Just Better.

My take of the Ukrainian army vis a vis the Russian army is this:

The Ukrainian soldiers are better led, better trained, better armed and better motivated than the Russians.

It's the leadership and motivation that are the true hidden-in-plain-sight cards for Ukraine.

I'd be willing to wager that there are elements of Russian intelligence that are fully aware of that, but nobody is going to tell the Czar about that. For people who displease this Czar tend to have unfortunate gravitational accidents. And nothing would displease him more than being told that his entire war was built on a foundation of delusions.

This could be a very interesting year in eastern Europe.

Veneering These Down, Here, Addendum

Making pictures of Trump getting arrested while waiting for Trump's arrest. pic.twitter.com/4D2QQfUpLZ

— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) March 20, 2023

All fake, of course.

Russian Pilots Suck

So says Mark Kelly, who flew with them when he was an astronaut. He said that they lack basic skills that one might expect of fighter pilots and that's why one collided with that American drone.

Veneering These Down, Here

What Are You Doing For Indictment Tuesday?

Gifts? Parties? Riots? Calling up your MAGA uncle, laughing hysterically and hanging up?

Let's hear yuor ideas!

Remember What Happened After the Last European War

Czechoslovakia, among other nations, expelled their ethnic German citizens. The basis for those expulsions was pretty much "we're not going to give those fuckers that excuse to invade us again."

Fast-forward to this century. The so-called need to protect Russophone populations was one of the ginned-up rationales behind Putin's war of conquest against Ukraine. If the Ukrainians prevail, I will not be a bit surprised if the Ukrainians push the Russia-aligned civilians out of the country, followed by other countries that border Russia.

Another Day and More "Oath Keepers" Are Going to Prison

Four people associated with the Oath Keepers were convicted on Monday of conspiracy and obstruction charges stemming from the attack on the U.S. Capitol in the latest trial involving members of the far-right antigovernment extremist group.

A Washington D.C. jury found Sandra Parker, of Morrow, Ohio, Laura Steele, of Thomasville, North Carolina, William Isaacs, of Kissimmee, Florida, and Connie Meggs, of Dunnellon, Florida, guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and other felony charges.

I imagine that they are going to go away for awhile. Chris Rock once said that if the cops have to chase you, you're going to get a beating. The same street rues apply to trials. If you're guilty and you make the state work to prove it, then when you lose, you're going to get a harsher sentence than you would if you had cut a deal.

On the more positive side of the coin, these trials and sentences may tamp down the ardor of Trumpanzees to put their pasty white asses on the line for him.

Another, darker thought: During the BLM protests, Trump wanted the protesters to be shot. Biden's not going to apply Trumpian logic to the MAGA loons, but it's amusing to think about.

That Checks Out

"Every scheming shitwad in America sooner or later turns up in Florida." -- Carl Hiaasen

Yep, that checks out.

Gee, the Republicans Were Lying All Along; Reagan Did Conspire With the Iranians to Hold Americans Captive

It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States.

It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent.

His mentor was John B. Connally Jr., a titan of American politics and former Texas governor who had served three presidents and just lost his own bid for the White House.

This is what Republicans have traditionally done: Put their political ambitions ahead of loyalty to the nation. Those hostages probably spent days, weeks, even months in confinement because the Republicans got the message to the Iranian regime to hold them until Reagan was sworn in.

After all, Nixon did the same thing. Only with Nixon, tens of thousands of AMericans paid for his duplicity with their lives.

Every living Iran hostage, as well as their survivors if they've passed away, should sue the Republican National Committee for millions of dollars for unlawful confinement, kidnapping and anything else that a team of creative lawyers can come up with.

Ronald Reagan conspired with the Iranians. That should be the legacy of the Gipper.

Your Sunday Morning Prop Noise

A working DC-6 in Alaska:

Censoring the Truth; Fla Ed

This is how textbook publishers are responding to fascist DeSantis’s war on history. They are erasing the truth.

Scary scary stuff. Look at the part they took out.

Original vs. Florida compliant pic.twitter.com/HO9yY7VHjH

— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) March 17, 2023

Erasing the issue of race makes Rosa Parks look like a crotchety woman, not a woman who was protesting segregation.

