40 Years In The Desert

Linkage

2026-08-31T06:36:00.000-04:00

It’s 90 degrees in the Arctic right now (Scientific American) We are at f%$#ed.
Florida Republican could face death penalty under child abuse law he championed (Raw Story) It's all projection, isn't it.
2,200-year-old Roman shipwreck reveals ancient waterproofing secrets (ScienceDaily) Getting your historical engineering freak on.
There Are Carrier Pigeon Apps Now Because Pigeon Technology Is Actually Superior (Gizmodo) There's an app for what?
Tesla to recall almost three million vehicles over hidden door handles (The Register) It turns out that China takes exception to the stupid and unsafe door handles that Elon Musk is such a fan of.
Scientists find evidence for two origins of life on Earth (ScienceDaily) 2 separate events in 2 separate locations. Cool.
Scientists Studied 338 NFL Players' Brains After Death. Nearly All Had the Same Disease (Gizmodo) CTE, I do not think that there is a way to fix football.
Trump Isn’t Caligula, He’s Commodus (Martin Longman) It gets down into the historical weeds, but I agree.
Did Google Glass Wearers Actually Get Punched in the Face? (Gizmodo) There is no evidence that "Glassholes" were actually punched in the face, though they deserved it.

The history of coffee, as only OTR can cover it:

Guck Foogle

2026-08-30T23:45:11.500-04:00

We're not changing the name of Lake Ontario. Name it whatever you want at your leisure: https://gulfof.mapquest.com/lakeontario (tag us so we can see your work 🙂)

[image or embed]
— MapQuest (@mapquest.com) August 27, 2026 at 4:14 PM

MapQuest is having none of it

Once again Google has offered conclusive evidence that it's old motto of, "Don't be evil," is inoperative.

In this case, Google Maps renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America before the ink was dry on Trump's executive order.

Time to switch to MapQuest, I guess. (Waze is owned by Google)

Google Maps has changed the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America following Donald Trump’s executive order mandating the change amid his trade war with Canada.

On Saturday, two days after the president cited Executive Order 14172 (Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness) to authorize the Great Lake’s renaming, Google Maps was updated to reflect the change for U.S. users.

Google’s sudden name change — the executive order stated the change must occur within 30 days, not 48 hours — was met with anger by Canadians, Lake Ontario-defending Americans, and HOMES mnemonic rememberers, all of whom accused the company of too quickly complying with Trump’s Lake America demand spurred by a trade war over tariffs.

To the degree that a future Democratic administration can dismantle all of the Silly-Con Valley monopolies, they should.

Pakistan Said This?

2026-08-30T21:00:00.000-04:00

While there have been recent movement toward China over the past few years, Pakistan has been in the pocket of the United States.

Not any more, it seems, because Pakistan has stated that it is not bound by unilateral US sanctions against Iran.

Pakistan said it is not “obliged to” comply with unilateral sanctions on Iran unless they are imposed by the United Nations, signaling a willingness to continue trade after the US warned of economic penalties against countries doing business with Tehran.

Islamabad is following bilateral agreements with Iran and while trade between the two neighbors remains robust, “there is a desire to expand,” Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said at a weekly briefing Thursday.

Pakistan relied on its ties with Iran to negotiate the release of oil tankers early on during the conflict. The two countries have also agreed to Pakistan, Iran Agree on Completing Free Trade Agreement Soon a Pakistan, Iran Businessmen Aim to Boost Trade to $10 Billion to increase bilateral commerce by more than threefold to $10 billion.

Pakistan has been trying to balance its relations with the US and Iran during the war. The country has strengthened its ties with the US during President Donald Trump’s second term, particularly after emerging as a key mediator between Tehran and Washington.

Last week, Pakistan’s army chief was in Iran as part of negotiations to end the Middle East conflict after tensions flared up again.

Iran won the war, and there are consequences of this.

Cats, Huh?

2026-08-30T20:20:00.000-04:00

Yes, this is our cat Mousetrap/Meatball.

Yes, this is our clothes dryer. (Gas)

Yes, we took her out before Sharon* loaded her wet clothes.

Catz are weird.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Not a Surprise

2026-08-29T19:08:00.000-04:00

A grand jury in Florida has determined that Ron DeSantis stole money from a Medicaid fraud settlement and gave it to two of his PACs.

I'm surprised, but not by the corruption. I'm surprised that anyone was willing to confront the little man on his blatant corruption.

Unfortunately, there will be no charges forthcoming.

A Florida grand jury has found that the administration of the governor, Ron DeSantis, “misappropriated” $10m in taxpayer money from a Medicaid settlement into the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity with ties to DeSantis’s wife, before the money was reportedly “funneled” into “two political action committees”.

In the grand jury report, which remains sealed but was obtained and published by CBS News Miami on Wednesday, the grand jurors wrote that “we conclude that these funds were misappropriated as part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities” but said that they found “insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally”.

The grand jury report, dated 28 January 2026, states that in 2024, the Hope Florida Foundation received $10m from a Medicaid settlement between the state and Centene, a contractor for the government health insurance program for low-income Americans and children.

The report goes on to say that after the money was transferred to Hope Florida, it was “quickly funneled” from there into two political action committees, and that the money was then reportedly used to lobby against a ballot measure that would have legalized marijuana in Florida, and was sent to the Republican party of Florida.

In a just world, DeSantis would already in custody.

I've Been Saying this for How Long?

2026-08-29T18:51:00.000-04:00

David Sirota on the Real News Network (RNN) describing how the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) consultant class have systematically sabotaged the party for their own personal gain.

As an aside, the woefully pathetic post-mortem that was finally released by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had a chapter removed that called out the consultants before its release.

Go figure.

Grand Jury No-Bills

2026-08-28T20:03:00.000-04:00

For once, this is not the Trump DoJ that f%$#ed this up.

In this case, the grand jury was in Ohio, and they refused to indict a man who sawed down a Flock camera.

Good.

A grand jury in Ohio has declined to indict a man charged with felony vandalism for allegedly destroying a Flock automatic license plate reader camera.

Police in Union Township, a Cincinnati suburb, accused Cody Morelock of disassembling the camera, its support pole and solar panel on June 13.

Investigators, according to WKRC-TV in Cincinnati, identified Morelock after obtaining surveillance footage from other cameras near the scene as well as information linked to a credit card and a customer rewards account.
Police estimated the damage at more than $1,000. Morelock posted a $10,000 bond and was released from custody shortly after his arrest.

A Clermont County grand jury, however, opted not to indict Morelock, and the charges were dismissed.

It is said that a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich.

It appears that a ham sandwich with a side order of flock vandalism is a different kettle of fish.

Today in Very Bad Fashion for a Very Good Cause

2026-08-28T19:52:00.000-04:00

If you wondering what could motivate such an ugly sartorial statement, the answer is pretty simple: The pattern f%$#s up the ability of AI to recognize the target as a human being.

Hopefully, this isn't just someone blowing smoke up our collective asses.

Designer Simon Weckert has created a colourful camouflage shirt that cannot be detected using AI video systems.

Developed in response to a pilot project to use artificial intelligence (AI) video surveillance at Berlin's Kottbusser Tor, which starts this month, the shirt was designed to stop the user being recognised as a person.

Named Digital Camouflage, the shirt aims to confuse the AI-powered object-detection system by subverting what the system recognises as a person.
………
The shirt uses a combination of bright colours and patterns to confuse the AI systems so that it doesn't recognise what it is seeing as a person.

Make it so.

Yeah, They are a Bookie

2026-08-28T19:02:00.000-04:00

The Appeals Court for the 9th Circuit just ruled that Kalshi sports "prediction market" is just sport betting and so subject to state regulations.

The court rejected claims that Kalshi's sports book operation is a. "Swap," which are exclusively covered under federal law.

Kalshi today lost a major ruling over whether it can evade state gambling laws, as a federal appeals court found that Nevada can stop the prediction market from allowing sports bets. While the Trump administration is trying to help prediction markets avoid state regulation, a panel of three Trump-appointed judges unanimously ruled against Kalshi in today’s decision from the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board today said the 9th Circuit “emphatically reject[ed] the view that the federal Commodity Exchange Act preempts application of Nevada’s gaming laws to sports-event contracts offered by Kalshi, Crypto.com, and Robinhood.” Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo, a Republican, said that “prediction markets offering sports-event contracts constitute gambling and must comply with Nevada’s gaming laws and regulatory framework.”

