Artemis

Next try for launch is at 1417, ET on Saturday, Sept. 3rd.

We Know Why the Feebies Raided the TOFF's Manse

He was hiding many of the classified documents and he apparently directed his lawyer to lie about it. I probably should read the DoJ's response to El Disgusto's bit of judge-shopping to ask for a special master.

The TOFF believes that everything he touched during his presidency belongs to him. I'm sort of surprised that he didn't try to steal the Resolute Desk, or Air Force 1.

Somebody's going to jail for this, as the letter that the TOFF's lawyer sent to the DoJ, claiming that all government documents had been turned over was a lie. That's the big point, for even if a judge accepts that the TOFF magically declassified all of those documents, they were not his to take.

It will be interesting to find out who were the people who ratted him out.

Lindsey Graham is a Fascistic Piece of Shit

Amid growing fears about political violence in the US, a senior Republican senator predicted “riots in the streets” if Donald Trump is prosecuted for mishandling classified information.

Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, made his remarks about the ex-president while speaking to Fox News’s Sunday Night in America, hosted by Trey Gowdy, a former Republican congressman from the same state.

Graham said: “Most Republicans, including me, believe when it comes to Trump, there is no law. It’s all about getting him. There’s a double standard when it comes to Trump.”

Alleging a failure by the FBI to investigate Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, Graham added: “I’ll say this, if there’s a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information, after the Clinton debacle … there’ll be riots in the streets.”

This is nothing but full-on fascist thuggery, threatening riots and disorder. This, mind you, is coming from the very same group of people who were decrying the 2020 BLM protests. These are the same people who were advocating for shooting down protesters.

So if the political golden rule is "do unto others as they would have done unto you"....

But really, Lindsey? Egging on the low-wattage MAGAites to go into the streets and riot if their Orange God is indicted? For a guy who is a lawyer, trashing the rule of law is a despicable act.

But that's Miss Lindsey. The TOFF proclaimed that there would be riots if he was prosecuted and Miss Lindsey, who is so far up the TOFF's ass that he can see daylight over his head, just parrots it. He is a human remora, attaching himself to alpha male politicians

This sort of bullshit is why our standing in the world has been sliding.

Obfuscating These Down, Here

(H/T)

Fly the Fiendish Skies With Air Chance

Two Air France pilots were suspended after physically fighting in the cockpit on a Geneva-Paris flight in June, an Air France official said Sunday. The flight continued and landed safely, and the dispute didn’t affect the rest of the flight, the official said, stressing the airline’s commitment to safety.

French newspaper La Tribune reported that the pilot and co-pilot had a dispute shortly after takeoff, and grabbed each other by their collars after one apparently hit the other. Cabin crew intervened and one crew member spent the flight in the cockpit with the pilots, the report said.

In-flight announcement in English on Air France: *ding* "Pardon, madames et messieurs, but the pilots, they are, how do you say, duking it out in the cockpit."

Russia and Ukraine

One thing comes to my mind, first off: The skin in the game of the average Ukrainian as compared to the average Russian.

For the Ukraininas, it's pretty clear. Their country has been invaded, twice, by the Russians. Strategy Page has reported that even the so-called Russified Ukrainians in Crimea and the Donbas are, more and more, choosing to throw in with Ukraine than with their occupiers.

For the Russians, I have not seen anything to indicate that Ivan Ivanov in either Moscow or St. Petersburg, let alone Vladivostok, could give two shits about Ukraine. This can be seen by the troubles that the Russian military is having getting men to enlist in their army. The reports are that the Russians have been greatly loosening their eligibility requirements for joining the army, with few takers.[1] They need people, as their casualty rate may be horrific.[2]

The Russians have been trying to make up the shortfall with private military contractors and with foreign troops. That has the age-old problem of fighting a war with mercenaries: They are willing to fight for a paycheck, but they are not inclined to die for one. The recruitment of criminals from Russian prisons by the mercenaries has additional problems with maintaining the good order and dsciple necessary for a competent combat force.[3]

On the other side of the coin, while both economies are suffering, Russia's potentially better suited to rebound. Putler can turn the taps wide and sell oil, along with coal, forest products, steel and gold. Russia may find that the market for Russian military weapon systems will have taken a beating, as nothing that they have has shown to be particularly impressive in this war (unlike LockMart). The future for advanced Russian weapons systems is rather grim.

