Billy Mitchell Would Like a Word

President Donald Trump has announced a bold plan for the Navy to build a new, large warship that he is calling a “battleship” as part of a larger vision to create a “Golden Fleet.”

“They’ll be the fastest, the biggest, and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” Trump claimed during the announcement at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
... He said Monday he will have a direct role in designing this new warship as well.

“The U.S. Navy will lead the design of these ships along with me, because I’m a very aesthetic person,” Trump said.

Donnie the Naval Architect. Right. One might wonder why the Demented Designer didn't insist that the ships include masts for backup.

Very large surface combatants have been obsolete for a century. The proliferation of drones has only increased increased that obsolescence. Ukraine, with no navy to speak of, has used drones, aerial, surface and subsurface, to operationally drive the Russian Navy out the Black Sea. That is, Gentle Reader, a harbinger of the future of surface ship operations no less telling than the sinking of the SMS Ostfriesland.

I don't disagree that American shipbuilding, other than submarines, is a shitshow. But building these Trumpy warships, which might as well be called the Very Large Target Class, is a piss-poor way to remedy that.

Pro-Trump Censorship at CBS

Paramount hired Bari Weiss, a pro-Trump zampolit, to run CBS News. The day before it was due to air, she killed a story about CECOT, the notorious prison that Trump and Noem sent deportees to. Her bullshit excuse was that it needed "additional reporting." The piece had been chopped through the lawyers, the fact-checkers, the editors and both DHS and the White House had been offered a chance to comment and declined. But Weiss wants Discount Goebbels to make an on-camera comment and she'll hold the piece for him, and presumably kill it if he refuses.

The piece makes the Orange Sundowner and the Puppy-Slayer look bad. Remember that ICE Barbie had been happy to pose for a selfie in front of a cage holding men at that prison, they were so, so proud that it's a brutal prison, but now they're shying away from a piece about how bad the prison is.

Stories have run forever in press, and now on the air, with a "no comment" or a refusal to comment. Not airing a piece unless an official makes an on-camera comment is handing the government a veto.

CBS paid millions in disguised bribes to Trump and now they're spiking stories that are unfavorable to him. Weiss is turning CBS News into Fox Lite.

Weiss has, in a short period of time, wrecked any reputation for excellence that CBS News once had. Any reporter there who can should leave that rortting, sinking ship before their honor is irrevocably stained.

Trump and Witkoff Move to Ally With Russia

US Treasury lifts sanctions on firms that supplied equipment for Russia’s military needs.

The delistings include Cyprus-based Veles International Limited and its owner, Dmytro Buhaienko — a subsidiary of an investment firm based in Moscow. The firm’s Moscow-based legal entities remain under U.S. sanctions.

Veles was placed under restrictions in 2023 for operating in Russia’s financial sector and working with wealthy Russian private individuals.

Sanctions were also lifted on Dubai-based 365 Days Freight Services FZCO and Turkey’s Etasis, which had exported sanctioned equipment to Russia for military purposes.

In addition, restrictions were removed on Finland’s Hi-Tech Koneisto and its chief executive, Yevheniia Dremova, who supplied optoelectronic and laboratory equipment to sanctioned Russian companies.

Another Turkish firm, CPS Proses Kontrol Urunleri Sanayi Ve Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, had supplied German and U.S.-made machine tools to a Russian defense contractor that is also under U.S. sanctions.

The U.S. Treasury Department did not explain the reasons for lifting the sanctions and did not say whether its policy toward the Russian recipient companies would change.

It's patently obvious that if these birds had been in power in 1940, we would have gone to war on the side of the Nazis. Who is the aggressor and who is the victim in the current war is no mystery.

But for reasons, whether ideologial or fiscal, Trump is aligning this country on the side of the bad guys. And his party is mute on this. Which is understandable, the GOP was backing Hitler right up until the bombs fell.

Blasts From the Past.

According to the stats thingie, somebody is going through and reading/vacuuming up a lot of my old posts. This one, from 2007, is pretty spot-on with what's going on with the Administration of Commandante Bone Spurs.

Your Sunday Morning Prop Noise

A DH.104 Dove:

Back in the day, I knew a guy who had a line on a derelict Dove and he wanted to restore it. A bunch of us encouraged him to find something smaller/simpler to restore.

Trump's DoJ Forges Epstein Docs

They're salting the files with shit that's not from the Epstein files.

From what I've read, while the Epstein Files Law required the files to be released yesterday, something light eight-tenths of one percent were released. Trump and Bribable Bondi clearly are going to slow-walk the release and, as they have been doing, redacting the shit out of what is released to protect Trump to the maximum degree. And they're also removing files that were released.

Trump and the GOP clearly think that it works for them to smear Bill Clinton. Everything Trump does is projection, he thinks that becaue he has his party defending his pedophilia, that Democrats will defend Clinton if Trump can implicate him. News flash: They won't. Clinton may be a major boogeyman to the Right, but to the Democrats, he's last-century's news.

But there is a photo of him hanging out with a known sex offender:

Furthermore, Democrats, unlike Republicans, aren't in the pedophile protection business. The fuzz can stuff both Trump and Clinton into the back of the pedophile paddy wagon and haul them off to the pokey as far as every Democrat not related by blood or marriage to Clinton cares (and maybe not even them).

Pilling These Down, Here

Caturday

Chip, my old cat.

Avoiding a Beating

Translation: "I was going to be beaten like a rented mule and so I dropped out."

The other possibility is that this is a move to have a candidate available when either Ka$happ or the Puppy-Slayer gets shitcanned soon.

How to Tube a Career in Broadcasting

Forget that your mike is open. Like this guy did at a Flyers game.