Music For Gandy-Dancing

Non-embeddable films, from 1973 & 1990, of actual singing & dancing. The Wolf took a line (10:12) from the '73 one.Embeddable.

Saturday Savings Spectacular!

Going to the corner for milk yesterday I spotted Xmas lights in a cardboard box & decided I could use the wire if nothing else. Well, they work & are battery-powered, so don't waste your money on Woodland Scenics JustPlug® or Dioramo® lighting systems.

My curiosity piqued, I checked battery-powered wired LEDs & found piles, some powered by AAs, some by D cells, & some by hearing aid batts. Turns out the above suckers are made by Greenbrier International, Inc., a subsidiary of Dollar Tree. (Or it's Dollar Tree's parent co. Fucking robots.) All plastic; the only metal is the wiring & whatever's in the battery pack. The biggest deal to me is the self-containment. Everything's in the structure, no connecting to an external power source, so no wall-warts, extension cords or added LED wiring are needed.

This looks as if six bldgs. could be illuminated for $40.00. W/ 30 lights per string, six huge industries could be lit, or a small structure could be overdone until it caught fire.

Hoo boy, now Woodland Scenics is offering this; the video came out two months ago, but the system can't be searched on their crummy site; you have to look in the "Coming Soon" area. No prices yet, but an arm & a leg should cover it fairly easily. Speakers, sound cards & readers &c. will be just a smidge more than a transformer, control box & LEDs. Might not be easily duplicated at a bargain store.P.S.: If you do want the tried & true, I compared the Just Plug® & Dioramo® MSRPs sometime last yr.; Dioramo was a bit less expensive & their system seems more open to using non-Dioramo LEDs & the like. Or, Dwarvin & their fiber-optic "no wires" system. Tain't cheap neither.

The Paranoid Style: Red Scares & Scary Sharia

From the first Red Scare, cover date Sep't. 1954.

History Lessons: Same Idiotic Shit, Different Day

Unpopular Front on the "Little Red Scare 2.0"

To the New Right, this abolition was unilateral disarmament in the still-frosty Cold War—and it removed a valuable cudgel against the domestic left. The Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership transition plan called to “revive the committees"“ and to rebuild of the internal security apparatus to battle domestic subversion, warning that clergymen, students, businessmen, entertainers, labor officials, journalists and government workers may engage in subversive activity "without being fully aware of the extent, purpose or control of their activities," and that individual liberties are "secondary to the requirement of national security and internal civil order.” The author of this section was one Samuel T. Francis, whothe would go on to be a staffer for [Sen.] John East.

The absolute joke that is fear of "Sharia law" is revealed by (non-) reaction to the Saud family's investment in the creation of the Paramount/WB/Discovery media cartel. All lies & hypocrisy.

Future book title: Lying Sacks of Shit & The Sucker-Ass Chumps Who Believe Them. Could be a long one.

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Note to self: Stop looking at the damn iNternet, seeing how stupid & shitty everything is, & thinking you have to type something. Remember, no one cares! Back to your second childhood, & to hell w/ the rest of this miserable world!

Orgy Of Consumption Complete*

The TrainWorld tat was there when I woke up, delivered at 1049.

Home Despot divided five items into three deliveries, first sand & the box for fiddly bits (just after 1100) then the alligator clips,

finally, at 1352, the glue & flashlight.

A real damn flashlight (A bright LED that uses three AAAs; almost blinded myself pushing the TRY ME button.) for when I block the light when working, or the dark recesses below.

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*For today. Still need ...

Impasse Hiatus Momentary Pause

Came to the realization that short bits of sectional track are not conducive to electricity or good running,

& I'll have to give flex-track another shot. Might neeed a slighty better voltmeter, too.

Decided to try TrainWorld again, so was awake before 1600ET, when they close, & spoke to a nice enough woman who set up a new acc't. for me & e-mailed the link to their form as we were on the 'phone. But it looks as if the pkg. won't be shipped until Tues., due to the holiday.

In other consumption news, I finally got an undamaged USN boxcar from Yankee Dabbler. Only took a couple of months.

