What It Means to Be Lethal War Fighter Pete or the Mad King. Hannah Allam of ProPublica: “Formalized in a 2022 action plan and in a Defense Department instruction..., [Pentagon] initiatives [to reduce civilian casualties] are known collectively as Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response, a clunky name often shortened to CHMR and pronounced 'chimmer.' Around 200 personnel were assigned to the mission, including roughly 30 at the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, a coordination hub near the Pentagon.... [But] the civilian protection mission was dissolved as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made 'lethality' a top priority. And the world has witnessed a tragedy in Minab [where the U.S. more than likely killed 175 people, mostly schoolgirls,] that, if U.S. responsibility is confirmed, would be the most civilians killed by the military in a single attack in decades. Dismantling the fledgling harm-reduction effort, defense analysts say, is among several ways the Trump administration has reorganized national security around two principles: more aggression, less accountability. Trump and his aides lowered the authorization level for lethal force, broadened target categories, inflated threat assessments and fired inspectors general....” MB: It means you treat little girls as “the enemy” and you deflect blame for slaughtering them. (The president in 2022 of course was Joe Biden.)
For once, White House reporters asked some very good, pointed questions. See the clips by Aaron Rupar & Real Clear Politicos of Trump's Monday presser. And, as stories we linked earlier Tuesday also described, Trump's "answers" were insane: Q: "Is it over or just starting?" Trump: "Both." Q: "Why are you the only person saying Iran bombed its own children?" Trump: "Because I don't know enough about it." We're talking about massive life-and-death here, and Trump's "reasoning" is utterly nonsensical.
Ellen Mitchell of the Hill: “The Defense Department on Monday identified the U.S. soldier killed by an Iranian attack on a Saudi Arabia air base as 26-year-old Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington. Pennington, of Glendale, Ky., died Sunday from injuries sustained during the March 1 attack at Prince Sultan Air Base. He had been assigned to 1st Space Battalion, 1st Space Brigade out of Fort Carson, Colo., and was supporting the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, according to a Pentagon statement[.]... Pennington is the eighth U.S. service member to have died in the war on Iran, which began Feb. 28.... Six American soldiers were first killed in an Iranian drone strike on a makeshift U.S. military operations center in Kuwait on March 1.... Then, National Guard soldier and New York City police officer Maj. Sorffly Davius died Friday in a “non-combat related” medical incident at Camp Buehring, Kuwait.”
Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times: “The Democratic National Committee sued the Trump administration on Tuesday to try to compel the government to say whether it was planning to put armed federal agents or military personnel at polling places or election offices this year. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., says that 11 separate Freedom of Information Act requests filed in October to the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense have prompted no meaningful response, a violation of the law.... It is possible that no such records exist within the Trump administration; the lawsuit is simply accusing the agencies of failing to respond to the information requests.”
Markwayne is Perfect for Trump 2.0! Paul Waldman in Public Notice: "While he may not have quite the walking-car-crash charisma of the woman he’s set to replace, in many ways Markwayne Mullin is a perfectly emblematic pick to run a huge and consequential cabinet department in the second Trump presidency. Comically unqualified, intensely partisan, and unflaggingly devoted to whatever ridiculous thing bubbled out of Donald Trump’s mouth five minutes ago, as the next Secretary of Homeland Security, Mullin will fit right in with what will undoubtedly be regarded as the worst presidential cabinet in history." Read on. MB: I don't think there's anything in Waldman's essay that we haven't said here at one time or the other, but it's almost a pleasure to see it so neatly wrapped and tied with a bow.
Deliberately being dumb is not good policy. -- Paul Krugman ~~~
~~~ Hey, Paul & Paul, we mustn't forget that "dumb and incompetent" extends to Trump choices at all levels of his administration. ~~~
~~~ Rebecca Beitsch of the Hill: “U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin is facing disciplinary action after he sent a letter to Georgetown University threatening legal action if it did not end its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. The Tuesday filing also indicates Martin repeatedly sought to evade action from the Office of Disciplinary Counsel, sidestepping its letters and seeking intervention from a judge even after she rebuffed him. He also tried to get the head of that office suspended. The move is the latest admonishment for Martin, a one-time U.S. attorney nominee who failed to advance in the Senate amid a string of controversies and who was more recently removed from his post as head of the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group. Martin last February sent a letter to the school saying he would not hire any interns or attorneys from Georgetown, later escalating that threat by saying failure to respond would 'bear directly' on its nonprofit status. 'Mr. Martin knew or should have known that, as a government official, his conduct violated the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States,' wrote Hamilton Fox, the disciplinary counsel for D.C., who has a quasi-prosecutorial role in overseeing attorney conduct.”
