Caturday

A shelter kitten.

Because It's Friday

Old steam:

"Old", in this context, means "19th Century."

Jeez

I'm watching Corey Lewandowski on GMA. "Bald-faced liar" doesn't even begin to cover it. 

(Wasn't he one of the guys who was talking to the Russians?)

Shorter GOP Excuse: "Trump is an Inexperienced Dolt."

Before Comey’s testimony about his private interactions with President* Trump had even concluded, Ryan joined an effort already underway among GOP lawmakers to place it in the best possible light for Trump.

“Of course there needs to be a degree of independence” between federal law enforcement and the White House, Ryan said. But he added, “The president’s new at this. He’s new to government, and so he probably wasn’t steeped in the long-running protocols that establish the relationships between [the Justice Department], FBI and White House. He’s just new to this.”

I don't buy that for a nanosecond. The problem is that Trump is, at his core, an authoritarian who believes that his every whim should be law and is confused by the notion of checks and balances.

He is a toxic mixture of ignorance and arrogance, infused with the emotional immaturity of a first-grader.

I watched some of the Comey hearing and it was clear that the RMS Trump has scraped open its hull against an iceberg. The Republicans are going to continue to arrange deck chairs and submit song requests to the band director. But the water is coming in.

The Spy in Your Printer

Your color laser printer may rat you out.

Unlike the old days, when the cops had to find the matching typewriter. some printers will encode source information into the page. Which was one of the tools that may have been used to catch Reality Winner.

Also, if you want to leak shit, don't send it to The Intercept. They would seem to be idiots.

The Diplomacy of Dolt-45

President* Trump thrust himself into a bitter Persian Gulf dispute on Tuesday, taking credit for Saudi Arabia’s move to isolate its smaller neighbor, Qatar, and rattling his national security staff by upending a critical American strategic relationship.

Because everything has to be about Trump. A smarter president would have realized that publicly taking the side of one ally over another was an incredibly stupid thing to do. Especially when the country that he is siding against is the host nation for American military bases.

A smarter president would have shut up and let the diplomats do their jobs. But no, not Trump. Everything has to be about him.

He is a whack job. Sooner or later, even Republicans will begin to acknowledge the damage that that 70-year old child is doing.

Wonder Woman

It does not suck.

It could have been shortened, a little, but it was still a fine movie.

"Airport Security is Not a Joking Matter."

But there should be an exception when the public address system is labeled "IED".

Shorter Kellyanne Conway: "Trump Doesn't Speak for His Administration."

Criticism directed at President Donald Trump over his flurry of Twitter activity related to the London terrorist attack over the weekend is misguided, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway said Monday morning, the result of a press that she suggested is eagerly critical of Trump even amid more pressing situations.

The media, Conway said, has “this obsession with covering everything he says on Twitter and very little of what he does as president.” Conway blamed that obsession for the uproar that began over the weekend when Trump hurled a political attack across the Atlantic, writing online that there had been “at least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’"

Trump is the fucking President and what he says matters. What any president says matters.

So what Conway is, in essence, claiming, is that Trump doesn't speak for his own administration. Or that he's insane, for why otherwise would he attack his own administration for defending his own policies or criticize executive orders that he issued?

The End of the Beginning + 75 Years

Yesterday was the 75th anniversary of the start of the Battle of Midway. The battle marked the turning point of the war against Japan. The Japanese sent a large force to invade Midway Island, spearheaded by four carriers. The US Navy had three carriers and, thanks to the Navy's code breakers, some knowledge of what the Japanese plan was.

The Japanese carriers launched strikes against the island, only to be found and attacked.


USN divebombers badly damaged three of the carriers on the morning of June 4th. All three were out of the fight, they were all abandoned and scuttled.



The fourth Japanese carrier struck back. Her planes badly damaged the USS Yorktown, which was later sunk by a Japanese submarine while under tow. This photo shows the Yorktown under attack.


The fourth Japanese carrier was sunk that afternoon.

Turning points to a war are only apparent long after they happen. At this point, the US and her allies in the Pacific had been at war with Japan for six months, the war would continue on for three more years.

The person who saw this most clearly, though, was Admiral Yamamoto, who, in 1940, was quoted as saying this about the prospect of a general war in the Pacific: "In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success."

He was right and he was proven to be so 75 years ago.

(Longtime readers might recognize this one.)

There is a press report about the leak that ran in the Chicago Tribune. The officer who inadvertently leaked it, the reporter who reported on it and the publisher, Robert McCormick of the Chicago Tribune, were lucky that they weren't all shot. What was astonishing was that no quasi-neutral country's diplomatic staff in Washington, such as Switzerland, didn't see the newspaper story and pass it along to the Germans, who would have, in turn, informed Japan.

If you pass through KMDW, be sure and spend a few minutes at the hallway to Concourse A:

There is a display by the windows which succinctly explains the battle, the time leading up to it and the aftermath.