For Now, I'm With the Cops on This One; Fuck Around and Find Out Ed.

On Wednesday, Nyah Mway finished middle school in the central New York city where his family moved about a decade ago as refugees from Myanmar, relatives said.

By Friday night, the 13-year-old was fatally shot by police who’d tackled him to the ground after he allegedly pointed what turned out to be a BB gun at them during a foot chase.

Struggling to comprehend his death, his anguished relatives and outraged members of their immigrant community called Sunday for justice for him and accountability for police.

Sure, let's have some accountability. Let's look hard at the kid's legal guardian9s), who knew or should have known that their child was running around the streets at night with a BB gun that was indistinguishable from a Glock 17.

The cops do a lot of dumb or bad things. Any frequent reader of this blog knows that I've not been shy about pointing that out.

But here, a kid pointed a gun at the cops. And if you do that, the cops are not going to wait to see whether or not it's a replica, a BB gun or the real thing. They are not going to wait to get shot.

You point a gun at the cops and they are going to light your ass up. If you're old enough to fuck around and point a gun at the cops, you're old enough to find out what it's like to get shot.

A Retirement Benefit for Special Operators -- Dain Bramage?

A pervasive pattern of brain damage has been found in SEALs who have committed suicide.

I've been reading the article and intended to gift it to everyone, but Digby beat me to it.

It's not just blast damage from IEDs. It's brain concussions from, well, everything, including repeated rifle fire. Those blast waves are micro-blasts that the person won't feel, but they do add up. The scientists have been studying the brains of those who have died, but those findings were not disseminated to military leadership to change things.

The SEALs have been serving all of their careers in the War on Terror and, when they hit their forties, the damage adds up and becomes evident. It sounds as though a lot of them are not going to have long retirements.

What I wonder about is the effect of firing thousands of rounds through short-barrelled rifles. The rifles used are not your dad/grandpaw's M-16s with 20" barrels. Even the CAR-15s back in the day had longer barrels than the SBRs that the "special operators" use. The shorter a barrel on a rifle, the louder the report, the more blast and the more of a concussion wave for each shot. I don't know if suppressors mitigate that by a lot and whether or not they use them all the time during training.

We are going to need to build a shitload of care facilities for these guys if we don't want to see them off on their own and killing themselves (and others). We should do everything we can to ensure that "brain-damaged special operator" doesn't become as much of thing as "homeless Vietnam vets" were forty years ago.

We owe those guys no less.

A Thought on the Ukraine War and Fort Fumble

If the procurement boys at Fort Fumble, both Army and Marine Corps, aren't figuring out how to gear up industry to produce hundreds of thousands of expendable drones a month, then all of them need to be fired (or shot) and replaced with Ukrainians.

For that seems to be about the current burn rate in that war. Scouting drones, FPV attack drones, decoy drones. Imagine, if you will, that there is a way to have a patrolling cloud of drones to attack, head-on, any aircraft over or near the battlefield. Turbines are not too happy with debris coming in the air intakes.

Mass-produced FPV drones are probably killing more soldiers than tube artillery and less expenisvely.

Also, a first-world military force with oodles of drones will stamp *paid* to all those dreaming of acting out far-right rebellion fanfic.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

Vampire!

Bangity

I shot a five-stage ICORE match recently. I brought two Model 28s. One locked up; it could have been a gun issue, it could have been an ammo issue (.357 mid-range reloads), but I switched to the other gun, anyway, and reshot the stage. (Memo to self: Always bring two guns to a match if you can.)

The second gun had a few light strikes during the match. There were two factors to that. One was the mainspring, which had been bent to reduce the force on the hammer. The second was the mainspring strain screw. This is both the screw that was in the gun and a new one:

The new one is on the top, the one that was in the gun is on the bottom. As you can see, the top of the screw was ground off. That is an old trick for a cheap trigger job (as is rebending the mainspring). Doing that is fine if one sets aside such a gun as a range-only gun. But if you're not willing to do that, don't fuck with it.

Replacement parts are in the gun. The trigger pull is noticeably heavier, so I am reasonably confident that the issue with light strikes is in the rear view.

The Lochner-II Court

From about the end of the Great War to about halfway into the Great Depression, the Supreme Court was on a right-wing ideological tear, from trying to make unions illegal to invalidating every move made to amerliorate the Great Depression. It was known as the "Lochner Court", from one of the more notoriously decisions that invalidated an attempt to regulate working conditions. (The era ended when the Court caved on programs to combat the Great Depression under a threat of court-packing.)

