Raking These Down, Here

Trump Is Telling You Who He Is.

A video posted to Donald Trump’s account on his social media network Monday included references to a “unified Reich” among hypothetical news headlines if he wins the election in November.
...
Trump previously used rhetoric echoing Adolf Hitler when he said immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country,” and called his opponents “vermin.”

The former president has also drawn wide backlash for having dined with a Holocaust-denying white nationalist in 2022 and for downplaying the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white nationalists chanted “Jews will not replace us!”

Cadet Bone Spurs's defenders are saying a staffer posted it and that he had nothing to do with it. But when it was pointed out to him and his people, the post was left up. So yes, he owns it.

He is telling you who he is in no uncertain terms. And to those who defend him, that's who you are, as well.

1-800 Customer Service, Everywhere

If True, the Irony is Kilometers-Thick; Russian Ed.

I haven't taken the time to run this down, but StrategyPage is saying that the Russians are talking about giving up a vast chunk of their territory in the Far East to China, comprising 9% of Russian territory, in payment for dual-use war material supplied by China.

If it's true, the irony is rich that Russia has gone to war to try to conquer Ukraine and will lose a vast chunk of its Asian territory in the process. I doubt if that's going to go over well with the Russian nationalists, let alone the Russian people, when they figure it out.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

(Somehow, this went live last Tuesday. Deleted and reposted. Maybe.)

A KC-135 in the Mach Loop.

Not exactly a low pass, but that airplane's probably older than the pilot's parents.

It's Called "Self-Inflicted Wounds"

An upside-down U.S. flag has long been a sign of dire distress and versatile symbol of protest. But in January 2021, when it flew over the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, it was largely seen in connection with a specific cause: the false claim by then-President Donald Trump’s supporters that the 2020 election had been marred by fraud.

The revelation this week about the flag flying at Alito’s home was the latest blow to a Supreme Court that was already under fire as it considers unprecedented cases against Trump and some of those charged with rioting at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Little Brave Sammy has been throwing his wife under the bus, saying it was her dispute with a neighbor. Which, frankly, is bullshit. He knows what the symbol means. He knows the inherent risks of any sort of political display by a judge.

And now we have two, count them, two justices who it can be fairly said have bought into Dolt-45's lies about the election being stolen. Two justices who have staked out partisan positians. And at least two justicies who have been more or less for sale, accepting favors from billionaires. And there are damn few of that class of folk who don't know the value of a buck and who are well aware of what they buy for their money.

The Supreme Court has been, in the last two decades or so, a corrupting influence on our country. Making it nearly impossible to prosecute corrupt officials. Opening the door widely to buying the political process. And having justices who are in debt, whehter morally or financially, to billionaires.

The "fire" that they are under is self-inflicted.

Caturday

Friends help friends clean their heads

Because It's Friday

CP 2816:

"Lens lice" are still a problem.

Sammy Alito is a Partisan, Trumpist Hack

Prove me wrong.

After the 2020 presidential election, as some Trump supporters falsely claimed that President Biden had stolen the office, many of them displayed a startling symbol outside their homes, on their cars and in online posts: an upside-down American flag.

One of the homes flying an inverted flag during that time was the residence of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in Alexandria, Va., according to photographs and interviews with neighbors.

I almost prefer Thomas's brand of venality, at least his hackery is for cash and favors. Little Sammy's because he wants to drag this country back to the Middle Ages.

This Cake Was Baked From the Start

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a full pardon Thursday for [Daniel Perry,] a former U.S. Army sergeant convicted of murder for fatally shooting an armed demonstrator in 2020 during nationwide protests against police violence and racial injustice.

Everybody knew this was coming. The perp could have killed some more people and the outcome would have been the same. Once Putin's Favorite American Pundit began running his mouth, the pardon was a done deal. They only had to finish papering the file and stepping through the paces.

Who Gives A Fuck About This Clown?

The commencement speaker at Kansas’ Benedictine College, a private Catholic liberal arts school, congratulated the women receiving degrees — and said most of them were probably more excited about getting married and having children.

Harrison Butker, the kicker for the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, is getting attention for those and other comments last weekend in which he said some Catholic leaders were “pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth of America.”

Really, who gives a fuck about this guy? His job is kicking a football, a job that doesn't exactly require much more than a room-temperature IQ. But this crap is getting a lot of minutes on the news shows, because reasons.

