Well. Well. Well.

Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida and a close ally of former President Donald J. Trump, is being investigated by the Justice Department over whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him, according to three people briefed on the matter.

Investigators are examining whether Mr. Gaetz violated federal sex trafficking laws, the people said. A variety of federal statutes make it illegal to induce someone under 18 to travel over state lines to engage in sex in exchange for money or something of value. The Justice Department regularly prosecutes such cases, and offenders often receive severe sentences.

The story has been confirmed by other sources. He says it's witch-hunt and that the Democrats are after him, but it seems that the DoJ was investigating somebody else and they began looking at Gaetz during the TFG Administration:

The investigation was opened in the final months of the Trump administration under Attorney General William P. Barr, the two people said. Given Mr. Gaetz’s national profile, senior Justice Department officials in Washington — including some appointed by Mr. Trump — were notified of the investigation, the people said.

The three people said that the examination of Mr. Gaetz, 38, is part of a broader investigation into a political ally of his, a local official in Florida named Joel Greenberg, who was indicted last summer on an array of charges, including sex trafficking of a child and financially supporting people in exchange for sex, at least one of whom was an underage girl.

Gaetz is everywhere, violating one of the basic rules of surviving a criminal investigation:

#PizzaGaetz is trending on Twitter. Everyone is remembering this fun fact:

One is the loneliest number — and in this case, that loneliest number is Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach.

On Dec. 19 [2017], Gaetz cast the lone "no" vote on a widely bipartisan human trafficking bill that passed unanimously through the U.S. Senate in September before sailing through the House by a count of 418 to 1.

The legislation — the Combating Human Trafficking in Commercial Vehicles Act — is an attempt to give the federal government more resources to combat the sex trade in the U.S., such as a human trafficking prevention coordinator at the U.S. Department of Transportation and a committee in the department to help develop best practices to fight human trafficking.

All that makes this tweet by Gaetz look creepy:
Funny, isn't in, how all of those far-right wing, QAnonite, conspiracy-buff Republicans are found out to be doing the same thing that they accuse others of doing.
Pass the popcorn, please.

Stuff


And this, which you can never unsee;
(h/t)
There is not a single Republican or a single conservative who has the moral basis for complaining how unaccompanied children at the border are being treated. They didn't speak up when TFG was running things, they have no standing to complain, now, as long as the Biden Administration isn't selling the kids for their organs.

If I had the money, I'd run an ad that had images of bridges falling down, trains derailing (and burning) and heaviy potholed highways. The voiceover would be along the lines of "if you don't like what you see and don't want things to get worse, then call your congressman and senator and tell them to support the infrastructure bill."

Stupid Leaders: Poland Ed.

This article is in line with a current issue: Poland is trying to whiewash its history.

Every country that was occupied by the Germans during the war had its quislings, its collaborators. Especially in Eastern Eurpoe, those collaborators helped the Germans commit mass-murder. Poland has sought to criminalize discussing any hint of tge complicity of Poles in the Holocaust.

Hell, in Poland, it is illegal to criticize the president. Saying that the president of Poland is an idiot is good for three years in prison.

The inescapable conclusion is that, irregardless of its court system or any other trappings of democracy, Poland is not a free nation. Free nations do not pass laws to criminalize the discussion of topics that cause their leaders butthurt.

Though, let's face it, the United States is not exactly a paragon when it comes to this area. We have an entire political party that is based on the false premise that the boys in Grey during the Civil War were fighting for anything other than the perpetuation of slavery. Up until very recently, Texas was teaching the lie of states' rights as the cause of that war. Presidents Adams and Wilson both criminalized criticising them in their respective Sedition Acts, both of which didn't survive the next presidency.

TGF wanted very much to have such a law, but that was too far a reach, even for his bootlickers in Congress.

People Are Stupid

President Joe Biden and a top health official warned Monday that too many Americans are declaring virus victory too quickly, appealing for mask requirements and other restrictions to be maintained or restored to stave off a “fourth surge” of COVID-19. The head of the CDC said she had a feeling of “impending doom” if people keep easing off.

We are in the short game of this pandemic. This is not the time to back off from taking precautions. Getting sick from Covid now is like having been killed on the morning of November 11, 1918. Hundreds of thousands of peolple died because TFG's administration couldn't be bothered to take mitigation measures, choosing instead to make preventative measures into another bullshit right-wing culture war.

Don't listen to the extremists and seditionist traitors trying to destroy this country. Do the right thing: Wear a mask, wash your hands, practice physical distancing and get your goddamned shots.

Stupid Leaders: China Ed.

A joint World Health Organization-China report on the origins of the coronavirus says it most probably jumped from animals to humans via an intermediate animal host, downplays the possibility it leaked from a lab and suggests next steps in a complex search mired in controversy, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post.

The report, set to be released Tuesday, offers the most detailed look yet at what happened in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 and early 2020. However, the findings are far from conclusive and will be overshadowed by questions about China’s lack of transparency — and the WHO’s apparent inability to press for more.

The story goes on to retell the fact that the Chinese initially tried to hush up reports of the Covid virus, including arresting those first reporting it.

That's an important bit of the story that cannot be overtold. The instinct of the Chinese buraucracy is to cover up shit. This isn't a fature of the Communist party, it's the way things have been for over a thousand years. Nobody curries favor by making the emperor look bad.

But the problem here is that by not being fully transparent, by insisting that things be approved by the politruks, the Chinese are iving oxygen to the QAnon-grade conspiracy theorists.

The Power of Flesh


Weapons are tools. Complex weapons are machines. They are inert chunks of metal, wood and plastic until some fool picks them up.

Saturday, March 27, 2021

Friday, March 26, 2021

The Fine Whines of the Press (and the Wingnuts)

It has been a little bit enjoyable to watch the various reporters who were whining about President Biden not holding a formal news conference. It's probably not worth the time to point out that he has had a lot dumped on his plate (in no small part due to TFG's petulant refusal to cooperate during the transition) and that, well, he doesn't work for them.

{Cecelia Vega, ABC]: Final follow, sir. You mentioned circumstances that must be horrific. The Customs and Border Protection facility in Donna, Texas — I was there — is at 1,556 percent capacity —

THE PRESIDENT: Yep.

Q — right now, with mostly unaccompanied minors. There are kids that are sleeping on floors. They are packed into these pods. I’ve spoken to lawyers who say that they — some of these children have not seen the sun in days. What’s your reaction — what is your reaction to these images that have come out from that particular facility? Is what’s happening inside acceptable to you? And when is this going to be fixed?

THE PRESIDENT: Is — that’s a serious question, right?

Is it acceptable to me? Come on. That’s why we’re going to be moving a thousand of those kids out quickly. That’s why I got Fort Bliss opened up. That’s why I’ve been working from the moment this started to happen to try to find additional access for children to be able to safely — not just children, but particularly children — to be able to safely be housed while we follow through on the rest of what’s happening.

That is totally unacceptable.

To ABC's credit, they aired Vega's question and Biden's calling her out on the evening news. Because it was a pathetic moment in which a reporter confused snarkiness with toughness and Biden would have none of it. And really, what the hell was she trying to get at? Even TFG would have not agreed (publicly) that packing kids in at 500% capacity was acceptable.

What I saw of the press conference was basically a pathetic performance by the press corps. Biden came prepared to talk about larger issues and the press focused on inside-the-Beltway issues. The reporters are focusing on the game of politics instead of the issues of governance. They're pretty much falling down on the job of informing people. If they want to cover topics that have won/lost stats, they should be transferred and sent out to cover high-school sports back home.

Because It's Friday

40 year-old report on UP's steam stable:

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Shorter GQP: "Life Got Unbearable When They Outlawed Hanging Strange Fruit!"

These people exist:

Life will be so unbearable for clowns like this if there were no such thing as white privilege, if people were treated fairly.

Sidney Powell Admits That She is a Big, Fat Liar (and That TFG's Supporters are not Reasonable People)

As a former Trump campaign lawyer, Sidney Powell did more than perhaps anyone to push the big lie that President Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in last November’s presidential election was the result of fraud involving Dominion Voting Systems machines. Now, however, lawyers representing her have acknowledged that the “big lie” is, in fact, just that.

Powell faces a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion because of her false claims, and on Monday her lawyers offered her defense: that “no reasonable person would conclude that the statements” Powell made about election fraud “were truly statements of fact.”

There you have it, right from the mouth of one of TFG's lawers: If you believe that the election was stolen, you are not a reasonable person.
But, as you may recall, Powell made these assertions in pleadings that she filed in one court case after another. Generally, when a lawyer files a pleading, he or she signs to assert the truth of the allegations. Oh sure, if your client lies to you, that's one thing. But if you file a pleading and you know that what you stated in the pleading was a lie, you can be well and truly cooked. Many judges aren't going to bust an attorney's gonads over this, but if it's aggregious and if it's in a really public matter, that's a whole different kettle of fish.

Powell may be done as an attorney. But don't cry for her, for she'll get one of the Disgraced Wingnut Welfare jobs at the Heritage Foundation or some other place. She's not going to be working the dirve-through at a fast-food emporium.

Thirty Year-Old Comedy Gold

Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters on the Tonight Show.


The comments about judicial nominees not answering questions, to the point that they appear to be stupid, is as spot-on now as it was then.

I'd carve out a half-hour and watch the whole thing, if I were you (since I already have done that).

Miami is Beset With Morons

Pointing to over 1,000 arrests in one of the nation’s top party spots, Miami Beach officials warned Sunday that the unruly spring break crowd gathering by the thousands, fighting in the streets, destroying restaurant property and refusing to wear masks has become a serious threat to public safety.

During a last-minute meeting Sunday, city officials voted to extend a highly unusual 8 p.m. curfew for another week along famed South Beach, with the possibility of extending it well into April if needed, and stressed this isn’t the typical spring break crowd. They said it’s not college students, but adults looking to let loose in one of the few states fully open during the pandemic.

This is on Gov. DuhSantis and his implacable hostility to any public health measures. As a result of his indeologically-driven obstinancy, Miami has one of the highest Covid positivity rates in the country. The new variants are rampant in Florida. And, just like last year, all of those imbeciles are going to go to their home states and spread the disease.

We were approaching being able to get this fucking pandemic under control, but now, because of Homo stupidicus, we're likelyu going to have a fourth wave of the Trump virus.

Dear Trump Supporters: Trump's Lawyers Were Lying to You; One Has Admitted as Much


In other words: "We were lying, all along, and you have to have been a special kind of stupid in order to believe what we were saying."

If you believed the lies of Trump's lawyers, and Trump himself, that the election was stolen, then congratulations: They were able to wash your brain without a lot of effort, thanks both to Fox News, their ilk, and your willingness to swallow their bilge in large amounts.

Here's your sign.
(H/T)

What Is It With These White Guys?

What is it with these white guys? Why is it almost always white guys who, when having a bad day, think it is appropriate to pick up a gun and murder strangers?

By the way, when someone says "common-sense gun laws," my inclination is to save time and just skip ahead to a stance of "go fuck yourself, not going to happen." Because when someone says "this is common sense," what they are doing is denigrating and trying to marginalize anyone who might have a quibble with what they propose.

Monday, March 22, 2021

Just Going to Leave These Here

Remember: Punctuation saves lives! 




Your Sunday Morning Prop Noise

Focke Wulf 190:



There's a story of a company that, during the war, ran a full-page ad in Life or Look with the headline "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Focke Wulf". (Companies ran such ads to keep their names in consumbers' mids come the end of the war.) The airmen of a bomber group wrote "we are" in large letters, everyone signed it, and they sent it to the company.

Saturday, March 20, 2021

Caturday

Willow, a store cat:

Friday, March 19, 2021

Georgia Pride

This is what it was like to grow up Asian in Georgia:

Growing up in the South as an Asian American is no easy feat. I was relentlessly teased by my White classmates that I had “slits” for eyes, that my food smelled “like fart,” that my face was so flat it looked like it had been “run over by a car.” When my immigrant parents were finally able to buy their first house after almost a decade of moving the family from apartment to apartment, their celebration of their white-picket-fenced American Dream came to a sudden halt. We were one of the first Asian families to settle in a predominantly White neighborhood, and our neighbors saw to it that we were not welcome.