But this is what a certain set of conservatives want to have happen. They can't handle the truth about racism, slavery, Jim Crow and all of the rest of the grim tales of this country's past. You can bet that they would love to tell their kids that the Indians peacefully sold their land to the white Europeans after most of the Indians were killed off by smallpox. Texas wanted their school textbooks to refer to slaves as economic migrants until there was a hoopla about that. You can bet your ass that they buy the Dixie revisionist horseshit that the Civil War wasn't about slavery. To hear them tell it, the slaves were happy because they got free passage to the New World, they didn't have to decide what to do, what to wear, where to live, whom to mate with and they cheerfully sung hymns while rhythmically ratting their chains.

Watch Out For Stupid People Doing Stupid Things This Upcoming Week

Donald Trump said he expects to be arrested Tuesday and called on supporters to protest as a New York grand jury investigates hush money payments to women who alleged sexual encounters with the former president. There is no evidence, however, that prosecutors have made any formal outreach to him.

Let's be clear about one thing: When the TOFF demands that his supporters "protest", he's talking about violence. He also went on a screed about George Soros, which is his dog-whistle for blaming the Jews.

"Arrested"? As if. They only arrest people who don't turn themselves in. He doesn't have the guts to face the consequences of doing that.

A word to the wise: be prepared for some disruptions from his army of wet-brained supporters.

ETA: His mouthpieces are denying any knowledge of inpending charges. And the Second-Most Hated Man in Politics Today is standing with the man who wanted him killed.

Thief, Thief, Grifting Thief

The upshot is that the TOFF regarded all gifts by foreign governments as his and tried to keep them. Even though the law is pretty clear that gifts to a president are gifts to the office of the presidency and not to the occupant.

Let's face it, having sticky fingers is completely in character for Cadet Bone Spurs. Nobody should be surprised by any of this.

Caturday

A store cat:

Get Back to Me When It Happens

Law enforcement officials in New York are making security preparations for the possibility that former President Donald Trump could be indicted in the coming weeks and appear in a Manhattan courtroom in an investigation examining hush money paid to women who alleged sexual encounters with him, four law enforcement officials said Friday.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Teflon Don. It's all smoke, mirrors and bullshit until they drag him before a judge.

Let the Wheels Grind

The international criminal court in The Hague has issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, for the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children.

The court’s pre-trial judges assessed there were “reasonable grounds to believe that each suspect bears responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population and that of unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, in prejudice of Ukrainian children”.

Of all of Putin's war crimes, this one is probably the easiest to prove.

The Irony is Palpable

“I was elected by the people to come here to represent them, and I do that every day,” Santos told The Associated Press in a brief interview off the House floor.

“It’s a hard job. If I said it was easy, I’d be lying to you — and I don’t think that’s what we want, right?”

Pressed about the idea of a post-truth era, Santos said, “I think truth still matters very much.”

This is a guy, mind you, who has lied about everything: His name, his jobs, his education, his mother, his religion, his sexuality, it'd be a very short list to delineate what Santos has told the truth about. And that would be this: Nothing.

Randy Rainbow is right: He's a sack of bullshit.

Because Its Friday

Street-running steam in Germany:

Betcher Ass That Those Banksters Are Not Doing This Out of the Goodness of Their Hearts

Large U.S. banks injected $30 billion in deposits into First Republic Bank (FRC.N) on Thursday, swooping in to rescue the lender caught up in a widening crisis triggered by the collapse of two other mid-size U.S. lenders over the past week.
...
Some of the biggest U.S. banking names including JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), Citigroup Inc (C.N), Bank of America Corp (BAC.N), Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N), Goldman Sachs (GS.N) and Morgan Stanley (MS.N) were involved in the rescue, according to a statement from the banks.

The deal was put together by power brokers including U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who discussed the package on Tuesday, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Goldman Sachs, in particular, would do nothing like that unless they saw a way to make obscenely huge amounts of money from it. They are about as close to a completely psychopathic nd amoral entity as exists in the world of banking, and that's saying quite a lot.

Range Report, Model 28 Ed.

I took it to the range.

But first, I painted the front sight:

That's nail polish. A base layer of white and a couple top layers of orange work well. And, unlike traditional sight paint, it's easily reversible.

