Fly on a 787 Made in South Carolina. Maybe the Wings Won't Fall Off. Maybe

Some of the inspections that the crack workers in South Carolina were gundecking was whether or not the wings were properly attached to the fuselage.

The only thing that Boeing cares about is making more money so that the vultures perched in the C-Suites make even more money. If the airplanes manage to stay in the air, that's a lagniappe.

If one of those airplanes crashes, the passengers' families should be allowed to enter a lottery to be on the firing squads that execute Boeing executives.

There's an old story, from Soviet times, that a tall apartment building was constructed before someone realized that the design team left off the elevators. They were all given apartments on the top floor and ordered to live there. So maybe a couple of 787s with loose wing bolts can be set aside for the use of Boeing's executives and that's the planes they have to fly on.

Facebleech Warning

Some scumbag of a scammer is sending out emails that purport to be Facebook password reset codes. Facebook wouldn't send those out unless you specifically requested them to.

So if you get an email that says it's from the Zuckerberg Borg and it has a reset code, delete that shit toot sweet.

Trump’s Toady Judge Keeps Toadying

The federal judge in Florida presiding over the classified documents prosecution of former President Donald Trump has canceled the May 20 trial date, postponing it indefinitely.

The trial will be postponed until it can be reliably determined that Hell has frozen over, if this judge had her way. I don't know how further up his ass she can crawl, but I guess that we're going to find out.

Mowing These Down, Here

Good News Story of the Day: Kristi Noem manages to unify the left and right, the woke and Q-anon, the trans and homophobes unanimously around the proposition that she is a monster.

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) April 29, 2024

787s: Maybe They Won't Fall Out of the Sky. Maybe.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday it has opened an investigation into Boeing after the beleaguered company reported that workers at a South Carolina plant falsified inspection records on certain 787 planes. Boeing said its engineers have determined that misconduct did not create “an immediate safety of flight issue.”

The crackerjack managers running Boeing set up a plant in South CArolina so that they could use cheaper and nonunion workers. It came out last year that Boeing's SC airplanes had quality problems. Well, no mucking fit. Setting up a plant based on low wages, cost-cutting and pushing product out the doors isn't a great idea for making blenders, let alone large jets.

Anyone who trusts Boeing to fairly investigate and correct this latest issue has a large amount of gravel in their cranium.

The smartest decision NASA has made in years was to not give Boeing a sole-source contract for their Starliner. NASA gave the lion's share of funding for that program to Boeing and a taste of it to SpaceX. SpaceX's Crew Dragon has made eleven flights to the ISS, Boeing, well, they have yet to get off the ground with people on board. NASA would still be stuck with flying crews to the ISS on Soyuz capsules if they had gone with Boeing.

Gulp. Going to Space in Something Built by Boeing

Launch around 2230 EDT

Scrubbed.

Expending These Down, Here

I seem to have accumulated a lot of these.

h/t

Contemptible Don, Part Deux

Judge Juan M. Merchan has again held Trump in contempt of court and fined him another $1,000 for violating the gag order, sternly warning the former president of the possibility of jail for future violations.

He said Trump’s statement “threaten to interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitute a direct attack on the rule of law. I cannot allow that to continue.”

“As much as I don’t want to impose a jail sanction,” the judge added, “I want you to understand that I will have to if necessary and appropriate.”

A weekend in a cellblock with only his SS detail for company might do Donnie Von Shitzenpantz a world of good. Guys in stir don't get cell phones. And people will kill for pictures of him in a jail jumpsuit.

"It's Your Fault For Not Stopping Me From Doing Something Stupid, So Imma Gonna Sue You!"

So, to sum up, some critter charged the stage at a Dave Chappelle show, tackled Mr. Chapelle, and received a beatdown in the process. He's now suing because, I don't know, he didn't like getting his ass kicked. And said critter alleges that, no, he didn't assault Mr. Chappelle, it was an act of protest. And yes, part of the complaint seems to be that they didn't stop or prevent said critter from acting the fool.

Crimus. This smells as though some ambulance-chaser is cruising for a quick settlement. If it goes to trial, a reasonable jury would laugh themselves silly. But then again, this is California.