The judges affirmed a district court order that let Nevada enforce state laws against Kalshi’s sports-related event contracts.

“KalshiEX, LLC advertises itself as ‘the first app for legal sports betting in all 50 states,’” wrote Judge Ryan Nelson. “As the volume of activity on Kalshi’s ‘sports betting’ platform ballooned, the Nevada Gaming Control Board sent a cease-and-desist letter notifying Kalshi that it was violating Nevada statutes and gaming regulations. Kalshi sought injunctive relief, arguing that it is not a legal sports betting platform but a designated contract market under the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) offering legal sports event contracts. Kalshi argues that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has exclusive regulatory authority over its sports event contracts and, therefore, Nevada’s gaming regulations do not apply.”

Good.

It's Bank Failure Friday!!!

2026-08-28T18:42:00.000-04:00

And I missed a few recent ones over the past few weeks.

First, the commercial bank failures number 4, Tioga-Franklin Savings Bank of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 21.

Here is the Full FDIC list.

Then there is the credit union failure number 7, African Diaspora Federal Credit Union of Saint Ann, Missouri on August 6.

Here is the Full NCUA list, and the direct link for this year.

Twice as many bank failures this year as occurred in all of 2025, and one fewer credit union failure than in all of 2025.

Cue Alanis Morissette

2026-08-28T18:19:00.000-04:00

When I heard the news that Milo Yiannopoulos had been detained by ICE, and that he has received a final deportation order, I could not help but smile.

It turns out that there ARE some people that I would wish ICE detention on.

I’m torn. I think the government has gone way overboard on deportations — let the people pursue happiness! — but yeesh, it’s Milo Yiannopoulos.

Far-right political commentator and deportation advocate Milo Yiannopoulos is currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody facing a final order of removal, according to U.S. officials and agency records.

Yiannopoulos, who is British, was apprehended in the New Orleans area and is being held in a Louisiana ICE holding facility, the U.S. officials said. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Yiannopoulos came to the U.S. legally in 2019 but “chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws.”

I was feeling a twinge of sympathy, both because I hate ICE and because he sure looks down in the dumps in his mugshot, but then, I was served with some quotes…

California needs ICE checkpoints at supermarket entrances, gas stations, strip malls, intersections and government buildings, with on the spot deportation for anyone who can’t prove they are in the US legally, he posted on social media in June 2025.

Total legal immunity for ICE agents when they’re on duty, he wrote in September 2025.

There is one concrete thing we must insist on this administration delivering, he wrote in June 2025. It matters a lot more than debts measured in imaginary money. We have got to deport millions and millions of people. Without that, nothing else matters.

Yeah, throw his ass out of the country.

Schadenfreude, sweet schadenfreude.

Can We Arrest Him Now?

2026-08-27T19:50:00.000-04:00

It appears that the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ was using child pr0n to train his Grok artificial intelligence system.

We are not talking hashes here, where the a digital signature is generated and used to compare to images and the like.

We are talking about actual CSAM.

Put the Elon Musk in jail.

xAI has now been accused of training Grok on child sex abuse materials (CSAM), as regulators and courts continue to probe how far the problem goes, and some Grok users have been arrested.

In a complaint filed on Wednesday, a plaintiff known as Jane Doe explained that she was preschool-age in the early 2000s when adult men repeatedly raped her to create CSAM to sell to pedophiles online. Since then, Doe’s images have been hashed by groups like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (CCCP).

For her safety, Doe has opted to receive alerts from the US Department of Justice Victim Notification System any time she may be a victim in a new criminal investigation. Although she has received countless alerts, she was shocked when the CCCP notified her that it had identified AI-generated CSAM on xAI that depicted her. This re-traumatized Doe, whose complaint alleged that messages were found on online forums “between offenders chatting about creating AI generated CSAM of Plaintiff and other similarly situated known, legacy, victims of CSAM.”

Now, Doe fears that xAI has not only made it easier to make more violative images of the most distressing time in her life, but also that xAI allegedly has stored the images that Grok generates and uses those outputs to further train Grok. Because of this, she believes that Grok has been trained on both the initial set of images that have haunted her for more than 20 years and the more recent AI-generated ones.

………

The lawsuit further noted that while xAI filters out violent content in Grok outputs to exclude it from training data, xAI’s terms notably do not specify if CSAM, non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), or NSFW material are “excluded categories.”

It seems to follow then that “because full removal of a training example’s influence from an already-trained model is technically difficult and not something that xAI has publicly claimed to have done, any CSAM ingested into training before takedown likely continued to shape the model’s outputs even after the original images were removed from public view,” Doe’s complaint said.

If you cannot get Musk arrested, I would suggest that perhaps Ms. Doe and her lawyers could ask for all of xAI be deleted, because the nature of Large Language Model Artificial Intelligence means that the entire data set has been polluted.

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2026-08-27T19:36:00.000-04:00

And initial and continuing claims are both down, while the trade deficit rose to a 16 month high and inflation remained in, "The Fed Hikes Rates," territory.

The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits for the first time fell for a second week while the overall number of people on jobless relief rolls slid to the lowest level in a month, signaling a stable labor market that should give the Federal Reserve leeway to focus on containing inflation.
Meanwhile, the U.S. trade deficit in goods, which President Donald ‌Trump is trying to reduce through his aggressive use of tariffs on imported goods, was the widest in 16 months in July as exports fell for a third straight month and capital goods imports surged on the back of the artificial intelligence build-out. The wider goods trade gap last month puts trade on track to be a net drag on U.S. gross domestic product growth for a fourth straight quarter.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 203,000 for the week ended August 22, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 208,000 claims for the latest week.
Claims are hovering in the lower end of their 189,000-230,000 range for this year, indicating that layoffs remain low even if hiring is soft. Despite a surprise drop in employment in July, the U.S. jobless rate ticked down again to 4.1%, a historically low ⁠level.
The number of people receiving unemployment benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, fell 18,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.778 million during the week ended August 15, the claims report showed. The continued claims data covered the survey week for the monthly nonfarm payrolls report for August.
………
Labor market stability, if sustained, gives the Fed headroom to keep its focus on containing inflation that has run above its 2% target for 65 straight months.
Thursday's data came as Fed policymakers and other global economic officials were gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for the Kansas City Fed's annual economic symposium, where U.S. central bank Chairman Kevin Warsh will deliver a keynote address on Friday morning. Warsh, who so far in his young term has shied away from commenting specifically ‌on the state ⁠of the economy and direction of Fed policy, is under pressure to address a central issue: Is current inflation a problem or not, and what should be done about it?

A growing minority of his Fed colleagues are increasingly anxious about inflation, and three voting members of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee dissented last month with the decision to leave interest rates unchanged at 3.50% to 3.75%. The inflation measure the Fed uses to set its target held steady unexpectedly last month at 3.7%.

Not a clue as to what this all means.

Headline of the Day

2026-08-27T18:59:00.000-04:00

Ex-Barclays boss denies having sex with woman dressed as Snow White after Epstein emails
—The Guardian

There are a lot of ,b.REALLY,/b. sick f%$#s out there.

The former Barclays boss Jes Staley has denied having sex with a woman dressed as Snow White, after being questioned about an infamous email exchange about Disney princesses with Jeffrey Epstein.

The comments were detailed in newly released transcripts from a closed-door interview last month with US lawmakers as part of their investigation into Epstein, who died in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial on child sex-trafficking charges.

In the email exchange on 9 and 10 July 2010 Staley and Epstein referred to Disney princesses. In those messages, the details of which have been circulating in the media since 2021, Staley tells Epstein: “That was fun. Say hi to Snow White.”

Epstein then asks: “What character would you like next?” to which Staley replied: “Beauty and the Beast.” Epstein responded: “Well one side is availble [sic].”

During his congressional testimony, Staley, who spent more than three decades at JPMorgan Chase before joining Barclays in 2015, was asked: “Did you ever have sex with a young woman in a Snow White costume?