For Ukraine, the situation may be more dire over the near term. The Russians, whether by accident or design, are poisoning/ruining a portion of Ukraine's fields.[4] Much of Ukraine's exports are agricultural. Their industry is being destroyed by Russian attacks under the toddler's principle of "if I can't have it, SMASH". So Ukraine may be an economic basket case for some years.

But in the longer term, if Ukraine can keep corruption under check,[5], then, with the assistance of the rest of Europe, they can recover to a point of having a more modern industrial base than they inherited from the fall of the USSR. Russia will continue down the road of mediocrity and inferior goods that they have been on for a century or more, with its citizens looking over the border towards Russia's more prosperous neighbors to the west and wondering why they can't ever have those nice things.[6]
_______________________
[1] Does that sound familiar?
[2] Reports are that their casualty-care methods have been bad by US Army standards for the Second World War.
[3] The Soviets did this by having penal battalions that were tightly overseen by the NKVD, who would kill those soldiers whenever it suited them.
[4] Besides stealing all the grain those fucling orcs can get their hands upon.
[5] Something that the donor nations can enforce.
[6] Which is an argument for making it easy for Russians to travel to the rest of Europe.

Artemis 1 is Scrubbed for Today

Apparently a mixture of weather and technical issues.

Check back later, I have shit to do.

Artemis 1

Scheduled for about 45 minutes from now.

No Wonder He Admires That Guy

That the TOFF admires him is beyond dispute.

So here's another MAGA-like idiot:

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

B-52s:

No word if any of them had to make the dreaded seven-engine landing.

One Thing I Know About The TOFF

I don't know if he's in any legal jeaopardy (and I doubt if you do), but there is one thing I am willing to bet on:

He will run his mouth, both on his failing social media platform, in interviews with his lackey press, and in speeches. Despite what legal advice he may receive, he will continue to do that.

Where he will say lots of things that can be used against him.

Anyhoo, suppose he gets indicted. What I see happening is that, at the bail hearing, the TOFF will run his mouth. The judge, who might be inclined to order ROR with supervision by the SS, will get pissed off and order a bail of $800 million because of a stated flight risk.

Caturday

Speck is waiting to get at the food.

Lesson #1 in Criminal Defense Practice Is...

...Get all of the money up front. Clients who lose have no incentive to pay.

Exhibit 1:

Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's former confidante now serving a 20-year prison sentence for child sex trafficking, is being sued for more than $878,000 in unpaid legal fees by a law firm representing her, according to court documents.

The lawyers are also suing her brother, claiming that he assured them that he'd pay. If they didn't get that in writing, then they are dumber than they look.

Because It's Friday

More Aussie steam:

Tyrants Love Each Other

The women’s golf tournament, part of the Aramco Team Series, was approved to be held at the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point in the Bronx by the Eric Adams administration, according to a city official who was familiar with the matter but not authorized to publicly discuss it.
...
City officials determined that they could not “unreasonably withhold approval” for the event under the city’s contract with the Trump Organization, according to another city official who was familiar with the matter.

Of course the TOFF's company is in bed with Mr. Bone Saw. Does anyone expect anything else?

A Lesson for the Stupid: Do Business with the TOFF At Your Own Risk

Donald Trump’s Truth Social is in a battle with RightForge over $1.6 million the conservative internet-hosting vendor says it’s owed, according to a Fox Business report Thursday.

Three sources told Fox Business that Truth Social stopped making payments in March, just a month after launching in February. According to these sources, RightForge is threatening legal action over the money owed for setting up Truth Social’s infrastructure.

I have no sympathy whatsoever for RightForge. The TOFF stiffs everybody he does business with. It's his M.O. He only pays a portion of his bill and dares vendors to sue him for the rest. Big or small, he underpays everyone, from big companies to workers.

By now, it should be patently obvious that the only way to do business with him or his organization/companies/family is to get all of the money up front, or walk away. The owners of RightForge thought that they were doing a good thing and now they are getting what they have coming to them for it.

Jesus Paying for Your Sins Is an Insult to Those of Us Who Paid for Our Own Sins.

I got nothing more to add. Go read RobertaX's take on it.

Arrest. Try. Imprison.

This is why:

The offer to military veterans left unemployed by the coronavirus pandemic was tantalizing: A year of online courses courtesy of the federal government. Graduates would be set up for good jobs in high-demand fields from app development to graphic design.

“I jumped at it,” said Jacqueline Culbreth, 61, an Air Force veteran laid off in 2020 from her job as a construction estimator in Orlando. “I was looking forward basically to upping my earning power.”