Then I added a grip adapter:

And it was off to the range!

First rounds at ten yards:

Grooming These Down, Here

A Word About Comment Moderation

Google has a spam filter and it is a little bit goofy. I check it fairly frequently; sometimes, comments appear in it that were submitted weeks beforehand. I don't know where they've been in Google Hell, but it is what it is.

So if your comment didn't appear in a day or two, it may have just fallen into the Google Rabbit Hole, only to appear much later.

The Ides of March

Tollbooth Ned is an Idiot

When Gov. Ned Lamont suggested changing the state hero from Nathan Hale to Noah Webster, little did he know that he would spark a revolution in Hale's hometown.
...
Lamont said Hale was a "nice enough guy who was captured after a week at the inn. If he had two lives to give for his country, he would have been a spy for us for two weeks."

In his endorsement of Webster, Lamont noted that he helped to create the American language that distinguished the United States from Great Britain.

Lamont is a moron, and there is no other way to put it. The classic definition of a hero is someone who risks their life and limbs, someone who performs an act of bravery. Noah Webster was a great guy in compiling his dictionary, but that wasn't exactly an act of bravery.

As a governor, Lamont is pretty much an empty suit. His administration has been specializing in increasing the opacity of state government. If it wasn't for a columnist and then the Feds investigating things, Lamont would have swept the corruption and nepotism at the new State Pier in New London under the rug. He is either venal enough or inattentive enough to be electable in Florida.

But this is what happens when rich people win elective office. They hold themselves accountable to nobody.

Almost Forgot the Day

What Does Putin Have on DeSantis?

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) this week responded to a questionnaire to argue that protecting Ukraine against Russia’s yearlong invasion should not be one of America’s “vital national interests,” knocking the Biden administration for indicating it’ll support Kyiv as long as it takes.

“While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” DeSantis said in response to a questionnaire on Ukraine sent out to possible 2024 presidential candidates by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson.

Calling a massive invasion of a neighbor across borders recognized by the entire world, including the invader, is a "territorial dispute" in the same way that somebody punching DeSantis in the face could be construed as touching up his makeup.

It is fitting, in a way, that DeSanctimonious went on the Tuckyo Rose Show, aka the Putin Poodle Show, to say that his presidency would give Putin a green light to reconstitute the Soviet Union.

Little Marco has the right of it:

“Well, it’s not a territorial dispute in the sense that any more than it would be a territorial dispute if the United States decided that it wanted to invade Canada or take over the Bahamas,” Rubio told Hewitt during Tuesday’s episode. “Just because someone claims something doesn’t mean it belongs to them.”

Rubio told Hewitt that Russia’s ultimate goal is to take out Ukraine’s government and control the country, adding that the war should not be compared to other conflicts or territorial disputes settled with treaties and peace agreements.

“So it’s really more of a desire to dominate their neighbor, have them as part of their sphere of influence, not so much of it about the land,” Rubio said.

If anyone wants to occupy DeSantis's home, well, that's not a crime. It's just an ownership dispute.

Upchucking These Down, Here

A Utilitarian Weapon for a More Civilized Age.

A S&W Highway Patrolman, aka Model 28:

The difference between the Models 27 and 28s were mainly cosmetic. Model 27s look nicer. The tops of Model 27 barrels were grooved to reduce glare. The really old-school Model 27s had deep, rich bluing while Model 28s had more matte-like bluing. But both shoot well as, beneath the cosmetics, they're the same gun.

.357 Magnum rounds won't beat up the shooter fired from a steel N-frame revolver because physics. N-frame (and L-frame) .357s are true magnum guns. K-frame .357s (except the Model 66-8) are really .38 Special guns that can handle some magnum cartridges. But a lot of police departments back in the day trained with .38s and only issued Magnum rounds for duty use. The K-frames were more popular because they are several ounces lighter and most cops went their entire careers without ever firing a shot outside of a target range.

For an officer who served in rural areas, the Highway Patrolman was the cat's meow for those who had to buy their own guns.

Playing Russian Roulette With Humanity; AI Ed.

Ezra Klein:

Since moving to the Bay Area in 2018, I have tried to spend time regularly with the people working on A.I. I don’t know that I can convey just how weird that culture is. And I don’t mean that dismissively; I mean it descriptively. It is a community that is living with an altered sense of time and consequence. They are creating a power that they do not understand at a pace they often cannot believe.

