Caturday

The "I hate my food" glare, directed at teh server (me).

A Drop in the Bucket and Corporate Welfare (Updated with OpenAI Losses)

Wal-Mart is donating $500K to food banks. They have 4,600 stores, so they're donating less than $110 per store.

They are seriously cheap fucks. Brookshire Grocery, which has about 200 stores, is donating half a million.

If you donated a load of groceries to a food bank, the chances are that you, proportionately, did more to help people needing food than did Wal-Mart.

Keep in mind that SNAP, the ACA and Medicare work also as subsidies to labor exploiters like Wal-Mart, which thereby don't need to pay a living wage to their workers.

Meanwhile, OpenAI, which is backed by billionaires and large tech giants, wants the government to back their loans, so they will have nothing at risk. (OpenAI lost about $12 billion last quarter.)

Sam Altman read the room and realized that asking for a few hundred billion in loan guarantees wasn't a good sell when tens of millions of Americans are going hungry, so he walked that back.

For now. Corporations and oligarchs always seem to want the government to guarantee their shit, while deriding those at the bottom of the economic pyramid. Socialism for the rich, same as it ever was.

Because It's Friday

A USATC locomotive in the UK:

Corruption and Fealty, Coastie Ed.

Coast Guard Exchanges at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., and in Centreville, Virginia, recently stocked Trump-branded wine and cider, according to a photo posted on Instagram and confirmed by Forbes from calls to the stores.

Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the exchanges were carrying Trump wines in a statement to Forbes, saying, “The brave men and women of the USCG are pleased to be able to buy Trump wine and cider tax free.”

If Biden had sold coffee through the military exchanges, the Republicans would have twisted them into knots in their haste to get in front of a microphone. But there will be nothing but crickets from the Right on this.

It is corrupt? Possibly. But it sure smells rotten for a present to sell his goods through a semi-captive system.

Dyeing These Down, Here

Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino Is a Motherfucking Liar and a PerjurerandThey Can Indict a Ham Sandwich, But Not Convict It

Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, who led a series of increasingly aggressive raids across Chicago and its suburbs, lied about firing tear gas at protesters in Little Village and tackling a man outside the Broadview ICE facility, a federal judge said Thursday.

He lied repeatedly (and so did his subordinates and the government's lawyers). That should be noted in any case he testifies in down the road.

Meanwhile, Drunken Jeanine lost another one:

Jurors showed no appetite for the Justice Department's case against "sandwich guy," the D.C. resident who chucked a Subway sandwich at the chest of a federal officer, finding him not guilty Thursday after several hours of deliberations.
...
Border Patrol Officer Greg Lairmore received two "gag gifts" related to the incident — a plush sandwich and a patch featuring a cartoon of Dunn throwing the sandwich with the words “Felony Footlong” — which the defense team argued showed this was not a serious event in his life.

Lairmore had testified that the sandwich “exploded all over” his chest and claimed he could smell mustard and onions. But a photo showed that the sandwich was still in its wrapper on the ground after it hit Lairmore in his bulletproof vest.

So, yet another cop got on the stand and testilied about the facts of the case.

The one difference between the American Gestapo and the original is that, for now at least, their bullshit sometimes gets dragged into the light in front of a jury.

Invest in Popcorn

A few conservative representatives with ties to the FBI and the Justice Department have spilled that the true details of the Epstein files are “worse” for Trump than previously reported, according to journalist David Schuster.

Michael Wolff, a longtime chronicler of Trump’s White House who conducted extensive interviews with Epstein prior to his death, told The Daily Beast last month that Epstein had shown him photos of Trump with half-naked “young girls” in his lap.

These rumors have galvanized into a legitimate movement among Republicans, who are now, Schuster wrote on X Wednesday night, clamoring for the files’ full release.

And so you see why the Republicans will move Heaven and Earth to keep the government closed in order to keep the government closed and keep the Epstein files hidden.

Republicans are protecting a major pedophile, and they are fully aware of that. Never ever forget that.

Supporting the Troops, Trump Style

An Army installation’s dining facility is closed because of the government shutdown, officials said.

The Fort Leavenworth Installation Warrior Restaurant is closed “until further notice,” base officials announced in a Facebook post. The Warrior Restaurant is the sole dining facility, or DFAC, on the Kansas base.

For most junior enlisted soldiers, DFACs are one of the few on-base options for meals, especially if they don’t have cars to get off post. Additionally, for those living in the barracks, a portion of their paycheck is allocated to cover the costs of eating at the dining facility.

Cadet Bone Spurs and Pee-Wee German had no trouble with moving funds to pay for his wall[1] when Congress wouldn't fund it, so one might conclude that the only reason they're going all-in on starving the troops is pure cruelty.
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[1]Such a beautiful wall. Big tough wall operators, straight out of Central Casting, with tears in their eyes, were saying Sir, we've never seen such a magnificent wall.

Hakeem Jeffries is Still Full of Shit

Quite wrong. Being anti-Trump, anti-GOP is not the same as being pro-Democratic party. I doubt very much if any meaningful number of people went to the polls thinking that their votes were ratifications of what Jeffries and Schumer are doing or not doing.

A lot of Democrats won because voters looked at the economic and political chaos brought by Trump and said "whoa." Eight million people don't turn out in the street nationwide because they're happy with the way things are going. Mayor-elect Mamdani received more votes than the total turnout in some of the recent NYC mayoral elections. Two Democrats won seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission, the first Democrats to be seated there in this century.

Voters are not happy and the person they are most unhappy with is the president and his lackeys. Watch for an uptick of Republicans in the House deciding to retire. And I expect some long-term Democrats to read the room and also opt to quit.

But for today, I am enjoying the fact that Andrew Cuomo lost two elections this cycle.

Gee. Who Saw This Coming?

Criminals posing as US immigration officers have carried out robberies, kidnappings, and sexual assaults in several states, warns a law enforcement bulletin issued last month by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The bureau urges agencies to ensure officers clearly identify themselves and to cooperate when civilians ask to verify an officer’s identity—including by allowing calls to a local police precinct. “Ensure law enforcement personnel adequality [sic] identify themselves during operations and cooperate with individuals who request further verification,” it says.

So, to sum up, criminals are impersonating another group of criminals.

Someone with a mask and a gun should be presumed to be a violent criminal. Any clown can buy an ICE raid jacket.