Not All Religious Fuckwads in This Country are Christian

Hasidic yeshivas in New York don't teach their students English or math. They take public money and then ignore the educational requirements that come with those funds.

No doubt that Johnny Roberts and his stable of batshit justices would think that is just peachy.

The Christian Nationalist Supreme Court Shat Out Another "Ruling".

That's about what one would expect from this illegitimate Christian Nationist court. The only thing that matters to them is twisting the Constitution to suit their ideology. They are a political court, not one that comes anywhere close to practicing law.

This has been laid bare by the fact that the plaintiff in the "I wanna discriminate against gays" case was never asked to do what she was complaining about. She was suing on a hypothetical, which courts traditionally don't allow, as there has to be an actual legal injury, aka "ripeness," in order to get into the courthouse door. But here, because the Christian nationalist wing of the Supremes wanted to make such a ruling, they just ignored that pesky procedural rule.

Because that's what they do. They don't let the law or procedure or precedent or the Constitution get in the way of promoting their religo-fascist ideology.

So I guess the thing to do is dress up racial discrimination in a cloak of religion and see what they do with that. My guess is that, as long as the religion practicing discrimination is Christianist and if they discriminate against minorities, they'll be fine with that.

Because It’s Friday

UP 4014:

News Flash: CT Staties Are Racist as Fuck

Hundreds of Connecticut state police troopers falsified information on at least 26,000 traffic stops from 2014 to 2021, skewing reports on the race and ethnicity of pulled-over motorists, according to an audit released Wednesday.

Data analysts with the University of Connecticut said the reports resulted in too many drivers being identified as white. They cautioned, however, that they did not try to determine whether the records were intentionally falsified or were wrong due to carelessness or human error.

Right. They falsified tens of thousands of traffic stops because of "carelessness or human error"? Note that the false data almost always listed the stopped drivers as being white, which skewed the data on racial profiling.

Tollbooth Ned, a governor who is a regular Inspector Closeau when it comes to detecting corruption and malfeasance in state government, has referred the issue to his AG, a man who, if seeing state fuckery was testable like vision, would have 6/400 vision.

Stenciling These Down, Here

Swirling These Down, Here

Dodging a Wingnut Bullet

The Supremes didn't go along with a whacko right-wing theory that would allow state legislatures to steal elections.

The three most corrupt justices dissented.

A New Unit of Time

The Goebbels Gap: The amount of time between something terrible happening in the world and someone figuring out a way to blame the Jews for it. https://t.co/8ht5ZuxKxE

— Yair Rosenberg (@Yair_Rosenberg) June 23, 2023

(H/T)

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Family business, y'all. For a bit. Preloaded stuff is in the queue. Current affairs and non-scheduled snark will be haphazard.

Stay out of electrical storms!

Your Sunday Morning (Mostly) Jet Noise

Lots of first-generation jet airliners at Heathrow over fifty years ago:

Can’t Wait on These

Interesting Times in Russia

President Vladimir Putin vowed Saturday to defend Russia against an armed rebellion by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led his troops out of Ukraine and into a key city south of Moscow.

The uprising, which Putin called “a stab in the back,” was the biggest threat to his leadership in over two decades in power.

The private army led by Prigozhin appears to control the military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, a city 660 miles (over 1,000 kilometers) south of Moscow that runs Russian offensive operations in Ukraine, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence briefing.

Machiavelli had some cautionary words about the foolishness of relying on mercenaries.

Caturday

OC, waiting for his chance at the food.

Because It's Friday

Double-Brit steam:

I screwed up on the posting time. Apologies.

We Interrupt Your Evening for Some Truly Tasteless Stuff

Felling These Down, Here

Even if you found a feral child with a pack of raccoons near a meth lab in Aurora, CO and then educated it on absolutely nothing but Jersey Shore reruns and ramen noodle nutrition facts, it would still have a better understanding of the US Constitution than Lauren fucking Boebert

— Liam Nissan™ (@theliamnissan) June 21, 2023

"I'll Take ‘Structural Failure and Implosion’ for $1,000, Alex."

The search for a missing submersible with five people aboard took a bleak turn Thursday when the U.S. Coast Guard said a debris field was found at the bottom of the ocean near the Titanic, an announcement that came after the critical 96-hour mark when breathable air could have run out.

The Coast Guard’s post on Twitter gave no details, such as whether officials believe the debris is connected to the Titan, which was on an expedition to view the wreckage of the Titanic. It said the debris was discovered within the search area by a remotely operated underwater robot, and was being evaluated.

There have been two wars fought with German U-Boats in the North Atlantic, not to mention all of the other ships lost due to fires, storms and collisions with icebergs, so the discovery of a debris field, by iteslf, isn't remarkable.

Unless they can see what kind of debris it is.

