Graham Bowley & Rachel Parsons of the New York Times: “A civil jury in California on Monday found that Bill Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted Donna Motsinger, a former waitress at a Sausalito restaurant, after escorting her to one of his comedy shows in 1972. The jury awarded Ms. Motsinger $59.25 million in damages, a judgment that comes as Mr. Cosby, by his own account, has run into financial difficulties. But an expert witness her lawyers called to the stand before the jury’s final decision estimated that Mr. Cosby was worth roughly $128 million. The decision, on the third day of deliberations, further tarnished the reputation of a man, 88, whose standing as one of America’s most beloved entertainers dissolved as dozens of women came forward in recent years to accuse him of sexual misconduct. The jury award came in two separate decisions. It first awarded Ms. Motsinger $19.25 million to compensate her for her pain and suffering and then later levied an additional $40 million in punitive damages.”
The “Foundational Flaw”: A Wish Is Not a Plan. Mark Mazzetti, et al., of the New York Times: “Within days of the war’s beginning, said David Barnea, the Mossad chief, his service would likely be able to galvanize the Iranian opposition — igniting riots and other acts of rebellion that could even lead to the collapse of Iran’s government. Mr. Barnea also presented the proposal to senior Trump administration officials during a visit to Washington in mid-January. Mr. Netanyahu adopted the plan. Despite doubts about its viability among senior American officials and some officials in other Israeli intelligence agencies, both he and ... [Donald] Trump seemed to embrace an optimistic outlook.... 'Take over your government: It will be yours to take,' Mr. Trump told Iranians in his initial address at the war’s start.... The belief that Israel and the United States could help instigate widespread revolt was a foundational flaw in the preparations for a war that has spread across the Middle East. Instead of imploding from within, Iran’s government has dug in and escalated the conflict....” Thanks to RAS for the link.
Joe Rennison of the New York Times: “Oil prices tumbled and stocks jumped on Monday after ... [Donald] Trump backed away from a threat to strike Iranian energy infrastructure, saying the United States and Iran had held 'productive' talks.... Despite Tehran responding to Mr. Trump by saying that no such talks were taking place, the gains in stocks and drop in oil mostly held.” MB: Trump must get such a kick out of watching how he can manipulate world markets, and whaddaya bet he and his buddies also are making money off the manipulations they know are coming.
Paul Krugman (podcast transcript): "It’s Monday morning. Donald Trump has, at least for the time being, called off plans to bomb Iran’s civilian infrastructure. He has done so because, according to him, highly productive negotiations are underway involving the government of Iran, an invisible six-foot white rabbit, and his Canadian girlfriend.... And shortly afterwards, the Iranian government and Iranian state media said, no, they aren’t. This is not happening. I’m not going to say that Iranian state media is necessarily a credible source, but the odds are that they are in fact telling the truth and the President of the United States is either lying or fantasizing or both.... There are three important reasons to believe he might be making this stuff up." Read on for Krugman's reasoning. Also too, I note that Krugman, like me, suspects there might be some insider trading going on here. What a cynic! ~~~
~~~ Update: Three cheers for cynics. Via Paul Campos. Thanks to RAS for the link: ~~~
In a Trumpdates post, the New York Times is liveblogging developments in today's Trump fiascos. There's this: “Agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement began to be deployed at airports across the country Monday morning, but it was unclear whether their presence was helping or exacerbating long security lines. Between 100 and 150 ICE officers were sent to the airports to assist Transportation Security Administration agents, according to a U.S. official.... The official said that the ICE agents were not expected to make immigration arrests as part of this assistance, though that appeared to conflict with President Trump’s statement about the agents on Sunday. Despite the deployment of the agents, along with a collision and subsequent airport closure at LaGuardia Airport overnight, flight delays and cancellations were minimal at major U.S. airports on Monday morning, according to FlightAware, which tracks aviation data. Still, hours of waiting at T.S.A. checkpoints threatened to cause many travelers to miss their flights.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: In a couple of photos I've seen, agents are not wearing masks. But if they're wearing name tags or numbers, those tags are on their backs; there's no sign of them in the photos.
Real Journalists Sue Trump Ministry of Truth. Minho Kim & Zach Montague of the New York Times: “Journalists at Voice of America sued Trump administration officials on Monday, accusing them of infringing on reporters’ First Amendment rights by turning the news group, which is federally funded, into a propaganda 'mouthpiece' that published content favorable to ... [Donald] Trump without legally mandated editorial balance. The journalists claimed in their complaint that Mr. Trump’s political appointees had interfered with editorial decisions of Voice of America reporters and editors, violating a safeguard Congress set out in law called the 'firewall' that protects their independence. Mr. Trump and his appointees, the lawsuit claimed, viewed such statutory requirements with 'antipathy and contempt.' The journalists said in the complaint that one official, Hui Jing, demanded 'loyalty' to the Trump administration if reporters wanted to 'keep their jobs.' The administration, the lawsuit said, is trying 'to use its governmental authority to control V.O.A.’s substantive output — the content of its broadcasts and publications — by suppressing coverage of events that it wishes had not occurred, and, separately, by directing that its own partisan messages be passed off to viewers and listeners as “news.”’” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Oh, now I understand right where Trump got the ironic name for his scammy social media site "Truth Social."
Sahil Kapur, et al., of NBC News: “On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., discussed an off-ramp with ... Donald Trump to reopen TSA and end the long lines and delays at airports. It would fund all of the Department of Homeland Security except for ICE, which Democrats have refused to support without new limitations on immigration enforcement operations.... ICE would be funded separately by Republicans in a party-line 'reconciliation' bill that can pass without the need for any Democratic support later in the year.... But Trump rejected it — as he made clear in a Truth Social post Sunday night. 'I don’t think we should make any deal with the Crazy, Country Destroying, Radical Left Democrats unless, and until, they Vote with Republicans to pass “THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,’” Trump wrote, while instead calling on Republicans to 'Kill the Filibuster, and stay in D.C. for Easter, if necessary.'” Related articles linked earlier today. ~~~
~~~ Marie: In case you are wondering why Trump wouldn't accept the interim deal Thune suggested, Akhilleus has the answer in today's Comments. Not only is Akhilleus' answer accurate, it is a sort of all-purpose answer that fits many a head-scratching question about Trump's weird decisions. Here ya go: "Because he believes in chaos."
