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Thank Trump for the Democratic House Majority

In reviewing polling and other data, [Republican political operatives] discovered that the president’s provocative immigration rhetoric was more damaging to the House GOP during the final seven to 10 days than they realized at the time.

Trump hammered on the migrant caravan as he barnstormed red states to stump for Republican Senate candidates in the homestretch while also raising the specter of eliminating birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants. The president’s near-singular focus on those issues repelled Hispanics, independents and soft Republicans, turning a race for House control that leaned Democratic into a late-breaking GOP bloodbath.
...
In late September, Republicans appeared resurgent, a product of the pitched battle to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. By late October, their condition soured, the result of a toxic mixture of Trump’s immigration rhetoric, bomb threats against Democrats and media outlets allegedly perpetrated by a Trump supporter, and a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue that the president fumbled in response.

Mind you, the above story did not run in anything that can remotely be described s a liberal rag-- it ran in the Washington Examiner.

It wasn't just immigration and Trump's reflex to align with neo-Nazis; health insurance also played a part. Funny thing: Widening access to health insurance and covering pre-existing conditions turned out to be popular with everyone outside of the Batshit Wingnut GOP base.

Don't even bother to ask if any of this will sink in with the Stable Genius. It likely won't. His gut is telling him things.

NRA, Time to Step Up

Remember Mr. Branford, the guy killed by a cop at an Alabama mall? The case where the cops first said he was a bad guy, but then had to retract that?

It turns out that the cop who shot him, in fact, shot him three times from behind. Which sounds more like a summary execution.

Two years ago, Philandro Castile was summarily executed by a Minnesota cop for the crime of legally carrying a firearm while black.

So far, the National Rifle Association, which likes to style itself as a civil rights organization that protects the rights of lawful gun owners, has said....

...about either killing.

The cops have their own political groups and lobbyists. The NRA likes to say that they stand for the rights of gun owners. It's high time that they did.

While I'm on the subject of the NRA, I'd like to know just what they have gotten for their full-throttle support of Trump.

The bill to drop silencers from Title III (machineguns, etc) to Title 1 (firearms) has gone nowhere. The bill for nationwide CCW reciprocity has, likewise, gone nowhere. Trump has, in fact, shown himself to essentially be as willing to entertain off-the-cuff and nonsensical restrictions as Andrew Cuomo or Dan Malloy.

But what has the NRA to say about that?

Only a Fool Acts as His Own Lawyer; You Know Who Ed

Following the recent filing by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York in the Michael Cohen case, in which Cohen admitted to criminal violations of campaign finance laws, Trump took to Twitter to, well...

One has to wonder what sort of stable genius would tell the world "yes, I did it, but it's not a crime"? I don't see how that will not come into a trial as evidence.

Besides that, note that Trump keeps blaming "the Dems". That is a pants-on-fire, ten-pinnochios lie. The U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York is part of the Justice Department. The current U.S. Attorney is a Trump appointee.

More Bad News for Trump and the GOP?

A woman accused of being a secret agent for the Russian government has likely taken a plea deal, prosecutors indicated Monday in a court filing that said her case has been “resolved.”
...
Butina, who was arrested in July, was charged with conspiracy and acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Russia. Her lawyer has argued that Butina is a student interested in American politics and better U.S.-Russian relations.

It would appear that her argument was about as airtight as a screen door.

The details might be interesting when they are made public.

Le Chant des Partisans (The Song of the Partisans)

It was the unofficial anthem of the French Resistance.

The men, women and children of the Resistance faced an implacable and much better equipped enemy. Their chances were slim. If captured, a quick death was the best that they could hope for, barring a miracle.

Walgreens: At the Corner of Authoritarianism and Fascism

Walgreens is one of the companies behind the GOP's anti-democratic power grab in Wisconsin. They are one of the companies that are eager to demolish American democracy, as long as they can earn a buck out of it.

Corporations are, by their nature, greedy psychopaths. Walgreens is proving to be true to type.

If you feel like taking to Twitter to lambaste them, @Walgreens is their corporate Twitter handle.

Black & CCW

The NY Times ran a story about the experiences of Black gun owners who carry concealed.

I expect that those on the Right, who would expect the story to contain blanket condemnations about civilians carrying guns, will be sorely disappointed.

