If Found Guilty, Fry These Guys, Too

Two U.S. Navy sailors have been arrested and accused of providing sensitive military information to China — including details on wartime exercises, naval operations and critical technical material, federal officials said Thursday.

It would not surprise me to learn that both spies are either naturalized citizens or that they have extensive family in China that their Chinese handlers used as leverage. Which then likely means that the counterintelligence folks are going to watch closely those in the military who weree either former Chinese nationals or who have family there. The same should be true for every defense contractor, tech company or manufacturer of anything that has technology newer than that used during the Korean War.

Changing gears to the Great State of Mississippi:[1]

Six white former law enforcement officers in Mississippi who called themselves the “Goon Squad” pleaded guilty Thursday to a racist assault on two Black men in a home raid that ended with an officer shooting one man in the mouth.

The officers entered the house without a warrant on Jan. 24, assaulting the men with a sex object and using stun guns and other objects to abuse them over a roughly 90-minute period, court documents show. After one victim was shot and wounded in a “mock execution” that went awry, the documents say the officers conspired to plant and tamper with evidence instead of providing medical aid.
...
The officers initially went to the home in Braxton because a white neighbor had complained that Black people were staying with a white woman who owned the house. Officers used racist slurs against the two men during the raid and “warned them to stay out of Rankin County and go back to Jackson or ‘their side’ of the Pearl River — areas with higher concentrations of Black residents,” the documents say.

I suppose that's an improvement over the days when two Black guys who visited a white woman, let alone stayed with her, would have been brutally lynched. But it does go to show that things in Mississippi haven't improved overly much, especially since those racist fuckwads are alleged to have killed two other Black guys.


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[1] OK, I just threw up in my mouth.

Whipping These Down, Here

"Originality Sells, So How Do We Copy That?"

That is probably the big question in Hollywood after the two-week box office for Barbenheimer.

But don't worry: MI-14 and F&F-23 will be made. Because even though there may be a market for original stories, sequels still sell (up until when they don't). Bet your ass that the studio execs are trying to figure out which kiddie toy they can make a movie of, or which atomic bomb scientist's life they can barf into a shooting script.

Burning Up the World

The world is burning up. It's over 100 degrees in countries where it is supposed to be the middle of winter.

That's fifty degrees, or more, hotter than it is supposed to be in many places in South America.

The Dumbest Man in the Senate(tm) shrugged off the global heat dome, saying it's just summer. But in many places where it is the hottest it's ever been, it's not summer. He's dumb enough to be a certain navy admiral. But then again, so is his entire party.

City Primeval, Ep. 4

The big news is that Raylan's daughter has exited the show (thankfully). She was an addition to the tale originally told by Elmore Leonard and not in a good way. It was proof that Hollywood can fuck up anything.

But now they're back to more closely following the source material and the improvement shows. Even to someone who hasn't read the book (like a good friend of mine).

Fry Him, Quickly

The gunman who stormed a synagogue in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community and killed 11 worshippers will be sentenced to death for perpetrating the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, a jury decided Wednesday.

Post Indictment the Third Thoughts

The full text of indictment #3 is available here.

The fact that Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jeff Clark, and Sidney Powell were not indicted along with Donald Trump suggests to me that at least one of them has flipped on him.

The TOFF's lawyer, predictably, is spreading bullshit and fog about the case. As the old saying goes: when the law is on your side, pound on the law; when the facts are on your side, pound on the facts; when neither the facts nor the law are on your side, pound on the table.

I don't know whether this would have happened without the January 6th House Committee, as it seems evident that their report was the foundation for the Special Counsel's investigation. Thanks for that is due, in part, to Kevin McCarthy, who threw a hissy fit and told Republicans not to participate after Nancy Pelosi refused to accept Gym Jordan as a committee member. Without some loyal GOP toadies to sabotage the process, the report was focused and not watered down with Trumpost bullshit.

It's funny, in a way, how the Party of Trump is lambasting the FBI for the TOFF's legal woes. Despite all of the evidence in plain sight of the Asset's culpability in his autocoup, they resisted investigating him. If the Feebies had done their fucking jobs, we might have been where we are a year or eighteen months ago.

We ought to just call what Cadet Bone Spurs is currently doing as his Stay Out of Jail Campaign. Which, like most of his endeavors in life, is destined to end up as a failure. Moral bankruptcy, when there are criminal charges in the mix, isn't an escape from obligations.

I would expect some of the more wet-brained among his supporters to lash out violently. The counter for that is that it may be sinking in to them that tolerance for that sort of bullshit has evaporated.

America's Leading Crime Boss is Charged, Yet Again

Donald Trump was charged Tuesday in a Justice Department investigation into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the run-up to the violent riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol.

The charges include conspiracy to defraud the United States government and witness tampering.

The indictment, the third criminal case brought against the former president as he seeks to reclaim the White House in 2024, follows a long-running federal investigation into schemes by Trump and his allies to subvert the peaceful transfer of power and keep him in office despite a decisive loss to Joe Biden.

Even in a year of rapid-succession legal reckonings for Trump, Tuesday’s criminal case was especially stunning in its allegations that a former president assaulted the underpinnings of democracy in a frantic and ultimately failed effort to cling to power.
...
They focus on the turbulent two months after the November 2020 election in which Trump refused to accept his loss and spread lies that victory was stolen from him. The turmoil resulted in the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump loyalists violently broke into the building, attacked police officers and disrupted the congressional counting of electoral votes.

In between the election and the riot, Trump urged local election officials to undo voting results in their states, pressured former Vice President Mike Pence to halt the certification of electoral votes and falsely claimed that the election had been stolen — a notion repeatedly rejected by judges.

Heh. Heh. Heh. He did it. We all know he did it. Even the loyal Trumpanzees know, deep down, that he did it.

The tragedy is that he and his co-conspirators won't get the penalty that they wanted to mete out during their coup. So, is it against the law to chant "Hang Donald Trump! Hang Donald Trump!"? And if so, why weren't any of the January 6th Coup Attempt crew charged for chanting "hang Mike Pence"?

Buy the TOFF's Lies, Go to Prison

A former Republican attorney general candidate and another supporter of former President Donald Trump have been criminally charged in Michigan in connection with accessing and tampering with voting machines after the 2020 election, according to court records.

Matthew DePerno, a Republican lawyer who was endorsed by Trump in an unsuccessful run for Michigan attorney general last year, was charged with undue possession of a voting machine and conspiracy, according to Oakland County court records.

Daire Rendon, a former Republican state representative, was charged with conspiracy to commit undue possession of a voting machine and false pretenses.

Those who believe the TOFF's lies and act accordingly are ending up in prison.

Chirping These Down, Here

Pining for the fjords: