Caturday

The "I hate my food" glare, directed at teh server (me).

A Drop in the Bucket and Corporate Welfare (Updated with OpenAI Losses)

Wal-Mart is donating $500K to food banks. They have 4,600 stores, so they're donating less than $110 per store.

They are seriously cheap fucks. Brookshire Grocery, which has about 200 stores, is donating half a million.

If you donated a load of groceries to a food bank, the chances are that you, proportionately, did more to help people needing food than did Wal-Mart.

Keep in mind that SNAP, the ACA and Medicare work also as subsidies to labor exploiters like Wal-Mart, which thereby don't need to pay a living wage to their workers.

Meanwhile, OpenAI, which is backed by billionaires and large tech giants, wants the government to back their loans, so they will have nothing at risk. (OpenAI lost about $12 billion last quarter.)

Sam Altman read the room and realized that asking for a few hundred billion in loan guarantees wasn't a good sell when tens of millions of Americans are going hungry, so he walked that back.

For now. Corporations and oligarchs always seem to want the government to guarantee their shit, while deriding those at the bottom of the economic pyramid. Socialism for the rich, same as it ever was.

Because It's Friday

A USATC locomotive in the UK:

Corruption and Fealty, Coastie Ed.

Coast Guard Exchanges at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., and in Centreville, Virginia, recently stocked Trump-branded wine and cider, according to a photo posted on Instagram and confirmed by Forbes from calls to the stores.

Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the exchanges were carrying Trump wines in a statement to Forbes, saying, “The brave men and women of the USCG are pleased to be able to buy Trump wine and cider tax free.”

If Biden had sold coffee through the military exchanges, the Republicans would have twisted them into knots in their haste to get in front of a microphone. But there will be nothing but crickets from the Right on this.

It is corrupt? Possibly. But it sure smells rotten for a present to sell his goods through a semi-captive system.

Dyeing These Down, Here

Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino Is a Motherfucking Liar and a PerjurerandThey Can Indict a Ham Sandwich, But Not Convict It

Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, who led a series of increasingly aggressive raids across Chicago and its suburbs, lied about firing tear gas at protesters in Little Village and tackling a man outside the Broadview ICE facility, a federal judge said Thursday.

He lied repeatedly (and so did his subordinates and the government's lawyers). That should be noted in any case he testifies in down the road.

Meanwhile, Drunken Jeanine lost another one:

Jurors showed no appetite for the Justice Department's case against "sandwich guy," the D.C. resident who chucked a Subway sandwich at the chest of a federal officer, finding him not guilty Thursday after several hours of deliberations.
...
Border Patrol Officer Greg Lairmore received two "gag gifts" related to the incident — a plush sandwich and a patch featuring a cartoon of Dunn throwing the sandwich with the words “Felony Footlong” — which the defense team argued showed this was not a serious event in his life.

Lairmore had testified that the sandwich “exploded all over” his chest and claimed he could smell mustard and onions. But a photo showed that the sandwich was still in its wrapper on the ground after it hit Lairmore in his bulletproof vest.

So, yet another cop got on the stand and testilied about the facts of the case.

The one difference between the American Gestapo and the original is that, for now at least, their bullshit sometimes gets dragged into the light in front of a jury.

Invest in Popcorn

A few conservative representatives with ties to the FBI and the Justice Department have spilled that the true details of the Epstein files are “worse” for Trump than previously reported, according to journalist David Schuster.

Michael Wolff, a longtime chronicler of Trump’s White House who conducted extensive interviews with Epstein prior to his death, told The Daily Beast last month that Epstein had shown him photos of Trump with half-naked “young girls” in his lap.

These rumors have galvanized into a legitimate movement among Republicans, who are now, Schuster wrote on X Wednesday night, clamoring for the files’ full release.

And so you see why the Republicans will move Heaven and Earth to keep the government closed in order to keep the government closed and keep the Epstein files hidden.

Republicans are protecting a major pedophile, and they are fully aware of that. Never ever forget that.