I cannot proceed in good conscience with the execution of Mr. Burton under such disparate circumstances.... I believe it would be unjust for one participant in this crime to be executed while the participant who pulled the trigger was not. -- Gov. Kay Ivey ~~~
~~~ Alabama. Eduardo Medina of the New York Times: “In a rare move, Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama on Tuesday commuted the death sentence of a 75-year-old man who had been convicted in a 1991 killing in which he did not pull the trigger. The man, Charles Burton, known as 'Sonny,' was scheduled to be executed via nitrogen gas on Thursday. The governor commuted Mr. Burton’s sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The 1991 murder began as a robbery at an AutoZone store in Talladega, Ala., involving Mr. Burton and five other people. One of the other robbers fatally shot the victim, Doug Battle. But in Alabama and other states, people who participate in a felony such as robbery that ends in a death can still be convicted of murder, even if they did not kill anyone. The actual gunman, Derrick DeBruce, was also sentenced to death. But his sentence was reduced to life in prison without parole in 2014 after he argued that his lawyers at trial had been ineffective.” At 1:00 pm ET, this was a developing story.
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The New York Times' liveblog of developments Tuesday in the war on Iran is here. From the pinned item at 9:15 am ET: “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed that Tuesday would be the “most intense day” of American strikes against Iran since the start of the war after ... [Donald] Trump sent mixed signals about a possible end to the conflict. Speaking at a news conference at the Pentagon, Mr. Hegseth said that 'the most fighters, the most bombers' would be deployed on Tuesday and that the U.S. military was giving Mr. Trump 'maximum options' to conduct the war. But Mr. Hegseth, who said last week that the conflict could last three to eight weeks, argued that it was up to Mr. Trump to assess whether 'it’s the beginning, the middle or the end.'” MB: So here we are in a situation where lethal war-fighter Pete is waging maximum lethal war-fighting on the people of Iran, and pumped Pete is leaving it up to a crazy old man to decide when and if all that lethal war-fighting ends.
Here was the top New York Times headline Monday afternoon. The Times editors really are catching on to what a catastrophic U.S. presidency* the world is enduring: ~~~
~~~ “Trump’s War Becomes World’s Latest Economic Hazard.” Tony Romm, et al., of the New York Times: “Fuel prices could soar, and stay elevated for months. That could make groceries and other shipped goods more expensive. And consumers and businesses, stung by the rising costs, could choose to spend less, constraining economic growth. In the eyes of economists, that is the increasingly real and dire picture from the U.S.-led war with Iran, now in its second week. It may be a conflict of ... [Donald] Trump’s making, but it is becoming the world’s latest economic headache, one that has sent foreign leaders scrambling for ways to contain the possible fallout.... In response, world leaders convened an emergency meeting of the Group of 7 countries on Monday, when finance ministers considered, yet decided against, tapping their national stores of oil to increase available supply. The gathering occurred on a day when Mr. Trump asserted in an interview with CBS News that the war was nearing its conclusion.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Evan Halper, et al., of the Washington Post: “Oil prices reached heights not seen since the aftermath of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine on Monday before falling back by the time markets closed, as ... Donald Trump sent mixed signals about his Iran plans.... Trump fed the volatility.... Leaders of the Group of Seven advanced economies met Monday and decided not to tap their emergency oil reserves but signaled they may soon release that crude into the marketplace, a message that may ... have helped calm markets.”
