Now I know what they do at faculty meetings on the humanities/social sciences side of campus » « They never learn

Infinite Thread XXXIX

It’s almost spring-like outside — the skies are clear, we’ve got cool breezes on a comfortable day, the plants are coming back… I know it can’t last but I’ll make the most of it. I’ve opened windows to let birdsong in and to drive the cat crazy.

Let the pleasant conversations flow!

Previous Thread

Now I know what they do at faculty meetings on the humanities/social sciences side of campus » « They never learn

Comments

  1. says

    MS NOW:

    As the U.S. military blockades the mouth of the Persian Gulf and halts what little trade was still passing through the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s major ports may be starved of their remaining trade. Although the strait has been nearly shut for most global trade since early March, some vessels, primarily Chinese-flagged ships, have been allowed to pass through unharmed.

  3. says

    For the convenience of readers, here are some links back to the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread.

    https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2026/03/30/infinite-thread-xxxix/comment-page-1/#comment-2298111
    “Trump blockading thing that’s already closed in order to reopen that which was previously open.”
    And here’s Trump behaving like the literal antichrist as described in 2 Thessalonians and posting a meme of himself as Jesus: [social media post, with image]

    https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2026/03/30/infinite-thread-xxxix/comment-page-1/#comment-2298107
    Trump II Spirals Deeper Into Madness in Bonkers Weekend

    https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2026/03/30/infinite-thread-xxxix/comment-page-1/#comment-2298093
    Judge dismisses Trump defamation lawsuit against Murdoch, WSJ about Epstein letter

    https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2026/03/30/infinite-thread-xxxix/comment-page-1/#comment-2298062
    Mexico’s Socialist president to roll out universal healthcare

    https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2026/03/30/infinite-thread-xxxix/comment-page-1/#comment-2298058
    Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real.

  4. says

    NBC News:

    The U.S. military said Sunday that it blew up two boats accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing a total of five people and leaving one survivor, as the Trump administration pursues its campaign against alleged traffickers in Latin America […]

    Steve Benen reports that the number of boats blown up in this manner is now up to 48.

  5. says

    New York Times:

    It became one of the searing images of the Trump administration’s immigration operation in Minnesota earlier this year. After using a battering ram to break down the door of a home in St. Paul, federal agents handcuffed ChongLy Scott Thao and led him outside in subzero temperatures wearing only boxer shorts and slip-on shoes.

    On Monday, local law enforcement officials announced that they were weighing whether federal agents should face criminal charges, including kidnapping, burglary and false imprisonment, over the detention of Mr. Thao on Jan. 18.

  6. says

    Associated Press:

    The Trump administration said Monday it will resume flying a rainbow Pride flag on a federal flagpole at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City, reversing course after removing the banner in February. The government revealed the decision in court papers as it agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by LGBTQ+ and historic preservation groups who had sought to block the removal.

  8. JM says

    CNN: Swalwell says he plans to resign from Congress amid sexual misconduct allegations

    Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell announced Monday he planned to resign from Congress following explosive allegations of sexual misconduct against him.
    The announcement from the California Democrat comes as he faced a just-announced House ethics investigation and mounting pressure on both sides of the aisle to step down. Swalwell, who has denied the allegations, had already suspended his California gubernatorial bid — though that did not tamp down the calls that he leave his job. The congressman was also confronting the prospect of a vote on the House floor to expel him.

    Not a surprise really, multiple independent accusations means he is probably guilty to some degree. I can see why a person would want to hold on to their congressional seat though, giving up the seat is probably the end of any real career.

  9. JM says

    CNN: Embattled GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales announces he’s stepping down from Congress

    Embattled Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales announced Monday that he would step down from Congress, just days before he faced the possibility of a high-stakes vote that could have made him the seventh member to ever be expelled from the House.

    Gonzales was on the verge of being ejected and figured going out on his own was at least a little cleaner. The evidence of his guilt is to great to pretend he didn’t have an affair.
    The Swalwell resignation seems to have prodded the Republican leadership into telling Gonzales to get lost. In the current environment it would be too much of a problem to let Gonzales stay after Swalwell had be pressed by Democrats into resigning. Politically it’s worse for Republicans then the Swalwell resignation is for Democrats but the public at large doesn’t see that as a reason to let him stay.

  10. Pierce R. Butler says

    I’ve opened windows … to drive the cat crazy.

    Seems a bit late for that.

  11. StevoR says

    A group of Palestinian human rights organisations are taking the government to the Federal Court seeking answers over Australia’s weapons exports to Israel.

    Represented by the Australian Centre for International Justice (ACIJ), they have launched legal action against the defence minister, calling for the release of documentation relating to dozens of military export permits to Israel that remained active throughout the war in Gaza.

    After a review, the Department of Defence last year acknowledged at least 30 permits for Australian companies to send “military use” items to Israel were cleared, and another 16 were still under “ongoing scrutiny”.

    But it has continuously refused to provide specific information about the nature of the exports.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-14/palestinian-legal-action-australia-weapons-exports-israel-f-35/106558340

  12. StevoR says

    Victoria Police has completed its preliminary investigation into an alleged Islamophobic attack where a man allegedly threatened to kill community members, and is weighing up what charges could be laid.

    On March 8, an uninvited man entered a community dinner in Ballarat, where he allegedly started punching guests, intimidating children and shouting racial death threats such as “f*** Allah, f*** Islam, death to Allah” and “go back to the s***hole where you come from”.

    Ballarat Police Acting Superintendent Jason Templar said if there was sufficient evidence, the man could be charged under hate speech laws.

    … (Snip)..

    The alleged intruder, a 37-year-old Ballarat man, has denied any wrongdoing and claimed he was attacked when he entered the Iftar dinner at a community hall to ask for help after his house was broken into by people unconnected to the dinner.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-14/victorian-muslim-community-waiting-for-charges-to-be-laid/106541178

  14. StevoR says

    “Leader” of the dregs of the leftover dregs of the LNP here in Oz :

    Social media screening of visa applicants would be ramped up and migrants who breach Australian values would be deported under a Coalition government proposal.