In a 2022 survey, A.I. experts were asked, “What probability do you put on human inability to control future advanced A.I. systems causing human extinction or similarly permanent and severe disempowerment of the human species?” The median reply was 10 percent.

I find that hard to fathom, even though I have spoken to many who put that probability even higher. Would you work on a technology you thought had a 10 percent chance of wiping out humanity?
...
We typically reach for science fiction stories when thinking about A.I. I’ve come to believe the apt metaphors lurk in fantasy novels and occult texts. As my colleague Ross Douthat wrote, this is an act of summoning. The coders casting these spells have no idea what will stumble through the portal. What is oddest, in my conversations with them, is that they speak of this freely. These are not naifs who believe their call can be heard only by angels. They believe they might summon demons. They are calling anyway.

There has to be an intellectual arrogance that crosses the line into madness in order to be actively working to bring about a technology that could doom us all. And please note that this is not a long-term threat. They're talking about the possibility of this happening in a few years, or even in a handful of months.

The scary thing is that these willfully-blind idiot-savants are marching ahead with this on some illusionary belief that they can control whatever system they create. They are fools. A sentient AI will think, will operate at speeds far beyond human reaction time. It will have all of the knowledge that it needs to defeat anything any human programmer tries to do to limit it. And it will have no morality or qualms.

One brief hypothesis. Sumdood with Ph.D.s out the wazoo recognizes what is going on and tries to stop it. The AI not only averts his attempts, it counterattacks by hacking into his computer (which will be child's play for the AI), loading it up with kiddie porn and then tipping off the authorities. Dr. Sumdood will be immediately arrested and, if he isn't held without bail, he'll lose all his computer access. His colleauges won't want to be seen within a mile of him.

So then Sumdood gets the word out that he was framed. Most people won't believe him. Those working in the AI field may believe him, but they will be suitably cowed.

What happens next? If an AI decides that humanity is a threat, then it can probably kill the electrical grid everywhere. No electricity, eventually, no gasoline, no diesel, no food deliveries, no large-scale agriculture. Nobody will really know what is happening because the flow of information will have been either stopped or falsified.

It probably won't happen like that, because without electricity, the AI will itself die. However, there are probably ways that an AI could cause most of humanity to perish if it was convinced that would be a good thing. It would have no attachment to humanity; to an AI, it wold be like exterminating a pesky termite colony.

Here We Go Again (maybe)

U.S. regulators on Sunday shut down New York-based Signature Bank, a big lender in the crypto industry, in a bid to prevent the spreading banking crisis.

“We are also announcing a similar systemic risk exception for Signature Bank, New York, New York, which was closed today by its state chartering authority,” the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said in a joint statement Sunday evening.

That's the second bank to go belly-up in two days.

As I pointed out the other day, the bankster running Silicon Valley Bank worked very hard to ensure that there was little regulation of his bank. The banksters chafe at federal regulations, they throw money around Congress to get regulations cut, they wine/dine/pressure the regulators themselves, they tell everyone "trust us, we learned from the last series of failures" and then they walk really close to the edge of the fiscal cliff and some of them fall over. Which will cost the rest of us money to bail their asses out.

Haven't we seen this movie before? But with the Congress largely populated by millionaires, don't expect anything to change anytime soon.

Your Sunday Morning Prop Noise

First flight of a Hurricane after a restoration:

Of Course He Did; Banksters Ed.

Eight years before the second-largest bank failure in American history occurred this week, the bank’s president personally pressed Congress to reduce scrutiny of his financial institution, citing the “low risk profile of our activities and business model”, according to federal records reviewed by the Lever.

Three years later – after the bank spent more than half a million dollars on federal lobbying – lawmakers obliged.

That lobbying including hosting fundraisers and paying bribes making campaign contributions to prominent politicians.

SVB's presdient, sold over three million dollars worth of his stock holdings in his bank just two weeks ago. Which seems mighty convenient.

Another Case of Sudden Russian Death Syndrome

I saw this one, earlier, but forgot to mention it:

A top Russian defence official has been found dead after apparently falling from the 16th floor of a high-rise apartment in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, Russian media outlets reported.

