Nadezhda Popova 1921-2013

I had heard of the "Night Witches" but this account of one's life and passing is fascinating. "AF weenie" NOT!

The Telegraph

Nadezhda Popova, who has died aged 91, was a member of an elite corps of Soviet women — known as the “Night Witches” — who fought as bomber pilots in the air war against Germany, and the only one to win three Orders of the Patriotic War for bravery....

In late 1941 Stalin signed an order to establish three all-women Air Force units to be grouped into separate fighter, dive bomber and night bomber regiments. Over the next four years these regiments flew a combined total of more than 30,000 combat sorties and dropped 23,000 tons of bombs. Nadezhda Popova, then aged 19, was one of the first to join the best-known of the three units, the 588th Night Bomber Regiment (later renamed the 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment).

The 588th was not well equipped. Wearing hand-me-down uniforms from male pilots, the women flew 1920s-vintage Polikarpov PO-2 two-seater biplanes, which consisted of fabric strung over a plywood frame, and lacked all but the most rudimentary instruments.

There was no radio; navigation was done with a stopwatch and a map. The planes carried no guns, no parachutes and had only enough weight allowance to take two bombs, forcing the pilots to make multiple sorties (Nadezhda Popova once flew 18 in a single night), returning to base each time to collect more bombs, which were released with a wire cable jury-rigged to the wings.
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It was the cold that she recalled more than anything else: “When the wind was strong it would toss the plane. In winter when you’d look out to see your target better, you got frostbite, our feet froze in our boots, but we carried on flying.” There was no time for fear: “You had to focus on the target and think how you could hit it. There was no time to give way to emotions... Those who gave in were gunned down and they were burned alive in their craft as they had no parachutes.”
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She decided to volunteer as a bomber pilot after her home was taken over by the invading Germans and her brother, Leonid, was killed at the front: “He was 20 and had never even kissed a girl,” she recalled. “My mother sobbed, 'That damn Hitler.’ I saw the German aircraft flying along our roads filled with people who were leaving their homes, firing at them with their machine guns... they blasted our school.”

After the war she returned to her work as a flying instructor.

In addition to her other decorations, she was awarded the Soviet Medal of Honour; the Order of Friendship; the Order of Lenin; and the Order of the Red Banner (three times).

She is survived by her son, now a general in the Belarussian Air Force.

From her Wikipedia page:

The regiment was called "Nachthexen" (Night Witches) by the Germans "because the whooshing noise their plywood and canvas airplanes made reminded the Germans of the sound of a witch’s broomstick."

Right before she flew it up their, er, heinies. Heh.

Fly on Nadezhda. The choice of flying machines is yours.

Yo, Fat Tony, time to go...

A tip o' the Brain to The Political Garbage Chute.

Scalia blames Holocaust on liberal judicial activism

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, an avowed conservative and self-styled “originalist” in his interpretations of the law, reportedly told the Utah State Bar Association on Saturday that he’s okay with discussing whether orgies relieve social tension and claimed that judicial activism in Germany was partially to blame for the rise of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust.

Word of Scalia’s claims comes by way of The Aspen Times, which reports that Scalia’s speech was titled, “Mullahs of the West: Judges as Moral Arbiters.”
...

The Aspen Times added that Scalia opened his speech with a clear analogy to Germany in the years before the Nazi Party — during a time Scalia believed Germany to be “the most advanced country in the world” much like the U.S. today. Judges then, he contended, were very open to new interpretations of the law, also like the U.S. today.

"Much like the US today" Inadvertently perceptive and for all the wrong reasons just like then.

Time for the rocking chair, Tony, before you fuck up much else around here.

Has the G.O.P. Gone Off the Deep End?

The short answer, of course, is "yup". The Gray Lady, many links:

Doherty, no liberal, is representative of the growing strength on the right of the view that the Republican Party has gone off the deep end.

“Their rigidity is killing them. It’s either holy purity, or you are anathema,” Tom Korologos, a premier Republican lobbyist and the ambassador to Belgium under George W. Bush, said in a phone interview. “Too many ideologues have come in. You don’t win by what they are doing.”

