nurse a question about a file, but that happened less than once a month. Aetna maintains that the deciding doctors are provided with all of the medical records, but the facts are that the "deciding doctor" reviewed them about as thoroughly as Donald Trump would have.

Evil fuckers.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

A DC-8:

This one almost went horribly wrong.

Bangity, New Gun

A S&W Shield in 9mm:

They can still be had for $300 or so, if you shop around. It came with two mags (7 round and & round); I bought three more 8-round mags. I'll probably get one more 7-round mag so I have a spare for that.

I have 200 rounds through it; 100 rounds of Ten Ring range ammo and 100 rounds of Winchester's steel-cased ammo. Neither brand is exactly premium fodder. One of the Ten Ring rounds had a bent-over case mouth that escaped QC. The Winchester stuff, on occasion, didn't have enough oomph to cycle the slide.

Some Federal HST ran flawlessly.

The sights were off enough to require a trip to a gunsmith to move them over. Both the front and rear sights were off. He centerized both with an impressive piece of kit, a MGW sight tool and verified alignment with a micrometer. A quick trip back to the range confirmed it.

It shoots pretty well. It weighs 18.4 oz empty on my postal scale, putting it a few ounces over a Model 442 Airweight, and being much easier to shoot. Part of that is because the gun itself is using up some of the recoil energy to function; whereas in the Airweight, you get it all. Not to mention you get 8 or 9 cartridges instead of the Airweight's five.

One downside is one really should shoot a fair number of rounds through a new auto to ensure that the gun is past the infant mortality stage. With a revolver, it's more shoot enough to confirm the sight alignment and you're mainly good to go.

Six Months and Out

Pressure on White House chief of staff John Kelly was intensifying on Saturday after a series of missteps, most notably his defence of a senior official accused of domestic violence.

Ominously Donald Trump has been grumbling about Kelly’s performance and weighing up possible replacements, according to media reports.

Reports in the New York Times suggested that Kelly told staff on Friday he was willing to resign over his mishandling of the domestic violence allegations that led to staff secretary Rob Porter’s resignation, and that simultaneously Trump was now considering Mick Mulvaney, currently White House budget director and head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as a possible successor.

That's shaping up to be the tour length for a Chief of Staff under Trump.

A chief of staff is supposed to run the White House bureaucracy and the day-to-day operations of the place. He's supposed to protect the president from being bothered by drop-ins so that the president can do what he needs to. Part of that implies that he has some control over the president's daily routine.

But Trump is ungovernable. There is no plan or strategy with Trump.

The other thing is that Trump essentially does not believe the stories of either women or minorities. If he wasn't inclined to do so, he would almost have to, as he's been accused of sexual harassment, if not assault, by enough women to sink a normal politician. No other politician could readily survive paying off a porn star, but that's Trump.

(Minorities because after DNA evidence cleared the Central Park Five, Trump still thought that they were guilty and should have been executed.)

Caturday

Chip in one of his five basic modes.

Sleep, eat, play, get petted and look out the windows.

Just State the Truth, WaPo. We All Know It, By Now.

Trump either can't really read or he doesn't like reading anything that doesn't have his name in every other sentence.

For much of the past year, President* Trump has declined to participate in a practice followed by the past seven of his predecessors: He rarely if ever reads the President’s Daily Brief, a document that lays out the most pressing information collected by U.S. intelligence agencies from hot spots around the world.

Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than getting the full written document delivered to review separately each day, according to three people familiar with his briefings.

You never hear of Trump reading anything, not even the chryon that is scrolling across the bottom of Fox News.

In comparison, George W. Bush was an avid reader.

Ah, Just Blame Hillary Clinton and Get It Over With

Remington Outdoor Company Inc, one of the largest U.S. makers of firearms, has reached out to banks and credit investment funds in search of financing that will allow it to file for bankruptcy, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

The vulture capitalists loaded Remington up with an unsustainable level of debt. But that's what they do, and they probably figured that record sales would continue under a Clinton45 administration, so they could get away with looting the company.

Which is what those sociopaths seem to always do.

Because It's Friday

From Peter, a steam-powered Land Rover:

I can understand maybe every third or fourth word he says.