    Opposition Leader Angus Taylor will unveil the first part of his plan for a migration crackdown in a speech to the Menzies Research Centre on Tuesday.

    “Australians are fed up with politically correct preaching on immigration,” Mr Taylor will say.

    A key element of the plan would involve a social media review of anyone who applies for an Australian visa, similar to one rolled out in the United States.

    Limited details on the policy have been made available to the ABC ahead of the announcement.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-13/coalition-immigration-policy-angus-taylor-announcement/106559472

  16. StevoR says

    Just after NASA shows how valuable and inspiring it can be :

    A new White House fiscal year 2027 budget proposal for NASA is drawing sharp criticism from space advocates, who warn it could dramatically reshape the space agency by cutting overall funding by 23% and reducing its science programs by nearly half.

    The newly released FY 2027 top-line budget request for NASA reduces the space agency’s Science Mission Directorate from $7.25 billion to $3.9 billion, representing a 47% cut to science funding, coupled with a 23% cut to the agency’s overall funding. The nonprofit Planetary Society issued a statement in response to the budget proposal, urging that it is notable not just for its scale, but for how it departs from long-standing budget practices.

    “There are two things: the astonishing lack of transparency and the abject refusal to acknowledge political reality,” Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, told Space.com in an email, explaining that the request is a significant break from decades of precedent. “This is the least transparent NASA budget request I’ve ever seen — and I’ve literally looked through every single one since 1960.”

    Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/nasa-science-faces-very-serious-threat-from-new-white-house-budget-scientists-say

  18. birgerjohansson says

    “The Pope is weak on crime”. True. When he was commissioner of Gotham City he could not stop Two-Face and The Joker.

  19. Silentbob says

    @ 16 StevoR

    Just after NASA shows how valuable and inspiring it can be

    I assume you’re referring to spending $4 billion to re stage Apollo 13 fifty-six years later. Is that the “valuable and inspiring” thing?

  25. says

    RACHEL MADDOW: Surprise inspection catches shocking state of ICE immigrant prison

    Rachel Maddow tells the story of an ICE prison in Mesa, Arizona that would move immigrants out of the facility ahead of congressional oversight visits to conceal overcrowded conditions …until members of Congress dropped in unannounced. Rep. Adelita Grijalva talks about what she saw on a surprise inspection of the facility.

    Video is 8:25 minutes

    RACHEL MADDOW: Trump’s fear is palpable as authoritarian peer Orbán is resoundingly rejected in Hungary

    Rachel Maddow highlights some striking parallels between Donald Trump and the authoritarian regime his administration is modeled on, Victor Orbán in Hungary. Maddow notes that the basis for an authoritarian’s power is the sense that their continued rule is inevitable, so seeing Orbán tossed from power so handily by the voters of Hungary sends a clear and upsetting message to Trump, and an encouraging message to Trump’s opponents.

    Video is 11:37 minutes

  26. says

    Good news.

    Former Pence adviser Olivia Troye launches run for Congress as a Democrat

    “Troye, who resigned from the White House in 2020 and became a vocal critic of President Trump, will run in Virginia’s redrawn 7th Congressional District, which is Democratic-friendly.”

    […] She is positioning herself as “a proud Democrat” and “MAGA’s top enemy,” according to her announcement, someone who has “faced countless death threats from MAGA.”

    Troye will run in Virginia’s new 7th Congressional District, in anticipation that the state will pass a redrawn map to try to boost Democratic seats in the House. She faces a crowded primary field that includes Virginia’s former first lady Dorothy McAuliffe and multiple state lawmakers.

    […] Troye began her career in GOP politics working for the Republican National Committee and the George W. Bush administration. She became an intelligence officer and later was an aide in Pence’s office, working on national security and Covid-19.

    She left the White House in the summer of 2020 and became an outspoken Trump critic, eventually announcing she would vote for Democratic nominee Joe Biden and appearing in an ad excoriating Trump and encouraging fellow Republicans to vote against him. The White House moved to discredit Troye and claimed she was fired, which she disputes.

    In her launch video Tuesday, Troye speaks of her childhood as “the daughter of a truck driver and a Mexican immigrant” — and her political evolution.

    […] “In 2016, I voted for Hillary, but after Trump won I kept showing up to work, because serving your country isn’t supposed to be partisan,” she says. “The evil I saw in that White House was staggering. In 2020, I finally said, ‘Enough.’ And they came for me. Kash Patel, Stephen Miller, even Trump himself.” […]

  27. says

    Trump focuses on arena for UFC fight at the White House

    “Two-thirds of Americans believe their unpopular president simply has the wrong priorities. He keeps proving them right.”

    The timing could have been better. On Saturday night, Americans saw JD Vance appear before reporters and announce that diplomatic talks with Iran had failed. At roughly the same time as the vice president alerted the world to the discouraging news, Donald Trump strolled into a venue in Miami to watch a mixed martial arts fight.

    The New York Times noted soon after, “It was unclear whether the president knew that negotiations had failed by the time he entered the arena for the U.F.C. event. … He wasn’t tapping away on his phone — he left that to Mr. Rubio, who at one point leaned over to show the president his screen — and he didn’t betray disappointment or anger.”

    Given the stakes and seriousness of the diplomatic efforts, one would ordinarily expect an American president to be at least somewhat engaged in the process. Trump, however, appeared more interested in his violent entertainment.

    This remained the case on Monday afternoon. The Hill reported:

    President Trump detailed new plans for a UFC fight the league is planning on the White House grounds in June.

    ‘I’ve been involved in a lot of big events, I have never had an event that has had more interest than the UFC fight we have right at the front door,’ Trump told reporters gathered outside the Oval Office on Monday.

    Pointing to the South Lawn, the Republican told reporters, “Right there, they’re going to start building a 4,500-seat arena, and then in the back, at the Ellipse, we’re going to have 100,000, maybe 50,000 to 100,000 people, I guess. They’re building tremendous stages, and we’re going to have massive screens of the fight. It’s a very popular sport.”

