Ringing These Down, Here

Only Speak Good of the Dead.Good!

Henry Kissinger is dead.

He was a war criminal, an arranger of Latin American coups, an enemy of democracy, a friend to tyrants and a Russian apologist. He will be missed by dictators and autocrats.

The opinion of another dead man:

"Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević. While Henry continues to nibble nori rolls and remaki at A-list parties, Cambodia, the neutral nation he secretly and illegally bombed, invaded, undermined, and then threw to the dogs, is still trying to raise itself up on its one remaining leg." -- Anthony Bourdain

"I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction." -- Clarence Darrow

"Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize." -- Tom Lehrer

Modi Channels His Inner Putin, orWhat's Hindi for "Mister Bone Saw"?

An Indian government official directed a plot to assassinate a prominent Sikh separatist leader living in New York City, U.S. prosecutors said Wednesday as they announced charges against a man they said was part of the thwarted murder conspiracy.

U.S. officials became aware last spring of the plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who advocated for the creation of a sovereign Sikh state and is considered a terrorist by the Indian government.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration interceded and set up a sting, with an undercover agent posing as a hitman, after the conspirators recruited an international narcotics trafficker in the plot to murder the activist for $100,000.
...
In October, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines travelled to India to share information with Indian government officials to aid their internal investigation.

The big difference, of course, is that neither the Russians nor the Saudis would not be so clumsy as to try and outsource a hit.

Sounds as though the desire is to try and avoid the step where ambassadors get sent home or recalled for consultations.

One of Two Things is Going On With Space Karen

Either he's losing more and more of his mind, or he's shit-stirring in order to keep his ugly puss in the press.

Elon Musk continued to boost a debunked conspiracy theory Tuesday, posting and later deleting a meme on X that referred to a fringe, far-right claim that sought to connect members of the Democratic Party with child abuse.

Musk wrote “does seem at least a little suspicious” alongside a meme drawing from the TV show “The Office,” which included fake dialogue superimposed on images of a character arguing that “Pizzagate is real,” a reference to a conspiracy theory that gained traction in 2016 and culminated with a North Carolina man’s opening fire in a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. NBC News reviewed the post before it was taken down.

If he's really losing his marbles, then bless his heart. If he's just shit-stirring, then he is a hateful troll who, when anyone says his name, they should immediately spit on the ground.

Of Course the UAE is Corrupt as Fuck

The United Arab Emirates planned to use its role as the host of UN climate talks as an opportunity to strike oil and gas deals, the BBC has learned.

Leaked briefing documents reveal plans to discuss fossil fuel deals with 15 nations.

The UN body responsible for the COP28 summit told the BBC hosts were expected to act without bias or self-interest.

The UAE team did not deny using COP28 meetings for business talks, and said "private meetings are private".

Private meetings are private and corrupt intent is corrupt. Using a summit on climate issues to negotiate oil and gals deals is akin to hosting a summit on human trafficking and using that as a way to get laid.

Revolving These Down, Here

Kevin McCarthy Is Clearly One of the Dumbest People In Congress

Think for one moment. In every single war that America has fought, we have never asked for land afterward—except for enough to bury the Americans who gave the ultimate sacrifice for freedom. pic.twitter.com/XbReeVvWPX

— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) November 27, 2023

Yeah, I know. That's a right-wing fiction, which that dumbbell repeated.

Let's go to the historical record, shall we?

Spanish-American War. We got the Phillipines (set free in 1946), Guam and Puerto Rico, both of which are American territories to this day.

Mexican-American War. We got territory that is now spread across seven states, territory that we had formally recognized as belonging to Spain (then Mexico) in a treaty in 1819. It is worth noting that California was part of that, which McCarthy apparently believes was completely uninhabited before 1848. Because he is a total moron. Or he believes that we needed something like half-a-million square miles of land to bury our casualties.

First Seminole War. We got Florida (OK, that was a mistake).

And then there is all the territory that the US formally acknowleded belonged to various Indian tribes, until some white folk here and there decided they wanted it, so the Army took it away from its rightful owners. And places we just took for shits and grins, such as Hawaii.

Apparently the educational system in California when McCarthy was going through school was as piss-poor as that of Texas, for he didn't learn shit.