The Lochner Court is, to this day, regarded as one of the worst since the Taney Court (Dred Scott, among others). But it seems to me that this current Court is embarked on a similar ideological rip, viewing matters not through a lens of the law or precedent, but what best suits the ideology of at least five of the "conservative" justices. Which is why they're figuring out how to overturn Griswold v. CT, Obergefell v. Hodges and probably Loving v. VA. (I suspect that if they could figure out a way to invalidate the Thirteenth Amendment, they would.)

What would you think that historians are going to call this pack of ideological thugs in black robes? "The Thomas Court" overstates his influence, "the Roberts Court" overstates his leadership.

I think callling them "The Dobbs Court" will suffice. Your thoughts?

And the way that the Lochner Court was dealt with should have been instructive in 2021. It's too late now, unless Biden wins re-election.

Caturday

The Supreme Court, in its Majestic Equality, Holds That the Law Can Forbid Both Rich and Poor From Sleeping in Public Parks

Yet another ideological opinion from the worst court since the Lochner Era.

And like then, the Court isn't interpreting the law. They're making law.

But Steve Bannon gets frog-marched into prison next Monday, so it's not all bad.

Judges Who Know Nothing About Scientific or Technical Areas Now Get to Rule on Shit That They Are Completely Ignorant About

The illegitimate bastards on the Supreme Court are continuing their judicial power grab.

The Supreme Court on Friday upended a 40-year-old decision that made it easier for the federal government to regulate the environment, public health, workplace safety and consumer protections, delivering a far-reaching and potentially lucrative victory to business interests.

The court’s six conservative justices overturned the 1984 decision colloquially known as Chevron, long a target of conservatives who have been motivated as much by weakening the regulatory state as social issues including abortion. The liberal justices were in dissent.
...
The heart of the Chevron decision says federal agencies should be allowed to fill in the details when laws aren’t crystal clear. Opponents of the decision argued that it gave power that should be wielded by judges to experts who work for the government.

The Supreme Court majority is an ideological one. They twist the facts, the law and precedent to fit their ideology. And when neither the facts nor the law nor precedent suits their needs, they just forge ahead, regardless. They know nothing about what they opine on, as Gorsuch proved.

Which is why 70% of Americans view the Supremes as operating based on their twisted far-right ideology.

To Paraphrase A Certain Warmongering Asshole

You go into an election with the candidates you have, not the candidates that you may want to have had or that you would have had if you did the process over.

We are now going to enter into a contest about which candidate is the worst and why you shouldn't vote for him. Not exactly the sort of stuff that generates turnout.

I'm pretty sure we won't see a second presidential debate. The TOFF won't want to risk looking more like a lying dictator wannabee than he already does and Joe Biden won't want to run the chance of driving home his image as a really old guy.

Debate Summation

From a text message:

So we have three choices in the election: The stuttering old guy who has been slowing down, the narcissistically-crazy old vengeful guy who wants to be a dictator, and the really crazy not-as-old guy who is clearly been doing too many drugs and who believes in witchcraft.

And from another text:

We have one candidate who should retire. One who should be in prison. And a minor party candidate who belongs in a bughouse.

Going back to the system where candidates were chosen by a bunch of party elders in smoke-filled rooms sure seems appealing right now.

Because It's Friday

The Riverside & Great Northern Rwy.



1/3rd scale still makes for a pretty good-sized steam locomotive.

The Joy of Running a Low-Rent Blog….

.... is that I don't have to spend it tonight watching the debate, live. I can watch it at my leisure, later.

if I want to. Nobody is paying me to watch it. And listening to the TOFF speak is only slightly more enjoyable than having wood splinters shoved under my fingernails.

And I know who I'm voting for. I cannot foresee a single circumstance where I would consider pulling the lever for Felon^34.

This Christian Nationalist Religious Indoctrination in Baja Kansas Is Brought to You by the TOFF and His Supremes

Oklahoma’s top education official ordered public schools Thursday to incorporate the Bible into lessons for grades 5 through 12, the latest effort by conservatives to incorporate religion into classrooms.

The directive drew immediate condemnation from civil rights groups and supporters of the separation of church and state, with some calling it an abuse of power and a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The order sent to districts across the state by Republican State Superintendent Ryan Walters says adherence to the mandate is compulsory and “immediate and strict compliance is expected."