Looks nice & rolls well. Certainly worth the US$34.99. Not worth the aggravation!

And the pirates at DoorStepInk have promised me a refund. Not there yet, & "It may take up to 10 days for this refund to appear in your account." Didn't take any 10 fucking days for the money to be taken from my acc't.! (Forget quite when I started this, but the refund did show on 5 July. Thanks again, clowns!)

I have been making good use of my time by getting the two areas that go nowhere fine-tuned again, & decided that amusing as it was to have the stock pen so close to the Yard Cafe & depot, it could be moved.

And the transload facility works better on the other spur as well. Win-win.

Then I realized that as soon as I have the new track laid everything will need fine-tuning again. And once I've bought turn-outs to replace some I bought when I didn't know what I was doing, or would eventually do, another round (theoretically the last🤞🏻) of alteration & adjustment. Gah!

Not to do anything the upper classes would, like set a goal, but having had this for four months less than seven yrs. now, it would be nice to have fully electrified, runnable track & even have glued a structure or two together & slapped it on the layout before Nov. I've had seven building kits, trees, plants, 'phone poles & other details in layout limbo for yrs. Pprobably beat inflation & Fat Boy's tariffs by buying early. Speaking of, even laying track like a dirty 19th-century Irishman beats the hell out of current events. An hr. passes like nothing.

Knew It

It did arrive a day earlier than estimated, a die-cast PBY5-A Catalina. What a Navy seaplane w/ early WWII insignia is doing over an Army camp close to 150 miles from the Pacific & around 125 miles from the Gulf of California in the mid-'50s is anybody's guess; maybe it's a Twilight Zone episode.

Not bad for US$17.75. (Just saw the same model for $39.99. And I didn't even compare prices. Hah!) I do resent those pirate bastards at FedEx getting $8.99 for shipping. (And Jesus, next time leave it at the door to the bunker, not the mail boxes, & knock before you run away.)

No tax, which I think violates California law. Ah. Only if your operation moves more than $500,000 anually in Calif. I dunno; populous state full of chumps & suckers. Maybe someone should look into it.

There are few HO scale aircraft available; this is 1/144th scale & should look better flying from the convenient hook, used on the prototype to lift it from or lower it to the water.

Does not want to be grounded.

Not balanced for flight either, so my story is it's struggling taking off from a short field, heavily laden w/ poison gas or an H-Bomb, especially as the landing gear is still down. May have mentioned that the Rice area was considered for the Trinity test. Pretty damn sure something nefarious is going on at Camp Patton.

Now I have to figure how to attach it securely to the ceiling.

Provenance:

Does Macau/Bangladesh mean no Trump tariffs, or has this been on a shelf for yrs.?

The actual item.

They Either Don't Know What It Is, Or They're Against It

From the yr. 1984. How do they know?
Not sure what to make of the LDS reference.

I s'pose the sheep have always been this way. They're apparently worse in 2026.

The evidence for this startling conclusion comes from the most significant opinion study you’ve never read or read about. Published in May, the Johns Hopkins Agora Institute and ReD Associates conducted an in-depth research of conservatives in three red counties in Michigan, South Carolina and Wyoming. The authors describe the content of “Faith, Freedom, Family, Place: An Ethnographic Study of Conservative Americans’ Relationships to Democracy” as follows:

This study relies on ethnographic research: sustained immersion in people’s homes, lives, and communities through extensive interviews, observations, participation, and relationship-building. Where much democracy research documents what people say they believe, ethnography examines how and why political worldviews take shape within the full context of daily experiences, relationships, and social environments.

The most fundamental issue the researchers attempted to resolve is the relationship their subjects had with what is commonly thought of as the American secular faith in democracy. What the study found is that the respondents either had a notion of what constituted democracy that greatly differed from what is taught in Civics 101 — when such a course is even offered — or rejected outright the very concept of democracy. In fact, the latter view was the majority opinion:

14 out of 21 participants in this study had an immediate negative reaction when asked about democracy . . . Sarah (mid 30s, WY), a homeschooling mother, put it plainly: “I don’t like the word democracy.”