Supporting the Troops, Trump Style

An Army installation’s dining facility is closed because of the government shutdown, officials said.

The Fort Leavenworth Installation Warrior Restaurant is closed “until further notice,” base officials announced in a Facebook post. The Warrior Restaurant is the sole dining facility, or DFAC, on the Kansas base.

For most junior enlisted soldiers, DFACs are one of the few on-base options for meals, especially if they don’t have cars to get off post. Additionally, for those living in the barracks, a portion of their paycheck is allocated to cover the costs of eating at the dining facility.

Cadet Bone Spurs and Pee-Wee German had no trouble with moving funds to pay for his wall[1] when Congress wouldn't fund it, so one might conclude that the only reason they're going all-in on starving the troops is pure cruelty.
_______________________
[1]Such a beautiful wall. Big tough wall operators, straight out of Central Casting, with tears in their eyes, were saying Sir, we've never seen such a magnificent wall.

Hakeem Jeffries is Still Full of Shit

Quite wrong. Being anti-Trump, anti-GOP is not the same as being pro-Democratic party. I doubt very much if any meaningful number of people went to the polls thinking that their votes were ratifications of what Jeffries and Schumer are doing or not doing.

A lot of Democrats won because voters looked at the economic and political chaos brought by Trump and said "whoa." Eight million people don't turn out in the street nationwide because they're happy with the way things are going. Mayor-elect Mamdani received more votes than the total turnout in some of the recent NYC mayoral elections. Two Democrats won seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission, the first Democrats to be seated there in this century.

Voters are not happy and the person they are most unhappy with is the president and his lackeys. Watch for an uptick of Republicans in the House deciding to retire. And I expect some long-term Democrats to read the room and also opt to quit.

But for today, I am enjoying the fact that Andrew Cuomo lost two elections this cycle.

Gee. Who Saw This Coming?

Criminals posing as US immigration officers have carried out robberies, kidnappings, and sexual assaults in several states, warns a law enforcement bulletin issued last month by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The bureau urges agencies to ensure officers clearly identify themselves and to cooperate when civilians ask to verify an officer’s identity—including by allowing calls to a local police precinct. “Ensure law enforcement personnel adequality [sic] identify themselves during operations and cooperate with individuals who request further verification,” it says.

So, to sum up, criminals are impersonating another group of criminals.

Someone with a mask and a gun should be presumed to be a violent criminal. Any clown can buy an ICE raid jacket.

Plopping These Down, Here

Satan Gains a New Lieutenant

Dick Cheney, the former White House chief of staff, member of Congress, secretary of defense and US vice-president, has died, his family has said. He was 84.

Cheney started out covering up the war crimes of Tiger Force and reached the height of power, pushing for wars of aggression and ordersing/approving the commission of war crimes. Like other conservatives, he flipped on culture war issues only when they affected his family. It took Trump's first coup attempt for him to recognize the threat posed by the Bloated Orange Fascist, but by then, he was long out of office and, if not for the stand taken by his daughter, he might have kept quiet.

So I'll end with the old saying of never speak anything but good of the dead. Good.

War #3 Threatened by Trump

The Trump administration has begun detailed planning for a new mission to send U.S. troops and intelligence officers into Mexico to target drug cartels, according to two U.S. officials and two former senior U.S. officials familiar with the effort.

The early stages of training for the potential mission, which would include ground operations inside Mexico, has already begun, the two current U.S. officials said. But a deployment to Mexico is not imminent, the two U.S. officials and one of the former U.S. officials said. Discussions about the scope of the mission are ongoing, and a final decision has not been made, the two current U.S. officials said.

The "no moar foreign wars" guy sure seems to be hot on invading every country that he sees on Fox News.

The United States is going to end up with no friends south of the Rio Grande, other than those that we have bought, like Argentina. Latin American countries are going to look for a counterweight and the most likely choice is China, which is going to be increasingly interested in overseas basing rights.

