Category: Uncategorized

In a place where lush gardens and green lawns decorate the yards of wealthy families and celebrities, resource authorities are taking extreme steps to cut down on the amount of water used by their customers–many times with the help of neighbors who turn them in, USA Today reports.

The Las Virgenes Water District, which serves wealthy neighborhoods like Calabasas, Hidden Hills and Agoura Hills, has been installing restrictor plates into the service lines of particularly egregious offenders of district’s water conservation rules.  People caught watering lawns (which are not native to the Southern California), filling pools (also not native) or failing to repair water leaking devices in their homes–as well as those who defiantly exceed their granted allotments–are being informed that they will have greater restrictions placed on their water supply via metal discs with a 1/16th-inch hole placed in their water meters.

The discs impede the flow of water into the house’s water meter, physically limiting the amount–and pressure–of water the system can use.  This can automatically turn ever shower into a “low-flow” device and it can render most lawn-watering systems useless.

“The only thing extreme or that people take issue with on Donald Trump is his dish, disposition or his personality, his bravado.  Not his politics!” Fox Sunday couch denizen and guy who never stopped using Dep after 1983 Pete Hegseth claims.  “If you look at his policies that are labeled extreme [note use of air quotes], they are quite mainstream by, on both the Republican Party and formerly the Democrat [sic] Party.”

Of course this isn’t true.  For example:  in four years, Trump raised the federal debt by $10 trillion.  He told people to inject disinfectant, to use a horse dewormer, and to swallow a malaria drug to treat Covid.  He allowed the economy to collapse because of his mismanagement.  He demonized LBGTQ people.  He cozied up to dictators.  He diminished American influence in the world.  He wanted to build a stupid border wall.  He brought about the revocation of women’s bodily autonomy.  Oh, and there’s the whole massive corruption and thinking he’s above the law thing.

Pete might want to note that Trump never won the popular vote in an election and never reached over 50% in a job approval poll, so it’s significantly more than “people thought he was too flashy.”

In the middle of an expansive piece on how screwed up the Trump Administration’s record-keeping was at the end of his single term in office, the New York Times drops a little nugget to show how petty and vindictive the Trump cabal is.

Some of the documents Donald Trump put a priority on declassifying before he left office were the FBI investigatory notes on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.  Most important to him, Trump wanted to declassify the text message between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, FBI agents who were having an affair and who exchanged text messages critical of Trump.

One problem:  the FBI would not drop its objections to declassifying the notes; it argued that the notes contained highly sensitive material that could divulge collection sources and methods. 

A pair of women have been charged with the murder of a college student in Talledega National Forrest in Alabama in what should sound pretty straightforward, but it’s Alabama (a.k.a., West Florida) so there’s a lot more to the story than it seems.

As the Guardian reports, Adam Simjee and his girlfriend, Mikayla Paulus, came across a stranded driver while traveling through the forest.  They stopped to help her, but she was actually an armed robber named Yasmine Hider, who marched the couple into the woods, apparently to shoot them.  Armed himself, Simjee pulled his weapon and shot Hider a number of times, but Hider fired a fatal shot.

As the gunfight occurred, Paulus was able to get away, but stopped when she heard Hider call out to another woman, who responded.  Paulus was able to find her cell phone and call 9-1-1 for help.  Unfortunately, Simjee was declared dead at the scene.  Hider survived.

Both pilots of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 343, heading from Khartoum, Sudan to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia fell asleep at the controls, causing the flight to overshoot the landing pattern and forcing an alarm to blare in the cockpit to wake up the pilots, CBS News reports.

As the two-and-a-half hour flight approached Addis Ababa, air traffic control attempted to radio the cockpit multiple times, but did not receive any response.  As the aircraft, a Boeing 737-800 with about 210 passengers onboard, hit the landing pattern, the auto pilot disengaged and sounded an alarm onboard.

By the time the pilots took control of the aircraft, it had missed the window to being its descent and had to circle around to reenter the pattern.  No passengers were hurt in the incident.  The airline does not acknowledge the pilots fell asleep and only acknowledges that the plane lose contact with the control tower.

Alexander Dugin, “Putin’s Brain” behind the invasion of Crimea in 2014, wanders the site of a car bomb explosion that killed his daughter, Dariya, in an assassination attempt gone wrong.  Dariya had started a family car when it exploded, a bomb thought to meant for her father.

After the mayor and town council of Vincent, Alabama learned that the three members of their town’s police force had shared racist jokes via text message, their first reaction was wanting to fire all three, but couldn’t because of the town’s policies, USA Today reports.