But more than a year after enrolling at the Chicago-based Future Tech Career Institute, Culbreth is no closer to her goal of landing a job in cloud computing. Like many former service members enrolled at the for-profit trade school under a pandemic relief program run by the Department of Veterans Affairs, she soon found herself immersed in discouraging chaos.

For-profit schools exist only to soak up student loan funds and stick former students (for thier graduation rates are abuysmal) with large amounts of debt. The predatory practices of many of those schools is one reason behind the loan forgiveness program.

The Screws Turn

Now it appears that the TOFF's lawyers were asked to turn over presidential records soon after his undignified return to his lair in Florida.

About two dozen boxes of presidential records stored in then-President Donald Trump’s White House residence were not returned to the National Archives and Records Administration in the final days of his term even after Archives officials were told by a Trump lawyer that the documents should be given back, according to an email from the top lawyer at the record-keeping agency.

“It is also our understanding that roughly two dozen boxes of original presidential records were kept in the Residence of the White House over the course of President Trump’s last year in office and have not been transferred to NARA, despite a determination by Pat Cipollone in the final days of the administration that they need to be,” wrote Gary Stern, the agency’s chief counsel, in an email to Trump lawyers in May 2021, according to a copy reviewed by The Washington Post.

Presidential records do not belong to the individual, they belong to the National Archives. In short, they belong to US. But the TOFF, at his core, is a thief who operates on a toddler's mentality that everything he touches is his.

He is a criminal. He has always comprted his style of managing as would a Mafia boss. He knows that he is a criminal.

And frankly, anyone who does not, by now, acknowledge his criminality is either willfully blind or has played too much football without a helmet, if you get my drift.

If It's Boeing, It's Not Going (Into Orbit)

Boeing’s first spaceflight with astronauts has been delayed until next year because of repairs that need to be made to the capsule following its last test flight.

Liftoff of the Starliner capsule with a pair of NASA test pilots is now scheduled for February, officials announced Thursday. They had hoped to launch it by year’s end.

Those astronauts who will ride it into orbit will have some serious stones.

Lawyering These Down, Here

Messing With Texas

A Florida activist has found a unique way to protest a new Texas law requiring public schools to display signs with the national motto. Chaz Stevens, founder of the Mount Jab Church of Mars—a group in Boca Raton, Fla., that advocates for the separation of church and state—launched a GoFundMe campaign Sunday to send hundreds of "In God We Trust" signs written in Arabic to the Lone Star State.

It's funny, but apparently the State Lege in Texas has solved all of the problems with the state's electrical grid that they can afford to spend time on this nonsense.

I wonder if it's too late to sell the goddamned state to the Mexicans.

Slava Ukraini!

Today is Ukraine's Independence Day. They are bracing for the Orcs to conduct more terroristic strikes.

The World's Oldest War Criminal said a few months ago that Ukraine will have to kowtow to Putler. JFK had a better take on the Russians:

“We cannot negotiate with people who say what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable."

Putler is likely going to try to hang onand wear down the West. We cannot let him get away with that.

Shorter Right-Wing Plea: "Please Go Burn Down These Churches."

The New Hampshire Council of Churches is concerned a list of so-called "woke" churches could be used to target those with inclusive beliefs.

The list of New Hampshire churches singles out congregations that have displayed rainbow symbols, condemned racism or supported COVID mitigation measures, among other things. The libertarian Free State Project shared the list on Twitter last week.

In a statement Tuesday, the Council of Churches expressed concern that certain churches could be harassed because of their beliefs, noting that “hate and white supremacist activity” has been occurring in New Hampshire.

Let's be clear on this: The use of the term "woke" by the Right has become a codeword of hate. You rarely hear people on the other side of the spectrum using the term nowadays, for they know that it has become the latest brickbat of the far-Right. It's all as Lee Atwater once explained.[1]

By now, it's become clear to anyone who is not a tRumpanzee that there is a bunch of loons with guns[2] who are ready and able to act on those codewords to terrorize people. If it happens to any of those churches, you can bet your next paycheck that those "libertarians" will express shock and horror.[3] On one level, they might even believe it, but deep down, you have to know that they'll be smiling after the fire's put out.
_____________
[1] The late, legendarily brutal campaign consultant Lee Atwater explains how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger."
[2] Or cans of gasoline and a lighter.
[3] It's also clear, now, that the Right's commitment to free speech has been, as always, limited to saying things that they approve of. Just like their concept of freedom of religion only extend to the churches of the Christian Taliban.

