jmowreader
jmowreader's JournalI've been thinking about the Trump Las Vegas attack
The Authorities have convinced Tesla to provide tracking data on the car the guy used to do this. It seems that he drove past the building a few times before he went in and set the bomb off. Maybe working up the nerve to do it? Elon Musk provided the Vegas sheriff with video off Superchargers he used in his trip from Colorado to Vegas, which helped them ID the guy. Once they figured out he was in the Army it would have been really easy to get an exact ID because the Army started collecting soldiers’ DNA in the 1990s to aid them in casualty identification. The Army says there are more than enough people in the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington and they’ve done everything they can think of to be sure no one else gets put in it.
The Vegas sheriff says the damage was minimized by the fact the guy used a Cybertruck in his attack. I don’t think that’s quite right…explosive blasts take the path of least resistance so any pickup would have given the same result.
So…if he was trying to actually trash the place he would have driven the truck through the doors into the lobby before firing his improvised explosive device.
Now…why fireworks? You can GET fireworks, that’s why. Colorado has reservations, and on those reservations they sell fireworks before New Year’s Eve. If you want any high explosives you need a blasting license to buy that material, but the local tribe will happily sell you commercial display fireworks.
The person who did this was a Green Beret when Trump was in office the first time. I wonder if maybe he lost teammates on a Trump-era deployment and wanted to make Trump feel some of his pain.
Spurious News: President Carter's cause of death "soul ripped out of body"
AMERICUS, GA (Spurious News Network) -- The Georgia State Board of Vital Statistics has just issued the late President Jimmy Carter's death certificate. It lists the cause of death as "having his soul violently torn from his body."
"That's the only thing any of us could think of," said Dr. Ellen Abernathy, a medical examiner in the Sumter County Coroner's Office who performed the autopsy on the late chief executive. "President Carter had a full and eventful life. Some of the things he did, like battling cancer, taking apart molten nuclear reactors, breathing in the fumes from Navy submarine paint, handling pesticides and fertilizers, working with VOC-emitting building materials and putting up with Republicans who hated him for as long as he did, would have killed a lesser man somewhere between 18 months and 80 years ago. President Carter was tough - way too tough. So we sat down and discussed it and decided that what had to have happened was his wife Rosalynn talked God into grabbing his soul by the scruff of his neck and dragging him to Heaven whether he wanted to go or not."
The State Department of Public Health agrees with the Sumter County assessment. Said Dr. Kathleen Toomey, department commissioner, "It's hard to argue against divine intervention in this case because he survived everything else."
President Carter's body currently resides at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Ga. On January 4, 2025, he will be transported by hearse to his boyhood home of Plains. He will pause near the farm he grew up on, which is now a National Historical Park. Following that, he will pass by his own house on the way to the Carter Center in Atlanta, where he will lie in repose until January 6. On January 7 he will travel to Dobbins Air Reserve Base outside Atlanta, where he will board an airplane and be flown to Andrews Air Force Base in the Washington, DC, area. He will then be moved by hearse to the Navy Memorial, where a caisson platoon from the 3d US Infantry (The Old Guard) will move him to the Capitol. He will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until January 9. His day on January 9 will be eventful: he will attend his state funeral at the National Cathedral, be flown back to Fort Moore, Ga., be taken back to Plains, attend a private service at the Baptist church he taught Sunday school at for 40 years, then be interred next to his wife's remains in a private burial service.
Another reason we lost
The significant cult of personality that has been built up around Elon Musk.
There are a lot of people who think Musk is a great, fantastic, super intelligent man. When Musk threw his support to Trump all of them voted for Trump.
Spurious News: Trump's Christmas Message and a response
PALM BEACH, FLA (Spurious News Network) -- This morning, Bill Signer Elect Donald Trump transmitted this message over his social media accounts on Truth Social and X, the current name of Twitter:
"Merry CHRISTmas to all those loyal Americans who voted for me. Those traitors who voted for Lyin' Kamala or who didn't vote at all, we know who you are and we'll be Making America Great Again by deporting you all to North Korea where my good friend Kim Jong Un will deal with you in his own special way."
