RFK, Jr.: Closet Nazi.

He is playing "Nazi Peekaboo", which is blowing a dogwhistle to the Nazis.

Mike the Mad Biologist has the details.

Considering that his uncle was killed fighting Nazis, this is beyond despicable.

Another Whiney-Ass Billionaire Theatens to Sue

This time, Elon "Crybaby" Musk, who is threatening to sue a nonprofit that studies hate speech online. Musk/Twitter/X had their lawyers send a nastygram to the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

The letter follows CCDH research published in June, which studied the propagation of hate speech on the social media platform since Musk’s buyout. In one report looking at 100 different accounts subscribed to Twitter Blue, CCDH found that X Corp. failed to act on 99% of hate posted by the subscribers and questioned whether the social media platform’s algorithm boosts “toxic tweets.”

Other CCDH research found that the social media company failed to act on 89% of anti-Jewish hate speech and 97% of anti-Muslim hate speech on the platform.

Maybe if Crybaby is upset that advertisers are fleeing his hate-enabled platform, he should do something about the stread of hate speech on his rusting new toy instead of threatening those who are reporting about it.

One can only hope that Crybaby has as much success in court as does the TOFF.

The TOFF Keeps Losing in Court

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit Donald Trump filed against CNN in which the former U.S. president claimed that references in news articles or by the network’s hosts to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election as “the Big Lie” were tantamount to comparing him to Adolf Hitler.
...
U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal, who was appointed by Trump, said Friday in his ruling that the former president’s defamation claims failed because the references were opinions and not factual statements. Moreover, it was a stretch to believe that, in viewers’ minds, that phrase would connect Trump’s efforts challenging the 2020 election results to Nazi propaganda or Hitler’s genocidal and authoritarian regime, the judge said.

“CNN’s use of the phrase ‘the Big Lie’ in connection with Trump’s election challenges does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or any other group of people,” the judge wrote in his decision.

Trump keeps losing in court and his Trumpanzee Corps keeps paying for him to lose.

Meanwhile, the Asset keeps hinting that he'll do his master's bidding and cripple Ukraine's fight to stay free if he manages to steal the next election.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

The BONE!

Caturday

Chip is chilling as the day draws to a close.

OhMiGawd! They Killed Kenny! Those Bastards!

A man is dead and a woman was injured after the owner of a stolen truck shot at them while trying to recover his vehicle on the South Side, according to San Antonio Police Chief William McManus.

The owner tracked his stolen pickup truck to a parking lot at South Park Mall on Thursday afternoon.

The TOFF Can't Even Crime Competently

Former President Donald Trump faced new charges Thursday in a case accusing him of illegally possessing classified documents, with prosecutors alleging that he asked a staffer to delete camera footage at his Florida estate in an effort to obstruct a federal investigation into the records.

The new indictment includes extra charges of obstruction and willful retention of national defense information, adding fresh detail to a criminal case issued last month against Trump and a close aide.
...
According to the indictment, Nauta met with De Oliveira on June 25, 2022, at Mar-a-Lago, where they went to a security guard booth where surveillance video is displayed on monitors and walked with a flashlight through a tunnel where the storage room was located, observing and pointing out surveillance cameras.

Two days later, according to the indictment, De Oliveira walked through a basement tunnel with an unidentified Trump employee to an audio closet, where De Oliveira in a private conversation asked how many days the server retained footage.

De Oliveira, prosecutors said, told the employee that “the boss” wanted the server deleted and asked, “What are we going to do?”

During a voluntary interview with the FBI last January, prosecutors say, De Oliveira lied when he said he “never saw nothing” with regard to boxes at Mar-a-Lago.

The Feds served a subpoena for, among other things, surveillance footage. And then, after the subpoena was served, the cameras captured Trump's minions walking around, looking for the location of the cameras.

These guys make "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight" look like criminal masterminds. The TOFF may act like he's running a crime family, but not all of his workers have bought into that fantasy. They're not willing to go to Federal prison to protect his pasty ass.

The saying from the Watergate scandal was: "It's not the crime, it's the coverup." The TOFF has to be uncommonly stupid not to have learned that lesson.

Because It's Friday

I do like the NKP Berkshires. I've taken trips behind 759, which has been retired.

Did Mitch McConnell Have a Seizure?

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell briefly left his own press conference Wednesday after stopping his remarks midsentence and staring off into space for several seconds.

McConnell approached the podium for his weekly press conference and began speaking about the annual defense bill on the floor, which he said was proceeding with “good bipartisan cooperation.” But he then appeared to lose his train of thought, trailing off with a drawn-out “uh.”

The Kentucky senator then appeared to freeze up and stared vacantly for around 20 seconds before his colleagues in Republican leadership, who were standing behind him and could not see his face, grabbed his elbows and asked if he wanted to go back to his office.

And then there is this:

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said [on March 25 that] he has been released from the rehabilitation facility where he had physical therapy for a concussion caused by a fall earlier this month.

The 81-year-old Kentucky Republican said in a statement released by his office that he will work from home for the next few days. The Senate is scheduled to be on break for the weeks of April 3 and April 10.

I've known people who had some bad trouble after a concussion. Not all seizures involve falling to the ground and frothing. Some can just be standing there and freezing for several seconds. They may not even be aware that it happened, but to an observer, it's kind of scary.

Concussions can be serious things and, with old people, they an be even more serious, because they aren't as resilient as kids.

Scorching These Down, Here

Londongrad is Still Open for Business

Despite sanctions, the Brits have been pretty loose when it comes to allowing sanctioned Russian oligarchs to spend their dirty money in London.

Because, as we all know, money talks.

The Supreme Grifters Keep on Grifting

Only three months into Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s first Supreme Court term, she announced a book deal negotiated by the same powerhouse lawyer who represented the Obamas and James Patterson.

The deal was worth about $3 million, according to people familiar with the agreement, and made Justice Jackson the latest Supreme Court justice to parlay her fame into a big book contract.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch had made $650,000 for a book of essays and personal reflections on the role of judges, while Justice Amy Coney Barrett received a $2 million advance for her forthcoming book about keeping personal feelings out of judicial rulings. Those newer justices joined two of their more senior colleagues, Justices Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor, in securing payments that eclipse their government salaries.
...
One area of particular concern, experts said, is how justices have used court resources to bolster their book ventures, which is paid work that falls outside the scope of their court work.
...
Other federal judges are bound by the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, which lays out guidelines and rules for judicial conduct. One of the tenets focuses on a judge’s use of court resources for outside activities. The rule says that “a judge should not to any substantial degree use judicial chambers, resources or staff to engage in extrajudicial activities.”

I understand that the audience for a book of memoirs, stories or legal thoughts by a sitting Supreme Court justice is greater than that for a Harlan County judge. That's life.

But what is troubling are two things: First off, and not just for writing books, the justices allegedly treat the court staff as servants to satify their whims. When the court staff is arranging private travel for justices or helping them on their books (or, possibly, ghosting on the books), the justices should reimburse the Treasury for the their time. The hammer here should be that if the Supreme Court staff has time time to spend Lord-knows-how-many hours doing side work for the justices, then there are too many people working there and there should be some RIFs.

Using the time of civil servants for somebody's private work is theft (unless that is explicitly within the job descriptions of said civil servants). The justices so using their staff as unpaid researches or travel agents or dogsbodies are criminals.

Second, then comes when the books are offered for sale. If there are bulk purchases,[1] that's pretty skeevy, because monied players are, in short, laundering their gifts to the justices through royalty payments.

The second point is probably uncontrollable, but we can mock it all we want. As to the first, that can be addressed and should be. Johnny Roberts seems to be content to do nothing more than wring his hands while his Court of Grifters and Their Spouses continue to drive down the Court's reputation to a par with drug dealers and hooptie salesmen.
____________
[1] This is a common occurrance on the far-right. The books of Josh Hawley the Cowardly Traitor or Don "Coke Boy" Trump, Jr. were bought in bulk in order to make them "bestselling authors". In a free market, their books would have sold as well as East German cars.

Why the Dems Aren't Freaking

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says Republican lawmakers may consider an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden over unproven claims of financial misconduct, responding to enormous GOP pressure to demonstrate support for Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

For one thing, compared to the grifting of the TOFF's family (see, $2 billion slush fund given by the Saudis to Jared the Wonder Boy), whatever Hunter may or may not have done is going to look like pretty small beer. Which the Democrats will happily point out. The Democrats will also happily point out all of the pressing issues confronting the country, but the MAGA Morons are laser-focused on bringing down Biden's son, who has had no role in his father's administration. Unlike Jared the Wonder Boy.

Oh, sure, all of that plays well for the MAGA Traitors. But as for indpendents and the non-MAGA Republicans, it won't play so well.

Speaking of MAGA Morons, Bozo Rudy had to concede, in court, that he has been lying though his teeth about election fraud.

Rudy Giuliani has conceded that he made public comments falsely claiming two Georgia election workers committed ballot fraud during the 2020 presidential race but is arguing that the statements were protected by the First Amendment.

That assertion by Giuliani, who as part of Donald Trump’s legal team tried to overturn results in battleground states, came in a filing Tuesday in a lawsuit by Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss. Their lawsuit from December 2021 accused the former New York City mayor of defaming them by falsely stating that they had engaged in fraud while counting ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta.

They're going to still have to prove damages, but I suspect that won't be a difficult lift.

Elsewhere, another Republican candidate for president has been engaging in financial fuckery, with possible foreign funding.

A government watchdog group is asking federal regulators to investigate a $500,000 contribution to a super PAC backing Miami Mayor Francis Suarez’s presidential bid, citing possible campaign finance laws violations.

The nonpartisan group Campaign Legal Center said it filed the complaint with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday. The complaint says the business PassionForest, LLC, which sells artificial flowers on Amazon.com, did not have the financial means to make such a large contribution and was instead used to hide the identities of the true contributors to the political action committee America for Everyone, now called SOS America.