H/T

Nazi-Adjacent Widdle Elon Tries for Some Blue-Washing

Elon Musk, who's been under fire for endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory and wider accusations of hatred flourishing on his social media platform X, visited Israel, where he toured a kibbutz attacked by Hamas militants and held talks with top leaders.

Big fucking whoop. Musk flew on his Gulfstream to go watch the World Cup final game in Qatar, so it's not as though this was some major effort for him. Musk has endorsed antisemitic posts and he has willingly permitted Nazis and white supremacists to post on his platform, turning it into a cesspit of hatred and bigotry.

Musk flying his jet to Israel for a tour is about as significant as most people taking a cab across town to visit a museum. We'll see if he actually makes changes to his online septic tank.

I'm betting that he won't and he'll have some mealy-mouthed reason why there will be no changes to his shitshow of hate.

Why Bother With Getting a Pesky Edjumacation?

In Louisiana, you can just claim to be home-schooled, fork over some cash and get a diploma. Your folks can send you to work at the local fast-food emporium, garage, or industrial operation and say that you got an education at the School of Hard Knocks.

Colleges and employers are going to need to be keeping lists of states (most of them southern) from which diplomas are worthless.

There's No Grifter Like an Aristocrat

It's called bona vacantia. When a Brit dies intestate and there are no known relatives, the dead person's assets go to either the Duke or Cornwall or the Duke of Lancaster, if the dead person resides in those domains. The duke (King Chuck for Lancaster, Prince Billy for Cornwall) is supposed to hold it in trust for any future claimants, but the reality of it is that they are free to use it as a slush fund.

King Big Ears uses the money to refurbish properties he owns, so they can be rented out for more money, and the rental proceeds are part of his income. His predecessor, Eddie VIII, just outright took the money. Supposedly, when it came to light after the Second World War that the then-king was making bank from those dead servicemen who died intestate and without relatives, the royals promised that the proceeds would go to charity.

But that hasn't happened in reality. It's pretty hard to see how refurbishing Chickie's rental properties qualifies as a charitable use. The Brits spend more on their royal welfare clan than any other country, but that's not enough for them, it would seem. Whatever they manage to get from their various properties and investments and so forth apparently are tax-free, so their profits don't contribute a whit to the national purse.

Of the European countries that had royal heads at the end of the 19th Century, all of the others have managed to downgrade or eliminate their system of rule by inbred cousins. Only the Brits seem to be devoted to maintaining their system of highly expensive and otherwise useless tourist attractions.

H/T

Four Essential Truths About the Middle East

1.  Seven million Israeli Jews live there.
2.  Seven million Palestinian Arabs live there.
3.  Nobody is going anywhere.
4.  Nobody is going to kill their way to a lasting conclusion.

Anyone who mouths Hamas talking points such as "from the river to the sea" call for genocide or the Israeli settlers' crap about "restoring Judea and Samaria" should be given short shrift.[1]

I imagine that one of the outcomes of this war will be the exit of both Hamas and Netanyahu from power. They had a weird sort of symbiotic if not parasitic relationship with each other. Netanyahu used Hamas to whip up the far-right of Israeli society, but there is plenty of evidence in his own words of how good Hamas was for his political aspirations. Hamas, for its turn, used Netanyahu, in part, for its justification for its dictatorial rule of the Gaza Strip and for its program of martyrdom.

What it brought the Israelis was the most violent anti-Jewish pogrom since the Polish pogroms at the end of the Second World War. Netanyahu promised to keep the population safe and he utterly failed. Once the war is over, he will, in almost every conceivable outcome, be turfed out of office.

What it brought the residents of the Gaza Strip was the near-complete destruction of any significant infrastructure. Gaza City, where 600,000 people lived, has been rendered almost as uninhabitable as the Moon.[2]. Over 11,000 people have been killed in Gaza and it is reasonable to suppose that the overwhelming majority of them didn't sign onto Hamas's plan of martyrdom. They didn't have a choice when Hamas diverted resources to build military infrastructure under their homes, schools, businesses and hospitals.