On another note, if you visit Phoenix, be aware that the Phoenix cops tend to be brutal and trigger-happy. Pre Trump & Sessions, they might have been investigated. But now, the DoJ is turning a blind eye towards such things.

Trump Gets Hoisted by His Own Petard, Again

The problem with running one's mouth on Twitter a lot is that somebody is going to notice what one said in the past and compare it to today.

First we have that Trump will, as of January 1st, have his third Chief of Staff in less than two years (four, if you count Steve Bannon, who was sort of a co-chief with Priebus).

Then we have what Cheetolini tweeted when Obama got a new Chief of Staff:

If Kelly came away from his time with Trump with his reputation and honor intact, it would be because he was a Marine who took on a horrendous job out of a sense of duty from nearly fifty years of service to the nation.

His replacement, a young political sleazeball, has no such shield. He's going from working for an intolerant religious zealot to working for a guy who is on the cusp of being indicted for various federal, if not state, felonies.

The churn continues.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

An F-86 at an airshow in Australia:

Caturday

Shelter Tuxies:

Guilty AF!

A man who drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters at a white nationalist rally in Virginia was convicted Friday of first-degree murder for killing a woman in an attack that inflamed long-simmering racial and political tensions across the country.

A state jury rejected arguments that [the Nazi Asswipe of Charlottesville] acted in self-defense during a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017. Jurors also convicted [Asswipe] of eight other charges, including aggravated malicious wounding and hit and run.

Sentencing comes next week. His lawyer's pitch to the jury ought to be highly entertaining and the stuff of fiction, much like his defense was.

Apollo 17

Apollo 17 left for the Moon just after midnight, 46 years ago. It was the only night launch and it was the last manned flight out of Earth orbit and to the Moon.

Any hope of continuing died when Nixon was elected. He was as implacably and irrationally hostile to anything championed by John F Kennedy as Trump has been vs Obama.

The Saturn production line was shut down and the expertise lost. Half of the struggle of trying to build a new heavy-lit rocket is that the capability to make really big fucking rocket engines has been lost. So we're sort of stuck with ganging together a lot of smaller engines, as the Soviets did, or strapping large solid-rocket boosters to the central booster body.

If we had kept going with the Saturn and developing from there, we would be in a much different place than we are with having been limited to low Earth orbit for the last forty years.

Burn and rot in Hell, Richard Nixon.

Apollo 11

A 90-minute documentary will ht the theaters next year. Researchers found over a hundred reels of Panasonic Panavision 65mm footage in the archives. They had to make custom equipment to screen it and transfer it to digital. They found 30-channel audio tape from Mission Control that captured all of the controllers' conversations. That, along with other audio recordings, have been matched up to the film.

The results, so far, to quote CSM Pilot Michael Collins, have been "magnificent".

I my have to make a trip to an IMAX to see this one.

Trump's Pick for U.N. Ambassador

The Petulant Man-Child-in-Chief chose Heather Nauert to be the Ambassador to the United Nations.

She has a strong command of history, as she said this last June:

"We have a very strong relationship with the government of Germany," Nauert said. "Looking back in the history books, today is the 71st anniversary of the speech that announced the Marshall Plan. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the D-Day invasion. We obviously have a very long history with the government of Germany, and we have a strong relationship with the government of Germany."

One can only wonder if Nauert thinks that crumpets were served at the Boston Tea Party.

Nauert's primary qualification is that she was an anchor on Trump's favorite TV show. I guess we should be grateful he didn't send Steve Doocy, a man who is a frequent gold medalist at the Stupid Olympics.

It's probably a good thing that Trump doesn't watch PBS, or he would have nominated Daniel Tiger.

Because It's Friday

Baldwin #26 at Steamtown:

The Petulant Child Goes to a Funeral

I didn't watch much of the funeral; but from what I saw, Trump was sitting there and looking like a kid who was made to go to church on a sunny day. Which i pretty much in keeping with his level of maturity.

A more self-reflective man might have wondered what mourners will say about him. Right now, the only president who would be willing to say anything nice about Trump when he passes would be Vladimir Putin. But Trump likely didn't think of that. He probably took everything nice that was said over George Bush's casket as a barbed dig aimed at him.

For in Trump's view, he is the center of the universe.