Random News And Notes
A Mexican Navy Tall ship struck the Brooklyn Bridge road deck last night. The ARM Cuauhtemoc is a training vessel and arrived in New York City on May 13, as part of a goodwill tour. She was scheduled to visit 22 ports in 15 nations over 254 days, 170 of them at sea.
It is being reported that the Cuauhtemoc lost power and was driven into the bridge by the strong currents in that section of the East River. In the video above you can see the top gallant masts snap off from back to front. The allision killed two crew members and injured Al least 22 others.
I do not generally follow the Eurovision crap. Watching effete euro-trash perform mediocre songs in dumb costumes isn’t my idea of fun. That said, it is very popular world wide. Why am I bringing up something I have very little interest in? Because of the Israeli contestant Yuval Raphael.
Yuval survived the 10/7 attack on the Nova music festival by hiding under bodies and playing dead. You read that right, she survived the massacre at the Nova festival by hiding under bodies and playing dead. And now, 1 year and 7 months later, she’s performing for Israel at Eurovision. At the competition she performed a song called New Day Will Rise.
Last night Yuval placed 2nd in the 2025 edition of Eurovision. She was the winner of the fan vote, much to the chagrin of the pro-hams crowd.
Am Israel Chai
I dropped the first indications of this story in the comments in yesterday’s News and Notes. Here’s a bit more on that explosion outside a fertility clinic in Palm Springs yesterday. The local authorities have determined it was a terrorist attack. They have also identified the bomber as 25 year old Edward Bartkus of Twentynine Palms.
I looked into this nutbag a bit. I will save you that particular brain pollution and tell you that he was a pro-mortalist, believed that being born is illegitimate because the infant isn’t asked for consent and had some sort of death pact with another nutbag – this one a chick who just recently got offed by her boyfriend. The whole thing is like the plot of a badly written dime-store novel. The only good thing to come out of the whole thing is that said asshat offed himself with the bomb.
Pope Leo VIV was officially installed today at a mass in the Vatican. There were many world leaders in attendance including VP JD Vance and SecState Marco Rubio. Il Papa shook hands with many dignitaries after the mass, but one man got a hug, his MAGA brother Louis.
As AuntiE noted in this morning’s Conversation this Pope actually appears to be Catholic. He has reached out to the conservatives in the Catholic church unlike his predecessor. He has also made some very definitive statements about things like marriage, ‘gender identity’ and abortion.
Other than the question of why, that’s pretty cool no?
Finally, there is this story out of Massachusetts. As I’m sure most of you know, most military installations in the US are required to open certain small arms ranges to the general public. This is true of Ft. Devens in central Mass. Full disclosure, this editor was stationed at Devens from 92-94 when the 10th SFG(A) relocated to Ft Carson Colorado and I got sent to Panzer Kaserne near Stuttgart.
Unfortunately, the commander of Devens, Lt. Col. Carlos Poventud-Estrada, doesn’t think the statutes – and yes they are statutes not regulations – involved do not apply to him. Back in 2022 he and the base were sued for preventing access to the ranges. He lost.
Fast forward to last weekend, the Colonel and base administrators prevented access again. This time it was in direct violation of a federal judge’s order. I think this tool and his DOD civilian lawyer are going to enter the FO portion of the FA:FO equation.
It is my understanding that the shooters, all members of the Ft Devens Rifle and Pistol club have already entered motions in the court to have the base commander and John Hollis, the civilian DOD attorney held in criminal contempt. I’ll keep an eye on this one, as it has the potential to get a bit spicy.