“No, I did not,” Staley said.

Mandy Rice-Davies Applies. (Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?)

I expect Disney to file a lawsuit against Mr. Staley in the next few days.

Sick Burn

2026-08-27T18:53:00.000-04:00

So, Lindsay Ellis had a post on YouTube about Kid Rock being a dick. (Not really, a dick has a head, but I digress)

In any case, a commenter said the following:

You really gotta separate the art from the artist, that way you get to hate Kid Rock twice.

That's gonna leave a mark.

Pocket Change

2026-08-26T20:43:00.000-04:00

It appears that the criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™ will be pay somewhere between $12 and $17.1 billion to settle the lawsuit accusing it of deliberately making an addictive product.

That is by my calculation less than 1 month's revenue.

They can find it in their couch cushions.

Meta on Wednesday reached a landmark settlement with 47 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, agreeing to pay up to $17.1 billion in penalties and make major changes to its products over claims it endangered children with addictive social media platforms.

In a dramatic capitulation, the owner of Facebook and Instagram agreed to the financial penalties for violating federal child privacy and states’ consumer protection laws, the states announced. Meta also agreed to limit how long teenagers can spend on its platforms and to bans on features that stoke mental health issues, striking at the heart of the company’s business of engagement for advertising.

………

The settlement effectively ends a bellwether federal trial in the U.S. Northern District of California in Oakland, where California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey were seeking roughly $200 billion over accusations that Meta harmed children. The states filed their agreement with Meta on Wednesday morning in that court, and Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers approved it.

Separately, Meta said on Wednesday that it settled with Texas for about $1 billion over similar allegations. The company still faces numerous other lawsuits from school districts and individuals, some of which are scheduled for trial in the coming months.

Meta’s stock rose on the news, closing up just over 1 percent. The company is valued at $1.47 trillion and most recently generated $60.8 billion in quarterly revenue.

Like I said, pocket change.

Also, there is a condition to this settlement that will likely mean that they won't even be paying that.

………
The full value of Meta’s payout depends on whether other social media companies also settle with the states and agree to financial penalties and product changes. Meta will initially pay about $12 billion. It will pay an additional $5 billion if Snap, TikTok and YouTube also settle with the states and agree to financial penalties and product changes.

I would be very surprised if a significant amount of this payout will occur this decade.

Facebook is, and always has been, a bad actor, and this settlement will not change that.

What would change this is frog-marching Mark Zuckerberg out of his offices in handcuffs.

Private Island? How Does a Justice Afford a F%$#ing Private Island?

2026-08-26T20:25:00.000-04:00

No, it's not Clarence Thomas, it's John Roberts, who was confronted by protestors at his private island.

Also, the whole private island thing is a bad look. Just ask Jeffrey Epstein.

Chief Justice John Roberts’ island escape was interrupted by protesters who arrived by kayak to stage a demonstration.

The 71-year-old Supreme Court justice, who has pleaded with critics of his ultra-conservative court to back off, learned earlier this month that even his private island retreat off Port Clyde, Maine, wasn’t beyond the reach of protesters.

Arriving by kayak, canoe, and rowboat, the protesters staged a one-hour “floating vigil” in the waters between Port Clyde and Hupper Island, where Roberts has a home, the Midcoast Villager reported.

he protesters’ signs declared “The Roberts Court: Rubber Stamp for Fascism” and “Roberts Benched the Constitution,” according to photos published in the Midcoast Villager. More than 20 people paddled out for the protest, while another 20 demonstrated on land, according to the Midcoast Villager.

Roberts and his wife, Jane Roberts, bought a 1,344-square-foot home on Hupper Island, a private island accessible only by water, in 2006. They bought a second 1,560-square-foot home sitting on two waterfront acres in 2016, according to the Bangor Daily News.

Last month, the couple—whose wealth is estimated at roughly $25 million—sold their longtime home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, for $3.44 million, Realtor.com reported. They had bought the seven-bedroom house for $1.23 million in 2003.

$25,000,000.00? I'd love to see a deep dive on his finances.

Now Tim Curry

2026-08-26T20:20:00.000-04:00

The actor known for Frankenfurter, Pennywise, Long John Silver, Wadsworth,Nigel Thornberry, Dr. Petrov, and many other roles has died at age 80.

Seriously, when is death coming for Trump?

Hitting Us Where We Sit

2026-08-26T20:11:00.000-04:00

It appears that one consequence of our trade war with Canada is a jump in the price of toilet paper.

Thanks Donnie.

Using the bathroom or having a cry is about to become more expensive for North Americans as the US and Canada enter a full-fledged trade war that threatens to flush away decades of peaceful trading between the two nations.

After trade negotiations broke down between the two countries last weekend, Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, vowed to match US tariffs “dollar for dollar” and unveiled a list of nearly 900 American goods that will face 25% to 50% tariffs starting on 8 September.

Paper products are among the hardest-hit sectors, with Canada threatening to put tariffs of between 25% and 50% on “toilet paper or face tissue stock” from 8 September in retaliation for a 50% hike from Washington DC.

Though American toilet paper and tissues are often made domestically, they heavily rely on lumber-rich Canada for raw materials. Procter & Gamble, the owner of Charmin toilet paper, said last year that it would have to increase prices amid tariffs that were in place at the time.

Maybe it's time to switch to 1-ply.

Because, Of Course They Are

2026-08-25T20:15:00.000-04:00

In the latest filing with the court regarding the Kennedy Center, the Trump DoJ has stated that if they do not get to shut down the center for 2 years (In order to conceal how much attaching Trump's name to the building has cratered support), and do not get to add Trumps name to the building, that Donald Trump might have the building torn down.

You know, I'm beginning to think that Adolph might be looking up from his pit of lava and saying, "Damn, Donald Trump is such a delicate snowflake."

Lawyers for the Trump administration told a federal judge that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts desperately needs the major renovation ordered by President Trump and raised the specter that it would need to be “taken down” if those plans are blocked.

In a court filing late on Monday, Justice Department lawyers defended plans for the $250 million renovation project and described how, as recognition for the president’s role, an inscription of his name on the center’s marble facade would be appropriate.

“Without those efforts, the center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down,” the filing said, “with a determination to follow on what to build on the site, such as a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River that has been proposed, by some, for many years.”

………

It was unclear how seriously any thought to knock down the building has been considered, but it was the most extreme measure cited to support Mr. Trump’s contention that the Washington arts center needs a major overhaul that would force it to close for two years. Mr. Trump ordered the demolition of the White House’s East Wing last fall to make way for a luxury ballroom.

………

This month, the board approved two new inscriptions below the main Kennedy Center signage. The first would read “renovated and restored by President Donald J. Trump.” The second, which would be added below the first once the endowment reaches $100 million, would say “endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”

Someone please make it stop.

Damn

2026-08-25T18:32:00.000-04:00

Dolly Parton has died at age 80.

While I cannot comment on her artistic accomplishments, I do not like and do not listen to Country Music, she was good people.

Worse than Useless

2026-08-24T21:10:00.000-04:00

Just the thing for caving I am referring, of course, to the dead eyed leader of the Democratic Party Caucus in the House of Representatives, and exemplar of everything that is wrong with the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), Hakeem Jeffries, who was just caught meeting with Trump son in law Jared Kushner.

Nice job of pre-capitulation. Showing your belly to these guys is going to work out just great.

Democrats and other Donald Trump critics reacted incredulously to a New York Times report on Sunday that House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries met with Jared Kushner, the president’s influential son-in-law, to discuss possible areas of collaboration.

The reported meeting comes months ahead of the November midterm elections in which Democrats are favored to retake the US House, a development that would make Jeffries speaker. If they are in the majority, Democrats are expected to use their oversight power to aggressively investigate the Trump administration, including self-enrichment by the president and his family.

There are longstanding conflict-of-interest concerns about the way Kushner has continued to make money from foreign nations as he works on foreign affairs, including conflicts in Ukraine, Iran and Gaza.

There is no excuse for this. Kushner holds no government position, and he is arguably the most aggressive grifter among the Trump Crime Family except (perhaps) for Donnie "Small Hands".

