How Long Shall The Wicked Reign Over My People?

Number of the Day: 2,864,974. (Popular vote differential.)

Fuck the gawd-damned Electoral College too.

Null Set

Neither Burgers Nor Shakes

Chain Link

YOUR SPEED 27

Unsuccessful Attack

TUE 28 DEC 1943
Pacific
Amphibious Training Base, Kamaole, Maui, T.H., is established.

Submarine Muskallunge (SS-262) unsuccessfully attacks Japanese convoy at 08°50'N, 147°20'E.

Navy PV-1 attacks Japanese net tender Katsura Maru off Kwajalein.

USAAF B-25s and P-40s sink Japanese merchant cargo vessels Heizan Maru, Unyo Maru and Koka Maru in Yangtze River, 30°40'N, 117°30'E.

Indian Ocean
U.S. freighter Robert F. Hoke en route from Abadan, Iran, to Mombasa, Kenya, is torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-26 at 20°05'N, 59°58'E, and abandoned by all but the 27-man Armed Guard, who remain at their guns and fire upon the I-boat's periscope to keep the enemy down. I-26 abandons any further attacks and retires while Robert F. Hoke remains afloat. The crew reboards the ship but is not able to get the ship underway and she is abandoned a second time. An RAF crash boat rescues all hands (41 merchant sailors and the Armed Guard) and the abandoned freighter is later towed to Aden by British rescue tug HMS Masterful. Robert F. Hoke is later towed to Suez but never returns to active service and is written off as a total loss.

Indian Navy minesweeper RINS Rajputana rescues the survivors of U.S. freighter Jose Navarro, torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-178 the day before, and transports them to Cochin.

Atlantic
PB4Y (VB 105) on patrol over Bay of Biscay sights five German destroyers and six torpedo boats returning from attempt to rendezvous with blockade runner Alsterfurer, sunk the day before by an RAF No. 311 (Czech) Squadron Liberator. Of 15 PB4Ys dispatched as a strike force, six (five from VB 105 and one from VB 103) contact the enemy force and attack it. Contact reports by Navy planes, meanwhile, draw British light cruisers HMS Glasgow and HMS Enterprise to the scene, resulting in the sinking of German destroyers Z 27 and torpedo boats T 25 and T 26, the survivors of which are rescued by the British ships, an Irish steamer, and four Spanish destroyers.

Ghost Restaurant

Sensing a theme?

Business Stinks All Over

Although opening a restaurant must be the dumbest risk ever.

Sucks to be you, huh Eric?

¿Qué Pasa, New York?

Fun City Losing Edge?

Paul Berger / Wall Street Journal:

New York City Traffic Deaths Set to Hit 100-Year Low  —  City officials credit traffic initiatives for reducing road deaths, on pace to fall for fifth consecutive year  —  The number of annual traffic fatalities in New York City is on course to fall beneath 200 for the first time in a century, transportation officials say.

Graham Rayman / New York Daily News:

Silent night: City records no murders for five days and counting Christmas week  —  All is calm, all is bright.  —  The city has gone five straight days with no homicides, making for a remarkably peaceful Christmas week.  —  The most recent reported slaying in our city of 8.5 million people was Friday.

At least Con Ed can still be counted on to keep it interesting, if prosaic.

Confirming incident in #Astoria was result of transformer explosion. No injuries, no fire, no evidence of extraterrestrial activity. Please continue to follow @FDNY and @Conedison

— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) December 28, 2018

On the other extremity, the F.D.N.Y. doesn't say it wasn't extraterrestrial, only that there was no evidence thereof. I'd have been thinking/praying Gojira,

had I seen it w/o knowing what it was.This reporter would guess it's more the cloud cover than the actual sky, but whatever, WSJ.

Bombardment At Bougainville

MON 27 DEC 1943
Pacific
Two cruisers and four destroyers (Rear Admiral Walden L. Ainsworth) bombard Kieta area, Bougainville, Solomons.

Coastal transport APc-15 is damaged by dive bomber, New Britain, 06°12'S, 149°03'E.

Submarine Flying Fish (SS-229) sinks Japanese fleet tanker Kyuei Maru, 21°25'N, 118°05'E.