Campaign Legal Center also says the artificial flower shop accused in the scheme filed a trademark application listing a Chinese address and the seller information listed by Amazon.com shows a ZIP code in Shenzhen, in southeastern China. The group says the scheme could have been meant to hide foreign contributions, which are prohibited.

Suarez's superPAC wasted no time in throwing down the race card. Which one can take as a tacit admission of "OK, ya got me", if one is so inclined.

Finally, DeSantis's campaign got caught flirting with Nazi themes and had to do a ritual firing. Which should surprise nobody.

More Tinfoil Hearings From the Party of Q.

The U.S. is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects, a former Air Force intelligence officer testified Wednesday to Congress. The Pentagon has denied his claims.
...
Grusch said he was asked in 2019 by the head of a government task force on UAPs to identify all highly classified programs relating to the task force’s mission. At the time, Grusch was detailed to the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that operates U.S. spy satellites.

I smell bullshit. In part, because if there is some seriously sentitive work to be done, they're not giving it to some damn major who comes across as a guy who was shoved into a corner to wait out his twenty.

Stupidity Has Consequences

The pandemic inflicted higher rates of excess deaths on both Republicans and Democrats. But after COVID-19 vaccines arrived, Republican voters in Florida and Ohio died at a higher rate than their counterparts, according to a new study.

Researchers from Yale University who studied the pandemic's effects on those two states say that from the pandemic's start in March 2020 through December 2021, "excess mortality was significantly higher for Republican voters than Democratic voters after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults, but not before."

More specifically, the researchers say, their adjusted analysis found that "the excess death rate among Republican voters was 43% higher than the excess death rate among Democratic voters" after vaccine eligibility was opened.

Listening to blovating idiots on Fox News, such as Tuckyo Rose and Stupid Sean, truly is hazardous to one's health. Being a Republican can be fatal. About a third of a million people or more died because they listened to anti-vaxx nutjobs.

Indicting These Down, Here

A bunch from AHNC:

America's Self-Perpetuating Oligarchy

Elite colleges have long been filled with the children of the richest families: At Ivy League schools, one in six students has parents in the top 1 percent.

A large new study, released Monday, shows that it has not been because these children had more impressive grades on average or took harder classes. They tended to have higher SAT scores and finely honed résumés, and applied at a higher rate — but they were overrepresented even after accounting for those things. For applicants with the same SAT or ACT score, children from families in the top 1 percent were 34 percent more likely to be admitted than the average applicant, and those from the top 0.1 percent were more than twice as likely to get in.

It is nothing short of affirmative action for rich people. The inescapable conclusion is that the elite schools don't want to sully their hallowed halls with lower-income people.

The schools tilt things by taking into account recommendations from guidance conselors, which pretty much are available only to kids from private schools. They accept atheletes from sports played mostly by rich kids. They give credit for volunteering; kids from lower-income familes aren't volunteering, they're working to help their families out.

And this, mind you, doesn't even bring into play the legacy admissions or those kids who got admitted because their relatives made huge donations to buy their way in.

All this is coming to the fore because the Supreme Grifters don't like affirmative action based on race or ethnicity. So now people are looking at where affirmative action is in operation for rich people. And, surprise, surprise, surprise, at the Ivies, they're finding just that.

A Really Stable Genius

Imagine this: There's a technology company that has been around awhile. In that sector, its name has global recognition. It has a logo that is recognized by at leasst a billion people. A fairly common verb has become shorthand for using the company's website.

So what does your garden-variety stable genius do? He buys the company, trashes about 70% of its value and then changes the name and logo.

Even that was done with no regard for the law when it comes to doing work on buildings.

At Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, meanwhile, workers were seen removing the iconic bird and logo Monday until police showed up and stopped them because they didn’t have the proper permits and didn’t tape off the sidewalk to keep pedestrians safe if anything fell.

If there was somebody running the building who knew the rules, chances are that the Fat Turdlet either ordered them to do it anyway or had fired that person beforehand.

I'm semi-surprised that he hasn't tried to sue Marvel Comics over the term "X-Men" because he clearly thinks that he owns that letter.

My guess is that, if B-schools have a class "don't be like this moron", that he's going to feature in it within a few years.

Justified: City Primeval, Ep. 2

I will say this: Whoever added the material about Raylan Given's daughter has basically debased Elmore Leonard's work. It's one thing when they were mining his material for the original series (the shooting of two hitmen, Joe and Frank, in the original series, S1E4, comes from Pronto) yet it's quite another when the story and much of the dialogue comes from one book. Hell, if they wanted padding, there was an interview between the protagonist and a reporter which should have been good for several minutes, at least.

But I did like the mentioning of the original protagonist of the novel.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

The BUFF!

That's Pretty Fucking Rich, Coming From a Republican

As Americans, can we learn to disagree better?

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox thinks so, and on Friday he kicked off his yearlong tenure as chairman of the National Governors Association with a mission he says is “an existential issue and crisis for our country”: Americans’ inability to disagree without hating each other.

Yeah, good luck with that. It was good ol' Republican Newt Gingrich who elevated hating on the other party into a fine art, as egged on by Radio Rwanda host Ruck Limbaugh. Republicans since Newtie have been following his playbook of leveraging hate, apocalyptic rhetoric and elminiationist bullshit into political power.

Cox should deal with the dispensers of hate in his own party before worrying about the rest of the country. There's even a biblical passage to that effect, but we all know that to the GOP, the rules and norms of civil behavior apply only to the other guy.

Justified: City Primeval

I've only watched ep.1, so these are first impressions. I have read the book.

First off, the protagonist in the book is a city cop, a homicide lieutenant. And he's certainly not dragging his young daughter around with him. The first part of the episode was extraneous, but the last part is fairly faithful to the book, right down to the make and model of the gun used by the bad guy.

So there may be some promise to this show. But we shall see. TV has a storied track record of fucking with and demolishing good source material.

Remember This: Corporations are Psychopathic Entities That Will Kill You If They See a Profit in It. Big Pharma is No Different

In 2004, Gilead Sciences decided to stop pursuing a new H.I.V. drug. The public explanation was that it wasn’t sufficiently different from an existing treatment to warrant further development.

In private, though, something else was at play. Gilead had devised a plan to delay the new drug’s release to maximize profits, even though executives had reason to believe it might turn out to be safer for patients, according to a trove of internal documents made public in litigation against the company.
...
Gilead ended up introducing a version of the new treatment in 2015, nearly a decade after it might have become available if the company had not paused development in 2004. Its patents now extend until at least 2031.

"Product hopping" is their term for basiclly maximizing profits at the expense of people's health and well-being.

In that regard, they are no different from the tobacco companies and the fossil fuel companies.

If you take anything away from this, it should be that all corporations are psychopathic and, unlike human pyschopaths, corporations are not really restrained by societal norms and the law.

Shorter Toddler TOFF: "Mine! Mine! Mine!"

He really does have the mindset of a toddler: Everything that he touches is his.

Former US president Donald Trump says he will return a set of ancient oil lamps to the Israel Antiquities Authority.

“These historic items were presented by a representative of the Israeli antiquities authority with the full support of the organization,” the Wall Street Journal quoted an unidentified Trump spokesman as saying. “As the items were displayed as originally intended, the office will be expediting their return to the organization’s representative.”

The announcement, published on Thursday, came after a revelation this week in Haaretz that the Israel Antiquities Authority had been asking for the return of the lamps for months, to no avail.

Oh, they're all trying to cover and protect that theiving fat ball of orange slime with varying excuses, but we all know the truth: Anything that he can get his tiny hands on, he steals. It's a minor miracle that he didn't go over to the National Archives and take the original copy of the Constitution.

Russia is a Terrorist State. That is Beyond Any Reasonable Dispute.

Russia has been attacking Ukranian grain and food supplies, concentrating on both the storage facilities and ship-loading facilities in Odesa.

Those who support Russia might as well take the next step and support ISIS. For both are terrorist entities.

Meanwhile, Bulgaria's president has adopted a pro-rapist/blame the victim stance in the war. He believes that Ukraine is at fault for resisting Russia's aggression. Fuck him, too. I gather that that slavic turdlet has forgotten that Bulgaria didn't join NATO in 2004 for the social events, alone.

Caturday

O.C. is waiting for something. He's another neighborhood stray, but not one that visits Priss's foodbowl.

Shorter RFK, Jr.: I Did Not Say the Things That I Was Recorded Saying.

"Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin' ears" is basically his position. When a congresswoman read his own statements to him, he claimed that he was being slandered.

Gym Jordan and Spineless Kevin thought it would hurt Biden to give Nutball Bobby a platform. Whey they aren't seeing is that the more people get to know RFK, Jr., the more they think that he's an unhinged lunatic. Since the Hyannis Jerkoff is running against Biden, the GOP is, in effect, helping Biden by giving that nepo-baby nutjob a platform.

This is from current polling in NH, where voters were asked for a single word that they associated with Kennedy:

Little Bobby is 60% underwater in the polls:

The only people who like him are Republicans and Fox News. And their opinions don't fucking matter one bit.

That Had to Smart a Tad

This will leave a mark 🤣 pic.twitter.com/RwwLuOvGuR

— thieves getting fucked (@RobberyFaiI) April 19, 2023

Because It's Friday

The Germans do paint their locomotives nicely,

I don't know what this "famous ramp" is. Maybe I'll get around to looking it up. Maybe.

Stamping These Down, Here

MTG is Dumber Than a Box of Hammers

As others have pointed out, it's a pretty stupid political move to write the other guy's ad copy for him. It's even dumber when your words, without any additional snark, can be plopped into an ad for the the guy you oppose.

But that's just what MTG did, in what the Brits call "scoring an own goal".

I approve this message. pic.twitter.com/f1q5giNM8j

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 18, 2023

This is kind of what can happen when you are yammering in an echo chamber. You can bet that the audience at the wingnut conference she was addressing thought that all the things that MTG mentioned were bad things. But to those who are not living in the Tuckyo Rose Memorial Rest Home, fixing Medicare, improving infrastructure, funding education, addressing urban problems and rural poverty all sound like damn fine ideas.

