Fokker Into London

80 years ago, it would have been a different Fokker and it would have been met by the RAF.

Spawn of Trump Tells People to Vote by Mail

Oh, the hypocrisy!

We’re anticipating a substantial increase in the number of whiplash cases at local hospitals, thanks to a robocall sent out to Georgia voters over the weekend. Listen here, but below is a transcript:

“This is Donald Trump Jr., and I’m calling on behalf of the Republican National Committee because my father, President Donald J. Trump, mailed you an official absentee ballot request.

“Voting absentee is a safe and secure way to guarantee your voice is heard. That’s why President Trump wants you to join him in being an absentee voter this year…

“President Trump needs your absentee vote to make America great again.”

In other words, "voting by mail is for Republicans only."

Only it's no longer the Republican party. It's the Trump Party.

Speaking of the Trump party, Donald Trump has finally gotten his Horst Wessel. The Trumpist guy was going around, spraying protesters in the face with bear spray. To my mind, that hardly makes him an innocent.

But don't worry, the Trumpers will portray him as a cross between Mother Theresa and the Pope.

Party of Trump: 2,977 Dead is a Tragedy, 183,000 Dead is a Statistic

When you compare the death tolls from the 9-11 attacks and the coronavirus pandemic, that's the only conclusion that one can reach.

Self-styled conservatives, the limited government people, clamored for the creation of the Orwellian-named Department of Homeland Security. They cheer on every restriction in freedom and movement put in place by DHS. As conservatives have always done, they egg on profiling people by their nationality, by the faith and by their skin color. Few have any problems with the creeping security state, the proliferation of CCTV cameras, the existence of license-plate readers. They don't mind one whit, because it's all put out there, as the purveyors say, to keep us safe.

Oh, they'll put up with that, but wear a mask to limit the spread of the virus? That's an impingement on their freedom to do what, exactly?

What's the difference? That they can't see a virus particle, but they can see a terrorist? That viruses have no identifiable religion or ideology?

By the end of the year, about 300,000 Americans will have died from the coronavirus. That's 100 times, or two orders of magnitude, more Americans who will have died in this pandemic than died from a terrorist attack.

We are still living with intrusive security measures to make it harder to carry out a terrorist attack. We still have airborne mall cops, riding airplanes. But we've hollowed out the public health system and continue to do so, because somehow, infectious diseases are less of a threat than terrorism.

Funny how, when it comes to infectious diseases, government is evil, but when it comes to terrorist, more government intrustion is a good things. The death toll would imply the reverse.

Conclusion: This country is led by morons.

Truth

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

DC-10 fire bomber:

Wakanda Forever!

First Chadwick Boseman slipped on the cleats of Jackie Robinson, then the Godfather of Soul’s dancing shoes, portraying both Black American icons with a searing intensity that commanded respect. When the former playwright suited up as Black Panther, he brought cool intellectual gravitas to the Marvel superhero whose “Wakanda forever!” salute reverberated worldwide.

As his Hollywood career boomed, though, Boseman was privately undergoing “countless surgeries and chemotherapy” to battle colon cancer, his family said in a statement announcing his death at age 43 on Friday. He’d been diagnosed at stage 3 in 2016 but never spoke publicly about it.

It's probably impossible to overstate how big a star Boseman became. Black Panther made a liar out of all those people in Hollywood who said that whites wouldn't go see a movie that was almost entirely populated by Black actors. Black Panther is the highest-grossing solo superhero movie ever made, 4th top-grossing movie of all time.

It's a movie that offered vision of a Black man running the most technologically advanced nation on the planet. What it must have meant for Black kids to see a movie like that!

Tributes for Bosemen are pouring in from all corners. Except from You Know Who.

104 Years Ago

The USS Memphis, ACR-10 (ACR meant "armored cruiser") was driven ashore by giant waves on this day in 1916. The captain of the ship, Edward Beach, got a feeling that was something was wrong and he ordered additional boilers lit off in order to weigh anchor and go out to sea.

As it turned out, it was a matter of fifteen minutes between the ship being able to sail to safety and being dashed onto the shore. The ship was, at one point, almost completely submerged. In this photo, taken soon after she was driven ashore, water is still pouring from the upper decks.

Three men received the Medal of Honor for their actions that day: LT Claud Jones, the Chief Engineer; Chief Machinist's Mate George Rud (posthumously); and Machinist Charles Willey.

If you want to read a vivid description of what happened about the ship, both in the engineering plant and above decks, I heartily recommend the book The Wreck of the Memphis by Edward Beach (the captain's son and a decorated naval officer in his own right). When he researched and wrote the book, there were a number of survivors still around to interview.

Memphis, which spent most of her life as the USS Tennessee, was a fast, well-armored and well-armed cruiser in the day when all ships were driven by large reciprocating engines. The Navy considered modernizing her three sister ships in the 1920s, but the result didn't seem to be worth the cost.

So Now the Wisconsin LARPing Kiddo is in Trouble with the Feds?

This from some Trumpanzee of a lawyer:

When you start manufacturing facts to support false accusations, you get into trouble under the law of defamation. Kyle did not carry a gun across state lines. The gun belonged to his friend, a Wisconsin resident. The gun never left the State of Wisconsin.

Truth always prevails. https://t.co/iDbsykaVvY

— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) August 28, 2020

The thing is, I don't believe that there is any such thing as "loaning" or "borrowing" a firearm when it comes to the residents of two different states. That's a "transfer", so far as I know, and I'm pretty certain that what the shooter and his friend did is a violation of Federal firearms law.

18 USC 922(a)(5)

Both the LARPer and his buddy violated Federal firearms law. There is an exception for sporting purposes that sort of implicitly OKs loaning a gun, but standing around outside of a car dealership and playing security guard isn't a sporting purpose.

Drunk Trumpist on Patrol

Waco police arrested a 30-year-old woman Wednesday morning on driving while intoxicated and aggravated assault charges after she chased at least two cars and intentionally crashed into one, later telling police she thought she was chasing a pedophile who had kidnapped a girl, arrest affidavits state.

Officers arrested Cecilia Celeste Fulbright, of Waco, at about 10 a.m., after she crashed into a barrier near the gas pumps at H-E-B on North 19th Street, police reported.

A driver called police at about 9:20 a.m. to report a small red car had chased them on North 19th Street but that they were able to get away, according to the affidavit.