Submarine Gurnard (SS-254) damages Japanese transport (ex-armed merchant cruiser) Gokoku Maru, 34°23'N, 138°24'E.

Submarine Ray (SS-271) sinks Japanese fleet tanker Kyoko Maru (ex-Dutch Semiramis) west of the Celebes, 05°00'S, 121°22'E.

Submarine Tautog (SS-199) damages Japanese seaplane carrier Kimikawa Maru off Shionomisaki, 33°25'N, 135°33'E.

Indian Ocean
U.S. freighter Jose Navarro, bound for Calcutta, India, is torpedoed by German submarine U-178 at 08°20'N, 73°35'E. A volunteer crew returns to the ship after she is abandoned in hopes of saving her but go over the side before U-178 finishes off the freighter in a second attack. There are no fatalities among the 46-man merchant complement, the 34-man Armed Guard, or the 86 embarked troops (only one man of that aggregate total is injured) (see 28 December 1943).

We Like This Guy

During testimony Thursday morning, a U.S. Forest Service investigator described his bizarre interview with Clark, who claimed he hadn’t slept and had been fasting for 40 days around the time the fire erupted Aug. 6 in Holy Jim Canyon, where he has a cabin. As a result, Clark said he couldn’t be sure if his recollections of what happened that day were just a lucid dream or reality, investigator Albert Banh testified.

[...]

Clark told the officer he had recently been released from a hospital on a “5150 hold,” which is police slang for someone involuntarily committed to be evaluated for mental health issues. The defendant also admitted he had stopped taking his medication because he considered it “poison,” Banh testified.

Clark told Banh he had lived in Cabin 14 in Trabuco Canyon for about 18 years, and right away he had issues with his neighbor — Romero — in Cabin 15, where investigators believe the blaze originated.

Clark claimed Milligan set the fire and he knew that because he has a “third eye” and could “see” him doing it, Banh testified. Clark also claimed he could “smell the KKK cigarettes” of Milligan, Banh said.

[...]

On Aug. 6, the day the Holy Fire erupted, Clark allegedly threatened to kill a neighbor about 7:30 a.m., prosecutors said in a previous motion to deny him bail.

As the neighbor walked to his truck, Clark told him that he “(expletive) FUCKED with the wrong person,” according to the motion. “The defendant stated that he was `crazy’ and noted it was `perfect’ because he could do anything he wants and get away with it.”

Later that day, he allegedly set fire to his neighbor’s residence. The Holy Fire ultimately also destroyed 13 other residences in Holy Jim Canyon and adjacent Trabuco Canyon.

Orange County sheriff’s investigator Jennifer Hernandez said in an affidavit supporting the motion to deny bail that Clark “could be heard on video telling (a victim), `Mark my words, you’re gonna die at 12:37… I have 100 percent plausible deniability. You’re gonna die. I’m gonna murder you.”’

In completely unrelated news, got my pension check today, giving me the entire wknd. in which to buy a gun (& plenty of ammo) to show to my corporate landlord & his incompetent flunkies. Fasting, huh? Good idea too. Couple days w/o eating & I'll be so angry I could eat a horse kill a humanoid. [Inspiration from mynewsLA.com.]

The Pearl Of Great Price

Dep't. Of Horseshit

Are people really this inane? (Don't answer that.)

Paranoid Nincompoop Of The Day

Are there no mental asylums?

Dan Zak / Washington Post:

What is Ginni Thomas saying now?  The evolution of an unusually outspoken Supreme Court spouse  —  What is going on with Ginni Thomas?  —  She still looks and sounds like the Washington wife of yore, with the pearl earrings, the Reagan-red cocktail attire, the sunglasses tiara'd atop her blond bob.

[...]

But her most visible work is on Facebook, which she considers a prime conduit for influencing the conservative base. Her specialty is meme warfare — sharing loving tributes to Trump, derogatory takedowns of progressives and broadsides against congressional Republicans. A week after a neo-Nazi killed a woman by driving a car into a crowd in Charlottesville, Thomas derided House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for not speaking out against violence on the left.

“LiberalFascists have their useful idiots,” she wrote, and we are left to wonder, as always: What is going on with Ginni Thomas?