~~~ Joe Rennison, et al., of the New York Times: “Global markets came under renewed pressure at the start of the week, but U.S. stocks ended the day on Monday slightly higher and oil prices fell after ... [Donald] Trump signaled that the war in Iran may be coming closer to an end. In an interview with CBS News on Monday afternoon, Mr. Trump said that the war was 'very far ahead of schedule,' an unexpected assessment that eased investors concerns about the long-term economic impact of the conflict. 'I think the war is very complete, pretty much,' Mr. Trump told CBS News.” (Also linked yesterday.) The CBS News story is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Somebody please explain to me the meaning of “very complete, pretty much.” Thanking you in advance very pretty slightly ever so much. ~~~
~~~ Well, that very complete pretty much end of Trump's war didn't last long. ~~~
~~~ Here's What the Mad King Said Last Night. From the pinned item of the New York Times liveblog, at 9:45 pm ET Monday: “After a day of conflicting signals about when the war against Iran might end..., [Donald] Trump struck a belligerent tone Monday evening, warning of even more aggressive action if Iranian leaders tried to cut off the world’s energy supply. 'We will hit them so hard that it will not be possible for them or anybody else helping them to ever recover that section of the world,' Mr. Trump said, meeting with reporters.... Mr. Trump expressed displeasure at the decision by Iran to name Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as supreme leader.... 'I was disappointed,' he said of the selection, 'because we think it’s going to lead to more of the same problem for the country.'” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Trump's remarks Monday night sound very much like what Sen. Lindsey Graham told Fox's Maria Bartiromo Sunday: Graham said “that the U.S. was going to 'blow the hell out of these people,' and warned that the Iranian regime was now in a death spiral. Trump said the same Monday: “We will hit them so hard that it will not be possible for them or anybody else helping them to ever recover that section of the world.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: So I suspect that some time between Trump's remarks to CBS News Monday morning & his evening remarks to reporters, Lindsey Graham got his ear. Here's why I think that likely: ~~~
~~~ Annabella Rosciglione of the Daily Beast, republished by Yahoo! News (March 7): “Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham is taking all the credit for pushing ... [Donald] Trump to launch his unauthorized war with Iran. Graham, who has long advocated for going to war with Iran, said he played a word-association game to get Trump, 79, on board with a full-scale war in the Middle East. 'I say Franklin Roosevelt, what do you say?' Graham told the Wall Street Journal, referencing Roosevelt’s famous 'You have nothing to fear but fear itself' quote. Graham noted that he worked for months to get Trump on board with the strikes.... Graham, 70, noted that [in recent weeks,] he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and told him ways to convince Trump, who has dubbed himself the “'Peace President,' to launch military action in Iran.... [Graham] also said he spoke with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman to get him on board ahead of Trump’s strikes.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ One person Trump definitely talked to about the Iran war on Monday afternoon: Vladimir Putin: ~~~
~~~ Barak Ravid of Axios: Donald "Trump spoke on the phone with Russian leader Vladimir Putin Monday and discussed the war with Iran and the efforts to end the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin said.... This was the first call between Trump and Putin since the beginning of the war with Iran.... Putin's foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov told Russian reporters that the call lasted around an hour and was 'frank' and 'businesslike.'... 'He wants to be helpful [with Iran]. I told him you can be more helpful by ending the war in Ukraine,' Trump said. "
Shawn McCreesh & John Ismay of the New York Times: Donald “Trump on Monday continued to suggest without evidence that Iran bombed an elementary school in the southern part of the country on the first day of the war, killing 175 of its own citizens, many of them children. Video evidence verified by The New York Times shows a Tomahawk cruise missile striking a naval base beside the school in the town of Minab on Feb. 28. Tomahawk missiles were developed by the United States and are being used by its forces in the current conflict; the United States has not sold that weapon to Iran. Only two U.S. allies [-- Australia & Britain --] are known to have Tomahawk missiles, and they did not carry out strikes on Feb. 28.” Trump claimed, “... Tomahawks are, are used by others. As you know, numerous other nations have Tomahawks. They buy them from us.”
Michel Birnbaum & Cat Zakrzewski of the Washington Post: The white baseball cap which Donald Trump wore Saturday during the transfer of the bodies of soldiers “set off a controversy that continued into Monday, as critics — including some Republicans — derided his hat as disrespectful and also criticized Fox News for airing footage that inaccurately showed Trump hatless.... Trump’s cap emblazoned with 'USA' in gold letters appeared to be a model that retails on the Trump Organization’s online store for $55.... The Trump Store website says the hat will take an additional seven to 10 days to ship “due to high demand.”
Adam Taylor of the Washington Post: “The Trump administration has ordered more U.S. diplomats to leave the Middle East, an indication of the ongoing security threat posed by Iran’s retaliatory attacks more than a week into the conflict. An 'ordered departure' went out Monday to nonessential American staff and their families at the U.S. Consulate in Adana, in southern Turkey, according to the State Department. A similar notice had been sent Sunday to staff at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Saudi Arabia. Additional mandatory departures could be imminent.”
Team of Ignoramuses. They Really Don't Know What They're Doing, Ctd. Vaughn Hillyard, et al., of MS NOW: "The Trump administration has cited Iran’s Tehran Research Reactor as a central justification for its military strikes, but has provided no evidence that the facility — built by the United States and used for civilian research for nearly six decades — was being used to develop nuclear weapons.... Multiple nuclear scientists and nonproliferation experts told MS NOW that the reactor does not have the capacity to serve as an easy conduit to a bomb as asserted by the administration.... [During negotiations with Iran,] the American negotiators, [Steve] Witkoff and Jared Kushner — who, according to a senior Middle East diplomat with knowledge of the talks, chose not to include nuclear technical experts in the negotiations — balked at Iran’s request to continue using 20%-enriched uranium at the reactor.... Several nuclear experts who spoke to MS NOW questioned the extent to which Witkoff and Kushner — who ... described the Iranian position to Trump — understood the technical details of the enrichment programs at the heart of the deliberations.”