Speaking of stupid shit, SNL is being accused of "bullying" for satirizing some former child star who has been trying to redo herself as an edgy gay pop star. Satirizing people in the public eye, especially in the entertainment industry, is what SNL does. And, as far as that goes, there were probably a million or more SNL viewers who had no frigging idea who JoJo Siwa was. But now they do. For someone in that biz, satire is still publicity and it didn't cost her a penny.

Your Sunday Morning Prop Noise

A Curtiss C-46 Commando.

Being on the Cutting Edge Can Mean That You're the One Who Bleeds

That's what a woman who bought a Fisker Ocean found out when minor damage to a door (a crease and a broken hinge) meant the car was totaled because parts weren't available.

And you can bet that the insurance premiums for such a vehicle are eye-watering.

Caveat emptor, people. Especially when you're out on the edge of things. My uneducated, untutored recommendation is that if you have to buy an EV, do so from a company that knows how to make vehicles. (Or, better yet, buy a plug-in hybrid.)

H/T

NRA Quietly Selling Off Its Museum Pieces

The NRA once touted that it had one of he greatest collection of firearms in the world, but it seems that they have been quietly selling them off.

As the referenced blog asks: Where's the money going?

Caturday

It takes work to look this good.

Imagine: Roving Military Patrols, Arresting and Detaining Anybody Who Looks Even Vaguely Hispanic.

For that is what Trump says he'll do. He'll send the military out to find and deport eleven million people, which will be the greatest roundup of people by ethnicity since the Germans were stuffing Jews, Roma and lots of other groups into boxcars. And yes, concentration camps will be constructed. He'll give the DoJ names of people he wants prosecuted and fire any prosecutor who doesn't carry out his bidding. And he'll essentially hand Europe over to Russia.

None of that is wild hyperbole. It's what he said he'll do.

If you are OK with that, then, respectfully, you need to stop saying the Pledge of Allegiance. For you are lying every time you do.

If you are not OK with that, then get off your ass and get to work ensuring that the closest that the TOFF ever comes to the White House again is a courtroom in D.C.

More Fraud From the TOFF, Maybe?

The auditing firm for Trump Media and the auditor’s owner were charged Friday with “massive fraud” by the Securities and Exchange Commission for accounting work that affected more than 1,500 SEC filings, the federal regulator announced.

The auditor, BF Borgers CPA, and its owner, Benjamin Borgers, have agreed to be permanently suspended from practicing as accountants before the SEC, and also agreed to pay a combined $14 million in civil penalties, without admitting or denying the allegations, the SEC said.

The agency, calling BF Borgers a “sham audit mill,” said the company and its owner “deliberately systematically failed to conduct” audits and quarterly reviews incorporated in more than 1,500 SEC filings from January 2021 through June 2023 in accordance with Public Company Accounting Oversight Board standards.

How hard is it to surmise that Trump Media (stock ticker: DJT) went looking for a compliant CPA who would, for a fee, accept whatever garbage of a financial statement that DJT handed them and sign off on it? It would be really delicious if it came to light that it was DJT's financial fictioneering that got the SEC to look hard at BF Bogers.

Doing work for Von ShitzinPantz at any level is committing professional seppuku.

H/T

Because It's Friday

US Sugar:

Compare and Contrast: Trumpy Insurrectionists and Pro-Hamas Protesters

Almost half of the more than 280 pro-Palestinian protesters arrested at Columbia University and City College this week weren’t students or faculty at the schools, according to data released by Mayor Adams’ administration Thursday.

The issue of whether “outside agitators” were behind the encampment protests at Columbia and CCNY that culminated in the short-lived occupation of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall has become a focus of intense debate. Mayor Eric Adams, NYPD officials and college leaders have repeatedly said outsiders were influencing student behavior, while student protest leaders deny that’s the case.

So half of the "Columbia student protesters" had no affiliation with the school.

Compare and contrast that to the Trumpanzees who stormed the Capitol on 1/6/21. Every one of those who were later arrested, charged and convicted (a nearly 100% conviction rate, by the way) were pro-Trump rioters. None of them were people with no affiliation to Trump.

Also, the cops in NYC went in and arrested them on the spot. Unlike the Feds, they didn't let them all go home and then have to round them up later.

Both groups seem to think that they should be given a pass for ciminal behavior. Fuck every one of them.

Contemptible Don

Donald Trump was held in contempt of court Tuesday and fined $9,000 for repeatedly violating a gag order that barred him from making public statements about witnesses, jurors and some others connected to his New York hush money case. If he does it again, the judge warned, he could be jailed.