After Mayor James Latimore learned from the lawyer for the town that the town couldn’t fire the officers because they did not have the required complaints and/or poor performance reports on file, the town council, representing Vincent’s 1,950 residents, decided to dissolve the police department, essentially laying off both remaining officers; the third officer had resigned hours before the council meeting.

People attending the town meeting were outraged that the city couldn’t outright fire the cops, but according to the town regulations, the officers couldn’t be fired because there was no previous complaint against any of them.  So the town council decided it didn’t need their services any longer and disbanded the force.  The officers will be able to apply for unemployment, but will no longer be affiliated with Vincent.

Gunmen stormed an upscale hotel where politicians and government officials frequently hold meetings in Mogadishu, Somalia, killing twenty people and wounding fifty, in a continuing crisis as they’ve taken hostages, police on the scene say, CNN reports.

Police have retaken the lobby and the top floor from the terrorists, but the gunmen are holed up on the middle two floors of the four-story hotel with their hostages.  The al Qaeda-affiliated group Al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for the attack on its affiliated websites.

The Biden Administration has made supporting the government of Somalia a priority as it refocuses its foreign policy on Africa, a continent all but abandoned during the Trump years, when Trump announced it was pulling all US troops out of Somalia.  The US maintained a contingent of military operations in Somalia to secure shipping routes around the Horn of Africa and in the Arabia and Red Seas.

Folks in Buenos Aires, Argentina held a “funeral” procession for their paychecks on Saturday, as inflation far, far worse than even the most hyperbolic bitching from American right wingers about “Bidenflation” plagues the South American country yet again, NBC News reports.

“The situation for the workers is devastating. Before the middle of the month we don’t have any more salary, it’s not enough,” said activist Melisa Gargarello, who organized the “funeral” in protest of 90% annual inflation killing the middle class’s buying power. The monthly minimum wage of $334 isn’t even half the estimated monthly basic food cost of $834 for a family of four in Argentina.

The FBI has turned into a SECRET POLICE force working for the DEMOCRATS!

— Ronny Jackson (@RonnyJacksonTX) August 20, 2022

Scientists remain unable to explain a series of recent attacks pods of killer whales have conducted on small boats sailing off the cost of Spain and Portugal, damaging some of the craft to the point they had to be towed back to shore, NPR reports.

At least three boats have been repeatedly struck and damaged by pods of orcas, known commonly as killer whales, a moniker given to them by their skill to hunt seals, dolphins and other prey.  There has never been a fatal attack by an orca on a human recorded, though the attacks on the boats are raising alarms.

In one recent attack, a family was sailing their 37-foot sailboat from France to the Portuguese island of Madeira, off northern Africa, when the craft was jolted by a series of strikes to the hull in the middle of the night.  The family went on deck to see a number of orca making runs at their boat, striking the hull with such force it cracks the boat’s hull and knocked off about 75% of the rudder. 

Explosions rocked the area around the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet in the Crimean city of Sevastopol, with the Wall Street Journal reporting a direct hit by a drone on the location, while the Russian government claims to have shot down the drone before the attack.

Ukrainian forces have taken the offensive in Crimea, conducting clandestine ground attacks that reportedly destroyed at least eight Russian military aircraft at an airfield, according to satellite photos of the base after explosions there August 10th.

The attack on the Black Sea fleet headquarters is the second in three weeks, and it’s caused Russia to redeploy air defenses from other areas to the port city, weakening military positions in parts of the Donbas region to the north, which is said to be the territory Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to annex.

An aide to renowned imbiber and the last guy in Manhattan to use Brylcreem Rudy Giuliani incongruously asked Donald Trump for a presidential pardon and a Presidential Medal of Freedom for Guiliani in letter sent in the wake of the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress, the New York Times.

The pardon would have been for his self-assumed criminal actions in trying to undermine the Constitution by falsely installing Donald Trump for a second term, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom would have been for saving the Republic by undermining the Constitution and falsely installing Donald Trump for a second term, as well as his work as Mayor of New York City who stood on a pile of rubble after the September 11th foreign terrorist attacks.

According to a new book by journalist Andrew Kirtzman, an associate sent Trump a letter on Giuliani’s behalf asking for the two presidential actions in the days following the January 6th attack.  The associated, Maria Ryan, reportedly also tried to get Trump to pay Rudy for his legal work on Trump’s behalf, and she tried to get Trump to pay her tens of thousands of dollars for her work.

Fast food giant Wendy’s is surrendering to the E Coli bacteria unconditionally by removing potentially contaminated lettuce from its menu in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, the AP reports.

