"A Foolish Consistency ...

... Is the Hobgoblin Of Little Minds"

TRUMP: "We have total control of the Strait of Hormuz"

TRUMP MOMENTS LATER: "We want the Strait of Hormuz open" pic.twitter.com/dWVybIV8CJ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 21, 2026

Well then, someone has a GIANT mind, possibly swollen by disease. It just opens the yap & spews virtually anything, anytime.

This nation will not endure until early 2029, will it? May not even survive 'til the 250th Anniv. on The Fourth of July.

Lest We Forget

Rep. Norman: January 6th was an issue that was made up in the first place.

Reporter: Made up?

Norman: That was a staged thing from day one.

Reporter: The riot was staged? Your Republican colleagues barricaded themselves in their chamber. You think they were acting? pic.twitter.com/txEnKwNso9

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 21, 2026

Keep posting this so people don’t forget how truly bad this event was.

Don’t let people gaslight you into thinking it was peaceful and worthy of 1500+ pardons and slush fund payoffs. pic.twitter.com/R4YzWQTHcC

— Jake Justice (@jakecobb) May 20, 2026

Pardons & your money hell, nothing but DEATH TO THE SEDITIONISTS!!

Rob Base, Dead At 59

That sucks. I love this song. All-time bass line.Legal name, Robert Ginyard. Predeceased by his friend & musical associate since fifth grade, DJ E-Z Rock (Rodney "Skip" Bryce) in 2014. The Wiki sez both were born on 18 May 1967. America eats its young.[Variety]

Steve M. Captures The Zeitgeist

Steve watched J.B. & added:

But it's the cultural coverage that hints at the GOP's future when Trump is gone.

This coverage is all about aspects of American life that Republican base voters believe are their property: NASCAR, pro wrestling, the military, crimefighting. It envisions a world where cops are always good and crime is always lurking. Democrats are socialist, trans, and generally weird. Republicans are the guarantors of good old-fashioned normality.

As I said last month, Republicans in the post-Trump era could be like Republicans in 1988: a party trying to carry on in the absence of a twice-elected leader who is worshipped by the base. Before the George H.W. Bush campaign found the secret to defeating Mike Dukakis (racist scare ads about Black criminals), Bush played the GOP culture card. He talked about enjoying pork rinds. He campaigned with country music legend Loretta Lynn (who said of Dukakis, "Why, I can't even pronounce his name!"). He toured a flag factory (at a time when his campaign was floating rumors that Dukakis's wife, in her youth, had burned an American flag*).

Republicans don't really care about the needs of NASCAR fans who eat pork rinds. But it's effective branding, and it will keep the GOP going once Trump is gone.

They are indeed the shallowest people imaginable.Fuck them & the advertising agencies that prey on them!

---

*This reporter burned a Yankee flag in his living room once, some 40 yrs, ago, possibly on or near the Fourth of July; some s.o.b. (Think he called hiself Zontar, Zondar, Zandar or something similar; does anyone remember who I mean?) actually tried to stop me, & then got hissy about it!

87 Today!

Friday Freak Out II

WWII Back In Blythe

"Halftracks firing at Desert Center"

U.S. Marines to Conduct Training Exercise in Blythe Starting Tuesday

U.S. Marines with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit will conduct a training exercise starting next week in Blythe to prepare for crises in urban environments.

"Crises in urban environments"? If you don't think they're going to fuck w/ voting in the cities, guess again, chumps.

Do your own research.

Blythe, earlier this wk.

[PressRelease-ReleasingBot.com]

Friday Freak Out

Music Of My Youth

Via Humanizing The Vacuum, a ranking of Numbers Four on the Hit Parade from 1963 & '64, when I was first becoming a music afficanado. We'd acquired a new GE stereo(!) radio & amplifier in '62; for some reason my immediate female ancestor informed me she didn't want to hear any rock 'n' roll on said radio. Wave a flag in front of a bull, why don't you? Oppositionally Defiant I was listening to the rock 'n' roll radio w/in mins. No one tells me nothin', y'hear?! NOTHIN"!!