White House to Be Rebranded as “Museum of the Narcissist.” Doug Mills & Larry Buchanan of the New York Times: “Over the last year, The New York Times has captured at least nine paintings, posters, memes, and even a mugshot outside the Oval Office,-[- all of Donald Trump --] that Mr. Trump added throughout the [White House]. Many of the selections are gifts from his supporters that highlight his political stature and reinforce the idea that Mr. Trump is invincible.... Never before has a sitting president displayed so much of his own image on the White House walls.” MB: I'm going to assume that you are a person who appreciates excellent portraiture, so I'm making this a gift link. Thanks to Akhilleus for the original link. See also his commentary in Monday's thread. (Also linked yesterday.)
Trump Team Continues Prepping to Rig Elections. Alan Feuer, et al., of the New York Times: “The F.B.I. has expanded its criminal investigation into purported irregularities in the 2020 presidential election, issuing a grand jury subpoena for reams of information about voting results in Maricopa County, Ariz., the largest and most influential county in the swing state, according to three people familiar with the matter. The subpoena was issued in recent days to the Arizona State Senate, which oversaw a sprawling but partisan audit of the vote result that was ordered by Senate Republicans in Maricopa County in the months after Donald J. Trump lost to Joseph R. Biden Jr.” (Also linked yesterday.) Politico's story is here.
Maria Sacchetti & N. Kirkpatrick of the Washington Post: “More than 4,000 people have been arrested in Minneapolis since the start of Operation Metro Surge in December, and federal judges and civil rights lawyers say many of those detentions broke the law. The Washington Post reviewed nearly 70 cases in which U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz ruled that the Trump administration had violated court orders. The court records offer the most detailed account yet on who officers arrested in Minneapolis and how they conducted arrests. The case files show how officers repeatedly detained people under a reinterpretation of a 1996 law that states that anyone in the United States illegally 'shall be detained' without bond, indefinitely, even when courts had ordered they be granted a bond hearing or set free. Most were quickly transferred to detention centers in Texas or Louisiana.” (Also linked yesterday.)
Travis Gettys of the Raw Story: "A former deputy [-- Madison Sheahan --] to outgoing Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem saddled the department with millions of dollars in wasted funding for vehicles that cannot be used. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are stashing away hundreds of pickup trucks and SUVs emblazoned with the agency's name, logo and motto, which agents say will hinder their efforts to apprehend undocumented migrants, reported the Washington Examiner. 'ICE has never had marked vehicles, said a source familiar with the purchases.... The 28-year-old Sheahan graduated from Ohio State in 2019 and left ICE in January to run for Congress in Ohio. Sources told the Examiner that Noem and DHS special government employee Corey Lewandowski signed off on her purchase order of the marked vehicles." Sources complained that the purchase was made without consulting the leaders of teams who would use the vehicles. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Uh, maybe they could paint out the identifying markings? Just a thought.
Amy Wang & Clara Morse of the Washington Post: “Rep. Andrew Ogles (R-Tennessee) wrote on social media Monday that 'Muslims don’t belong in American society,' becoming the latest Republican lawmaker to voice blatantly Islamophobic sentiments.... Ogles, a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, recently said he planned to introduce a bill that would ban immigration from certain Muslim countries. Over the weekend, he declared on X that 'Diversity is our weakness' and called for the deportation of even naturalized Muslim Americans. Ogles also railed against two men who are being investigated for bringing explosives to an anti-Islamic protest in New York [related stories linked below], though his history of making anti-Muslim posts goes back long before that incident.”
Douglas MacMillan & Aaron Schaffer of the Washington Post: “... as the Trump administration embarks on a $38 billion plan to convert industrial warehouses into a new breed of large-scale holding centers, it is turning to a crop of relatively untested businesses to rapidly build and operate the facilities.... Rather than holding most migrants in buildings owned and operated by private firms and outsourcing virtually all aspects of detention to those companies, as the U.S. has done for years, the government now plans to own many of the buildings itself and exert more control over their operations, DHS has said in its communications with local communities hosting the projects. The pivot may bolster the government’s leverage over the private detention firms.” (Also linked yesterday.)