    Trump was referring to an upcoming UFC event at the White House, scheduled for his birthday, in June, which is something he brings up quite regularly.

    […] The president remains fixated on his long list of distractions and trivialities.

    Amid widespread concerns about the struggling economy, a deadly and destabilizing war that hasn’t gone according to the White House’s plans, and a burgeoning global energy crisis, recent polling has found that two-thirds of Americans are convinced that their unpopular president simply has the wrong priorities.

    Trump keeps proving them right.

    [Trump] is focused on UFC bouts. And cheap attacks against Bruce Springsteen. And promoting himself as some kind of American Jesus. And don’t even get me started on his obsession with his ballroom vanity project.

    What’s more, this keeps happening. At a White House event last month at the Kennedy Center, the president spoke at great length, not about the war he initiated in Iran, but about paint colors and his marble preferences.

    It came on the heels of related preoccupations, covering everything from the Super Bowl halftime show to his dissatisfaction with the Grammy Awards to his whining about which comedians are making fun of him.

    As part of the president’s appeal in the E. Jean Carroll case, his lawyers argued in a court filing that Trump is simply too busy to deal with the civil litigation, which was odd for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that Trump doesn’t seem focused on his weighty responsibilities at all. […].

  28. says

    JD Vance tries and fails to clean up Trump’s religious messes, scolds Pope Leo

    As this week got underway, the White House apparently wanted to focus on tax policy. Donald Trump made sure that didn’t happen, shifting the focus instead to his latest controversies related to religion.

    On Sunday night, the president not only publicly slammed Pope Leo XIV, but he also decided to use his social media platform to promote an image that appeared to present himself as some kind of American Jesus.

    As is often the case, it fell to JD Vance to try to help clean up the mess. Unfortunately for the vice president, that didn’t go especially well. [video]

    On the image that drew rebukes from many of Trump’s own political allies, Vance told Fox News, “I think the president was posting a joke. And of course he took it down because he recognized that a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor in that case. I think the president of the United States likes to mix it up on social media.”

    The problem with this sad defense is that we know it’s untrue. We know this for certain because Trump said so: Hours before Vance’s on-air comments, the president specifically told reporters that he wasn’t trying to be funny but rather promoted the image because, as he put it, “I thought it was me as a doctor. … It’s supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better.”

    To be sure, that defense was quite bonkers given the relevant details, but it was also the opposite of the defense his vice president brought to a national television audience.

    It was at this point that Vance also decided to weigh in on Trump’s offensive against the pontiff. [video]

    […] what was notable was how Vance presented his case.

    After suggesting that policy disagreements between U.S. administrations and the Vatican are not “particularly newsworthy,” the vice president added, “I certainly think that in some cases it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of, you know, what’s going on in the Catholic Church, and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.”

    In case this isn’t obvious, the pope drew Trump’s ire by speaking out on matters such as a deadly and destabilizing war in the Middle East and the plight of immigrants seeking a better life. Whether Vance appreciates this or not, those are, by any reasonable measure, “matters of morality.”

    […] it was the latest in a series of humiliations for the beleaguered vice president.

  29. says

    It’s the Corruption, Stupid

    In the aftermath of Viktor Orbán’s defeat in Hungary, a typically shallow conventional wisdom has already emerged that unless President Trump gets the economy turned around, Republicans are going to have hell to pay in the 2026 and 2028 elections.

    The NYT quotes the right-wing commentator Rod Dreher, who decamped to Hungary to work for an Orbán-funded think tank, as explaining the election result thusly: “When all boats aren’t rising, everybody looks at who’s on the yacht. In terms of MAGA, populism is great, but if you can’t deliver on the economy, none of it is going to matter.”

    That is abundantly true and yet terribly misleading because the economic mess we’re in is entirely of Trump’s own doing. [! True.]

    […] In historic fashion, Trump has torpedoed key pillars of the global economy by launching unprecedented trade wars and an unjustified elective war in the Middle East that has bottled up world oil supplies to such an extent that it threatens a recession. At home, he has dramatically throttled back the economic engine of immigration, targeted America’s world leading universities, and decimated its vibrant scientific and biomedical research base. [All, unfortunately, true.]

    Except for the racist assault on immigrants, all of these moves are not driven by ideological imperatives but by corrupt impulses. The economic damage Trump has done was crafted purposely to create opportunities for self-enrichment for him and his allies. [!]It generates its own currency which can be used to perpetuate his political power. What he dispenses he can take away.

    he AP sums up the Trump family kleptocracy succinctly:

    The family real estate business is undergoing the fastest overseas expansion since its founding a century ago, each deal potentially shaping everything from tariffs to military aid.

    Led by Eric, and his brother, Donald Jr., the family business has expanded into cryptocurrencies with ventures that brought in billions of dollars but raised questions about whether some big investors received favorable treatment in return.

    The brothers have also joined or invested in a number of companies that aim to do business with the government their father runs. Last month, they struck a deal giving them stakes worth millions in an armed drone maker seeking contracts with the Pentagon and with Gulf states under attack by Iran and dependent on the U.S. military led by their father.

    It always sounds a bit earnest to deplore corruption, but one of the practical reasons for eschewing corruption is because at best it acts like an invisible tax on economic growth. At worst, it corrodes the economic engine to the point that it doesn’t properly function any longer. […] the Trump DOJ has explicitly stopped enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and we’re now in a grubby race to the bottom.

    Any notion that Trump can get the economy “back on track” or dampen the economic shockwaves he has unleashed ignores the substance of what he’s done. Not only are Trump’s second term attacks on economic growth hard to reverse, let alone quickly, they’re deeply wired into who he is and what he’s about. [All too true.]

    The Economic Warning Signs
    – The Middle East conflict is causing oil scarcity and rising prices that are contributing to significant “demand destruction” which could lead to the steepest drop-off in demand for oil since the COVID slowdown, the International Energy Agency is forecasting in its latest outlook.
    – The International Monetary Fund warns that the Middle East conflict will slow economic growth, fuel inflation and raises the possibility of a global recession.