Less important to those morons on the teevee are the various wars going on that threaten to suck in the rest of the world.

Tedding These Down, Here

I Don't Know Who These Guys Are and I Don't Care; Gun Ed. (Yes, I'm Old)

Rost-Martin RMC1.

I don't much follow developments in striker-fired pistols. If I were to get a striker-fired, double-stack 9mm,[1] I'd get a Glock or a S&W M&P or Equalizer and call it good. Probably the Smith, as I prefer safeties on cocked (or semi-cocked) guns, or double-action. Because I am old, almost as much as these guys, and I know what works for me.

The new hotness seems to be reflex sights. More and more guns are coming either ready to accept the various adapter plates (like the RMC1) or they have such sights installed. When I go to a local USPSA match,[2] I see a lot more people using reflex sights. Most are on gamer-type guns. Once or twice I've seen somebody shooting a carry-sized gun with them. Not sure what that's telling me.

Changing gears, I read a recent profile about Judith Butler, of whom I had never heard. Butler uses they/their/them pronouns, which is fine for Butler. But, having grown up with grammar rules that distinguishes between singular and plural pronouns,[3] it's a little difficult for me to shift gears and realize that "they said that" or "it was their opinion that" is about a single person. I can understand why that is used, for the traditional non-generded signular pronoun would be a little bit insulting, maybe.

Yes, I'm old. So I'm going to close this and go outside to yell at clouds for awhile.
__________________________
[1] Which I'm not going to to, because hi-cap magazines are illegal here.
[2] IDPA seems more rule-y. USPSA doesn't seem to care that much at a Level 1 match, since I am a member of neither.
[3] Enforced with the smack of a ruler, if need be.

Slow Dogs and Fast Dogs

The Circus of Suck-Ups and Ass-Kissers Continues

Bible Mike the Second showed up in NY to kiss Former President Petomane's ring and suck his tiny mushroom dick. Because that's what all of the politicians in the Trump Cult are doing to show their loyalty to Don Snoreleone.

"Senator Tuberville appears to be the only person to ever get brain damage from coaching football.” -- Stephen Colbert

Why I Own Guns (and Know How to Use Them)

Because assholes like this exist:

H/T

I suspect that Wormy Bobby would have endorsed that image and so would that other admirer of Hitler.

Regulating These Down, Here

More Stupid Activists

Two Just Stop Oil protesters have smashed the glass around Magna Carta at the British Library.

The Rev Sue Parfitt, 82, and Judy Bruce, 85, a retired biology teacher, targeted the protective enclosure with a hammer and chisel on Friday morning.

Just Stop Oil said the pair then held up a sign reading “The government is breaking the law” and glued themselves to the display.

Right. Two old women are going to jump-start a discussion about climate change by vandalizing a museum display? In what addle-pated mind does that make an iota of sense?

Happy Mothers Day to All You Mothers Out There

That is all.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

Typhoon!

Next, They’ll Try Holding Their Breath Until They Turn Blue

Over a dozen students at Princeton University have been on hunger strike for the past week as part of a Gaza solidarity encampment on campus protesting Israel’s war on Gaza and calling on the university to disclose and divest from companies with ties to Israel, among other demands.

Self-harm is, arguably, a sign of mental illness. So if this goes on, it probably won't be too hard to get a judge to sign off on a 72-hour hold and then do the needful.

"I'm not going to eat until you do what I want." From me, my response is "so don't eat."

Of Course the Courts Protect the Rich

A federal judge in Texas temporarily halted a plan by the Biden administration to lower late fees on credit cards to $8 that was slated to go into effect next week.

The temporary nationwide injunction imposed by Judge Mark Pittman in the Northern District of Texas is a win for the big banks and major credit card companies, which collect billions in revenue each year in late fees and were looking to stop the proposal from going into effect. It is also a win for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which led the lawsuit on behalf of the banks.

No real shock that a judge that was appointed by the TOFF would side with the banksters against people. You can bet heavily that the Supremes will see it the same way, especially since some of them are owned by billionaires.

Non-Shocker of the Day: Trump Cheats on His Taxes (and Grifts the RNC)

Taking a double deduction on a Chicago project to the tune of $100 million in tax evasion.

Former President Donald Trump may face an IRS bill in excess of $100 million after a government audit indicates he double-dipped on tax losses tied to a Chicago skyscraper, according to a report by The New York Times and ProPublica that drew on a yearslong audit and public filings.