Sitting in a courtroom on a Monday afternoon,
Going to the Justices' Debate. ~~~
~~~ Abbie VanSickle of the New York Times: Supreme Court Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Brett M. Kavanaugh “publicly sparred on Monday evening over how the court is handling a barrage of emergency requests to clear the way for Trump administration policies. The polite but forceful back-and-forth ... gave a rare glimpse into the justices’ sharply differing viewpoints about how to navigate repeated emergency requests by the Trump administration to greenlight its policies. Supreme Court justices deliver only occasional public remarks and appear together even more rarely, particularly across the ideological divide.... The ... [debate] came during an annual lecture series at a federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., and in front of a courtroom packed with spectators, including prominent federal judges who have handled cases involving Trump administration policies.” An AP report is here. MB: Every way you look at this, you lose.
Jonah Bromwich & Tracey Tully of the New York Times: “A judge on Monday declared the three-person leadership team [picked to replace Alina Habba] of the New Jersey federal prosecutor’s office to be unlawful and said ... [Donald] Trump’s insistence on handpicking U.S. attorneys showed that the White House cared more about personal control than public safety. The judge, Matthew W. Brann, was ruling on whether the three prosecutors who have led the New Jersey office since December were doing so lawfully. He also addressed the national trend in which the Justice Department fires judicially appointed prosecutors as soon as they take office. Using italics that demonstrated the heightened tenor of his ruling, he wrote that the Trump administration had shown through its statements and actions that it cared far more about who was running the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office 'than whether it is running at all.' Judge Brann pointedly said that the president’s continued reliance on unlawful mechanisms to appoint top federal prosecutors meant that “scores of dangerous criminals could have their cases dismissed or convictions eventually reversed.” ~~~
~~~ Politico's report is here. The 130-page opinion is here, published by the court, via Politico.
Mike Baker & Steven Rich of the New York Times: “The Times analysis found that 300 billionaires and their immediate family members donated more than $3 billion — 19 percent of all contributions — in federal elections in 2024, either directly or through political action committees. Five presidential elections ago, before the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling that lifted many remaining campaign finance restrictions, the share of billionaire spending was almost zero — 0.3 percent, to be precise.... Money at [the scale they give] can be game-changing in tight races.... Many of those billionaires are not only hoping to reshape the federal government, as Elon Musk did in the early months of ... [Donald] Trump’s second term, but to win influence in state legislatures, City Councils, school boards and courthouses.”
Robert McFadden of the New York Times: “Alexander P. Butterfield, who disclosed to the U.S. Senate and to a stunned nation the existence of Richard M. Nixon’s White House taping system, blowing the cover on the Watergate conspiracy and sealing the fate of the only American president to resign from office, died on Monday at home in the La Jolla section of San Diego. He was 99.” MB: The link is a gift link. Mr. Butterfield's testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee was among the most consequential Congressional testimony of the 20th century. If you were too young to experience Mr. Butterfield's revelatory Senate testimony, maybe the Times obituary will help. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
Clay Risen of the New York Times: “Bernard Lafayette Jr., a central figure in the civil rights movement of the 1960s who helped desegregate Nashville lunch counters; was imprisoned in Mississippi as part of the Freedom Rides; led early planning for the Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights in 1965; and coordinated the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., died on Thursday at his home in Tuskegee, Ala. He was 85. Dr. Lafayette played a key role in many of the events that defined the civil rights movement. Soft-spoken and bespectacled, he was known for his meticulous organizing skills and his commitment to nonviolence. He was a 19-year-old seminary student in Nashville when, early in 1960, he and his roommate John Lewis joined Diane Nash, James Bevel and others to start a sit-in campaign that led to the desegregation of the city’s downtown commercial district.” (Also linked yesterday.)
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California Congressional Race. Mariana Alfaro of the Washington Post: “Rep. Kevin Kiley (California) said Monday that he is immediately changing his party affiliation on the House’s official roster from Republican to independent, further complicating the ability of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) to manage the Republican Conference. Last week, Kiley said he would seek reelection as an independent. During a news conference, Kiley said he will continue to caucus with House Republicans 'for the remainder of this term' but pledged to be 'an independent voice.' It remains to be seen what practical effect his move will have, but it narrows the number of registered Republicans in the chamber to 217. Democrats hold 214 seats, and there are three vacancies. Kiley will be the only independent.” Politico's report is here.