The expansive oak tree that spread its branches over our front lawn was repeatedly toilet-papered by the neighborhood kids, often before a rainstorm. Then the sodden toilet paper — too high to reach, too messy even to bother — would fester on the branches in moldy wet clumps until they disintegrated on their own. The shoes we’d take off outside our door were once discovered with baked beans poured into each one, rendering them unwearable. The final straw was when we were “ding-dong-ditched.” My mother had opened the front door to see a brown paper bag sitting on the front doorstep. Inside it, a lump of feces.
...
Even after that incident, the hazing, the deliberate intimidation didn’t stop. A mother of one of the neighborhood kids drove her Ford Expedition down our street, stopped her car in front of our driveway and allowed four young girls cackling with excitement to jump out and scream, “Chinese fire drill! Chinese fire drill!” before taking off. I hid behind the window blinds, hoping they couldn’t see me. Our neighborhood had made it clear that it wasn’t okay to be me, so I tried my best to disappear.

Is there any doubt as to why the attitude of the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department of sympathy to a mass-murderer was so wounding to Asians? If you grow up being hated and despised, is it any surprise to you that the cops would be sympathetic to someone who killed people who looked like you?

Or the fact that the cops there seem to be so eager to take the killer's word for it that what he did wasn't a hate crime? "Sure, I'm a woman-hating murderous bastard, but at least I an't no racist?" That's the line that they're swallowing?

Frankly, I'm somewhat surprised that we're not hearing "hey, it's just a buncha dead whores, what's the problem" from the local constabulary and officals. Not all that long ago, they would have said as much, but with an ethnic slur in between the words "dead" and "whores". So I guess that's some degree of progress.

Bitter, Dead-Ender, Pro-Insurrection Congressmen

A dozen Republicans voted against a resolution honoring US Capitol police for their efforts to protect members of Congress during the insurrection on 6 January.

Their big beef was with describing what happened on January 6th as an "insurrection". No doubt that they preferred to use the phrase "failed garden party", or, as their Orange God's owner called it, "a stroll".

These are the pro-insurrection congressvermin:

Biggs Republican Arizona
Cloud Republican Texas
Clyde Republican Georgia
Gaetz Republican Florida
Gohmert Republican Texas
Good Republican Virginia
Gooden Republican Texas
Greene Republican Georgia
Harris Republican Maryland
Massie Republican Kentucky
Rose Republican Tennessee
Steube Republican Florida

Profiles in Sedition is a book that is begging to be written about the events leading up to January 6th, the failed insurrection itself, and the denialism by those who stoked it. Like the above dozen douchebags.

Speaking of seditious douchebags:

Four men described as leaders of the far-right Proud Boys have been charged in the U.S. Capitol riots, as an indictment ordered unsealed on Friday presents fresh evidence of how federal officials believe group members planned and carried out a coordinated attack to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

One of the Arrested Asshats's lawyer said that his client "loves his country".. yep, loves it enough to try to use mob violence to overturn the results of an election.

And then there's this self-styled patriot:

A former Army Special Forces soldier charged with a half-dozen crimes stemming from the Capitol riot threw a flagpole at a police officer like a spear and assaulted three other officers, according to the FBI and court documents.

Jeffrey McKellop, 55, who was arrested Wednesday, is among more than 30 veterans charged in the Jan. 6 incident but appears to be the first so far who served in Special Operations, according to service records analyzed by The Washington Post.

Seditious bastards, all of them.

Because It's Friday

Atlanta & West Point #290:



The locomotive was the one that ran over Buddy in Fried Green Tomatoes. It has not operated in nearly 30 years.

Thursday, March 18, 2021

"The Murderer Was Having a Bad Day."

A Georgia official faced swift backlash for pinning a shooting rampage that left eight dead at three Atlanta-area spas on a "very bad day" for the alleged gunman.
...
In a press conference Wednesday morning, Capt. Jay Baker, a spokesperson for the Cherokee Sheriff's Office, said [the Asswipe of Atlanta] was taken into custody "without incident" and described having "a bad day" as part of the suspect's mindset.

Baker said the [Asswipe] "understood the gravity of [his crime]. And he was pretty much fed up, had been kind of at the end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him, and this is what he did."


What about, you know, the eight people that Asswipe shot dead, Capt. Baker? You think that maybe their day wasn't exactly stellar? "How was your day, dear?" "I got shot dead."

So this Asswipe is claiming that he had a sex addition and that his remedy was to try and kill every (presumed) sex worker that he could find? And almost all of the people that he murdered happened to be Asian, all but one passer-by was femaie and there's not a racial or sexual component to this, says the cops?