Fascism, Incoming. Maybe

Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

It is, essentially, fascism. It is a plan to use the vast powers of the Federal government to stamp on opponents large and small and reward those who support the TOFF. That is what conservatives, beside the TOFF (who is only in it for the money) love to do. Conservatives haven't changed since the days of Jim Crow, when they used all means, legal or not, to crush Black people. The violent coup in Wilimgton, NC and the destruction of Black Wall Street in Tulsa were just two examples of that. It is, after all, conservatives, who spent over a century defending lynch law. It was Nixon who started the War on Drugs in order to punish two groups of people he didn't like (Blacks and hippies).

The article is outside the paywall, so judge for yourself.

Bribing,er, Doing Favors for a Supreme Court Justice is Apparently a Legit Business Expense

It seems that Clarence the Grifting Justice's ol' asshole buddy, Harlan Crow, deducted the costs of hosting Clarence on a yacht trip.

It's a tad bit more complicated than that but that's the gist of it. Crow used his "yachting business" to generate losses, so he could take the costs of his toy off his taxes.

Official announcement: I no longer give a fuck about people cheating on welfare, unemployment or workers' comp. If the uber-rich can cheat the system with impunity, poor and working-class people should, too.

The Wheels Grind On

Michigan’s attorney general filed felony charges Tuesday against 16 Republicans who acted as fake electors for then-President Donald Trump in 2020, accusing them of submitting false certificates that confirmed they were legitimate electors despite Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, announced Tuesday that all 16 people would face eight criminal charges, including forgery and conspiracy to commit election forgery. The top charges carry a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.

The group includes the head of the Republican National Committee’s chapter in Michigan, Kathy Berden, as well as the former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, Meshawn Maddock, and Shelby Township Clerk Stan Grot.

Obviously, all are allegations until a trial is held. But if, and I do mean if, these people are convicted, they should all serve consecutive sentences. Because they tried to fraudulenty steal the election for their Orange Master, none of them can be classified as being loyal to this country.

Meanwhile, another one of the members of the Cult of the Orange God has been convicted for participating in the TOFF's Insurrection.

A Pennsylvania woman who used a bullhorn to direct rioters attacking the U.S. Capitol was convicted on Tuesday of charges that she joined the mob in an attempt to keep President Joe Biden out of the White House.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth heard testimony without a jury before he convicted Rachel Marie Powell of felony charges stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, siege. Powell, who was convicted of all nine counts in her indictment, is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 17, according to court records.

One of the TOFF's "very fine people" has been arrested for participating in the Trumpist Coup Attempt.

A man who served a prison term for joining torch-toting white nationalists in marching through the University of Virginia’s campus in 2017 has been arrested on charges that he stormed the U.S. Capitol and attacked police officers.

Tyler Bradley Dykes, 25, of Bluffton, South Carolina, was arrested in Charlottesville, Virginia, and made his initial court appearance on Monday, according to court records. A federal judge ordered Dykes held in custody until a detention hearing on Wednesday.

Videos captured Dykes tearing down police barriers, attacking officers outside the Capitol and stealing a riot shield during a mob’s attack on Jan. 6, 2021, an FBI affidavit says.

But while that asswipe is being held in custody until a detention hearing, you can bet your farm that the thug who set all of this into motion won't be held for a millisecond in a jail cell after being indicted and until he's tried for his coup attempt.

Boozing These Down, Here

Why is Wrong DeSantis Standing Up His Own Militia

There is something seriously wrong about his organizing his own private armed goon squad.

More and more, Florida is becoming a state that is attractive for unhinged fascist lunatics.

H/T

I'd Like to See Some Proof, Though. Even Though I fully Believe that Rudy and the TOFF are Two of the Most Despicable and Corrupt People in the Country

A woman who said she worked for Rudy Giuliani during the last two years of the Trump administration alleged in a wide-ranging lawsuit that Giuliani, the former president’s personal attorney, discussed selling presidential pardons and detailed plans to overturn the 2020 election results.

In a 70-page complaint filed in state court in New York on Monday, Noelle Dunphy said that after Giuliani hired her in January 2019 he sexually assaulted and harassed her, refused to pay her wages and often made "sexist, racist, and antisemitic remarks," adding that she had recordings of numerous interactions with him.

If there is any proof, one would hope than charges will be forthcoming.

Putin Reserves "the Right to Reciprocate" By Doing Something That He's Been Doing From Day One of the War

President of Russia Vladimir Putin said that Russian troops could use cluster munitions if Ukraine’s Armed Forces use the weapons, reports Interfax.

“Russia has a sufficient supply of various kinds of cluster munitions,” Putin said in an interview on the program “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin” on state-owned television Network Russia-1.

“So far we haven’t been doing that, haven’t been using them, and we didn’t have the need to despite a well-known [ammunition] shortage at a certain period in time,” said Putin.