New York. Praveena Somasundaram of the Washington Post: “Two young men accused of trying to detonate explosive devices during a protest outside the home of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Saturday have been charged with attempting to support a foreign terrorist group and using a weapon of mass destruction, federal prosecutors announced Monday. Officials said Emir Balat, 18, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, traveled to New York from Pennsylvania and tried to detonate two devices near protesters gathered for an anti-Islam rally near Gracie Mansion, the mayoral residence, where Mamdani lives with his wife, Rama Duwaji.” The New York Times story is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Chelsia Marcius of the New York Times: “The sight of a man igniting a homemade bomb then hurling it into a crowd of protesters stunned people in New York City, where no one has attempted to use an explosive device in a public place for nine years. The device, a jar wrapped in tape and filled with screws, nuts, bolts and fuses, was in fact a makeshift bomb packed with a cheap but highly volatile chemical compound used in terrorist attacks worldwide, local and federal authorities said on Monday. The device did not detonate. Neither did a second, similar homemade bomb that the man, a supporter of the Islamic State, dropped near a group of police officers keeping watch over an anti-Muslim rally on Saturday led by a right-wing provocateur, law enforcement officials said. No one was injured even as the devices emitted plumes of smoke that sent people running for cover at the protest in Manhattan, outside Gracie Mansion, the official residence of New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani.”
New York. Debra Kamin, et al., of the New York Times: “Three brothers, including two who were among the country’s most prominent real estate brokers, were convicted in Manhattan on Monday of engaging in a yearslong conspiracy to traffic women and girls for sex. The brothers — Tal and Oren Alexander, who regularly closed multimillion-dollar real estate deals in New York and elsewhere, and Alon Alexander, a security executive — were found guilty on every count they each faced, and all could now receive up to life in prison when the judge, Valerie E. Caproni, sentences them on Aug. 6. The verdict comes more than a month after the trial began in Federal District Court, where the jury heard weeks of emotional and often graphic testimony from 11 women who had accused the brothers of rape or sexual assault. The jurors deliberated for about 21 hours over three days.”
Ohio. Vimal Patel of the New York Times: “The president of Ohio State University has resigned after he disclosed to trustees that he had an 'inappropriate relationship,' the school said in a statement on Monday. The president, Walter Carter Jr., who has led the school for two years, said in a statement that the relationship was with 'someone seeking public resources' and that he had 'made a mistake in allowing inappropriate access to Ohio State leadership to support her personal business.'... Ben Johnson, an Ohio State spokesman, said the board of trustees was alerted to the matter by 'someone outside the university.' He said the university 'will investigate potential concerns regarding public resources.'” (Also linked yesterday.)
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16 comments:
Jeanne,
Thanks for your note of concern for my mental well being. It ain't easy being sane these days, but I find enough non-treason watching interests to maintain a certain equilibrium. Rocket and I have our twice a day walks and with nicer weather, I've been trimming the rose bushes and thinking about lime and fertilizer for the yard. I just bought a book of dog poems by Billy Collins. I read some to Rocket who must be thinking "Why aren't you reading one about me?" He's rarely diffident, but he knows when daddy has the books out, it will be a while between treats or walks, so it's couch time. Then there's various cooking experiments, but nothing so awful as that time I tried a chocolate omelet in my early days of crazy kitchen concoctions. So it's not all res horribiles in this annus horribilis. Life is still mostly good. Hey, it's better than the alternative.
On "Not stupid rules of engagement"...
The mantra of Drunk Pete. Spoken like the mindless, vicious thug he is. When I was still quite young, I wondered about the notion of rules in war (I suppose I wasn't THAT young). But it occurred to me that even as kids we had our own sort of rules of engagement. Kids have a natural tendency to fairness. For instance, in our various games, the little kids would get extra breaks (they'd get four or five chances to hit or kick the ball instead of being out in three strikes). Even in tussles, you'd never kick a kid when he was down. If someone got hurt, you'd make sure he or she was okay before going back to the game.
But there were always those few kids who had no interest in rules. They were the kids who put rocks in snowballs, or would cheat at everything. They'd sucker punch you, just for fun. These were also the kids who were eventually disinvited from any and all games. They ain't gonna play fair, screw them. And we never felt bad about it because they were such jerks.
A lot of those kids are now working for Fat Hitler. He was one of those kids. So was Drunk Pete. These were the cheaters, the sucker punchers, the rock in the snowball kids. Only now they have much bigger weapons, and still don't believe in rules.
So why do we have rules in war? Same reason we had 'em when we were kids. Sure, you have disagreements, occasional fights, even pretty big ones, but as long as you fought fair, both sides could shake hands later and be able to have fun again the next day.