About 20 minutes later, another driver reported the red car was chasing her and that the driver, Fulbright, was yelling at her and rammed her car multiple times before the caller pulled into the H-E-B parking lot on 19th Street, the affidavit states.

According to some of her friends, the Bag of Nuts is both a Trump supporter and a QAnon believer.

Apparently, the Bag of Nuts is still living in Ya-Ya Land:

Fulbright contacted Molina after getting out of jail, seemingly unaware that she had done anything wrong. Molina said that Fulbright told her that one of the cops who arrested her had winked at her and told her she was in “good girl jail” because “they knew I was doing good.” Molina said she confronted her ex-roommate about the seriousness of her actions but that her concerns were “not registering at all.”

“I feel like I’m mourning my friend’s death,” Molina said. “I don’t know her. Like, I have no idea who this person is. … That’s pretty much how we all feel.”

Five days after the incident, Molina sent a text message to Fulbright asking her if she was still “following the white rabbit,” a common slogan for QAnon adherents that describes the “researching” of the conspiracy theory. Fulbright responded in the affirmative.

“Q is I… Q is you… Q is us… it’s literally data… collected by the white hats and then turned into videos and shit. But okay… yeah I follow Q,” Fulbright wrote back on Aug. 17.

These nut jobs are out there and they can be dangerous; attacking strangers based on some wild-ass conspiracy theory.

I think it's going to get worse.

Caturday

Chip:

Mommies make the best cat beds.

Fear-Based Politics

From an email:

An idle thought....
In '68, I can recall driving rural KY and seeing Wallace bumper stickers: "Don't Live in Fear, Vote Wallace". Then it was the message of a Southern racist crackpot, now that's the message of the whole damned GOP, recited nightly at their convention. -- SD, 8/27/20

Both Wallace and Nixon ran racist campaigns, but they were campaigning as the challengers.

Trump, who is decrying things, is the fucking incumbent. He's the guy who has been in a position to try to do something to address the problems of this country. But all he does is engage in his barf-fests on twitter. Trump is the guy who said that neo-Nazis are fine people. Point out that Black and Latino Americans suffer disproportionately at the hands of the police and Trump makes mockery of those concerns.

Let's update Dr. King a tad:

“…I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, [police brutality,] equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.”

Fifty-five years ago, the cry was "Black Power!" Today, the cry is "Black Lives Matter!"

The counterpoint to that today tends to be bullshit. "Blue Lives matter" ignores the fact that, in many jurisdictions, crimes committed against police officers draw heftier penalties than crimes against people, in general. Blue lives have always mattered more to the justice system. Hell, the cops are the ones who routinely get away with committing perjury to the point that there is a term of art for that: Testilying.

Still, whatever you think of the growing protests over racial injustice, the hard truth of the matter is that Donald Trump, the man who promises that he along can fix things, has not only sat on his hands for the last three and a half years, he has made things worse. Whenever the issue of racial justice is brought before Trump by a reporter or congressman, Trump crosses his arms and affects the mien of an offended and petulant toddler.

If anything is going to be done, the first thing has to be to remove from power those politicians who are obstructionist Wallace-type racists, beginning with Donald Trump.

The Stable Genius of Bidness

The Trump International Hotel and Tower Vancouver, which closed its doors in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has shut down permanently.

Right now, about the only Trump-brand property that would do well would be a transfer station.

Because It's Friday

Essex Valley RR:

USS Bonnehomme Richard

Last month's fire is being investigated as an act of arson and they have a suspect.

It's way too early to know whether or not the Navy will repair the ship or scrap her. The USS Belknap was repaired with possibly worse damage.

The Tsar's Bomb

A once-secret Soviet documentary (or propaganda film) on the test of the 50 megaton bomb has been released. It's in Russian, with English subtitles.

POT Convention: Day Three of the Festival of Clown Shoes

Two speakers were axed tonight. One for criminal activity, the other for “logistical reasons”.

The “logistics” may be that not enough of Trump’s Nazi followers are buying refried beans and black beans from Goya to make up for the loss of sales to Hispanics who don’t like Trump.

I'm Just Going to Leave These Here

Pompeo is a Trumpist Hypocrite. So What Else is New.

"A Rule for Thee, But Not For Me":

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent a cable to all U.S. diplomatic missions last month warning American diplomats that under federal law they should not take overt sides in the presidential campaign. On Tuesday, he plans to ignore his own warning by speaking to the [Trump] National Convention endorsing President Donald Trump for a second term.

Secretaries of State for past presidents, both Republican and Democratic, have avoided even the appearance of being involved in the political campaign of their presidents.

But in the POT, all those rules and customs get washed away by the stench of corruption that emanates from Trump.

Heh. Heh. Heh.

pic.twitter.com/gRrzKh33M0

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) August 25, 2020

Don't Play the Trump Drinking Game!

Emergency services across the country were overwhelmed tonight dealing with an epidemic of tragic deaths following President Trump’s appearance at the GOP convention.
...
The rash of presumed deaths by alcohol poisoning is being blamed on an internet drinking game, which instructed people to do a shot every time President Trump told a lie.

Edited to add:

I ordered this t-shirt:

GOP: Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You, Ask What You Can Do for Donald Trump

The GOP has resolved that its party platform for 2020 is fealty to Donald Trump.

(Read it for yourself if you want, but I recommend doing it in a a private window or over TOR.)

Oh, for eyewash, they just tacked on their 2016 platform, which spends a lot of time criticizing the previous four years, so the GOP is essentially conceding that Trump is a disaster. But that's nitpicking.

The larger point is that the GOP is no longer a political party. It has been transformed into a cult of personality.

Let's look at past personality cults: Jim Jones. Josef Stalin. Mao Zedong. Kim Il-sung, Men to whom there was no such thing as loyalty to the state or to the faith, but only unswerving loyalty to the leader.

That's what the GOP is, now. It's the Party of Trump in all but name.

The Unspoken Message of the GOP Convention

Members of the Trump family are scheduled to speak each night, and Mr Trump's eldest son, Donald Jr, will kick things off on Monday. What, they can't find enough sycophants to fill up the time, so they have to pad it with every member of the Trump family who still is on his payroll likes him?

Was There Any Doubt of This; Putin's Poisoners Ed.

The Berlin hospital treating the seriously ill Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, says he appears to have been poisoned.

No doubt at all.