Lieutenant Colonel Bill Witherspoon, commander of 1st Ranger Battalion at Hunter Army Airfield, GA, decided Something Had To Be Done about this. "Staff Sergeant Fredrickson, our battalion gunsmith, is married to an opera singer who's a great tailor and whose lovely voice carries really far. She made this beautiful costume that's a jumpsuit in wedding dress fabric. She looks like a dream in it. What we're going to do is infiltrate her into the back lawn at Mar-a-Lago at 3 am dressed in this outfit and carrying a big bag with some Quarter Pounders and fries in it. We also got a National Guard smoke platoon to set up outside of the mansion to blow the aroma of used McDonald's fry oil in through an open window, and a PsyOps platoon from Fort Liberty to put a microphone on the bag. She's going to go on the lawn, shake the bag and sing about how delicious the food is and that he should come out and get it. You know, like the Sirens in mythology who led sailors to ground their ships on big rocks. Eventually he'll come out and a company of Rangers will grab him. After that, we'll fly him to Fort Stewart and throw him in the stockade until someone comes to bail him out and fly him to Russia so he can be with his mentor Putin. Don't worry, the Secret Service approved the operation because they don't like him either. After that...I guess Vice President Harris is going to have to be president whether she likes it or not because she came in second to him in November."
When asked the question on everyone's mind, Colonel Witherspoon laughed. "No one will. We have to buy the food at (11 pm) before McDonald's closes, and it'll take until (five in the morning) to finish the operation. Anyone who tried to eat that stuff after all that time would have the worst day of his life."
Why "Die Hard" is a Christmas movie
Besides being set at Christmas, a Christmas movie needs at least one of three plotlines:
An interpersonal conflict between two or more of the main characters that is resolved favorably by the end of the film.
A villain who tries to destroy Christmas, and is foiled.
A character who has a personal demon he defeats to become a whole person once again.
In classic Christmas cinema, an example of the first plotline is in Miracle on 34th Street, where the characters who aren't Kris Kringle try to get Kris committed to a mental hospital for thinking he's the real Santa Claus. This is also the plot of every Hallmark Channel Christmas movie, as well as "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas," where Kirk - who still believes Christmas is a Christian holiday - convinces Christian, his brother-in-law, that all the commercialism and pagan elements of the modern holiday are really Christian symbols.
The most obvious example of the second plotline is the Grinch, who despises Christmas over its commercialism then learns to love it when he sees commercialism is not the most important part of the holiday. This is also the plot of "Home Alone."
And the third is in A Christmas Carol, where Scrooge is converted from what he was to a joyous person through the visits of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future.
Die Hard is a special Christmas movie in that they managed to fit all three plotlines into the movie in a way that makes sense: the first one is seen in John and Holly's marriage, which at the beginning of the film is so bad John plans to stay at his retired captain's home in Pacoima rather than Holly's house while he is in "fuckin' California." The villain, naturally, is Hans and his gang of bad guys who break into the building to steal the $640 million in "negotiable bearer bonds" while making it look like it's a terrorist attack rather than a heist. One does have to wonder why the global and highly successful Nakatomi Corporation didn't put battery backup on their vault if the seventh seal - a reference to the Seven Seals in the Bible's Book of Revelation - required electricity to operate but that's an issue for another day. Police Sergeant Al Powell - a cop so traumatized by a bad shooting he'd been involved in earlier in his career that he was consigned to a desk, then worked with John throughout the movie over the radio and found it within himself to kill the last gang member to save John and Holly - is the third plotline.
So...now we have a Christmas movie. Ho, ho, ho.
Swiss Olympic snowboarder Sophie Hediger dies in avalanche on closed slope
https://snowbrains.com/snowboarder-tragedy-in-arosa-switzerland-as-avalanche-claims-life-of-26-year-old-woman/#google_vignetteSophie competed in the 2022 Olympics, and in three FIS Snowboard World Cups, all in the discipline of snowboard cross. What this is: the event organizer builds a narrow snowboard trail with lots of obstacles, jumps and turns that make it very hard to navigate, then they put four to six snowboarders on it and the competitors race each other to the bottom.