    Latest on the Middle East Conflict …
    – Israeli and Lebanese officials gathered in D.C. for rare direct talks — the first in a decade — as the Netanyahu government has seized on the wider conflict to advance Israel’s position on the ground in Lebanon.
    – Bitter irony alert: Talks between Iran and Trump administration are complicated by “the risk that any agreement that emerges may resemble the 2015 nuclear accord” that Trump abrogated in his first term, the NYT reports.
    – House Republicans have again abdicated their oversight roles by pushing off until at least May testimony originally scheduled for next week from senior Pentagon officials on the war in Iran.

    Lawless Boat Strike Death Toll: 170

    The U.S. attacked an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Eastern Pacific on Monday, bringing the campaign’s overall death toll to at least 170. In announcing the attack, the U.S. Southern Command introduced new Orwellian language: “Applying total systemic friction on the cartels.”

    Meanwhile, the Trump administration is waging a pressure campaign against the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to squash a potential investigation into the boat strike campaign, The Intercept reports.

    Link

  30. says

    Good news.

    New York Times link

    “Threats to Library Funding End With Settlement by Trump Administration”

    “The American Library Association and a union of cultural workers filed a lawsuit arguing that cuts ordered by President Trump were illegal.”

    The Trump administration has reached a settlement with the American Library Association and a union of cultural workers, bringing to an end its yearlong effort to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency.

    The settlement, reached by the Justice Department last week, affirms that the agency will continue issuing grants and operating its programs, which provide support to institutions in every state and territory. The Trump administration reaffirmed that it had reinstated all previously canceled grants, in keeping with a separate legal ruling last year, and reversed all staff reductions. It also promised not to take any further steps to reduce the agency.

    Sam Helmick, the president of the American Library Association, said the threats had set off “a chain reaction” of cuts in services and called the settlement a victory for “every American’s freedom to read and learn.”

    “This settlement protects life-changing library services for communities across the country,” Helmick said. […]

  31. says

    WIRED link

    “Government Workers Say They’re Getting Inundated With Religion”

    ON EASTER SUNDAY, US Department of Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins sent out an email titled “He has risen!” to the entire agency. In the email, Rollins calls the story of Jesus Christ the “greatest story ever told, the foundation of our faith, and the abiding hope of all mankind.” […]

    I don’t have access to the rest of this report.

  32. JM says

    @28 Lynna, OM:

    After suggesting that policy disagreements between U.S. administrations and the Vatican are not “particularly newsworthy,” the vice president added, “I certainly think that in some cases it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of, you know, what’s going on in the Catholic Church, and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.”

    Trump did this to both Vance and Pence, sticking them into corners where they had to pick between serving the president and following their religion. Pence stuck by his fringe religious beliefs hard. Vance appears to have given his up his religion instantly for a show of loyalty to the throne.

  33. JM says

    Raw Story: DoorDash PR chief hammered after company accused of staging pro-Trump stunt: ‘Crash out’

    On Monday, President Donald Trump was greeted at the White House by Sharon Simmons, a 58-year-old DoorDash delivery driver who handed off two bags of McDonald’s food to the president. During the encounter, Simmons championed the president’s no-tax-on-tips provision included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is set to expire at the end of 2028.

    It was soon uncovered, however, that Simmons had advocated on behalf of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act during a congressional hearing in 2025, leading critics to allege the delivery to have been “staged” to benefit Trump, and other critics to accuse Simmons of being a “MAGA-paid prop.”

    Not really a surprise, Trump having Door Dash delivered to him by a vocally pro-Trump delivery person in front of the press was obviously staged. The thing is, typical for this administration, their staged press event was staged badly. The Door Dash delivery person they had was flown in for the event and had advocated for Trump at congressional hearings in the past.
    The video is awkward. Trump wandered off script and the delivery person didn’t know how to handle the situation.

  34. JM says

    Reason: Federal Reserve: Without Tariffs, Inflation Would Have Dropped to Pre-Pandemic Levels During 2025

    Those tariffs have raised core goods prices by 3.1 percent, according to a new study by a trio of economists at the Federal Reserve. Those higher consumer prices were the result of retailers passing the cost of tariffs along the supply chain.
    As of February 2026, the tariffs “can explain the entirety of the excess inflation in the core goods category since January 2025,” the economists concluded. “Our estimates indicate that tariff effects on prices gradually build over time, with cumulative effects seven months after implementation consistent with our theoretical measures of full dollar-for-dollar pass-through.”

    This is last year and early this year, before the effects of the current climb in oil prices. The tariffs being entirely the reason for inflation is surprising but it was obviously the cause of a good bit. I suspect that uncertainty about the tariff and the desire to keep prices low to avoid drawing Trump’s attention caused it to take a long time for the price increases from the tariffs to kick in.

  35. JM says

    Reuters: Strait of Hormuz traffic barely affected on first day of US blockade, data shows

    The first full day ​of a U.S. blockade on vessels calling at Iranian ports made little difference to Strait of Hormuz traffic on Tuesday, with at least eight ‌ships including three Iran-linked tankers, crossing the waterway, shipping data showed.

    The US blockade has not changed much in a situation that is already messy. Only a few ships were crossing and still only a few ships are crossing. The US blockade isn’t trying to stop all ships, only certain ships, so a few ships crossing is expected. What real impact, if any, the US blocked is unclear. The US says it has turned away ships but have not said which ships.
    The biggest question is can the US enforce that blockade in a meaningful way? The US can easily turn away small ships from small countries but is the US willing to board a Chinese oil hauler making a transit without US approval? Who will try without US approval? Will anybody try without Iran’s approval? How will they get approval from either country?

  36. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/misogynistic-rape-enthusiast-andrew

    Details at the link.

