Sadly, This Is Not True

But, just in case....

GO, CHIEFS!

One More Day

Goombye, Asswipe

An Ohio Nazi was sentence to eighteen years in Federal prison for trying to burn down a church that was going to host a drag event.

No doubt that the asswipe thinks that the TOFF will pardon him.

Sanding These Down, Here

Color Me Skeptical; Earhart Ed.

Some dude thinks he may have found her airplane.

These are the sonar images:

Take a close look at what would be the wings. Both are swept back. Lockheed Electras didn't have swept wings.

Times Slowly Changing for the Po-Po

A few recent instances of cops being charged with DUIs.

Time was that they would have been told to "get home safe" and let go, or even given a ride. And nobody would say anything to anybody.

Acting the Ass in Court is Expensive

E. Jean Carroll's attorney thinks that the TOFF showing his ass in court was probably worth about ten million more in the verdict.

If he wants to appeal the verdict, he has to either find a bonding company willing to write an appeal bond for him or he has to deposit $83.3 million with the clerk of the court.

Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up! (And Bible Mike Dons His Kneepads)

It now is pretty clear that the TOFF has been committing tax fraud for years and that it is provable.

Meanwhile, Bible Mike (R, Taliban) will do the TOFF's bidding no matter what. The border bill was a top priority for Republicans, until Dolt-45 came out against it and so, Bible Mike dropped to his knees to give his Orange Jesus a hummer.

More on the Shit Show That is Boeing

This is worth your time if you are interested in things Boeing.

Remember that "Spirit" is Spirit Aerosystems, which once was Boeing's Wichita plant, but Boeing spun it off in the '00s in order to make a quick buck, please Wall Street, and get more bonus cash for its C-Suite executives. It's not Spirit Airlines, which is its own flying shitshow.

It's probably going to take sustained governmental pressure to fix Boeing. The institutional shareholders and Wall Sgtreet don't give a fuck, as long as Boeing makes a short-term profit. Those people can't think much further past the lengths of their dicks, anyway.

ETA: Also, this.

You Clowns Are Fucking Assholes, Mona Lisa Ed.

Two environmental protesters have hurled soup at the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris, calling for “healthy and sustainable food”. The painting, which was behind bulletproof glass, appeared to be undamaged.

Gallery visitors looked on in shock as two women threw the yellow-coloured soup before climbing under the barrier in front of the work and flanking the splattered painting, their right hands held up in a salute-like gesture.

That stupid shit accomplishes nothing, other than to show that the imbecility of the perpetrators.

Mark their demand for "healthy and sustainable food" by having a nice, juicy steak at your earliest opportunity.

Your Sunday Morning Prop Noise

A PB4Y Privateer:

NRA Was WLP's Personal Piggy Bank

He had them pay for everything under the sun, from private jet travel for decades (up to $50K a month) to mundane shit like Apple TV+ for his wife and treating his backyard for mosquitoes. he also extended the "the NRA will pay for everything I do" grift to his personal aide.

At this point, maybe someone can suggest how the NRA can be reformed. NYAG James may have been trying to shut down the NRA for political reasons, but her investigation has indeed uncovered a cesspit of corruption and self-enrichment. Everybody involved, including the toadies on the Board of Directors, needs to go. I'm not sure if it can be reformed. If the NRA was a building, all that might be salvagable would be the cellar hole.

I also wonder if the IRS is watching this and figuring out who, beside WLP, they can go after for not reporting income-in-kind.

Caturday

Chip on the five-cat heated bed.

George, Gracie, Jake and Bella had all slept on that bed.

Yet Another Loss for the TOFF's Crack Legal Team in Court

Running his mouth costs him money (if he ever pays).

A jury awarded $83.3 million in huge additional damages on Friday to longtime advice columnist E. Jean Carroll from former President Donald Trump, who she says shattered her reputation and opened her to threats by calling her a liar who only accused him of sexual assault to sell a memoir.

The award, when coupled with a $5 million sexual assault and defamation verdict last year from another jury in a case brought by Carroll, raised to $88.3 million what Trump must pay her. Protesting vigorously, he said he would appeal.
...
Jurors deliberated less than three hours after the two-week trial.

Good luck with that appeal, bucko. When a jury is out for only a few hours, the clear signal is that it's not even a close question. His acting up in court likely cemented the case for Carroll. And his lawyers acting the ass in the courtroom probably didn't help matters any. Which will be repaid when the TOFF stiffs them on their bills.

Republicans Love Trump and Hate America; Chapter MDLXI

Anyone who would willingly let problems fester in order to help Cadet Bone Spurs in the election nine months away is an unpatriotic jackhole who deserves to be pelted with rotten fruit every time they show their ugly faces in public.

Exhibit 1: Josh Hawley:

Senator Josh Hawley said the quiet part out loud on Friday, explicitly tying the GOP’s border security grandstanding to a coordinated effort to hurt President Joe Biden’s reelection chances.

“Senator, is this deal dead, effectively?” Fox News’s Laura Ingraham asked Hawley Thursday evening.

“I hope so,” Hawley said. “It should be. If it’s not dead yet it should be dead. There is absolutely no reason to agree to policies that would further enable Joe Biden.”

The Senate reached a bipartisan border deal this week, which would include additional funding for border security as well as aid for Ukraine. But the minute [the Old Orange Bastard] criticized the deal, Senate Republicans caved and said they probably won’t pass it.

Hawley’s statement is more proof that Republicans aren’t all that interested in the so-called border crisis. They just want to use it as a political tool in the 2024 election.

Not do anything on the border, so their Orange Jesus can go around, screetching that only he can fix it. Not help Ukraine anymore, because Putin's Favorite Asset says not do.

Traitorous Republicans like little Josh will happily let the country burn if the TOFF sees a benefit in doing so. They have put loyalty to their party above their duty to the nation.

Any Republican in the TOFF's camp is a treasonous hunk of semi-sentient protoplasm.

Because, let's face it, they have no spine when it comes to facing down Dolt-45

Dear Costume Designers for 19th Century Shit

Don't assume that people aren't paying attention. A woman's dress or blouse with an obvious zipper seam down the back is just as jarring as if someone in 1870s London is toting a Browning High Power.

The other thing is that when the characters are using period-correct guns, they almost always appear to be very old. They don't look like the new or newish guns that they would be.

Because It's Friday

Welsh steam:

If It's a Boeing, Take a Greyhound

Here is a listing of Service Difficulty Reports for the 737 Max. You can run the slider down to a few hundred hours and see the problems with new airplanes and see things such as doors not assembled properly so that it took a strong person to move the operating handle.

The big customers are pissed.

“I am more than frustrated and disappointed. I am angry,” Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci told “NBC Nightly News” in an interview that aired Tuesday night. “My demand on Boeing is, what are they going to do to improve their quality programs in-house?”

United CEO Scott Kirby said that Boeing needs “real action” to restore its previous reputation for quality.

Boeing workers at its 737 factory stopped work on Thursday to hold a special session to focus on quality.

Great, a one day "safety standdown" that will really do nothing. Boeing has to change the cuture that it has instituted since Harry Stonecipher changed it from a company run by engineers to one run by beancounters.

Remember when it came out that Boeing was outsourcing critical flight-control software to a company that paid its engineers less than burger flippers? Apparently, it is worse than that. Boeing outsources a number of sub-assemblies to other countries. Ones from South Korea look like precision instruments. the ones from a country about two hundred miles across the Yellow Sea to the west appear to have been hammered out by kids in the Kyber Pass and then dragged through the mud before crating them up.

I have heard that Boeing has a system in which anyone noticing a defect in something fills out a report chit. The thing is, there is zero incentive to find problems. Quite the opposite; a worker who files too many chits will find themselves in another (and not as good) job. It's sort of a Russian zero defects system: There's zero defects if nobody reports any defects.