In short, he was poisoned with some sort of nerve agent.

Open Up the National Strategic Popcorn Reserves

A former close friend of Melania Trump is releasing a book based on her time in the Trump circle. The book will cover, among other things, the way that Melania talked about the president and his adult children, and it’s reportedly based on audio recordings that were taken secretly.

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff was a friend of Melania Trump, and spent time close to the family in both casual and professional capacities. In Yasher’s Newsletter Yashar Ali writes that two sources say Wolkoff secretly taped the First Lady talking about her husband and stepchildren. The details of the audio are reportedly included in her upcoming book, Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with The First Lady.

…two sources familiar with the contents of her book confirmed that she reveals the details in her book including harsh comments about Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter and senior advisor.

And this:

New York’s Democratic attorney general asked a court Monday to enforce subpoenas into an investigation into whether President Donald Trump and his businesses inflated assets on financial statements.

Attorney General Letitia James filed a petition in state trial court in New York City naming the Trump Organization, an umbrella group for the Republican president’s holdings, as a respondent along with other business entities. The filing also named Eric Trump and Seven Springs, a New York estate owned by the Trump family.
...
The attorney general’s office is investigating whether the Trump Organization and the president improperly inflated the value of assets to secure loans and obtain economic and tax benefits. Investigators are looking into whether the Trump Organization and its agents improperly inflated the value of the Seven Springs north of the city.

There have been plenty of reports that Trump lies about is icome, up to and including committing tax fraud whenever it suits him.

Meanwhile, Melania uses Air Force airplanes to go to and from her hair appointments, instead of, say, paying her hairdresser to take the Acela down to the White House. One thing is clear: The Trump family will have cost the taxpayers more for their travel than the last two presidents, combined.

Grand Old Party of Perverts

Crack open a nice bottle of Schadenfreude '20 for this one:

In a claim likely to intensify the controversy surrounding one of the most influential figures in the American Christian conservative movement, a business partner of Jerry Falwell Jr has come forward to say he had a years-long sexual relationship involving Falwell’s wife and the evangelical leader.

Giancarlo Granda says he was 20 when he met Jerry and Becki Falwell while working as a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel in March 2012. Starting that month and continuing into 2018, Granda told Reuters that the relationship involved him having sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell looked on.

Granda showed Reuters emails, text messages and other evidence that he says demonstrate the sexual nature of his relationship with the couple, who have been married since 1987. “Becki and I developed an intimate relationship and Jerry enjoyed watching from the corner of the room,” Granda said in an interview. Now 29, he described the liaisons as frequent – “multiple times per year” – and said the encounters took place at hotels in Miami and New York, and at the Falwells’ home in Virginia.

If it wasn't for the fact that Falwell has, for decades, been one of those Bible-thumping moralists, ready to castigate anyone and everyone who doesn't measure up to his moral yardstick, nobody would really care about this.

But since Spawn of Falwell has a long history of being racist, misogynistic and homophobic, it's high time to see this guy hoisted by his own petard.

Burn the Land and Boil the Sea; Trump's Policies

Between Melania's near-bulldozing of the Rose Gardenand Trump's willingness to poison the air and the water under any excuse that he can find, it's pretty clear that wrecking everything is Trump's goal.

Funny how all of those self-styled evangelicals are supporting a man who, when his policies and personal behavoirs are examined, he might well be the Antichrist.

Why Any Rational Person Would Be Wary of the Coronavirus Vaccine

First Trump lambastes the FDA for following scientific protocols instead of his whims:

Then, all of a sudden, the FDA issues emergency authorization to use convalescent plasma to treat COVID cases.

On the eve of the Republican National Convention, Trump put himself at the center of the FDA’s announcement of the authorization at a news conference Sunday evening.

The implication that Trump is putting out is he the one who is pushing stuff out in defiance of things such as trials and evidence. Nobody can be assured that Trump won't have twisted the FDA's arm to approve a vaccine before the testing is finished and the results evaluated.

In other words, Trump will pull a Putin if he can.

So why did Trump make a Sunday announcement? Possibly because he was trying to drown out the coverage of his sister's calling Donnie a cheat and a liar. One of the more telling things is that his sister basically said that she doesn't want that asshole to speak at her funeral.

Your Sunday Morning Turboprop Noise

A Saunders-Roe "Princess" flying boat:



That was the only one that ever flew. By then, thanks to the widespread construction of runways for the Second World War, flying boats were obsolete.

Mon aéroglisseur est plein d'anguilles

I got nothing.

Trump's Hardon for TikTok is an Outgrowth of His Failed Rally In Tulsa

Users on the social media app TikTok are claiming some credit for the disappointing turnout at the president's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, [on June 20th], after a weeks-long campaign to artificially inflate the number of people registered to attend. The prank may have helped lead the Trump campaign to boast about more than a million people seeking tickets for the rally — while only about 6,200 ended up filling seats.
...
Two days before the rally, Mr. Trump said at the White House, "It's a crowd like, I guess, nobody's seen before. We have tremendous, tremendous requests for tickets — like, I think, probably has never happened politically before."

But when Mr. Trump walked onto the stage at Tulsa's BOK Center, there were fewer than 6,200 people there to see him, according to the city's fire department. About two-thirds of the stadium wasn't filled, and photos from the rally showed rows upon rows of empty blue chairs.

Trump has to blame somebody for failing to fill the seats in his Superspreader Event in Tulsa, so rather than blame his campaign, he's blaming TikTok.

And that's why he's got such a mad on for them. The stated rationales for forcing the sale of TikTok are just eyewash. If it wasn't for what happened in Tulsa, or, more accurately, what didn't happen, Trump wouldn't give a rat's ass about TikTok.

Warm Up Your Checkbook, Donnie

A California Superior Court judge has ordered President Donald Trump to pay $44,100 to Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, to reimburse her attorneys' fees in the legal battle surrounding her nondisclosure agreement.
...
Broadbelt also rejected an argument by Trump's attorneys that the President was not liable for the fees because he had not signed the NDA.
In his decision, Broadbelt wrote that since Trump had reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000 payment to Clifford, and since the Trump legal team had earlier argued that a defamation suit filed against the President by Clifford should be handled by an arbitrator per the NDA, the President was effectively a party to the agreement.

You're a loser, Donnie, so that why you pay her.

Bet that this story has already been tweeted to Melanaia about a half-a-pasta-bazillion times by now.