………

Nonetheless, among some who lamented the reported gathering was Tommy Vietor, previously an aide to former president Barack Obama and now a co-host of the left-leaning podcast Pod Save America.

“Jared Kushner has no actual government job he just uses his family connections to get money from gulf autocrats and fund corrupt deals. The only way [Jeffries] should work with him is with demands for documents and subpoenas,” Vietor posted.

In April, Democrats on the House judiciary committee opened an investigation into Kushner’s financial conflict of interest. The investigation is focused on the way Kushner’s private business has raised money from Gulf nations while Kushner served as a special envoy for peace for the government.

“You cannot both be a diplomat and a financial pawn of the Saudi monarchy at the same time; you cannot faithfully represent the United States with billions of dollars in Saudi and Emirati cash burning a hole in every pocket of every suit you own,” Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House judiciary committee, wrote in an April letter to Kushner.

What a useless excuse for a leader.

Impeach Them All

2026-08-24T20:59:00.000-04:00

I am not referring to anyone in the White House. I am referring to the 6 corrupt and partisan Supreme Court Justices who just authorized Donald Trump's plan to meddle in mail-in voting in the upcoming election.

The US supreme court sided with Donald Trump on Monday in his effort to crack down on mail-in voting, though it remains unclear if his administration can take action ahead of the midterm elections in November.

Justices on the court voted 6-3 along ideological lines to lift an injunction from June that a judge in Massachusetts placed on an executive order issued by the president. But a second injunction remains in place and the ruling leaves room for legal challenges.

“The Court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful,” the majority wrote in an unsigned order. “On that score, time will tell.”

The three liberal justices dissented. In a blistering dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the decision “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections”.

Justice Brown Jackson, injecting, "Chaos and ncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections," is a feature, not a bug.

To be fair the conservatives on the court did take a principled stance, it's just that the principle was, "N%$#@!*s should not vote."

This Has Got To Mean Something

2026-08-24T20:48:00.000-04:00

The fact that Texas scumbags Ken Paxton and Greg Abbott have both come out against further data centers in Texas, with Texas AG Paxton releasing a 4 point plan which would (among other things) make it easier to sue AI companies, and Texas Governor Abbot declaring that AI companies, "Basically dug their own grave for the problem that’s been caused for them, and that’s why they got the backlash they deserve," on the ABC program This Week.

Let's be clear: Neither politician is sincere.

You know it, I know it, and I'm sure that the various AI data center firms have quietly been told it's just politics.

Still, it is significant that they feel compelled to lie about this.

Another Reason to Hate Donald Trump

2026-08-24T20:17:00.000-04:00

Because in response to his bullying tactics, he he makes Ontario Premier Doug Ford sound like a hero, rather than the right wing bowling ball in a jacket that he is.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford is slamming Donald Trump as a “loser” and the “king of bankruptcies” after the U.S. president criticized him on social media on Monday afternoon.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump referred to Ford by name as “the less charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great, Rob Ford.”

The post came hours after an interview with The Morning Rush with Bill Carroll in Ottawa, in which Ford said that Trump could “kiss my ass.”

At a news conference in Hamilton on Monday afternoon, Ford initially said that he wouldn’t respond to a “dictator” and “bully” like Trump before going on a prolonged rant about the U.S. president.

Ford also doubled down on his earlier remarks, saying “I have a lot of real estate on my ass, so he has a lot of room to kiss my ass.”

“I am not going to take any advice off a guy that is the king of bankruptcies and he is actually tariffing his own people, taxing his own people,” Ford said of Trump. “I am going to be reaching out to every single governor, every single senator, every single congressperson and when it comes to the (U.S.) midterms I have a message to the Americans: don’t vote in a person that is going to kill your jobs.”

………

Ford’s news conference in Hamilton was held to announce an expansion of an existing program to support workers and businesses impacted by the trade war.

However, it unfolded just moments after Trump’s Truth Social post.

At one point during the news conference Ford addressed the U.S. president directly: “Your own people, President Trump, don’t even like you,” he said.

He then predicted that Americans would “speak loud and clear” during the upcoming midterm elections and offered that he would be “door-knocking” himself if he could.

When asked about the personal nature of Trump’s criticism, Ford said “bring it on.”

………

Ford’s comments on Monday come after Trump threatened to impose a 50 per cent tariff on Canadian vehicles by 2027.

Speaking with reporters, Ford said he believes “everything should be on the table” amid the renewed trade war with the U.S., including a surcharge on electricity exports that Ontario introduced and then scrapped earlier in the trade war.

………

“I cannot speak for other premiers but a couple premiers have a lot of power to protect Canada, massive power,” Ford said. “Everyone needs to be on team Canada and throw everything and the kitchen sink at them (the U.S.) no matter if it is electricity, if it is fuel, potash or uranium. We need to have everything on the table. But we need a buy-in from cost to coast.”

Note that the threat to end /surcharge cheap hydro-electricity exports to the US is a big deal, and given this year's record El Niño, it's likely that this won't result in potential sales being literally flushed down river.

I'm nodding in approval, and I don't want to be nodding in approval.

I File This Under, "This and $17.47 Will Get You a Starbucks Venti Pumpkin Spice Latte with Eight Shots of Espresso, Seven Pumps of Pumpkin Sauce, and One Pump of Maple Pecan Sauce."

2026-08-24T20:09:00.000-04:00

Still, a man portable high power laser is kind of cool.

My guess as to the power? To my not particularly trained eye, I would guess about 1kW.

„Laser weapons“ powered by a backpack energy source have appeared in the Russian Armed Forces pic.twitter.com/Z5aE2JnYIg
— Drone Wars (@Drone_Wars_) August 23, 2026

As to the tech? It could just be batteries, or maybe a fuel cell and a capacitor.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Predicting 15 of the Past 4 Stock Market Crashes

2026-08-23T19:24:00.000-04:00

I am referring, of course, to the current hand wringing over the price/equity (PE) ratio.

While the number is concerning, using this statistic as a a hard limit is on its face financially absurd.

Usually when numbers shoot higher on Wall Street, it is a reason for celebration.

That is not how Jonas Goltermann, the chief markets economist at Capital Economics, feels when he looks at one of the most feared charts on the stock market: the Shiller price-to-earnings (PE) ratio.

“That’s obviously a bit worrying,” he says after seeing the metric on track to end the month at its highest level since August 2000.

The Shiller PE ratio, a closely watched fear gauge on Wall Street, may sound esoteric, but it has become one of the most important numbers in the world – and one you should care about.

For all intents and purposes, it is the canary in the coal mine for global financial crashes.

To be clear, I do believe that we are headed to a crash, and that this crash is coming because the entire facade of our current financial market is a fraud. (The AI bubble)

What I do not believe is that this obsession with PE ratios is a useful diagnostic tool.

Lying to the Court Again

2026-08-23T19:00:00.000-04:00

One of the arguments given by the Trump administration to allow the construction of the White House Ballroom is that there will be a nuclear proof bunker underneath that is required by current threats.

The problem here is that there is already such a bunker under the White House, and the Trump Administration has not informed the courts of this.

President Donald Trump has claimed that the White House needs a massive new ballroom because it would provide him and future presidents with a secure, hardened facility. But former officials say the argument fails to acknowledge that the presidential complex already has one.

More than a decade ago, federal officials built a highly protected bunker, embedded deep underground, that can shelter the president and his top aides in a national security emergency, according to three former officials.

The facility, which was secretly completed during the Obama administration, can house dozens of people for up to multiple weeks, two former officials said. It’s buried more than 60 feet underneath the White House complex and built to withstand a nuclear blast, two of the officials said, ensuring the president and his team have a secure command center to run the country in times of extreme duress.

The bunker’s existence, the former officials said, undercuts the Trump administration’s emerging legal argument in the ongoing lawsuit over the $600 million ballroom complex’s construction: that the facility must be completed due to its significance for U.S. national security.

They are lying again. This is why the presumption of regularity has been going out of the window.

More History Rhyming

2026-08-22T21:02:00.000-04:00

It looks like we are headed for a crackup in the private credit market. (archive link)

Strain is spreading across private credit portfolios, with some of the largest funds taking writedowns and warning about problem loans as the industry faces its biggest challenge in almost a decade.