Boeing is a fucking shitshow. Within the span of 25 years (1958-1983), Boeing certified the 707, 720, 727, 737, 747, 757 and 767. In the forty years since then, they've designed and certified two new airplanes, the 777 and the 787. They have nothing in the pipeline to replace the 737, which was 60% of a 727, anyway. Oh, they say they do, but it's not an active project, as far as I can tell.

To be fair, part of that is the fault of their customers who don't want to pay for their pilots' new type ratings. So they demanded that Boeing squeeze every bit of juice they can out of a sixty-year old design. But they didn't push Boeing to buy parts from third-world sheet-metal fabricators. They didn't make Boeing partially divest itself, that was the doing of Wall Street and the financial vultures, who don't care if Boeing slowly suffocates itself, as long as they can make a buck in the process.

Boeing, as I have commented repeatedly, began walking down the road it is on when it merged with McDonnell-Douglas and McD-D effectively took over the company. That was 27 years ago; changing the culture of Boeing will require massive reworking of the executive roster, which isn't going to happen. The company's board is made of the same level of compliant hacks as is that of the NRA.

Boeing is settling in to becoming a company that survives only on the Federal teat. The way Boeing is going, if you fly on a new full-sized airliner in fifteen or twenty years, it's going to be an Airbus.

Reeking These Down, Here

I'm Not That Smart

But I have been telling people in my social circle for the last two years that the 2024 election would be The Old Incumbent President versus the Old Heavily Indicted Former President. I've said as much here.

The question is whether or not the Two Traitor Joes will try to throw a monkeywrench into things in order to elevate the TOFF. Both of those self-inflated jerkoffs are almost as old as the other two guys in the race.

Most Americans say that they did not want a repeat of the 2020 contest. But so what? Republicans have drunk the Kool-aid from the poisoned chalice of Dolt-45. Democrats know that history is that if someone posts a serious challenge to a sitting incumbent, the incumbent goes on to lose. So unless President Biden was going to step down, it was game on. And he might have stepped down if the Toff had done the right thing and retired to his gilded bathroom. But he wasn't going to turn away from another opportunity to beat the Putinite Asset.

The outcome of the NH primary should give a rational Republican something to worry about. Six in ten Republicans said they'd vote for Commandante Bone Spurs. That's not enough to do anything for him other than to give him a second defeat (and a third loss of the popular vote). If it goes that way, then the Democrats will also retain the Senate and retake the House.

What will also happen is that El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago will try to get his light-in-the-loafers to cause trouble, which will give more employment to Federal prison guards.

.32 Revival

On the heels of this, Taurus is releasing a new .327 Magnum.

This one, I am seriously meh about. If a K-frame-sized .32 is an offering, a seven-shot gun would be a better idea. Otherwise, if you're shooting a medium-frame gun, why not stick with a .38? For one thing, ammunition is far more widely available and cheaper, to boot.

But that's me talking out of my ass, I've never seen one.

Strapping These Down, Here

All from here.

Bullshit in Court, WLP Ed.

Longtime NRA leader Wayne LaPierre is too ill to commit to all-day testimony in his ongoing corruption trial in New York, his lawyer said in a court document made public Friday.

Funny how all of WLP's alleged infirmities came to light when he was about to have to testify with regard to all of his alleged graft and self-dealing at the NRA.

This smells like the tactics that Vincent Gigante pulled to stay out of prison for years. Maybe he's really ill.

But it does seem rather convenient.

Say Bye-Bye to the Baltimore Sun

A local buyer taking over a struggling newspaper in the 21st century is normally cause for some celebration. But The Baltimore Sun’s newly announced owner has a very specific political background, and some are concerned about what the 187-year-old publication could become.

David D. Smith, executive chairman of the Sinclair broadcasting chain and an active contributor to conservative causes, has bought Baltimore Sun Media from the investment firm Alden Global Capital.