Putin is a Trump-grade liar. The Russians have been using cluster munitions against civilian areas since the war began.

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

Bunches of helicopters prep for a presidential visit.

(Assholish political comments prohibited.)

Another Asshole Reveals That He is Antisemitic to His Core

RFK, Jr., a nasty piece of work, antivaxxer and addle-pated conspiracy theorist, who now blames COVID-19 on the Jews.

Scratch a COVID conspiracy theorist and you'll find a Nazi.

H/T

What's Next From the Party of the Christian Taliban

Who said all political ads are boring? This is probably the hottest political ad you’ll ever see.

OHIO vote NO on August 8th 🔥 pic.twitter.com/nGv4Q8LUrT

— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) July 15, 2023

Cartoon link.

And that is no shit. Don't kid yourselves, those six reactionary jerkoffs have their eye on overturning Griswold V. CT, which held that there was a constitutional right to use birth control. But the Christian Taliban/Republicans want to have the government overseeing your sexual relations, once more.

Of Course the MAGA Republicans Are Going to Put Their Twisted Pet Culture War Issues Ahead of National Defense

It's what they do.

The House passed a sweeping defense bill Friday that provides an expected 5.2% pay raise for service members but strays from traditional military policy with Republicans add-ons blocking abortion coverage, diversity initiatives at the Pentagon and transgender care that deeply divided the chamber.

Note that one of the MAGA congressmen used the term "colored people", probably because he caught himself at the last minute and didn't use the word that he really wanted to use. On a separate note, it would seem that Matt Gaetz hasn't yet gotten up the nerve to try to lower the sexual age of consent to age ten.

The Pro-Putin MAGA congressmen tried to pass a bill that would make their Uncle Vladdy proud, but even that was a vote too far for a majority of Republicans. You can see a list of the mouth-breathing, low-wattage, pro-Putinites, here. Most of them are known to be too stupid to be allowed to go outside in an electrical storm.

But it's what one might expect from a political party that is so, so enamored with having named Army bases after traitors.

Caturday

Priss, the 60% outdoor cat. She wasn't happy because it was raining and she couldn't leave the garage.

Aux barricades, mes amis !

Today is Bastille Day, the French National Day.

A version that is more familiar to American audiences:

Allons enfants de la Patrie
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'étendard sanglant est levé
Entendez-vous dans nos campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats ?
Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras.
Égorger vos fils, vos compagnes !

Aux armes citoyens
Formez vos bataillons
Marchons, marchons
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons

(Full translation, which makes The Star-Spangled Banner look pacifistic.)

The Bastille was torn down very soon afterwards. Very little of it survives. The key to the fortress was given by Marquis de Lafayette to President Washington. It is on display at Mount Vernon.

Because It's Friday

One of those huge-ass, insanely-long frieght trains got stuck on a grade in Nebraska.

Fortunately, help was available:

The TOFF Keeps On Grifting; Family Ed.

It appears that Trump's main super PAC, along with two other Republican groups, made six-figure payments to Melania Trump. The super PAC then failed to accurately report the payments to the FEC, characterizing them as payments to another vendor. https://t.co/RUpvri9N8d

— @robertmaguire.bsky.social (@RobertMaguire_) July 13, 2023

They tried to disguise the payment by washing it through some management agency.

H/T

Galumping These Down, Here

Killing Generals Could Get to be a Habit with the Ukrainians

A senior Russian general has been killed in a missile strike in Ukraine, Russian sources have said.

Lt Gen Oleg Tsokov is said to have died in a strike on a hotel housing Russian military commanders in Berdyansk, on Ukraine's occupied southern coast.
...
Lt Gen Tsokov was deputy commander of Russia's southern military district. Ms Skabeyeva who presents a talk show on the state-run Rossiya-1 channel said he was killed by a UK-supplied Storm Shadow missile.

That doesn't say much for Russian OPSEC that Ukrainians were able to determine where Russian senior officers were spending the night and then blow the shit out of the building.

An Ally So Unreliable, It Might as Well Be France

Sweden’s membership of NATO took a big step forward on Monday after Turkey agreed to remove one of the last major roadblocks in return for help in reviving Turkey’s own chances of joining the European Union.

Everything with Erdogan has a price. He keeps wavering between supporting European efforts in the Russo-Ukrainian war and sucking up to his good friend, Czar Vladimir III. He agreed to buy S400 missiles from the Russians, but that didn't go over so well with his erstwhile allies. He also wanted to buy upgraded F-16s and F-35s, but that got a general reaction of "go fuck yourself" in Washington.

Erdogan probably feels the need to woo back Turkey's friends. He's also making nice with Greece, but that'll only last until he feels the need to show Turks that he's a tough guy. That seems to be a peculiar affliction with elected wannabee autocrats.[1]

I don't believe that Erdogan's so-called "charm offensive" will have any lasting effect. Every other nation in Europe and the Middle East knows who he really is.
_____________
[1] See, Viktor Orban, Chimpy and the TOFF.

