Caturday

If Biden Acted Like Felon^34, Florida and South Carolina Would Get Fuck All for Disaster Aid

In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, former President Donald Trump has blasted the Biden administration for its handling of the disaster — going so far as to accuse Democratic leaders of ignoring the needs of Republican storm victims.

But a review of Trump’s record by POLITICO’s E&E News and interviews with two former Trump White House officials show that the former president was flagrantly partisan at times in response to disasters and on at least three occasions hesitated to give disaster aid to areas he considered politically hostile or ordered special treatment for pro-Trump states.

Mark Harvey, who was Trump’s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff, told E&E News on Wednesday that Trump initially refused to approve disaster aid for California after deadly wildfires in 2018 because of the state’s Democratic leanings.

But Harvey said Trump changed his mind after Harvey pulled voting results to show him that heavily damaged Orange County, California, had more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa.

But that is just how the FOFF rolled; he acted like a king dispensing favors instead of the leader of a republic. He was clearly The.Worst.President.Since.the.Civil.War. (if not ever).

Obviously, he thinks Biden is screwing red states because that's exactly what he would do if he was on the job.

He is a despicable excuse for a human being. He has no compassion for anyone, everything is transactional for him. he has no concept of duty or honor or integrity, as he has himself admitted.

H/T

Yet Another Grifting Republican is Heading to Prison

A jury convicted Pahrump Justice of the Peace Michele Fiore on all counts in a federal wire fraud case on Thursday.

Fiore, currently suspended from her Pahrump duties, was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and six counts of wire fraud. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. She appeared more subdued after the verdicts were read in the courtroom.
...
Fiore is accused of raising more than $70,000 for a statue to remember Las Vegas Metro Police Officer Alyn Beck, but then spending the money on personal expenses. Beck and Officer Igor Soldo were killed in the line of duty in 2014.

“Michele Fiore used a tragedy to line her pockets,” [federal prosecutor Dahoud] Askar told the jury.

An executive with Olympia Companies, a major developer, had testified the company paid for the statue in its entirety and Fiore would have known this.

Pretty ballsy to raise money for something that somebody else is paying for and then steal all of it.

H/T

MTG Shows, Once Again, That She is Dumber Than the Average Bag of Hammers

Marjorie Taylor Greene challenges YOU to prove Hurricane Helene wasn’t an inside job.

As the death toll from one of the worst U.S. storms in recent memory topped 200 on Friday morning, the Republican congresswoman and noted conspiracy theorist posted a timely reminder on X that “yes they can control the weather” and that “it’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

First off, when people like her say "they control" anything, they mean the Jews. Which would track with her past statements about forest fires.

Second, when someone argues a conspiracy theory, it's a pretty good good indication that they have no idea how things really work. Only a four-starred blithering idiot would believe that anyone controls the weather. And that is a good description of both MTG and the people in her district who vote for her.

Because It's Friday

First one I saw, because shit's going on today.

A Pox on Both Their Houses

Since both the head of the ILA and the USMX are both Trumpers, color me uncaring as regards to the port strike. I hope they both lose.

Indictments and Trials, Please

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has opened an investigation into Impact Plastics in Erwin, Knox News has learned. Employees of the company have alleged management didn’t allow workers to leave the facility even as flood warnings were issued and floodwaters from the Nolichucky River swamped the building.

Two of the women in the group of Impact Plastics employees died, according to an immigrants rights group that has been working with families of some of the employees who worked there. At least three are missing. The company confirmed the death of one person but did not give details about their identity.

I'd bet a lot of doughnuts that the company did tell their workers if they left before their shift was over, that they'd be fired.

Here's a tell: The company was required to report the deaths of workers and they didn't.

Impact Plastics is owned by Gerald O’Connor, who says that he's "devastated", but it seems that he'd have been more devastated by letting his workers leave early.

Well, here's hoping that he suffers a plague of lawyers.

Be a Trumper, Go to Prison

A judge ripped into a Colorado county clerk for her crimes and lies before sentencing her Thursday to nine years behind bars for a data-breach scheme spawned from the rampant false claims about voting machine fraud in the 2020 presidential race.

District Judge Matthew Barrett told former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters — after earlier sparring with her for continuing to press discredited claims about rigged voting machines — that she never took her job seriously.

“I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen,” Barrett told her in handing down the sentence. “You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.”

And now she's a convicted charlatan. Listening to the lies of Trump and the addlepated rantings of Lindell can cost one.

Screeching These Down, Here

The rest are mostly from this place.

Another Dumb MAGA Texan

There are some redundancies in the title of this post.

Anyway:

The guitar supposedly signed by Taylor Swift that was sold for $4,000 to a Texas man who immediately smashed it with a hammer wasn’t authentic, a source close to Swift’s merch company told HuffPost on Tuesday.

So by destroying a counterfeit, it can be argued that that MAGA Moran actually did Taylor Swift a favor.

Smooth move, dude.

Switching gears, "don't pay attention to our past crimes, let's look to the future" doesn't work anywhere else but in GOP campaigns.