Someone might begin pointing out that the destruction rained down on Gaza by Israel was foretold in Lebanon in 2006, when a Hezbollah attack resulted in a month-long war that shattered much of Lebanon's infrastructure south of Beirut. The lesson then was that given a severe enough provocation, the Israelis would have no compunction about breaking everything they could.[3]

Once this war ends, then unless both sides recognize the essential truths of the situation and then decide to see about finding a way out of the fighting, then the sole alternative is going to be another war.
___________
[1] Pelting them with rotten fruit is probably not a good idea. Attractive though it might be.
[2] Other than a breathable atmosphere and a 24-hour day.
[3] As much as their Iranian paymasters may have desired otherwise, it is notable that Hezbollah stayed out of this war.

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

Marine One:

If This Story Be True, Then I Wish All Success to Mossad As They Hunt Those Bastards

The first indications of possible sexual violence came as early as Oct. 7, the day that thousands of Hamas and other fighters streamed into Israeli towns and began live-streaming bloodshed and torture.

Footage showed several women stripped of their clothing. One video showed a woman, her hands zip-tied behind her back, with blood on the crotch of her pants.

Later came testimony from witnesses and first responders. One witness described in graphic detail a gang rape at the Nova rave site near Re’im. An Israeli reserve combat paramedic told The Post that he found the bodies of teenage girls with signs of sexual assault.
...
Earlier this month, Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau based in Qatar, also said in an interview with the BBC that “women, children and civilians were exempt” from Hamas’s attacks — despite a death toll that was made up mostly of those groups.
...
One woman, her face blurred and her identity concealed in a video statement to police, said she saw a gang rape at the Nova rave near Re’im during the Oct. 7 attack, as she lay down, pretending to be dead.

The witness saw a woman bleeding from the back, she said, first bent over, then pulled back up by combatants. One man pulled the woman’s long hair and raped her, the witness said, then passed her onto another man, who also raped her before shooting her in the head.

“He didn’t pick up his pants,” the witness said. “He shot her while inside her.”

I am sure that there are people who read this who will feel some urge to justify what Hamas did. I expect that regular readers of this blog have an idea what I would say to them in response.

Caturday

Priss sits up on her heated bed. She seems to like that it is ringed with fleece to block the drafts.

It’s Tough to be an Ex-Cop in Prison

Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, was stabbed by another inmate and seriously injured Friday at a federal prison in Arizona, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

I'm somewhat surprised that it's been this long. Unless the BoP moves him to a Supermax, he won't make it to the end of his sentence.

Because It's Friday

The Patagonian Express:

More Price-Fixing

An Illinois jury ruled this week that several major egg producers conspired to limit the U.S.'s supply of eggs in order to raise prices in a case stemming from a federal lawsuit originally filed 12 years ago.

Several large food manufacturing companies including Kraft Foods Global, Inc. and The Kellogg Company alleged in the lawsuit originally filed in 2011 that producers used various means to limit the U.S. domestic supply of eggs to increase the prices of eggs and egg products during the 2000s. The time frame of the conspiracy was an issue throughout the case; jurors ultimately determined damages occurred between 2004-2008.

A jury unanimously delivered its verdict Tuesday in the Northern District of Illinois and damages will be decided in a trial scheduled for next week.

The suppliers include the family company of an Indiana egg farmer running for the U.S. Senate in the state.

And, guess what? He's a Repubican.

Give Thanks for Free Snark

Happy Thanksgiving

On a number of radio stations back in the day, playing the entire song was a Thanksgiving tradition. Some of them were commercial stations-- almost nineteen minutes of no commercials. And some of them played it twice, at noon and 3 PM.

The judge was really blind, he had a Seeing-Eye dog. He played himself in the movie (as did Officer Obie).

I hope that if you're in America, you and yours have a good Thanksgiving. Try not to punch out your racist uncle or your commie nephew.

And please, enjoy the day without resorting to rampant consumerism.

Or burning down your hostess's house.

And you can maintain peace at the table by dividing up the attendees.

(Yes, this is almost a complete repeat from earlier years. So sue me.)

Stand By for Some Epic Pooch-Screwing

The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday granted Boeing approval to begin flight tests of its 737 MAX 10 jet with FAA pilots on board. It’s a key step that allows the FAA to gather flight data for certification of the airplane.

In an internal message to employees, Mike Fleming, Boeing vice president who leads its commercial aircraft development programs, celebrated the move forward in what has been an unprecedently slow process — one that still has a long way to go.

“This is a significant milestone as we work to get the 737-10, the largest airplane in the 737 MAX family, certified to enter passenger service with operators around the world,” Fleming wrote.

I am of the mind that maybe it'd be best to not get on one for a few years, if possible. Boeing's QA/QC procedures aren't ones to inspire confidence. The company's reputation is one of shaving corners wherever possible.

A Tune for the Day Before Thanksgiving

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
That's how it goes.
Everybody knows.

By Leonard Cohen

2020 Voter Fraud

And, once again, it was a Republican doing the fraud, convicted on 52 counts.

The defense basically didn't put on a case, going with the old tactic of argung "they ain't got nothing." It didn't work.

UPDATED: Buffalo Border Crash

A border crossing between the U.S. and Canada has been closed after a vehicle exploded at a checkpoint on a bridge near Niagara Falls.

The FBI’s field office in Buffalo said in a statement that it was investigating the explosion on the Rainbow Bridge, which connects the two countries across the Niagara River.

Photos and video taken by news organizations and posted on social media showed a security booth that had been singed by flames.

Further information wasn’t immediately available.

No doubt that the 101st Keyboard Commenteriat will be jumping to the usual conclusions.

UPDATE: Apparently, it was just garden-variety automotive stupidity. Whether or not alcohol was involved... TBD.

UPDATE 2: In reading some of the linked coverage elsewhere, one thing is clear: Fox News rots people's brains. No explosives in the car, no link to terrorism, both were things that those numbnuts at Fox claimed to be true,

Sixty Years Ago

Sixty years ago today, John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. This is what I wrote about that fifteen years ago.

One of my cousins was about to have a birthday party when the news broke. My cousin's reaction was along the lines of "so much for this day ever being about me." (I once knew a guy whose family was going to throw him a big party for his fortieth birthday on the afternoon of September 11, 2001.)

Some of us haven't forgotten the reaction among the American Right over the news. Back then, we'd calll them "the far-Right" and "the Birchers", but these days, the moderate wing of the Republican party doesn't seem to be visible.

Cryptocurrency or Criminal-Currency?

The U.S. government dealt a massive blow to Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, which agreed to pay a roughly $4 billion settlement Tuesday as its founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to a felony related to his failure to prevent money laundering on the platform.

Zhao stepped down as the company’s chief executive and Binance admitted in the settlement to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and apparent violations of sanctions programs, including failure to put into place suspicious transaction reporting programs.

Cryptocurrency seems to be more of a tool for crime than for serious investment.

Schmearing These Down, Here

When the Far Right Utters Their Pedophile Slurs, They're Looking in a Mirror

A Philadelphia-based outreach leader for Moms for Liberty – the conservative parental rights group that is pushing to exclude discussion of gender and diversity from school curricula – has been exposed as a registered sex offender.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Phillip Fisher Jr – a pastor and local Republican ward leader who volunteered at Moms for Liberty’s national summit in Philadelphia this year – pleaded guilty in 2012 to a charge of aggravated sexual abuse involving a 14-year-old boy when he was 25 and living in Chicago.

Conservative, pastor and sex offender... it's like hitting a trifecta of sleaze.

Of course, the kiddy-diddling felon blames everyone else:

According to court records, Fisher pleaded guilty to one of 12 charges filed against him after an investigation by the Chicago police. The charging documents allege Fisher had oral and anal sex with the victim in the case in January 2011.

Fisher served three years in prison followed by two years of supervised release.

He told the Inquirer that the charges against him were fabricated – a “railroad job” – and drummed up by the political action committee for Lyndon LaRouche, a US presidential candidate now widely regarded as conspiracy theorist.

Yeah, yeah, he was innocent as the driven snow, in his mind.

Patreon

Patreon is a sort of super-blogger, where people of note can post content and other people can subscribe (for cash). I signed up for American Fighting Revolver beone of the people involved because I do like wheelguns and I kinda sorta know one of the people involved.

But I don't know how that model works for most people. For readers, five bucks a month isn't all that much, but read a few more and it starts to add up. When it does start to add up, then users start pruning back. If the creators don't have a lot of subscribers, then they're not making much for their efforts. Then if they start paring back, the doom loop begins: Fewer posts, fewer subscribers.

The apparent fact that Patreon is arguably a pro-Russian service is a bit disquieting. So is the kidde porn allegations.

Eighty Years

Eighty years ago, the Marines landed on Tarawa, the first of the heavily-opposed "storm landings" in the Pacific. It could have been a lot worse, absent the pulverizing of a lot of Betio island's defenses by direct fire from battleships. The Japanese commander was killed by sniper fire from a destroyer's 5" gun.

In a harbinger of the future storm landings, the Marines killed almost all of the defenders, who fought to the bitter end. They paid the butcher's bill for it, too.

A Blogger Down (an in "Injured")

Burr Deming, the writer of Fair and Unbalanced. was the victim of a violent attack. He's had one surgery and there may be more.

A Life Well Lived

Former first lady Rosalynn Carter, the closest adviser to Jimmy Carter during his one term as U.S. president and their four decades thereafter as global humanitarians, has died at the age of 96. The Carter Center said she died Sunday after living with dementia and suffering many months of declining health. The statement said she “died peacefully, with family by her side” [yesterday] at 2:10 p.m. at her rural Georgia home of Plains. “Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” the former president said in the statement. “She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

Mrs. Carter did what she coud to make the world a better place. May her memory be a blessing.

Meatball Ron is Really a Gutless Weasel

Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is refusing to condemn Elon Musk ‘s post endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory, maintaining Sunday that he wasn’t familiar with the post despite it prompting major companies to pull advertising from the billionaire’s X social media platform.

“I did not see the comment,” DeSantis, the governor of Florida, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And so, I know that Elon has had a target on his back ever since he purchased Twitter because I think he’s taking it in a direction that a lot of people who are used to controlling the narrative don’t like.”

I don't buy that he doesn't know what Musk said, not for a second. It's been all over the news for day and anyone running for a major public office pretty much keeps their ears to the ground and their eyes open. He knows, all right. You can bet on that. He's just too gutless to say anything, because he doesn't want to take a chance of pissing off that Nazi-Adjacent Afrikaaner troll who is almost as beloved by the neo-Nazi base as the TOFF is.

ETA: DeSantis seems to believe that he can both play with neo-Nazis and avoid criticism by supporting Israel.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

The B-3 B-21.

Amazing footage! Stablized and post-processed to reduce that jitter. pic.twitter.com/u0gjTD1KoP

— C Schmitz (@chrisschmitz) November 10, 2023

It still irks me that the mentally-deficient leaders in the Zommies got to trash the aircraft designation system because some alcohol-besotted functionary thought that "B-21" was a cooler designation than "B-3" for their latest flying money-sink.

Nazi-Adjacent Tech Boss Gets His Feelings Hurt, Threatens to Sue, Just As His Orange God Would Have Done

Elon Musk has said he will be filing a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters and others, after major US companies paused their adverts on his social media site over concerns about antisemitism.

The media watchdog Media Matters said earlier this week that it found corporate advertisements by IBM, Apple, Oracle and Comcast’s Xfinity were being placed alongside antisemitic content, including that praising Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

It led to a number of big names in technology and media announcing they would be withdrawing their advertising. It also included Warner Brothers, Paramount and Disney.

“The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company,” Musk said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

I will bet dollars to doughnuts that Media Matters has screenshots to prove their allegations. Beyond that, as far as I know, unless he's filing his lawsuit in Moose Hollow County, most courts these days have electronic filing. The panties-in-a-wad little bigot could have his lawyers file this morning.

And yes, he's pretty much Nazi-adjacent:

Elon Musk has publicly endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory popular among White supremacists: that Jewish communities push “hatred against Whites.”

There we have it: To Musk, European Jews are not "white people". He apparently has the same ideas of what makes a "white" person as his neo-Nazi buddies-- good old-fashioned Aryan Germans.

Caturday

Speck, a chonky semi-feral.

Because It's Friday

Shit happens with old things.

The Vegas Athletics

The Oakland A's are going to move sometime after the 2024 season.

Every current season ticket holder should cancel their tickets for 2024. Any Oakland A's fan who goes to a game next year has no self-respect and should have their heads examined. The Coliseum should be so empty during home games that the team would have to give free tickets to homeless people in order to have anyone in attendance.

