Caturday

Bella under a fancy lamp:

Another Trumpanzee is Headed to Prison

The leader of a right-wing militia that was detaining migrant families at gunpoint near the border in southern New Mexico pleaded guilty this week to a federal gun charge, Justice Department officials said.

The leader, Larry Mitchell Hopkins, who has also operated under the alias Johnny Horton Jr., faces up to 10 years in prison after he admitted Thursday to being in possession of several firearms and various caliber ammunition in November 2017, despite being a felon, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico said in a statement.

NEXT!

A State of War Now Exists Between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America

Iran's most powerful military commander, Gen Qasem Soleimani, has been killed by a US air strike in Iraq.

The 62-year-old spearheaded Iranian military operations in the Middle East as head of Iran's elite Quds Force.

He was killed at Baghdad airport, along with other Iran-backed militia figures, early on Friday in a strike ordered by US President Donald Trump.

Mr Trump said the general was "directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions of people".

Let's dispense with Trump's comments: Everything Trump says about anything is either hyperbole or a flat-out lie. This is no different.

You don't kill a senior general of another nation outside of a war. That we did means not that there will be war, but that we are already in one. It would have been nice to be reassured that our government had thought of the question "if we do then, then what", but I have no confidence in that. Trump has the impulse control of a toddler on a sugar high. Somebody on Fox News probably mentioned that Soleimani was responsible, Trump asked "can we kill this guy", was answered in the affirmative and he said "whack him" and that was all of the consideration that went into it.

Trump doesn't do consequences. His entire life has been about creating havoc and then letting other people clean up his messes, whether it's having a business go bankrupt, stiffing suppliers, or paying off women with whom he had affairs.

The Iranians will respond. To not respond would be to look weak in a region of the world where appearing weak is viewed as a terminal disease.

American flag officers around the world might be well advised to look to their own security.

Because It's Friday

Agricultural steam.

How to Tube a Career; Cop Ed.

HERINGTON, Kan. (WIBW/Gray News) – A Kansas police officer is no longer employed after admitting he “fabricated” a story about a McDonald’s employee writing an expletive on his coffee cup over the weekend, according to the Herington police chief.

Herington Police Chief Brian Hornaday confirmed in a news conference Monday that the officer resigned from the agency, calling it a “black eye on the law enforcement community.”

After initially standing by his story, Hornaday said the officer has since told him the note was “meant to be a joke.”

It seems that the McDonald's joint had cameras everywhere and could prove that nobody there did it.

What is wrong with people? Did the attention-whore involved not think that such shit could go viral in a heartbeat?

What happens from here on is that the kid involved won't be working as a cop again.

Wait, What?? Talkies Ed.

Adam Sandler could win an Oscar for Uncut Gems.

My reaction: Really? Really??

Yes, I know that the movie has scored 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, but that would seem to indicate that the critics are operating in hive mind mode.

I saw the movie yesterday. Or, to be frank, about forty minutes of it. We (I went with a friend) walked out. There was nothing at all that was engaging about the movie. Every character in the movie, including Howard Ratner, the protagonist played by Sandler, was a shitbird. Ratner was a jeweler/gambler who was making more and more intricate bets to try and get out from owing a lot of money to some very bad people who have poor impulse control. There was something involving a chunk of rock containing rare opals that was smuggled out of Ethiopia in a box of dead fish.

(Pro tip to Customs: If someone is sending a styrofoam cooler of dead fish to the address of a jeweler in the diamond district of NYC, there is a good chance that there is more in the box than dead fish.)

So no, I don't know how the movie ended. I don't know whether Ratner managed to place a great bet that enabled him to pay off the bad guys or if he ended up dead in the trunk of a stolen car.

Nor do I care.

Sandler's Oscar buzz seems to be of the "lookie here, a comedian can act" sort. The movie sucked. It should be nominated for a Razzie.

Autocrats Love Each Other; Bloomberg Ed

Mike Bloomberg was presiding over his inaugural Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore in 2018 when, to the surprise of some in the audience, he gushed about one of China’s top government officials.
...
Then in September, amid mass pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and human rights activists decrying China’s imprisonment of Muslim minorities, Bloomberg seemed to go out of his way to defend Beijing, saying in a television interview that President Xi Jinping “is not a dictator.” Bloomberg said Xi “has to satisfy his constituents or he’s not going to survive.” Pressed by the interviewer, Bloomberg said Xi “has a constituency to respond to . . . they really are responsive.”

Xi is not dictator? Tell it to the Uighurs. Tell it to the citizens of Hong Kong. Tell it to the Chinese whose every utterance online is monitored.

Bloomberg may be rich as fuck, but he apparently can be bought.

Shoot Them Right, They Quit Doing What They're Doing

UPDATE: Colt's Python page.

Shooting a new Python with Ken Hackathorn:

Coming off the trigger each time is indeed important with Colt revolvers.

$1,500 MSRP.

Biden: Dick-Stepping All the Way

On Labor Day, 2019:

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Former vice president Joe Biden said he wanted to spend Monday celebrating the role organized labor has played in improving the lives of Americans. But moments into his first Labor Day appearance, the presidential candidate turned instead to the nation’s latest mass shooting, which left seven dead in the west Texas town of Odessa on Saturday.

“It is irrational, with all due respect to the governor of Texas, it is irrational what they’re doing on the same day you see a mass shooting . . . and we’re talking about loosening access to have guns,” he told reporters at a picnic in Cedar Rapids.

“To be able to take them into places of worship, store them in schools, I mean, it’s just absolutely irrational, and it’s all about special interests, and it has to stop.”

The gun banners have been yammering for awhile that they're all for taking away guns "if it saves one life."[1]

But then there's this:

A gunman killed two people during a Sunday morning service at a church in White Settlement before a member of the congregation fatally shot him, authorities say.

Police in White Settlement, about eight miles west of Fort Worth, were called before 11 a.m. to the West Freeway Church of Christ at 1900 South Las Vegas Trail after one member, who is part of the church’s security team, opened fire on the gunman.

That doesn't exactly fit into the "forbidding guns from these places keeps people safe."

A bunch of people are alive to welcome in the New Year because, in Biden's view, their state government is irrational.
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[1] Let's close the swimming pools.

Happy New Year 2020

I wish I could be optimistic about this New Year. But I am not.

Politically, I see the partisan divide broadening in an abyss. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know where I stand and whom I blame for that.

Personally, in my offline world, which involves a number of people that I care deeply about, some real shit is happening. Almost all of it has the potential to be pretty bad.

For me myself, all is pretty good. But I'm not an island, I'm not alone in the world.

So I'm pulling on the crash helmet and fastening the safety harness.

2020, here I stand, motherfucker.

Do your worst.