Dr. J. Beauregard Sessions's Prescription: "So Suffer."

Sessions said that too many opioids are prescribed in the United States.

"People need to take some aspirin sometimes and tough it out... you can get through these things," he said.

Says the politician who has evidently never experienced pain from cancer, multiple fractures, or recovering from major surgery. Or even, for that matter, a root canal.

I hope his doctors place a note in his chart to never give him anything stronger than aspirin or acetaminophen.

Hapless Criminal Play-by-Play

Worthy of going full-screen.

More From the Circus of Trump

Offered without comment, mainly:

• A high-level Trump aide, after allegations of abuse from his ex-wives surface, has declared that the allegations are completely false and vile, but he's going to step down, anyway. Because reasons, one supposes.
•  One of Trump's panel of evangelicals is telling people that they don't need flu shots, that Jesus will protect them from the flu.
• Trump is contemplating a "bloody nose" strategy of whacking North Korea and hoping that it won't lead to war.

The latter item is just fucking insane. Kim Jong Un rules by fear. He can't afford not to respond militarily to such a strike, for he would look weak and open himself to a coup d'etat. Those who are proposing it to Trump (or caving into his demands for one) should be fed lithium and put on a regimen of electroshock therapy.

Amazon Phishing Scam

It comes as an email with a link to track your recent order.

It's a scam. I know two offices (not mine) whose computers are now offline as they get fixed.

If you need to check the progress of an order with anybody, best to go to their website.

Trump and Treason

By Trump's definition:

• Trying to get dirt on one's opponent from a foreign intelligence service:  Not treason.
• Hiring a foreign agent as one's campaign manager:  Not treason.
• Hiring a known foreign agent as the National Security Adviser: Not treason
• Not applauding a Trump speech:  Treason.

And now it seems that Caudillo con Bone Spurs is ordering up a big military parade to celebrate the military strength of the Trump regime.

You know, of course, what other countries do such things: Authoritarian states, such as China, Russia, North Korea (and the French). Big military parades are staged by dictators who seek to cow their own people into submission.

In other words: The kind of leader that Trump aspires to be.

But don't worry: The far-Right will close their eyes to this (or start yelling "but Barry!"). Just as they've closed their eyes and covered their ears to everything else Trump spews forth.

The Flight of Falcon 9 Heavy

Dear CBS News: Go Fuck Yourselves

I was watching the countdown for the launch of Falcon 9 Heavy on CBS News's website. About fifteen seconds before zero, those fuckers cut away to cover the presser of the White House's Liar du Jour. By the time I was able bring up another feed, the rocket was well into the air.

So, from this space geek to CBS News, the network that so heavily and professionally covered the early days of spaceflight:

Go fuck yourselves.

Old Nazi Runs for Congress

As a Republican.

Like most candidates running for Congress, Arthur Jones has a campaign website.

It outlines the Republican candidate’s education background, his stance on issues and how to donate to his campaign to represent the Illinois’s Third Congressional District.

It also lays out Jones’s unapologetically racist and anti-Semitic views.

In a section called “Holocaust?” Jones describes the atrocities as a “racket” and “the biggest, blackest, lie in history.” Under another tab titled “Flags of Conflict,” he lists the Confederate flag first and describes it as “a symbol of White pride and White resistance” and “the flag of a White counter revolution.”

Apparently, the filing deadline for a primary candidate in Illinois was December 4, 2017.

So the GOP is stuck with having a Nazi running as one of their official candidates this year.

You can expect a lot of hay to be made of this.

SB-LII Snark

The comments I've been hearing and reading about last night's victory by the Philadelphia Eagles have run along two lines:

"Guess Belichick couldn't figure out how to cheat his way out of this one."

"Tom Brady was deflated by losing the game."

After all: "Brady became the first quarterback in NFL history to lose a game, in the regular season or the playoffs, despite passing for 500 or more yards, three or more touchdowns and no interceptions." That had to sting a bit.

"No one is going to feel sorry for us," Brady said.

Fucking a right about that.