Go to Ft. Hood Because You Have Orders. Stay Because You've Been Murdered.

Ft. Hood has emerged as the most crime-ridden Army base.

The why it's that way isn't obvious. But what does seem to be going on is a culture of cover-up and denial, both on and off-base. Nobody's going to earn goodwill for promotion by uncovering and dealing with a toxic culture of crime. The off-base community doesn't want to upset Big Army by aggressively prosecuting soldiers who have committed crimes.

Funny how Trump and his bootlickers keep blathering about crime-ridden cities, but they ignore any such place in a red state, such as Ft. Hood.

Caturday

Priss disappeared for four days. Some of us here went into mourning.

I kept the faith.

Live in a Rural Area and Support Trump? He's Going to Fuck You, Hard.

Now, with delays raising fears that the United States Postal Service is being hobbled by a combination of financial problems, politicization and pandemic, farmers and other rural residents say they are particularly vulnerable to the crisis roiling the postal system. And while President Trump’s own words have raised alarms that the problems are part of an effort to keep Democrats from voting by mail, many of those being hurt the most live in rural areas that overwhelmingly support the president.

“This is an attack on a tried-and-true service that rural America depends on,” said Chris Gibbs, a farmer in western Ohio who voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, but this year started an advocacy group arguing that the president has failed rural America. “It pulls one more piece of stability, predictability and reliability from rural America. People don’t like that.”
...
Amid the uproar, some rural residents worried that the damage to their livelihoods and the credibility of the Postal Service had already been done. They wondered whether they could still trust the mail to handle their packages, animals and ballots.

“I’ve always counted on the post office,” said Carrie Sparrevohn, 64, who raises merino sheep and sells wool and yarn from her ranch outside Auburn, Calif. “Now, I don’t know if I should be mailing anything.”
...
In Fort Benton, Mont., Leone Cloepfil, 75, started worrying about her mail in July, when her Visa payment was not delivered and she was charged a $35.04 late fee. She had to stop driving recently after the numbness in her foot got so bad that she could no longer feel the pedals, so she said she had no choice but to trust her ballot to the mail.
...
But in places already isolated because of spotty internet access, people said the post office was the only institution mandated to serve them at a flat cost, no matter the weather or how remote they were. Like a hospital, school or grocery store — all of which have closed across rural America — they said a post office anchored a town’s survival.

“If these small rural towns lose their post offices they lose their identity,” said Gaylene Christensen, who relies on the post office to ship orders of home décor from her shop in Arlington, S.D., now that foot traffic has been slowed by the pandemic. “We’re the ones who are going to get hit.”

You'd think that a guy like Trump, who views the presidency as being transactional, and who demanded that places that didn't vote for him get punished, would want to look out for those who did.

But you'd be so wrong.

Do you live in Alaska, where people depend on the post office for all manner of things? Welll, Trump and DeJoy are going to fuck you up.

DeJoy’s potential plans, the people said, also include eliminating the Alaska Bypass program, a federal program exclusive to the state in which the Postal Service subsidizes the cost of freight shipping of groceries and other goods for remote areas to keep its commitment to universal service. The program costs the USPS about $100 million a year.

If you live outside of the "lower 48", DeJoy is going to ensure that your mail costs a lot more.

The post office isn't a business and it hasn't been for over two hundred years. But the Republicans, for decades, have harbored a dream of breaking up the post office, of privatizing it.

Anyone in rural America who thinks that is a good idea probably needs some serious professional help.

BOHICA; Gun Ed.

This is a screenshot from an Internet retailer:

That's right; nearly seventy smackers for a box of cheap-jack .380 range ammo that, at the beginning of the year, sold for about one-fifth that.

Let me be clear: I despise profiteers and that outfit, through the supply shortages in 2009, 2013 and now, has been in the forefront of skimming whatever it can.

Because It's Friday

The Lehigh Gorge Scenic Rwy, Jim Thorpe, PA

Today Just Got a Little Brighter

Stephen K. Bannon, former top advisor to President Donald Trump, was arrested while on a yacht off Westbrook [CT] early Thursday, law enforcement sources said.

Bannon was arrested by inspectors from the U.S. Postal Service while cruising Long Island Sound near Westbrook in a $28 million mega yacht called Lady May.
...
The “We Build The Wall” fundraiser was headed by men who pushed their close ties to President Trump, giving their effort a legitimacy that helped them raise more than $25 million. They touted their effort to help the president realize his vision of a “big beautiful” border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, especially after his effort to redirect millions in government funds, was held up through lawsuits.

But according to the criminal charges unsealed Thursday, very little of the wall was actually constructed. Instead, the money lined the pockets of some of those involved. Bannon, who served in Trump’s 2016 campaign and White House, received over $1 million himself, using some to secretly pay co-defendant, Brian Kolfage, the founder of the project, and to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars of Bannon’s personal expenses.

There's more details in a Times story.

Donnie, Jr. praised the fraudulent charity:

Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. was a guest at a symposium hosted by the We Build the Wall group in New Mexico in 2019, praising the organization as “private enterprise at its finest.”

“Doing it better, faster, cheaper than anything else,” he added.

But now he's backing away as fast as his corrupt little legs can carry him.

Grifters gotta grift. Make America Grift Again!

Edited to add: All of the chairmen of Trump's 2016 campaign have been arrested on one charge or another.

Send Two Cards or Letters a Week

That's something that would go a ways to helping the Postal Service out: Send two cards or letters a week. Friends, family, to the paper, your congresscritters, your mayor, it doesn't matter.

If every American did that, it would go a long way.1
_____________________________________
1. Trumpists don't count.

"Postmaster" DeJoy is Murdering Chickens

At least 4,800 chicks shipped to Maine farmers through the U.S. Postal Service have arrived dead in the recent weeks since rapid cuts hit the federal mail carrier’s operations, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree said.

A little more:

The postal service is the only entity that ships live chicks and other small animals and has done so since 1918, according to the service’s website. For farmers in Maine it has been an affordable method for receiving live chicks from hatcheries in other parts of the country. The state has no hatcheries of its own. A newly hatched chick can live for up to two days without food or water, drawing its nutrition from the yolk of the egg it was hatched in, according to poultry experts with the University of Maine’s Cooperative Extension Service.