Wash and repeat:

Judge Juan M. Merchan has commenced a contempt hearing on prosecutors’ allegations that Trump violated his gag order four more times.

These are in addition to the nine violations Trump was fined for earlier in the week.

The TOFF has the self-control of a toddler. For the first time in his life, he is being held to account for his actions and he doesn't cotton to it one bit. He wants his lawyer in his criminal trial to be nastier, which is about a self-defeating a proposition as it comes. Getting the jury to hate you and your lawyer is a good way to grease the skids for losing a case.

Springing These Down, Here

All found here.

In Red States, All Women of Child-Bearing Age are State Property

Demented Donnie is just fine with the idea of states monitoring pregnant women's health to ensure they don't have abortions and prosecuting them if they do.

So this is what will happen in the confederate/red states: When a girl has her first menses, she will be fitted with a health monitor, which she will have to wear under pain of incarceration until she has gone through menopause. The monitor will transmit her health status to the state and alert the Pregnancy Enforcement Police should she become pregnant. Once that happens, she will be barred from going to any state where abortion is legal. Should she do so, an arrest warrant will issue and she will be incarcerated upon her return. If she isn't then pregnant, she'llb e charged with murder.

No woman with half a brain should live in those states.

The White Privilege Protests

That seems to be the attitude percolating through much of these protests: That they can break the law, engage in shenanigans, including occupying and trashing the interior of buildings, and nothing bad will happen to them. They'll get to go back to school, graduate, and go on to have fine careers with no indication of committing felonies or misdemeanors.

Because they are (mostly) white kids who have known privilege all of their lives, the kind of privilege when the cops pull over their parents, the cops call them "sir" or "ma'am" with not even a prospect of a beat-down.

Maybe I'm wrong.

I don't think I am.

See, in those schools, in the graduations coming up, there are some kids who are the first ones in their families to graduate college or get a professional degree. To them and their families, graduting college (or medical or law school) is A Really Big Deal. The families are justifiably proud and they want to take in the event; an event which is being canceled or disrupted because a bunch of white kids who couldn't have found Gaza on a map seven months ago are now pitching tantrum like a pack of lemmings who can't find the cliff edge.

And I don't think I'm wrong about that, either.

High Time That This Happened

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will move to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, The Associated Press has learned, a historic shift to generations of American drug policy that could have wide ripple effects across the country.

The DEA’s proposal, which still must be reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, would recognize the medical uses of cannabis and acknowledge it has less potential for abuse than some of the nation’s most dangerous drugs. However, it would not legalize marijuana outright for recreational use.
...
Once OMB signs off, the DEA will take public comment on the plan to move marijuana from its current classification as a Schedule I drug, alongside heroin and LSD. It moves pot to Schedule III, alongside ketamine and some anabolic steroids, following a recommendation from the federal Health and Human Services Department. After the public comment period and a review by an administrative judge, the agency would eventually publish the final rule.

The pot dispensaries would then be able to access the banking system and use credit cards. The tax revenues would flow more easily. And using pot with a prescription would remove the legal stigma for using it now.

This would partially dismantle Nixon's War on Drugs. It does nothing to restore the civil liberties that the courts, especially the Supremes, have stripped away in furthering that "war".

Too bad it took this far into the Biden Administration to do this, but I'll take it for the good step that it is.

Skitching These Down, Here

^^^ Because of this.

Lock Them Up! Lock Them All Up!

Dozens of protesters took over a building at Columbia University in New York early Tuesday, barricading the entrances and unfurling a Palestinian flag out of a window in the latest escalation of demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war that have spread to college campuses nationwide.

Video footage showed protesters on Columbia’s Manhattan campus locking arms in front of Hamilton Hall early Tuesday and carrying furniture and metal barricades to the building, one of several that was occupied during a 1968 civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protest on the campus. Posts on an Instagram page for protest organizers shortly after midnight urged people to protect the encampment and join them at Hamilton Hall. A “Free Palestine” banner hung from a window.

If it was wrong to break into a public building on 1/6/21, an act for which a lot of people have gone to jail, it is even more wrong to break into a privately-owned building to throw political temper tantrums.

More than that, who the fuck do they think they are convincing of the righteousness of their cause? Public and legal protests are one thing, they can show large support for a cause. But riots (and this is now a riot) do nothing. Did the BLM riots in Portland a few years ago do anything but lose support for their cause? Did the Capitol invasion as part of the TOFF's Coup Attempt do anything other than put a lot of people in prison?