There are environments where the Silicon Valley mindset of "move fast and break things" gets people killed. The sky and the sea are two of them. Neither are forgiving of folly, and that's before one goes into the extreme realms of either one. Disregarding the experts comes at a costs.

The RMS Titantic has claimed five more lives. Going that deep into the ocean to view a wreck for basically shits and giggles is stupid. After Ballard found it and photographed the wreckage nearly forty years ago, every other trip down there has been an exercise in applied lunacy. (Sort of like the idiots who have died diving on the wreck of the SS Andrea Doria.)

It Should Have Been Longer

A California man who drove a stun gun into a police officer’s neck during one of the most violent clashes of the U.S. Capitol riot was sentenced on Wednesday to more than 12 years in prison.

Daniel “D.J.” Rodriguez yelled, “Trump won!” as he was led out of the courtroom where U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced him to 12 years and seven months behind bars for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. Only two other Jan. 6 defendants have received longer prison terms so far after hundreds of sentencings for Capitol riot cases.

Prosecutors wanted him to be sentenced to fourteen years. The judge should have accepted that. The perp shocked Officer Fanone into a heart attack, damn near killing him. But when it comes to the Jamuary 6th Trumpist Coup Attempt, the law-'n-order crows pivots to wanting to murder the boys in blue.

Another Supreme Grifter at Work

In early July 2008, Samuel Alito stood on a riverbank in a remote corner of Alaska. The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000 a day, and after catching a king salmon nearly the size of his leg, Alito posed for a picture. To his left, a man stood beaming: Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes.

Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way.

In the years that followed, Singer’s hedge fund came before the court at least 10 times in cases where his role was often covered by the legal press and mainstream media. In 2014, the court agreed to resolve a key issue in a decade-long battle between Singer’s hedge fund and the nation of Argentina. Alito did not recuse himself from the case and voted with the 7-1 majority in Singer’s favor. The hedge fund was ultimately paid $2.4 billion.

Alito did not report the 2008 fishing trip on his annual financial disclosures. By failing to disclose the private jet flight Singer provided, Alito appears to have violated a federal law that requires justices to disclose most gifts, according to ethics law experts.

Little Sammy denies that there's an ethics problem. Because, after all, everybody has billionaires willing to fly them away on six-figure junkets. Singer and his hedge fund have had case after case in front of the Supreme Court; Little Sammy has voted on all of them. He hasn't disclosed the trips (until now), which suggests to me that he likely knew that it stunk and he'd rather not air that pile of dirty laundry.

Alito isn't the only justice that these clowns have given expensive trips to. They also treated Scalia, but he's dead, so there's not much point in throwing more dirt on his grave.

Any local politician, official or judge who did anything remotely similar would have been subject to rather uncomfortable questioning by the FBI, if not an indictment. But the rules are different for the none demigods on the Court.

Combing These Down, Here

Wow. Disney+ changed the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark... pic.twitter.com/JWWLTs9CYt

— Jesse McLaren (@McJesse) June 9, 2023

Stand By for MAGA Republicans to Go Batshit

President Joe Biden’s son Hunter has been charged with failing to pay federal income tax and illegally possessing a weapon and has reached an agreement with the Justice Department, according to letter filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware.

As part of the agreement, made public Tuesday, Hunter Biden will plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses and is expected to reach an agreement with prosecutors on the felony charge of illegally possessing a firearm as a drug user.

it is easy to predict that the MAGA Morons will freak out over this. Gym Jordan will commence more of his idiotic evidence-free hearings. Republicans will continue to bleat about this, ignoring the fact that the special prosecutor who ran with this case for the last five years was appointed by Their Orange Overlord. The QAnon-grade lunatics, like RFK, Jr., will claim that the missing submersible was a pre-planned distraction.

Maybe the equivalent of the oversight committee in the Senate will look into the Saudis giving Jared two billion with no strings attached. But don't count on it.

If You Buy the TOFF's Latest Line of Bullshit, You Are Certifiably Dumber Than You Look

Lashing out after his arraignment on federal charges last week, Donald Trump took aim at President Joe Biden and Democrats with language that seemed to evoke another era: He was being persecuted, he said, by “Marxists” and “communists.”

That's pretty rich, coming from a tired old felonious loser who kept a book of Hitler's speeches by his bed and who thinks Hitler did good things.

If you know someone who is parrotting Cadet Bone Spurs's latest line of attack, and if they are someone that you care about, please keep in mind that they are the sort of person who can drown in the rain and govern yourself accordingly.

What Goes Up Must Come Down. The Reverse Is Not True.

A rescue operation was underway deep in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean on Monday in search of a technologically advanced submersible vessel carrying five people to document the wreckage of the Titanic, the iconic ocean liner that sank more than a century ago.

