Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

By request, sort of, a Bell-47:

The request was for the title sequence to MASH, which has Bell 47s (technically, H-13Cs) and no rotor noise to speak of. The introduction of helicopters to medevac wounded soldiers nearly halved the rate of casualties dying before reaching a medical facility.

Terrorism Worked for the TOFF

The Rude Pundit, who apparently subscribes to The Atlantic and could read the article about Mitt Rmoney's book, notes that, according to Romney, a lot of Republican senators didn't vote to impeach the TOFF because they were afraid for their families' security. Romney said that he's paying $5K/day for security so that his family can be safe from MAGAites with guns.

Let that sink in for a minute. They voted to protect the TOFF because they were afraid that the Oath Keepers, the Threepers and all of those other "Second Amendment Solution" lunatics would come after them. And it is hard to say that wasn't a justified fear, as they had just seen the TOFF and his co-conspirators (indicted and otherwise) stir up a lynch mob and send it to invade the Capitol to hang Mike Pence and anyone else they could get ahold of.

Let's be clear about this: MAGA is a terrorist movement. That is beyond dispute or argument at this point. The TOFF is the head of a terrorist group.

It is past time that he be treated as such.

Terrorism worked for the TOFF. It still does. He's been walking around free on minimal bail (no bail in three of four cases) in spite of being indicted with such a quantity of felonies that any otherdefendant, especially one with a long-range jet at his disposal, would have found himself parked in jail on a no-bail order to await trial. It is plausible that the reason he's walking free is fear of the reaction of his armed and low-wattage supporters.

That's not the legal system at work. That is terrorism at work.

Lock him up!

Caturday

A break from Chip.

The Dance of the Brain-Damaged Clowns

Facing fresh challenges to his leadership, Speaker Kevin McCarthy is trying to accomplish what at times seems impossible — working furiously to convince House Republicans to come together and pass a conservative bill to keep the federal government open.

It’s a nearly futile exercise that could help McCarthy keep his job, but has little chance of actually preventing a federal shutdown. Whatever House Republicans come up with is nearly certain to be rejected by the Senate, where Democrats and most Republicans want to fund the government.

In one dramatic sign of defeat Tuesday, House Republicans were even voting against their own defense bill. During a rowdy afternoon vote, the usually popular bill was turned back from consideration, 212-214, after five hard-right conservatives helped sink it.

The Right keeps making the argument that McCarthy has a "razor-thin" majority in the House, but that doesn't hold water. Nancy Pelosi's majority in the last Congress was as narrow, narrower at times, and she still managed to get shit done. That happened because the Democrats, as fractious as they were, were interested in governing and getting shit done. In this current Congress, there are enough far-right bombthrowers who are not interested in doing the people's business. They are only interested in destruction and in looking good on Fox News.

If you voted for a Republican, especilly if your congresscritter is one of the so-called "Freedom Caucus", then this is also on you.

Bob, Bob, Bob. Are You Seriously That Stupid?

Sen. Bob Menendez was charged Friday with secretly aiding the authoritarian government of Egypt and trying to thwart the criminal prosecution of a friend in exchange for gold bars and cash, as prosecutors unsealed a corruption indictment that accuses him of using his foreign affairs influence for personal gain.

The indictment, the second in eight years against the powerful 69-year-old New Jersey Democrat, alleges an illegal commingling of Menendez’s professional obligations as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to advance U.S. priorities and his private interest in cultivating relationships with wealthy businessmen.

The indictment also charges him, his wife and three New Jersey businessmen who authorities say showered the couple with money, gold and a luxury car in exchange for his actions on their behalf. A previous indictment of Menendez stemming from different allegations ended in 2017 with a deadlocked jury.
...
Authorities found more than $100,00 worth of gold bars in Menendez’s home, and more than $480,000 in cash — much of it hidden in closets, clothing and a safe, prosecutors say. Photos included in the indictment show cash that was stuffed in envelopes found in jackets bearing Menendez’s name. Investigators discovered a Google search by Menendez for the value of a “kilo of gold,” and DNA of one men prosecutors say bribed him on an envelope filled with thousands of dollars in Menendez’s home, they said.