Through a world war, a depression, years of turmoil and two pandemics, the Postal Service has delivered the mail. Through rain, snow, gloom of night, but not with a Trumpist thug as postmaster general, a man who is deliberately crippling the mail to both benefit Trump's attempts to fuck with the election and to line his own pockets, as he has investments in companies that compete with the Postal Service.

The Postal Service is not just a company. It is one of the functions of government mandated by the Constitution.1 The decades-long effort to "privatize" the Postal Service is as evil as it would be to hand the defense of this country over to mercenaries.2

Republicans complaining about voter fraud is the same old bullshit. When it comes down to it, the fraudsters almost always turn out to be Republicans, especially their caudillo.
_______________________
1. Article I, Section 7, Clause 7.
2. They've probably thought of it. Dimwit DeVos may have been arguing that to Trump, for all we know.

Trump is Losing His Shit (and we may all pay the price)

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said a massive shift to mail-in voting in the November presidential election could cause so many problems officials might have to re-do the vote.

Trump has said repeatedly and without evidence that a shift to universal mail-in voting - something most states have not proposed doing - will lead to fraud in the Nov. 3 election, when he faces Democratic challenger Joe Biden who currently holds a substantial lead in public opinion polls.

Trump does not have the authority to reschedule an election. A national election “re-do” has never occurred in the more than 200 years the U.S. has held elections, including during the Civil War, the Great Depression and two world wars.

That Trump doesn't have the power to do anything has never stopped him from wanting to do it. That something is wrong hasn't stopped Trump, ever.

It is not beyond the realm of possibility that it will take tanks to get him out of the White House. He may flee to his dacha in Moscow to agitate and plot a revolution.

The sad things is that there are probably somewhere between ten and thirty percent of the population who will be more loyal to Trump than they are to the Constitution. The short-hand term for such people is "traitors". We may be in for a very rough time.

Meanwhile, the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is run by Republicans, concluded that Trump's 2016 campaign was indeed working with Russian spies. Kushner, Bannion and Donny, Jr. lied under oath to the Senate panel.

The Trump Administration is a nest of traitors and criminals.

The Protest of the Karens

A “wild pack of Karens” were spotted outside of a grocery store in California on Saturday participating in an anti-mask rally.

Claiming that having to wear a mask to prevent the spread of the coronavirus is "worse than communism" and "a war crimes" shows that the Covidiots are truly a pack of fucktards.

Two of those idiots apparently went into the store without masks and were arrested for trespassing.

Presidential Emergency Action Documents

The power of the president is enormous – and may be even more so with presidential emergency action documents (PEADs), classified orders granting vast presidential authority in response to extraordinary situations. PEADs are so secret even Congress cannot see them – and that troubles constitutional scholars. "Sunday Morning" special contributor Ted Koppel reports

.

If you watch it, you'll see that the only person who is not troubled by the vast powers claimed by the 48-odd PEADs (or up to 60) is John Woo, the Torturers' Lawyer, a man who, if the US was not so powerful, would have been tried in The Hague a long time ago for crimes against humanity.

So what happens if Trump uses those powers to suspend habeus corpus, to postpone or cancel the election, to round up his enemies? Short answer: Nobody knows.

During the 1970s, when military officers engaged in informal discussions in the wake of the Nixon Administration, it was the majority consensus that, if Nixon had done such things, that the military would have obeyed their oath of fealty to the Constitution and moved against Nixon.

I don't have that confidence today.

If Trump does those things, I am certain that the majority of those self-styled Constitution-loving patriots will all fall in line behind Trump. They will rationalize Trump's trashing of the Constitution as "pwning the libtards" or some other bit of nonsense.

Will Trump go quietly, assuming that he loses? We can only hope, especially if we can promise him that he'll have more time to play golf.

But if he doesn't, the question will be whether or not those who swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, are loyal to their oath or to Trump.

Either way, you may want to have supplies on hand.

And keep your powder dry.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

F-16s at Nellis AFB:

So Much Winning

The U.N. Security Council on Friday resoundingly defeated a U.S. resolution to indefinitely extend the U.N. arms embargo on Iran, with the Trump administration getting support from only the Dominican Republic but vowing further action to prevent Tehran’s sale and export of conventional weapons.

Can anyone offer another time when an American-sponsored resolution in the Security Council was only supported by one other nation?

Note that the Chinese are saying that, because the Trump Administration withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Accord, that what the Trump Administration proposes or threatens under that agreement is meaningless. Sort of like this:

France and Germany have quit talks on reforming the World Health Organization in frustration at attempts by the United States to lead the negotiations, despite its decision to leave the WHO, three officials told Reuters.
...
“Nobody wants to be dragged into a reform process and getting an outline for it from a country which itself just left the WHO,” a senior European official involved in the talks said.

When you take your ball and go home, don't be shocked if the game goes on without you. That's something that Trump can't understand.

America may never again be the unquestioned global leader, the indispensable nation. And that is due to the global sabotage wreaked by Donald Trump.

Caturday

Chip had dental worth this week, poor guy. He lost four teeth. In this photo, he is coming out of anesthesia.

He’s on a all-wet food diet for five days postop. Once that’s over, we’ll have created a monster.

Did Beeltejuice Sneeze?

Apparently a star can sneeze.

That is what happened to Betelgeuse, the red supergiant star that marks the armpit of Orion the Hunter, according to Andrea Dupree, associate director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She and an international team of astronomers described that conclusion in a paper published this week in Astrophysical Journal.

This is a fascinating universe that we live in.

Flashback

Just for fun, here's a long post about propeller management, which I wrote back in the day when my readership could be counted on both hands.

Over the years, it's gotten a lot of views. Probably thanks to the Google. Other posts around the same time haven't reached ten views.

Revolvers With Safeties

I was reading a mystery the other day.1 As the story reached its climax, Our Hero pulled out his .357 revolver and "thumbed off the safety."

I wanted to throw the book across the room, and I might have, if it wasn't a libary book.

So anyway, here's this:

I don't know how a mystery author can take a lot of time to get places and locations correct and not spend five freaking minutes doing basic research on the basic tool of the trade of a fictional private detective.2
_____________________________
1. Collision Bend by Les Roberts.
2. Robert B. Parker was horrible in this regard.

Gold Rush Prices

According to the book Revolver; Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter That Changed America, a Colt revolver that sold for $38 in New York in 1849 sold for up to $500 in California.