These memes come off the assembly line of jingoistic conservative Facebook groups with names such as the Citizens Mandate and the Great American Movement, which have 160,000 followers between them. The groups seem as automated and leaderless as many of the murky forces in social media these days, but the latter appears to be linked on Twitter to a fellow Groundswell member, and the former was apparently born of a 2014 pledge to “Stop the Fundamental Transformation of America” — which was signed by anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly, evangelical James Dobson and 50 other conservatives, including a few that Thomas has honored with “impact” awards.

“I can’t believe that the wife of a Supreme Court justice would be spreading such dangerous lies,” wrote a Facebook commenter named Elizabeth in October, after Thomas equated Democrats with rioting and mob rule.

A handful of Thomas’s fellow warriors, when asked about her Facebook activity, say they haven’t observed it or haven’t caught anything objectionable, though at least one says she can overreach at times.

“She’s hardcore to a fault,” says an alumnus of the Heritage Foundation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly. “Sometimes it clouds her political judgment.”

Dangerous lies & "meme warfare": Politics for pinheads who have to move their lips when they read. You know, conservatives & the religious.

They Killed It!

Murderers!

Making It Up As He Goes Along

He's a lying sack of shit,

Felicia Sonmez / Washington Post:

Trump claims without evidence that ‘most of the people not getting paid’ in partial government shutdown are Democrats  —  President Trump on Thursday claimed that “most of the people not getting paid” in the partial government shutdown are Democrats, days after he contended that many federal workers support …

he's a lying sack of shit.

Fact check: Trump brags to troops about 10 percent pay raise he didn't actually give them

The president also got it very wrong when he claimed during his trip to Iraq that service members haven't had a wage hike in 10 years.

[N.B.C. News]

Crabby?

You bet I'm crabby.

Apparently You WILL be Replaced

The Halal Guys move in at one end of the block,

next thing you know the Mickey D's at the other end of the block is replaced by "RETAIL For Lease".

Oh Ugly World, W/ Such Ugly Things In It

I shot 140 peopleics today & you're going to look at every last one of them if/until it kills you.

Today In Urban Camping

Now that the holidays are over, you can go back to forgetting the least among us until next Thanksgiving, you filthy, filthy hypocrites.

Twice a yr. its's stale but free doughnuts, future leftovers & a "gift bag" w/ toothpaste & a pair of socks for them, & the remaining 363 days of the yr. they can suck wind.

There being no apparent Gawd, I s'pose it's on me to burn your houses & let you suffer that to which you've condemned your fellow humanoids.

Crane Of The Future

Operation BACKHANDLER

From.

SUN 26 DEC 1943
Pacific
1st Marine Division (Major General William H. Rupertus, USMC) is landed at Cape Gloucester, New Britain, by Seventh Amphibious Force (Rear Admiral Daniel E. Barbey) after heavy preinvasion bombardment and bombing by ship gunfire and aircraft in Operation BACKHANDLER. During retaliatory Japanese air strikes, destroyer Brownson (DD-518) is sunk by dive bomber off Cape Gloucester, New Britain, 05°20'S, 148°25'E; destroyers Lamson (DD-367), Shaw (DD-373), and Mugford (DD-389) are damaged by dive bombers; and tank landing ships LST-66 is damaged by horizontal bomber.

Caribbean
U.S. tanker Chapultepec en route from Aruba, N.W.I., to Cristobal, C.Z., is torpedoed by German submarine U-530 at 10°33'N, 79°10'W. While there are no fatalities among the 53-man merchant complement or the 28-man Armed Guard, two of that aggregate total are injured. The ship reaches her destination under her own power and discharges her cargo of fuel oil. Subsequently, U.S. tanker Esso Buffalo,, en route from Aruba, N.W.I., to the Canal Zone (ultimate destination: Melbourne, Australia), most likely accidentally rams U-530 at 10°25'N, 78°28'W. There are no casualties among the 47-man merchant complement or the 28-man Armed Guard.

Dumb S.O.B. Can't Do Anything Right

Menace To Society. Or At Least The Military.