Maybe he needs nearly a half-million in cash on hand in case somebody had a few dozen S&W Registered Magnums to sell?

It is hard to escape concluding that Menendez thought he was bulletproof because he skated off on the last time he was charged with being a corrupt fuck. No doubt he'll rip a page out of the TOFF's playbook and scream that this is a witchhunt.

Tuckyo Rose-- Now With Even More Treason!

Russian TV news channel Rossiya 24 has aired a trailer for a weekend show featuring former Fox News journalist Tucker Carlson.

I have no doubt that this is being done with the full knowledge of that smarmy little traitor, because the Russians regard him as a Friend Of Putin.

There was a time when, if an American had a show on Russian state TV, that the Right would have been clamoring for their head on a pike. But times have changed.

Because Its Friday

More Brit steam.

Shirting These Down, Here

Mandatory Music for Today

Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. Plus Fragile White People.

You might recall when the TOFF claimed that he was mentally sharp because he could remember and repeat those words.

But he doesn't remember who he ran against in 2016 and he's worried that President Biden might get us into World War II.

The second point is understandable, in that the TOFF is an admirer of Hitler and probably doesn't want to get in a war with him.

Shifting gears, how is it intellectually honest to teach the history of this country in a way that won't offend Southern conservatives? How do you teach about slavery? Do you, as Texas tried to do, pretend that the slaves were "economic migrants"? How do you teach about the Civil Rights Movement? Do you pretend that the Bloody Sunday police riot at the Edmund Pettis Bridge during the Selma-Montgomery March in 1965 was a state police baton-training exercise? Do you pretend that the Tulsa Massacre was impromptu urban renewal?

Well, that's probably what they try to do. Since 1866, they've been trying to rewrite history to pretend that the Civil War was about anything and everything else except slavery. Which is horseshit.

Can you imagine teaching the history of the first half of the 20th Century in Europe in a way that doesn't make Germans uncomfortable? Or teaching about the breakup of Yugoslavia in a way that doesn't discomfort Serbians?

Honest discussions of history is about confronting and dealing with the past, not trying to whitewash it. But whitewashing the past, if not outright burying it, is what white conservatism is all about.

The past is not over. History is how we got to where we are, now. Knowing history gives us a chance of not doing the same stupid shit, over and over.

The Term is "Obstruction of Justice"

One of former President Donald Trump's long-time assistants told federal investigators that Trump repeatedly wrote to-do lists for her on documents from the White House that were marked classified, according to sources familiar with her statements.

As described to ABC News, the aide, Molly Michael, told investigators that -- more than once -- she received requests or taskings from Trump that were written on the back of notecards, and she later recognized those notecards as sensitive White House materials -- with visible classification markings -- used to brief Trump while he was still in office about phone calls with foreign leaders or other international-related matters.
...
Sources said that after Trump heard the FBI wanted to interview Michael last year, Trump allegedly told her, "You don't know anything about the boxes."

That's the TOFF, telling people to lie to the Feds about his shit.

Meanwhile, he's been running his gob and probably giving his attorneys ulcers. All the stuff he's been telling reporters is probably admissible as an admission against interest and they can be played for the juries. It could be cut into a "Greatest Hits: Donnie Admits He Did Shit That Was Against the Law" tape.

Wrenching These Down, Here

Mandatory Viewing for Those Who Attend School in Florida

It might help counteract the shit they've been fed from Meatball Ron's curriculum (and other states where it is now illegal to upset fragile white people).

It's named "Calling Bullshit".

Modi's Been Taking Lessons From Putin. Allegedly.

Canada expelled a top Indian diplomat Monday as it investigates what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called credible allegations that India’s government may have had links to the assassination in Canada of a Sikh activist.

Trudeau said in Parliament that Canadian intelligence agencies have been looking into the allegations after Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a strong supporter of an independent Sikh homeland known as Khalistan, was gunned down on June 18 outside a Sikh cultural center in Surrey, British Columbia.