Spotted at Hullabaloo. As noted, worth reading. No reforms or promises will give these people functioning minds that can be changed. Members of the "godless and wicked majority" who they think are "besieging" them had better get to work on actual besiegement, before it's too damn late.

Tuesday?

When I saw it was in Chino yesterday p.m., I figured it would be here today. But the estimated delivery date hasn't changed. Nonetheless, it's on the FedEx vehicle, so step on it, Jesus. My patience grows thin!

Jah Is Not Happy [Up-Dated]

Listen to this testimony.

 New York Times:
Crowds Evacuated as Storms Menace Washington Ahead of Trump Speech  —  Thousands of people stood in security lines for hours in severe heat to reach the National Mall, only to be ordered to leave as events were set to start.  Some refused.  —  Federal officials ordered thousands of people …

Was it the you-know-whos & their "space lasers" controlling the weather? Apparently not a joke to this person:

Who is effing "deranged" here?

Friday Finger

America speaks

Enjoy your phony wknd. filled w/ pseudo-patriotism & Nazi bullshit, you brain-dead chumps. You are all truly beneath contempt & I will see you all IN HELL!!

Scared Of Something?

Notice that the Nazis are no longer screeching "Cultural Marxism" (Whatever that was.)
but have returned to the straight-up "Communist" smear.

Here come the frightened fascists & the whiny liberals, who've been running things into the ground for 250 yrs.

Jonathan Chait / The Atlantic:

There's Nothing Democratic About These Socialists  —  The DSA was formed in opposition to the very thing it has become.  —  The general idea that Democratic Party loyalists seem to have about members of the Democratic Socialists of America is that they're a lot like Democrats, but perhaps a bit more passionate.
Wall Street Journal:   Democratic Socialists Are On the Rise. What to Know About the Movement.

Ryan Mancini / The Hill:   Vance says Democrats headed toward communism: ‘This is not raising taxes a little bit’

Will McDuffie / MS NOW:   Democratic socialists are winning. Their ambitions don't stop at Capitol Hill.

Ryan King / New York Post:   One-third of Dems say they want far-left democratic socialists in office: shock poll

Jon Levine / The Washington Free Beacon:   'She Hasn't Asked for My Endorsement': New York Democratic Party Chair Keeps Distance From Darializa Avila Chevalier as Party Frets Over Socialist Surge

Norman Solomon / The Guardian:   Progressive primary victories have corporate Democrats panicking

Stu Smith / City Journal:   Actually, a Lot of DSA Members Are Communists
Andrew Solender / Axios:

House Dems rocked by another socialist upset: “Wake up call”  —  House Democrats were staggered Wednesday by the loss of yet another one of their longtime colleagues to a democratic socialist challenger. … So why did she become a target of the left?  — “One more case in the growing dynamic …

Emily Davies / New York Times:   Left-Wing Insurgent Ousts 15-Term Congresswoman in Colorado

Scott Bland / NBC News:   A Colorado primary defeat highlights a dangerous political environment for Democratic incumbents

Colorado Politics:   Colorado's Diana DeGette concedes defeat to Democratic socialist Melat Kiros

Cortney Weil / Blaze Media:   Yet another establishment Democrat taken out by a Mamdani-like socialist from a foreign land

Ed Morrissey / HotAir:   DemSoc Goes National: Socialists Boot Progressive Dem in Colorado

Yash Roy / Bloomberg:   Democratic Socialist Ousts 15-Term House Incumbent in Colorado

Malcolm Ferguson / New Republic:   Centrist Democrats Privately Panicking After Another Major DSA Win

David Brady / The American Conservative:   Democratic Socialist Wins CO Congressional Primary

Issues & Insights:
The Closet Door Of Socialism Has Been Opened
Ward Clark / RedState:   Socialism in America: Not New, But This Time, Worse

Matt Vespa / Townhall:   John Fetterman on Dems: Our Party Has Become an Orgy of Socialism

"Orgy". Take your depression & damaged brain & shove it, Fetterman. You too, Jonathan Chait, & the corporate Democrats. And all the fake news Nazis. We'll see your lying scum asses in the socialist reëducation camps.