World Record Shooting

Six plates in two seconds from the draw with a 9mm revolver.

I need to watch the earlier ones to learn about the gun he's using. One thing of note is the titanium cylinder. Back in the day, match shooters would put titanium cylinders from 325s into 625s, The Ti cylinders have a lot less mass than steel ones, which translates into easier to get going in rotation and a lot less battering of the gun when the cylinder slams into the bolt. His gun is an N-frame with a compensated. The steel-cylinder .357s are known for going out of time if shot a lot and shot fast. A Model 27 with a Titanium cylinder and a 5" or 3.5" barrel would be the shit.

Sawing These Down, Here

Meanwhile, the Political Comedians Are Crying in Their Beers

The House Ethics committee in a scathing report Thursday said it has amassed “overwhelming evidence” of lawbreaking by Republican Rep. George Santos of New York that has been sent to the Justice Department, concluding flatly that he “cannot be trusted” after a monthslong investigation into his conduct.

Shortly after the panel’s report was released, Santos blasted it in a tweet on X as a “politicized smear” but said he would not be seeking reelection to a second term. He gave no indication he would step aside before his term ends next year, vowing to pursue his “conservative values in my remaining time in Congress.”
...
The panel said that Santos knowingly caused his campaign committee to file false or incomplete reports with the Federal Election Commission; used campaign funds for personal purposes; and engaged in violations of the Ethics in Government Act as it relates to financial disclosure statements filed with the House.

His only "conservative values" are glomming onto everything he can in preparation for an extended time in Club Fed.

If You Really Believe That, Sen. Manchin, Then Sit Down and Shut the Fuck Up

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, days removed from announcing he won’t seek reelection, said Wednesday that if the nation’s voters give former President Donald Trump another term in the White House, “he will destroy democracy in America.”

Manchin, whose home state voters overwhelmingly backed Trump in the last two presidential elections, made the comment on a press call with West Virginia-based reporters amid speculation that Manchin himself might be weighing a third-party run for president.

The moderate West Virginia Democrat said Wednesday that he would never want to be a “spoiler” who contributed to getting any other candidate elected. But he said he would do what he had to in order to save the country.

“If they said, ‘You’re the only person to do it,’ I’ll do whatever I can to save this nation,” he said.

"They", being the same imaginary people who tell shit to the TOFF. Everyone with even a smidgen of polticial sense knows that if Traitor Joe runs for president, he will act as a sppoler and the TOFF stands a greater chance of getting in.

Traitor Joe is a consummate self-inflated narcissist if he even thinks there is a chance that he's the only one who can defeat the TOFF. That he would even utter such a thing betrays his mindset.

A vote for Manchin is a vote for Trump.

More About Prequel

Here is the author,Rachel Maddow, on The Late Show:

A story on CBS Sunday Morning:

"There's a history here that we ought to learn from." Indeed.

So Far, in Prequel

What I have learned, so far:

• The LAPD and the LASD were pro-Nazi.
• Naval Intelligence was not and did what they could about Nazi efforts in the US
• J.Edgar Hoover and the FBI willingly closed their eyes to the American Fascist/Nazi movement and their plots for staging a violent coup.

Prequel, by Rachel Maddow

I already knew that if Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg were not outright Nazis, they were Nazi-adjacent, and why nobody in my parents' generation of the family drove a Ford.

Rivian Truck

The front of one, when the daytime lights are on, look like two toilet seats.

That's probably appropriate, as the company's flushing money. And they're pretty shitty.

Colt Bangity

A handful of years ago, somone was offering hammer shrouds for Colt Detective Specials. I bought one. But then came the problem of having it installed. Maybe it's overly cautious on my part, but the guys calling themselves "gunsmiths" in this area are probably good at assembling AR-15s (or were before they were banned) or working on Glocks or M&Ps. Maybe even 1911s.[1] But there was no way on this Earth that I was going to let them work on a good revolver.

If I sent it out to a revolver gunsmith, it would probably cost close to a C-note in shipping costs each way. So that wasn't attractive.