Killing political opponents in third countries is damn near a trademarked move of Putin's. It speaks of India's slide towards an authoritarian government that Modi would allegedly have a troublesome activist gunned down on Canadian soil. And he's not the only Sikh activist to be murdered.

Suicide is Theft in DPRK

A warning from The Only Obese Man in North Korea:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has issued a secret order for local authorities to prevent suicides after data showed an increase in people taking their own lives this year, government officials told Radio Free Asia.
...
Kim officially defined suicide as an “act of treason against socialism,” and ordered local governments to take preventative measures.

Entire families are offing themselves and leaving suicide notes that blast the state for starving its people. The officials aren't bothered by people quietly dying of starvation in large numbers, but leaving suicide notes that get passed around undermines the regime, or so they think.

Treason in North Korea is, no doubt, an offense punishable by a gruesome execution, so it's unclear what the State Cheese Scarfer thinks he can accomplish.

(Thanks to Oko)

Halliburton is Just as Venal As Ever

They have kept on exporting shit to Russia. That's right on the level with electrocuting our soldiers at bases in Iraq back during the Chimperor's War.

Like They're Going to Give a Shit

China has put US arms companies Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman on its sanctions list for selling weapons to Taiwan, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing said on Friday.

I doubt if either company sells anything to the PRC, so what do they care if they're on the PRC's sanctions list? To them, it's probably no more significant than being sanctioned by North Korea.

Speaking of North Korea, following the visit to Russia by the Only Obese Man in North Korea, my guess is that they are going to send the Russians a lot of artillery shells that are decades past their "good if used by" dates.

Something Doesn't Add Up; Baby Bobby Ed.

An armed man impersonating a U.S. marshal was arrested at a Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. campaign event on Friday, the candidate said.

Kennedy said a man with two holstered weapons carrying a U.S. Marshals badge and federal ID approached him at a Los Angeles campaign event on Friday. The man claimed to be part of Kennedy’s security detail.

Kennedy said his security identified the man and apprehended him until Los Angeles Police arrived.
...
[The arrestee's] bail is set at $35,000 bail, according to LAPD jail records.

Little Baby Bobby is a huge conspiracy theorist, so let's apply his own sort of thinking to this, shall we? The guy who was nabbed has pretty minimal bail for a guy who supposedly posed a serious threat to His Assholiness. Which would lead to the question of whether or not this whole shebang was a setup.

Your Sunday Morning Prop Noise

I've used this clip from Catch-22 before, but you're not likely to see anything like it ever again.

Any similar scene nowadays would be made with CGI. And it would mean nothing. Who the hell wants to pay good money and go to a theater to see computer graphics?

A Brit Takedown of the TOFF.

It's pretty much perfect.

I'm not going to quote from it. It's so good, they deserve the web traffic.

Who Is This Clown and Why the Special Treatment?

Hundreds of rioters have been charged, convicted and sentenced for joining the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol. Unlike their cases, Samuel Lazar’s appears to have been resolved in secret — kept under seal with no explanation, even after his release from prison.

Lazar, 37, of Ephrata, Pennsylvania, was arrested in July 2021 on charges that he came to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, dressed in tactical gear and protective goggles, and used chemical spray on officers who were desperately trying to beat back the angry Donald Trump supporters.

There is no public record of a conviction or a sentence in Lazar’s court docket.

But the Bureau of Prisons told The Associated Press that the man was released from federal custody this week after completing a sentence for assaulting or resisting a federal officer.

Why does one of the TOFF's putschists get special treatment? Who is he to somebody?

Lying American Nazi

Some asshat, who claims to have fought in Ukraine, and whose story has been bruited about by the Putin Propaganda Machine, has been lying the entire time. During one of his claimed trips to fight in the war, he was in court in Florida.

These idiots don't seem to know that the wreckage of their lives leave traces. This particular clown should appply for a permanent DOC number, which he could then add to his tattoos.