The value of troubled loans held by some of the biggest private debt investors has reached levels last seen in 2017, when the industry was dealing with a hangover from an oil price crash, an FT analysis of figures from fixed-income data provider Solve has found.

Loans placed on non-accrual status by the 20 largest publicly traded business development companies (BDCs) — listed funds that invest in private credit loans — climbed to a median 2.8 per cent of their cost in the second quarter, up from 2 per cent at the end of March.

The non-accrual demarcation is one signal of stress in the private credit industry, indicating borrowers have either stopped making payments on their loans or that a fund believes a borrower may soon default on its obligations.

………

Listed vehicles managed by KKR and Blue Owl, as well as one run by Apollo Global known as MidCap Financial, were among the funds in which repayments outstripped new lending in the quarter, with executives at KKR pointing to limited dealmaking and its push to exit certain loans.

The firm’s listed fund, FS KKR Capital Corp, reported that 7.1 per cent of its loan book was troubled in the second quarter, a slight improvement from the prior quarter but still far above the industry average.
The figures underscore the challenge facing the private investment industry, which wagered heavily on private credit as a major source of growth as it looked to invest money for insurers, retirees and wealthy individuals.
………
But many executives across the $2tn asset class believe that the alarmism surrounding private credit’s troubles is overblown, with several blaming the media — including the FT — for the outflows weighing on the asset class.

They would say that it is just alarmism, their paychecks depend on their saying this.

………
Much of the pain already seen has been centred on investments the funds helped finance between 2020 and 2021, when interest rates were near zero and private equity groups went on a buying binge while valuations were elevated.

Many of those companies are now struggling to service their debt as interest rates have climbed, with executives on earnings calls repeatedly pointing to that cohort as the source of trouble.

Yeah, this is econ f%$#ing 101. When interest rates go up, loan payments go up.

………
Mitchel Penn, an analyst at Oppenheimer, noted that the sell-off in BDC share prices meant funds were “priced for death”. His own research showed that on average over the past five years, funds in the bottom quartile were generating returns on equity below the yield on a 10-year Treasury.

“Underwriting wasn’t as good as it should have been,” he said. “They weren’t as picky.”

Gee, apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Professionals Talk Logistics

2026-08-22T19:48:00.000-04:00

At Exercises Southern Cross and Pitch Black in Australia the USAF was only able to deploy ½ of the F-35s that they planned, and those jets were delayed by a week.

Once more we have a, "It was a viciously sharp slice of mango, wasn't it, sir," moment for the Pentagon.

The U.S. Air Force’s latest fighter deployment to Australia has revealed an uncomfortable reality: If it wants to get into the fight quickly, it needs support from allies.

The service spent months this year gearing up for a nearly monthlong deployment of 12 Lockheed Martin F-35As from Alaska to Australia to support Exercises Southern Cross and Pitch Black. In the end, only six aircraft arrived and were more than a week behind schedule.

This deployment was planned over a year in advance, and still, it fell apart.

Vote Blue No Matter Who My Ass

2026-08-22T19:33:00.000-04:00

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) has decided to abandon the very competitive race in Michigan, because the wrong sort of candidate won.

The people who gave us Senators like Krysten Sinema have decided that having a real progressive in the Senate with an Arab name is a bridge too far.

Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan’s Democratic primary has complicated Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s plans to help Democrats retake the Senate in November, tying his party’s fortunes to a candidate some Democrats in Michigan say they cannot support — even if it means costing Democrats the Senate majority.

Michigan is crucial for Democrats. The party’s path to a Senate majority relies on holding the state and all of its other current seats, as well as flipping four Republican-held seats — including at least two seats in states that Donald Trump won by double-digit margins in 2024. If El-Sayed loses in Michigan, which Trump carried by less than two points in 2024, Democrats would need to flip a fifth Republican seat in deep-red territory.

Schumer backed Rep. Haley Stevens over El-Sayed in the primary, saying he thought she had a better chance of winning in November. The New York Democrat endorsed El-Sayed after the primary, and the two men have spoken about working together to hold the seat — but they have pronounced differences about Israel.

………

El-Sayed’s challenges run deep enough that three Democratic donors in Michigan are hosting a fundraiser for his Republican opponent, former congressman Mike Rogers, on Tuesday evening, according to an invitation obtained by The Washington Post. One of them, Brian Hermelin, wrote in an email to potential donors last week that El-Sayed’s rhetoric on Israel and toward Jews meant he could not support him.

………

The race has put Schumer in a tough position. On one hand, he has called out those on the left who are “too complacent or forgiving about those who exhibit antisemitism within their ranks.” On the other, he often describes Democrats as having a big-tent party, capacious enough to include Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania) — an ardent defender of Israel — as well as the country’s critics.

El-Sayed’s public criticism of Schumer — whom he suggested during the primary that he did not want to see remain as the Democratic leader in the Senate — has not made it easier. “If you’re Chuck Schumer, I’m pretty damn dangerous,” El-Sayed said last month.

That fundraising? It would not have happened without the tacit approval of Schumer.

The whole, "Vote Blue no matter who," thing? F%$# that.

I'm not suggesting voting Republican if you have another Synema or her ilk running, I voted Republican once and felt dirty afterword, ⃰ but you can always go with the couch, aka JD Vance's girlfriend, instead of the ballot booth.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) needs to be aggressively educated about the importance of actually listening to the base.

^*I voted for Bill Weld as Massachusetts Governor in 1990, because his Democratic opponent John Silber was literally insane.

Funny, Innit?

2026-08-22T19:00:00.000-04:00

After getting outed for having large investments in AI companies, Michigan Republican US Senate candidate Mike Rogers has changed his views on a data center moratorium.

I wonder why that would be?

Days after The Lever revealed that Michigan Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers held millions of dollars in stock that could benefit from his support for artificial intelligence-related development, he reversed his position and backed a statewide moratorium on new data center construction.

Rogers, a former FBI agent, congressman, and adviser to a venture capital firm, now supports a one-year moratorium on new data center developments, declaring in a statement on Thursday that “Michigan needs stronger guardrails to protect community control, prevent utility price hikes, protect our water, and stop pay-to-play schemes.”

Rogers added that he does not support a full federal ban on data centers, as some lawmakers have called for. Instead, he noted that a pause should be instituted “until we establish a fair, transparent approval process” for the projects. He told The Detroit News at a press conference Thursday that the policy would help “make sure that we’re answering all of the questions that people have.”
Rogers’ new position comes just days after The Lever that he and his wife, former lobbyist Kristi Clemens Rogers, hold between $1.7 million and $2.6 million in companies that could benefit from AI-friendly policies and streamlined permitting for AI-related infrastructure.

Will wonders never cease.

I Don't Care About Natalie Harp

2026-08-21T20:08:00.000-04:00

I am amused about the Republican meltdown about the Trump aide, but beyond schadenfreude, I cannot bring myself to care.

I don't care if Trump is f%$#ing here. I care that Trump is f%$#ing the entire world.

Until now, Natalie Harp was known only to Washington insiders and people weird enough to read insidery books about the administration. But Harp has officially escaped containment.

She is about to be a full-fledged character in the dramedy of the Trump White House, discussed in the news and recognized by ordinary people. And while the White House and its allies are pretending to be outraged about that fact, it’s completely appropriate and long overdue. There is literally no single person who spends as much time at the side of the president of the United States as her; the idea that it should somehow be off-limits to discuss her role is bonkers. So let’s review what got us here.

Thank Jon Ossoff for putting a spotlight on her

At a campaign speech on Sunday, Sen. Jon Ossoff mentioned Harp in a single sentence, as part of a criticism of the president for being distracted by unimportant things. “He doesn’t want to do the job,” Ossoff said. “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace, gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”

And then their heads exploded. Heh.

Gee, Ya Think?

2026-08-21T19:48:00.000-04:00

A former safety engineer at Facebook, Arturo Béjar, has testified that Mark Zuckerberg does not give a f%$# about protecting children.

Gee, you think?

A massive trial is underway in California, where state attorneys general are holding Meta’s feet to the fire for its role in fueling a children’s mental health crisis.