    Content note: sexual assault, sex trafficking, misogyny

    Excerpt:

    […] Why am I telling you this horrible, horrible, deeply disturbing story? Because just recently, Andrew Tate — the violent, (alleged) sex trafficking misogynist who was in prison in Romania until the Trump administration freed him (no sex trafficker left behind!) and who makes a large portion of his money teaching men how to trick women into making them money as cam girls and allegedly inspired Kyle Clifford to violently murder three women — shot to the very top of Substack’s New Bestsellers list. Tate joined the site earlier this month and has since racked up 1.1 million followers … which is pretty incredibly depressing. ][…]

    Problems arise for other sites that are hosted on Substack:

    As a result, Substack ended up trending on social media yesterday, with many people (fairly!) saying that they would no longer support any site hosted on the platform. Who is a website hosted on the platform? Wonkette is a website hosted on the platform. Many users already left Substack when it was revealed that they hosted several anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi sites (and made money off of them, too). It’s likely that more will leave now.

    […] There’s an argument that could be made for allowing all speech, no matter how vile, but there’s not really one for allowing (and benefiting from) monetization.

    [I snipped a discussion of YouTube, TikTok and Meta.]

    […] Unfortunately, we are not in really a position to leave because (inside baseball!) we have 22 years of posts that would need to be transferred to a new site — something that took many months and tens of thousands of dollars the last few times we’ve done so. It would be a whole lot better for us if the platform would just not host and make money off of neo-Nazis and violent misogynists. It’s not actually that hard. If practically every other site on earth can do it, we think Substack can manage. […]

  37. says

    EXCLUSIVE: Musk’s Grok AI chatbot is still making sexual deepfakes, despite X’s promise to stop it

    “An NBC News review found dozens of AI-generated sexualized images of real women posted to X over the past month.”

    Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence software, Grok, continues to generate sexualized images of people without their consent, despite his company’s pledge months ago to halt abusive deepfakes after a public backlash and government investigations.

    A review by NBC News found dozens of AI-generated sexual images and videos depicting real people posted publicly on Musk’s social media app, X, over the past month. The images show women whose likenesses were edited by the AI chatbot to put them in more revealing clothing, such as towels, sports bras, skintight Spider-Woman outfits or bunny costumes. Many of the women are female pop stars or actors.

    The Grok software, created by Musk’s company xAI, made the images at the request of users who tried to break through undressing restrictions the service put in place in January. Grok, via its X account, or the users then posted the images to X.

    The images are similar to ones that sparked a firestorm of criticism in January, when Musk’s companies freely allowed people to undress others simply by uploading photos and typing prompts such as “put her in a bikini.” Musk’s companies had cheered on the idea, promoting the “spicy mode” of his AI chatbot. The flood of fake images, including some of children, prompted government investigations on five continents. […]

    More at the link.

  38. coffeepott says

    @36 i appreciate the abundance of wonkette posts shared here, i used to be a daily reader of that site. i considered becoming a paid subscriber countless times, and that it’s hosted on substack is what stopped me. eventually i stopped visiting any substacks.

    wonkette has been using the ‘it takes so long to transfer our historic posts’ excuse for months, and okay sure but you’ll keep losing readers by not at least getting the process started by posting new content elsewhere.

  39. says

    Follow-up to comment 31.

    Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission takes aim at the separation of church and state

    For Americans who expect the government to remain neutral on matters of faith, leaving religious decisions to Americans without political interference, Donald Trump’s second term has been unsettling.

    Federal agencies are pushing overt Christian messaging to the public while inundating federal workers with religious communications. Powerful cabinet secretaries have abandoned all subtlety in their embrace of Christian nationalism. Republican officials at the state level have passed laws to impose the Ten Commandments in public schools. [All too true.]

    The vice president has insisted that the United States is a “Christian nation,” raising unavoidable questions about whether people of minority faiths or no religious beliefs have been relegated to second-class citizenship. The president, who has claimed the ability to inform the public about God’s wishes and who has implored Americans to gather in groups of 10 to hold weekly prayers ahead of the celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary, recently used his social media platform to promote an image that appeared to present himself as some kind of American Jesus.

    If it seems as if Team Trump and its allies are opposed to the separation of church and state, it’s probably because it’s been quite explicit in its rejection of the constitutional principle. My MS NOW colleague Ja’han Jones highlighted the final hearing of the White House’s Religious Liberty Commission, which didn’t appear focused on religious liberty.

    To give you a sense of the tone, the commission’s chairman, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, went on a rant calling the separation of church and state ‘the biggest lie that’s been told in America since our founding.’ Each speaker after him parroted a similar line, framing liberals as some kind of threat to free religious expression.

    The separation of church and state, however, is not a “lie”; it’s a bedrock principle of our system of government. [!] In fact, I’d refer Patrick to the First Amendment, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

    According to Thomas Jefferson, those 16 words created a “wall of separation between church and state” — and he’s a bit more credible in this area than the Texas Republican.

    […] If GOP policymakers are against the idea of government neutrality on matters of faith, it’s incumbent on them to elaborate on their preferred model. Do they envision a theocracy along the lines of Iran? Do they support a governmental system in which politicians base policy decisions on their interpretations of religious doctrines? Should those who are not religious or are members of minority traditions expect to be penalized by their own government?

    These need not be rhetorical questions. If the White House’s so-called Religious Liberty Commission wants to flaunt its opposition to the First Amendment, it should be prepared to offer its proposal for what should come next.

  40. says

    Zelenskyy will fix Druzhba oil pipeline as he counts on Hungary to lift EU loan veto

    “German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the €90 billion loan to Ukraine must now be ‘disbursed quickly.'”

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that the damaged Druzhba oil pipeline would be operational by the end of April, but there’s a trade-off.

    Zelenskyy expects Hungary to lift its veto on the €90 billion loan to fund Kyiv’s war effort against Russia, as he confirmed oil will flow through the conduit again by end of April.

    “We have promised that the [Druzhba pipeline] will be repaired by the end of April. Not completely, but enough for it to be operational,” Zelenskyy said during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin.

    “We believe this coincides with other commitments by European Union member states, particularly Hungary, which has blocked certain decisions that are important to us,” he added in reference to the loan.