If you fight a scorched earth war, look to destroy everything and everybody, there's little chance of coming back from that. And trying to put a country back together after such catastrophes can take decades, maybe generations. Fatty sez "We will bomb them so bad nothing will be left!" Drunk Pete and his thugs torpedo a ship with no armaments, full of non combatants, then leave the survivors to drown and brag about it later.
The Geneva Conventions were drawn up to ensure that some level of humanitarian concern, especially for civilians, is maintained, that unnecessarily draconian measures are kept to a minimum, that methods causing excessive suffering, chemical weapons, torture, etc. are not used. Military discipline is necessary to stave off compete anarchy, rape, torture, infliction of savagery on a population that will likely remember such treatment later, with unpredictable results.
But Drunk Pete doesn't care for all that. That stuff is too woke for a Lethal War Fighter like ol' Whiskey Pete and his fat coward of a boss. Human suffering is the point. Excessive savagery is the goal. And this mindset carries over to the way MAGA conducts itself politically.
"Russell Vought, the architect of Project 2025 who’s gleefully overseen the firing of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, shattering their lives and families while throwing the American government into crisis, apparently gets an erection thinking of them crying themselves to sleep at night worrying about getting thrown out on the street with their children because they can’t pay the rent:
We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down… We want to put them in trauma.
Yeah, trauma. It’s what today’s Republicans love, so long as it happens to other people. It’s their drug of choice."
They don't just want to win. They crave annihilation. They shoot for total destruction. It's the way of the mindless savage. The Trump Way. The Republican Way.
We may survive all of this. But the scars will remain forever. We have rules because this what humans who strive for decency do. Clearly, these fucking people are less than human. They're still putting rocks in snowballs.
Don't Eat There
Donnie's restaurants adhere to the rules of food safety as well as he does.
"‘Affected By Pests’: Trump’s Chicago Hotel Restaurants Failed Health Inspections
In December, city officials flagged flies, faulty dishwashers and wastewater-flooded floors."
Gullicism
"Many Americans believe that vaccines are unsafe, but will jab themselves full of performance enhancers. They think seed oils cause chronic disease, but beef tallow is healthy. They’ll say you can’t trust federally insured banks, but you can trust the millionaires who want you to invest in their volatile vaporware crypto tokens. They think food additives are toxic but support an administration removing all restrictions on pumping pollutants into the air and water. They’ll insist that you can’t trust scientists, because they’re part of the conspiracy. The podcaster selling you his special creatine gummies, though? He seems trustworthy.
Part of what’s going on here is that people want a simple explanation for their troubles in a complicated world. Autism? It’s vaccines. Disease? Some foods are “poison.” Trouble with your kid? Must be brainwashed by … novels? Video games? Rap music? (This one depends on the decade.) The One True Reason trains a mind not only to reject complexity but to accept bigotry—which is why it’s so ideal for reactionary politics."
Waldman on this war....
https://substack.com/home/post/p-190510424
The Times displayed a similar chart about support for previous wars that also did not list Vietnam. I wondered about that and concluded that conflict's beginnings were too hard to locate. We eased into it over years. Waldman kinda speaks to that.
Rachel lays out the war in a way that just makes me sick. We are being led by war criminals who are aiding and abetting the enemy:
https://youtu.be/geWyWoYi6OU?si=E--4I-qNlU-DZyms
A fat coward tells oil tanker crews to put their lives on the line so he can look good.
Boy, is this rich. Here's the blowsy, coddled old codger safe in the Führerbunker, a craven coward who five times did a hippity hop around the draft with a phony bone spurs note from his old man's doctor, ordering oil tanker crews to show some guts.
"These ships should go through the Strait of Hormuz, and show some guts. There’s nothing to be afraid of. They have no navy. We sunk all their ships". Luckily for him, Fox, when they replayed that quote, edited out all the "buck, buck, bucks" from chicken Donald's order.
So they have no ships? We've only heard of one Iranian navy vessel being sunk. There may have been more, but even if most of the Iranian fleet had been incapacitated, there are plenty of other ways to damage or even sink an oil tanker. The Fat Fascist likely doesn't remember (or never knew about) the USS Cole. In 2000, the Cole was struck by two Al Qaeda operatives in a speed boat loaded with explosives. The attack blew a huge hole in the side of what was then a brand new missile destroyer killing 17 sailors.
Oil tankers are not exactly the most maneuverable ships on the ocean. Even if they saw a speed boat approaching. there's not much they could do to avoid it. And then there's the possibility of an RPG attack from a small boat. There are any number of ways tankers could be severely damaged or sunk. But Brave Boy Fatty sez never mind all that. It's making me look bad, Me, Donald the God!