It was a more innocent time, meaning people were stupid, ignorant & foolish, & I wasn't yet aware how evil you people were (although the Civil Rights Movement was giving me an idea) & that I should have started killing as many of you bastards as I could have right then. Maybe I would have made a dent in the bestial stupidity of your scum species by now.

Anyway, here are three of the selected tunes, from my "Wonder Years"®.

Waiting For Juice

Bonus electric-powered Google robot.

I wish I could juice myself up. I'm about half a level above catatonic, & could barely rouse myself to make it the few blocks to the supermarket & back.

"Fighting Communism" W/ Imperialism

Have some context. Or is it propganda?

Gun News

I hope Cuba is doing this too.Others defending themselves:

According to LADWP, the employees were attempting to perform a scheduled water shutoff when the incident occurred. The workers, who were unharmed, moved to a safe location and contacted LADWP Security and the Los Angeles Police Department.

Dunno what a "scheduled" water shutoff is, but if the DWP employees were trying to cut off the water, what the hell's he or she supposed to do? And what did the heat do to the irate property owner/renter? Inquiring minds want to know, mynewsLA.com!

Another Real Threat

I am so fucking tired of being lied to & cheated every instant of my existence in this world of shit, pain & lying cheats you fucking imbeciles have made for yourselves. What is wrong w/ all of you? Why are you all such cheating liars?

That's Yankee Dabbler, by the way. Fuck them to the theological place of eternal damnation for all eternity.

Dog Bites Man!

Is this sort of thing even "news" anymore? No one can possibly be surprised, 'though some may be disgusted & revolted. Xians, apparently, think it's how things should be. Father knows best!

Shannon Butler / WFTV:
Former ‘gay cure’ ministry leader Alan Chambers charged in underage sex sting
Bob Smietana / RNS:   Alan Chambers, former Exodus International leader, charged with soliciting minor
Quispe López / Advocate:   Former leader of ‘ex-gay’ Christian ministry arrested for soliciting sex from a minor

Can't even "cure" himself, if he does realize he's doing something more awful than the "sins" he thinks "the gays" are committing.

At least Gary Puckett tried to keep it in his pants.

Truly A Paper Tiger

By gucciminh.

The term was frequently used in Chinese Internet discourse regarding the trade war begun by United States President Donald Trump. Internet users referred to Trump as a "paper tiger", frequently observing that the United States economy depends heavily on Chinese companies for a host of necessities, electronics, and raw components.

They have him pegged.

A "quick one" from Krugman.

When the leaders of the world’s two most powerful nations met in Beijing, Chinese Premier Xi Jinping spoke about the lessons of history:

Can China and the United States transcend the so-called ‘Thucydides Trap’ and forge a new paradigm for major-power relations?”

Donald Trump, on the other hand, spoke about fast food

Just as many Chinese now love basketball and blue jeans, Chinese restaurants in America today outnumber the five largest fast food chains in the United States, all combined. That’s a pretty big statement.

I’m old enough to remember when we were a serious country.

So am I. I believe the exact phrase is "Serious as cancer".

"Basketball and blue jeans" is yet another demonstration of how shallow he is. How do already overpaid sportsball weasels getting Chinese endorsement money help any other Americans but billionaire team owners? "Blue" jeans, what is he, his grandfather? Aren't "blue jeans" made in Vietnam or Central America? The Chinese restaurant bit is obvious bullshit & means less than nothing. Mencken's "The White House will be adorned by a downright moron" is completely correct, innit?

If the "gift link" doesn't work, digby excerpted much of it.

70 Yrs. Ago Today In Railroading History

Image by O. Winston Link. ©East Bumfuck Historical Society Collection. Used w/o permission.

A.T.S.F. Locomotive 2342 & Caboose 1353 pass the bean elevators at East Bumfuck, 19 May 1956.