Whose Bible, exactly? Which sect's version of it?

This is state-mandated religious indoctrination by the Christian Taliban, plain and simple. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. And I suppose that Walters is going to send in goons in jackboots and leather trenchcoats to ensure that his orders are being carried out.

Religious indoctrination of children, using state-sanctioned texts. How does this, in spirit, differ from Saudi-funded madrassas?

This is what you get since the Christian Nationalist bigots and the MAGAites have taken over the GOP. If you are OK with kids undergoing forced religious indoctrination, then I am sure of one thing: You are no American that the Founding Fathers would have recognized.

The Supremes Move to Protect Clarence from Prosecution

The Supreme Court overturned the bribery conviction of a former Indiana mayor on Wednesday, the latest in a series of decisions narrowing the scope of federal public corruption law.

The high court’s 6-3 opinion along ideological lines found the law criminalizes bribes given before an official act, not rewards handed out after.

“Some gratuities can be problematic. Others are commonplace and might be innocuous,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote. The lines aren’t always clear, especially since many state and local officials have other jobs, he said.

The high court sided with James Snyder, a Republican who was convicted of taking $13,000 from a trucking company after prosecutors said he steered about $1 million worth of city contracts to the company.

So if a contractor or lobbyist hands a politician a sack of cash before the politico does something they want, that's a "bribe", but if the cash is given after the politician does something for them, that's a "gratuity" and is legal.

Sounds to me that this ruling is nothing more than a move to protect Clarence Thomas from being prosecution for the millions of dollars worth of gratuities that he's received.

Meanwhile...

A solid majority of Americans say Supreme Court justices are more likely to be guided by their own ideology rather than serving as neutral arbiters of government authority, a new poll finds, as the high court is poised to rule on major cases involving former President Donald Trump and other divisive issues.

The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 7 in 10 Americans think the high court’s justices are more influenced by ideology, while only about 3 in 10 U.S. adults think the justices are more likely to provide an independent check on other branches of government by being fair and impartial.

Even a majority of Republicans believe that. So they're not even convincing their own base that they are more fair and impartial than Fox News.

For a branch of government that has no enforcement power of its own, that depends on people more-or-less voluntarily agreeing to accept their decisions as being fair and abiding by them, this is dangerous territory to be in.

ETA: They should sell tickets to people who want to line up in order to piss on the grave of George H.W. Bush for putting that corrupt fuck on the Court.

Boeing, the Shit Show Continues

Late Wednesday, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a strong rebuke to Boeing and said it will sanction the company.

The move follows comments by a senior executive who spoke to a media gathering on Tuesday and disclosed new information related to the cause of the Alaska Airlines fuselage blowout in January.

Boeing is a party to the NTSB investigation. However, by long-established rules and signed agreements, only the lead investigating agency — in this case, the NTSB — is authorized to reveal details of an investigation and to provide analysis of an incident’s cause.
...
In a statement, the NTSB said Boeing “blatantly violated the NTSB investigative regulations and Boeing’s signed party agreement with the NTSB by providing nonpublic investigative information to the media and speculating about possible causes of the Jan. 5 door plug blowout.”

The NTSB said “few entities know the rules better” than Boeing. Accordingly, it will impose “a series of restrictions and sanctions” on the jet maker.

Basically, Boeing will now be treated as a witness and is no longer allowed to participate in the investigation itself. Because their executives figure that the rules don't apply to them, which is pretty much the way most of the C-suites in this country operate.

It took a long time for the chickens to come home to roost for Boeing, but they seem to be settling in.

Witness Tampering, COFF Style. Allegedly

Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company.

The benefits have flowed from Trump’s businesses and campaign committees, according to a ProPublica analysis of public disclosures, court records and securities filings. One campaign aide had his average monthly pay double, from $26,000 to $53,500. Another employee got a $2 million severance package barring him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. And one of the campaign’s top officials had her daughter hired onto the campaign staff, where she is now the fourth-highest-paid employee.

If it looks like witness tampering, walks like witness tampering, talks like witness tampering and smells like witness tamering, Felon^34 might sue you if you call it witness tampering.

Driving These Down, Here

#WORLDNEWSTONIGHT You Guys Suck

Half hour evening news means, as we all know about 22 minutes of news and 8 minutes of commercials.