According to the testimony of former Meta safety engineer Arturo Béjar, the company has purposefully adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it comes to keeping children safe on its platforms, the Guardian reported.

Throughout his time on the witness stand, Béjar asserted that Meta has known its platform is actively harming children, pushing things like violent and predatory sexual content onto their feeds.

Béjar, whose role in the company reportedly involved briefing CEO Mark Zuckerberg on safety issues, said that executives were well aware of the issues, but weren’t in any hurry to solve them, despite repeated assurances that Meta and its platforms Instagram and Facebook “don’t prioritize profit over safety,” per the Guardian.

Why are they not looking at criminal prosecutions?

Fuck John Roberts

2026-08-21T19:19:00.000-04:00

The modern day incarnation of Roger B. Taney decided to allow the construction of Trump's White House Ballroom to continue while the case proceeds.

This is clearly an attempt to allow facts on the ground to take precedence over the the facts and the law.

The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon allowed construction on a new 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom to continue – at least for now. Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Leon had issued an order, slated to go into effect at the end of the day, that would have stopped above-ground work on the project. But Chief Justice John Roberts issued a temporary order, known as an administrative stay, that kept Leon’s order on hold to give the justices more time to consider the Trump administration’s request to pause it.

The brief, one-sentence stay did not indicate when the justices might act on the government’s request. Leon’s order has never gone into effect, permitting the Trump administration to move forward with construction while the case made its way toward the Supreme Court. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the Supreme Court last week that there was “a 250-person crew working 20 hours a day, 7 days a week to keep the Project ahead of schedule and under budget”; as a result, he wrote, as of last week, the project was “65% complete in its entirety, and moving quickly toward total completion.”

Another nakedly corrupt and partisan act by a naked and partisan justice.

This is not a court of law, this is the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation.

I Have No Son!

2026-08-21T19:01:00.000-04:00

Remember when I noted that my son had an idea to sell a T-Shirt that said, "Vore is biblically canon?"

You Maniac, You Blew it All Up! You Maniac! Ah, damn you! God damn you to hell!

OK, maybe it's not that bad, but daym, it ain't good.

In any case, here is a picture of his abomination, and you can get it at the link above either black on white or white on black in various forms of shirts, buttons, stickers, and magnets.

In case you are wondering, this is a reference to the Book of Jonah, not the Catholic ritual of communion.

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2026-08-20T21:10:00.000-04:00

I am not sure what to make of the most recent unemployment figures.

Initial claims fell by 6,000 to 206,000 and continuing claims rose by 18,000 to 1,8 million.

Applications for US unemployment benefits edged lower last week, staying near historically low levels and suggesting few layoffs across the labor market.

Initial claims decreased by 6,000 to 206,000 in the week ended Aug. 15, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 210,000.

Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, rose to 1.80 million in the previous week.

Not a clue what this all means.

To the Last I Grapple with Thee; From Hell’s Heart I Stab at Thee; For Hate’s Sake I Spit My Last Breath at Thee.

2026-08-20T20:59:00.000-04:00

The cover

Table of contents

So, I got this book in the mail today.

It turns out that it is a belated birthday gift from my little brother.

That's a fine thank you after I went and sent him a taxidermied armadillo all those years ago.

I will have my revenge.

To be fair, this is biblically accurate.

Best Military in the World

2026-08-20T19:59:00.000-04:00

General Dynamics got over $½ billion to manage a new factory producing 155mm howitzer shells. It has yet to deliver a single round.

The Pentagon ain't asking for its money back either.

A robot was on fire. Again.

It was the summer of 2024, and the cutting-edge robots inside General Dynamics’ sweltering artillery factory near Dallas were catching fire with startling regularity, according to four former workers there. This wasn’t ideal, as the plant was supposed to be churning out urgently needed artillery shells for Ukraine. The robots, giant metal arms with clamps for hands, would end up drenched in oil, which would then — no surprise — combust as they moved steel blocks heated to 1,800 degrees into and out of a machine that periodically erupted columns of fire. One blaze that summer melted a robot’s cables, putting it out of commission for a week.

Only weeks earlier, defense officials and executives had touted the factory’s innovative new machinery, imported from Turkey, at a gala opening ceremony. But employees were already used to spectacular mishaps, fiery and otherwise. “After the second, third, fourth time, it just became almost normal,” one former worker said. “It got to the point where I was not surprised by anything that happened there.”

Instead of producing shells in an efficient and streamlined fashion, the pricey machines kept failing in bizarre ways. The robot arms would swing out of control, smashing into carefully calibrated equipment, and sometimes they would unexpectedly drop hunks of steel 5 feet down to the floor. The factory’s signature device, meant to precisely stretch the steel for the artillery shells, instead often cracked it beyond repair. Then there were the giant press machines, which required regular pounding with a sledgehammer to function properly but still botched the shaping of nearly every shell. “We really didn’t have any standardized practice,” said Quantel White, a former employee. “It was just a bunch of guys taking turns going at the machine with a sledgehammer every night.” To workers, even the factory buildings themselves came to feel doomed, with acrid smoke hanging in 100-degree heat over foundations seemingly sinking into the earth.

The situation never improved. The U.S. Army, which funded the factory, ordered work halted on two of its three production lines in August 2025. By then, General Dynamics had blown eight deadlines. Work on the third production line continued, but the facility never produced a single usable shell, according to a report from the Department of Defense’s inspector general in July.

The fiasco has cost American taxpayers $533 million, according to the Army. But the Army has not held General Dynamics or a key Turkish subcontractor — which provided the factory’s much-hyped but little-proven equipment — publicly accountable for the failures. Nor has it made General Dynamics pay a penny back.

To quote Samuel L. Jackson, "Motherf%$#er!"

Skeet of the Day

2026-08-20T19:30:00.000-04:00

Lord Vader is right:

"The Emperor is a fan of Flock, and we must continue utilizing Flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the rebel scum as they move from playground to playground... They are following children in parks and gymnasiums, and we need this. I need this so I can stalk my ex-girlfriend."

[image or embed]
— Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social) August 20, 2026 at 1:21 PM

Ever Wondered About Democratic Party Fundraising Spam?

2026-08-19T22:05:00.000-04:00

It turns out that there are organized for-profit operations doing this and taking delivering barely more than 5% to the candidates. (Not referring to Act Blue)

We need to lead with the preface, which shows just how eager these rat-f%$s are to suppress this information:

This investigation was originally developed for The New York Times, where it underwent eight months of editing, multiple rounds of fact-checking, and independent replication of the underlying methodology. The piece had a scheduled publication date when requests for comment were sent. It was only after the Times reached out to the subjects of the investigation for routine comment that the Elias Law Group, representing the DCCC and DSCC, sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding the paper not publish. Although the paper’s fact-checkers and legal department later cleared the piece before sending out a second round of requests for comment, the Times ultimately decided to kill the piece.

The piece was subsequently slated for publication at The Bulwark, where it underwent additional fact-checking, data verification, and legal review. When requests for comment were sent to the subjects of the investigation, lawyers representing the Progressive Turnout Project and Mothership Strategies likewise responded with legal letters demanding that the article not run. From there, publication was repeatedly delayed. The piece cleared successive rounds of legal review. When I asked for a committed publication date after months of delay, The Bulwark conditioned publication on my accepting an extensive rewrite prepared by its editors that, in my assessment, removed key empirical findings without explanation, introduced claims contradicted by the data and fact-checking record, and presented the subjects' legal defenses as my own conclusions. When I declined to publish under those terms, the piece was released back to me.

What follows is the complete investigation that emerged from this year-long process.

To quote P.C. Hodgell, "That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be."

If you’ve ever donated to a Democratic campaign, you know the messages never stop: “All hope is lost.” “We’re BEGGING.” “Quadruple-match EXPIRES in 180 MINUTES!” They arrive at all hours, claiming to be “close to tears” because you haven’t sent $15.

Most of us dismiss them as annoying spam. But federal election records reveal a hidden population of seniors for whom these messages prove surprisingly effective. What reads as parody to one recipient may be psychologically triggering for another.