This is not the first time that a right-wing rich guy has gotten ahold of a newspaper in a city that leans Democratic. It has not gone well before. Richard Scafie bought the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, took it to the right and ran it into the ground. What happens is if a paper is far out of synch with the population, then subscribers drop their subscriptions. Advertisers see the declining numbers and either stop advertising or demand lower rates. The loss in revenue results in firings in the newsroom, less local reportage and more reliance on the wire services. Readers notice and more drop their subscriptions. The paper tries to do more on the Internet, but the revenue is a tiny fraction of what they need to keep the lights on. The paper "transitions" from being a daily to printing five days a week to three to going wholly online. At that point, it becomes just another website that few people pay attention to.

The real beneficiaries of all that are the local politicians, government officials and companies, whose fuckery then goes unreported and unremarked upon.

Fly the Fiendish Skies of Alaska

Quisling Mike Admits That He is Taking Orders From the TOFF

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a central figure in border negotiations, said he has "frequently" discussed the issue with former President Donald Trump.

Johnson, who is digging in on hard-line demands for more restrictive reforms despite progress in the Senate on a bipartisan compromise, told Fox News that he and Trump talked about the matter on Monday -- before Johnson and other congressional leaders convened at the White House for a meeting with President Joe Biden on Wednesday.

Trump has expressed opposition to any deal between Senate negotiators and the Biden administration.

"President Trump is not wrong," Johnson told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Wednesday night. "He and I have been talking about this pretty frequently. I talked to him the night before last about the same subject."

Johnson shortly after also appeared on CNN, where he told Kaitlan Collins that he speaks to Trump "every few days."

So Quisling Mike's the TOFF's sock-puppet. One thing is clear about Dolt-45: He does not give a tinker's damn about anything other than inflating his sense of importance. He doesn't give a damn about this country. If he did, he wouldn't have forbade his kids from joining the military.

What Republicans Have Wrought in Taiwan

Thanks to the Republicans' screwing around with aid to Ukraine, two-thirds of the Taiwanese now believe that the United States is not a trustworthy ally, that in the event that the PRC attacks them, they will be left to twist in the wind.

And if Xi believes the same thing, it will be game on sooner rather than later. Because history is pretty clear that wars get going when the aggressor believes that their victim and friends won't fight.

If war comes to the Pacific, be sure to thank a Republican.

Haley Was Right, It's a Two-Person Race, Now.

Meatball Ron is out, so he can spend more time in Florida, oppressing transgendered people, whitewashing American history, and trying to get Disney to leave.

He burned through over a hundred million smackers, going from polling as a serious challenger to roadkill. It was probably the worst showing a Republican nominating process since Giuliani in 2008.

Revolver Goodies

442 and 642 with better sights and grips, regulated for .38+P Speer Gold Dot. 632 and 432 in .32 H&R Magnum. The latter guns are six-shot.

I'm kind of meh. I find the alloy-framed .38s to be a bit much, other than with target-load wadcutters. The front tritium sight seems that it might be a bit more snag-prone than the old ramp front tight. On the other hand, if you wanted a non-Lipsey's gun, you might be looking at buying a 442 or 642 for around five or six bills and then putting that much more into it for all of the extras that Lipsey's guns have (trigger job, chamfered cylinders,tritium front sight, rough-country rear sight, etc.).

As for the .32s, I have had no experience with them. One with wadcutters might be pretty sweet. But that would require me to get into another cartridge. If I'm going to get into a sub-.38 revolver, I just might go with an eight-shot .22. But these will probably sell like cold water in Hades, because S&W hasn't made these guns in .32 for a while.

On the other hand, a .32 would give one six shots and the wadcutters should be effective enough. Given that most people won't shoot one of these guns a lot, four boxes of 50 might be a five-year supply.

So yeah, I'm strongly considering one.

MSRP will be about $760. Street (non-GB) price should be less. I figure they'll sell every one that S&W makes for them. At least initially. Lipsey's is promising thst this won't be a "one run and done" gun.

And they're also implying that we ain't seen nothin' yet.

Your Sunday Morning Aircraft Noise

Since a P2V has both piston and jet engines.

