Not the Civil War

It was, as this article points out, the Rebellion of the Slave-Owners.

Need proof? How about the infamous "Tweny Slave Law", which exempted slaveowners from being drafted to fight in their war. But they drafted hardscrabble farmers (read BadTux's comment to this post), leaving their families facing starvation.

It was no noble cause. It was a war waged by slaveowners, using poor white men as cannon fodder, to preserve their system.

And it is no accident that, once the Union Army began occupying plantations, the attitude of the soldiers went from "why are we fighting for this" to "burn the motherfucking South to the ground."

Reality and Fantasy Collide Over the Reflecting Pool

President Donald Trump on Saturday sharply criticized U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s assessment that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was the result of shoddy construction and not the work of vandals, as he claims.

Pirro’s office, in a court filing on Friday, moved to drop criminal charges against a former Olympian, David Hearn, who had been accused of deliberately damaging the pool after it underwent a renovation ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday celebration last month.

Trump, in a posting on social media, acknowledged that there “may have been some contractor difficulty” in the installation of a new pool liner. But he continues to insist “the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”

Donnie Demento and his suckups like Burgham can continue to lie and spin and fuss all they want. And I'm sure that Pirro would like to sing along with the Fabualist Choir of Asskissers, but she has a real problem. Both she and the attorneys working for her are answerable to judges and to state bar ethics committees. And neither are impressed by hype and lies.

Pirro is licensed in New York, I believe, and this is what the professional responsibility statutes have to say about that:

If they persist with charges that are patently false and unsupported by evidence, there can be trouble. A number of the Bloated Lying Orange Boss's attorneys have lost their law licenses for lying to courts and for bringing absurd claims pushed by Cade Bone Spurs.

Pirro, and the attorneys working for her, are well aware of that. They also know that those who sacrifice themselves for Don Snoreleone don't end up well. And so they aren't going to do that.

Your Sunday Morning Prop Noise

A gaggle of Spitfires:

Caturday

An asphalt driveway would seem to make a hard bed for Speck,

Who's the Biggest Crybaby?

You know who it is, of course.

Trump at a Cabinet meeting today: "I probably was abused more than anybody in the history of our country."

Right. The spirits of those who were part of the Long Walk of the Navajo would, if they could, shed tears for Crybaby Donnie.

So would this man, Peter:

Or this man:

Or Emmett Till:

But none of those people would matter to Weeping Donnie, the Biggest Narcissist Since Nero, because he is just so, so abused and anyway, those folks were not white.

The sad thing is that nobody at that meeting had the stones to stand up and sy: "Sir, you're just crazy. I quit."

Because It's Friday

Not all steam locomotives operational nowadays are massive Northerns.

Nineteen Years

21,000+ posts, 57,000+ comments.

BFD, eh?

Carding These Down, Here

Thursday Morning Tab Clearing

AI may be good for some comedy:

Meanwhile, it is being alleged that the companies involved in AI are hiding huge amounts of debt in the same way that Enron did.

It’s an extremely costly undertaking built on seemingly bottomless hype — and a mountain of debt. As Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei Asia found in a recent investigation, just five US tech giants — Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle — are hiding an estimated $1.65 trillion in debt that doesn’t appear on balance sheets. That’s even more than the $1.35 trillion in debt the five companies officially reported in their financial data for the most recent quarter.

Meta alone has amassed around $420 billion in off-balance-sheet debt, according to Nikkei, highlighting how precarious the AI industry’s steep investment in AI has become, and inspiring comparisons to energy company Enron, which collapsed in spectacular fashion in 2001 because of similar debts hidden behind shell companies. Like Enron, they’re using special purpose vehicles, or off-balance sheet arrangements such as legally distinct subsidiaries, as a way to make their financial reporting look healthier than it actually is — often a glaring sign that something is deeply amiss behind the scenes.

We'll see if our largely corporate-owned media covers this. It's probably a good bet that you won't see a mention of it on CBS or in the WaPo. When the AI bubble bursts, it could be bad.

Elsewhere, Julie DiCarlo, a reporter, posted this:

It's funny how many men come into my mentions to "protect women's sports" but have zero other posts talking about women's sports, or even women, in any kind of meaningful or supportive way.

— Julie DiCaro (@juliedicaro.bsky.social) July 29, 2026 at 8:58 PM

She is exactly right. Trump and the rest of his ilk have done nothing to support women's sports, other than requiring genital checks. They've been ramming through anti-abortion laws that have essentially required doctors to let women having problem pregancies die. And they haven't scrapped Blanche's nomination because of his active role in hiding All Things Epstein.

Fauci Hearings Today

One thing about the hearing today:

Republicans have nothing for the 2026 election.

They really don't. They have nothing to energize their suporters. Inflation's up, gas prices are up because of Trump's Stupid War, Trump is fixated on bullshit like his ballroom and the GOP is doing zip point shit to help the American people. The only people left that support him are his MAGA loyalists. Only Nixon as he was being shown the door was less popular.

Because they have nothing, they're not trying to persuade people to vote for them. What they are trying to do is gin up enthusiasm among their base to vote by revisiting QAnon's greatest hits: COVID and the 2020 election.

Yet here's the thing: They like to forget who was the president when the COVID pandemic hit, who was the president who signed off on the mask mandates and who ramrodded the fast development and production of the COVID vaccine. But we all know that it was their guy, the Demented and Bloated Orange Narcissist-in-Chief, good old Agent Kraznov, himself.