James LaPorta / Newsweek:

Donald Trump Twitter Account Video Reveals Covert U.S. Navy SEAL Deployment During Iraq Visit  —  President Donald Trump and the White House communications team revealed that a U.S. Navy SEAL team was deployed to Iraq after the president secretly traveled to the region to meet …

Noor Al-Sibai / Raw Story:   National security expert nails Trump for revealing classified identities of special ops troops in Iraq visit
Sophie Weiner / Splinter:   Trump Seems to Have Accidentally Revealed the Identities of a Covert Navy SEAL Team on Twitter

Of course the SEALS might've resisted the urge to pose w/ the fucking puke.

$10 TO STOP

In The News

Obligatory

[The news]

Fragging Time!!

If he returns from Iraq alive, it will be proof that not a single one of our baby-killers over there is a patriot.

Mental Illness Round-Up

Predictions from the "prophetic". And pathetic.

2018: The Year in False Prophesies and Failed Predictions

If Jesus loves these morons, why does he let them embarrass themselves on a daily basis?

[Weasel Watch]

LAUNDRYWOOD

Clean for Christmas.

War On Christmas Day

SAT 25 DEC 1943
Pacific
TG 50.2 (Rear Admiral Frederick C. Sherman) attacks Japanese ships at Kavieng. Planes from aircraft carrier Bunker Hill (CV-17) and small aircraft carrier Monterey (CVL 26) sink transport Tenryu Maru, 02°36'S, 150°49'E; and damage minesweepers W.21 and W.22 and transport (ex-armed merchant cruiser) Kiyozumi Maru.

Submarine Skate (SS-305) torpedoes Japanese battleship Yamato northeast of Truk, Carolines, 10°05'N, 150°32'E.

USAAF B-25s damage Japanese Patrol Boat No.14 50 kilometers east of Hong Kong.

Atlantic
German blockade runner Osorno arrives off the Gironde Estuary, met by six destroyers and six torpedo boats. Although Osorno has run the gantlet and avoided damage from her foes, she fouls the submerged wreckage of sunken German auxiliary vessel Sperrbrecher 21, necessitating the blockade runner's being beached.

Koreatown Christmas Lights

Very tasteful.

Xmas Eve Afloat During War

FRI 24 DEC 1943
Pacific
Task force of three cruisers and four destroyers (Rear Admiral Aaron S. Merrill) bombards Buka-Bonis area, Solomons.

Allied aircraft sinks Japanese auxiliary minelayer Koa Maru, Marcus Bay, New Britain.

Destroyer escort Griswold (DE-7) sinks Japanese submarine I-39 off Koli Point, Guadalcanal, 09°23'S, 160°09'E.

Submarine Gurnard (SS-254) sinks Japanese transport Seizan Maru 27 nautical miles east of Miki cape, 33°57'N, 136°19'E, and auxiliary minesweeper Naruo Maru, 34°17'N, 136°55'E.

Submarine Raton (SS-270) torpedoes Japanese transport Heiwa Maru in Kaoe Bay, Halmahera, 02°57'N, 127°32'E; Heiwa Maru is intentionally run aground in shallow water to prevent her sinking.

USAAF B-24 aircraft damage Japanese cargo ship Kensho Maru, Kwajalein.

Atlantic
Advanced Amphibious Base, Dartmouth, England, is established.

Escort carrier Card (CVE-11)'s screen continues to battle concentration of U-boats. Destroyer Schenck (DD-159) sinks German submarine U-645, North Atlantic, 45°20'N, 21°40'W; but Leary (DD-158) is torpedoed and sunk by U-275 and U-382, 585 miles west-northwest of Cape Finisterre, Spain, 45°00'N, 22°00'W.

Xmas Canada Goose Cooked

Two birds are recovering at a wildlife care center after officials said the animals overdosed on pills dumped at a park in Huntington Beach.

Last week, authorities said, a man spotted hundreds of pills on the grass at Carr Park. After seeing a goose in distress, he called animal control.

[L.A. Now]

50 Yrs. Pass Like Nothing

Earthrise, by Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders, taken 24 December 1968, mission time 075:49:07 (16:40 UTC).
West Africa is visible just above Terra's terminator line. The lunar horizon is ~780 kilometers from the spacecraft.
Width of the photographed area at the lunar horizon is about 175 kilometers.
Two craters visible on the image were named 8 Homeward and Anders' Earthrise in honor of Apollo 8 by IAU in 2018.