Thursday Almost Weekend Motes

Of course he did: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday accused his predecessor Scott Morrison of “trashing democracy” after revealing that while Morrison was in power, he took on five ministerial roles without the knowledge of most other lawmakers or the public. Albanese said Morrison had been operating in secret, keeping the Australian people in the dark and misleading Parliament over who was in charge of what portfolios. Morrison defended taking on the extra portfolios, saying they were a safeguard during the coronavirus pandemic. So he did it for “the good of the people”.

Remember, it’s a war: A Russian-backed separatist court in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk charged five foreign nationals captured fighting with Ukrainian forces with being mercenaries on Monday, saying three could face the death penalty, Russian media reported. So far, none of the Wagner Group leaders have been arrested or charged. Oh wait, they got blow’d up in Donbas last week. My bad.

Chicken skin story: August 16, 1942. US Military blimp L-8 later renamed America and popularly known as the “Ghost Blimp”, whose crew disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on August 16, 1942. At 11:15 a.m., several hours after the airship lifted off from Treasure Island, California. L-8 reappeared off the shore of Ocean Beach near Fort Funston. L-8 briefly made contact with the ground at Ocean Beach, causing damage to the airship, then drifted over San Francisco and crashed on Bellevue Avenue, Daly City. While the control car doors were found hanging open, and the crash had been so gentle that the crewmen would have walked away unharmed, no crew was found inside. No traces of its crewmen, Lt. Ernest DeWitt Cody and Ens. Charles Adams, have ever been found. Both men were declared dead in 1943.

Thugs are not the same as security: Security for Democrat Florida Senate candidate Val Demings assaulted a video tracker at an event on August 6. The man who was assaulted was sent to the hospital. Based on dialogue captured on the video, the individual appeared to be a video tracker who regularly follows the campaign. In a part of the video, Demings’ security guard tells the video tracker: “In corrections, I used to bounce people like you off their head in the jail.” It appears the only thing the tracker did wrong, was what he was doing, videoing a candidate. The “security” did not do himself any favors with the brag.

We live in a freaked up world: Surveillance video of a horrifying 5 pm, July 31 attack on a 70-year-old woman showed that at one point she was actually kicked squarely in the face while she was already on the lobby floor of her residential building. When she tried to get away and was unable to shut a door, the suspects returned and beat and robbed her a second time. But fear not, the culprits are known. San Francisco police identified children ages 11, 13, and 14 as suspects. A fourth suspect — an 18-year-old male — also was identified, but the 11-year-old suspect is too young to be charged. The 11-year-old suspect could not be charged due to the suspect’s age. In what freakin’ world is it okay to kick an old woman in the face? You cannot convince me these little animals did not know what they were doing was WRONG.

Gas, Honolulu, 8/11/21.