Showing posts with label AP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AP. Show all posts

Friday, February 27, 2026

Let me fix that for you: Incompetent U.S. military under cowboy Pete Hegseth shoots down our own Border Protection drone in Texas BY accident

Why do Reuters and CNBC bend over backwards to obscure who did what to whom? 

U.S. military shoots down government drone in Texas accident, Reuters sources say

The U.S. military shot down a government drone with a laser-based anti-drone system, an accident that prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to bar flights on Thursday in an area around Fort Hancock, Texas, congressional aides told Reuters.

Congressional aides told Reuters the Pentagon used the high-energy laser system to shoot down a Customs and Border Protection drone near the Mexican border, in an area that often has incursions from Mexican drones used by drug cartels.

The Pentagon, Federal Aviation Administration and Customs and Border Protection issued a statement saying the military used a “counter-unmanned aircraft system ... to mitigate a seemingly threatening unmanned aerial system operating within military airspace.” ...

CBP deployed the laser technology this month to reportedly take down four suspected cartel drones, despite warnings from the FAA that the technology had not been deemed safe to use in the same vicinity as commercial flights, an aide told Reuters, adding agencies told them the laser had never before been deployed domestically.

Two weeks ago the military used this laser, and missed!

US military used laser to take down Border Protection drone, lawmakers say

 


 

Saturday, February 14, 2026

It could be worse: If the average price of coffee in this chart had kept up with inflation since Jan 1980, the average price in Jan 2026 would be $13.42 instead of $9.37

 Soaring coffee prices rewrite daily routines...

 ... Coffee prices in the U.S. were up 18.3% in January from a year ago, according to the latest Consumer Price Index released on Friday. Over five years, the government reported, coffee prices rose 47%. ...


 




Friday, January 2, 2026

So-called America First president threatens Iran over its domestic turmoil

 Trump and top Iranian officials exchange threats over protests roiling Iran

 “We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump wrote, without elaborating. 

 Trump Criticized Obama For Not Intervening During 2009 Iran Protests:

"If Obama would’ve backed the people of Iran two years ago when that county had a big, big problem—and the protesters were making headway...we wouldn't have any problems in Iran, believe me.”

 

Friday, December 5, 2025

But they did kill them all, including the survivors which is a war crime, and they're murderers because the drug runners are noncombatants

If the US military is allowed this completely novel idea that it can kill noncombatants, THEY CAN KILL YOU.

 They're also conspirators who tried to cover up their crime.

Admiral says there was no 'kill them all' order in boat attack, but video alarms lawmakers...  

After the September 2nd debacle, they changed their policy about survivors, which shows they knew all along that they were wrong to kill the survivors on September 2nd.

There were survivors of the sixth attack, on October 16th. Those survivors they recovered and repatriated.

That incident was reported as the first known case of survivors because they covered up that there were survivors on September 2nd.

These people know they committed murder on September 2nd and they tried to hide it. Now they're madly spinning.

What Trump is doing is wildly illegal, wildly un-American. 

U.S. military detains survivors of latest boat strike near Venezuela: The operation is the sixth known attack on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean, and the first known to have left some people alive.  

U.S. repatriating survivors of alleged drug boat strike to Colombia, Ecuador


Wednesday, December 3, 2025

Trump isn't interested in Venezuela because of the drugs, it's the oil

This entire drug war is a charade. 

Trump, April 2011: "I'm only interested in Libya if we take the oil".

He just pardoned the former Honduran president sentenced to 45 years over cocaine, but he's going after the Venezuelan president over drugs?

Venezuela has 4x the proven oil reserves of the United States, tops in the world, and it's right in our backyard.

Trump isn't interested in peace and freedom in Ukraine, either. All he wants is a piece of action.

All that lizard brain cares about is money. 

 





 

Thursday, November 6, 2025

Sunday, November 2, 2025

So the FBI's great Michigan Halloween terror plot was a conspiracy among teenagers to get together to smash pumpkins?


BUT YOU SAID IT WAS ISLAMIC STATE EXTREMISM!

 

Michigan lawyer says a Halloween terror plot that FBI Director Kash Patel described never existed

A Michigan defense lawyer is disputing FBI Director Kash Patel’s allegations that his 20-year-old client and four other young suspects were planning to carry out a terror attack on Halloween weekend. ... 

The investigation involved discussion in an online chat room involving at least some of the suspects who were taken into custody, according to two people briefed on the investigation who could not publicly discuss details. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The group allegedly discussed carrying out an attack around Halloween, referring to “pumpkin day,” according to one of the people. The other person briefed on the investigation confirmed that there had been a “pumpkin” reference. ...

Since the 9/11 terror attacks, the FBI has foiled several alleged attacks through sting operations in which agents posed as terror supporters, supplying advice and equipment.


Monday, September 15, 2025

It's remarkable how quickly people on the right have 86ed the fact that a right wing nut assassinated the top Democrat in the Minnesota House just a few months ago

 And I can't find any record of The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan wringing her hands in a column over the dire implications of this assassination for the country like she did for Charlie Kirk's. In June and July Peggy was all about thinking, not emoting. In September she's losing her shit.

A nut killing some Democrats is no reason to lose your head, I guess, but killing a Republican, now that's different. 

 


Sunday, August 10, 2025

Power hungry data centers break the utility model of socializing electricity costs: Seventy percent of last year's increased electricity cost was the result of data center demand


 

 As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame. States feel pressure to act

... Monitoring Analytics, the independent market watchdog for the mid-Atlantic grid, produced research in June showing that 70% — or $9.3 billion — of last year’s increased electricity cost was the result of data center demand. ... 

PJM [Interconnection, the mid-Atlantic grid operator], has yet to propose ways to guarantee that data centers pay their freight, but Monitoring Analytics is floating the idea that data centers should be required to procure their own power. 

In a filing last month, it said that would avoid a “massive wealth transfer” from average people to tech companies. ...

 Demand for Electricity Takes Off. US Power Generation by Source in 2024: Natural Gas, Coal, Nuclear, Wind, Hydro, Solar, Geothermal, Biomass, Petroleum 

The quantity of electricity generated in the US by all sources, from natural gas to rooftop solar, rose by 3.1% in 2024 from 2023 to a record of 4,304,039 gigawatt-hours (GWh), according to data from the EIA today.

This is now clearly a breakout in demand, after 14 years of stagnation, from 2007 through 2021, when electricity users, to reduce their costs, invested in more efficient equipment – lights, appliances, electronic equipment, industrial equipment, heating and air-conditioning, etc. – and in better building insulation, shading, etc., to reduce their power costs. This relentless drive for greater efficiency kept demand roughly stable for years despite the growing economy and population. And it mired many power generators and electric utilities in a no-growth business where it was difficult to justify investment.

Now the scenario has changed, largely due to the growth in demand from data centers (AI, cloud, crypto) and the increasing penetration of EVs in the national vehicle fleet – EVs accounted for over 10% of US vehicle sales in 2024. ...

Monday, August 4, 2025

The cost of groceries is a major source of stress for 53% of US adults according to AP-NORC poll, followed by the cost of housing

... Esther Bland, 78, who lives in Buckley, Washington, said groceries are a “minor” source of stress — but only because her local food banks fill the gap. Bland relies on her Social Security and disability payments each month to cover her rent and other expenses — such as veterinary care for her dogs — in retirement, after decades working in an office processing product orders.
 
“I have no savings,” she said. “I’m not sure what’s going on politically when it comes to the food banks, but if I lost that, groceries would absolutely be a major source of stress.”

Bland’s monthly income mainly goes toward her electric, water and cable bills, she said, as well as care of her dogs and other household needs.
 
 “Soap, paper towels, toilet paper. I buy gas at Costco, but we haven’t seen $3 a gallon here in a long time,” she said. “I stay home a lot. I only put about 50 miles on my car a week.” ...
 
Bland, the Washington state retiree, said she’s paid for pet surgery with a pay-later plan. ...
 
More
 

 

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Thursday, July 17, 2025

As I said, TACO Trump & Co. talked up destruction of Fordow because that's the only one of the three sites they destroyed


The bunker buster bombs were made for Fordow, so they bombed Fordow with them, and talked Fordow, Fordow, Fordow, "obliteration", blah blah blah.

Military-industrial complex, rinse and repeat.

Meanwhile the threat remains, and the not serious people remain in charge.

Trump Always Chickens Out. 

  

 New U.S. assessment finds American strikes destroyed only one of three Iranian nuclear sites

WASHINGTON — One of the three nuclear enrichment sites in Iran struck by the United States last month was mostly destroyed, setting work there back significantly. But the two others were not as badly damaged and may have been degraded only to a point where nuclear enrichment could resume in the next several months if Iran wants it to, according to a recent U.S. assessment of the destruction caused by the military operation, five current and former U.S. officials familiar with the assessment told NBC News. ... 

U.S. officials believe the attack on Fordo, which has long been viewed as a critical component of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, was successful in setting back Iranian enrichment capabilities at that site by as much as two years, according to two of the current officials.

Much of the administration’s public messaging about the strikes has focused on Fordo. ...

U.S. officials knew before the airstrikes that Iran had structures and enriched uranium at Natanz and Isfahan that were likely to be beyond the reach of even America’s 30,000-pound GBU-57 “bunker buster” bombs, three of the sources said. Those bombs, which had never been used in combat before the strikes, were designed with the deeply buried facilities carved into the side of a mountain at Fordo in mind.

As early as 2023, though, there were indications that Iran was digging tunnels at Natanz that were below where the GBU-57 could reach. There are also tunnels deep underground at Isfahan. The United States hit surface targets at Isfahan with Tomahawk missiles and did not drop GBU-57s there, but it did use them at Natanz. ...

Trump was briefed on the so-called all-in plan, but it was rejected ultimately because it would have required a sustained period of conflict. ...

Before the June airstrikes, the regime had enough fissile material for about nine to 10 bombs, according to U.S. officials and United Nations inspectors. ...

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Camp Mystic campers routinely did not receive weather emergency training, did not have access to their phones while at camp

 

 
HUNT, Texas (AP) — Texas inspectors signed off on Camp Mystic’s emergency planning just two days before catastrophic flooding killed more than two dozen people at the all-girls Christian summer camp, most of them children.
 
The Department of State Health Services released records Tuesday showing the camp complied with a host of state regulations regarding “procedures to be implemented in case of a disaster.” Among them: instructing campers what to do if they need to evacuate and assigning specific duties to each staff member and counselor.
 
Five years of inspection reports released to The Associated Press do not offer any details of those plans at Mystic, raising new questions about the camp’s preparedness ahead of the torrential July 4 rainfall in flood-prone Texas Hill Country. ... 
 
Charlotte Lauten, 19, spent nine summers at Camp Mystic, mostly recently in 2023. She said she didn’t recall ever receiving instructions as a camper on what do in the case of a weather emergency. ...
 
One thing that likely hindered the girls’ ability to escape was how dark it would have been, Lauten said. Campers don’t have access to their phones while at camp, she said, adding they wouldn’t have cell service anyway because of the remote location. ...