Caturday

Good ol' Chip.

A Natural Running Mate for the TOFF

Would be a politician who has allegedly cheated on her spouse for years.

Married Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has engaged in a years-long affair with longtime Donald Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski, multiple sources told The Post Friday.

Of course, she's using the tired defense of "people are attacking me only because I support the TOFF", which does nothing to rebut the substance of the allegations.

By the way, the idiot governor of North Dakota is running attack ads which claim that, as governor, he's balanced the state budget. Well, no fucking shit. States don't have the ability to engage in deficit spending, they have to balance their budgets. A state governor who claims that he's balanced the budget might as well claim he's successfully engaged in aerobic respiration.

L’Shana Tovah

May you inscribed in the Book of Life for a good year.

What Flip-Flop Mitt Meant to Say: His Party is a Corrupt Hive of Treason

What he said: “A very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.”

What he meant: "A very large portion of the Republican party is made up of seditionists and traitors."

Republicans, millions of them, are traitors. They don't believe in the rule of law or the bedrock document governing this nation. They are, in point of fact, the very enemies that every person who has sworn an oath of enlistment/commissioning has pledged their lives to oppose. They fly the flag of a country that they are not loyal to. They lie every time that they say the Pledge of Allegiance.

Scratch a Republican, find a traitor.

Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance should be kicked out of the Senate for swearing a false oath. They clearly were lying through their teeth. The list of House Republicans who should be indicted for swearing a false oath is too long to list. But you know who they are, I'll wager.

Because It's Friday

When I'm short of time or energy to find stuff, there's always lots of new British steam videos.

Even a Doormat Can Get Tired of Being Trod On (Updated)

Angry, frustrated and unable to lead a fractured and unruly Republican majority, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Thursday told the colleagues threatening to oust him: Do it.

The embattled Republican leader essentially dared his hard-right flank to quit holding the risk of a vote to remove him from the job.

If you’re going to do it, go ahead and try, McCarthy told the Republicans behind closed doors.

“File the f——- motion,” McCarthy said, using a profanity for em phasis, according to those in the private meeting.

Kevin grew a spine. Maybe.

Or this could just be an act. Especially since McCarthy started an evidence-free impeachment inquiry in order to appease those who are holding the keys to his 'nads.

We'll now see if Matt the Alleged Child Predator has the balls to pull the trigger, if his little puppet has indeed cut his strings.

(My apologies to those who commented on the earlier post on this topic. In updating it, those were lost.)

Shopping These Down, Here

Some Old Country for You

Modern topic, old-time music.

The Stench Bows Out

Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney said Wednesday that he will not run for reelection, ending a storied two-decade political career that included the 2012 Republican GOP nomination for president and a term as Massachusetts governor.

I know that there are those who will point to Romney's votes to convict Trump during the impeachment trials and state that this decision not to run is proof of Romney's political morals and courage, but I disagree. There are oodles of people in Utah who have drunk of the Cult of the TOFF. He would have faced a primary challenger and he would have been beaten worse than he was in 2012. No career politico wants to end on a loss, so The Stench is folding his tent.

Another Move to Guarantee the Re-Election of President Biden

Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced Tuesday he is directing the U.S. House to open an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden over his family’s business dealings, launching historic proceedings ahead of the 2024 election.

McCarthy said that House investigations so far “paint a picture of a culture of corruption” around the Biden family as Republicans probe the business dealings of the president’s son, Hunter Biden, from before the Democratic president took office.

Four years ago, he was singing a different tune about the power of a Speaker to open an impeachment inquiry.

And

It's nothing but pure vengeful politics. Their guy, as president, pressured a foreign nation to manufacture dirt against Biden. He orchesterated and egged on a violent coup attempt. Those things not only were not impeachable offences to Republicans, someof them allegedly cooperated with the coup attempt.