If you or I were to cheat on our taxes for a hundred grand or so, we could expect IRS agents to show up with a set of handcuffs. But former president Petomane, well, he cheats on his taxes at Madoff-grade levels and he's still walking around, unindicted and unbothered.

Meanwhile, most of Don Snoreleone's kids are delegates to the GOP convention this summer. I'll bet that's so their lodging is paid by the RNC and Demented Donnie can overbill the RNC for the cost of them flying their on his 757. But it seems that Melania has persuaded (or commanded) Barron to not get involved in that mishegoss. That's probably a smart move, for if he had gone, then he would have been fair game for both the press and the comedians.

Caturday

Older cats sleep.

Maybe They'll Name a School "Ho Chi Minh Junior High"

A Virginia school board voted Friday to restore the names of Confederate military leaders to a high school and an elementary school, four years after the names were removed amid nationwide protests calling for a reckoning over racial injustice.

In a reversal experts believe was the first of its kind, Shenandoah County’s school board voted 5-1 to rename Mountain View High School as Stonewall Jackson High School and Honey Run Elementary as Ashby Lee Elementary.

At least Ho Chi Minh wasn't fighting to enslave Americans, which those two honorees were.

I guess those morons would have no issues with Norwich, CT renaming a school after Benedict Arnold, since he was from there.

The South is awfully proud of having fought for the right of rich white Southerners to own Black people.

Connecticut: Corruption Gets a Leg-Up, Again

Connecticut lawmakers passed a measure in the final hours of the 2024 legislative session that would roll back a reform that Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration pushed for after the state’s school construction program became the subject of a federal criminal investigation.

A single sentence change in a 254-page bond bill will, if signed by the governor, allow construction managers — the companies that oversee most state building projects — to also bid on the subcontracts for school construction.

That type of contracting, which is frequently referred to as “self-performance,” was advocated for by Kosta Diamantis, the former director of the state’s school construction office who resigned in the wake of the federal grand jury investigation.

The corruption-enabling legislator, State Rep. Jeff Currey, stated that there are "safeguards" to prevent self-dealing, but they haven't worked before and only a low-wattage chucklehead would argue as he did.

So then, is Currey really that stupid, that idealistic, or is he getting something out of this? Somebody should consider looking into this, that that person whould have the letters "F","B" and "I" in the name of the agency that they work for.

The Sweet Sound of Cell Doors Slamming

BREAKING: Steve BANNON's conviction for defying the Jan. 6 committee has been upheld by a unanimous three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

His four-month jail sentence has been on hold pending this ruling.

Details TK

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) May 10, 2024

My guess is that he'll try to appeal to the Supremes, and hope that Der Gropenfuhrer is returned to power and pardons him again.

Because It's Friday

The Little River RR

On a side note, I read, somewhere, that one of the reasons that you see steam trains with "helper diesels" is because the steam locomotives are not equipped with a full Positive Train Control system, which is pretty much a requirement for operating on the main lines. (But they can be equipped with a terminal that is linked to the diesel.)

Trump Solicits a Massive Bribe

As Donald Trump sat with some of the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month, one executive complained about how they continued to face burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year.

Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him, according to the people [at the meeting].

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court doesn't see it for what it is: Pay to play. The TOFF is evil and corrupt. The oil industry, well, they're just evil. Climate change is getting worse, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are steadily increasing. The oil companies are more than happy to poison the planet because they'll all be long gone by the time the butcher's bill is presented. And fuck their descendants, because their descendants have never done anything for them.

Meanwhile, Von ShitzenPantz is seeding his family into the upcoming convention. Every one of the Trump Crime Family is now fair game for satire and mocking. But it's probably because Brokeahontas is too cheap to pay their expenses, so he's sticking the GOP with the cost of trucking them to Milwaukee. No doubt that when they fly there on his jet, he'll bill the RNC a fortune for the seats.

One Trigger-Happy Sheriff's Department in Florida Needs to be Retrained or Disbanded

The department that murdered an Air Force Airman was the same one that had another deputy shoot up a patrol car with a suspect inside because an achorn hit the roof.

It would appear that they have a problem with being spring-loaded to shoot people. Especially Black people.

It might be advisable to stay the fuck away from Okaloosa County, Fla, which includes Ft. Walton Beach. There are plenty of other places in Florida where you can lie on the beach and drink yourself into a coma.