Convicting the Loudmouths

A jury on Tuesday convicted two men of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, delivering swift verdicts in a plot that was broken up by the FBI and described as a rallying cry for a U.S. civil war by anti-government extremists.

One might remember back, then Chimpy's internal war on loudmouth Muslims was in full swing, the FBI had a practice of finding local loudmouths, egging them on, then charging them with terrorism for doing things that they arguably wouldn't have done without an FBI agent provocateur pretty much arranging the whole thing. It's what they do.

The counter-argument is that these guys are grown men who should have had the sense to rethink that they were doing instead of acting like a couple of lemmings. (Remember your mother would ask "if your friends jumped off a cliff, would you follow them?")

What the FBI does should always be judged by the facts of any particular case. They are not to be trusted, due to their record of fuckery, big-footing local cases, and inflationary self-importance going back ninety years.

What's Going On With Fox News? (Plus More About the TOFF's Moronoic Blatherings)

Fox News ran an opinion piece explaining that the search of the TOFF's lair was, well, legal:

The truth needs to be set forth plainly and simply, and so let’s get down to brass tacks here. What happened on August 8, 2022, was not tyranny. It was not political persecution. It was not a minor dust up over bureaucratic processes blown out of proportion. It was the criminal justice system operating just like it does with any other private citizen on any other given day ending in a "y."
...
You cannot remove properly marked classified documents and place them in a location not authorized for retention of classified documents. You cannot obstruct a federal investigation seeking to lawfully recover those documents. You cannot present false statements to federal investigators.

Our jails are filled with people who have gone to jail for less. Search warrants are executed on properties and residences every day by local, state and federal law enforcement authorities in a manner no different than what happened at Mar-a-Lago. Those individuals’ lawyers also are not permitted to impede or micromanage the execution of the warrant, just as Trump’s lawyers were not permitted to do so.

Those search warrants also tend to result in agents rummaging through areas that contain personal items but which fall within the scope of the search warrant, just as happened at Mar-a-Lago. The individuals subject to the search warrant also are not permitted access to the underlying probable cause affidavit unless and until there is an actual criminal indictment. Trump is not special in that regard.

My heavily uneducated guess is that whoever signed that letter to the Feds in June stating that the TOFF had turned everything over is in serious trouble, as Martha Stewart can tell them.

Meanwhile, the TOFF's latest team of crackerjack lawyers filed a motion asking for a special master because of executive privelige. I guess it's not fully sunk into Commandante Bone Spurs that he isn't the president. The judge responded whith an order asking for clarification, which essentially translates into "what the fuck do you want, why do you want it and what possible legal basis is there for this bullshit"?

Jacking These Down, Here

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Family matters will take precedence for a few days. Comment moderation will be slow. The usual features have been cued up.

HARM for Ukraine

That's the "high-speed anti-radiation missile". Both StrategyPage and 19FortyFive have reported that the Ukrainians are using them.

I have no idea as to the kludging that is necessary to operate a complicated Western weapon system from a Soviet-era airplane, but I'm not betting against the Ukrainians.

Winning the Battle, Losing the War

A decade or so ago, I observed that if you had a carry permit, some of the Northeastern states, including New York, were pretty liberal as to where you could carry a gun.

Then came NYSRPA v. Bruen.

In response to that decision, the State of New York revised their concealed carry laws. The effective result of that, in practice, will be to make it illegal to carry a concealed firearm in the state.

This should be no surprise to anyone who has an understanding of what happens when the Supremes make a ruling that is very unpopular with the locals. When the Court ruled that public accommodations had to be desegregated, as Badtux noted, towns across the South reacted by closing those accommodations, including schools. More subtlety, towns and cities slashed school property taxes, impoverishing the public schools, with the usually unspoken justification that whites could take the money they saved on taxes and send their schools to racist academies.

That still goes on, to some degree. I once knew a guy who moved his family from the Miami area to one of the NY counties close to the city. He said that his property takes went up over $20K/yr, but that more than offset by the savings of not having to send his kids to private schools. (It's probably worse, now that DuhSantis is trying to turn the public schools into Trumpist indoctrination centers.)

Your Sunday Morning Prop Noise

The F4U Corsair

Remember, the F3A, FG and F4U are basically the same airplane. The pre-1962 designation system was a lot of fun.