Speaking of corruption, the Republicans had no problem with the Spawn of the TOFF going all around the world when he was the president, complete with their Secret Service detail, to try and score deals that would enrichen the TOFF family. Not a quibble when foreign governments books large blocks of rooms in the TOFF's failing hotel. They uttered not a peep when the Daughter That The Toff Wants to Bang managed to score a raft of Chinese patents on her handbag designs in rcord time. Not a discouraging word was heard from the QAnon Party when the TOFF's son-in-law amassed a four billion dollar slush fund from Persian Gulf Arabs (half of that from Effendi Bone Saw).

For the 2024 general election, this shit is gold for the Democrats. Nothing about this bullshit will translate into support from independents, let alone democrats. Regardless how people feel about Biden's age, it's clearly obvious that they are far more disquieted about the griftiness and autocratic tendencies of the Party of Treason's leading candidate, with his string of court losses and ninety-one pending felony charges.

And then there is the extremism of the Forced Birth Party, which is a gold mine of attack fodder for the Democrats.

Alexei Navalny Would Like a Word

Russian President Vladimir Putin asserted Tuesday that the criminal cases against former U.S. President Donald Trump are political revenge that show the fundamental corruption of the United States.

Right, this comes from a guy whose political opponents get sentenced to decades in prison on trumped-up charges of terrorism, poisoned with nerve agents or shoved out windows.

Any American who buys this shit is more than welcome to join Steven Segal in Russia.

Securing These Down, Here

I'm going back through the queue. These have been hanging around for awhile.

Twenty-Two Years On

We took a sucker punch from terrorists that were, I believe, funded by a country that is, at best, a frenemy. We threw away a lot of our freedoms. We became a nation that operated torture chambers. But I've said all this before.

About the only cheery thing I can say is that at least most retailers aren't running "9/11 Sales". That'll probably happen sometime in the next century. ("We're burning down our prices!")

Yeah, China is So Neutral on the Russo-Ukrainian War

The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has accused a group of Chinese bloggers of violating its state borders and entering the country illegally, after opera singer Wang Fan was filmed singing the Soviet war song “Katyusha” inside the Mariupol Drama Theater where hundreds were killed.

“The performance of the song "Katyusha" by Chinese "opera singer" Wang Fan on the ruins of the Mariupol Drama Theater, where the Russian army killed more than 600 innocent people, is an example of complete moral degradation,” the spokesperson for the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Oleg Nikolenko said in a Facebook statement on Friday.

Singing a Soviet war song where over six hundred civilians, sheltering in a clearly-marked building were killed by the Russians isn't exactly a neutral act.

China may profess neutrality in this war, but everyone knows that is pretty much a sham. Only the risk of sanctions keeps them from going all in with Putin on his war of conquest.

Don't Tell Me That Revolvers Can't Malfunction

I shot an extended match the other day. I tried to shoot a Model 686, which kept jamming up with both lower-powered .357s and with classic .38s. On one stage, I went through a lot of speedloaders and spent the scoring time retrieving live rounds. The two stages where I tried to shoot the 686 were so screwed up that the only reason I didn't place dead last was that a couple guys got DQ'd.

Fortunately, I brought a backup gun: A Model 66. Which ran fine.

A serious SME told me that the L-frames were designed with a lot tighter tolerances than the K-frames. He went over my gun to ensure that every speck of carbon was removed, but the gun still malfunctioned. I'll go over it again, but if I can't get it to function, it'll go to a gunsmith.

Cops in Georgia Fall Back to Their Roots of Serving and Protecting Those With Money

Nearly every Walmart location has a few common departments — grocery, pharmacy, housewares — but an Atlanta store is slated to have one that few others have: police.

Plans call for the Walmart in Atlanta's Vine City neighborhood to include a designated workspace for law enforcement officers when it reopens in May next year.

Let's call this for what it is: Putting a police station inside of a private business to serve the needs of said private business. Calling it a "law enforcement workspace" is just another euphemism from a company that calls its hourly workers "associates".

If Wal-Mart wants to have security in its stores, they have the money to hire "loss prevention specialists". If they want to hire off-duty cops at their time-and-a-half rate, they can try to do that. But building cop shops inside private businesses?