Tommy Tuberville is (a) Racist; (b) Stupid; (c) Batshit Crazy; or (d) All of the Above

Collins: "A white nationalist is racist, Senator."@SenTuberville: "Well, that's your opinion." pic.twitter.com/iTI4BgLaR0

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) July 11, 2023

"Some of my best friends are Klansmen"...

But now, under massive amounts of fire, Tuberville is backwatering.

Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama finally condemned White nationalists, telling reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday that “White nationalists are racists,” after previously refusing to equate White nationalism with racism.
...
When [earlier] asked what his opinion was, Tuberville said, “My opinion of a White nationalist, if someone wants to call them White nationalist, to me is an American.”

It hasn't stopped him from holding the military hostage to his Christian Taliban beliefs.

Cry Me a River; MyPillow Ed.

MyPillow is auctioning off hundreds of pieces of equipment and subleasing manufacturing space after several shopping networks and major retailers took the company's products off shelves.

The Chaska-based manufacturer recently listed more than 850 "surplus equipment" items on the online auction site K-Bid. Sewing machines, industrial fabric spreaders, forklifts and even desks and chairs are up for auction.

Gee, it seems as though fewer and fewer retailers want to be associated with a clown who was openly advocating for a coup and who has embraced one bullshit conspiracy theory after another.

By the time he finishes losing every civil suit brought against him, Lindell will be lucky if he can afford to buy used skivvys at a thrift store. And he will have done it to himself. Nobody made him sign onto the Cult of Cadet Bone Spurs.

(H/T)

Even More Supreme Grifting

It goes beyond the conservative grifters.

For colleges and libraries seeking a boldfaced name for a guest lecturer, few come bigger than Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court justice who rose from poverty in the Bronx to the nation’s highest court.

She has benefited, too — from schools’ purchases of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of the books she has written over the years.

Sotomayor’s staff has often prodded public institutions that have hosted the justice to buy her memoir or children’s books, works that have earned her at least $3.7 million since she joined the court in 2009.

These gigs are often arranged by the Spreme Court staff for all of the justices. So they are using taxpayer money and government employees to facilitate their side hustles. That, of course, is forbidden for congresscritters and presidents (not that the TOFF would pay attention to that rule. But for the Supremes, especially Sotomayor, they seem to take it as their due that government-paid employees work to make it easier for the justices to work their grifts.

Meanwhile, Ol' Johnny Roberts is off, wringing his hands, because more and more Americans are regarding the justices as just another pack of corrupt politicos.

EVs Are Not Selling Well

Compared to internal combustion or hybrid cars, EVs are piling up on the lots.

Personally, I don't make a lot of long-distance drives anymore. My longest trip, these days, is to visit my mother in her nursing home three states away. Most EVs have the range to make the trip. But once I got there, there is no place to plug in and charge up. If I wanted to stop for lunch on the way, there's no place to charge a vehicle.

But there are plenty of gas stations. And pumping up a tankful of gas only takes a few minutes.

Lazing These Down, Here

Cluster Bombs

President Joe Biden on Friday defended what he said was a “difficult decision” to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine, a move the administration said was key to the fight and buttressed by Ukraine’s promise to use the controversial bombs carefully.

I don't see it as a difficult decision. The Russians have been using cluster munitions in Ukraine since the start of the war. One of the Golden Rules of Warfare is "I'll Do Unto You Like You Did Unto Me." If the Ukranians can make good use out of cluster weapons, fine, send them on over.

The Fuckery That Is Putin's Russia

First off, they've had close to 50,000 soldiers killed in his failure of a war of conquest.

Roughly 47,000. That is how many Russian soldiers have died so far in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to a joint study by journalists at Meduza and Mediazona and Tubingen University statistician Dmitry Kobak. Analyzing existing reports about published obituaries, mortality data from the Federal State Statistics Service, and extensive records from the National Probate Registry, we estimate that between 40,000 and 55,000 Russian men under the age of 50 died fighting in Ukraine by May 27, 2023. When factoring in the number of men wounded so seriously that they did not return to military service, Russia’s total casualty count rises to at least 125,000 soldiers, based on our calculations. (This figure does not include missing or captured soldiers or Ukrainian nationals fighting with Russian proxy forces based in Donetsk and Luhansk.)

In 15 months of fighting (from February 24, 2022, to late May 2023), three times more Russian soldiers died in Ukraine than Soviet troops over 10 years of war in Afghanistan. Nine times more soldiers were killed in Ukraine than in the first Russian-Chechen War between 1994 and 1996. The numbers presented below are remarkable not just because they signify the tens of thousands of men Vladimir Putin has sent to die in a war of aggression but also because the authorities have labored tirelessly to conceal the invasion’s true and growing costs to Russians themselves.

When one adds in the thousands of men who have fled Russia to avoid being drafted into the Czar's war, that is a serious loss of fertile-aged men for a country that is already facing demographic collapse. Immigration could help, but seriously, who, other than North Koreans, would want to immigrate to Russia?

Now, let's shift gears to the aborded Wagner Revolt:

Russian President Vladimir Putin met mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin after the failed Wagner group mutiny last month, the Kremlin says.