The Democrats Now Run the House, and RFK,Jr.’s Wormy Brain

With a one-vote majority and batshit-crazy lunatics like Moscow Marjorie, Gym Jordan, Beetlejuice Boebert and Massie in his caucus, if Speaker Johnson wants to pass a bill that has a prayer of being passed in the Senate, he needs Democrats to vote for it.

Which means the Democrats effectively have a firm veto on what the House does. All the Republicans can do on their own, now, is to hold stupid hearings for the sole purpose of getting their former-president-petomane-loving faces on Fox News.

Meanwhile, I don't know how much snark I can add to the fact that a worm or worms ate part of Baby Bobby Kennedy's brain. Except to say: Yeah, that explains a lot.

Once Again, the Second Amendment Doesn't Apply to Black Men

A Florida sheriff publicly released bodycam footage from a deputy who fatally shot a Black airman in his home last week – and disputed claims from the victim’s family that the deputy had gone to the wrong apartment.

Okaloosa County Sheriff Eric Aden showed the video during a Thursday news conference, shortly after an attorney for the 23-year-old airman’s family called for its public release, saying the victim’s girlfriend was FaceTiming with him and believes the deputy was at the wrong unit.

The footage that I have seen shows that Mr.Fortson was indeed holding a pistol, but it was pointed down and his finger was not on the trigger. He made no move to raise the gun; the trigger-happy cop immediately shot him dead.

Being Black and armed seems to be a license for the cops to kill people. Again and again.

Whacking These Down, Here

Fly on a 787 Made in South Carolina. Maybe the Wings Won't Fall Off. Maybe

Some of the inspections that the crack workers in South Carolina were gundecking was whether or not the wings were properly attached to the fuselage.

The only thing that Boeing cares about is making more money so that the vultures perched in the C-Suites make even more money. If the airplanes manage to stay in the air, that's a lagniappe.

If one of those airplanes crashes, the passengers' families should be allowed to enter a lottery to be on the firing squads that execute Boeing executives.

There's an old story, from Soviet times, that a tall apartment building was constructed before someone realized that the design team left off the elevators. They were all given apartments on the top floor and ordered to live there. So maybe a couple of 787s with loose wing bolts can be set aside for the use of Boeing's executives and that's the planes they have to fly on.

Facebleech Warning

Some scumbag of a scammer is sending out emails that purport to be Facebook password reset codes. Facebook wouldn't send those out unless you specifically requested them to.

So if you get an email that says it's from the Zuckerberg Borg and it has a reset code, delete that shit toot sweet.

Trump’s Toady Judge Keeps Toadying

The federal judge in Florida presiding over the classified documents prosecution of former President Donald Trump has canceled the May 20 trial date, postponing it indefinitely.

The trial will be postponed until it can be reliably determined that Hell has frozen over, if this judge had her way. I don't know how further up his ass she can crawl, but I guess that we're going to find out.

Mowing These Down, Here

Good News Story of the Day: Kristi Noem manages to unify the left and right, the woke and Q-anon, the trans and homophobes unanimously around the proposition that she is a monster.

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) April 29, 2024

787s: Maybe They Won't Fall Out of the Sky. Maybe.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday it has opened an investigation into Boeing after the beleaguered company reported that workers at a South Carolina plant falsified inspection records on certain 787 planes. Boeing said its engineers have determined that misconduct did not create “an immediate safety of flight issue.”

The crackerjack managers running Boeing set up a plant in South CArolina so that they could use cheaper and nonunion workers. It came out last year that Boeing's SC airplanes had quality problems. Well, no mucking fit. Setting up a plant based on low wages, cost-cutting and pushing product out the doors isn't a great idea for making blenders, let alone large jets.

Anyone who trusts Boeing to fairly investigate and correct this latest issue has a large amount of gravel in their cranium.

The smartest decision NASA has made in years was to not give Boeing a sole-source contract for their Starliner. NASA gave the lion's share of funding for that program to Boeing and a taste of it to SpaceX. SpaceX's Crew Dragon has made eleven flights to the ISS, Boeing, well, they have yet to get off the ground with people on board. NASA would still be stuck with flying crews to the ISS on Soyuz capsules if they had gone with Boeing.

Gulp. Going to Space in Something Built by Boeing

Launch around 2230 EDT

Scrubbed.

Expending These Down, Here

I seem to have accumulated a lot of these.

h/t