Fuck that shit.

Police are public servants, supposedly, and their stations/substations/"law enforcement workspaces" should be in public buildings that are open to the citizenry whose taxes pay for them, without having to go onto or into private property.

In the first half of the 19th Century, the function of police in Georgia was helping rich slaveowners keep their chattel in line. Seems that not much has truly changed.

Your Sunday Morning (Mostly) Jet Noise

A few bad days in the mix.

Maybe a New GoFundMe to Help Pay for Alex Jones's Moving Expenses

If he really thinks that Russia is such a great country under Putin, he should fucking move there.

By the way, if you are a Republican politician, you should go stick up a bank and then, after you're indicted for your crime, hold a rally and tell your supporters that you're being indicted for them.

Which is a pretty bizzare claim for the TOFF to make, given that his supporters who attacked the Capitol keep getting convicted and sentenced. So far, the score for prosecutors has been 793-1.

ETA: For the Banhammer Boys who have tried to comment, feel free to join Jones in exile in Russia. Maybe you won't be drafted.

Who is Buried in Bill Beck's Grave

The grave marker says that he died in 1927. But he didn't. He died thirty-two years later.

So who is buried in Bill Beck's grave?

Odds are good that we'll never know. Who would consent to dig up the unknown murder victim?

Caturday, Guest Critter Ed.

No Shock About This

Harlan Crow, Clarence Thomas's bestie, is funding the "No Labels" Trump sock-puppet party.

A vote for "No Labels" is a vote for Trump.

Just as a vote for Ralph Nader was a vote for Chimpy.

It cannot be stated any plainer.

Mark Meadows Gets His Dick Slapped

A judge on Friday denied Mark Meadows’ request to move his Georgia election subversion case to federal court, ruling that the Trump White House chief of staff must fight the charges in state court instead.

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones in Atlanta wrote in a 49-page ruling that Meadows “has not met even the ‘quite low’ threshold” to move his case to federal court, noting that the question was whether the actions at issue were related to his role as a federal official.

“The evidence adduced at the hearing establishes that the actions at the heart of the State’s charges against Meadows were taken on behalf of the Trump campaign with an ultimate goal of affecting state election activities and procedures,” Jones wrote. “Meadows himself testified that working for the Trump campaign would be outside the scope of a White House Chief of Staff.”

Not to mention that trying to stage a coup is outside the scope of the job.

The Gunternet and the Right Needs to Get a Grip

Liberty Safe is getting a lot of nasty hate from cooperating with a Federal search warrant and providing the Feebies with an override code.

Those who are upset and are calling for boycotts are, for want of a better word: Stupid. This is why:

If the cops show up with a search warrant and if the subject of the warrant has a safe, the cops are going to get into the safe. If the person being searched doesn't provide access, the cops are still going to get into the safe. In this case, the Feebies were kind enough to ask the safe company for an override code. They got into the safe and the owner of the safe had a usable safe afterwards.

Now, think of what would have happened without an override code. The Federales are not going to say "oh, there's a safe, we're not getting into that." They would have simply brought some heavy tools and peeled open the safe. If necessary, they could have called in the local fire department, which has lots of tools for breaking open things and who would have had fun doing it.

Nine Pages to Tell the TOFF's Chihuahua, A/K/A Gym Jordan, to Go Fuck Himself

You can read DA Willis's letter to him here.

H/T

Musk Admitted He Intervened to Protect the Russian Black Sea Fleet

A top adviser to Ukraine’s president accused Elon Musk of enabling Russian aggression, after the billionaire entrepreneur acknowledged denying satellite internet service in order to prevent a Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian naval fleet last year.

The Starlink satellite internet service, which is operated by Mr. Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, has been a digital lifeline in Ukraine since the early days of the war for both civilians and soldiers in areas where digital infrastructure has been wiped out.
...
Later on Thursday, Mr. Musk responded on his social media platform to say that he hadn’t disabled the service but had rather refused to comply with an emergency request from Ukrainian officials to enable Starlink connections to Sevastopol on the occupied Crimean peninsula. That was in effect an acknowledgment that he had made the decision to prevent a Ukrainian attack.