~~~ Air Travelers: Nice People. Immigrants: Criminals. Alexander Bolton of the Hill: Donald “ Trump on Monday prominently rejected a core Democratic demand in the negotiations to reopen the Department of Homeland Security by declaring that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers should be allowed to wear masks to protect their identities during enforcement operations. Trump’s declaration on Truth Social that he is 'a BIG proponent of ICE wearing masks as they search for, and are forced to deal with, hardened criminals' may derail any prospect of getting a deal with Democrats this week.... The president clarified, however, that he would not want ICE officers to wear masks if they are deployed to airports to help ease the massive congestion at security lines caused by high rates of absenteeism among TSA workers during the shutdown. 'I would greatly appreciate, however, NO MASKS, when helping our Country out of the Democrat caused MESS at the airports, etc,' Trump posted.”
Your Tax Dollars Blowing in the Wind. Evan Halper & Jake Spring of the Washington Post: “The Trump administration reached an agreement to pay $1 billion to French energy firm TotalEnergies to stop developing two offshore wind farms off the coast of New York and North Carolina, instead directing the investments to oil and gas projects. Trump has campaigned against offshore wind for more than a decade, eventually losing a battle to stop a farm from being built off the coast from a golf course he owns in Scotland in 2015. He has called turbines ugly, expensive and dangerous to animals, though offshore wind proponents say those concerns are unfounded and that stopping any energy projects will only make electricity prices surge further.”
Confederate Supremes Lean Toward Not Counting Late-Arriving Mail-in Ballots. The New York Times liveblogged a Supreme Court hearing on a Mississippi election law. From the pinned item at 1:30 pm ET: “The Supreme Court on Monday appeared poised to reject Mississippi’s mail-in ballot law, a decision that could upend mail-in voting throughout the country. The justices appeared divided along partisan lines, with the court’s six conservatives expressing deep skepticism with Mississippi’s law during arguments held on Monday. The state’s law allows ballots to be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day but received within five business days afterward. At least 18 other states and territories also allow ballots to be counted so long as they are postmarked by Election Day.” MB: Let's face it; this is an anti-democracy court.
New York. Patrick McGeehan of the New York Times: “... hundreds of members of [New York University]’s faculty walked off the job over a contract dispute. A union representing about 950 full-time faculty members who are not on track to earn tenure began their strike at 11 a.m., several minutes after the university’s lawyers responded to the union’s final offer, said Brendan Hogan, a spokesman for the union, the Contract Faculty United-UAW. Mr. Hogan said that there was not time to review the latest counteroffer before a revised strike deadline of 11 a.m., so picketing began outside the John A. Paulson Center on Mercer Street. He said that the talks had not broken off and that the strike would continue until the bargaining committee had reached terms that it wanted to present to the members for a ratification vote.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: There should not be 950 full-time faculty who are not on a tenure track. In a university located in a city like New York, there could be an excuse for, say, a dozen or so "celebrities" and experts who might for some reason have voluntarily taken time off from their real professions to teach for a year at NYU. And those "celebrated" professors are probably well-paid. But 950? No way. NYU is exploiting these people, most of whom probably had to have Ph.D.s to get their poorly-paid jobs.
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⭐The TACO King Plays Songs of Peace! Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump said Monday the United States is negotiating with Iran to end the three-week-old war, declaring that the two sides had two days of 'very good and productive conversations' that will continue throughout this week. It was the president’s first acknowledgment of high-level talks between the two sides since the United States and Israel unleashing a withering bombardment of Iran on Feb. 28.... Trump said Iran and the United States have been negotiating a 'COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST,' in a post to Truth Social. He said that he had told the U.S. military to postpone strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure for five days, 'SUBJECT TO THE SUCCESS OF THE ONGOING MEETINGS AND DISCUSSIONS.' This is a developing story. It will be updated.” MB: Maybe those war crimes charges got to him (see reports & opinions linked below).
The New York Times' live updates of developments in the Iran war are here. From the pinned item at 4:45 am ET: “Residents reported blackouts across large parts of Tehran after heavy airstrikes struck multiple areas of Iran’s capital early Monday. It came shortly after Israel announced it would target Tehran’s infrastructure, without providing more details.... [Donald] Trump warned that if the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil shipping route, was not fully reopened by Monday night, the United States would strike Iranian power plants. Iran dismissed the ultimatum, saying that such attacks could lead to retaliation against energy facilities in countries hosting American troops, as well as desalination plants that serve as a lifeline for much of the Middle East. Tehran said the strait would be 'completely closed' if its energy infrastructure were attacked.” ~~~
~~~ The AP's live updates are here. The Guardian's story, by Jon Henley & Lorenzo Tondo, on the Strait of Hormuz standoff is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: An expert discussing the fiasco on MS NOW yesterday said that purposely hitting civilian targets was a war crime, so what Israel is doing and what Trump says he will do tonight constitutes a war crime. I didn't know that, so I asked Art Intel about it. Art said, "... the purposely hitting of civilian infrastructure is a war crime under international humanitarian law. The laws of war, including the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, strictly prohibit directing attacks against civilian objects." So there's that. This also means, of course, that Putin commits war crimes nearly every day. And Trump wants to reward him for it. Bigly. ~~~
[Donald Trump] overestimated his ability to control the events once he unleashed this torrent of violence. -- Geoffrey Corn, former military lawyer ~~~
~~~ Collin Binkley of the AP: “At war with Iran..., Donald Trump is cycling through an increasingly desperate list of options as he searches for a solution to the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. He has jumped from calls to secure the waterway through diplomatic means to lifting sanctions and now escalating to a direct threat against civilian infrastructure in the Islamic Republic. Trump and his allies insist they were always prepared for Iran to block the strait, yet the Republican president’s erratic strategy has fueled criticism that he is grasping for answers after going to war without a clear exit plan.... Over the course of about a week, Trump has repeatedly shifted his approach on the crucial waterway for global oil and gas transport.... 'Trump has no plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, so he is threatening to attack Iran’s civil power plants,' said Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass, adding: 'This would be a war crime.'” MB: He really doesn't know what he's doing. ~~~
We’re literally putting money into the pockets of the very nations that we are fighting right now. We’ve never seen this level of incompetence in war-making in this country’s history. -- Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), on "Meet the Press," Sunday ~~~