    The Druzhba pipeline carrying Russian oil through Ukraine to Hungary and Slovakia has been at the center of a spat between the European Union and Hungary. After it was damaged during a drone attack in January, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán retracted his support for the €90 billion loan that Kyiv needs to sustain its war effort as Russia’s full-scale invasion enters its fifth year.

    But Hungarian Prime Minister-elect Péter Magyar’s landslide victory last weekend stemmed European leaders’ optimism about a quick turnaround in Budapest — with Magyar himself indicating Monday he’s ready to lift Budapest’s blockade.

    “We also want to quickly get the EU loan for Ukraine — agreed upon in December — up and running,” Merz said about the money. “The funds for military aid must be disbursed quickly now. Ukraine needs them urgently.” […]

  43. Reginald Selkirk says

    Hospital at centre of child HIV outbreak caught reusing syringes in undercover filming

    … They are two of the 331 children that BBC Eye has identified as testing positive for HIV in the city between November 2024 and October 2025.

    After a doctor at a private clinic linked the outbreak to the hospital, called THQ Taunsa, in late 2024, local authorities promised a “massive crackdown” and suspended the hospital’s medical superintendent in March 2025 – but a BBC Eye investigation can now reveal that dangerous injection practices continued months later.

    During 32 hours of undercover filming at THQ Taunsa in late 2025, we witnessed syringes being reused on multi-dose vials of medicine on 10 separate occasions, potentially contaminating the drugs inside…

  44. birgerjohansson says

    I realised something. DJT turns 80 this spring.

    The Swedish king turns 80 April 30.
    He is the exact opposite of DJT, as he does not seem really comfortable with being the center of attention, he takes an interest in his grandkids, he drives his own car and he likes to be in the outdoors without a goddamn golf car. The monarchy has remained popular because the members are seen as ordinary people, none of that imperial pomp surrounding presidents or British royals (The late president Carter likewise toned down the pomp during his tenure which makes him the most ‘Swedish’ of US presidents).
    .
    I am not turning into a royalist, but it is possible to be a chief of state for a lot of years without turning into a narcissistic asshole. And reach 80 years without sex scandals in the extended family.

  45. says

    In Hungary, the prototype of Trump’s autocratic power grab just crashed and burned, by Rachel Maddow

    Imagine you’re a small country, proud but little and not very rich. And at some point, you decide that it’s time to put in streetlights or upgrade them in places that need them to be fixed up.

    If you’re a town or village inside that country that wants in on this project, you get told that here’s how you do it: You must hire a consulting company, which will assess your needs and attest to what kind of streetlights you should receive, and then that’s what you’ll get.

    But it turns out that as the towns across the country start going through this process, they hire the same firm to help them get their streetlights, and that’s when a couple of things begin to emerge.

    First, that company — the one these towns have been told to use in order to get the streetlights — is owned by a guy who’s in business with the prime minister’s son-in-law. And the business he’s in with the prime minister’s son-in-law turns out to be a company that makes streetlights.

    So every little town all over your country has to hire this one guy’s company, and every time the company offers that assessment, they say “the only streetlights you can get are from the business owned by the prime minister’s son-in-law and me.”

    Well, the country where this actually happened turns out to be in Europe, and the funding for the streetlights was from the European Union.

    So when investigative reporters figured out this scheme, and the EU investigated, they realized that the project to put streetlights in this poor country had instead become basically just a project to make the prime minister’s son-in-law a millionaire.

    Although the company and the prime minister’s son-in-law say they did nothing wrong, the EU froze the funding in response.

    So how did the prime minister react to that? Well, he decided that he would just pay his son-in-law directly from his country’s already meager government funds.

    And that’s how Viktor Orbán’s son-in-law, István Tiborcz, made his first millions.

    Since then, over the course of Orbán’s 16 years in power, Tiborcz has become one of the wealthiest men in the whole country, worth at least hundreds of millions of dollars. Some of that money comes from his luxury hotels.

    The presidency of the EU rotates from country to country every six months, so when it rotated to Hungary a couple of years ago, that meant there would be lots of official delegations from other countries coming to Hungary to do business.

    What some of those other countries would soon find was that no matter what hotels they booked for these official visits, the Orbán government would somehow find a way to unbook them from the hotels where they wanted to stay and rebook them into one of the hotels owned by Tiborcz.

    That was uncovered by investigative reporting from two of Hungary’s independent journalism outlets, Direkt36 and VSquare.

    In 2025 the Financial Times reported that Tiborcz nearly doubled his net worth to almost 500 million euros just in 2024 alone.

    Ahead of the elections on Sunday in Hungary, which saw his father-in-law turfed out of power after 16 years and now facing potential prosecution for corruption and theft of public assets, Tiborcz reportedly relocated to the U.S.

    Now, this story of a leader’s son-in-law profiting from his father-in-law’s power may sound familiar. Trumpism in the United States is not just a personal thing. It’s not just a big political manifestation of the authoritarian personality of Donald Trump. For Trump himself, it might be just that. But, in terms of governance — in terms of what all those other people on the right and the far right like about Trump in power and what they want to do with him in power — it is actually based on something.

    More than anything else, it’s based on the rule of Orbán.

    When looking for inspiration for how conservatives should approach power and government, Orbán isn’t just a model of how to do that; he’s the model, according to the head of the Heritage Foundation, the group behind Project 2025, which mapped out what the Trump administration would do once it got into power.

    So even though Hungary is this tiny little country (its whole population is the size of New Jersey’s), the Trump movement has been obsessed with it. Vice President JD Vance recently called Orbán “one of the only true statesmen in Europe.”

    Here’s what that looks like: Under Orbán’s leadership, Hungary has become, by some measures, the poorest country in the EU, and it’s tied with Bulgaria for the most corrupt country. It has the highest cumulative inflation in the whole EU, double what it is in other member states. Its salaries are less than half the average of what people get paid elsewhere in the EU, and its unemployment is the highest it’s been in 10 years. The total economic growth in the country last year was an anemic 0.4%. (The United States’ economic growth at the end of last year was basically just as bad, at 0.5%.)