It's pretty common knowledge that, as far as many cops are concerned, sex workers are disposable people. That attitude was on full display in Cherokee County.* Even though there was no evidence that the workers at those massage parlors were sex workers. That didn't seem to matter to that murdering Asswipe, or, for that matter, to the cops.

I'll bet that they won't execute this Asswipe, even though murder is a capital crime in Georgia. That's another little bit of racism that'sbaked into the process: White dudes who kill people of color arely get fried for their crimes.
___________________________
* And isn't it nice that they named the county to remember the people whom they force-marched 1,500 miles to the west?

Nope, Still No Fraud

U.S. Postal Service investigators did not find evidence of any backdated presidential election ballots in the post office in Erie, Pennsylvania, according to a report summarizing the investigation into claims by a postal worker that spurred calls from Republicans for a federal probe.

Turns out that the postal worker was lying when he said that he heard the postmaster and the supervisor talking about backdating ballots. He saw them talking and assumed that's what they were talking about.

The claims by TFG's Campaign and his butt-kicking acolytes in the GQP have been shown to be lies or, worse, Russian propaganda that has been eagerly swallowed hole by the Party of Q.

Just Going to Leave These Here

I accidentally posted this yesterday. Sorry about that.





Wednesday, March 17, 2021

The Latest Target for Right Wing Lunatics and Bigots

Transgendered kids.

Transgender women and girls couldn’t play on girls’ and women’s school sports teams under a bill passed by a Florida House committee on Wednesday.

Where is the flood of transgendered girls seeking to play sports? I'll spare you the hunt: There isn't any. There were two kids in Connecticut, but that is it. But because of those two kids, lawmakers across the Bigotry Belt are rushing to pass laws, even though there hasn't been a single case of a transgendered kid going out for sports in their states.

But this is what Republicans do: They invent problems and then enact laws to "correct" their non-existent problems. Widespread votor fraud. Doesn't exist, but Republicans are busily enacting laws to make it harder to vote. Same thing with transgendered kids.

Sorry, folks, but if you identify as a Republican, you have signed on to a political party that operates on the corrosive fluids of bigotry and hate.

The Almighty forbid that Republicans actually do something to help anyone other than big corporations and rich people.

The All-Consuming Narcissim and Pettiness of TFG

It didn't matter one bit to TFG where the need was the most dire. All that mattered to TFG is whether or not people were saying nice things about him.

TFG would have sent both hospital ships to South Dakota if they could have been sailed up the Missouri River.

TFG's motto has always been Ubi Est Mea. That was on full display when he was mangling the response to the pandemic. What was good for the country never entered his consciousness, only what was best for him.

Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Vaccines and Republicans

It seems, now, that the mRNA vaccines not only fight the chance of severe disease and death, they do greatly reduce the chances of even contracting COVID. But even though Trump claims that he should get the credit for the vaccines, Republicans don't want to take them.

I want this pandemic to be over as soon as possible. And if that means that COVID burns through the anti-vaxxers, so be it.

I just hope it happens sooner rather than later.

Monday, March 15, 2021

Lightening Cuts in Gun Slides

Tam writes about them.

I firmly believe that the opening cuts on slides are, well, a sign of drain bamage. The slide is also known as a "dust cover" for good reasons.

If a fully-enclosed dust cover wasn't a good idea, John Moses Browning, Jr. would have done away with them.

I Propose a Law

If someone proposes naming or renaming a street: The number of letters in the street name shall be counted, including the abbreviation at the end for "road", "street", "boulevard", etc. The maximun number permitted shall be fifteen.

However, if a longer name is proposed, then the individual proposing it, or the CEO of the company or organization proposing it, must then write out the full name of the street, in longhand, one thousand times for every letter over the limit of fifteen, one line per entry. So, for example, if there are nineteen letters in the name of the street, the name must be written out four thousand times, by hand.

Proof of so writing must be furnished to the Postal Inspector before the name is permitted to be used for mailing purposes. All of the written names must be legible.

In the event of failure to comply, the name given to the street shall be "Asswipe (name of the person proposing the new name) Blvd." Mail addressed to any other name for the street shall be marked as "undeliverable" and returned to the sender.