Good, but I wish they'd hurry up and lose. And shut up and go away.

The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe.

Why do the names "Hitler" and "Mussolini" come to mind? Hmmmmm...

McInturff put his finger on the problem: House Republicans are invested in their own re-election and not in the long-term viability of their party. Those who put the lowest priority on presidential politics are those most worried about a primary challenge from the right, and it is this cohort that forms the backbone of the Tea Party faction in the House — the cohort most wedded to nativism, intolerance and hostility to the poor. These are the members nudging the Republican Party over the cliff.

Follow the lemmings...

There is a striking correlation between the rise of conservative talk radio and the difficulties of the Republican Party in presidential elections.

...and take Limpbaugh et al with you...

A part of the Republican problem lies in the party’s disproportionate dependence on white Southern voters. These voters are well to the right of the rest of the nation, and they elect the dominant block of hard-right conservatives in the House. Of the 234 Republican members of the House, 97 — two-fifths — come from the 11 Confederate states, and these 97 are almost uniformly opposed to negotiation of any kind with Democrats.

It is the Southern conservatives who, along with their Northern Tea Party colleagues, seek to kill immigration reform and who insisted on removing the food stamp program from the recently passed Farm Bill.

These members of the House are what Feehery describes as “nostalgia” Republicans who define conservatism as “the ability to fight progress.” They produce a flood of statements and declarations that Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, calls “offensive and bizarre” and that he claims are turning his party into “the stupid party.”

And a fine mess they've made of it too.

The Republican Party is struggling to resolve the conflict between its pragmatic establishment wing and its ideological-suicidal wing. Speaking right after President Obama’s re-election, Haley Barbour, a former governor of Mississippi and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, summarized the party’s problem succinctly. At a meeting in Las Vegas of the Republican Governors Association, Barbour said: “We’ve got to give our political organizational activity a very serious proctology exam. We need to look everywhere.”

Heh. Sorry 'bout the visual. Shoulda warned ya! Good luck for them to find someone with a strong enough stomach to do that! I'll wait for the autopsy. Soon, I hope.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Obama: 35 Years Ago “Trayvon Martin Could Have Been Me”
“Woulda, coulda, shoulda,” says Fox News.

Heh.

Proposed “Hyperloop” Will Whisk Passengers From NY to LA in 45 Minutes
Where your car will whisk you to your hotel in two and a half hours.

House Passes Farm Bill Without Funds for Food Stamps
Why should the government give hungry Americans food when it can give the money directly to farmers and cut out the middleman.

That's a perfect example of Repug "thinking".

Death Valley Park Rangers Implore Visitors Not to Fry Eggs on Pavement
After numerous complaints from Denny's, IHOP

Heh. It's a hundred miles from DV to either of those. At least.

Quote of the Day

From Will Marijuana Farming in Mendocino County, California, Lead America to Pot?

When prohibition ends, some consumers will choose a Big Tobacco or Big Alcohol model, and some will seek out the co-op, farmers market or CSA farm. That’s why we have Dom Perignon and Two Buck Chuck.

Ten bucks a lid sounds about right. Yeah, right, gramps. Heh.

The answer to the question in the title of the article is "Yes, and soon I hope".

Ah, Sweet Schadenfreude Headline of the Day

Papa John's, Applebee's And Others Pay Huge Price For Anti-Obamacare Politicking

Suck it, bitchez.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Thanks to Jerry Jarrett.

Texas wimmens is pissed off

Another pissed-off Texas woman weighs in on Goodhair And The Lege at Rude Pundit and tears 'em a new one.

Texas Senator Hegar — I hope you are RIGHT and there is a God and a Heaven and a Hell.

I hope that you are right because that means you will burn in hell.