To understand how this system works, I combined contribution data from the Federal Election Commission with age data from voter registration lists, covering more than 300 million donations. The donors who send money in response to Democratic fundraising spam are overwhelmingly elderly, and a surprisingly concentrated group of them accounts for the bulk of the money raised.

Looking closely at the donation data can be heartbreaking. An 85-year-old retiree in Oxford, Ohio made more than 7,800 donations totaling over $648,000 to Democratic causes, more than double the estimated value of his home. A 91-year-old woman residing in a senior living facility in Indianapolis donated over 25,000 times, totaling over $250,000, burning through money she may need for care.

………

Who is behind this flood? A thriving industry of digital-fundraising consultants who specialize in offering spam as a service, and the political action committees and candidates who adopt their methods. Together, they form a broader network of fundraising that deploys these methods at scale.

The most visible players in this ecosystem are what I call “spam PACs” — organizations that use high-volume digital fundraising firms to raise small-dollar contributions, only to sink a disproportionate share of those funds right back into fundraising. They are built on a common financial model: outsized spending on aggressive digital messaging that repeatedly extracts donations from a disproportionately elderly group of donors. But these tactics have spread throughout the party. Even the party’s own congressional campaign committees and some of its most senior leaders have embraced the spam.

………

Spam PACs rarely operate in isolation. My analysis of FEC data shows that they cluster into networks linked by a small number of treasurers who oversee multiple committees at once. The largest I found is a group of PACs connected to the Progressive Turnout Project. Harry Pascal, a longtime accountant turned Democratic fundraiser, is treasurer for the Progressive Turnout Project PAC and seven additional PACs whose affiliated status allows them to operate as a single network.

Through 2025, Pascal’s network of PACs raised more than $390 million from individual donors. According to my analysis of FEC filings, roughly $20 million of that went directly to Democratic candidates, or funded independent expenditures supporting them. Another $100 million or so covered field and get-out-the-vote programs and the payroll to staff them, and roughly $20 million more went to administrative costs. The rest — an estimated $249 million, or 64 cents of every dollar raised — went to fundraising itself.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is little more than a pale echo of Mel Brooks' character Max Bialystock from his first film, The Producers.

Not Gonna Happen

2026-08-19T21:07:00.000-04:00

There are very few things that I am certain about.

One thing that I an certain of is that when a largely unknown aircraft manufacturer claims that it will build a transport that dwarfs the AN-124, it ain't gonna happen.

As rarities in aerospace go, the outsize cargo aircraft—or purpose-designed large airlifter—is among the most unique. Limited in number yet indispensable for key commercial and military roles, the outsize freighter fleet is rarely augmented or refreshed. Debuts of new options with tail or nose loading ramps are separated by decades, and relatively low flight hour accumulations mean that aging aircraft remain in service for years.

………

Under the Next-Generation Airlift (NGAL) program, the U.S. Air Force is poised to begin an analysis of alternatives for a single future airlifter to replace the C-17 and C-5. In parallel, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Propulsion Directorate is working with engine-makers on studies of propulsion systems for a future aircraft.

………

Another startup targeting military airlift is Colorado-based Radia, which is developing the enormous WindRunner. The 356-ft.-long, 261-ft.-wingspan aircraft is designed to carry payloads up to 160,000 lb. and 344 ft. long. With the capability to operate from a runway length of 6,000 ft., the WindRunner is planned to fly 1,200 nm at Mach 0.6 powered by four commercially available turbofans in the 55,000-lb.-thrust range.

Despite the emergence of an active Air Force RFI, Radia is proposing a nearer-term military WindRunner variant dubbed the C-242, founder and CEO Mark Lundstrom says. “The Pentagon is starting to turn the gears for the Next-Generation Airlift, and it is a process which would create a new capability sometime probably in the early 2040s,” he says. “Radia’s intent is to provide service in the early 2030s.”

The manufacture of large air-lifters is not a Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland movie.

You can't just go and say, "My dad has a barn, let's assemble an 800 ton aircraft!"

Well, you can go and say that, if you are smoking the right stuff.

Forget it Jake, It's Texas

2026-08-19T20:54:00.000-04:00

In response to Texas' refusal to extradite an indicted ICE agent, Minnesota has sued Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

While I know that this won't result in Abbot being wheeled into a prison cell, the image makes me smile.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, alleging the governor is refusing to extradite a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent charged with shooting an immigrant during Operation Metro Surge.

Christian Castro, 52, is facing four counts of assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime related to a Jan. 14 incident in which prosecutors allege he fired through the front door of a Minneapolis home he knew was occupied.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty and Ellison have sent letters to Abbott urging him to sign off on the officer’s extradition after Castro was charged in May. Last week, Ellison warned Abbott he would sue if he did not authorize Castro’s extradition by the end of the day Monday.

“This is not some accidental thing,” Ellison said in a Tuesday news conference announcing the lawsuit. “This is a choice.”

At a news conference Tuesday, Abbott said he would not respond to Minnesota prosecutors until they “acknowledge their fault in the fraud that took place” and repay the government for it. He was referring to the Trump administration’s accusations of fraud in Minnesota.

Governor Abbot? You do not get to ignore a lawful request for extradition because you want Minnesota to do racism.

………

In addition to the extradition demand, Ellison’s lawsuit also requests a temporary restraining order to bar the Cameron County Sheriff’s Office, where Castro is in jail, from releasing him. According to the lawsuit, which was filed in the Southern District Court of Texas, Castro could be released under Texas law as soon as Aug. 26 if he is not extradited.

If Castro is released, he will most likely flee to Mexico.

Irony, neh?

Meanwhile in Argentina

2026-08-19T20:52:00.000-04:00

It appears that many Argentines are unimpressed with Peter Thiel decamping to the Pampas.

Some of them are protesting, and they have done some research, and know that the literal vampire is a big fan of the works of JRR Tolkien, so they protested while dressed as Gandalf the Gray.

I approve.

One does not simply walk into Argentina. Despite his significant influence over the Trump administration, tech billionaire and Antichrist enthusiast Peter Thiel has been putting down roots in Javier Milei’s far-right, anarcho-capitalist Argentina, apparently worried that things might go sideways in the States. At least some Argentinians would prefer he go back home, and they decided to send him a message by protesting outside of Thiel’s residence while dressed as Gandalf the Grey.

According to Argentinian newspaper Clarín, the demonstration took place on Monday and featured a dozen or so people draped in long cloaks, wizard hats, and faux beards who made their way to Thiel’s neighborhood with signs bearing slogans like “You shall not pass, you son of a bitch.” Per Clarín, the group also jumped up and down while chanting, “Whoever doesn’t jump owns Palantir and won’t be able to live in Argentina.”

The group’s inclination that Thiel take a hike comes as the billionaire continues to dig his claws into Argentina. Per the New York Times, the scariest member of the PayPal mafia has already met with Milei and his ministers, who were apparently thrilled to have him. Milei described their meeting as “wonderful,” according to the Buenos Aires Times.

Gondor Calls For Aid!

Linkage

2026-08-19T05:14:00.000-04:00

British journal retracts study on excess mortality after COVID-19 pandemic (Anadolu) The BMJ have finally called out antivax bullsh%$ as antivax bullsh%$.
East Tennessee commissioner suggests Flock CEO be publicly hanged (WATE 6 On Your Side) I do not approve of calls to violence, but if I were to sit on a jury, I would be hard pressed to vote to convict anyone who took this politicians advice.
Cougars Lower the Risks of Car Crashes by Hunting Deer (WIRED) Also wolves. We need cougars and wolves back in Maryland.
Paleontology rocked by organic molecules found in 66-million-year-old dinosaur bones (ScienceDaily) They found Collagen. Mind blown.
Greenland Meltwater Is Bending Europe's Jet Stream Into Record Heatwaves (Tech Times) We are f%$#ed.
The ultimate horse (Works in Progress Magazine) The genetics of race horses has apparently become so brittle that future improvements through breeding are nearly impossible.
SpaceX’s Earnings Show Elon Wiped Out Two-Thirds Of Twitter’s Ad Business (Techdirt) Going public increases transparency, and we not get a front seat to Elon's incompetence and corruption.
The Economy Has Spoken: Stuff That's AI-Generated Has Almost Zero Value (Futurism) There is no, "There," there.
Meta Exec Rages Against Employees Asking for More Time Off Because AI Made Them More Efficient (Futurism) They really are horrible people.
Theban tomb reveals how Egyptian burial trends evolved in time (Ars Technica) The evolution of funerary rituals is fascinating.