On Monday, December 23, Sophie and a friend were at the Arosa Lenzerheide Ski Resort in Switzerland. The black-diamond Run 12 had been closed to guests due to extreme avalanche risk. They crossed the barricades, went out on the hill, and the avalanche the resort was worried about happened. Her friend made it out but she was killed by the avalanche.
I'm thinking about changing the term I use to refer to Trump
I've been calling him "President-for-Life Elect Trump." Of course, after January 20 he would become "President-for-Life Trump."
But since he isn't really going to be president and Elon Musk will be, do you think "Lapdog-Elect Trump" or "Bill Signer-Elect Trump" would be better?
How to solve the Elon Musk problem in one bill or less
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/208This is 18 USC 208, which prohibits people working in or with the executive branch of the government from profiting from this affiliation. It contains enough loopholes so Musk can continue to run his companies while he's being president. All that needs done is to get rid of the loopholes in it so one of three things happens: Musk completely divests himself from all the companies he is in charge of - and by "completely divests" I mean he's gotta sell his stock too; Musk decides to not be president nor advise Trump in any way; or the government ends its SpaceX, Starlink and Tesla contracts.
"What in God's Name?" Department, 2024 edition: a horror film opens on Christmas
It's called Nosferatu. It's a remake of a 1922 vampire film (apparently a ripoff of Dracula) which was a silent movie. It has an ensemble cast featuring Willem Dafoe and Johnny Depp's daughter Lily-Rose, with Bill Skarsgard playing the vampire. It opened December 2 in Berlin and the critics say it's awesome.
I don't know, guys...after a season of Christmas movies and Christmas songs, a good old-fashioned horror flick might be just the thing. No idea of the legs this has, but I predict a lot of people are going to use it to wash the Hallmark Channel movies out of their minds.
Spurious News: Executive Office of the President prepares for Trump being locked up in NY
WASHINGTON (Spurious News Network) -- The legal world was roiled slightly this week when Judge Juan Merchan of the Supreme Court of New York declared that the crimes he convicted President-for-Life Elect Donald Trump of in a trial in his courtroom earlier this year did not involve "official acts" of a president and were therefore not covered under the Supreme Court's grant of presidential immunity. The convictions can be punished by sentencing the defendant to prison.
"Is is possible for President of the United States to be a jail job?" said Elizabeth Martin, who serves in the Executive Office of the President. "We never thought we'd have to be asking ourselves this, but if it comes down to it, we can handle it."
Ms. Martin explained how it would work if it came to that. "He'll probably go to Sing Sing Correctional Facility, which is New York's maximum security prison. That's in Ossining, which is on the Hudson Line of the Metro-North Railroad. We'll rent a house in Ossining and put someone from the Executive Office in it. A couple times a week during visiting hours we'll take things he needs to sign there. He'll sign them with a Sharpie he bought from the Sing Sing commissary, then our officer will get on the train and ride to Grand Central Terminal in New York City with the signed paperwork in a briefcase. Another of our officers will meet the Ossining officer, exchange briefcases, then go to the Moynihan Train Hall to catch Amtrak to Washington. We'll pick that officer up at Washington Metro Station and take her back to the White House to deliver the paperwork. In especially dire situations where we need a signature quicker than using the trains will allow, although we can't think of anything like that happening in the Trump presidency, we can fly an officer to the Westchester County Airport and rent a car for the 16-mile drive to Sing Sing. We can do Cabinet meetings pretty easily; Sing Sing has pay phones for the inmates to use. The prisoner has to set up an account and the calls are billed to that account. He'll just call in when there's a Cabinet meeting. It'll be just like he was in DC, except he won't be. Of course, we won't be putting any money in the account so he'll have to rely on family contributions and his earnings from his job in the prison laundry."
Ms. Martin doesn't expect there to be any trouble from the other inmates if Trump is sent to prison. "We call him Geiger Counter Don, he's so radioactive. No one wants to be near the guy, so we think he will go unharmed by anyone in there."
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