L'Shana Tovah 5785

It's been a tough year. This post, from nearly sixteen years ago, explains why.

No Doubt That Every Woman Who Has Had the Misfortune to Have Had Sex With Ol' Mushroom Dick is Pro-Choice

It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government.

Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body? A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.

Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body. I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life. -- Melania Trump

Since the COFF wants to make a show of voting, she'll be free to cast her ballot for whomsoever she chooses. If she voted absentee, I'll wager that he'd insist on marking it for her. Because he's just that much of a pig.

Delusional Donnie

Keep lying to yourself, Buddy.

Trump: And so the women thing. I did a great thing. They’ll understand. On the Roe v. Wade. I did a great thing pic.twitter.com/O815RqnSKE

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 1, 2024

Such a winning issue that Republicans have been running away from it as far as the Christian Taliban will let them.

Plotting These Down, Here

And Here We Go....

The Israeli military said Tuesday that Iran has fired missiles and it ordered residents to remain close to bomb shelters as air raid sirens sounded across the country.

I'm sure that it will be great comfort to the Iranian people that their leaders dragged them into a war that few of the population want to see happening. Because it's probably a good bet that you couldn't fill a stadium with the numer of Iranians that want to go to war because Hezbollah is getting their asses kicked.

Meanwhile, in Lebanon:

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said a top Hamas commander killed in Lebanon Monday was one of its employees but had been suspended since allegations of his ties to the militant group emerged in March.

So which was the side hustle, being a terrorist or a teacher?

Heh. Heh.

They Sucked. They Really Sucked.

The Chicago White Sox, which managed to lose 121 games this season.

They had a ways to go to dethrone the Cleveland Spiders as the worst team ever in baseball, but still, being the worst team since the turn of the 20th Century is an impressive feat of awfulness.

There's always next year.

Rasmussen Polling Lies for and Colludes With the COFF

One thing that seems to be more and more true about conservative organizations: They cannot be trusted to be anything but a tool of Felon^34.

This is the case with Rasmussen. They claim to be objective, but they are in the tank for Putin's Bestie.

H/T

In Your Guts, You Know He's Nuts

Or senile.

Trump: Oh, there's a fly. Oh, I wonder where the fly came from. See, two years ago, I wouldn't have had a fly up here. You’re changing rapidly. We can’t take it any longer pic.twitter.com/ZiLoNJfuTQ

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 28, 2024

So, is he blaming a fly on migrants? Jews? Democrats?

Or has he just really lost cognitive control?

The HMFIC of the First Church of Child Molestation Has an Opinion About Morality

Pope Francis suggested Sunday that Israel’s attacks in Gaza and Lebanon have been “immoral” and disproportionate, saying its military domination has gone beyond the rules of war.

Francis was asked en route home from Belgium about Israel’s targeted killing of one of Hezbollah’s founding members, Hassan Nasrallah. Friday’s strike in Beirut targeted an area greater than a city block and reduced several residential buildings to rubble, and at least six other deaths have been confirmed.

Francis didn’t mention Israel by name and said he was speaking in general terms. But he said that “the defense must always be proportionate to the attack.”

Right, as if that's a philosophy that we have followed. Ever. A philosophy of warfighting, American style, is "anything worth killing is worth overkilling."

If an enemy hides military assets under/behind civilian infrastructure and people, well, that's just how the cookie crumbles. Hezbollah's HQ was a legitimate military target, as was their now-dead commander, and they hid the HQ under civilian apartment buildings. Israel is in a region of the world that operates under Hama Rules and, when an enemy's clear goal is genocide, the gloves come off.

Your Sunday Morning Prop Noise

A Curtiss Pusher:

Note how the controls work.

A Thought About the Aftermath of Hurricane Helene

President Biden isn't prioritizing Federal relief aid to those states where the governors have said nice things about him.

Unlike a certain fat old bastard during the first stages of the Covid pandemic, or during wildfires.

The Irrelevancy of the NYT

One man's opinion.

I pretty much agree with him.

They aren't the first paper whose rich-as-fuck ownership has different views from their readership and who have tried to push their opinions down everyone's throats. That has scuttled other papers, but the NYT has been subtler about it than, say, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, whose fuckery along those lines led to that paper's near-implosion and left Pittsburghas possibly the largest American city without a daily newspaper. (Pittsburgh has a population of about 300,000. Contrast that to New London County, CT, which has 30,000 fewer residents and at least two daily print newspapers.)

The Times keeps adding online games, so odds are that a fair number of their online subscribers are only there for them.

Anyhoo, I started on this a bit ago and I can't find where I found the link. Let me know and I'll add the credit

Caturday

Speck is on a mission: Operation Fill Mah Belly.

Does the FOFF Believe That He is Going to Lose?

Donald Trump is now hawking a new line of watches, some with an eye popping six-figure price tag – the latest example of the former president cashing in on his name like no presidential candidate ever has.