Unfortunately, this is what happens when a man with an oversized ego and bloated sense of self-importance meddles in international affairs. Musk has a whiff of Henry Ford about him, in that Ford was and Musk is an antisemetic asshole who believe that being a rich jackhole translates into wisdom about foreign policy and military strategy.

So, as the Ukranians have pointed out, the Russians have been free to keep firing missiles into Ukranian cities because Musk has done (and probably has continued to keep doing) what he can to protect the Russians from the consequences of waging a war of aggression.

We Shall See About This New Army Rifle, or Farewell to the Poodle-Shooter?

StrategyPage is reporting that the Army is replacing its M4 5.56mm carbines with a 6.8mm rifle.

I'm skeptical. When it comes to the desire for a longer-range rifle round, there has been no shortage of research that goes back for generations which showed that combat use of rifles occurred at ranges of less than 100 yards. That obviously doesn't hold for special operations use or for snipers, but they use different weapons. The other concern has been about the weight of the load for the infantry; I don't see how going to a heavier rifle with heavier ammunition will alleviate any of that. It's not like the Army's going to lighten the load elsewhere.

It's an age-old problem.

Because It's Friday

Steam in the West Coast

Jeez, Boeing

Boeing discovered that its largest supplier improperly drilled holes in a component that helps maintain cabin pressure of the 737 MAX jet, threatening to derail delivery targets for its bestselling model.

The latest issue for Boeing’s cash-cow jet isn’t a safety threat, the Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday. But it’s another complication for Boeing as it speeds the manufacturing pace of the 737 family while dealing with supply-chain strains and the aftermath of a strike at Spirit AeroSystems, the supplier that builds about 70% of the narrowbody jet frames.

“During factory inspections, we identified fastener holes that did not conform to our specifications in the aft pressure bulkhead on certain 737 airplanes,” Boeing said via email Wednesday. The inspections have uncovered hundreds of misaligned and duplicated holes in some aircraft, according to a report by The Air Current.

I'm assuming that, nowadays, those parts get loaded into fixtures and a computer-driven gizmo drills the holes. So I don't have a clue how it could be screwed up.

But it seems that, if there is a way to fuck it up, Boeing will find it.

Minions Can't Blithely Assert Executive Privilege

Trump White House official Peter Navarro was convicted Thursday of contempt of Congress charges for refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Navarro offered no testimony to support his attorney's claim of executive privilege, so he lost. It appears that he's hoping that a Republican will win next year and pardon his ass.

Steaming These Down, Here

The TOFF Loses in Court, Again

Donald Trump’s forthcoming civil trial over comments about the writer E Jean Carroll and her allegation that he raped her will only concern how much more he has to pay, a judge said on Wednesday, ruling that the comments were libelous.
...
On Wednesday, Kaplan said that by finding that Trump had sexually abused Carroll, the jury in the first trial effectively established that his 2019 statements also were false and defamatory.

For a self-claimed billionaire, who presumably could afford to hire top men as lawyers ...

... he seems to lose a hell of a lot. He loses so much that it must be habitual.

Yeah, and the TOFF Had Bone Spurs

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s health episodes show “no evidence” of a stroke or seizure disorder, the Capitol physician said Tuesday, but his statement still left questions about the apparent freeze-ups that have drawn concerns about the 81-year-old’s situation.

Yeah, you can really trust the politicians' doctors.

Another Shot Over the TOFF's Bow?

Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was sentenced Tuesday to 22 years in prison for orchestrating a failed plot to keep Donald Trump in power after the Republican lost the 2020 election, capping the case with the stiffest punishment that has been handed down yet for the U.S. Capitol attack.

One-eyed Stewie and the Proud Boy's on-site commander each got eighteen years for their leadership roles in Trump's coup attempt. So how much does the top dog in the coup attempt, the guy who wanted to stay in power, get if he's convicted?

Nepoing These Down, Here