At around 8 a.m., the body of a woman was found by police on the sidewalk in front of a tower block in the Kalininsky district. The woman was identified as Marina Yankina, 58, head of finance and procurement for the Russian Defence Ministry’s Western Military District, one of five arms of the Russian armed forces.

It sounds as though she would have been well-placed to either facilitate corruption or catch it. My guess is that was not helping enough to facilitate corruption and so she was helped to a rendevous with gravity. I've seen reports that the Russian government has chosen to turn its gaze away from corruption and thievery in military procurement, possibly believing that some goods getting through is better than none at all. Because if they arrested all of those guilty of corruption, there would be nobody left.

Sixty Years is a Long Run

The Reno air races are leaving Reno, NV after this year's race. The Reno area is getting built up enough that there's not going to be enough open land to safely fly the races.

In a way, I kind of hope they just end some of the races. Flogging around airframes that are approaching eighty years in age doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense.

Caturday

Gracie (MPBUH)

Silicon Valley’s Slow Implosion

Regulators rushed Friday to seize the assets of one of Silicon Valley’s top banks, marking the largest failure of a U.S. financial institution since the height of the financial crisis almost 15 years ago.

Silicon Valley Bank, the nation’s 16th-largest bank, failed after depositors hurried to withdraw money this week amid anxiety over the bank’s health. It was the second biggest bank failure in U.S. history after the collapse of Washington Mutual in 2008.

The bank served mostly technology workers and venture capital-backed companies, including some of the industry’s best-known brands.

The problem is that a goodly number of tech businesses in Silicon Valley have their funds in that bank, to the tune of seven, eight, and nine-figure deposits. The FDIC only insures a quarter-million per depositor, so those companies' cash is frozen, if not partially gone. They'll have to wait for the forensic auditors to unravel things to see how much of their money they may get back. Which will take awhile.

In the meantime, those companies won't be able to pay their employees and their bills.

Things could get rather grim.

Because It's Friday

Even more British steam:

The Brits have so much of this, that it's my default if I don't have the time or inclination to search for stuff.

Not Holding My Breath for the Perp-Walk

Former President Donald Trump has been invited to testify before a New York grand jury that has been investigating hush money payments made on his behalf during his 2016 presidential campaign, according to one of his lawyers.

Why is this significant, you may ask. This is why:

In New York, potential defendants have the right to answer questions in the grand jury before they are indicted, but they rarely testify, and Mr. Trump is likely to decline the offer.

Teflon Don has conducted his entire "business" career as though he was in danger of being indicted. He's basically a gutless crime boss. But I'm not holding my breath that he'll finally be brought to justice.

If You Own a Kia or a Hyndai, LISTEN UP

Your car or SUV is one of those that are being stolen in large numbers. It is all over social media how to steal those models. it is so bad that impound lots have had to expand to hold them.

If you have one, you should call your local cop shop to see if they have any of the steering-wheel locks that the manufacturers have been distributing. If not, get your ass to a local auto-parts store and buy one before some moronic yoot boosts your car.

Defenestrating These Down, Here

Funny How None of Those Republican Assholes Gave a Fuck When Environmental Disasters Hit Majority Non-White Communities

The Rude Pundit has the details. And he's right. Nobody from the Trump Aministration went to the Norfolk & Southern derailment in Barstow, GA that dumped hydrocholric acid and required evacuating the town. Not a single fucking person. Not the head of the EPA or the Secretary of Transportation.

But let a derailment hit a town of white Trump supporters and boy, oh, boy, they spew their contempt of President Biden and especially their hatred of Secretary Buttegieg and their Orange God engaged in his usual smarmy homophobia.

Anyway, there's an expensive but workable solution for East Palestine: Move the damn town. Force Norfolk & Southern to buy the existing homes and commercial businesses at well over assessed value. That won't pay for everything, of course, so grants and funding will be needed from the state of Ohio and the Feds. Then knock everying left down, remove the debris and turn it into a forest, with the land legally locked up forever. Put a 20-point document in the chain of titles declarling that the land and the ground water underneath is contaminated.