Today, that would be equivalent to $1,160 (not far off from today's MSRP) and $15,300. That would get you three Korth revolvers.

Because It's Friday

The weather's how, so let's cool off with some winter steam on the Durango & Silverton RR:

Republicans Keep Grifting, Michigan Ed.

LANSING (August 3, 2020) — With all the drama of a soap opera, the first approved recall ballot petition effort against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has canceled its signature collection amid allegations that the founder, Chad Baase, used the committee’s funds for personal use.
...
Baase, who is also running as a Republican for the 62nd Michigan House district, has flatly denied most allegations — except that money is missing.

A Trumpist politician dipped his hand into campaign funds for personal expenses.. or, in other words, "ops normal".

Bail Funds

The MA Bail Fund is taking heat for bailing out criminals accused of violent felonies. They bailed out an accused rapist who went on to rape another victim. In their statement, the MA Bail Fund veers from trying to take the high road to calling those who oppose freeing everyone as white supremacists.

The reality of things is not as clear as the Bail Fund would have it.

Look, it is true that even low bail has a heavy impact on poor people. A fair bail system would be based on a financial disclosure form (income and assets), so everyone has the same amount of skin in the game.1 One of the features of higher bail is to ensure that the accused and their family have an incentive for the accused to act right, to show up for court, and to not commit any more crimes. A third party paying the freight removes that incentive, for the bail payment becomes free money.

I'd be more impressed if, instead of weaselly-worded statements that "we believe that people who have been harmed need and deserve access to community supports, trauma services, and healing", that the MA Bail Fund did something tangible to support the victims of those they sprung from stir.

Bail reform is needed. Free money to those accused of violent crimes is not anywhere near approaching a reform.
___________________________________________
1. Finland, for one, does that for traffic fines.

One Thing You Can Count On

Because Sen. Kamala Harris isn’t white, some assholes will challenge her citizenship.

Her parents were immigrants (her mother is deceased), some racist fucks will claim she’s not an American by birth. Even though she was born in Oakland, CA.

Trump’s mother was an immigrant, but nobody seriously questioned his citizenship. Because he’s a white guy. Unlike, say, the previous president, who also had one non-American parent, but trolls like Trump questioned his citizenship, because he’s Black.

It’s racism, pure and simple. If you’re questioning Sen. Harris’s right to run for office on the bullshit grounds that being born in Oakland doesn’t make her an American citizen, then you, sir or madam, are a racist fuck.

Don’t let the screen door hit you in the ass on your way out.

Update, 8/13/20, 9AM: Yep. It happened.

“What kind of spectacular prick do you have to be that everyone’s last request is ‘make sure that asshole isn’t at my funeral’?”

Bill Maher asks that question of Donald Trump, and posits a possible eulogy for Trump, so that Trump may get an idea how he is regarded:

It got under Trump's notoriously thin skin.

Biden-Harris

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has named Kamala Harris as his running mate - the first black woman and South Asian American in the role.

Once a rival for the top job, the California senator of Indian-Jamaican heritage had long been considered the front-runner for the number two slot.

Harris was not my ideal pick, but then again, I'm not running for president. Biden is.

She's probably a smart choice. Harris has not been out in front of the Black Live Matter movement. As CA's AG, she was diligent in defending problematic convictions and sentences, which arguably was part of her job.1 Trump thinks that she's nasty,2 she'll do a good job of getting under his skin.
________________________________________
[1] If you subscribe to the view that the prosecutor's job is to zealously push their side of things and leave issues of justice and fairness up to the judges. (I don't.)
[2] One of his favorite words to describe women who dare to have opinions on anything. Except for maybe he daughter, which, as we all know, he wanted to bang.

Trumpist Family Values; CT Ed.

A Republican running for Congress in Connecticut’s 2nd District abruptly dropped his bid on the day of the primary following his arrest on domestic violence charges.

Thomas Gilmer, 29, of Madison was arrested by Wethersfield police late Monday and posted $5,000 bail. He was arraigned Tuesday in Superior Court in New Britain on charges of first-degree unlawful restraint and second-degree strangulation.

It's a lot messier than that, with allegations that the local GOP party officials tried to hush things up.

Things is, this guy's probably going to win the primary. He's the endorsed candidate and ten times as many voters in the primary are voting by mail than is usual, plus that he dropped out too late for the news to spread.

Gobsmacking Stupidity; Trump Ed.

The President says the “1917 pandemic” ended the Second World War pic.twitter.com/jSltuSYim2

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) August 10, 2020

Yes, he really said it.

Assembling an Operating V-8 Engine

Yes, it's an animation. But it shows how all of that crap works.

All the parts that going into building a V8 engine

In the Year 2028, At Some Cemetery Outside Мосба

Also, this:

pic.twitter.com/a0Ybx4vev7

— erin plizga (@ELPlizga) August 9, 2020

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

Tree-trimming around powerlines with a Loach (MD-500 or something):

It'd be expensive to have those guys trim your trees.

A Couple of Few Things

First off, I'm having trouble just keeping up with stupid shit said by Trump, especially in the interview with Jonathan Swan of Axios.

As Seth Meyers points out, every time Trump steps out from the bubble of Fox News, it's a disaster for him.

So one has to wonder why Trump does it. At this point, we have two candidates that have a propensity to say stupid shit, but we only have one who lies with every breath he takes, over 20,000 lies in three and a half years. He's a fucking bully who specializes in making enemies of our long-term friends. He can't be bothered to do anything meaningful about this pandemic, because that requires steadiness of purpose and speaking the truth to the American people, two things he just cannot master.

--------------------------------------

Now, to shift gears to the NRA.

You've probably read that the attorney general of New York is suing to dissolve the NRA. If you read any of the conservative media, you'll see a lot of teeth being gnashed over an assault by a liberal on a storied organization.

Let's be honest about that: There is a germ of truth in that charge by conservatives. Nobody sued to dissolve the Komen Foundation, TIGHAR or the Wounded Warrior Project after it came to light that they were big on feathering the nests of their bosses.

But let's also be honest about this: The NRA did it to themselves. You only have to surf the online firearms communities to see frank discussions of how much of a shitstorm the NRA has become. There a lots of allegations of how the CEO, Wayne LaPierre, has been treating the NRA as his personal piggy bank, to the point that he wanted the NRA to buy him a $5 million mansion in Texas, a purchase that fell through because it became a PR nightmare. Through the NRA's ad agency, an apartment was rented for a comely intern (allegations were that she was WLP's chippie) and over a quarter-million was charged for WLP's purchases at a tony boutique in Beverly Hills.