Piling On

From.

“President Lyndon B. Johnson’s wife owned a profitable radio station. George W. Bush was on the board of an oil company while his father was in the White House. And Hunter Biden was paid by a Ukrainian natural gas company while his father was vice president,” the New York Times reports.

“But never before in American history has there been anything like Donald J. Trump, a president who in his first year back in office has collected about $1.4 billion in new revenues from cryptocurrency businesses that directly benefited from his actions as president, a financial disclosure report made public on Tuesday shows.”

“Overall, Mr. Trump’s revenue in 2025 jumped to at least $2.2 billion, compared with a minimum of $622 million in 2024 before he returned to office.”

Getting past the paywall w/ Political Wire. And:

Trump Earned $26 Million from Foreign Real Estate Deals

Help yourselves, rent-seeking pigs.

Nothing To See Here, Just Move Along

Clue Comics vol. 2 no. 1 (March 1947)*
“King of the Bank Robbers”, pencils by Jack Kirby

Are There No Fucking Laws?

Bill Allison / Bloomberg:
Trump Reports at Least $1.4 Billion in 2025 Crypto Earnings  —  President Donald Trump reported earning at least $1.4 billion in 2025 from crypto and memecoin-related businesses, according to his latest annual financial disclosure.  —  Trump reported making more than $588 million from sales …
Bernard Condon / Associated Press:   Trump filing shows he took in about $1.2 billion from crypto businesses last year
CNBC:
Trump's annual financial disclosure shows more than $580M in crypto-related income
Reuters:   Trump reports more than $1.4 billion in income from crypto ventures

Steven Nelson / New York Post:   Trump reports $236M in income from cryptocurrency token sales

Newsweek:   Trump Financials Revealed: Melania's Movie Income and Millions in Crypto

Tell us more about the "Biden Crime Family," Lumpy, you grotesque crooked sack of shit. Taxpayers: This is was your money, suckers!

Donald, Jr.  & Eric's song.

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*Source, as Bugger won't embed the link in the caption. Another reminder that everything is turning to SHIT! Devolution before your eyes.

What A Hypocritical Shithole

EAT THE RICH! SOCIALISM NOW!!

“What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

A historian explains:

Writing during the carnage of the First World War, the iconoclast intellectual Randolph Bourne described the American revolutionary inheritance as a squalid marriage between the town capitalist and plantation patriarch. Glittering generalities of freedom and democracy, Bourne observed, were indelibly marked by their long captivity to the money counters and owners of human chattel.

[...]
 

Recent years have seen growing numbers of mainstream detractors from this consensus history – among the most prominent, the New York Times’s 1619 Project, which offered an account of a “new founding” adjacent to the one championed by civil rights liberals, but wildly traducing the original. The Revolutionary War, its lead author Nikole Hannah-Jones argued, was primarily motivated by the tawdry desire to give a free hand to Bourne’s plantation patriarchs “in order to ensure that slavery would continue”.

[...]

King observed something else that has since been mostly forgotten. American universalism was weak because it had been purchased “at bargain rates” – and often at someone else’s expense. The Black freedom struggle, in this sense, was about “more than the rights of Negroes”, as it revealed “systemic rather than superficial flaws” in US society. “Today, Black Americans have not life, liberty nor the privilege of pursuing happiness, and millions of poor white Americans are in economic bondage that is scarcely less oppressive,” King said.

In Trump’s second term, the expansionist pole of the American dialectic has instead returned with a vengeance, untethered from its worn-out emancipatory partner. “If you don’t believe in the Indian wars, you don’t believe in America,” could just as easily be a social media post from the Department of Homeland Security, or a slogan supporting Israel, a kind of US settler colony in miniature – as it seeks to further its own expansionist project in the Middle East.