    So Orbán’s economic performance in office has been terrible for its citizens, but somehow his son-in-law becomes one of the wealthiest people in that part of Europe. And his close friend, a plumber, has somehow become the richest person in the whole country — rich enough that this summer the political opposition to Orbán started organizing field trips for ordinary people (they called them safaris) to go drive around the immense private zoo, full of exotic animals, that his best friend built for himself when the leader shoveled him so much money that he became a billionaire from government contracts.

    We have people dressed up in inflatable frog costumes at our anti-ICE protests here in the U.S., and people in Hungary are dressed up in inflatable zebra costumes to protest their leader’s corruption.

    Orbán is the model, the platonic ideal, of what Trump’s time in power is supposed to be. Trump is supposed to follow Orbán’s lead, to use the power of the state to change the rules and change everything so that he and his friends can never be removed from power — to make their regime election-proof.

    With guys like that — election-proof and entrenched in power in a Western country — you can break Europe, you can break the West, you can break NATO and chop up and divide the world among the permanent strongmen, who will rule forever. That’s the dream.

    But a really loud alarm just went off and woke those guys up from that dream.

    Sunday’s election proves that for strongman authoritarians like Orbán and like Trump, their ongoing rule is not inevitable. It is not a fate the country can’t escape.

    As the disciplined, nonviolent, big-tent, sustainable, growing resistance to Orbán started to coalesce, as he started to look like he was going to lose, his supposedly unbreakable base of support just collapsed.

    See, no one actually likes a corrupt despot. They all support him because they think he’s going to be in power forever, so you need to stay on his good side to get anything for yourself. When it becomes clear that the despot is not going to be there forever, it falls apart. In the end, no one is a true believer in a corrupt despot, other than his henchmen and his family, and sometimes not even them. (Did I mention that Orbán’s streetlight-millionaire son-in-law has apparently fled to the U.S.?)

    Far-right authoritarian parties like Trump’s, and ones that are supported by Trump, have lost in the past year in Germany, France, the Netherlands and elsewhere.

    But Orbán’s loss was even more significant. He was defeated in a wild, huge landslide election that just swamped everything he had done to make himself and his party election-proof. The prototype on which Trump and the Republicans built their entire rule of power just crashed and burned in spectacular fashion.

  46. says

    MS NOW:

    More than 5,900 people have died in the Middle East, nearly one-third of them in Lebanon, since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran in late February. In Beirut and elsewhere, last week’s strikes, which Israel called its most intense of the war, killed more than 350 people in Lebanon, the Lebanese branch of the World Health Organization said.

  47. says

    MS NOW:

    U.S. Central Command said today that ‘no ships made it past the U.S. blockade’ of the Strait of Hormuz in the 24 hours after it was implemented, even as shipping data from MarineTraffic shows at least two vessels bypassed the blockade.

    U.S. Central Command has a credibility problem, or they have an internal communication problem.

  48. says

    Good news, as reported by The New York Times:

    Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia has signed into law a bill to end tax exemptions for a slate of Confederacy-related organizations in the state.

  49. says

    NBC News:

    Tests of intelligence and brain function showed the same results whether or not people drank fluoridated water growing up, a highly anticipated, long-term study found.

    RFK Jr. has been looking into banning fluoride.

  50. says

    Eyebrow-raising news, as summarized by Steve Benen:

    During JD Vance’s latest Fox News appearance, the vice president actually said, “What [Iranian officials] have done is engage in this act of economic terrorism against the entire world. … As the president of the United States showed, two can play at that game.”

    JFC

  51. says

    Trump confronts a public conversation he hoped to avoid over his mental stability

    Last week, after Donald Trump issued genocidal threats toward Iran and made strange comments at the White House Easter Egg Roll, Rep. Jamie Raskin decided to contact the president’s physician, seeking a “comprehensive cognitive and neurological evaluation.”

    This week, the Maryland Democrat, who serves as the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, took another step down the same path, unveiling a proposal to establish a Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office. The measure, which was unveiled with 50 Democratic co-sponsors, [That is a lot of co-sponsors!] would be responsible for determining whether the president is incapacitated “either mentally or physically” and unable to discharge the powers and duties of office, as called for in the 25th Amendment.

    The effort comes just days after the president used his social media platform to promote an image in which he appeared to present himself as some kind of American Jesus and then said the AI-generated portrait showed him “as a doctor, making people better.”

    Few would argue Raskin’s effort stands a realistic chance of success. But arguably that’s not the point: A great many Trump critics hope to generate attention and public conversation about the president’s mental stability (or lack thereof), and proposals like these help advance that discussion.

    […] The New York Times published a striking report with an unsubtle headline: “Trump’s Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate.” From the article:

    President Trump’s erratic behavior and extreme comments in recent days and weeks have turbocharged the crazy-like-a-fox-or-just-plain-crazy debate that has followed him on the national political stage for a decade.

    A series of disjointed, hard-to-follow and sometimes-profane statements capped by his ‘a whole civilization will die tonight’ threat to wipe Iran off the map last week and his head-spinning attack on the ‘WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy’ pope on Sunday night have left many with the impression of a deranged autocrat mad with power.

    The Times highlighted a lawyer who used to work with Trump, who described the president as “a man who is clearly insane.” [!] It also noted a recent comment from Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary who worked for Trump in his first term, who wrote online last week that her former boss is “clearly not well.”

    The day after the Times’ report ran, The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols wrote a related piece, arguing, “The American people must not look away, as they have done so often in the past. They must pay attention to the president’s deterioration.”

    I am mindful of the debate about whether Trump has been unhinged for years and his latest signs of mental incapacity are simply more of the same, or whether his condition is actually getting worse.

    Indeed, I remember the Times publishing a front-page report in October 2024, about a month before Election Day, that highlighted a variety of situations in which Trump “seemed confused, forgetful, incoherent or disconnected from reality.” The same article added, “He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own ‘beautiful’ body.”