I can think of no more fitting price to pay for your mean, hypocritical behavior in the State Capitol this past few weeks. That Christian god whose ass you lick so diligently has a huge reputation for charity, and you displayed NONE regarding the omnibus abortion legislation. When you find yourself assigned to hell, along with Governor Perry and the rest of your conservative cohorts, I think you will discover that this battlefield you paraded around so self-righteously here on earth set you all up for eternal damnation.
...

I cannot find the words for my rage.

If men got pregnant, this sort of legislation would never, ever, be considered.

If ANY of you elected pricks and thin-lipped bitches think abortion hasn’t been the option of choice for women you love (your MOTHERS, your DAUGHTERS, your SISTERS, and your WIVES)…think again. I’ve been to those clinics and there were plenty of affluent, white, Christian, gals in there that were YOUR family members. I don’t blame them for not telling you, you are certifiable ASSHOLES and no one would trust you with such a personal and painful choice. I do blame YOU for thinking you know what’s best and trying to deny women in Texas access to choice.
...

Make no mistake—this is a war on abortion by 117 elected officials (plus Perry and Dewhurst, the worst of the lot) from a state with more than 26 million residents.

This is war.
And I aim to fight.
...

I have miscarried after the first trimester and that bloody mess was not a baby.
...

That fewer than 100 mealy-mouthed men and a dozen tightly wound, conservative bitches would vote to decide to limit my options to end a pregnancy is stunning.

The audacity.
The hypocrisy.
The rule-breaking, the cheating, the FRAUD from Republicans crowing about their moral high ground.
We should all be terrified that they do so publicly, proudly, and oblivious to what this means.
It means Rick Perry and his band of right-wing, like minded legislators think they can do whatever they want.
Pro-death penalty legislators promising to protect life.
Anti-gun control legislators worried about a safer community.
It would be funny if it were not so terrifying and sad.

I could write for years.
I will fight forever.

Wow. I think Goodhair and The Lege can consider their asses well and truly blistered. And rightly so.

Heh...

Click to embiggen

Thanks to YubaNet.

Quote of the Day

From Maddowblog - "Hard times for conservative media":

"Much of movement conservatism is a con and the base is the marks." - Chris Hayes.

Well said, young Chris.

Losing the War On Stupid

From an article by Greg Palast mostly about the genitalia involved in the Big Apple mayoral race. In this part he nails it:

Snowden has been called a "traitor" and charged with crimes regarding the revelation of a private contractor analysing "metadata" from internet traffic.

As a former professor of statistics, I should explain that “metadata” is defined by experts as, “A big load of bullshit used by consulting firms to get hundred-million-dollar no-bid contracts from government pinheads.”

What Snowden uncovered is not some massive spying operation that could expose terrorist plots, but a massive invasion of the taxpayer’s wallet by connected consultants.

I'll buy that. Oh, wait, I think I already have...

The Republican Party needs to hit rock bottom.

They're not far from it and this could be the kicker. GOP, meet cliff. From Liz Cheney For Senate.

Perhaps the Republican Party needs to hit rock bottom and Liz Cheney is the last shot of rail tequila before the conservative movement blacks out, wakes up and heads to a meeting.

One can only hope.

Liz Cheney for Senate.

I hope that while the GOP is passed out, someone scrawls funny things on them and it goes viral on YouTube. Heh.

Obamacare Is the Right’s Worst Nightmare

A coupla tidbits from Paul Krugman.

News from New York: it looks as if insurance premiums on the individual market are going to plunge thanks to Obamacare. This shouldn’t come as a surprise; in fact, the New York experience perfectly illustrates why Obamacare had to look the way it does. And it also illustrates why conservatives should be terrified about this legislation, as it takes effect. Americans may have had a lot of misgivings in advance, thanks to vast, deliberately spread misinformation. But I agree with Matt Yglesias — unless the GOP finds even more ways to sabotage the plan, this thing is going to work, it’s going to be extremely popular, and it’s going to wreak havoc with conservative ideology.

It's gonna fuck with the wingnut scam? Oh shit, oh dear! Heh.