~~~ Alex Nguyen of Mother Jones: “'Sometimes you have to escalate to de-escalate.' That’s how Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defended Donald Trump’s threats against Iranian leaders and infrastructure on Sunday, insisting on NBC’s Meet the Press that such bluster is 'the only language the Iranians understand.'... Bessent doubled down on defending Trump’s actions on Sunday, telling Meet the Press host Kristen Welker repeatedly that she has 'terrible framing' when she questioned the administration’s plans in Iran. 'We are jiu-jitsuing the Iranians,' he insisted. 'We are using their own oil against them.'” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Uh, really? Nguyen writes, “Last week, Bessent announced that the administration was lifting sanctions on approximately 140 million barrels of Iranian crude currently stranded on tankers, in an attempt to relieve skyrocketing oil prices. On March 12, Bessent said the administration was temporarily lifting sanctions on Russian oil also stranded at sea that were imposed because of its war on Ukraine.” If this be jiu-jitsu, Trump is lying flat on his back, pinned by a chokehold. ~~~
~~~ Phil Gordon on X: "When Obama sent Iran $400m + $1.3bn in interest in 2016 Trump called it 'insane' and he and others spent a decade mocking the idea of 'pallets of cash' even though it was Iran's own money, American prisoners were released, courts were likely to require the U.S. payment, and Iran had just agreed to significant and verified reductions and restrictions on its nuclear program for 15+ years. Now Trump is giving Iran up to ten times that amount of revenue -- one of the most significant measures of sanctions relief provided to the Islamic Republic since its founding -- in exchange for marginal and temporary relief from the big increase in oil prices his actions have caused, without any concessions from Tehran, and even as Iran continues to target the United States, its allies, and world oil supplies. No way to read as anything other than desperate recognition of the situation Trump's own actions have created and the lack of available alternatives for dealing with it." Via Heather Cox Richardson. ~~~
~~~ Paul Krugman, podcast transcript: "[Saturday], Donald Trump threatened Iran with basically a massive war crime, saying that if they don’t open the Strait of Hormuz by 48 hours from the time of the post, which would be tomorrow, that he will order attacks on Iranian power plants, on civilian infrastructure, which is, you know, it is a war crime, not something that has never been done, not something that the United States has never done, but not something that you kind of just openly announce — that we’re going to try and terrorize you with this bombing campaign. But at the same time, the United States is allowing Iran, and only Iran, to export oil, shipping it out through the Strait of Hormuz.... Now that is wild.... It’s not completely crazy, but what it is is it’s a demonstration of incredible weakness..., presumably because the Trump administration is afraid of the political backlash from higher gas prices.... They’re willing to drop bombs and all of that, but they’re not willing to accept economic pain in the United States, even enough to shut off the revenue flow to the Iranian government." Includes video of the podcast. ~~~
~~~ This would be a good time, officers, soldiers & sailors, to check out that video by six Democratic members of Congress reminding you to refuse illegal orders. ~~
Erica Green of the New York Times: Woodrow Wilson, “the first Southerner to win the presidency after the Civil War..., packed his cabinet with white supremacists, whom he allowed to segregate the federal work force and dismiss, demote and demean Black employees. He hosted a screening of 'The Birth of a Nation,' a film glorifying the Ku Klux Klan.... More than a century later..., historians and critics of ... [Donald] Trump ... see distinct parallels between Wilson’s abandonment of promises to Black Americans and Mr. Trump’s policies and politics since he took office a second time last year. Mr. Trump’s gutting of the federal government, his assailing of diversity policies and his occasional use of racist imagery have made Wilson’s administration especially relevant now, they say.... Mr. Trump’s treatment of Black Americans is not the only parallel to Mr. Wilson’s presidency, historians say.” The link is a gift link. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: One big difference between Wilson & Trump is that Wilson had a distinguished career as an historian & political scientist & as president of Princeton, whereas Trump is as dumb as a post. So Wilson had no excuse for his bigotry; Trump's excuse is stupidity. Green points to other parallels between Wilson & Trump. Maybe there's another one on the horizon: in his second term, Wilson had a debilitating stroke. As Art Intel puts it, "First Lady Edith Wilson acted as a 'secret president,' controlling access to her bedridden husband and deciding which matters of state to bring to his attention. She managed the executive branch's day-to-day work until March 1921, making her a de facto chief executive." What if something happened to Donald & his foreign-born wife became our "secret president"?
Julia Jacobs of the New York Times: “A statue of Christopher Columbus was installed on the grounds of the White House early Sunday morning, as part of ... [Donald] Trump’s effort to position the explorer as a hero after monuments to him were removed across the country. The statue is a replica of one that protesters in Baltimore tore down and dumped into the city’s Inner Harbor in the summer of 2020. The statue’s marble pieces were retrieved from the harbor, and a Maryland artist used them to guide the creation of the replica. The new statue was erected sometime overnight on the north side of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, facing Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, which houses offices for White House staff and is next to the West Wing. The statue is behind fencing....
“The toppling of the original statue stemmed from the racial justice protests that erupted after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. More than 30 statues were dismantled in the span of four months, either torn down by protesters or ordered removed by officials. Those who have opposed the lionization of Columbus have focused on his role as a slave trader of Indigenous Taíno people; on the brutal campaign of subjugation waged by Spanish colonists; and on the decimation of the Indigenous population, through violence and disease, in the century and a half after his voyages.” The AP report is here.
So Much for “Platonic Perfection”! Threat Level: Code Deep Orange. Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post: Donald “Trump is the most significant threat to the city’s architectural and design legacy since British forces burned the Capitol and White House during the War of 1812.... Washington has a composed geometry built up from significant details like [an] elliptical drive [designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., which Trump is about to obliterate to make room for his ballroom]. As with the diagonal avenues that connect symbolically important circles, squares and civic landmarks, the Platonic perfection of this shape is best appreciated from the air. But it is a vital reminder of the care taken, over the past 200 years, in the design of the capital city, and the deference paid to a set of aesthetic and cultural values that came out of the Enlightenment, including a love of symmetry, repetition, iterative patterns and a fine balance between grandeur and grandiosity.... [Trump's constructions and alterations] would ... manifest in stone, cement and steel a vision of the city fundamentally at odds with the democratic ideals of the city’s founders, the stewards of its expansion in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the vigilance of its latter-day defenders against shabby development, cheapness and commercialization.” The link is a gift link.
Cheyanne Daniels of Politico: “House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said ... Donald Trump could get 'somebody killed' after the president accused Democrats of being the country’s 'greatest enemy' after Iran. On Sunday, the president posted, 'Now with the death of Iran, the greatest enemy America has is the Radical Left, Highly Incompetent, Democrat Party!' Trump also said Saturday that 'Radical Left Democrats have hurt so many people with their vicious and uncaring ways' and that 'Fascist Democrats will never protect America.' In an interview with CNN’s State of the Union, Jeffries replied, Donald Trump should keep his reckless mouth shut before he gets somebody killed.'” Good for Jeffries. (Also linked yesterday.)