The violence and corruption of the current era, however, lack any legitimating or moralizing framework, and are unlikely to be laundered as easily as it was in 2008 if and when the Democrats return to power. In the eyes of the world, the US is no longer “the cause of all mankind”, but its scourge. Reanimating stalled pretensions to racial progress, or other such bargain basement promises, will not absolve the empire this time. The town capitalists and plantation patriarchs are in the saddle – while our revolutionary inheritance, Paine’s “universal struggle for liberty”, awaits its next reinvention.

Don't hold your breath. Be ready for a boot stomping on a human face across this awful world.

From The Crime Blotter

Not that far from this reporter.I dunno about the reported "gunman"; could have been an angry spouse who didn't think an illegal gambling report would get the heat to do anything. Yrs. ago a friend who was selling reefer had a disgreement w/ his upstairs neighbor about my friend's loud music at all hrs. & the neighbor called the police & claimed my friend was selling heroin & had guns. Suffice it to say the police were happy enough to make a reefer bust.

J.C. Testifies

I've had all I can take of this country, your species & the non-stop money-grubbing bullshit. How much of their crap do they think we'll take before we rise up & explode? Ha! They know you're sheep, & you'll all stay w/ the flock.

Everything is so shitty and I am so tired of it all. Everything is just a squeeze or gimmick to rake the last dollar out of your wallet. I bought a portable air conditioning unit so I could run the central ac less, and the thing is not working after just a few weeks. So I tried to have it replaced and send the old one back but before they would do it I had to waste a bunch of everyone’s time talking to an agent and she asked a series of questions and then asked “Have you checked with the manufacturer?” and that is where I lost it.

“NO I haven’t fucking checked with the manufacturer and I don’t intend to and that’s because I’m not a fucking air conditioning repairman. I bought this from you, you sent it to me, it does not work, I want to send it back to you.”

At any rate they are sending a new one but how have we let everything get so fucking shitty. It’s gotten to the point that just getting anything done with a business is like dealing with a fucking car dealership. No I don’t want the add on. No I don’t want an extended warranty are you telling me you sell shitty stuff. No I don’t want fucking hell I WANT THIS THIS IS WHAT I FUCKING WANT NOTHING MORE NOTHING LESS.

Have you tried to cancel a streaming service or magazine subscription lately? Jesus tapdancing christ. Everything is awful.

Everything is just a squeeze to get their dirty fucking fingers and filch your last dollar. Shake and Bake doesn’t even come with the plastic bags to shake the food in anymore- you are paying 2-3 bucks for 8 cents worth of herbs, spices, and bread crumbs. Everything about modern life in America is irritating and dispiriting. The gutter racism. My god. Everything. How did it get this fucking bad?

They gave it to the pres. of United Healthcare, when does the next piggie get his or her just reward?

Note well that this reporter is more than willing to name names, assign blame & take sweet revenge. Tonight's shittiness is not being able to watch the Dodgers at the Padres bcause Mark of The Beast Bezos has bought it & wants more money than I'm already paying Spectrum for cable (w/ ads) because the former Bums of Brooklyn aren't happy w/ the revenue from ad-supported broadcasting alone. Fuck everybody involved w/ that crap w/ all the painful items you can imagine, like a set-top box Or a baseball bat. Let the punishment fit the crime. Or make the crime fit the orifice, one way or another.

Piracy On The Internet

Edward Teach, the pirate Blackbeard.

Mentioned these pirate bastards yesterday. Check the comments. At least my piece of plastic shit printer worked w/ actual H-P cartridges, unlike some people's.

Zuckerberg, you fucking crook, why do you let this shit go on? It looks like criminal activity to this reporter. Specifically, interstate & international wire fraud. Getting a refund from these jagoffs seems like pulling teeth. Are there no laws? Is there no att'y. willing to initiate a class-action suit against these pirates? I'm more than willing to visit Chatsworth w/ a can of gasoline & a lighter.

That's a fucking threat, squealer!! Are you in favor of people being ripped off? Then you'll call the police to turn me in & defend criminal activity. C'mon, rat!!

You Are Expendable

After replacing the humanoid wage-slaves, there won't be anyone w/ a job left to buy all the plastic crap Amazon wants you to consume.

Not "Tired", Exhausted!