TOFF's Great Rat Hunt

According to multiple sources close to Trump, suspicions initially centered on Nicholas Luna, the longtime Trump body-man who stepped back from his duties around March, and Molly Michael, the former Trump White House Oval Office operations chief, who remains on payroll but is due to soon depart.
...
The focus in the middle of the week shifted to Mar-a-Lago employees and other staff at the members-only resort in Palm Beach, Florida, the sources said, seemingly in part because the FBI knew exactly which rooms and where in the rooms they needed to search.

But towards the weekend, and following the revelation that the FBI removed a leather-bound box from the property and already knew the location of Trump’s safe, scrutiny shifted once more to anyone else who had not yet been suspected – including members of Trump’s family, the sources said.

He can't blame his dog, because he doesn't have one. It's pretty weird that he's about the only president in modern memory who didn't have a pet, other than Steve Doocy.

(Paranoia will destroy ya.)

Cat Barfs on the TOFF!

The morning paper, in its first section, had two articles about the PoT, the TOFF's effect on candidates and the overall threat to demorcracy posed by the TOFF. I set the first section aside, as I just didn't feel like starting off my morning with that bullshit.

So there I was, reading about the Regal bankruptcy, and Chip was lying next to me. He hopped down onto the rug and began the "Urp..Urpp.. Hack" routine. I said to myself "oh, hell no", held him in place and then put that section of the paper in front of him. He wanted to move, but he couldn't, and he barfed onto the newspaper. When he finished, I let him go, folded up the newspaper and threw it into the trash.

Heh

Seriously, this is what they went with?

When ‘Tsarbucks’ was right there for the taking? pic.twitter.com/OE3koHsrdH

— Alice (@alicescrambled) August 19, 2022

"Führer's Coffee" would not have had the same ring to it, unfortunately.

Do You Have a Regal Cinema Gift Card or User Points?

If so, use them up as fast as you can. They are about to become worthless.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that Cineworld, the London-based exhibitor that’s the second-largest in the world, is expected to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States and declare insolvency in the U.K. (a legal action similar to Chapter 11). Regal Cinemas, the cinema brand that operates in the U.S. did not return a call seeking comment, but earlier this week Cineworld itself hinted at the possibility in a statement that warned of immediate measures needed to deal with debts.

Unless things have changed since I did that kid of work well over a decade ago, gift cards and reward points make you an "unsecured creditor" and you go back to the end of the line for payment. If, for example, you had a $100 gift card, you'd get maybe five or ten bucks back. If even that.

So, if you have a gift card and/or reward points, use them up. Take your family to see something. Treat them to overpriced popcorn and shit at the concession stand, whatever it takes, so that when they do file for bankruptcy, your balance is zero.

Caturday

About 10 miles to the north:

This is the Modern Far Right

Some buttmunch on Twitter posts a flat-out lie and the mouth-breathing, sub-room-temp-IQ lunatics swing into action:

Boston Children’s Hospital said on Tuesday that its staff has faced a flood of violent threats and harassment sparked by a false claim made by the viral LibsofTikTok Twitter account.

The account, run by [Some Asshole], tweeted on August 11 that “Boston Children's Hospital is now offering ‘gender-affirming hysterectomies’ for young girls.” The claim has been widely debunked by fact-checking groups—but as is typical in anti-trans rhetoric, facts rarely matter, and the claims were shared widely on right-wing social media accounts.

The far-Right is an ideology of hatred, racism and intolerance. To claim otherwise is to deny reality.

Let's Be Clear: There is No Such Thing as "the Republican Party" Anymore.

The politicians in the formerly Republican Party are nothing but the TOFF's sock-puppets. Witness this:

Rising crime isn’t due to systemic racism. It’s due to a lack of common decency and an utter disregard for the rule of law.

— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) August 18, 2022

That's unintended irony, if there ever was any. He was the Secretary of State when his boss attempted to carry out a coup. Or it's just utter and shameless fealty to his master.

Why did Merrick Garland and the FBI wait 92 days before the midterm elections and nearly 2 years since Trump left office to suddenly conduct a search on his property?

— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) August 18, 2022

All that ignores the repeated attempts to get the TOFF to give back those classified documents. First, they asked nicely. Then they served a subpoena. The FBI met with the TOFF's lawyers, who assured the agents, in writing, that all documents had been returned. They hadn't. But Blackburn can do nothing but defend her Orange God.

Any conservative who speaks against the TOFF is ostracized. Those who don't, even if they call for violence, are embraced.