Matthew Goldstein, et al., of the New York Times: “The Wall Street titan Leon Black paid Jeffrey Epstein $170 million for what he said was tax and estate work.... The millions of pages of Epstein-related emails and other documents that the Justice Department released this year offer a potential explanation for the size of the payments: Mr. Epstein essentially served as a fixer whose services went beyond modernizing Mr. Black’s finances or reducing his taxes.... Mr. Epstein suggested ways to obscure millions of dollars that Mr. Black paid to women, as well as to Mr. Epstein himself. He brainstormed about how to avoid taxes on some of the payments.... [And more.] The recently released documents, which include some of Mr. Black’s financial records, have intensified congressional scrutiny of his relationship with Mr. Epstein and whether it crossed ethical or legal boundaries.” MB: How Pam Bondi could say with a straight face that there was no evidence in the Epstein files of wrongdoing by third parties is beyond me. Since when isn't tax evasion a criminal activity?
Goon Squads Coming to an Airport Near You. Erica Green, et al., of the New York Times: “Tom Homan, the White House border czar, confirmed on Sunday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents would be deployed to U.S. airports on Monday, casting the operation largely as an effort to ease long lines that have caused frustration among travelers during one of the busiest travel seasons. ICE personnel, including agents from Homeland Security Investigations, are planning to be at 14 airports, according to a document obtained by The New York Times. The airports span the country, including Kennedy and LaGuardia in New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, New Orleans, Houston and Phoenix.
“The agents are expected to conduct tasks to free up Transportation Security Administration agents to handle processing travelers, according to an official from the Homeland Security Department, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the location of ICE agents.... [Donald] Trump announced the measure on Saturday, first as a threat aimed at pressuring congressional Democrats to agree to a deal to fund the Homeland Security Department, which includes the T.S.A., and then as an aggressive operation. He said on social media that agents would 'do security like no one has ever seen before,' which would include 'the immediate arrest of all illegal immigrants who have come into our Country.'” An NBC News report is here. A Salon story is here.
~~~ Marie: Here again, threats of violence and violence are Trump's idea of “negotiating.” Compromising with Democrats? Faggedaboudit. Wait, wait. He gets worse: ~~~
~~~ Jennifer Scholtes, et al., of Politico: “The shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security is at risk of shattering the record for the longest-ever funding lapse for any federal agency if ... Donald Trump and congressional Democrats can’t strike a deal this week. Lawmakers are scheduled to take a two-week recess for Passover and Easter starting Friday.... Trump threw a curveball into the rekindled talks Sunday night when he declared on Truth Social he would not back any deal unless it includes the GOP’s partisan elections bill, the SAVE America Act. Senators, Trump said, should 'lump everything together as one, and VOTE!!!... Kill the Filibuster, and stay in D.C. for Easter, if necessary,'.... A bipartisan group of lawmakers met twice in the Capitol late last week with Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan. Negotiators continued to talk over the weekend, after the White House laid out an expanded offer Friday that included changes to DHS immigration enforcement tactics — the crux of the shutdown fight. 'We’ll see if they can land something,' [Majority Leader John] Thune said in an interview Sunday before Trump delivered his ultimatum.” ~~~
~~~ Heather Cox Richardson puts Trump's goon-squad move into context. Richardson is very good at this bigger-picture analysis.
“Since his confirmation in February 2025, [Robert F.] Kennedy [Jr.] has taken particular aim at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a federal agency charged with safeguarding the nation’s public health. He has called the C.D.C. 'the most corrupt agency at H.H.S. and maybe the government' and vigorously defended mass terminations carried out by Elon Musk’s DOGE. At least 2,400 employees, or 18 percent of the C.D.C. staff, have been fired or have resigned since January 2025.... Kennedy wants to move large parts of the agency to a new entity, the Administration for a Healthy America, while leaving the C.D.C. to focus on monitoring infectious diseases. The secretary’s critics say that his real goal is not to reform the agency but to dismantle the nation’s vaccination programs, in which the C.D.C. plays a key part.... The civil servants who spoke to me worry that ... a century’s worth of expertise is being lost — leaving Americans increasingly exposed to a wide range of health threats.” MB: Interlandi gathered citations from a lot of horrified former staffers. This is one of those annoying “interactive” articles that I have trouble scrolling thru. ~~~
~~~ Interlandi wrote a “takeaways” report, also for the magazine, which is easier to read and highlights her findings: “Communications were ‘hijacked’... [;] Amid a measles outbreak, Kennedy promoted unproven remedies instead of vaccines... [;] Kennedy replaced the C.D.C.’s vaccine experts with people who share his views ... [;] The agency has been left without a permanent director for most of the past year.
Kara Voght of the Washington Post reports on the annual Gridiron dinner in Washington, D.C., which took place last night. Neither Trump nor his sidekick attended, but Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker was there & -- unlike Trump -- knows how to tell self-deprecating jokes. Journalists did sketches, including this song parody:
This land is Greenland, this land is Trump’s land,
From Nova Scotia to the Faroe Islands,
From the shrinking glaciers to the melting ice sheet,
This land was made for Trump to seize. (Also linked yesterday.)
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New York. From a New York Times liveblog at 5:00 am ET: “A collision involving an Air Canada regional jet and a Port Authority fire truck shut down all flights at LaGuardia Airport until 2 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration said, disrupting operations at one of the nation’s busiest domestic airports. A New York Times journalist at the airport early Monday saw police vehicles and fire trucks next to a white Air Canada Express plane with a sheared-off nose on the runway. A damaged truck lay on its side nearby. There was no immediate confirmation of deaths or injuries. The disruption quickly rippled across the region’s travel system. More than 400 flights were canceled early Monday, and New York City officials warned of road closures and traffic delays around the airport, urging drivers to avoid the area.” ~~~
Claire Moses: “The two pilots of the Air Canada Express plane that collided with a vehicle on the runway at LaGuardia have died, according to Kathryn Garcia, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.... Forty-one passengers and crew members were taken to the hospital, according to [Ms.] ... Garcia.... Thirty-two have been released from the hospital as of Monday morning. Others were seriously injured.”
of the New York Times: “As the Democratic presidential contest heated up in 2015, it fell to President Barack Obama’s political strategist [David Plouffe] to tell Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. ... he should not run for president because he could not win.... As the vice president mulled jumping into the race, he was grieving the death of his son Beau Biden from cancer and was many months behind the two main candidates, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders.... Mr. Plouffe shared his account of those discussions with researchers from the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, which is posting the first installment of its Obama presidential oral history on Monday morning.... Mr. Biden was upset that his two-time ticket-mate would not support him in 2016. To this day, some of Mr. Biden’s confidants maintain that he would have won, which would have kept Mr. Trump out of the White House and changed history.” The link is a gift link. ~~~
~~~ Marie: This sure sounds like conversations Obama should have had with Biden. It's as if Obama so dismissed Biden as a person & as a politician that he didn't deign to discuss Biden's future with him. Sending a political operative to tell Biden to get lost is an insult that a vice president does not deserve.