And Yglesias is right: there will be bobbles along the way, but this is going to become an immensely popular program. By the time Liz Cheney challenges Hillary Clinton’s reelection campaign, there will be signs at the rallies declaring “Don’t let the government get its hands on Obamacare!”

Conservatives are right to be hysterical about this: it’s an attack on everything they believe — and it’s going to make Americans’ lives better. What could be worse?

Anything that's bad for the Repugs is good for us all.

Headline of the Day

Why Isn't NRA Arguing Trayvon Martin Tragedy Could Have Been Averted if Only He Had a Gun?

You know why.

No Deer Urine Required

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford drawing a strange life lesson from ... Adam Sandler?!

But I will not take that route this time. Because I have learned. Or rather, I am still learning. I am learning to see people like Adam Sandler as not merely brainless grist to be mocked and mourned like one mourns the existence of Texas Republicans, or Antonin Scalia, or the Vatican, or Florida.

Rather, I am learning to flip it all around, to see Sandler and his ilk (hi, Judd Apatow) as shining examples, a beautiful beacon, a gleaming axis of negative possibility the around while I can revolve my deeper intuition of what life can really be.

In other words, I recognize, with all sorts of delightful, wine-enhanced epiphany, that Adam Sandler perfectly represents the thing not to become. And he does so brilliantly.

See, Sandler is the cautionary take writ large, the toxic place you avoid like karmic Chernobyl, a giant pothole made of spiritual vacuity and rotten asparagus and nails. His films’ casually venomous visions of America, of masculinity, of friendship, women, sex, kids, marriage, love, the human body and nay life itself, this is the perfect hell. It pretends at comedy, but it is really the Inferno. Simple.

And for this insight I now say, I am grateful.
...

The wise ones tell us that great teachers come in many forms. They are certainly not all the Dalai Lama, not all Thich Nhat Hanh, not all deeply humble or spiritually attuned beings willing to reveal to you hard and numinous truths via talks, or wise books, or a lifetime of quiet, powerful example.

Increasingly we find some of the most pivotal teachers are those from whom we recoil from the most. They are most callous clowns in life’s circus, the ones who do not even know they are teachers, for otherwise how could they show us the lowest and worst aspects of man, how low the vibration can go?

For them, we are grateful. From them, we can learn. We can see, with full clarity, the dark and cruel path. And then we can happily slingshot in the exact opposite direction. No deer urine required.

Oh swell. Now what do I do with all this deer urine?

Great White Father sucks wet monkey ass

The Hill

Native American tribes’ lawsuit could decide who controls Senate in 2015

A high-profile lawsuit on the voting rights of Native Americans could help determine control of the Senate in the next Congress.

A group of 16 Native Americans, nine of whom are military veterans, is waging a protracted legal battle against Montana’s Democratic secretary of State and county administrators, arguing for improved access to voter registration sites.

The case will be significant for Democrats in 2014 as they vie to keep control of the upper chamber by holding retiring Sen. Max Baucus’s (D-Mont.) seat. Republicans need to pick up six seats to win back control of the Senate.
...

An estimated 50,000 Native Americans are eligible to vote in Montana. Many of them live on reservations throughout the sprawling 550-mile-wide state, which means driving more than 100 miles for some to reach polling sites established long before Native Americans got the right to vote.

It’s the distance equivalent of voters in Washington, D.C., having to drive to Gettysburg, Pa. and back to complete their late registration forms or cast early in-person absentee ballots.
...

The Department of Justice, Montana tribal leaders, the ACLU and the National Congress of American Indians have all backed the plaintiffs in the legal dispute.

The origin of the lawsuit began when Rodgers, a member of Montana’s Blackfeet tribe, received a phone call that U.S. Army Spc. Antonio Burnside, a fellow Blackfeet member whose tribal name was Many Hides, was killed last year in combat on Good Friday in Afghanistan.

In late April 2012, after raising the money to help celebrate the soldier’s life, Rodgers said a feeling of rage overcame him.

He noted that Native Americans have the highest percentage of military enlistees of any ethnic group.

“Some of the poorest of the poor can fight a war and die for you on a hellish moonscaped mountainside and then when they return home in a flag-draped coffin, you seek to diminish their native brothers’ and sisters’ ability to vote. Young dead soldiers do not speak. They leave us their deaths. It is us who must give them meaning by remembering them,” Rodgers said. “We got tired of the dark lies in rooms of white marble. Now the plaintiff warriors will take their faith in justice by acting with justice to other rooms of white marble: the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and Congress.”

Get some, blanketasses!

Headline of the Day

Legalizing Marijuana May Help Save the US Economy, Reduce the Prison Population, and Stop the Drug War Death Toll

I knew that. Problem is, there's too much money in keeping it illegal.

The Sepia-Toned Sansabelt-Slacks Coal-Powered Buggy-Whipped Daguerreotype Party

Will Durst

They say one sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Which means it can't be long before the entire Republican Party is institutionalized for their own safety shuffling around in shabby bathrobes popping a daily regimen of psychotropic pills in miniature Dixie Cups. Falling asleep during games of checkers. Which, admittedly, is redundant.

The contraction of the party into a hard white stone nugget the size of a peach pit is almost complete. Inclusion? Heresy! Generosity? Hah, we spit on your generosity! And fie on your benevolence. Compassion? Grace? Sympathy? Tolerance? More liberal plots solely designed to destroy the lives of decent God- fearing people. Just like science and education and the EPA.
...

These guys have assumed multiple positions so far on the wrong side of history they probably see dinosaurs chewing on extinct ferns in their back yards. Going to end up with La Brea tar pit fossils as their only friends. Their theme song- straight from the movie "Horsefeathers," by Groucho Marx "Whatever it is, I'm against it." Should really adopt the Wooly Mammoth to replace the elephant as their mascot. Maybe the Dodo Bird.
...

One fact never addressed, their record- not really one to write home about. Unless your home is on Failure Avenue. Stubborn Street. Recalcitrant Road. Cantankerous Court. Wayward Way. Think about it. Conservatives have opposed every, single, major advancement in human rights over the last 200 years. Freeing the slaves. Women getting the vote. Minimum wage. Child labor laws. Medicare. Social Security. ObamaCare. Miniskirts. Arugula. Jazz.

So that's their back- to- the- future track. Morphing into the modern equivalent of the Whig Party. The sepia- toned, Sansabelt- slacks wearing, Tin Pan Alley listening, rabbit- ears adjusting, blacksmithing, coal- powered, buggy- whipped, daguerreotype party. Sitting all by themselves in an outhouse with a Sears catalogue and black and white dreams of separate but equal water fountains as only their companions.

Funny, but it'd be a lot funnier if the Repugs weren't fucking the country up so bad.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

GOP Split Into Two Factions on Immigration
One wants to keep everybody out, other just wants to keep out Mexicans.

Bill in House Would Create National Park on the Moon
And you thought this was a do-nothing Congress.

Uhhh...yup...

Report: Bin Laden Wore Cowboy Hat to Avoid Detection by Drones
Spoke in Yiddish accent to throw off wiretaps.

Yippee-I-O-Ky-Oy...?

Koch Brothers TV Ad: $34,000 a Year Puts You in World's Wealthiest 1%
Along with them.

In a Koch pig's ass.

Misogyny: It's What's For Dinner

The Rude Pundit is on vacation and he has people filling in for him. Go read a Texas lady going off on Texas men. First and last ¶:

There's a reason the average Texas woman is meaner than a goddamn snake: She lives with Texas men.

But most of us Texas women are not docile, and we've run out of patience. We're sick of being regarded as incubators, tired of being told we're less important than a non-viable fetus. So you can expect to hear a lot more whooping and hollering from Texas in the coming days, as we round up this bunch of worn-out old bulls, and send them to the packing plant.

And then, we will have one hell of a barbecue.

Go read.

I only disagree with her on one minor point - she calls TX legette Jodi "Rape Kits Clean Women Out" Laubenberg a "prize heifer" when she's really a dried-up old cow.