Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Come on, man.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

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War for Ukraine Day 744: Russia Attempted To Bombard Ukraine with Shaheds Again

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Once again Russia launched a drone bombardment against Ukraine overnight.

Overnight, Ukrainian air defenders shot down 33 our of 37 russian “Shahed” UAVs.

Every destroyed Shahed and missile is a result of an important and difficult work of our soldiers. We defend our people from brutal russian terror.

Every air defense system provided to Ukraine from our partners is a significant step towards the security of 🇺🇦 cities and villages.

Fortunately Ukrainian air defense seems to be holding against the Shaheds. Even more fortunately, the Russians didn’t launch any of their different cruise missiles last night.

President Zelenskyy was in Turkiye today and, as of 8:11 PM EST, there is no posted daily address. I’m pretty sure they just don’t have the English transcripts/pages up for his joint event with President Erdogan.

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1766211192501014551

Here’s the video with English subtitles of that joint event with Erdogan.

There’s no actual transcript. Just a write up in Ukrainian.

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Schadenfreude Open Thread: What Is Best in Life?…

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… To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the over-dramatic baby-girl-voiced lamentation of their women…

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Look Up! It’s a Bird, it’s a Plane, it’s a Turd!

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Look Up! It's a Bird, it's a Plane, it's a Turd!
A United 737-MAX went off the runway today at Houston Intercontinental. Probably pilot error but who the hell knows at this point?

I figure it’s about time for a 737-MAX update.  First, if you haven’t seen it, John Oliver’s Boeing dissection from last week is a tour-de-force and worth a watch.

Second, those fuckers running Boeing are stonewalling the NTSB in their investigation on the door plug blowout of Alaska Air 737-MAX-9.  Here’s an exchange between NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy and Senator Maria Cantwell:

“…[E]very shift is documented, you know the workers that were involved in this particular area, you can get their names, you can ask for interviews with those individuals. And you’re saying that that hasn’t happened?” Sen. Cantwell asked Chair Homendy.

“We have gone through emails, we’ve gone through texts, we’ve looked at pictures to begin to get a picture of the date in mid-September, the two dates in mid-September that we believe the work occurred,” Chair Homendy responded. “We haven’t received that information directly from Boeing. We also believe we know what shift it occurred on. But we still — there is one team … that deals with the doors, of 25 people. Why we don’t have those names today, two months later, is really disappointing.”

The reason they’re stonewalling is, of course, because the truth is appalling.  It’s obvious at this point that they let a 737-MAX leave the factory without four life-safety critical bolts installed.  Presumably these 25 folks will tell a tale of lax oversight, rush to get planes out the door, and general sloppiness.   I’m guessing the morons in charge at Boeing believe that we’ll all forget about this turd if they delay their response, but clearly that’s not going to happen.

Oliver’s piece compares the 737 to the DC-10, the last plane designed from scratch by McDonnell-Douglas before they merged with Boeing and effectively took over.  That turd took a hell of a long time, and a lot of dead passengers and crew, to get sorted out.  McDonnell-Douglas didn’t design another plane from scratch after that.  Instead they milked their old designs (DC-9 and DC-10) with an endless series of stretches and minor re-designs.  The last DC-10 variant, the MD-11, is notorious for being hard to land due to lack of engineering expenditure:

[T]he MD-11 is essentially a stretched DC-10, with winglets, a 2-crew cockpit (one fewer than on the DC-10), and a few other nips and tucks. Significantly, the designers increased the operating weight and the length of the aircraft, without re-engineering the wing and rudder. As a result, the aircraft has rather sluggish roll and yaw responses to control input at low speeds, i.e., on short finals and during the landing flare.

The second significant factor that affects the MD-11s landing performance is speed. In order to compensate for the MD-11’s higher operating weight and reduced rudder authority, its approach speeds can be substantially higher than other comparable commercial jets. […]

It’s only used as a freighter now, thankfully.   The legacy of “just one more stretch” lives on with the 737-MAX and the MCAS software “solution” to the engineering challenge of putting large modern high-bypass turbofans on a plane that first flew in 1967.

The amount of real value (not stock value) lost by the looting of Boeing by a bunch of MBAs is staggering.

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Major Crush

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Not only did Biden crush the State of the Union speech last night, but I’m sure it crushed the pathetic souls on the right, or at least whatever they have left of what was once a soul.

But my real crush is on Jared Moskowitz.  If he is not the one behind all of his fun posts, I don’t want to know.

This short clip made my afternoon.  Which is good, because just moments before seeing this I had come to the realization that there won’t be any big news from the Jack Smith court cases for a very long time, at least nothing of the good variety, which was not a happy thought.

I may just watch this again.

Totally open thread.

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Biden’s Speech Was Great – By a Fair and Balanced Measure

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Biden's Speech Was Great - By a Fair and Balanced Measure

I didn’t watch the SOTU last night (haven’t for years) but I could tell that Biden did well by the Fox chyrons I saw at the gym.