Second Amendment activists have been trying to clean up the NRA for years. But WLP keeps doing what he does, including purging directors who opposed his kleptocratic regime and rigging the board elections. The NRA has been shedding members. If you're a member (other than a life member), you've probably gotten one email after another offering reduced membership rates. But nobody can penetrate the armored bubble WLP and his acolytes have erected.

Maybe the NY AG can. It's likely a politically inspired lawsuit. But it's a lawsuit that would never stood a chance of success if WLP had not mortally wounded the NRA from within.

If we have an assault weapon and high-cap magazine bans in the near future, a goodly share of the blame should attach to WLP.

--------------------------------------

Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff known for his controversial hardline tactics against undocumented immigrants, lost his bid to win back his former position in Maricopa County.

Arpaio lost Tuesday's Republican primary for Maricopa County sheriff to his former chief deputy Jerry Sheridan by about 6,000 votes, according to the results from the Maricopa County Elections Department.

Signals: Alfa! Mike! Foxtrot!

Adios, you fascistic motherfucker.

Caturday

I'm feeling lazy, so this is what you get this week:

Sulu Scores!

I’ll make a positive ID:
DONALD TRUMP

Do I get $10 million? pic.twitter.com/K8Ib61MkGs

— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) August 6, 2020

Because It's Friday (Repaired Video Link)

Starting up an old stationary engine:

I think I'd want to be a lot of feet away when they first fired that up.

Global Peace Came With a Bang, Not a Whimper

No, I am not so naive to imagine that there is anything approximating world peace. Countries still find ways to fight and to kill each other's citizens.

But today, seventy-five years ago, with the detonation of Little Boy over the City of Hiroshima, direct armed conflict between major powers fell out of fashion. It became clear during both World Wars that wars were no longer confined to the battlefield, but between atomic weapons and intercontinental delivery systems, the conflict could reach anywhere.

And everywhere. Even a smallish nuclear war could do that.

Few rational leaders are eager to see their cities vaporized, much less see their people die of starvation.

The danger is that, as those who saw what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki fade from living witnesses into historical accounts, some fool will believe that the effects of nuclear weapons are overblown and use them. Because humans seem to be really bad at learning from history.

I suspect that we will see nuclear weapons used in war before this century is out. My good fortune is being of an age where I will be less likely to see it.

Just Going to Leave These Here

(H/T}

Isaias

At least six people were killed as Tropical Storm Isaias spawned tornadoes and dumped rain Tuesday along the U.S. East Coast after making landfall as a hurricane in North Carolina, where it caused floods and fires that displaced dozens of people.

And:

At least six people have died due to the storm and more than 3 million customers across five states were without power late Tuesday night.

The Trump Administration must be considerably relieved that they only have a tropical storm to fuck up the response to.

Pence Loves Criminals. As Long As They're Republicans

In January 2019, the Navy found itself in a tough spot.

Former Navy SEAL and Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens wanted to be reinstated to military service. He hadn’t applied yet, but the Navy had received word the request was coming.

The problem was neither the SEALs nor the Navy wanted him back, documents newly obtained by The Star show.

Greitens had been charged with a felony in 2018 connected to allegations of violent sexual misconduct. Though the charge was ultimately dropped, the Navy wasn’t ready to welcome the former governor back at a time when the military was facing intense criticism over its response to sexual assault in its ranks.

It was after the intervention of Vice President Mike Pence’s office that Greitens was allowed to return as a reservist, the documents show.
...
Greitens and Pence have political ties through Nick Ayers, a veteran GOP strategist that ran Greitens’ 2016 gubernatorial campaign and went on to serve as the vice president’s chief of staff for two years.

Greitens resigned his governorship as part of a plea deal to avoid being prosecuted. It's small wonder that the Navy didn't want him back. But hell, the Navy has a record of bending its rules when it comes to those who can get a powerful politician to push for them. This is at least the second time Pence has been involved with that.

Anyway, Greitens claims to be "fully exonerated", which is some high-grade horseshit. Avoiding prosecution with a deal is not exactly exoneration. That's sort of like Leslie Moonves, who said that the allegations against him when he was CEO of CBS were completely untrue, but he still quit his job. There are a lot of people like that.

The only reason that makes sense for Greitens to have quit being governor was that they had the goods on him, he knew it, and everyone was more interested in getting his drama out of Jefferson City than putting him on trial.

(Not that his successor, a true Covidiot, has been any great improvement.)

Dismantle DHS

To the DHS, the First Amendment is just a goddamned piece of paper, right?

The Department of Homeland Security has compiled “intelligence reports” about the work of American journalists covering protests in Portland, Ore., in what current and former officials called an alarming use of a government system meant to share information about suspected terrorists and violent actors.

Over the past week, the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis has disseminated three Open Source Intelligence Reports to federal law enforcement agencies and others, summarizing tweets written by two journalists — a reporter for the New York Times and the editor in chief of the blog Lawfare — and noting they had published leaked, unclassified documents about DHS operations in Portland. The intelligence reports, obtained by The Washington Post, include written descriptions and images of the tweets and the number of times they had been liked or retweeted by others.

Oh sure, after the story broke, DHS did the usual ritual reassignment of a functionary, but that means zip -point-shit.

DHS has also been spying on peaceful protesters, again, because the First Amendment doesn't matter a fuck to DHS.

The Department of Homeland Security has been monitoring the Black Lives Matter movement since anti-police protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri last summer, according to hundreds of documents obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The documents, released by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Operations Coordination, indicate that the department frequently collects information, including location data, on Black Lives Matter activities from public social media accounts, including on Facebook, Twitter, and Vine, even for events expected to be peaceful. The reports confirm social media surveillance of the protest movement and ostensibly related events in the cities of Ferguson, Baltimore, Washington, DC, and New York.

They also show the department watching over gatherings that seem benign and even mundane. For example, DHS circulated information on a nationwide series of silent vigils and a DHS-funded agency planned to monitor a funk music parade and a walk to end breast cancer in the nation’s capital.

You read right, the DHS was monitoring a fundraising walk to end breast cancer, because why? Breast cancer patients and their families are prone to rioting?