You can see the doors that closed when the jet were not running. An earlier version of the P2V, named The Truculent Turtle, made a 55-hour 11,000 mile flight in 1946 from Perth, Australia to Columbus, Ohio.

OldNFO, do you know how those doors worked?

Something Wheelgunny is Coming From Lipsey’s Tomorrow

Unless you're on one of the gun forums, you can watch this space for the news.

An updated DAO Model 12? An alloy-framed .327 Magnum? Something with a new cartridge?

Place yer bets.

The Federal Highway Administration is Staffed With Humorless and Stupid People.

First there was making the states renumber their highway exits, probably because some clown at the FHWA is (or was) too stupid to read a map or use a GPS. Now those same worthies are "strongly advising" states not to have electronic signs with funny or quirky messages. Those bureaucrats with too much time on their hands and a deep-felt need to stick their nibs into everything seem to think that the signs are distracting and that drivers should be focused on the road.

Well, if they really want to do that, why not ban billboards, especially the LED ones that change messages? Why not ban road signs, since drivers have to read them and understand them, instead of looking at the road.

If you're curious about what the Federales think road signs should be like, well, they've got five hundred or so pages on that subject in this here manual.

Caturday

A sunny spot and a human to lean against. Could life be any better?

Germany is Speaking. Is Quisling Mike's Caucus Listening?

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius warned that the war between Russia and Ukraine could expand beyond the neighbouring countries.

“We hear threats from the Kremlin almost every day – most recently again against our friends in the Baltic states,” Pistorius told the Tagesspiegel newspaper in an article published on Friday.
...
With his call for the Bundeswehr to become “war-ready” he also wanted to “shake up our society,” he said.

The minister expects proposals for re-introducing a version of compulsory military service by April. Germany ended mandatory conscription in 2011.

The Germans are going to ramp up their spending and reinstitute the draft to get ready for an expanded war with Russia. And this is lrgely because Putin's Poodles in the GOP have been dragging their heels when it comes to supporting Ukraine.

When the history of this period is written, much of the blame for the course of the Russo-Ukraine War will be laid on Biden for his timidity in providing war materiel to Ukraine when it could have made a real difference in breaking Russia's military.

But, to be fair, American timidity in the face of a rising threat from Eurpoean dictators, as driven by the Right, is a recurring theme.

The TOFF Blows His Racist Birther Steam-Whistle, Again and Again

ETA: Even more racist bullshit from the Asset.

As Nikki Haley surges in Republican polls, former President Donald Trump has turned to his social media outlet where he is promoting a "birther" conspiracy theory against the former South Carolina governor.

Trump posted an article on his Truth Social account from a right wing outlet that claims Haley is ineligible to be president because her parents were not U.S. citizens when she was born.

While her parents became citizens after her birth, Haley was born in South Carolina. Under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, being born in the United States makes her a natural-born citizen. She is therefore eligible to become president.

It's just racist bullshit, the same bullshit that Cadet Bone Spurs was yammering about President Obama. The funny thing there was that the same accusation he leveled against Obama (one foreign-born parent means one isn't eligible to be president) applied to him, as well. Except, of course, the little point that the Adjudicated Rapist's foreign-born parent was a white person and Obama's wasn't.

Trump is a fucking racist. You know it, I know it, he knows it.

If you buy his argument, then you're a racist and probably a fucking Nazi. Save the rest of us some work and go punch yourself in the face. Repeatedly.

Because It's Friday

British India Line (whatever that was).

Blowing a Russian A-50 AWACS Out of the Sky

This is how the Ukrainians may have done it.

The reportage I've seen differs as to numbers, but they all hold that the Russians have only a handful of operational A-50s. So it's doubtful that the Russian Air Force is going to risk any more of them.

And its accompanying Il-22M may be a writeoff, as well.

Another Organization That Allegedly Can Be Bought.