And aside from his cowardly avoidance of the draft, leave us not forget that Brave Boy Fatty was so afraid that a little rain would muss that bird's nest on his empty head that he ran away from a WWI centenary ceremony at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France. Ooooh, Brave Sir Donald.
But okay, everyone else should "show some guts" for his benefit.
RAS,
The gullicists' success can also be attributed to the attack by the right, and especially by the entirety of the Fat Hitler Reich, on knowledge, on education, on expertise and experience. When Polio Bob sez "Trust your gut, not your doctor", he's treading the path laid out by the clowns and dunces who routinely suggest that the Joe Plumbers of the world are better sources of information on, say, nuclear power, than a trained physicist, that those who brag "I'm not a doctor", should be given more credibility than an actual MD with decades of experience treating whatever malady they're on about.
It's the apotheosis of the dim.
NiskyGuy,
A couple of things. First, were this a Democratic administration mired in a war in which our capabilities were being targeted with invaluable assistance from a sworn enemy like Russia, and that Democratic president got on the horn to make a "Hey, howzitgoin'" call to the Russian leader, heads would explode in the Treason media echo chamber. Calls for impeachment would be heard from the space station. But Fat Hitler does it and.....crickets.
First of all, why is he calling Putin? Is he telling him to knock that shit off? Highly, highly unlikely, because it's still all a game to Fatty.
Second, why aren't PoT members of congress demanding an explanation?
War criminals is right. It's one thing to be guilty of war crimes against your opponent, it's a much different thing when you are guilty of fucking up your own side.
Natl Cancer Institute Hasn’t Made Any Grants In 2026
"For Johns Hopkins, the first shot from the Trump Administration came on February 28, 2025. That day, a press release from the Department of Justice arrived, saying that the Federal Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism would be visiting ten campuses, including Hopkins, to investigate potential violations of federal law. Nobody ever visited the university, but subsequent shots had far more severe consequences.
The federal government terminated eight hundred million dollars in grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Hopkins had been administering; this led the university to lay off more than two thousand employees. The slowdown and termination of scientific-research grants at Hopkins resulted in an additional financial hit of five hundred million dollars last year. Nationally, N.I.H. grants to universities are down by more than ninety per cent in the current fiscal year; during that time, the National Cancer Institute hasn’t made a single grant."
Waste, fraud and abuse.
"The Pentagon spent millions of dollars on luxury crabs and other food items in a single month as part of a frantic end-of-year spending spree to maintain its immense funding. An analysis by the government watchdog Open The Books found that the department led by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spent more than $93 billion in September 2025, the end of the fiscal year, on various grants and contracts.
Included in this spending was $2 million on Alaskan king crab last September alone, as well as $6.9 million on lobster tail and $1 million on salmon. The Defense Department also spent nearly $140,000 on doughnuts, $124,000 on ice cream machines, $26,000 on sushi preparation tables, and a whopping $15.1 million on ribeye steak."
These are the fuckers who scream that people on food stamps sometimes splurge on candy and sodas. All those steaks and lobsters could have fed people who actually need it. Or maybe they could have used that money for the life saving protein supplements that USAID was sending around the world to keep people alive. The Worst People.
This may where you got the number eight from Marie.
"Pentagon: 140 US Troops Injured In War, 8 “Severely”
About 140 US troops have been wounded in the Iran war, including 8 severely and 108 who returned to duty, Pentagon says."
One can only imagine the guffaws and knee slapping going on in the Kremlin when Putin comes out of his office and says to the boys "You'll never guess who called me to say I should stop bombing Ukraine, and then to ask if we were still on for the Trump Hotel in Moscow? That fat idiot in the White House! hahahahaha! Here we are helping Iran to fuck him up and he calls and says 'Hey, how's it going?' What a moron!"
Red Socialists
For what it's worth Iran doesn't need a navy to lock up Hormuz. It's so narrow that mobile land based systems can hit targets and marine mines can slow traffic to a crawl. As with any offensive system, those can be knocked out by counter-battery and detectors. But they can gum things up a long time with carefull deployment.
@RAS: Thanks. I found the 8th soldier just now: 26-year-old Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington of Glendale, Ky., who died Sunday from injuries sustained during the March 1 attack at a Saudi air base.
I did look a couple of times the other day, and could not find a story about the 8th soldier. Yesterday I saw another on-air report about Sgt. Pennington but -- at least the part of the story I heard -- the report did not identify him as the 8th victim, so I thought he was the 7th. I've linked a story above -- published yesterday -- about Sgt. Pennington's death.
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