DHS has become an Orwellian agency whose main function has been to suppress the rights of American citizens, at least, those of color and of a different political persuasion than the GOP. This has been going on for decades and across three administrations. Every time the threat of far-right extremism is pointed out, their fellow-traveler politicians squelch any attempts to investigate them.

Creating DHS was a knee-jerk overreaction by a bunch of jerks to a terrorist attack. DHS's structure, if not its very existence, should be re-examined with an eye to its complete dismantling.

Trumpanzees at Work

A married couple was taken into custody Friday after a racist rant and act of vandalism in Torrance last week was caught on cellphone video.

Gregory Howell, a 29-year-old from Carson, and Rachel Howell, a 29-year-old from Seal Beach, were captured on camera on July 22 as a road rage incident culminated into a confrontation, the Torrance Police Department said in a news release.
...
On July 24, investigators obtained arrest warrants for both Howells for hate crimes and vandalism, according to police. After locating the pair a week later, the couple was arrested Friday.

The Howells have to be dumber than two sacks of hammers, not to realize that almost everyone these days carries a videocamera with themselves and knows how to use it.

No Shit, Sherlock; Vaccine Ed.

Given that it typically takes years to develop a vaccine, the timetable for the initiative, called Operation Warp Speed, was incredibly ambitious.
...
It escaped no one that the proposed deadline also intersected nicely with President Trump’s need to curb the virus before the election in November.
...
Under constant pressure from a White House anxious for good news and a public desperate for a silver bullet to end the crisis, the government’s researchers are fearful of political intervention in the coming months and are struggling to ensure that the government maintains the right balance between speed and rigorous regulation, according to interviews with administration officials, federal scientists and outside experts.
...
Despite concerted efforts by the Trump administration and a bevy of pharmaceutical companies it is working with, the original October target has slipped, with the administration now pushing to have hundreds of millions of doses available by the end of the year or early 2021.

But experts inside and outside the government still say they fear the White House will push the Food and Drug Administration to overlook insufficient data and give at least limited emergency approval to a vaccine, perhaps for use by specific groups like front-line health care workers, before the vote on Nov. 3.

That's pretty much of a "no shit, bucko" for me. If a vaccine is released this year, I plan not to take it, not until what essentially will be the phase four trials are done.

And this is why: The Prince of Merde, fresh off his efforts to bring a lasting peace to the Middle East, will have his grubby fingerprints all over it:

The president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, who is helping to steer the re-election campaign from the White House, is a regular participant in meetings of a board formed to oversee the vaccine effort.

This whole project has been rife with insider influence and stinks of corruption.

The vaccines pushed by Trump have the potential to be like his favorite drug, hydroxychloraquine: Ineffective and dangerous.

So take the Trump vaccine to cure the Trump Virus at your own peril.

Yeah, Just the Flu. My Ass, It is.

The list of lingering maladies from COVID-19 is longer and more varied than most doctors could have imagined. Ongoing problems include fatigue, a racing heartbeat, shortness of breath, achy joints, foggy thinking, a persistent loss of sense of smell, and damage to the heart, lungs, kidneys, and brain.
...
A paper this week in JAMA Cardiology found that 78 of 100 people diagnosed with COVID-19 had cardiac abnormalities when their heart was imaged on average 10 weeks later, most often inflammation in heart muscle. Many of the participants in that study were previously healthy, and some even caught the virus while on ski trips, according to the authors.
...
Brown, Zandi, and colleagues described 43 people with neurologic complications this month in Brain; many had been hospitalized during their acute infection, but not always for long—and for some, neurologic problems were their most debilitating symptom and the reason for hospital admission. In summary, this is some serious shit, people. Even if you get it and you think that you've gotten over it, the potential is there for some long-term damage that can seriously fuck up the rest of your life.

Still think it's just the flu? Back up your bullshit with deeds and sign the Covid Waiver. I'll bet that there is not a single person who has.

Dragon is Home

First splashdown in 35 years, first manned one in the Gulf of Mexico.

Interesting

Trump appears to be dragging his right leg around in this clip from his visit to a lab in North Carolina on Monday pic.twitter.com/LIJiIIRrLU

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 28, 2020

Add that to his slow gait down the ramp at West Point, his recent tendency for using two hands to drink a glass of water and that still-unexplained weekend jaunt to Walter Reed last November.

That all says something. I'm not sure what, though.

(H/T)

Crew Dragon Splashdown

NASA TV is live for the re-entry and recovery.

The timeline:

1:51 p.m. – Crew Dragon performs claw separation. The claw is located on Crew Dragon’s trunk, connecting thermal control, power, and avionics system components located on the trunk to the capsule.
1:51 p.m. – Trunk separation
1:56 p.m. – Deorbit burn begins
2:08 p.m. – Deorbit burn complete
2:11 p.m. – Nosecone deploys
2:32 p.m. – Crew Dragon maneuvers to attitude for re-entry
2:44 p.m. – Drogue parachutes deploy at about 18,000 feet in altitude while Crew Dragon is moving approximately 350 miles per hour.
2:45 p.m. – Main parachutes deploy at about 6,000 feet in altitude while Crew Dragon is moving approximately 119 miles per hour.
2:48 p.m. – Splashdown

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

Apache helos

Fun for the I-95 Corridor

Hurricane Isaias:

Tracks change, they always do, but as of now, this puppy's going to run right over NAVSTA Norfolk and New London.

Hopefully Donnie Dumbass can keep his Sharpie away from the hurricane maps.

The Trump Administration Could Fuck Up a Wet Dream; Pandemic Ed.

Leave it to Trump to fuck up a working system.

As COVID-19 hospitalizations in the US approach the highest levels seen in the pandemic so far, national efforts to track patients and hospital resources remain in shambles after the federal government abruptly seized control of data collection earlier this month.

The Trump administration issued a directive to hospitals and states July 10, instructing them to stop submitting their daily COVID-19 hospital data to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—which has historically handled such public health data—and instead submit it to a new database in the hands of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Besides the point that the Trump Administration increased the administrative burden on hospitals across the country, there's the funny point about a ten-million dollar for handling the data that was given under shady circumstances to, you guessed it, yet another Trump supporter. It was awarded in such a way that other companies, who might of been expected to bid on it, not only did not, they were not aware of it.

With Trump and his cronies, it's all about the grift.

Caturday

This is the Rodent Control Officer at a local hardware store: