OceanGate Transcript

If this transcript is genuine, they probably knew for about a quarter-hour that things were going pear-shaped, bigly.

Vacaying These Out, Here

I've lost track of where I was in the Snark file (it's a big file), so there may be some repeats. You can ask for a refund and see what that gets you.

That Had to Hurt, a Little

What seems to be a Russian arms depot blew up after being hit by a Ukranian misile:

Musk is A Scum-Sucking Douchebag, Right to His Core

Twitter requires ex-employees to go into arbitration. Which Twitter now is refusing to pay for.

I don't much care dor Commander Data's love child, but I wish him well with his new competitor to Musk's Blue Bird of Despair.

When one considers what a fucking pile of steaming dogshit Musk has made of Twitter, I have to wonder why in the name of (insert name of your Dear and Fluffy Lord here) anyne would consider flying in one of his spaceships or buying one of his cars.

Skyrocketing These Out, Here

Speaking of People Who Can Go Fuck Themselves: Russians.

Ukraine has launched a drone attack on Moscow, the Russian defence ministry says, forcing flights to be diverted from Vnukovo International Airport.

Five drones were reportedly used in Tuesday's attack, which also targeted locations in the wider region around the capital.
...
"An attempt by the Kyiv regime to attack a zone where civil infrastructure is located, including an airport that receives international flights, is a new terrorist act," foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Telegram.

Russia has been raining down drones, bombs and missiles on Ukranian towns and cities since the beginning of the war. Russia has hit apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, stores, restaurants, public parks and day-care centers, killing thousands of people. Russia has made it impossible for international flight to fly in and out of Kyiv.

But a few drones hit Moscow and the Russians have conniption fits? Russia is a brutal, uncivilized nation, led by bloodthirsty hypocrites. One of the basic principles of war is the Rule of Reciprocity, or, as the Bible doesn't say: "Do Unto Others as They Do Unto You." Their hypocrisy reaches Nazi levels (they were complaining about their cities being bombed after Germany pioneered bombing cities).

Russia can go fuck itself. The Russians can go fuck their mothers. And those in the self-styled "Freedom Caucus" and their supporters (including Wrong Desantis and RFK, Jr.), who unabashedly supports Putin, can go fuck themselves with a barbed-wire dildo.

If You Run a Retail Business and You're Open Today: Go Fuck Yourself, You Greedy Bastid.

I get that some businesses should be open: Gas stations and 24-hour pharmacies, but not much else. This is supposed to be a day of celebration and reflection, not a day to go out and find a good deal on mattresses or shit like that there.

The Fourth

Read aloud by the staff at NPR, many years ago.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

One Hundred and Sixty Years Ago

General Robert E. Lee ordered General Pickett (and against the advice of General Longstreet) to charge the Union Lines at Little Round Top in the Battle of Gettysburg. At roughly the same time, Confederate cavalry under the command of General J.E.B. Stuart attempted to get behind the Union lines to disrupt things if the charge succeeded.

As we all know, Pickett's Charge was a failure. The charge was, to my mind, a Napoleonic War charge against a well-positioned enemy equipped with rifled muskets and artillery. Pickett's division was shot to doll rags.

Stuart's attack similarly failed. In part, it was because he had fired two signal cannon to let Lee know he was in position, which alerted his enemy. Part of the Union cavalry forces in opposition was a brigade from Michigan commanded by Gen. Custer, whose cavalrymen were equipped with Spencer repeaters. They turned back the Rebs.

The following day, the siege of Vickburg ended when the Confederate garrison surrendered to the forces led by General Grant. The two battles, taken together, marked the turning point of the war. With fits and starts, sure, the tide was now flowing to Appomattox.

I have never understood the veneration of of General Lee. He lost his war. Losing at Antietam gave Lincoln the breathing space and the cover to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which, among other things, drove a stake into the efforts by Confederate diplomats to gain formal recognition from Great Britain (or any other European nation).

Lee fundamentally misunderstood his task. He kept trying to hit home runs, get a knockout punch. But his job was to just keep the fight going until the Union gave up trying to beat the South. He didn't have to win, he had not not lose badly. Yet Lee kept rolling the dice on a grand victory and losing.

Add to that, Lee couldn't or wouldn't see the overall picture of the war. He fought as though all the mattered was the Army of Northern Virginia. He didn't seem to know or grasp that the losses in the west were strangling his cause. I don't know if he ever considered sending troops to oppose Gen. Sherman's attack on Atlanta and his march to the sea.

In fairness, Lee's army was badly equipped and badly fed. Desertion and draft evasion were epidemic in the Confederacy, especially after both widespread conscription and the "Twenty Negro Law" were enacted. Operation Anaconda eventually chocked off almost all foreign trade. The Confederate government didn't order farmers to grow foodstuffs instead of cotton, so warehouses were full of cotton that couldn't be traded to European merchants for weapons. Meanwhile, the Union both grew its own food and made its own weapons. In a war of attrition, most of the cards were held by the Union.

But all of the glorification of Bobby Lee is countered by one salient point: He lost his war.

People Who Support Face-Eating Leopards Are Surprised to Find That Leopards are Eating Their Faces

I.E., the Log-Cabin Republicans:

I'm going to pass on noting that using the term "commonsense" in this context is nothing more than a cheap rhetorical trick to cast opponents as irrational (see "common sense gun control").

Hatred of gay people has been a mainstay of the GOP since the early 1990s, when Elder Bush had a homophobic speaker at his convention. Chimpy used "pro-marriage" (anti-gay) state constitutional amendments in 2004 to drive voters motivated by hate to the polls. But the Log Cabin Republicans continue to support their party because money talks. They're no better than the rich Jews and the First World War Jewish veterans who believed that they wouldn't be stuffed into boxcars.

Gays aren't the only people to find out that Wrong DeSantis is eating their faces. Women receiving alimony, including a lot of Republicans, got a shiv in the back. And if you live near a road in Floriduh, it can now be paved with radioactive waste. That waste is supposed to be kept in dedicated stacks so the hazard can be controlled, but good old DeathSantis thinks it's just peachy to pave roads with it. Because rich white people usually don't live right next to highways. As the paving wears, that shit is going to end up alongside the roads and in the aquifers. But rich people don't drink tap water, I guess.