Like this asshole:

Anyone who thinks that Liz Cheney (Voldemort's daughter) is a liberal is delusing themselves. She is a solid conservative. She is loyal to the rule of law, to the Constitution, to the nation, not to any one man. She has not and will not sign onto the cult of personality that has consumed her party.
If our Republic survives in the long run, those who have hitched their starts to the Cult of Trump will be derided by history. Of that, I have no doubt whatsoever.

If you have read this far and if you are a Trumpist acolyte, ask yourself if you would have signed onto two similiar cults in Europe ten decades ago. If you would have, then reflect on how it turned out for them. Is that what you want for this country?

If joining a political cult is your bag, please, learn Russian and emigrate.

Because It's Friday

Reading & Northern doubleheader:



I suspect that either one of those locomotives could have hauled that train without breaking much of a sweat. But it was still a pretty sight.

Dear FBI Agents: Get a Fucking Clue. Conservatives Are Not Your Friends

Oh, don't kid yourselves, those of us on the left of the political spectrum don't much like you guys. Some of us have rather long memories of the Hoover era and I suppose a lot of us don't think that you've changed overly much.

But, at least we're not screaming for you guys to be defunded and killed, unlike the clowns on the Right.

Those clowns are all "law and order, back the blue", until they start getting arrested. Then it's cries of repression and they're LARPing with their knockoff AR-15s.

p.s.; the "words of advice" at the top have been changed. Enjoy yourselves.

Mugging These Down, Here

Osprey News

A problem with the clutch on Air Force Special Operations Command’s CV-22 Osprey aircraft has prompted the command to ground its fleet while it tries to find the cause.

In an email to Defense News, AFSOC public affairs director Lt. Col. Becky Heyse said that the command’s 52 tiltrotor Ospreys were grounded on Tuesday due to recent “hard clutch engagement” incidents. Two such problems have happened in the last six weeks, and there were previously two others that occurred since 2017.
...
Hard clutch engagement occurs when the clutch connecting the propeller’s rotor gear box to its engine slips. When this happens, Ospreys are designed to transfer the power load from that engine to the other engine immediately, which would allow it to keep operating if an engine failed.

In these incidents, the clutch on the original gear box has engaged and the power load transferred back, within a span of milliseconds. The large transfer of torque causes the Osprey to lurch, and the air crews land immediately. These problems in the past have led to the replacement of Ospreys’ gear boxes and engines, which qualified them as Class A mishaps.

A "Class A mishap" in ZoomieLand is an incident that causes $2.5 million in damages, and/or death, permanent disability or loss of an aircraft.

If you peruse the list of tiltrotor projects going back seventy years, you may notice that only one has ever made it to production. I imagine that there is a reason for that.

Hard to Find Good Help When You're an Asshole

Former president Donald Trump and close aides have spent the eight days since the FBI searched his Florida home rushing to assemble a team of respected defense lawyers. But the answer they keep hearing is “no.”

The two biggest problems facing the TOFF are that he has a well deserved reputation for both not following legal advice (especially when it comes to keeping his mouth shut) and for not paying his bills. Add to that the possible blowback of being coated with the reputational stink of defending that fat future felon.

New Collector's Item from S&W

The Model 350, a seven-shot X-frame firing the .350 Legend cartridge.

I don't know who out there is jonesing for this gun, it isn't me. I suspect Tam is right; it's going to have a hell of a muzzle flash.

More to the point, the .350 Legend is a little more powerful than the .357 Maximum; but in exchange, a shooter has to deal with moonclips, as the Legend is not only rimless, it has a rebated rim.[1]. I'm not a big fan of moonclips. One of the strengths of revolvers is that all one really needs to use them are the gun and the cartridges. There is nothing else to lose, break or buy, other than a holster.[2]

My second quibble is that I've not seen an excess of new revolvers from any maker, let alone Smith & Wesson, on the shelves of gunshops in the last two years.

But, on the other hand, this beast likely shoots pretty flat and will be pretty effective on deer at reasonable handgun hunting ranges.
__________________________
[1] The .350 Legend has a rebated rim because it was designed to be usable in AR-15-pattern rifles and to use the same bolt as a .223 rifle.
[2] Besides the moonclips (some of which can be delicate-ish), one really needs a moonin/demooning tool so load and unload the clips. The old GI .45 half-moon clips can be unloaded with a pair of needlenose pliers, as they are made of hefty spring-steel, but you run the risk of ruining the cases for reloading. In reality, those clips were single-use items, dumped out on the battlefield.