It turns out the extreme corseting of the Victorian era was far less extreme than we had previously though:

Primaries Tonight

2026-08-18T23:24:00.000-04:00

First, Angie Nixon defeated Alexander Vindman in the Florida Senate primary.

This is despite the fact that Vindman outraised and outspent her by almost 17:1.

In an upset for the Democratic establishment, progressive Angie Nixon won the party’s US Senate primary in Florida, beating former army intelligence officer Alexander Vindman.
Nixon, a state representative and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, had significantly less funding going into the primary – with $975,000 to Vindman’s $16.3m at the end of July, according to Florida Politics.
Vindman served on the national security council in Donald Trump’s first term and became a well-known whistleblower and witness in the president’s first impeachment, centered on Trump pressuring Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, to investigate Joe Biden.
………
Nixon, who was born in Jacksonville, has aggressively opposed DeSantis’s policies, including with a sit-in at the governor’s office this spring to protest Republican redistricting, the Miami Herald reported. That demonstration resulted in her facing misdemeanor charges of trespassing and resisting, which she is fighting in court.

Vindman’s campaign had been focused on Moody, not his primary opponent, and he did not agree to debate Nixon, despite her public calls for him to take the stage with her.

Also in Florida, the state's most reprehensible Democrat, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, succeeded in her effort to Bigfoot her way into a predominantly black district, because competitive elections are for suckers.

But establishment Democrats prevailed in other Florida races this week, in the first election in the state after redistricting. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, an 11-term congresswoman and former chair of the Democratic National Committee, defeated Elijah Manley, a 27-year-old substitute teacher who was endorsed by a progressive group. Wasserman Schultz had faced criticisms for running in a district that has a plurality of Black voters and has long been represented by a Black Democrat.

Wasserman Schultz’s previous district was broken up by Republicans’ gerrymandered congressional maps, and she chose not to run in the district where she lives, but in a newly drawn one that was solidly blue.

Nothing else of particular note so far.

Election Live Updates: Florida Chooses Donalds and Jolly as Nominees to Replace DeSantis as Governor - The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/08/18/us/elections/results-florida-us-senate-special-primary-august-18.html

Speaking of Political Malpractice………

2026-08-18T21:23:00.000-04:00

Trump's disastrous and incompetent Iran adventure is deeply unpopular, and it's getting less popular by the day, but the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) refuses to come out against the war.

To quote (not) Tallyrand, "This is worse than a crime, this is a mistake."

There’s definitely something uncanny about this: We’re five months and 10 days into Donald Trump’s war of choice with Iran, and it’s been about five months and five days since he lost it. Trump won’t end the war because he can’t accept terms that make clear how badly he fucked this up, and we’re all captive to his narcissism. The result is that U.S. credibility is in tatters. Everyone’s mad at us for creating a global energy crisis, and rightly so. Nobody trusts Trump to honor his word, because he’s a liar. Nobody trusts him to make good on his threats, because he makes them endlessly but never follows through. He’s depleted U.S. munitions stockpiles badly enough to leave service members, and allies that rely on our preparedness, vulnerable to adversaries.

It’s a cockup of world historic proportions. And yet… it’s often not among Trump’s biggest day-to-day political liabilities. The war is slow-bleeding support from the GOP. But there are no sustained calls for Trump to resign in disgrace, or face impeachment, or any consequences that match the scale of the failure. And yet we know, because we weren’t born yesterday, that presidents and cabinet officials have been mired in damaging controversy for much smaller military blunders. Remember Barack Obama’s redline in Syria? Or Benghazi?

………

What do you think would happen to Democratic Party approval ratings if Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries wrote up an agenda like the one I proposed here, including a promise that if Democrats win the election, they’ll defund Trump’s war against Iran? Would they go up or down?

What if they were able to communicate, unabashedly, that Trump had humiliated America. That through his own foolishness, megalomania, and dishonesty, he had made the United States seem weak and feckless to the world. That this is, for the pendency of his regime, a disaster for U.S. strategic power—but also that it’s fundamentally aberrant. Something Democrats will set right once Trump is gone.

What if Democrats told the electorate, but also the world, that American renewal could begin early, but only if voters gave Democrats enough power to dog walk Trump to the end of his term. No more threats to invade or occupy enemies or allies on a lark. No more denial about the failure of his foreign policy. He might serve his last two years in full—Republicans could still ensure his acquittal on impeachment—but he’d be muzzled and on a tight leash?

People are disinclined to vote for careerist coward hypocrites.

Useless as Tits on a Bull

2026-08-18T20:26:00.000-04:00

I am referring, of course, to the dead eyed leader of the House Democratic Caucus Hakeem Jeffries.

He decided that it would somehow be a good thing to come out in opposition of Medicare for All, because lobbyists gotta write those checks.

If the Dems take over the House and Senate this November, it will be in spite of mooks like Jeffries, not because of them.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) announced his opposition to Medicare for All on the same day a CBS News poll found 90 percent of Democratic voters support the idea — and 72 hours after a Yale University study showed the program would save 114,000 American lives and $1 trillion every single year.

Here’s some important context: Jeffries has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign cash from healthcare PACs in the 2026 election cycle and didn’t face any primary challenge holding him accountable to Democratic voters’ desires, despite him representing a deep New York City blue district.

If you think what I’ve just described is so cartoonish that it must be an overstatement, think again — it’s all too real and all too emblematic of Democratic politics.

But the good news is that other prominent Democrats are starting to speak out more forcefully against their party’s direction and this kind of betrayal.

The very epitome of everything that is wrong with the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

Of Course It's Amazon

2026-08-17T20:46:00.000-04:00

You've hears about the AI groups that are shredding old rare books in order to train AI without having copyright issues.

We now have at least one of the culprits.

A book seller put Airtags in a bulk book order, and it's Amazon that is shredding the books.

On an emotional level, this is the single most offensive thing that Jeff Bezos' monster has ever done. (Intellectual level, the mistreatment of workers is worse)

For the past year or so, booksellers have suspected that AI firms are buying up huge lots of rare books, then destroying them after scanning them to train AI. But this was hard to prove until now, as 404 Media reports that an Airtag hidden in a rare book shows that at least one tech giant, in the race to advance its frontier models, is behind some of the bulk orders: Amazon.

On Monday, 404 Media revealed that it had connected with a bookseller who agreed to plant an Airtag in a rare book that was part of a bulk order. That Airtag was then tracked to an Amazon AI training facility in Las Vegas that housed a team focused on tearing books from their spines and scanning pages, 404 Media reported. Apparently tone-deaf to the escalating backlash over destructive book scanning, a logo on the door of that team’s warehouse, VGT3, showed a Tyrannosaurus rex preparing to devour a book, 404 Media documented.

I have advocated breaking up Amazon on a few occasions.

Screw that, send the whole C-Suite to Gitmo.

No Disciplinary Actions

2026-08-17T20:45:00.000-04:00

After prosecutors in Queens, New York were discovered to have concealed exculpatory evidence, The disciplinary committee decided to take no action against them.

These guys should have been fired ……… Out of a cannon ……… Into the sun.

Five years ago, one of the state’s top judges found Queens prosecutors had deliberately hidden evidence that could have spared three men decades in prison. Not long afterward, an attorney asked a disciplinary committee to investigate the incident.

The committee has finally returned its own finding. There is “insufficient evidence” the prosecutors had violated any of the “rules and laws governing attorney conduct,” according to a letter from the committee that was obtained by Gothamist.

The letter states the committee has closed the complaints against seven prosecutors filed in connection with the wrongful murder conviction of George Bell.

The five-sentence letter offers no information about the committee’s investigation or reasoning. Gothamist’s reporting on the matter is the first public confirmation of how the disciplinary process ended, and may be the only accounting the public ever gets.

This is why secret proceedings done by secret committees staffed by fellow members of the same profession rarely if ever deliver meaningful accountability.