Yet, with that precious 22minutes, you fuckers used several of them for a "news" story that was nothing more than a disguised commercial for one of your shows on some goddmaned Disney channel.

Harry Reasoner and eter Jennings are spinning in their graves at an audible rate of speed.

SG Murthy Sabotaged the Biden Campaign

The U.S. surgeon general on Tuesday declared gun violence a public health crisis, driven by the fast-growing number of injuries and deaths involving firearms in the country.

First off, fair warning: If the comment thread gets into a discussion about the merits of gun control, I will shut it down. That's not the topc for this post.

What is the topic is that, a few months before an election that may or may not be the most pivotal in over 160 years, where every vote counts, and which will decide whether we remain a nation of law and freedom or one that is a authoritarian oligarchy/kletocracy, the fucking Surgeon General of the United States decided to put on his clown shoes and wade in on one of the most divisive topics out there.

And it's not as though he doesn't know this. Murthy almost didn't get confirmed the first time that he was SG because of concern that he would do exactly what he just did.

Is he this politically obtuse? Was he so arrogant as to not have this vetted by the White House? And if he did, are there people in the West Wing who are so politically stupid as to not see the minefield in which Murthy decided to go for a nice walk?

Unless President Biden made this call, himself, there are people who should be doing rug dances in the Oval Office this morning.

Wrenching These Down, Here

About Fucking Time, Haredi Ed

Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled unanimously that the military must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox men for compulsory service, a landmark decision that could lead to the collapse of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition as Israel continues to wage war in Gaza.

The Haredi are parasites. Everything that the Right used to say about "welfare mamas" plopping kids and gaming the system to get money from the state goes triple for the Haredi. The majority of Israelis are secular and resent the nearly total free ride the Haredi get from the state. The insane political system in Israel gives minority parties like the ultra-Orthodox outsized power. So they inflict their views in society and bear none of the burdens.

Now the bill may be coming due. About time.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Family matters for a couple of days, y'all. Comment moderation will be a slow thing. Read a newspaper. A real one, printd on chemically-processed wood fibers.

Thanks to Those Jerkoff "Climate Protestors," A Part of Me Wants to Buy a UniMog or a H-1 That Gets 7MPG

Or a street-legal Stryker, if such a thing exists.

Six people protesting climate change stormed the 18th green while the leaders were lining up their putts on the final hole of regulation at the PGA Tour’s Travelers Championship on Sunday, delaying the finish for about five minutes. ... The crowd surrounding the 18th green heckled the protesters by yelling profanities and cheered the police who intervened.

And this:

Two climate protesters were arrested on Wednesday after spraying orange corn flour on Stonehenge in an audacious bid to pressure the U.K. government to end the use of fossil fuels.

Maybe they should make sure everything they have is plant-based, cut off their electricy service, and then slit their throats in order to limit their climate footprint.

Those protests persuade nobody. Just like those dimbulbs that block roads.

Free Graphic for Louisiana Educators

Just copy, print and post in classrooms.

Yer welcome.

Your Sunday Morning Rotor Noise

CH-53s:

The Seattle Chicago Arlington Pooch-Screwers Keep Screwing the Pooch

Boeing received orders for only four new planes in May — and for the second straight month, none for its best-selling 737 Max, as fallout continues from the blowout of a side panel on a Max during a flight in January.

The results released Tuesday compared unfavorably with Europe’s Airbus, which reported net orders for 15 planes in May — 27 sales but 12 cancellations.

Meanwhile:

Boeing and NASA announced Friday night that mission officials are again delaying the Boeing Starliner capsule’s return to Earth from the International Space Station.

The announcement is only the latest in a string of recent delays. Officials have pushed back the Starliner spacecraft’s departure date several times after the vehicle — which launched Williams and Wilmore to the space station on June 5 — experienced some issues en route to the space station.

Officials did not immediately announce a new return date, but the space agency indicated the return of Starliner’s crew, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, won’t come until July.

When Wilmore and Williams turn in for their sleep time ("night" being a tenuous concept in low Earth orbit), one wonders if they are pondering the choices they've made in life that took them into orbit on one of the biggest pieces of shit to fly on a rocket since Soyuz 1. And, you can bet that the last thing NASA wants is to see another manned spacecraft burn up on re-entry.