Impregnating These Down, Here

An abundance today:

Security Hypo

Suppose that there's this person who is entitled to a government-furnished lifetime security detail.

Now suppose that they are arrested for a crime and refused bail, or that they are convicted and sentenced to prison.

What happens? Does the security detail go into the jail/prison? Is the protectee placed in adseg for the duration of the sentence?

Asking for a friend....

Grinding Away

Rudy Giuliani is a target of the criminal investigation into possible illegal attempts by then-President Donald Trump and others to interfere in the 2020 general election in Georgia, prosecutors informed attorneys for the former New York mayor on Monday.

The revelation that Giuliani, an outspoken Trump defender, could face criminal charges from the investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis edges the probe closer to the former president. Willis has said she is considering calling Trump himself to testify before the special grand jury, and the former president has hired a criminal defense attorney in Atlanta.

Also, this:

The Justice Department on Monday rebuffed efforts to make public the affidavit supporting the search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s estate in Florida, saying the investigation “implicates highly classified material” and the document contains sensitive information about witnesses.
...
The document, the prosecutors say, details “highly sensitive information about witnesses,” including people who have been interviewed by the government, and contains confidential grand jury information.

So now we know that a grand jury is looking into all this. The wheels sre grinding.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

The F-35 "Turkey Two":

Go about to 1:50 in to see it land vertically.

It seems that Putler has been LockMark's best salesman.

So, Is Trump's Lawyer Going to Go Down for Lying to the Feds?

At least one lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump signed a written statement in June asserting that all material marked as classified and held in boxes in a storage area at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and club had been returned to the government, four people with knowledge of the document said.

The written declaration was made after a visit on June 3 to Mar-a-Lago by Jay I. Bratt, the top counterintelligence official in the Justice Department’s national security division.

The existence of the signed declaration, which has not previously been reported, is a possible indication that Mr. Trump or his team were not fully forthcoming with federal investigators about the material. And it could help explain why a potential violation of a criminal statute related to obstruction was cited by the department as one basis for seeking the search warrant used to carry out the daylong search of the former president’s home on Monday, an extraordinary step that generated political shock waves.

It also helps to further explain the sequence of events that prompted the Justice Department’s decision to conduct the search after months in which it had tried to resolve the matter through discussions with Mr. Trump and his team.

No doubt, the Trumpists have some new justification for the TOFF's latest lies.

But these lies have consequences, as Martha Stewart has cause to know.

The TOFF may have cellmates.

Remember Reality Winner?

She stole classified documents and got five years in prison.

Sone old fat bastard in Florida might have a cause for concern.

Shorter Right-Wing Freak-Out

If the FBI can get a search warrant, signed off by a magistrate judge, and approved by the HQ of the DoJ right up to the AG to search an ex-president's home, then they can get a search warrant to search your home for very-highly classified materials, including information on nuclear weapons.

That, in a nutshell, is the complaint of the Trumpanzees. But let's be honest about this: If the TOFF killed Melania, live on Fox News, his supporters would be incensed if he was arrested.

Shooting Bonnie and Clyde

A podcast interview with Darryl Bolke about Frank Hamer and the guns used:

Bolke is a retired cop, a collecter of old law-enforcement guns and an expert on investigating shootings. He is part of Hardwired Tactical, which does a lot of revolver training. In this podcast, he debunks a lot of the myths about the guns used.

Caturday

Chip chills in the a/c.

More Screws Turning

A Manhattan state court judge on Friday declined to throw out the criminal case against Donald J. Trump’s family business and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, clearing the way for a trial in the case scheduled for the fall.

Meanwhile, Cheetolini is becoming as paranoid as an old mob boss:

Two sources close to Trump also told Rolling Stone that the former president has also grown suspicious of the Republican figures coming to see him at his clubs, wondering if they could be "wearing a wire." These sources also told Rolling Stone that Trump and his advisers are in search of a "mole" or a "rat," who might be working with law enforcement against Trump.

Seems to me that a reasonable presumption that somebody is engaging in criminal activity is when they are concerned that they may be caught doing crimes.

It's probably to Sarah Huckabee's credit that she didn't delete this tweet:

But I screenshotted it, just in case.

At this point, I suspect that it's highly likely that we're going to see indictments. I can't see them carrying out a search like this if they don't already have most of the goods on the TOFF.