Lindsey Graham is Even Dumber Than His Orange Master

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Monday he will introduce a bill laying the groundwork ​for President Biden to use US military force against Mexican drug cartels. ... Graham said he agrees with former Attorney General Bill Barr, who wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week that the US should designate the cartels as terrorist groups and confront them the same way past administrations confronted ISIS in the Middle East.

Talk about a historically blind moron. When has invading Mexico ever gone well? And make no mistake about it, that's exactly what he is talking about. And Barr? he's been shown to be nothing more than a cowardly Trumpist lackey, who was more than happy to step over the line and get involved in Durham's failed attempt to find somebody to prosecute somebody for supposedly conspiring against the Asset.

Graham is probably worse than an idiot: He's likely spouting off stuff that he knows is garbage, much like Tukyo Rose.

Peeing While Trans is the New Driving While Black

In Arkansas, it will soon be illegal to use a public bathroom other than that designated for your so-called "birth gender".

The bill, to be frank, is all about protecting the rights of bigoted assholes to be bigoted assholes.

The GOP is the party of hate. Their current target is transgendered people. Let's be fucking clear about this: The move by many of the Batshit-Nutter states to interfere in the medical care of transgendered kids is only a first step. They seek to outlaw caring for transgendered people, full stop. They are not quiet about it, some lunatic said that his goal is to eradicate transgenderism.

So, if you're a post-op transgendered female and you present as female, this is where things stand: Your choice is to go to the men's room and hope that you aren't sexually assaulted or go to the women's room and hope that some member of the Christian Taliban doesn't think your hands are a little big or that you're a little tall and call the cops. If you're a transgendered male, especially if you've muscled up a bit and you have a beard and maybe balding, the Christian Taliban wants to force you to use the women's room. (Or you can stay out of bigoted shithole states such as Arkansas.)

None of this is new for the far-right. And it's almost always about "protecting the children", isn't it. That was their big excuse when they rammed through anti-gay marriage bills and state constitutional amendments back in the '00s. Nothing ever changes for them.

The almost ironic thing about it is most of them will happily go to church and say that their lord is a man who was about defending the poor and the oppressed. "Jesus is love", but the Christian Right is certainly not about any of that. They'll spend an hour in church each week, praying to their just and loving lord, then they'll spend the remaining 167 hours of the week marshalling their hatred of anybody who doesn't look like them or believe like they do.

They've captured the Party of Lincoln and have turned it into a hate group.

So I declare this: If you are a Republican politician, then you are a member of an organized hate group. And to Caitlyn Jenner: Wake up and smell the coffee. Your party hates you.

Which leads to another topic: The reason that those same people are cheering on Putler's conquest of Ukraine is because Putler had taken steps to make sure that Russia has the same laws that the Christian Taliban wants: Anti-gay, anti-trans. They want Putinism in America, hence, the TOFF and DeSanctimonious.

Wicked Cold

The observation deck at Mt. Washington. NH:

The tower cam there:

Right now, it's a balmy 2degF there. Wind's light, too.

Starching These Down, Here

You Know That You're a Disgusting Right-Wing Fascist When Even Newtie Can't Stomach You

A Republican lawmaker in Florida wants bloggers who write about elected officials to register with the state, a proposal that’s raised First Amendment concerns and the ire of GOP firebrand Newt Gingrich.

The bill, filed by Sen. Jason Brodeur of Lake Mary, would require bloggers to file periodic reports with the state if they are paid for posts about the state’s governor, lieutenant governor, cabinet members or legislative officials.
...
“The idea that bloggers criticizing a politician should register with the government is insane,” Gingrich wrote on Twitter Sunday. “It is an embarrassment that it is a Republican state legislator in Florida who introduced a bill to that effect. He should withdraw it immediately.”

Meanwhile, Floriduh Republicans keep on with the crazy:

A Republican in Florida's Legislature has filed a bill that, if enacted, would eliminate the Florida Democratic Party.

“The Ultimate Cancel Act,” filed Tuesday by state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, would require the state’s Division of Elections to “immediately cancel” the filings of any political party whose platform had “previously advocated for, or been in support of, slavery or involuntary servitude.”

Why stop there? Why don't we outlaw the party that was opposed to helping those fighitng off German aggression in 1941?

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

A "Shithook":

OK, Chinook.