The GOP nominee announced his latest branded merchandise, Trump Watches, on social media Thursday – 40 days before the election and on a day when he did not appear on the campaign trail. He told his supporters the watches would make good Christmas gifts and then directed them to a link where they could be purchased.

The watches retail for $499 but one series – Tourbillon – is priced at $100,000. They come in three different colors and are limited in number to 147.

He's been selling NFTs, Bibles, sneakers, cryptocurrency, silver coins, picture books, pieces of his suits and other shit which I've forgotten about. He's been pushing one thing out after another, as though he knows that his time to cash in is limited. And now it's crappy Chinese watches.

Maybe he figures that it'll be harder to sell shit from Sing Sing. Being on office wouldn't slow him down, not since his lackys on the Supreme Court declared that almost everything he did there would be an official act.

His merch, though, functions as sort of a reverse IQ test: Anyone who buys that crap is showing a serious lack thereof.

ETA: Jimmy Kimmel called him "Rolex Luthor". Heh.

Because It's Friday

Double-heading on the Essex Valley RR:

Gundecking: Newport News Shipbuilding Goes Full Boeing

Shipuilder Newport News Shipbuilding, Va., informed the Department of Justice of faulty welds that may have been made intentionally on non-critical components on in-service Navy submarines and aircraft carriers, USNI News has learned.

[Huntington Ingalls Industries] reported to the Navy that welds on new construction and in-service submarines and Ford-class aircraft carriers were made not following welding procedure, according to a Tuesday memo from Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition Nickolas Guertin to Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti.

The managers involved in this probably figured that they'd not get caught or that, since they supposedly were "non-critical", that nobody would either notice or care.

But they're wrong. If they want to produce shit and get paid for it, Russian shipyards are probably hiring.

Did Vladdie Just Realize That He Has a Potemkin Army?

In a strong, new warning to the West, Putin said Wednesday that any nation’s conventional attack on Russia that is supported by a nuclear power will be considered a joint attack on his country.

The threat, outlined in a revision of Moscow’s nuclear doctrine, was clearly aimed at discouraging the West from allowing Ukraine to strike Russia with longer-range weapons and appears to significantly lower the threshold for the possible use of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

That's what they say, but I see something else. I think that the TOFF's boss may have finally realized that his much-vaunted military has been hollowed out by many decades of corruption and stagnant leadership. Even their self-proclaimed deterrents may not work. Russia has never adapted to more modern ways of fighting and that is why the Ukrainians, who did adapt, stopped Putin's three-day campaign to conquer Ukraine and have continued to do so. The only way the Russians have been able to make any progress is by their ancient tactic of throwing soldiers into do-or-die assaults. It may be leading to high levels of casualties unseen since the Korean war.

It is a hollow threat. The Russians have to know that a nuclear attack on a NATO nation would be answered in kind in very short order.

And then it would be game over for us all in a matter of hours. Even the über-rich wouldn't have time to flee to their bunkers. The aftermath would make Fallout look like a garden party.

Covid Tests

Four more free ones for American households.

Digging These Down, Here

The Donald Goes All Space Laser

With just weeks to go until the 2024 U.S. presidential election, former President Donald Trump baselessly claimed during a Sept. 25 speech in North Carolina that Venezuelan migrant gang members in Aurora, Colorado, possessed "massive machine gun-type equipment," adding that the weaponry goes "beyond even military scope." He also said, "And they're taking over apartment buildings. They're taking over real estate."

As of this writing, we uncovered no evidence to support the idea of Venezuelan migrants in Aurora bearing "massive machine gun-type equipment" or anything regarding weaponry "beyond even military scope."

By email, Sydney Edwards, a spokesperson for the Aurora Police Department, said of the claims of migrants supposedly possessing "massive" weaponry and taking over apartment buildings: "We do not have any reports or information that relate to the claims you mention."

I don't know what weaponry, would be "beyond military scope", unless he think they've got land-based versions of MTG's Jewish space lasers.

But what is consistent is that the TOFF has been engaging in racist and hateful demonization of immigrants since the first day of his first presidential campaign. He is a bigot, he always has been.

This Could Get Interesting; NYC Corruption Ed.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted by a grand jury on federal criminal charges, according to two people familiar with the matter, an extraordinary culmination to weeks of searches, subpoenas and resignations of top officials that have thrust the city’s government into crisis.

The indictment detailing the charges against Adams, a Democrat, was expected to be unsealed Thursday, according to the people, who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

And:

The head of New York City’s public schools system, David Banks, said Tuesday that he will step down at the end of the calendar year, becoming the latest high-ranking departure from Mayor Eric Adams’ administration amid escalating federal criminal investigations.

The decision comes weeks after federal agents seized Banks’ phones, as well as devices belonging to the city’s police commissioner, two deputy mayors and a top Adams adviser. The police commissioner, Edward Caban, resigned earlier this month.

I'm no great shakes as a legalwatcher. Having said that, my impression of the Feds, especially the Southern District of NY, is that they don't go after politicians for piddly-ass shit. When they do, they have the receipts.

The indictment might be an interesting read for the legal reporters.