If it was OK to go after the Capitol Hill insurrectionists with the full force of the criminal justice system, then it's OK to go after these turdlets.

The Retrograde Supreme Court

One of the outcomes of the Civil War was the supremacy of the Federal government. The Union fought under a single government, more or less, while the Slavers were a loose confederation of states. And they lost.

But it seems to me that the Supreme Court has been doing its level best to bring back states' rights and reverse the outcome of the Civil War. Hell, if it wasn't for the Thirteenth Amendment, I have no doubt that this current iteration of the Supremes would bring back chattel slavery.

Now, with Demented Donnie's claim for immunity, the Court seems to be setting its sights on reversing the outcome of the Revolutionary War by turning the presidency into an elected kingship. I am pretty sure that, if the Founding Fathers were to come back, they'd go to the Supreme Whoreshouse Courthouse and administer a round of painful dopeslaps.

America's Enemies

Includes the majority ot the GOP's congresscritters and their presumptive nominee for the presidential election, Dementia Donnie.

"R" for political identification, no longer stands for "Republican". It stands for "Russia". For that is where their loyalty now lies.

And if you support those clowns, start studying.

Color Me Heavily Unsympathetic

Maryam Alwan figured the worst was over after New York City police in riot gear arrested her and other protesters on the Columbia University campus, loaded them onto buses and held them in custody for hours.

But the next evening, the college junior received an email from the university. Alwan and other students were being suspended after their arrests at the “ Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” a tactic colleges across the country have deployed to calm growing campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war.

The students' plight has become a central part of protests, with students and a growing number of faculty demanding their amnesty. At issue is whether universities and law enforcement will clear the charges and withhold other consequences, or whether the suspensions and legal records will follow students into their adult lives.

Welcome to the real world, kid, where committing a crime carries the risk of long-term consequences.

Besides that, I'll bet that some of the people who are saying "poor child" were cheering on as those who participated in the 1/6 Coup Attempt or the Tiki-Torch Racists' March were indicted and lost their jobs. So it may come down to whose ox is being arrested.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

A good old DC-9:

Farewell, Col. Tigh

Terry Carter, the original Col Tigh in Battlestar Galactica, has died. He was 95.

Guest Caturday

Grey Wolf's cat.

Scratch a Pro-Palestine Protestor, Find an Antisemite

Video of incendiary comments by one of the leaders of the student protest encampment at Columbia University surfaced online Thursday evening, forcing the school to again confront an issue at the core of the conflict rippling across campuses nationwide: the tension between pro-Palestinian activism and antisemitism.

The student, Khymani James, said in the January video that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”

Mr. James made the comments during and after a disciplinary hearing with Columbia administrators that he recorded and then posted on Instagram.

It's not as though that turdlet is being sandbagged. He recorded himself making those remarks and then posted them, himself, online.

Only when there is now significant blowback does he try to disavow what he said. But believe what he said to be what he believes.

Meir Kahane was a thug and a terrorist. But he had the right of it when he advocated that every Jew should have weapons and know how to use them. When Mr. James decides it is time to go out and start murdering people, he might come down with a serious case of bullet wounds.

Because It's Friday

Some drone footage:

Can't say I'm too crazy of the viewpoint. It looks too much like a model railroad set.

Reciprocal Blogroll

I'm going through that section and pruning out those who aren't reciprocal.

But if you've blogrolled me and you're not in any of my blogrolls, let me know, so I can fix that.

Caveat: If you're one of the Banhammer Boys, forget about it.

Also, if your blog is really old, please post something. Anything will do. Otherwise, it'll go, too.

The Campus Pro-Hamas Protests

I would feel a little more sympathetic to them if they condemned the atrocities Hamas perpetrated on October 7th. I would feel a little more sympathetic if they could spare a word for the civilian hostages that have been held since then, or for those who died in Hamas's custody.

But no, not a peep out of the kaffiyeh-klad klowns about any of that.

So color me unsympathetic. And if it takes a "whiff of grape" to break up the protests, I won't shed many tears. I well remember the Vietnam protests and they didn't win any friends. They were pretty masturbatory, in that they only made the protesters think that they were doing something.

Scratching These Down, Here

H/T