I don't know what the chances are of Starliner being jettisoned to burn up as space junk and those two astronaughts being stuck there until SpaceX can send up a Crew Dragon capsule with two empty seats, but they are definately non-zero. Even if Space Karen will be crowing about it until he strokes out.

Bring on the Lawyers, Louisiana Ed.

That is correct. They are going to have to display all of them or pull down the Ten Commandments after enacting this stupid law. All Louisiana has done is to ensure that a lot of lawyers are going to be making a lot of money that will all be paid by the taxpayers of Louisiana.

Which will serve them right.

Dementia Donnie and the Commanderments

He seems to be amazed that anybody has heard of, let alone read, the Ten Commandments

Donald Trump told a group of evangelicals they “cannot afford to sit on the sidelines” of the 2024 election, imploring them at one point to “go and vote, Christians, please!”

Trump also endorsed displaying the Ten Commandments in schools and elsewhere while speaking to a group of politically influential evangelical Christians in Washington on Saturday. He drew cheers as he invoked a new law signed in Louisiana this week requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom.

“Has anyone read the ‘Thou shalt not steal’? I mean, has anybody read this incredible stuff? It’s just incredible,” Trump said at the gathering of the Faith & Freedom Coalition.

Funny how he starts off with the commandment that he has probably broken every working day of his life. Whether fraud or outright theft, that's how he rolls.

By now, nobody should be shocked that the Christian Taliban has hitched their wagon to the most irreligious man ever to seek the White House. The only way that he would have opened a Bible would be if he was told that it was written by Hitler and that his name was featured on every page.

Caturday

Not mine:

Because It's Friday

Rich People Are Assholes, Especially Kit Bond's Family

It takes rich, self-entitled assholes to poison a neighbor's trees because the neighbor's trees are blocking their view, but that's Arthur and Amelia Bond fromMissouri are.

Suspicious deaths in an idyllic seaside community and detective work that points to poison sound like themes from a classic murder mystery. But the victims in this Maine whodunnit were trees that stood in the way of a wealthy family’s oceanfront view, allegedly felled by well-heeled killers who, while ostracized and publicly shamed, remain free.
...
To make matters worse, the herbicide used to poison the trees leached into a neighboring park and the town’s only public seaside beach. The state attorney general is now investigating.
...
Amelia Bond, former CEO of the St. Louis Foundation, which oversees charitable funds with more than $500 million in assets, brought the herbicide [Tebuthiuron] from Missouri in 2021 and applied it near oak trees on the waterfront property of Lisa Gorman, wife of the late Leon Gorman, L.L. Bean’s president and grandson of L.L. himself, according to a pair of consent agreements with the town and the state pesticide board.

Bond’s husband, Arthur Bond III, is an architect and the nephew of former U.S. Sen. Kit Bond. Their summer home, owned by a trust, is situated directly behind Gorman’s home, farther up the hill.

When the trees and other vegetation began dying, Amelia Bond told Gorman in June 2022 that the tree didn’t look good and offered to share the cost of removing them, Gorman’s lawyer wrote in a document.

Instead, Gorman had the trees tested.

$4,500 for illegal use of pesticide, $180,000 to the town for violations, $30,000 for environmental testing and $1.5 million to the nieghbors. That's probably a drop in the bucket for the Bonds.

That's what the rich do: Break the law and, if they get caught, pay the fines. At least Toll-Booth Ned claimed he didn't know about illegal tree-cutting, but the Bonds sure as shit knew what they were doing.

Our Best Frenemy

More allegations have surfaced that Saudi intelligence did surveillance work for al Qaeda in advance of the 9/11 attacks.

It's no secret that what is commonly called "Islamic terrorism: is really "Saudi terrorism", as it is the Saudis who have funded a number of those groups and who have promulgated an intolerant and hostile strain of Islam.

Goodbye, Hawkeye

Donald Sutherland, the prolific film and television actor whose long career stretched from “M.A.S.H.” to “The Hunger Games,” has died. He was 88.

Kiefer Sutherland, the actor’s son, confirmed his father’s death Thursday. No further details were immediately available.

“I personally think one of the most important actors in the history of film,” Kiefer Sutherland said on X. “Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that.”

"A Round Room With a Madman Screaming Inside of It."

That is the description of the Trump White House by one of his cabinet secretaries.

The TOFF went through five secretaries of homeland security, four secretaries of state, four secretaries of defense, four directors of national intelligence and four chiefs of staff. His presidency was marked by security breaches by him, rampant instability in governance and cozying up to dictators and their ilk.