The Washington Times:

In what appears to be a new revelation, the testimony included Tedrick being asked about $30,000 monthly payments the NRA was making to the conservative newspaper The Washington Times. He said he did not know what the payments were for. The NYAG showed him a 2017 email about The Washington Times payments where the subject line was “David Keene.” [Note: Mr. Keene has long been affiliated with the Washington Times; he is also an NRA board member and former NRA president]

It's not known, yet, why the NRA was paying thirty large a month to The Washington Times. But it does smell as though they were paying them to keep Keene on their payroll. It's also not known if Keene did anything for them, or if it was a no-show job.

A lot of people should be going to jail over this shit, but this is a civil case.

Skidding These Down, Here

Dean Phillips Apparently Can Be Bought for One Million Dollars

Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips removed a reference to promoting “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” on his campaign website after one of his top financial backers, a leading DEI opponent, prodded Phillips publicly on the subject.

That donor, the hedge fund investor Bill Ackman, has at different times called Phillips’s language about DEI a “mistake” and said the candidate was “getting educated” on the issue. Writing on X, he said several times that he expected Phillips would revise his campaign website’s reference to DEI.
...
Phillips’s super PAC recently received a commitment for a $1 million donation from Ackman who has engaged in a highly public campaign against DEI initiatives at universities. Ackman recently took part in a conversation on X with Phillips in which the subject was broached.

This is an old jole, but it is relevant:

George Bernard Shaw: Madam, would you sleep with me for a million pounds?

Actress: My goodness. Well, I'd certainly think about it.

Shaw: Would you sleep with me for a pound?

Actress: Certainly not! What kind of woman do you think I am?

Shaw: Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.

We know what Phillips is and he has apparently set his price. It may be higher, we don't know how much Ackman has previously given him. But it is now established that if you have a pet cause, bring your checkbook, for Phillips is open for business.

Phillips might as well be honest and show up to his campaign events wearins a micro-mini and spike heels. Maybe then he'd get somebody to show up.

Quisling Mike Johnson is Likely Putin's Favorite Poodle

Johnson is saying that no aid to Ukraine is possible anytime soon.

Nothing has changed when it comes to the far Right and aggression by Euopean tyrants. They closed their eyes to it in 1914 and 1939 and they are holding their eyes tightly shut in 2024.

The bare naked fact is that Putin has designs on other Euopean countries, including our allies. We can stop the Russians where they are and it will only cost us more money.

Or we can turn our backs on Ukraine, the way that the Right wants to do now, and, like in the 20th Century, end up sending our young to fight and die to stop the Russians in 2025 or 2026 and spending a shitload more money to do it.

For some reason, the far Right loves dictators and hates freedom. They always have.

Good Times at the Twilight of Police Wheelguns

I had forgotten about the Frame War.

Of the guns mentioned in the blog posts (Models 19, 66, 586, 686, Security Six family and GP.100) only the Security Six family of guns (Security Six, Service Six and Speed Six) are not still in production.

H/T

Nikki Haley Forgets, Again, About the Little Matter of Slavery and Jim Crow

When asked by host Brian Kilmeade if the GOP is a racist party, [Nikki] Haley made a broader point that the US has “never been a racist country.”

“We’re not a racist country, Brian. We’ve never been a racist country,” she said. “Our goal is to make sure that today is better than yesterday. Are we perfect? No. But our goal is to always make sure we try and be more perfect every day that we can.”

Really, Nikki? Slavery? Jim Crow? Sundown towns? The Negro Motorist Green Book? Voting discrimination (a practice her party engages in to this day)? Night riders? Housing discrimination? Segregated schools? Redlining?

How can she not be aware of any of that stuff? It wasn't just racism, it was government policy based on race, written into the Constitution, and enforced by both the law and by mob rule.

I probably should cut Haley a break. She's campaigning for votes in a party in which a significant number of the voters are fragile white people who can't handle the truth, so they turn on Fox News for their daily dosage of lies and coddling.

It Was Just Before Dawn When the Truck Started Down The Exit Ramp That Led Into Stonington, Connecticut Carrying Forty Thousand Pounds of Bananas

A crash that involved a tractor trailer closed an off ramp for Interstate 95 north in Stonington on Tuesday morning.

State police said the exit 92 off ramp was closed.