Sarah Wildman of the New York Times on the way we were. Marie: Just this weekend, I talked to a young man who has three young children about this very topic. He said he and his wife let their children run wild, just and he -- and I -- did when we were young. (We didn't discuss cellphones.)
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California. AP: “A California sheriff running for governor has seized more than half a million ballots cast in a November special election from county election officials, saying he’s investigating a ballot count discrepancy. County elections officials have disputed the claims by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, called Bianco’s move unprecedented and says it is designed to sow distrust in elections. Bianco held a news conference Friday saying his office had launched the investigation after receiving a complaint from a local citizens group about the ballot count from a November 2025 special election on redistricting. In the special election, voters approved a measure to redraw congressional district lines to favor Democrats in the upcoming midterm election. The measure passed in the county by a margin of more than 80,000 votes.” A New York Times story is here.
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A reminder that Donald Trump is a menace throughout Earth: ~~~
~~~ Denmark. Jeffrey Gettleman & Maya Tekeli of the New York Times: “Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s leader, has become the biggest political force this little country has seen in decades. When she took office in 2019, she etched herself into Danish history by becoming the youngest prime minister. Now 48, if she wins and serves out her term, she will be the longest-serving Danish premier since World War II.... Many voters in this country of six million credit her with protecting Greenland and keeping the kingdom intact.... But some Danes are also itching for change.... Her party, the Social Democrats, is No. 1 in the polls, but Denmark’s political scene is so fragmented, with more than 10 parties represented in Parliament, that it’s unlikely the Social Democrats will win more than a quarter of the vote. The most likely outcome, many political analysts believe, is a reshuffled coalition government with her at the head. Another possibility is an upset....” Denmark holds elections Tuesday.
~~~ Martin Krasnik in a New York Times op-ed: “If war is how Americans learn geography, it has also reminded Danes of our place on the map. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Mr. Trump’s repeated claims about the necessity of controlling Greenland revealed just how vulnerable we had allowed ourselves to become. Denmark is a small, low-lying nation of sand, gravel and chalk — a northern outcrop of Germany and a natural lock at the mouth of the Baltic.... In just under seven years as prime minister, [Mette] Frederiksen has overseen a rearmament that was as much about a political and cultural shift as it was about military procurement.... Denmark has undergone such a vibe shift that almost everybody accepts that we have to be ready to defend ourselves.... Denmark that has changed fundamentally, and is better prepared for a world that lurches from one crisis to the next.”
30 comments:
There's a lovely piece in the NY Times this morning from Molly Jong Fast responding to one of the zillions of scurrilous insults from the Dear Leader, this one directed last week at California Governor Gavin Newsom in which he called
Let's try that again, and hit the right button this time.....
There's a lovely piece in the NY Times this morning from Molly Jong Fast responding to one of the zillions of scurrilous insults from the Dear Leader, this one directed last week at California Governor Gavin Newsom, this time calling dyslexics stupid.
Such a HIE-larious insult coming from a grade A level moron, calling other people stupid.
Molly reveals that she also is dyslexic, something I never knew, which must have been difficult being the daughter of such a famous writer. She points out that dyslexics, like so many others with disabilities, learn to navigate the world in creative ways which turn a disability into a kind of super power.
"I’m not saying people with dyslexia are smarter, though Albert Einstein is believed to have been dyslexic and he was pretty smart. But dyslexia forces you to think around corners that other people don’t have to. One of the things that people with dyslexia do — it’s something I did — is learn to navigate our weird brains. I never learned phonics; I had to memorize words in their entirety because I could never sound them out. We avoid things that can embarrass us, like reading aloud, though now I’m so good at it I can read a TV teleprompter that features a moving wall of text, something that would have terrified young me.
As a New Yorker profile published last month discusses, Mr. Newsom had to negotiate these same challenges, and did so using similar methods: 'Newsom rarely gives long written speeches; instead, he memorizes. (He sees the lines of text on a teleprompter screen as a single image, like a Chinese character, which he uses to recall the next line.)'"
Of course, for Trump, a disability is something to make fun of, hoping that his rabid followers will guffaw along with him. But this also is revealing.
His insults often stem from fear. Most bullies are fearful and cowardly, and Trump is no different. Perhaps he believes people like Newsom are simply a lot smarter than he is and therefore need to be taken down.
Ms. Jong Fast points out that disabilities provide a pathway to seeing things and processing the world in different ways.
"In 2023, Mr. Newsom debated Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Neither man got the nomination of his party, but Mr. Newsom showed himself to be a skilled debater — someone who memorized facts and data in a way I recognized. Watching him, I could see him trying to negotiate the facts, the data, the ideas he’d cataloged in his brain. There is something strange and maybe a little wonderful about spending so much time thinking about how you process information and make sense of the world."
Fatty knows nothing of information processing, of creatively navigating the world. He barges in, knocks shit over, insults whoever is there, blames someone else for his mess, and moves on to the next room to see what other things he can break, vide his current war of whim, a conflict begun out of fear and stupidity and continued along the same lines.
FDR saw the world much differently after he was stricken with polio, which perhaps provided him with the sort of insight that helped him pull the country out of a horrible depression. Jürgen Habermas, whom I mentioned last week, was born with a cleft palate and was bullied terribly as a child, an experience that likely helped him develop a philosophy that saw the value in everyone, not just the rich and connected. It's too bad Fat Hitler didn't have some kind of disability that required him to see the world differently. Oh wait. He does have a disability. Ignorance. And yes, he does see the world differently. He thinks it all belongs to him.