The vessel was reported overdue Sunday night about 435 miles (700 kilometres) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland, according to Canada’s Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Lt. Cmdr. Len Hickey said a Canadian Coast Guard vessel and military aircraft were assisting the search effort, which was being led by the U.S. Coast Guard in Boston.

For most problems, one might expect the pilot to jettison the ballast and surface. That they haven't suggests that something bad has happened. If that submersible is stuck at the bottom, I don't hold much hope for it being freed in time, as they have about sixty hours to get something on scene and then descend down 2-1/2 miles to find the craft, fix whatever is wrong and get it back up to the surface.

Other than having gravity, the deep ocean may be more hostile to humans than Earth orbit.

We All Knew They Did It; Dam Kaboom Ed.

Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to bring down a Ukrainian dam that collapsed earlier this month while under Russian control, according to exclusive drone photos and information obtained by The Associated Press.
...
Kakhovka is one of a series of Soviet-era dams along the Dnieper River that were built to withstand enormous force, amounting to thousands of pounds of explosives. They were constructed in the wake of the infamous World War II “Dambusters” raids that destroyed German dams.

It apparently would have taken a ton of explosives, deep within the dam, to blow it up. That's a tad bit more than a bunch of movie commandos could carry. The Russians are the only ones who had the ability to blow up the dam.

Besides that, wrecking Ukraine is what Russians do.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

A L-1011:

I liked flying on them. Still, the story was that once the airlines slowed down their speed to save fuel after the 1973 oil embargo, the Tri-Stars trimmed up a little nose-high, which made pusing the beverage and food carts hell for the flight attendants. I don't know if that's true or not.

Three engines should still be the standard minimum for transoceanic flying.

A Thought About Why DeSantis Hates Transgendered People

Maybe he got tired of his name being mangled to Rhonda Santis.

But that didn't explain his white boots.

Which likely came off the sale rack at TJ Maxx:

Country Music Songwriters Are in Trouble

AI can do a passable job of it.

This was the prompt I gave Google's Bard:

Write a country song. The singer is a man whose wife left him and took the Chevrolet pickup truck. He wants the truck back.

This is what it came up with:

(Verse 1) I woke up this morning, my wife was gone She took the kids and the dog and the Chevrolet pickup truck I don't know what I did wrong, but I guess I must have done something 'Cause she left me without a word, and I'm feeling all alone

(Chorus) I just want my truck back It's the only thing I have left of her I know it's just a truck, but it means the world to me I just want my truck back

(Verse 2) I used to drive that truck all over town We'd go fishing, camping, and just cruise around It was our truck, and now it's gone I don't know what I'm going to do without it

(Chorus) I just want my truck back It's the only thing I have left of her I know it's just a truck, but it means the world to me I just want my truck back

(Bridge) I know I should be grateful that she left me But I'm not, I'm just sad and lonely I miss her, and I miss the truck

(Chorus) I just want my truck back It's the only thing I have left of her I know it's just a truck, but it means the world to me I just want my truck back

(Outro) I'll never forget the day she left She took the kids, the dog, and the truck I'm all alone now, but I'll keep on truckin' 'Cause I know that one day, I'll get my truck back.

So, then I tried this prompt:

Write a blues song about a country music songwriter who lost his job because you (Bard) could write country music songs.

The result:

(Verse 1) I used to be a country music songwriter, I wrote songs that made people cry and sing. But then Bard came along, And he could write country music songs just as good as me.

(Chorus) So they gave me the axe, And told me to hit the bricks. They said Bard was the future, And I was the past.

(Verse 2) I'm sitting here on my porch, Drinking a bottle of cheap wine. I'm trying to figure out what I'm gonna do, Now that I'm out of a job.

(Chorus) I guess I'll just have to start over, And find a new way to make a living. But it won't be easy, Knowing that Bard is out there, Taking my place.

(Bridge) I'm not bitter, I'm just disappointed. I thought I had something special, But I guess I was wrong.

(Chorus) So here's to Bard, The new king of country music. I hope he does well, Because if he doesn't, We're all in trouble.

That's more meh, but I've heard worse.

Caturday

"Moar noms?"

No Surprise At This

A truck driver who spewed hatred of Jews was convicted Friday of storming a Pittsburgh synagogue and shooting everyone he could find on a Sabbath morning, killing 11 congregants in an act of antisemitic terror for which he could be sentenced to die.

The guilty verdict was a foregone conclusion after Robert Bowers’ lawyers conceded at the trial’s outset that he attacked and killed worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, in the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history. Jurors must now decide whether the 50-year-old should be sent to death row or sentenced to life in prison without parole as the federal trial shifts to a penalty phase expected to last several weeks.

The only surprise is that it took the jury five hours to come back. Thirty minutes should have been enough, since his attorneys had conceded that he was guilty as fuck.

Because It's Friday

UP 4014:

Munching These Down, Here