If they do indict him, look for a lot more violent acts from the Coalition of the Nutjobs.

Because It's Friday

The Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway"

Trump Stole Nuclear Secrets?

Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Monday, according to people familiar with the investigation.

There was a time when people got executed for that sort of shit.

Popcorn Futures Are Trending Up

The Justice Department is asking a federal court to unseal the warrant the FBI used to search the Mar-a-Lago estate of former President Donald Trump, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday, acknowledging extraordinary public interest in the case about classified records.

First off, as I've mentioned before, the TOFF has a copy of the search warrant as well as the inventory of seized items. He could have released them at any time since the search. That he has yet to do so speaks volumes.

Second, the documents seized were subpoenaed last Spring. The TOFF didn't turn them over. And this, leep in mind, was after he was requested to turn all of that shit last winter.

The TOFF's ass-kissing minions in the Congress have been screaming for the DoJ to show their justification for the search. If the TOFF files an opposition to the DoJ's motion to unseal, well, the presumption any rational adult should draw from that is that there is some pretty damning stuff in the warrant.

Hacking These Down Here

Oh, This is Going to be Fun to Watch

The NYS AG may be filing to seek massive penalties form Trump's businesses and to dissolve them outright.

This is where his using the Fifth to answer every question other than his name may bite him on the ass. Because, in civil cases, an inference can be drawn from refusing to testify.

More popcorn, please.

Heh. Past Donnie Despises Present-Day Donnie

Trump pleading the fifth shows that of all of Trump's enemies, his worst enemy is just him from the past. pic.twitter.com/oFS9hRplnl

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) August 11, 2022

And So, It Begins, as Felonious Donnie's Wet-Brained Supporters Begin Acting Out

Part of Clinton County, Ohio in lockdown right now, connected to an armed suspect who was allegedly threatening a Cincinnati FBI building. https://t.co/RbqQEObHz4

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) August 11, 2022

Attack on the FBI building in Cincinnati:
Interstate I71 North is shut down after suspect drove toward Waynesville Ohio. Unconfirmed reports say his now firing at police from a corn field.https://t.co/BDibMb2If5 pic.twitter.com/gLmgpmlVuT

— NBC 15 News (@mynbc15) August 11, 2022

Somebody Dimed Out The Donald?

This just gets better and better:

The raid on Mar-a-Lago was based largely on information from an FBI confidential human source, one who was able to identify what classified documents former President Trump was still hiding and even the location of those documents, two senior government officials told Newsweek.

Pass the popcorn.

His ride is waiting for him at the Palm Beach Airport:

Taking the Fifth

Back in the day, The Senate Rackets Committee (RFK was chief counsel) held a shitload of public hearings about organized crime and its influence on labor unions. Many of the hearings were televised, in prime time. Millions of Americans watched labor and public officials repeatedly take the Fifth. The clear implication that everyone got was that those guys were all corrupt and crooked.

So, now, let's step ahead about sixty-plus years:

Donald Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination as he testified under oath Wednesday in the New York attorney general’s long-running civil investigation into his business dealings, the former president said in a statement.

Right, he's as innocent and pure as the driven snow.

The fuck he is.

You can be for the rule of law and American democracy or you can be for Trump. You cannot be pro-American and pro-Trump.

You Can Credit (or Blame) Jon Jones For This One

This is one worth cranking your speakers for-- Highway to Hell, as played by a polka band:

He suggested it.

One Telling Point About the FBI's Search of Mar-a-Lago

The FBI left a copy of the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, because that's what the law requires.

The TOFF could release that copy of the search warrant.

He hasn't.

I suggest that his silence on that point speaks volumes.

So, for now, Republicans are falling back to their standard eliminationist rhetoric because law enforcement stepped out of its lane of stomping on BLM protestors and Black men driving cars.

BOOM-Chucka-Lucka-Lucka; Crimean Ed.

One person has been killed after blasts rocked a military base in Crimea, the head of the Russia-appointed regional administration there said.

Sergei Aksyonov wrote on social media that the blasts had taken place at the Saky military base near Novofedorivka on the peninsula's western coast.

Footage circulating on social media appeared to show multiple explosions.

The Ukrainians claim to have hit the base. The Russians are denying it, proclaiming "Is smoking accident. Is no problem, Comrades." Probably because there were a shitload of Russian tourists on the beaches and telling them that they saw an accident rather than part of Herr Putler's little special military operation is more acceptable to the Kremlin.

Sedimenting These Down, Here