@Akhilleus: Fast's essay reminds me of a time somewhere around 1980 when I first used a word processor -- sort of an early form of personal computer. Before that, I wrote out sentences, paragraphs, essays in longhand, then sometimes typed them out. Either way, I had to think not just in whole sentences, but in paragraphs. I kinda had to know from the beginning where I was headed toward an end.
The word processor changed all that. Suddenly, I could think in clauses and phrases. If I didn't like what I had written in the order I had written it, I could easily change the order, delete some of it, elaborate on it. Revisions happened in real time, not later when I looked back to see that something looked awkward or out of place.
I recognized immediately that I was letting the word processor dumb me down. I no longer had to organize my thoughts so thoroughly. I no longer had to judiciously "think ahead." By making revisions easy, word processing, computing, may (or may not) have made us more elegant writers, but it is an editorial crutch that has allowed us to be careless writers, and more careless thinkers, too. Crutches meant to help us, it seems, can be their own sort of disability.
They really are jerkoffs.
If you think MAGA is weird and awful, you just haven't been reading about the truly troubling insanity going on in much of the far-right fever swamps.
The indispensable Amanda Marcotte learned me a bit of something called "gooning", which is apparently all the rage among the Nick Fuentes' misogynistic followers on the right. Jesus, is this weird.
You may have heard of this James Fishback person, a certified whacko running for governor in Florida. This guy has emerged apparently from some of the more febrile fever swamps on the outskirts of MAGAdom.
"But what is really drawing attention to the 31-year-old Fishback is how he, while running far behind with older Republican voters, generates real enthusiasm with young conservatives. Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times described the packed audience at a Fishback event as 'very young,' writing, 'several attendees told me they were in high school.' Vanity Fair’s Dan Adler wrote that the long-shot candidate 'has captured the most extreme attitudinal aspects of the Gen Z online right.' Fishback is polling at 32% with GOP voters aged 18-32, and his campaign events are larger and growing."
Okay, this stuff gets crazy very quickly so you're gonna have to read this for yourself, but here is the short version.
Women are horrible, terrible, nasty, and vile and they want to control men, so the only "sane" solution for these imbeciles is to try to completely dominate women and--and here's where it gets really weird--rather than be regular heterosexual men who, ya know, like women (ie, are subjugated by horrible female types), stay home and indulge in "gooning": jerking off.
I am not even kidding. This is how fucking weird the rightwing is in this country.
"Fishback’s campaign inadvertently gave the world a glimpse into how gooning-obsessed this youngest generation of far-right men has become. Leaked text messages from the Florida governor-hopeful’s campaign showed one high-ranking staffer semi-jokingly suggesting that straight sex is 'gay' — echoing a claim by fascist influencer Nick Fuentes — because of this perception that engaging with women is degrading. Another set of leaked texts, these from conservative students in Miami-Dade County, was nicknamed 'Gooning in Agartha.' (Agartha, the legendary utopia that some believed to exist at the center of the earth, was believed by many Nazis to house an Aryan superior race and so is a fitting reference to include in a chat full of racist and antisemitic dialogue.)"
All fans of Onan the Barbarian, it seems. So if you think the Markwayne Mullins and Shady Vances are bad, wait until these fucking idiots get a little older and start running for office.
Conservative ideology used to be, if not my cup of tea, at least somewhat respectable as a way of considering political engagement in the real world. Todays right wing is so far removed form both respectability and the real world as to be the stuff of rejected dystopian novels too crazy for even self-publishing options. Trump has opened so many terrible doors. I'm not suggesting that he's the godfather of the gooners, but his rejection of anything normal and decent has allowed crackpots like Fishback and Fuentes to make inroads into the mainstream. He's the rightwing Pandora.
But hey, if these weirdos just want to stay home and jerk off, fine with me. Just be careful who you shake hands with from now on.
Akhilleus...
Oh, this poor young sods, who apparently never heard of the consequences. Hairy palms and blindness, as I recall.
Marie,
Excellent point about word processors. I think all of us out here, at least those of a certain age, approached writing the same way you did. Write stuff out in longhand on paper, read it over, make more changes, then edit some more. The thinking part was more important than the actual jotting down of words in sequence.
I think I used to be a much better writer. My freshman year in college, I took a Shakespeare survey course. It was fabulous. I still try to read a play every month or two. My section leader pulled me aside after reading a paper I had written on Henry IV, part I. He told me to meet him in his office the next day. That day he spent two hours going over a four page paper. He pulled It apart and sent me back to my room to rewrite the whole thing. The biggest lesson he taught me was to write something then put aside and go back to it in a couple of days. If it still makes sense, good. If you read it and think "What's going on here?" then it's time for a rewrite.
Speed kills. In more than one way. So often I rip off a comment here (and to friends) and later wonder how I ever graduated high school. But we live in a rapid fire world now. Professional reporters are given at most, thirty or forty seconds to think about important and vital information, and then have to write about it with practically no chance to carefully consider how best to convey that information. The other day, I read an AP report about Iranian missiles directed at Diego Garcia. Then I read another report on the same event. It was fine except neither told me where the hell Diego Garcia was! I guess they thought, "Oh sure, everyone knows Diego Garcia." No. We don't. I had to look it up. And even though now I know a heck of a lot more about the Chagos Archipelago than I did before*, I realized that both reporters had to rip that stuff off quickly and published their stories without a pretty important detail.
Word processing may have made it easier to write, but it didn't make us better writers.
*After learning about the Chagos Archipelago, I realized that I did have some previous connection with that region, from the Joseph O'Brien novel "The Mauritius Command", one of his superb Aubrey-Maturin books about the British navy in the early 19th century. I'll bet Joe wrote his stuff out longhand on yellow legal pads, it was some spiffy stuff.
Ken,
Hahaha...haven't thought of that hairy palm stuff for a long time. And blindness too. Woof.
Out on a limb?
Anyone else think the Pretender's attack on Newsom for his dyslexia is another sure sign of our Dear Leader's pathological projection? The Pretender shows no signs of being able to read and few of being able to talk coherently.
Whatever words are to the Pretender, they are surely not his friend. Dyslexic or not himself, I see his long, rambling texts and speeches as strategies he developed over time to disguise his general incomprehension, a linguistic analog to the wealth and glitz he seems to need to substitute for personal worth.
Fat Hitler's nuclear threat flew under the radar last week sitting next to the prime minister of Japan.
Trump: "Some of this weaponry is unthinkable. You don't even want to know about it. Oh, you could end this thing in two seconds if you wanted to."