The nearest good gunsmith is about a four-hour roundtrip. So what I did was just accumulate some other guns that needed work. Both of the Model 28s I bought last winter were either close to out of time or out of time. One had endshake issues. I had a 686 that began malfing and needed a tuneup. And I had a Model 60 that was cheap because it needed some serious unfucking. That was enough, so a couple of months ago, I packed them up and made the drive.

I got them back today. This is the DS with the hammer shroud:

A steel-frame DS is kind of heavy for pocket carry, but in a winter coat it might be OK. And from an inside-the-waistband holster, all issues of the hammer snagging clothing are now gone.

Frankly, I don't know why Colt doesn't offer them for their current-production Cobras, instead of the bobbed-hammer model.
__________
[1] I did have one of them install a set of tritium sights on a 1911. I've neever seen a rear sight held on with purple locktite before.

The 2024 Hess Truck

RobertaX has the concept:

It's a Tesla Cybertruck in the style of the "Transformers" toys, only when you transform it, it's a dumpster, complete with flames shooting out the top!

Tesla also threatened to take legal action against any owner who sold one. That bullshit lasted about a day.

A neighbor of my sister bought a Tesla car and immediately parked it. They contacted Tesla for the title. Tesla said that they had about a month to get the title to them before the temporary tags expired and wanted to know what the rush was. The buyer said they were going to flip it and Tesla said they'd be on a list prohibiting them from buying a new one for the next year. They said they didn't care, they were making over ten grand on the deal. Even though the fit and finish of the car wouldn't have passed final inspection at the Yugo factory, somebody was willing to pay bank for one.

If you buy a Tesla, you're supporting a narcissitic troll with dreams of turning this country into an autocracy in service of the billionaire class. Think of his stuff as Nazi vehicles 2.0.

Will the Children of the Freedom Caucus Now Oust Bible Mike?

The House voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to prevent a government shutdown after new Republican Speaker Mike Johnson was forced to reach across the aisle to Democrats when hard-right conservatives revolted against his plan.

The bipartisan tally — 336-95 with 93 Republicans voting no —showed Johnson’s willingness to leave his right-flank Republicans behind and work with Democrats to temporarily keep government running — the same political move that cost the last House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, his job just weeks ago.

Bible Mike was one of the clowns pushing for a shutdown when Gutless Kevin was Sepaker, but as he's now found out, being in charge brings responsibilities for what goes on.

The MAGA Grift

Members of former Trump aide Michael Flynn’s family pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars in leftover money from a legal defense fund that was set up for the retired general as he faced a federal investigation over the 2016 election, Flynn’s sister testified in a defamation case involving CNN.

So Flynn and his sister grifted the leftover money (over half a million) and had not problem appealing to QAnon and MAGA nutjobs to give them money, but they felt it was defamatory to be associated with QAnon and MAGA. Even though they willingly participated in some oath-swearing ceremony which included a QAnon slogan, because they were trying to soak the wet-brained for cash.

Seems like a hell of a stretch. Here's a pro tip: If you don't like people saying that you're associated with a nutball extremist group, then try not associating with a nutball extremist group.

Clicking These Down, Here

The View That the TOFF is a Nazi is Inching Rightward

This from Forbes:

Trump Compares Political Foes To ‘Vermin’ On Veterans Day—Echoing Nazi Propaganda

Former President Donald Trump pledged to eliminate political extremist groups that “lie, steal and cheat on elections,” calling them “vermin” during a speech Saturday and in a Truth Social post commemorating Veterans Day—echoing a term Nazis often used in antisemitic propaganda to dehumanize Jews, equating them to parasites who spread disease.

The fact that the TOFF couldn't say anything about veterans without going into another grievance-fest is almost not worth mentioning.

But we all know what he truly thinks of those who are serving and who have served our country" He thinks they're all "suckers" and "losers". Which is why he forbade his spawn from serving.

More Toothless Bullshit From Johnny Roberts and the Supremes

The Supreme Court on Monday adopted its first code of ethics, in the face of sustained criticism over undisclosed trips and gifts from wealthy benefactors to some justices, but the code lacks a means of enforcement.

The policy, agreed to by all nine justices, does not appear to impose any significant new requirements and leaves compliance entirely to each justice.