People in other countries have a better sense of history; they haven't forgotten when American Latin Policy was "send the Marines" to every country that the United Fruit Co. was beefing with. This threat to send in the military is going to ring a lot of chimes.

The Trump Administration is disintegrating American power and influence around the world. We will be cleaning this up for a lifetime, if even that quickly.

A House of Dynamite

If you like movies with a tidy storyline where everything gets wrapped up in the end and everyone lives happily ever after like a Disney fairytale, "A House of Dynamite" is not for you.

If you want to see a serious adult-grade movie that, if you really think about it, will scare the shit out of you, then watch it.

One thing the movie gets right is that the ground-based missile defense system is a $250 billion coin toss, because the odds of it working are about 50-50.

Fucking With the Trumpy Business Owners

Do you know a business owner who supports Trump and is dismissive of people who are on SNAP or other assistance? I'll bet that you likely do.

Here's a fun thing: Go to this database, enter the name of the business (you may have to dig into a DBA filing) and you can see how much they got in COVID relief loans and how much they didn't have to pay back, ie, welfare for businesses.

Whiskey Pete is a Serious Piece of Shit

The War Department showed off photos of War Secretary Pete Hegseth working out with U.S. troops stationed in Malaysia, vowing America's soldiers will be "fit, not fat."

"Secretary Hegseth joined our warriors for morning PT in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia," the DOW's rapid response account wrote on X. "From the top down, we will be FIT, NOT FAT!"

In a sane world, it would not matter a fucking whit whether or not SecDef can run four miles with a full pack or is so obese that he has to be moved with a forklift. The job is to run the bureaucracy of the world's most powerful military. Nowhere in that is a need to be fit enough to go on a combat patrol.

Hegseth is coming across as a stereotypical low-ability military leader who only understands one aspect of his job and hammers that to the exclusion of everything else. You could grab an E-7/9 or an O-3/6 out of the ranks at any unit and that person would have a 75% or better chance at being a better SecDef than this alcohol-infused loser.

So, This is an Illegal Blog?

According the the Demented Orange Fart Machine, this blog is illegal:

He doesn't understand how numbers and percentages work, so I can safely say that I am easily 250% anti-Trump.

Your Sunday Morning Turboprop Noise

A Piaggio P.180:



I've not seen a lot of them, but when one passes overhead, you'll know it. It sounds different because the props are cutting up the exhaust flow.

Time Change

Remember to turn your clocks back tonight to 1934.

It's Always About the Oil.

First it was Iraq. Then the Orange Warmonger sends a bunch of ships to threaten/attack Venezuela. But nos somebody must have told him that Nigeria has sweet cruide, because he's threatening them.

It's all about the oil for him.

Beyond that, a military strike into Venezuela will poison relations with every country south of the border (excpet maybe Argentina) for a generation.

Time to resurect Tom Lehrer

Tone-Deaf Donald

He threw a "Great Gatsby" party the day before SNAP benefits were cut off.

And he couldn't be bothered to wear any sort of costume.

DHS Thugs Dogpile on Old White Guy

Some old white guy turned down the street into DHS thuggery, so the goons dragged him out of his car, proned him out on the pavement, knelt on him and broke six of his ribs, causing internal injuries.

If This is what they feel free to do with the knowledge that their actions are being documented, then one has to wonder what horrific abuses are going on behind the walls of their concentration prisons.

Caturday

Chip, awake for once.

Donald Marie Antoinette Trump

Federal workers are going unpaid, a hunger crisis is looming, people are facing whopping spikes in health insurance premiums.

And while all that is going on, Donnie's bragging about remodeling a shitter.

The "stable genius" needs to retire to his gilded suite in Florida.

ICE the Occupying Army

This isn't a cop. This is the chief of the Border Patrol cosplaying the Battle of Fallujah.

ICE and the CBP aren't cops. Cops are there, nominally, to serve and protect the population. These clowns are cosplaying as soldiers. They're dressed up in their knockoff cammies, hiring the dregs of the employment pool, to occupy and to terrorize.