Prigozhin, who heads the mercenary group, was among 35 Wagner commanders invited to the meeting in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov added.

There have been times in the past where a rebellious commander, like Prigozhin, would have been dragged to Lefortovo Prison for some interrogation under torture, followed by his execution. So the question is whether Putin is seriously weakened that he can't afford the risk of having Prigozhin shot or he is playing a longer game.

Bet That They Are Already Claiming that He Was Killed as Part of a Conspiracy

The leader of a QAnon cult who convinced thousands of people that former president John F. Kennedy and his son JFK, Jr. are still alive has died, VICE News can exclusively report.

Michael Protzman, 60, died last Friday in the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota a week after an accident at the Meadow Valley Motocross track in Millville, Minnesota. Protzman’s death was confirmed to VICE News in a phone call with the Minnesota Department of Health.

His wet-brained followers believe that this is all part of the plot to reveal the TOFF as JFK, Jr., or that the TOFF has JFK, Jr. stashed away. Maybe he's impersonating RFK, Jr. Who the hell knows what they believe, because they are all about as crazy as one can be outside of a locked ward.

Multiple Choice Question: Iowa Republicans are (a) Racist; (b) Stupid; or (c) Both

Iowa Republicans announced Saturday that the party’s presidential nominating caucuses will be held Jan. 15, on the federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., putting the first votes of the 2024 election a little more than six months away as the GOP tries to reclaim the White House.

The anacephanic who is the state party chairman said that they were honoring Dr. King by holding the caucus on the holiday, but then admitted that nobody considered that it was a holiday when they scheduled it. So they're trying to cover up stupidity by racism, I gather.

Even Cadet Bone Spurs wasn't that stupid/rqcist. When someone pointed out that his rally in Tulsa (home of the eponymous massacre) was scheduled for Juneteenth, he, at least, moved it by a day. The Iowa republicans probably figure that there aren't enough Black republicans to matter and they're just has happy to subltly suggest to them that Black republicans stay home in order to keep Iowa white.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

A MD-11:

Killing People for Hubris (and Money)

The only positive thing about the OceanGate disaster is that the clown who essentially guaranteed that it would happen died in the implosion. It was about as inevitable a disaster as can be.

At every step of the way, Stockton Rush seemed to revel in defying common sense. the laws of physics, and good engineering practices. He hired people who, whether from inexperience or lack of training, didn't know what they were doing. He used materials that were not suited for the purpose, because he thought that defying the rules was a good thing. Which may be, to some extent, but when dealing with hostile environments, safety rules are often written with blood. Rules come about because people have gotten themselved killed, or killed other people, from doing stupid shit.

There seems to have been far less oversight of the construction of OceanGate's submersible than there is of some guy building a GT400 in his garage.

Here's one that can be learned: When you want to take a ride on something, and the operator tells you that you're going to be given the title of "mission specialist," think really, really hard about finding something else to do for funzies.

Caturday

Chip listens to an approaching thunderstorm.

Because It's Friday

You see a lot of Brit steam here because it's the easiest to find and this here's not a paying gig.

Kids, You Are So Fucked.

Sweltering heat is blanketing much of the planet, and one unofficial analysis says the past seven days have been the hottest week on record, the latest grim milestone in a series of climate-change-driven extremes.

It's not just a few days of global heat. The icepacks are melting at record rates, the oceans are warming.

You were told this was going to happen. You've been warned for decades. More carbon dioxide has been dumped into the atmosphere since knowledge of the problem became generally available than had been since humans began burning coal to any great degree.

But did the primary users of fossil fuels do anything? Nope. They sat around with their thumbs in their mouths and their heads up their asses while the fossil fuel and auto industries shoveled out the same lies and obfuscations that the tobacco industry did about the dangers of smoking and the car industry did about tetraethyllead.

And nobody wanted to listen. Because the problems would happen in the future and what has the future done for us? It was more fun to watch the goings-on of stupid celebrities who really do nothing productive. We were more concerned about who was marrying whom and what kind of kids got to play what sports or what pro baller took a knee and other inane culture-war issues, instead of doing something about the building fire that threatened our only home.

So now the first chickens are coming home to roost. Over the next decades and beyond, there will be a lot more chickens. The plastic-filled seas will continue to rise. Weather will become more extreme. Areas of the globe that have been fertile cropland for generations will cease to be so. As the glaciers melt and disappear, potable water will become much harder to get, much more expensive, in places where a billion or more people live. There are already climate-fueled mass migrations. There will be wars over dwindling resources.

It's not as though people weren't warned. But we all refused to listen. We refused to act in meaningful ways. One city recyling its waste was good, but it didn't make a dent in it. Buying a Prius instead of a Challenger would be meaningless (unless tens of millions did).

Only now, it's not a problem for the future. It's a problem for us. We've heated up the Earth too fast and contaminated it in the process. If your family has babies on the way or very young children, you may want to apologize to them when they're old enough to understand.

Because things are going to get worse, and they're the ones who are going to in the thick of it.