It's sort of like saying "please don't take bribes and murder people" without any consequences for doing that. A code without an enforcement mechanism is simply empty, meaningless words promulgated by a bunch of jerkoffs.

But seriously, did anybody expect anything other than meaningless platitudes about ethics from those nine unelected monarchs?

More Bullshit From Mayor Adams

Shortly after winning the Democratic mayoral primary in 2021, Adams reached out to Daniel Nigro, the New York City fire commissioner at the time, encouraging him to let Turkish government officials use the building, which had not yet opened because fire department officials had refused to sign off on the safety of its occupancy, sources told The New York Times.
...
Adams said in a statement Sunday via campaign spokesperson Evan Thies that part of his role as Brooklyn Borough President was to "notify government agencies of issues on behalf of constituents and constituencies."

The government of Turkey is a "constituent"? Does anybody even remotely buy that horseshit? Even if one wants to stretch the definition of "constitutent" to include "foreign government making illegal campaign contributions", the building in question is in Manhattan, which would hardly be a concern of a Brooklyn Borough President.

Pay no attention to the stench emanating from Gracie Mansion.

Mass Arrests. Concentration Camps. Forced Deportations. Haven't We Seen This Movie Before?

I wish that I were kidding about this, or exaggerating. But I am not.

The TOFF and his enablers intend to incorporate Hitler's methods against the Jews and apply them to immigrants, with the exception of the gas chambers and crematoria. And no,this isn't a joke. (The following is not paywalled, so feel free to click on the link and read the entire story.)

Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.
...
To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Mr. Trump wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights. And to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Mr. Trump would redirect money in the military budget, as he did in his first term to spend more on a border wall than Congress had authorized.
...
People who were granted temporary protected status because they are from certain countries deemed unsafe, allowing them to lawfully live and work in the United States, would have that status revoked.

Similarly, numerous people who have been allowed to live in the country temporarily for humanitarian reasons would also lose that status and be kicked out, including tens of thousands of the Afghans who were evacuated amid the 2021 Taliban takeover and allowed to enter the United States. Afghans holding special visas granted to people who helped U.S. forces would be revetted to see if they really did.

And Mr. Trump would try to end birthright citizenship for babies born in the United States to undocumented parents — by proclaiming that policy to be the new position of the government and by ordering agencies to cease issuing citizenship-affirming documents like Social Security cards and passports to them. That policy’s legal legitimacy, like nearly all of Mr. Trump’s plans, would be virtually certain to end up before the Supreme Court.
...
As he has campaigned for the party’s third straight presidential nomination, his anti-immigrant tone has only grown harsher. In a recent interview with a right-wing website, Mr. Trump claimed without evidence that foreign leaders were deliberately emptying their “insane asylums” to send the patients across America’s southern border as migrants. He said migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” And at a rally on Wednesday in Florida, he compared them to the fictional serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter, saying, “That’s what’s coming into our country right now.”

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution says this:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

That is black-letter law, law that, like most other laws, the TOFF and his minions would willingly tear up. If it were possible to revoke the citizenship of natural-born Americans, the TOFF would be on the next plane to Moscow.

The TOFF's "poisoning the blood" rhretoric is straight out of Mein Kampf, probably one of the few books that he has read from cover to cover. Rest assured that, under a second TOFF administration, anyone who even vaguely looks Hispanic or Middle Eastern will be rounded up, tossed into a concentration camp and, since it's unlikely that they'll have documents in their possession to prove their citizenship (do you?), they'll be deported to whatever country the TOFF's functionaries deem to be proper. And even if they did happen to have a copy of their birth certificate or a passport or passport card in their possession, you can rest assured that those documents will wind up missing.

If you think that the TOFF's roundup will end with undocumented immigrants, I have a bridge to sell to you.

And then there is this.

A vote for the TOFF is a vote for Hitler 2.0.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

The one, the only, F4H/F-110:

Yeah, I know. Robert Fucking McNamara had it redesignated as the F-4 because he couldn't hold it in his puny little mind that the Navy and Air Force used different designation systems. Sue me.

Uranus is Glowing

And it's a mystery.

We might get around to sending a probe to Uranus (and Neptune) before a century has passed since the Voyager-2 flyby. Or maybe not.

A Little V-Day Snark