That anybody would consider voting to put him back in power boggles the mind. It leads me to the conclusion that anyone who would vote for him is either brain-dead, someone who hates the United States or figures that they can make some money as the country implodes and they don't give a fuck as long as they get theirs.

Iterating These Down, Here

Character Matters, (But IOKIYAR)

Flip things and imagine what the Republicans, the Far Right and the Christian Taliban would be saying if the Democrats were running a candidate with 34 felony convictions, who tried to incite a rebellion and who was found of culpability for sexual assault.

Just imagine the outrage, the self-righteous vitriol. You don't have to go far, look up what they said about Bill Clinton, who didn't do two or three magnitudes of what Trump did. Hell, look at Al Franken, who was turfed out of the Senate for, in comparison to Trump, the henious crime of spitting on the sidewalk.

Character matters to Republicans, but only if the person in question is not a Republican. If the person is a Republican, then even serial murder would be OK.

Republicans Are Following the TOFF Off the Cliff of Stupidity, Trade Ed.

RNC spokesperson Anna Kelly saying, “The notion that tariffs are a tax on U.S. consumers is a lie pushed by outsourcers and the Chinese Communist Party.”

Ms. Kelly is either dumber than a sack of rocks or she is an intellectual prostitute who is mouthing crap that she knows is a lie.

Anybody who has even of smidgen of knowledge about how tariffs work knows that tariffs are a tax paid by the consumer. I've explained it before and it only takes a few paragraphs to do. Of course, a few paragraphs is more than than Demented Donnie will ever read.

It Doesn't Get Much More Childish Than This

A Republican state lawmaker from Vermont has apologized for repeatedly pouring water into a Democratic colleague’s bag, after he caught her doing it on video.

State Rep. Mary Morrissey publicly apologized to state Rep. Jim Carroll, colleagues and the citizens of Vermont from the House floor on Monday. Both are from Bennington, a town of about 15,000 in the southwestern corner of the state.

“I am truly ashamed for my actions,” Morrissey said of “her disrespectful conduct” toward Carroll.
...
Carroll told The Associated Press that the tote bag he hangs in a hallway at the Statehouse was soaked a couple of times per week in January and February. Then, after he was charged with driving under the influence in February and returned from rehab, his bag was soaked almost daily, he said.

"Truly ashamed", yah, sure. You can safely bet she'd still be doing it if she hadn't been caught on camera. She's 67, which would be pretty old for childish behavior, excepting her party leader.

Felonious Donnie's Appearance at a Black Church Was to an Audience of White Folk

Trump is definitely going to win the Black vote…by filing a Black church with white folks for his rally 🤦🏽‍♂️

“The Blacks won’t notice.” pic.twitter.com/m7jWEAvAKO

— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) June 15, 2024

The Detroit pastor who hosted Donald Trump’s controversial surprise roundtable at a Black church on Saturday said people laughed in his face when he suggested coming to the event. Pastor Lorenzo Sewell appeared on MSNBC on Sunday night to discuss the turnout at 180 Church for an event intended to be about tackling issues facing Black voters. Photos and footage from the event showed the pews packed with white crowds.

So, just another disgusting scam by the FOFF. One that a lot of the MSM swallowed, too, for they mentioned that the Convict from Queens was at a Black church, but they didn't mention all of the white folk brought in to fill the pews.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are lying about who pays the cost of tariffs in order to disguise the Russian Asset's plan to bring back massive tariffs and crash the world economic order. Once more, the fact is evident that the TOFF and his bootlickers have learned nothing from history, but both are topics for another time.

Cycling These Down, Here

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

AV-8:

I saw one at an airshow, many years ago. When it went into a hover, it was about the loudest airplane I've ever heard.

Time to Make T-Shirts

ETA: My brother said that the first line should read "an asshole". I'll get a round tuit.

Either Way, I'll Happily Watch on Pay Per View

The FOFF mused about being on a sinking boat:

But I asked the boater. I said, “So let me ask you: Let’s say your boat goes down and I’m sitting on top of this big powerful battery and the boat’s going down. Do I get electrocuted?” And he said, “You know what, honestly nobody’s ever asked me that question.”

But if I’m sitting down and that boat’s going down and I’m on top of a battery, and the water starts flooding in, I’m getting concerned. But then I look ten yards to my left and there’s a shark over there. So I have a choice of electrocution or a shark. You know what I’m going to take? Electrocution. I will take electrocution every single time. Do we agree? Yeah, I will take electrocution.