Fat Hitler gets his thanks for encouraging the education of the world with his dangerous and unhinged behavior around the world.
It will be a piece of cake.
"As the United States and Israel prepared to go to war with Iran, the head of Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, went to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a plan.
Within days of the war’s beginning, said David Barnea, the Mossad chief, his service would likely be able to galvanize the Iranian opposition — igniting riots and other acts of rebellion that could even lead to the collapse of Iran’s government. Mr. Barnea also presented the proposal to senior Trump administration officials during a visit to Washington in mid-January.
Mr. Netanyahu adopted the plan. Despite doubts about its viability among senior American officials and some officials in other Israeli intelligence agencies, both he and President Trump seemed to embrace an optimistic outlook. Killing Iran’s leaders at the outset of the conflict, followed by a series of intelligence operations intended to encourage regime change, they thought, could lead to a mass uprising that might bring about a swift end to the war."
I don't recognize the conservative republican party that Peter Wehner glowingly describes as the party he joined and remained a member of until 2016 and t***, but, like Akhilleus, he is concerned by "how fucking weird the rightwing is in this country", writing Trump Killed Conservatism
"The “Make America Great Again” movement is the beating heart of the GOP, the dominant political party in America—which makes MAGA the most important political movement in the world. And that is why some recent developments within the MAGA movement are so disquieting.
....
To be clear, the MAGA movement’s rancidity isn’t due to only Trump. The impulses now on display within MAGA existed long before he entered politics. But those impulses were, for the most part, confined to the fringes. Republican presidents and other political leaders did what they could to keep it that way.
But from the moment Trump announced his candidacy in the summer of 2015, he sought to cultivate and encourage the ugliest passions within the GOP, dousing the embers of hate with kerosene. Among Trump’s most consequential legacies has been his deformation of the temperament and disposition of virtually the entire Republican Party. It has been a remarkable shift to observe: The very qualities that early on made Republicans, including evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, uneasy about Trump are those they have since come to accept and embrace. He rewired their moral circuitry."
Iran Denies Trump’s Claim Of Talks To End War
"An Iranian source later denied that the US and Iran were holding talks about ending the war. “There is no direct contact with Trump, not even through intermediaries. Trump retreated after hearing that our targets would be all power plants in West Asia,” the unnamed source told the Iranian state-affiliated Fars News Agency. Oil prices fell shortly after Trump’s announcement, reflecting market expectations of potential de-escalation in the region."
I think that last sentence there is why Fat Hitler made his probably fake announcement. And the financial idiots took his announcement without a second thought and ran with it. We also know that someone(s) will be making a killing when the price jumps back up over his BS.
Will the untrained thugs be as enthusiastic to show up at the airports when they find out people can see who they are without their masks. From Fat Hitler, "I would greatly appreciate, however, NO MASKS, when helping our Country out of the Democrat caused MESS at the airports,"
Looks like FH is going to dox ICE, lol.
David Rothkopf
"So, As It Turns Out, Brain-Dead, Morally Bankrupt, Rampant Incompetence Matters
It matters if our leaders know how to do their jobs, if the people around them know how to do their jobs, if what they seek are good outcomes, if they know the difference between good and bad outcomes, if they are capable morally and intellectually of serving the people.
And, right now, we’re zero for everything on that list."
I can't offer anything to help with the hairy palms, but as to the blindness there is hope. Check out the1977 comedy flick "Can I Do It Until I Need Glasses?" which featured several names familiar later on such as Robin Williams.
John Oliver on police stings
Another Republican mess in the making?
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03/23/us/supreme-court-voting-late-ballots
The article suggests the Supines are leaning toward requiring that mailed ballot arrive by Election Day...
a decision that would make it interesting for Americans abroad or stationed overseas, and especially for some states like Alaska and its vastness. (Isn't there an equal protection issue here?). Then there's the pressure on an already understaffed PO, and the implied requirement that states and counties across the US where mailed ballots are allowed get their act together weeks earlier....
More FUBAR from the highest court in the land.
And even more FUBAR, this one with a $1 billion price tag.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2026/03/23/trump-east-coast-wind-farms-pay-france/?utm
It's official. We're a petro-state.
Marie,
Paul Campos has a screen shot on his post talking about some of the money being traded in the five minutes before Fat Hitler's Fake Iran-Oil/Insider Trading announcement. It looks like a money making scheme with the bonus of positive fake headlines for the loser.
Little Johnny and the Dwarfs have had their "See? We ARE independent of authoritarian fascism!" moment with their ruling on Fat Hitler's illegal and unconstitutional tariffs. Now it's back to business, doing what they do best, lining up on the side of a democracy hating tyrant and sticking it to voters who aren't MAGAfied, doing their best to help keep a demented autocrat in power.
And don't forget, with respect to the tariff decision, Little Johnny dragged that thing out for months in order to give Fatty and his evil elves time to reconstitute most of those tariffs with the help of obscure and questionable legal maneuvers, so it's not like that short-lived seeming return to the rule of law was anything more than ass covering kabuki for the traitors on the Court.
But now we're seeing the masks come off. "Dear Donald, what can we do to make sure you steal the midterms? Shall we debase mail-in voting rules implemented by the states? Okay, sure. Anything else? You'll get back to us? Great. We've got our sledge hammers ready."
The legacy of Democracy's Executioner, the Grim Reaper, Turtle Man McConnell.
There is a tweet for every occasion.
Fat Hitler complaining about president playing golf while TSA falls apart and airports are a disaster, in 2016.
Maybe all this insider trading is really just him being able to look into the future.
So ICE goons are already in place at airports? Gee...that two to three week TSA training course must have been dramatically shortened, say, two to three minutes?
And how, pray tell, will Fatty's Gestapo goons assist in shortening waiting lines? We've all seen how things work at the airport. Even well trained employees sometimes have to call over a supervisor for help. Several times I've had to wait while some jamoke tried to tell me that the picture on my drivers license wasn't me (I assured him I was much better looking. He wasn't amused). A supervisor came over and the two of them took almost five minutes to decide I was who I (and the state issuing the license) said I was. Are the ICE goons trained to do this? Will they be the ones helping hand out the plastic trays for jackets, laptops, and wallets? What will they do?
And what happens when Gestapo muscle memory kicks in and they see someone who doesn't look Norman Rockwellish enough? Pull that person aside and start beating them up? I'm sure that won't cause any disturbances to mom and dad the kids on the way to Disneyworld.