Been Getting The Old Run-Around!!

Spent the early afternoon screaming & yelling at incompetent, lying cheats involved in fucking me in iNternet & interstate commerce. (Then wasted 1.5 hrs. typing this screed, which few will read, & they'll probably just laugh at me. You'll be laughing from the other sides of your mouths soon enough, unsympathetic jerks.) DoorStepInk is in Chatsworth (Valley scum!) so that's not interstate. Do not deal w/ these mother-fuckers! Should have checked some of the comments on their ad: "Doesn't work, they are no help & won't give me a refund," yada yada. Do not buy anything from a Facebook advert, ever, period. And look at this pseudo-patriotic bilge:

Gawd damn America, I say!! 

This is a complete & absolute lie. I was given no such options. 

Woman I talked to there kindly informed me that H-P "e" series printers (I have a 2855e) don't take remanufactured ink. Thank you so very gawddamn much for letting me know on your website or when I ordered it, you fucking assholes!! I believe the Cath-licks refer to that as a sin of omission, rather than of commission. Evil lies either way! Then she says she'll e-mail me a return label, & asks if I have any way to print the fucking thing. No, you dumb hoor, that's why the hell I'm calling your stupid ass in the first place!! And screw every single person at Hewlett-Packard in every damned orofice twice w/ a rusty chainsaw! I dare say everyone who has ever owned an H-P printer will agree w/ me on that. Hell, if anything were to start a worldwide revolution, it might well be by uniting the world against those rat-bastard pirates. I'm sure Hewlett & Packard spin eternally in their graves after seeing what their names have been reduced to by filthy pig greed. Now I have to leave the fucking house & go to Target if I want to use this bullshit printer. Fuck everything.

And Yankee Dabbler. Sent me a defective box car in fucking April, dealt w/ an incompetent buffoon who somehow couldn't find my 'phone number for a month because it was "blocked" & he was apparently unable to find it in all the information Yankee Dribbler has on me. Somehow he did find my e-mail, sent me an e-mail promising that some other fuck would send me a return label which hasn't happened for two wks. now. They finally acknowledged me today after an angry e-mail, but I didn't hear the 'phone ring, & called again so damn angry the chickenshit asshole hung up on me. I fucking hate people who get all pissy when you scream at them & call them the cheats, crooks & liars they are after they've spent two months ignoring or fucking w/ you. "Oh, don't curse me." You self-righteous prick. If I'd been in the same room w/ you ... You bastards sit there in New Jersey thinking I can't do one damn thing about your bullshit, then you claim "Oh it was just miscommunication". FUCK YOU!

Another outfit to watch for is Sagebrook Home, which advised my order was coming by UPS, which continued not to have the package, so I called them & they kindly sent a replacement, which arrived a day or two after the original order showed up, but shipped via FedEx. Done by some ignernt cracker moron warehouse worker in AsheSummerville, NC. Fuck you, moron!! I advised them of this wks. ago & asked them to send a return label. No action, as the saying goes. Today I called, rather than e-mailed, & had the operator/receptionist track down the person so I wouldn't be transferred to some bullshit answering system that won't record a message. (COWARDS!! Answer your fucking 'phones!!) So I did speak to her & she e-mailed me the damn label. Finally. Would've kept the damn thing but there is literally no place to put it in this tiny dump.

In conclusion, I so hate this fucking bullshit world of fucking bullshit & everybody in it, because you made it this way you pieces of shit.

It's Murder!

Another reminder that no one is "safe", anywhere.

New York Times:

The Deadly Rise of Giant Trucks and S.U.V.s  —  For decades, American roads were steadily getting safer for pedestrians.  But around 2009, the trend reversed.  Since then, the number of pedestrians killed each year has risen by about 75 percent.  —  Source: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
Solange Reyner / NewsMax.com:   Big SUVs, Pickups Linked to Rise in Pedestrian Deaths

Click the NYT link, appears to be a "gift" & the graphic (26" hood in '02, 47" hood in '22) is fun.And look for sneakily quiet electric vehicles to kill more innocents in our atomic future.