It is a Saturday Morning here in my Hunker-Bunker.  It is going to be a fairly warm day today, with temperatures topping out at around 55° F today.  Yes, there will be rain.  It’s a feature, not a bug.

Lots of fun stuff in the news this morning.  I might even have an “I told you so” wrapped up in there somewhere.

It’s taking almost forever to upload anything here today.

Let’s get started, shall we?

Headlines That Caught My Eye This Morning

Item 1:   The Price For Behaving Badly: $83 Million

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.  This must have been a stark wake-up call for him, because for the first time since he’s lost another court case, he hasn’t taken to TruthSocial and mentioned her name.  Maybe, just maybe something finally clicked inside of that giant head and he’s figured out that his mouth can get his fat ass in a lot of trouble.

He would love to blame this on Biden.  Or even the judge.    Nope.  It was the unanimous decision of the jury of his peers who apparently were swayed mostly by his attitude in court more than the fact that he had continued to defame the Plaintiff even after losing an earlier case to the same Plaintiff.  Never mind that he had a terrible attorney who apparently has never tried a case in court, let alone a federal court.

This was a very expensive lesson for Trump to learn.  This was just a civil trial.  Things are even more strict in a criminal court.

Item 2:   Fed’s preferred inflation gauge falls below 3% for first time since March 2021

For the past eight months or so, the Fed has been hoping for a “soft landing”, where we don’t slip into a recession.   The job market looks strong, even though most of the tech companies are now starting to shed much of the hiring they did during the pandemic.

But is it time to start lowering interest rates to increase spending?  Probably not.  The Fed made a similar mistake in the 1970s where they thought they’d licked inflation, so they dropped interest rates and inflation came roaring back with a vengeance.  This is how we ended up with Reagan in 1981.

There is a lot of geo-political bullshit going on in the world right now, and every bit of it has the potential to shaft our economy.  Supply chain issues are still a problem, now with added stresses.  Two of our major global waterways have some very serious issues going on right now.  The Red Sea with the Houthis, and the Panama Canal with a water shortage, causing a major blockage. (didn’t see that one coming, did you?)

Item 3:   NSA secretly buying Americans’ data without a warrant

“Secretly”?  It’s got to be the worst-kept secret in the history of secrets then.  Oh, and big surprise.

If you and I can buy consumer data on Americans, then what makes you think that the NSA wouldn’t be buying this stuff?  You cannot go online, use your telephone, send a text without it being recorded, transcribed, bundled and sold to anyone who wants to buy it.  Your smartphone will literally sit there in your pocket and listen to you.  Your phone is literally time-stamping your location within eight feet.  If a cop were to ask you where you were on Saturday, January 27th at 0725 hrs, they probably already know.  Both Apple and Google keep track of you.  Both will allow you to “opt-out” of tracking on their ‘timelines’, but you can’t opt-out on them keeping track of you.   If you turn off your GPS in your phone, you lose a lot of it’s functionality, but it doesn’t actually turn off your GPS signal.  It’s still relaying that information to the cell tower.

How many of you have those supermarket membership cards, like Safeway, or Krogers?  Both use the exact same databases, and ALL your purchasing records are happily tracked and are for sale to whoever wants to buy it.  Everyone wants your phone number at the POS so you can get your “discount”, and/or fuel rewards.

Item 4:   Phones Track Everything but Their Role in Car Wrecks

Seems like phone tracking is all over the news this morning.  As if someone just figured it out…

Item 5:   Senior adviser to Pope accused of sex assault

How is this news?  It seems like every day there’s another one.  Hey, here’s a novel thought:  let them marry.  They are human beings for crying out loud.  They have the same biological needs.  That won’t get rid of all the problems involving sex abuse, but it would cut down on a lot of it, and wouldn’t make the Catholic Church stand out over all the other walks of life.

Item 6:   Shocking moment boat full of migrants arrives at San Diego’s famed La Jolla Beach

How is this “shocking”?  Migrants have been landing on our shores since forever ago.  Many come over in containers on ships and disappear into our landscape.  It’s a problem that even Democrats are willing to work with Republicans on right now.  Well, at least those who aren’t balking because they’d rather score political points than actually DOING something and maybe scoring even more because of it.

Take the fucking deal.  If you don’t like it, then BUILD upon it later, when you’ve got the power to do so.  The point is, we have to do SOMETHING right now, because the Executive Branch can only do what is allowed by law, and the current law was made in the 20th century for the geo-political realities then.  We are in a completely new era, and our laws and policies MUST be updated to fit today’s realities.

Are the new proposals being worked on going to be enough to fit today’s realities?  Probably not even close, but we need a start, a foundation to build on.  Whatever they come up with needs to be comprehensive, that includes a plan to deal with the source of the problem, not just the symptoms.  That is going to take some serious give and take on a bipartisan level.

Item 7:  REPORT: UN agency employees took part in Hamas’ October 7 attack

Oh, shock.  By ’employees’, I am assuming the fact that the UN employs a lot of Palestinians that came out of the UN training center there.  There are bound to be members of Hamas and other groups there.  The fact that they could only point to twelve seems a bit low to me.

Item 8:   Leaked Netanyahu Tape Slamming Hostage Mediators Spurs Chaos

This is yet another example why Netanyahu is toast after this war is finally over.

Item 9:   More suspected narcissists live in Texas than any other state, study says

Oh, do tell.  Texas likes to brag a lot about nothing.  They have the most, or the largest of everything.

I guess so.

Item 10:  Trump lawyer vows to appeal verdict

Um… NO.

Let me ruin the suspense for everyone. Trump doesn’t have an appeal.  To have a meritorious appeal, you have to preserve a reversible error at the trial level.  Anna Habba failed to preserve any grounds for appeal, and it appears that she unintentionally waived any and all of them.  She had no objections as exhibits were entered into evidence.  The judge had to admonish her 14 times in one day, and yet she failed to preserve any of that for appeal.

Have I mentioned that Trump has the worst lawyers?  He probably would have done better if he had Barron representing him, for all the good his lawyer did for him.

But this sums up Trumps lawyer in her own words:

Item 11:  Johnson warns Senate on immigration talks and vows to impeach Mayorkas soon

Oh cool.  We want to complain about a problem, and then impeach a guy who can only do what the current law — and the courts — allow him to.  But we don’t actually want to update the law so the guy we want to impeach can actually DO his job.

This is why we have the problem in the first place.

Item 12:  Google Update Reveals AI Will Start Reading All Your Private Messages

“Your Dasher is nearby”

I don’t know what the Bard AI is going to get out of that, but hey… have at it.

A Couple of Funny Videos

Cows With Guns

“It wasn’t rape, it was sexual assault.”

The people of Walmart

Music I found on the Rott Server

Today’s selection brought to you by

“10 Randomly Picked“

Memes From the Meme Box

I receive dozens of memes in my Meme Box on a daily basis from people all over the landscape.  Some are political, some topical, but most are just everyday events with a little fun inserted.  My absolute favorite are just photos that will speak those thousand words clearly.

100 percent me:

Take what you can get when you can get it.

She did actually say this.

Can anyone remember this TV show?

“This is gonna hurt…”