I Could Go to Prison in Holland for This Post

Donald Trump is a narcissistic man-child with the emotional maturity of a toddler who will happily destroy American liberties, freedoms and the rule of law to protect his own miserable hide. He makes Richard Nixon look ethical and law-abiding in comparison.

Why that would get me tossed into the pokey in the Netherlands is that they have a law that makes it a felony to insult the leader of a "friendly nation".

I would argue that to the nations of Europe, Trump is not the leader of a friendly nation. Whether that'd keep me out of The Tulip Slammer (or th Prison of Orange) is speculative.

Tab Clearing and Such

One of the joys of living near a state border is that the radio stations cover local news from more than one state. The station I was tuned into covers at least three.

So they were interviewing some clown who is running for the state legislature. This candidate said that, in going around and talking to voters, two of the major concerns were crumbling infrastructure and keeping taxes low.

I wanted to pull over and bang my head on the steering wheel. Who do those idiots think will come by and fix the roads and bridges, the Infrastructure Fairy? That takes money and it has to come from somewhere. it sure as shit isn't going to trickle down in grants and gifts from the oligarchs who are basking in their anticipated tax cuts. Re reporter, to his eternal discredit, didn't ask the candidate what the plan was to reconcile those conflicting ideas.
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Robert Wagner is now a "person of interest" in the 1981 death of Natalie Wood. As far as I can tell, the difference between "suspect" and "person of interest" is a matter of quibbling. If Wagner has an attorney who graduated from a brick-and-mortar law school, the last thing he'll ever do is sit down for an interview with the cops.

Your Sunday Morning Turboprop Noise (+ Wind)

DHC-5 Takeoff. Pay attention to his deck angle.

The Idiots in the Race

Stephen Colbert has kicked off a segment he calls "Profiles in Discourgement", about the various idiots running for office.

I expect he's going to have a lot of material.

What Is It With These Veterinarians Nowadays?

The Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office [Louisiana] arrested a Harahan veterinarian accused of fatally shooting her neighbor's dog because of constant barking, authorities said.

Dr. Kelly Folse, 35, was booked Tuesday (Dec. 19) with aggravated animal cruelty, according to interim Sheriff Joseph Lopinto. Folse was also booked with illegal discharge of a firearm and two counts of drug possession after investigators found undisclosed narcotics at her home in the 8900 block of Camille Drive in River Ridge.

You might remember another veterinarian who ended up being suspended for a year (if not longer) for killing a neighbor's pet cat, a cat which apparently was still alive when she posed for her trophy photo and which, to a reasonably trained observer (like a veterinarian) wasn't a feral cat.

What is it with these clowns? Do they not realize that, given their profession, that engaging in acts of animal cruelty, besides being illegal, is a ticket to professional oblivion?

Caturday

Adopt meeee!

Because It's Friday

Alaska RR #557

This restoration isn't an in-house deal, so the video ends with a funding appeal.

Those Whacky Republicans

During a speech to pastors in Kansas City in December, Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley linked the problem of sex trafficking to the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Let's test that, shall we?

The White-Slave Traffic Act, more commonly known as the Mann Act, was enacted into law in 1910. It made it a Federal crime to bring women across state lines for prostitution or other immoral acts. That was back in the day when ice-cream parlors were regarded as the gateway to a life of iniquity.

Hawley is a fucking moron and when it comes to politics, he's about as big a whore as they come. He has zero interest in being the AG of Missouri. All he wants to do is leverage that as soon as possible into a better job. His main goal as AG is to get his name in the papers as often as he can.

Fifty Years Ago

South Vietnam's national chief of police, General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, executed Viet Cong Captain Nguyễn Văn Lém on this day in 1968.

What all of the handwringers overlooked, then and now, was that Captain Nguyễn was fighting in civilian clothing. He had killed, or was responsible for killing, the wife and children of one of General Nguyễn's fellow officers. The VC/NVA had targeted the families of South Vietnamese police officials. Deliberately murdering children wasn't an act of war. It was an act of terror.

I believe that General Nguyễn was right to have done what he did. His only problem was that the cameras were rolling when he pulled the trigger of his S&W Bodyguard. For while a picture may say a thousand words, those words may not be the truth of the matter.