But if they're not going to do any of that, what will they do? And here's another thing. Fatty is demanding an additional $200 billion for his war (and other stuff). Why not use some of those billions he scarfs up from taxpayers to pay the TSA people? Better yet, why not accept the deal that all DHS employees except the Gestapo thugs get paid?
Because he believes in chaos. Chaos is a great distractor. If some ICE goons start pounding out someone who looks like that Juan Valdez guy in the coffee commercials, that a great distraction from Fatty's incoherent and incompetent prosecution of his war of whim.
As I've said before, an idea with "horrible" written all over it.
Andrew Lawrence
"every single financial institution would benefit from hiring exactly one (1) progressive to walk around the office all day long going “are you fucking stupid?” to anyone within ear shot"
I would love to apply for that job.
Love this this reply to brilliance of our financial geniuses.
bojak90
@bojak90.bsky.social
"There’s an example from the early 2000’s which I think perfectly highlights Their stupidity.
WWE did a storyline where Vince McMahon died. The day after his “death” the stock price plummeted. An obviously scripted show made them panic"
And speaking of that $200 billion demand, here's a little something that was missed. Actually, a pretty big something.
When a reporter asked Fatty about that $200 billion (I guess that's chicken feed now for the Fat Hitler Crime Family. Jared alone will probably be making half of that before this is over) she pointed out that one could easily conclude that a request of that size for a war costing a billion dollars a day meant that this war wouldn't be ending any time soon.
Fat Hitler's answer was quite interesting. He said that the war was almost over but that the rest of that money was for "other things he had planned". What other things? Is he going after Cuba next? Greenland? He forgot about Greenland. Maybe he'll get back to that one. Will the Traitor controlled Congress hand over $200 billion of taxpayers' money without even asking what it's for? If it ain't for the war, then what?
This whole thing has been a crime riddled, scam clogged, grift-a-palooza from day one. And now billions more for....whatever he "has planned"?
Oh, don't tell us, Donald. Let it be a surprise! We love surprises!
@Ken Winkes: Re: your comment on Trump's projection, in September Trump said, "Nothing bad can happen, it can only good happen." I guess that proves your point.
Yesterday, RAS pointed out that Fox News, aka State Television, never once mentioned Fat Hitler's disgusting celebration of the death of Robert Mueller, at least up to that point.
If anyone was waiting for pigs to fly, Fox never did.
Even though Mueller's death was brought up a number of times, not once did they bother to inform the MAGA slugs screaming at the TV from their Barcaloungers about how the war is all Biden's fault, that their Dear Leader is a disgusting creep.
I hope I don't jinx things by saying this, but kudos to senate Democrats for not giving in to Fat Hitler's screaming demands that they do what he orders them to do and pay his ICE thugs. Good for them. Of course, I'm excluding Fetterman. He's as MAGA as any gun toting, race baiting, democracy hating Fatty voter, so fuck him.
One last note of interest, then I'm done for a while.
Let's go to the scoreboard, shall we? Winners and Losers in the Trump-Epstein-Bibi War!
Winners:
Russia and Putin. They get massive inflows of funds for their oil, plenty to keep war criming! And don't forget, Russia is still helping Iran target American interests. And we're paying him billions. Couldn't make this shit up. We let him make billions while he's helping to kill Americans. Only Fatty could be this stupid.
China. Their influence grows by the hour. They have quietly made inroads into Middle East countries and when this is all over and these countries need money and assistance to rebuild bombed oil facilities and the like, they won't be coming to the US, they'll go to China. The Fatty War is a huge windfall for China.
Iran: Even though they're getting bombed hourly, they are surviving. They will get out of this with their fissionable material intact, their regime in place, and now they're making money because Fatty is letting them sell their oil again! WTF? Can you imagine FDR telling Hitler that he was going to allow him to make a few billion a day more even while American soldiers were dying and American interests were being fucked up, down, and sideways by doing it?
Jared. He always finds a way to make money off other people's misfortune. He is a grifting, grasping, scheming little prick. In fact, a lot of this war was his doing, no doubt. His clients in the Middle East were happy to have him encourage this war with Fat Hitler. As they make out, by having the US do their dirty work for them--and pay for it--Jared makes out as well.
Losers: Ukraine. Russian gets more money to bomb them, the US is now otherwise occupied and can no longer provide them with military assistance. The Fatty War puts Ukraine's plight on the back pages, and now even their assistance with knocking out Iranian drones is largely shoved to the side.
Lebanon: Bibi is using this war to go after anyone he hates, and that includes Lebanon. A million Lebanese are now displaced and thousands dead. Bibi is a true genocidal war criminal. A good one for Fatty to partner with.
United States. The US has been losing in so many ways since that fat fuck waddled into the Oval Office. There are too many ways to recount how we are losing here. Suffice it to say, we end up as perhaps the biggest losers in all of this entirely unforced self-immolation.
Okay, I thought I was done until I read this.
Who thinks like this?
Fat Hitler goes to Graceland, the home Elvis Presley purchased for himself and his mom and dad. I've been to Graceland. It's impressive, but it's not nearly as big as many McMansions one can find in any number of gated communities for the well off, not even the Richie Riches, just well off Americans. How things have changed.
Anyway, Fatty was in Memphis to brag about he personally has stopped all crime in that city, so he waddles over to Graceland. What was foremost on his mind? I'll give you a hint. It was something that never crossed my mind as I toured Elvis's home.
He is concerned enough about his manly manhood, that he demands to know of a tour guide if he could have beaten Elvis in a fight.,
Seriously?? Once he heard that Elvis had studied karate and had achieved a certain level of proficiency, Trump wanted to fight him. Well, not really. He just wanted that poor tour guide to let everyone know that he could have kicked Elvis's ass. What serious person in his late 70s is obsessed with the idea that he could physically beat up people decades younger that he is.
You know who? A numbnuts juvenile weenie so worried about not looking like the cowardly whiner he is that he has to bully people to agree that HE is the Greatest!
The poor tour guide had a great answer to Fatty's question. He told the First Bully that Elvis probably would have let him win out of respect.
In other words, NO. Elvis could have kicked your ass into the fucking Mississippi River from Graceland, but he was gentleman enough to let the deluded old guy win.
What I thought about when I visited Graceland was how skinny a young Elvis must have been to fit into some of those costumes displayed in the home. I wasn't thinking "Hey, man, I could have kicked that guy's ass!"
This is our president*.
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