First, it was Tish James supposedly getting booed by a bunch of NY Firefighters, thus obviously invalidating her extremely successful effort to put a hurt on DJT.  As an aside, I really don’t know what’s up with firefighters being Trumpy.  I mean, I get it, there are a lot of white middle-aged firefighters who are in Trump’s main demo, but what a way to shit all over your popularity by aligning yourself with that asshole.  They should leave it to the cops.

Second, giant flatulating anus in human form Mark Penn appeared to flog RFK’s candidacy.  It’s a three-man race, people!  Nevermind that RFK would probably take more votes from Trump than Biden.

There was no mention of Katie Britt’s Stepford-wife-off-her-meds fast-cycling-bipolar performance in her rebuttal speech, and there certainly wasn’t any video of Biden’s actual speech.

So, I’d say they’re scared. And they should be, since last night was one of the few times that their audience steps out of their bubble to see what everyone else sees, and what their audience saw probably looked at least halfway decent to them.

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Chilling…

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The Wall St. Journal tells a happy tale today…if you happen to have your nest egg invested in “an industry leading manufacturer of pistols, revolvers, rifles.”

Chilling...

That would be Smith & Wesson, whose shares are up as almost 28% since the opening today as I write this–on news that year-over-year revenue and per-share earnings are up substantially this quarter.

Well, merchants of death have to make a living too, I suppose, and a simple earnings report like this is depressing, but on its own not a major jolt to my equilibrium.

The grotesque emerges when CEO explains why he things the good times will continue to roll:

Chief Executive Mark Smith said the company believes it gained market share as shipments outpaced the overall firearm market. “We continue to expect the firearm market to experience healthy demand through the 2024 election cycle,” he said.

Let me repeat: “throughout the 2024 election cycle.” What could possibly be the connection between gun nuttery and elections?

Don’t answer that.

The Journal does slip in a hint of editorial comment with their choice of photograph; I don’t think it’s meant to give anyone (except modern Moloch worshippers) the warm and fuzzies. It’s a copyrighted image, so you’ll have to click the link to see what I mean.

But back to Mr. Smith. Does he hear himself? Do any of our “friends”* on the right have any idea how linking home arsenals and voting actually sounds?

Don’t answer that either.

I don’t have a lot more to say on this. Y’all know how I feel about American gun idolatry.  Gun regulation isn’t enough.  Expose the manufacturer’s to all the liability exposure. Charge a society-born cost-of-gun-violence on every firearm and each box of ammo sold. Go for any fissure or crack in the 2A regime that the Supremes have decided we must endure.

Or, more simply, intercourse them orthogonally with an oxidized farm implement.

Open threads, not fire!

*Editor: they are not our friends.”

Image: Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts, Trompe l’Oeil with Pistols, 1672

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Times of Israel – U.S. Military Emergency Mission to Build Pier Off the Coast of Gaza

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Such welcome news!

According to the live blog on the Times of Israel: the US military will build a temporary pier off Gaza coast that will allow for maritime delivery of aid!

President Biden is the living embodiment of what Nancy Pelosi said in this clip about passing health care reform in 2010.  The whole clip is  only 1.5 minutes, but the money quote starts one minute in at 1:05.

Cutting to the chase.  Biden Administration:

We’re not waiting on the Israelis. This is a moment for American leadership, and we are building a coalition of countries to address this urgent need.

.

US President Joe Biden will announce in his State of the Union address tonight that he has directed the US military to embark on an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza that will allow for the direct delivery of humanitarian assistance from the Mediterranean Sea, senior administration officials tell reporters on a briefing call.

The idea for a marine humanitarian corridor into Gaza has been floated for years, but never got off the ground due to Israeli reticence and concerns that the existing Gaza City fishing port isn’t equipped for docking large ships. The US made a renewed push for the corridor establishment following last week’s deadly mass-casualty incident where dozens of Palestinians were killed trying to collect aid in northern Gaza.

Believing that the best way to ensure civilians receive aid is by flooding the strip with assistance by land, air and sea, the US has airdropped food over Gaza three times since Saturday, and will over the coming weeks begin work to establish a causeway facility off the coast of Gaza that will be able to receive large ships carrying hundreds of truckloads of food, water, medicine and temporary shelters each day, according to the administration officials.

The US is coordinating with Israel to ensure its security concerns are met and with the UN and humanitarian organizations on the ground in order to ensure that the aid is properly distributed.

Initial shipments will arrive to the port via Cyprus’s Larnaca Port, where they will ostensibly undergo security inspections.

It will take “a number of weeks” to get the temporary pier built and running, one of the officials briefing reporters said, adding that the US hopes that the port will turn into “a commercially operated facility over time.”

The officials clarified that the project will not require US boots on the ground in Gaza. Instead, US military personnel will be present on vessels offshore while the pier is being built.

“We’re not waiting on the Israelis. This is a moment for American leadership, and we are building a coalition of countries to address this urgent need,” one of the senior officials says.

I wrote this yesterday but held it because of the state of the union.  I still think this is worth front-paging.  Do take a minute to watch Nancy Pelosi!

Open thread.

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