• Joe Biden shows what a president can do when he’s not glued to Fox propaganda and addicted to getting upvotes on Twitter. 
• Trump asking the DOJ, “What can I do to reduce the heat?” is a threat, pure and simple.  He’s saying, “Do what I want and I won’t tell my cult to set the country literally on fire.”
• Seriously, Trump’s a minor-league Mob boss, making very unsubtle threats.  He’s doing the same thing by threatening to release the closed circuit video of the search of Mar-a-Lago to dox the FBI agents:  he wants every law enforcement agent in the country to know that he’ll set his mob on them if they don’t protect him.  
• Ron DeSantis wants to ban a Black kid in Jacksonville from learning about the horrors of slavery so a white kid in Destin doesn’t feel bad.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume LXXXIII”

More than twenty ships that were once part of Nazi Germany’s Black Sea fleet are breaking through the surface as the Danube River water levels have fallen to record levels, causing safety and transportation concerns on the vital waterway, ABC News reports.

Sometime in 1944, Germany relocated dozens of ships from their Black Sea fleet up the Danube to protect them from advancing Russian forces.  At the end of World War II, the Nazis scuttled many ships near the Serbian port town of Prahovo, about 150 miles southwest of Belgrade.

Now, the re-emerging fleet is creating a host of problems.  The ships appear to be laden with ammunition and explosives, making removing the wrecks highly dangerous.  The low river level has also limited navigable channels in the river, with one section narrowed to a passage just 75 feet wide. 

The feared Russian intelligence agency FSB royally screwed up their assessment of the ease of victory for the forthcoming Russian invasion of Ukraine, with agents looking for potential office space in Kyiv they planned to occupy a week after launching the attack, the Washington Post reports.

A special unit within the FSB, the Department of Operational Information, assured Kremlin officials that the Russian invasion would be quickly successful, either because they completely misread Ukrainian anti-Russian sentiments or because they were frightened to tell Putin something he didn’t want to hear.

Their loyalty has paid off:  after growing the Ukraine unit within the FSB from 30 personnel to about 150 in the months before the invasion, none of the key players have been replaced or “disappeared” even though the expected week-long invasion is stalled after nearly six months.

Atlanta police are investigating two separate incidents this week where someone painted swastikas on a set of rainbow-colored crosswalks in front of the site of the city’s first LGBTQ bookstore, CNN reports.

Located at the intersection of 10th Street and Piedmont Avenue in Atlanta’s midtown community, the crosswalks were installed during the 2015 Pride festival and made a permanent feature in 2017 as a “remembrance of the 49 LGBTQ+ lives lost in the horrific 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting” that happened in Orlando, Florida.

The first incident happened at some point Wednesday night.  On Friday at around 1:45 a.m., a vandal painted swastikas on the crosswalks.  Atlanta police have released video of the Friday incident, asking for the public’s help to identify the perpetrators.

Accused child sex trafficker and Republican Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz was once the only member of Congress to vote against the passage of an anti-child-sex-trafficking bill.  He nearly tops that level of jackassery by co-sponsoring a bill proposed by woman sucking off the teat of taxpayers and social media upvote whore Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-Ga.) called “The Protect Children’s Innocence Act.”

Greene’s bill would make any type of gender-affirming medical or mental health treatment for trans children a Class C felony punishable by 10 to 25 years in prison.  The bill puts the federal government in charge of a child’s health care regardless of the child’s or parents’ wishes, putting Big Government in between the care of the patient and their doctor.  (Remember when conservatives were against that?)

The bill would block hormone therapies in children–which are also used in treatments other than gender affirmation care, meaning the children who receive these treatments may have to justify to a court why they’re receiving proven medical care.  Marge even wants to ban “artificial implants in the gluteal region,” which doesn’t really have anything to do with gender. 

On convicted criminal Steve Bannon’s podcast, washed-up and hair-dyed former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs–who was fired from the network for continuing to promote bullshit conspiracy theories about a technology company that could end up costing the network more than one billion dollars–explained why he’s upset that former Vice President Mike Pence isn’t worthy of the blessings of Donald Trump, lord king poobah of the lunatic fringe, because Pence signaled his willingness to testify before the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress:

Tragically delusional.  Uh, er, a man who is egoistic without understanding himself, which is something of a contradiction and not remotely amusing ironically.  The man has no chance to be president.  The man has no chance, in my eh, estimation to be even a contender and for him to be virtue signaling [note the sneering tone] to the MAGA base, a base that he neither understands, is in touch with, nor ess, obviously respects because that was a condescending and eh pompously biased statement–dah, oh, we’ve got to respect the FBI, we’ve got to respect the Justice Department, we’ve got to take the tone down again–all of this nonsense.