More Fearmongering

The proverbial chickens may be coming home to roost atop what remains of The White House.Hah! Good luck getting Congress to address anything.

Had little prior interest, but now I can't wait for the World Cup! Hey, is that blood?

Some Quality Kvetching

From 2016. He's certainly fixed all the problems on his list, hasn't he?

As a general rule, there’s value in trying to understand why those we disagree with think as they do. But there’s no reason to allow such sentiments to obscure or confuse what we are living through. The GOP has been trending this way for a long time. In 2012, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein wrote:

“The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

Mann and Ornstein correctly identified what had been the longtime drift of the GOP by that time, and felt it necessary to say so, especially in the face of a media environment that remained wedded to a “both sides” frame that muddied that reality. Led by Trump, especially in his second term, the GOP has reached the end point of that long arc, leavened by a depth of fraud, ignorance and spite that has made even veterans of that earlier era of GOP politics blanch.

End of a party, end of the Empire ...

When will these shitheels die so I can start pissing on their graves?

[Jonathan’s Quality Kvetching Newsletter, via Hackwhackers. Part of Mann/Ornstein.]

Plague Watch

No Vaccines or Treatments

The doctor's words:

We've seen cases unrelated to each other in Kampala, the most populous city in Uganda. hundreds of kilometers away, all of which makes me realize, well, this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, and two, we still don't have a full handle on what exactly we're grappling with yet.

Looks as if these United Snakes have the welcome mat on the porch, the door unlocked & the porch lights off. Let the punishment fit the crime. When the "NO FACE DIAPERS!" MAGA/MAHA morons start dropping, call it Trumpbola.

Monday Modeling Monotony

What I "Model" (Give Or Take 70 Yrs.)

Not actually modeling it, used as an inspiration & jumping-off point.

Did entirely too much research; I'd need more reefers & stock cars for authentic operations. Fortunately, it's a switching layout, not an operating layout.

For most of its existence, the line sourced outstanding levels of traffic carrying produce and other agricultural products from the valley. For example, an Interstate Commerce Commission report from 1956 states that the seasonal perishable train (The PVX), bound to Chicago, "averaged 69 cars," longer than the usual length of the GFX trains from California's Central Valley (although the PVX was seasonal and the GFX was year round). One week in the spring of 1954 had seen 191 carloads of lettuce, the majority percentage shipping to Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. The three weeks prior to approx. April 8, 1954 saw 708 carloads of lettuce shipped. In the summer of 1959, cantaloupe shipments reached 2333 cars in the growing season. In 1970, a derailed train primarily hauling lettuce had 77 cars, with at least one of the cars appearing in the picture being a newer and longer SFRC car as opposed to a 40 ft SFRD car. And the railway agent of the Blythe yard once recalled "as many as 135 cars" at one unspecified time. But as of 1977 the train length might be 35 cars "on a good day." Off-season reefer traffic cars were dropped off to Rice or Cadiz to be picked up by other trains, while the PVX trains ran directly to the transcon line between Los Angeles and Chicago. White ice was produced in Blythe and had been shipped to Winslow, Arizona in the summer of 1949 for the reefer trains stopping there.

Grain and livestock traffic was heavy too. The Blythe-Ripley included the Union Feed Yards south of Blythe, which at one time was the largest feed yard in the country. There was a nearly four-mile spur originating from the curve near the valley's northern edge that served Riverview Farms to the east from 1954 to 1982. (Myrick, Pg. 240) Information referring to this spur is extremely scarce. You can see big pictures of those feed yards in the Palo Verde Historical Museum.

Will not be attempting any of the now reduced to slabs of concrete facilities as they were in the 1950s, but the geography fits my unwillingness to make terrain features, & I was insprired by the schadenfreude of the burg of Ripley, named after a former A.T. & S.F. president, & washed away w/ the rail line by a flood in the winter of 1922. (Maybe the schadenfreude isn't justified; money was probably made on insurance.)

You needn't arse yourselves w/ any of this; it's for this reporter's reference, & he's numb already. Hollywood's one-time provider of artificial snow was U.S. Gypsum in Midland, now a ghost town. It was burned to the sand. Dunno who "Jane" is but it's a great museum."Jane" is the guy's GPS, it turns out. What? Not a bad traveling set-up, either, if you like to leave the house.

Also, which led to geoglyphs 15 miles north of Blythe. Pardon the New Age or whatever music.Those would be fun to copy, but I'd need more space than could be spared. The longest glyph would be almost two linear ft. in HO.

Railfanning nothin', planefanning, w/ a good long look at the geography. Be quite a wasteland w/o irrigation.I'll need a shitpile of little green things to scatter about. Inspiration: W/ his name so bandied about, I think I'll call the Army facility Camp Patton instead of Camp Swampy. I s'pect the only swampy areas here would be where irrigation pipes had broken.

Looks just like it though, dunnit?

"Camp Patton" will be beneath the lovely currently cardboard backdrop at the left.

Still a Sisyphean mountain of work. Once I've painted track, sanded, painted & installed roadbed, gotten two or three bridges & lost that chunk of wood, I have to ensure adequate electricity flows though the tracks, sure to be a total effing pain involving redoing the track I'll have just finally laid, then slap together seven structure kits, most of which have been sitting here for several yrs. (Hey, I beat inflation & tariffs.)

& blow more moolah on oil loading platforms, high tension transmission poles & another electrical substation. Then scenery, signage & details. And at some point exchange couplers, purchase & add coupler boxes & buy & replace trucks on several cars. Estimated completion date is approx. the 12th of Never. Gah.

Local Naval Railroading History

I remember going past Seal Beach NWS on the Five & seeing many large spherical mines in the open, probably this Mark 6. Did the Navy have nukes there? Ask & the Navy says they "neither confirm or deny". Is that a "Yes"?

Untitled

Can't be bothered.

DAMN!

All four got out, I hope relatively unscathed."Gunfighter Skies Air Show" Grow up already!

KTFT:

4 crew members safely ejected following Idaho jet crash, AP reports  —  The Associated Press has reported that all four crew members involved in the jet collision ejected safely.  —  MOUNTAIN HOME AIR FORCE BASE, Idaho — Four crew members were able to safely eject from their aircraft …
Anthony Blair / New York Post:   Idaho air show horror after 2 jets crash in front of frightened spectators

Carter Schroppe / Washington Examiner:   Two F-18s collide at Idaho air show; all four crewmembers safe after ejecting

New York Times:   Two Military Jets Collide in Midair at Idaho Air Show

Jennifer Van Laar / RedState:   Breaking: Navy Fighter Jets Collide During Air Show at Mountain Home AFB

WWL-TV:   Jets collide during Idaho air show, prompt Air Force base lockdown and investigation

Fox News:   Two Navy jets crash midair as crew successfully ejects during Idaho military base air show

Justmindy / twitchy.com:   Miracle Ejection: Two Navy Fighter Jets Collide and Explode Over Idaho Airshow

Joseph Chalfant / Townhall:   Two Navy Aircraft Suffer Mid-Air Collision at Idaho Air Show

CBS News:   Fighter jets crash in midair during air show at Idaho Air Force base

Cassandra MacDonald / The Gateway Pundit:   SHOCKING VIDEO: Two Navy Jets Crash into Each Other Mid-Air at the Gunfighter Skies Air Show in Idaho, Four Parachutes Seen Floating to the Ground

Nicholas Slayton / Task & Purpose:   Air crews safely eject after two Navy jets collide during air show

Heather Mongilio / USNI News:   Naval Aviators Safe After EA-18G Growlers Crash at Idaho Air Show

Thomas Stevenson / The Post Millennial:   BREAKING: Two US Navy fighter jets collide during air show in Idaho

Addy Bink / KTLA:   Crews eject after ‘midair collision’ at Idaho Air Force base air show

Note how the fake news liars refer to them as "fighter jets", like the metal eight-yr. olds they are. Childish, & redundant (Pretty sure there are no more prop-driven fighter aircraft.) if true, however, "Growlers" aren't actual fighters, but electronic warfare platforms.

Use of the passive voice: "Two Navy Aircraft Suffer Mid-Air Collision at Idaho Air Show". Suffering, it can't be explained. It just happens, man. Wasn't a "miracle" either. It's called applied science. Ninnies.

No Rest For The Weary

The Cross, The Flag & The Star

Sunday is not a day of rest for me, as I continue to hate all earthling scum 24 hrs. a day, seven days a wk., 52 wks. a yr.

Farm Report: They Asked For It, They Got It! Good & Hard, Too!

Sorry, you can't afford any.

Nathan Bomey / Axios:
Farmers growing desperate amid rising energy and fertilizer prices  —  Farmers across the Midwest are entering planting season under mounting financial pressure, as the Iran conflict drives up diesel and fertilizer prices — deepening an agricultural downturn that some say is the worst since the crisis of the 1980s.
Alexander Willis / Raw Story:   Trump policies spark warnings of impending disaster: ‘Going to be fewer farmers’

Jesus Mesa / Newsweek:   Donald Trump Deals New Blow to US Farmers on China Trip

Sophie Hurwitz / Mother Jones:   Farmers Are Collateral Damage in Trump's Iran War

Do you like to eat? Ha ha ha! Too bad. Start saving now so you can afford Soylent Green!

Piling on, later. How dense are these sucker-ass chumps?

Brad Brooks / Reuters:

Trump says Iran war is worth the economic pain.  These rural voters agree.  —  Perched behind the cash register at Stubs liquor store, Amy Van Duyn gazed out the window at a red-and-green gasoline price sign, which she said seemed to tick up daily.  —  The price was $4.34 per gallon …

Alexander Willis / Raw Story:   Three-time Trump voter rips president as ‘naive’ as Iran war decimates GOP stronghold

Drought won't help either. Two words: Dust Bowl.

Psychedelic Saturday

And a (B-)side dish of those white person blues.

CONSUME! CONFORM!

Via Red State Blues's weekly round-up (Helluva wk., & every item's worth clicking.) from The Propaganda Professor,
an image I like

Must admit, probably generated by a robot (Note dials on telebision set.) unless the Professor is a talented
(& fast-working artist) & it's not bad beside the dials & that black thing atop the moneybag.
Wonder what they told the robot to do, & if they showed it pictures. Oops! Missed a few at first glance.
Always count the fingers: The busty blonde is short one. Also too, the sugar cubes aren't all cubes (or white)
the salt shaker needs holes in the lid, the box should read "STAYS CRISP!",
the flag's not well rendered & the brain support looks hinky.

& an opening paragraph w/ which I couldn't agree more, to wit:

Confession time: I like my breakfast cereal soggy. There, I’ve said it. Yep, I like it to soak up the milk like the most absorbent of sponges, becoming so saturated that you can’t tell where the cereal ends and the milk begins. Apparently eating cereal without sound effects is a sacrilege, because the cereal makers have long been advocates for cereal apartheid, actively striving to develop and market a product that “stays crunchy longer” by adjusting moisture content, adding sugar or glaze coatings (yum), and altering density and shape. So those little neon-colored, sugar-bombed nuggets are more likely to get lodged between your teeth. Aren’t you thrilled? Do most cereal aficionados really prefer their morning bowl this way? I don’t know. But if they do, I strongly suspect that it’s only because someone on Madison or whatever Avenue decided they should, and began hyping that particular attribute.

Before I became a breatharian I enjoyed Cap'n Crunch® Original (Because there weren't 10 freaking varieties then.) fully soaked. The Professor goes deeper, & it's further evidence you're all sheep. I agree w/ that too.