And they're losing the battle for public opinion.

I gotta be real, I did not suspect we would reach "roving mobs of white folks chanting "shame" at ICE" within 9 months, and it really feels like a sign of how much more horrifying it must be on the ground than those of us not there can even imagine.

[image or embed]

— Ghostly Bree (@mostlybree.kitrocha.com) October 31, 2025 at 5:36 PM

(I'll find a public version of the video and upate this post.) 

Losing the battle for public opinion is fatal in a democracy. When the worm turns, the budgetary axe will fall on these guys. And nobody is really going to want to hire laid-off goons for anything.

What happens when they lose the battle for public opinion in an autocracy, when the population is also armed, is another question.

Nancy Mace is an Arrogant, Entitled Piece of Shit

She was berating the cops and the TSA officers at an airport because, I guess, they didn't lie down and let her walk across their bodies.

Her media staff puke tried to play the Charlie Kirk card. I'm betting the cops weren't impressed.

After all, this is the party that says they back the blue, except when they're beating them with flagpoles,

Where Are the Billionaires?

Between unpaid Federal workers and SNAP recipients, tens of millions are facing a food crisis. States and citizens are donating to food banks to help. Which begs the obvious question:

WHERE ARE THE BILLIONAIRES?

The billionaires are funding Trump’s golden obscenity of a ballroom. They are not opening their hoards of wealth to help anyone else. Is there anything else needed to convince people that the billionaires, the Musks, the Zuckerbergs, the Bezos, the Ellisons, the Waltons and the rest are parasites? They suck the wealth out if the rest if us and give nothing back.

This level of inequality can’t be allowed to go on. Either we’ll fix it the easy way, with tax policy, or we’ll fix it the hard way, the way the French did.

But sooner or later, we will fix this.

Because It's Friday

The Brits love their steam.

Trump Nails Up the “Whites Only” Sign

The Trump administration is going to restrict the number of refugees it admits into the United States next year to the token level of just 7,500 – and those spots will mostly be filled by white South Africans.

Trump and Pee-Wee German are racist right down to the marrow of their bones. It's who they are. At this point, it's not even debatable.

Waltzing These Down, Here

The Andrew Formerly Known as Prince

King Charles III on Thursday stripped his disgraced brother Prince Andrew of his remaining titles and evicted him from his royal residence after weeks of pressure to act over his relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Buckingham Palace said the king “initiated a formal process to remove the Style, Titles and Honours of Prince Andrew.”

Effective immediately, Andrew will be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor and not as a prince, and he will move from his Royal Lodge residence into “private accommodation.”

In England, Epstein's pedo-pal gets told to fuck all the way off. In this country, we elected him to the presidency.

Trump to Male Veterans With Breast Cancer: Die, Fucker, Die

Men do get breast cancer. If they're veterans and they go to the VA for treatment, the VA's position now is that they should go home and die. Because Cadet Bone Spurs believes that real men don't get breast cancer.

But he's so concerned about windmill cancer.

We truly are governed by idiots.

Trump is Confused, Again

President Donald Trump appeared to suggest the U.S. will resume testing nuclear weapons for the first time in three decades, saying it would be on an “equal basis” with Russia and China.

President Demento made those comments after Russia claimed to have tested a nuclear-powered cruise missile, which suggests to me that he confused warjhead testing with missile testing.

Beyond that, this missile is going to essentially be a dirty bomb, which makes it a weapon of mass destruction. And we know how to deal with being hit with a nuclear weapon.

A Year Ago

It all came true.

DHS and ICE Lies

The videos that they've been posting are of different protests, in different cities, some recorded in the last decade and some of other countries.

Remember this: DHS lies about everything, just like their Demented Old Orange Leader.

Proposition: CBS News and Bari Weiss Are Racist As Fuck.Prove Me Wrong

If this is true, I doubt if you can:

The Broken Orange Roomba

That was the impression Trump gave as he wandered around an offical reception in Japan.

Caning These Down, Here