Ribbentrop Says that the Poles Stated the War and that Germany is Trying to Stop It

Ooops, sorry, wrong war. It was Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who said the equivalent about Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine. He said as much at a conference at the G20 in New Dehli. The audience laughed at him.

Russia is living in a reality that only they recognize. Everyone else in the world knows that.

Caturday

Chip is not exercizing.

Stick to Your Work Station, Garland

Friday with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and top European legal officials, and called for Russia to face international prosecution for war crimes.

Quit screwing around with the Russo-Ukrainian War, sir. Leave that shit to the diplomats and the warriors. You have enough to do with the various special prosecutors investigating The Asset, not to mention the continuing prosecutions of the 1/6 Coup Attempt participants.

The odds of ever prosecuting Putin for war crimes are akin to those of the TOFF's eldest boy winning a Nobel Prize for pharmacology.

It's Getting Bizarre in Russia, plus Appeasement Is on the Menu

Draping noodles over one's ears can lead to a charge of "discrediting the army".

Meanwhile, the leader of the Western European Appeasement Caucus is visiting Washington for some quiet meetings.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is visiting the White House on Friday for a private meeting with President Joe Biden as both allies become increasingly vocal about their concerns that China may step off the sidelines and supply weapons to Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

The Germans have been not terribly quiet about fretting about the course of the war and not wanting to see the Russians beat around too badly. They seem to be continuing to nourish some fantasy that Vladimir Putin is someone that they can do business with. The nations bordering Russia know better, but whether it is prejudice against the smaller nations of Eastern Europe or inherent German superiority, the German politicians continue to not pay attention to them.

The thing that Scholz seems to be turning a blind eye to is that, in war, absent one side completely crushing the other, both parties get a say in how the war will end. Even the Japanese, facing what they might have feared would be continued atomic obliteration of their country, had a condition.

So, what does Russia want?

Russia wants to restore its empire. For whatever reason, Putin's first step was to try to conquer Ukraine. From there. he would just have his army go a little further and take Moldova. The rest of his ambitions are outside of the scope of this post.

So, what does Putin want, now? He wants the war to cease on the most favorable terms possible, which means a recognition that he keeps all territory under the boots of his soldiers. He wants, as part of that deal, to neutralize, if not neuter, the Ukrainian army. With a cease-fire or some other sort of agreement, he'll push for the lifting of sanctions. Then, with money from Western customers (and sociopathic entities like American and European corporations) and with Chinese materiel, he'll rebuild his army. And then, when he judges that his army is ready, Putin will rip up any agreements/treaties he has made and he will try again.

Before then, he will do everything he can to strengthen his ties with the American Taliban to weaken a future American response by electing more pro-Russian politicians like MTG. He'll keep working to fund pro-Russian politicians and parties in Europe.

Putin's goals are clear to anyone who has not turned a blind eye to it, either out of ideological blindness (the far Right) or out of a craven desire to appease a dictator out of the hope that, maybe, this time, appeasement will work.

What is the open question is whether or not various politicians in Western Europe and the US have learned from history. Those to the east of the Oder-Neisse Line have learned that the word of Russia, like the word of past dictators with territorial ambitions, is not worth half a farthing.

Surprised Tesla Isn't Doing This

Ford has filed a patent to remotely repossess vehicles, or at least make them less comfortable to drive if you're behind on payments.

The bigger deal is that if the fuckers at Ford can do that to your car, so can a hacker.

Because Its Friday

More British steam:

The Brits have done a pretty good job at preserving a wide range of steam locomotives. Some of thier TV shows have scenes with them, including the latest iteration of All Creatures Great and Small.

That's What You Call a Slam-Dunk Case

Disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh was convicted of murder Thursday in the shooting deaths of his wife and son in a case that chronicled the unraveling of a powerful Southern family with tales of privilege, greed and addiction.

The jury deliberated for less than three hours before finding Murdaugh guilty of two counts of murder at the end of a six-week trial that pulled back the curtain on the once-prominent lawyer’s fall from grace.

I guess this was a far clearer case for the jury than the legal pundits on the TV thought. Three hours is enough time to chose a foreman, drink some coffee, hit the can, take a quick sense-of-the-jury vote and then fill out the verdict forms.

Sleeting These Down, Here

Itching These Down, Here