Troopers said the tractor trailer, which carried 40,000 pounds of bananas, rolled over around 6:35 a.m.

One guess as to why this is worthy of mention.

New Browning High Power?

From Inglis, which isn't the old company, though.

I don't know who's making them-- Girsan, Tisas, Ishapore, or someone else. I'm sure it's not Inglis; they supposedly sold their tooling to Ishapore.

But I'm interested. Maybe they can do better than Springfield did with their SA-35.

Remember: Trump Has Already Been Adjudicated to Be a Sexual Predator (and a Liar)

From his new trial today:

Icing These Down, Here

The next image is a special image for the Banhammer Boys
(you know who you are):

Don't Let Them Live in Your Head Today

Everybody knew that the TOFF was going to win the Iowa caucuses. There wasn't any doubt about that. Anyone on the news who spends more than thirty seconds (OK, two minutes) on that story is a moron.

Don't join them.

It's his party. It's his cult. If you want to save this country, you know what you have to do.

(Also, the rest of us can get back to not giving a fuck about Iowa.)

That Was Expensive

The Ukrainians have apparently shot down a Russian AWACS. Supposedly, that was the first time that an airborne radar control aircraft has been downed.

"They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist--" -- Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

MH-53E:

So Much Winning

Former President Donald Trump was ordered Friday to pay nearly $400,000 in legal fees to The New York Times and three investigative reporters after he sued them unsuccessfully over a Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 story about his family’s wealth and tax practices.

The newspaper and reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russell Buettner were dismissed from the lawsuit in May. Trump’s claim against his estranged niece, Mary Trump, that she breached a prior settlement agreement by giving tax records to the reporters is still pending.
...
The Times’ reporting challenged Donald Trump’s claims of self-made wealth by documenting how his father, Fred Trump, had given him at least $413 million over the decades, including through tax avoidance schemes. Mary Trump identified herself in a book published in 2020 as the source of the documents.

The Times’ story said that Donald Trump and his father avoided gift and inheritance taxes by methods including setting up a sham corporation and undervaluing assets to tax authorities.
...
In dismissing the Times and its reporters from the lawsuit, [the judge] wrote that legal news gathering is “at the very core of protected First Amendment activity.”

The TOFF is a fraud and a tax cheater and so was his old man.

Chinese ICBMs Are Fueled With Water?

Per Tam, this is pretty interesting:

What is also interesting is the different ways that Russia and China have responded to pervasive corruption within their respective militaries. Xi is apparently trying to clean house. Putin seems to be less aware of corruption (or he is getting a cut), because he's not removing people. Putin may be more of a guy who has the Trumist/Bushie view that reality is what he says it is.

Still, Putin may prevail in Ukraine because the Republicans have his back, just as the American Right had Germany's back right up until December 11, 1941. And while Xi may be more aware of his military's shortcomings than Putin, Xi might yet attack Taiwan because he may comclude that the Republicans will be as willing to combat Chinese aggression as they are in combating Russian aggression.

Today Sucks

I've been spending much of the day, so far, in the basement with a wet – dry shop vac, sucking up water from the recent rains.

Some interesting shit about the PRC's military has come out. More later.

Caturday

Elliott.

It's Easier to Bribe Make Large Campaign Contributions to Politicians Than Build Good Airplanes

That is the essence of this long story about how Boeing has repeatedly made large campaign contributions to politicians.

I've been told that the CEO of Boeing has been making the rounds of the plants to try and rally the troops. But no new programs are being launched to improve inspections of work being done. No plans or promises to hire more QC inspectors. Just the usual management smoke, mirrors and fresh horseshit.

Along with upping the amount of cash going to the campaign coffers of strategic politicians, no doubt. At this point, Boeing is operating like a Russian corporation: Make shitty products and bribe the right people.

Fly in a recently-manufactured Boeing aircraft at your own risk.

Because It's Friday

One of the last turns of this locomotive:

I gather that earning a new boiler certificate is neither cheap nor easy.

Scooping These Down, Here