Meanwhile, CEOs are starting to figure out that the Convict From Queens is a few cans short of a sixpack:

Former President Donald Trump failed to impress everyone in a room full of top CEOs Thursday at the Business Roundtable’s quarterly meeting, multiple attendees told CNBC.

“Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said one CEO who was in the room, according to a person who heard the executive speaking. The CEO also said Trump did not explain how he planned to accomplish any of his policy proposals, that person said.

Several CEOs “said that [Trump] was remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought [and] was all over the map,” CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin reported Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

It won't dent the Kool-Aid-Swilling Trumpanzees, they'd vote for him if he were in an irreversible coma. But there are not enough of them, alone, to elect his senile, treasonous fat ass.

Yet if he loses, quite a few will act up. Good thing that a lot of guys convicted of possessing pot have been let out of prison, we'll need the space for the Legion of Losers.

H/T

Caturday

Someone else's cat:

The Difference Between Cops and Catholic Priests

One carries a gun and wears a badge. The other wears a cassock and carries a cross.

Both have child rapists in their ranks and the organizations cover it up.

They served in police departments big and small. They were new recruits and seasoned veterans, patrol officers and chiefs of police. They understood the power of their guns and badges. In many cases, they used that very power to find and silence their victims.

A Washington Post investigation has found that over the past two decades, hundreds of law enforcement officers in the United States have sexually abused children while officials at every level of the criminal justice system have failed to protect kids, punish abusers and prevent additional crimes.
...
The Post identified at least 1,800 state and local law enforcement officers who were charged with crimes involving child sexual abuse from 2005 through 2022.

Same as the RCC and other churches: Using positions of trust to rape children.

Read it, it's outside the paywall. It's horrifying

Scratch a Pro-Palestinian Demonstrator, Find an Antisemite

Monday’s protest started in Union Square, where footage posted to social media showed a small group of demonstrators holding up a flag saying, “Long live October 7th.”

Protesters then flooded into the subway and rode down to Wall St., where they staged a larger action outside the Nova Exhibition, a memorial created to honor the victims of Hamas’ attack, in which terrorists killed some 1,200 Israelis and took hundreds hostage.

At the Wall St. protest, footage showed a protester waving a flag with Hamas’ logo on it and another with the emblem of Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S., while someone else was seen holding a sign saying Zionists are “not human.”

Terrorist sypathizers gotta sympathize, I gather. And they are just that. Most of them are mask-wearing cowards. Just like the ones in Gaza, who make war while hiding behind civilians.

They will inadvertently accomplish one MAGA priority by outlawing wearing masks.

On another note, the UN Security Council endorsed President Biden's cease-fire plan. Hamas hasn't accepted it.

It should be pretty clear by now to even the most casual observer that Hamas's strategy is to continue to hide behind the civilians in Gaza and dare the Israelis to keep killing Gazans. Hamas believes that if the civilian death toll continues to mount, that eventually the other nations of the world will put enough pressure on Israel (aided and abetted by Hamas's useful idiots in the West) to unilaterally call a halt. And then Hamas can claim victory.

Well, maybe that'll work. But in the meantime, the Israelis will do their best to ensure that if that is a Hamas victory, it'll be a Pyrrhic one.

The Convention of Amoral Male Whores

Donald Trump spent the day before his 78th birthday being feted by Republicans in Congress who sang “Happy Birthday” and presented him with a cake and gifts. It was a remarkable show of loyalty for a former president who was shunned by many of the same lawmakers after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

If Don Snoreleone didn't have the MAGA morons in an iron grip, there is no way that "good Christians" like Mike Johnson and the rest of them would stand to be within a kiloparsec of that serial adulterer/liar. But because they think they can get something out of him they want, they'll happily lick his anus.

Which makes then nothing other than political whores.

Actually, it makes them delusional pilitical whores. Because if the FOFF does win, there is nothing more that he'll need from him. He already has plans to govern like a dictator and, if the GOP members of Congress oppose him, Demented Donnie will see that they are taken care of.

They re as delusional as the politicians and weathy jerks who thought they could control Adolph Hitler and Vladimir Putin. Dolt-45 is cut from the same cloth as those two.

Because It's Friday

British steam.

Waxing These Down, Here