    […] this entire line of inquiry is a disaster for the White House. Trump is woefully unpopular; he has no idea what to do with a struggling economy; and the destabilizing war he started in Iran for reasons he’s unable to explain clearly isn’t going according to plan — to the extent that the president even had a rudimentary plan at all.

    It’s against this backdrop that the conversation about his mental fitness is getting louder.

  52. says

    DOJ Sides With Proud Boys, Oath Keepers: Asks Judge to Toss Seditious Conspiracy Convictions

    When Trump took office last year, he didn’t pardon everyone on Jan. 6. Some defendants who were convicted of seditious conspiracy, like Stewart Rhodes, Dominic Pezzola, and Ethan Nordean, had their sentences commuted — the slate was not entirely wiped clean, though they were free to go.

    That could be over now. On Tuesday, federal prosecutors working for U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro asked the DC Circuit to throw out convictions in the seditious conspiracy cases against the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.

    That, should a panel of judges agree, will remove the convictions. Some in the greater Proud Boy community already hope that it’s a signal for something more: that their lawsuit demanding the DOJ cough up cash for damages over its prosecution of the group will bear lots and lots of money.

    Link

  53. says

    ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES: ‘Veep-like week’: Hayes reacts to JD Vance’s recent ‘string of failures’

    From Orban’s defeat to stalled Pakistan talks to picking a fight with the Pope, JD Vance has had a rough week. Chris Hayes unpacks a brutal run of failed missions with Jon Lovett.

    Video is 9:09 minutes

    ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES: ‘Really?’: Bernie Sanders rips Trump’s DoorDash stunt as families ‘go bankrupt’

    “It really, once again, shows you how far Trump and his oligarchic friends are from the reality facing working families,” says Sen. Bernie Sanders on Trump’s DoorDash stunt.

    Video is 7:04 minutes

    Also from the video featuring Senator Bernie Sanders:

    […] What we [Democrats] are going to do tomorrow is bring forth two resolutions, which basically say I think what the American people want Congress to do. […] We can’t continue to fund the extremist government of Netanyahu who has been waging an all-out war, genocidal war in Gaza, who started the war in Iran, was violating all kinds of international law in the West Bank — killing Palestinians there, knocking down homes — and is now at war, an expansionist war in Lebanon. […] has not only killed thousands of people, it has displaced over a million people […]

  54. beholder says

    @19 Silentbob

    Just after NASA shows how valuable and inspiring it can be — @16 StevoR

    I assume you’re referring to spending $4 billion to re stage Apollo 13 fifty-six years later. Is that the “valuable and inspiring” thing?

    Deprioritizing and then promptly forgetting how to go to the moon was shameful. I’ll have to agree with StevoR on this one, though, the fact that we pulled our know-how together just enough to learn how to do it again is inspiring, in its own way. Although we won’t really know if we learned to do it again until we establish a manned base on the surface.

  56. JM says

    @47 Lynna, OM:
    Lawyer grade careful wording.
    WSJ: Iran War, April 14, 2026: U.S. Enforces Blockade, Sends Tankers Back to Iran

    U.S. Central Command said no ships out of Iranian ports have gone through the U.S. blockade within its first 24 hours.

    That is only part of the blockade the US is trying to enforce but nobody violated that one specific bit. It’s also the easiest to enforce because those ships are all going to be Iranian flagged and military or sanctioned trade ships. The US is not going to bomb or capture a Chinese flagged ship without talking to their government first.

    U.S.-Iran talks are likely to resume, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said. Foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan will meet their Turkish counterpart this week to discuss proposals presented to Iran.

    For this sort of international negotiations I would normally say the second round is more likely to achieve something. With the Trump administration who knows. They keep saying things almost designed to mess up negotiations but fit within the stupid nationalism view of many administration figures. Trump is all over the place, at times he seems ready to negotiate, at other times ready to bomb.

  57. whheydt says

    Re: beholder @ #54, quoting SteveR…
    NASA didn’t replicate Apollo 13 (and a damned good thing, too). They replicated Apollo 8.

  59. birgerjohansson says

    Another Soviet officer who saved the world was Stanislaw Petrov, in 1983.

  60. birgerjohansson says

    Bruce Springsteen and Ron Perlman are 76 years old but are physically and intellectually agile.
    Trump is 79 but seems like 86. And with views that would fit 1859.

  62. StevoR says

    Good.

    An American YouTuber has been jailed in South Korea for being a public nuisance after he filmed himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean war sex slaves.

    Johnny Somali was sentenced to six months in prison for displaying “severe” disrespect for South Korean law.

    The 25-year-old has gained notoriety for recording himself doing several provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan and streaming them on platforms including YouTube and Twitch.

    ..(snip)..

    Prosecutors had sought a three year jail sentence for the self-confessed “internet troll” who was also accused of harassing staff and visitors at an amusement park, disrupting a convenience store by blasting North Korean music and tipping over a cup of noodles onto a table. He also caused similar disruption on a bus and subway and distributed non-consensual deepfake videos..

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-16/youtuber-johnny-somali-jailed-for-disrespecting-south-korean-law/106569500

  63. StevoR says

    Solar wind in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona, flows up to four times faster than scientists had thought, a study based on photographs taken by a solar eclipsing spacecraft revealed.

    The type of wind that the researchers studied forms very close to the sun’s surface and had previously been known to blow at speeds of 60 miles per second (100 kilometers per second). That’s considerably slower than the 480 miles per second so-called fast solar wind that blows from coronal holes — dark, cool regions with open magnetic field lines in the sun’s upper atmosphere, the corona. But images taken by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Proba-3 mission — a duo of satellites flying in a formation to simulate the solar eclipse — revealed that even the slow kind of solar wind can be much faster than expected.

    Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/sun/solar-wind-travels-up-to-4-times-faster-than-expected-eclipse-spacecraft-reveals

  64. says

    Mark Meadows seeks reimbursement from Trump’s DOJ for legal fees

    Mark Houck, a longtime anti-abortion activist and failed Republican congressional candidate, filed suit against the government following his 2022 arrest for allegedly shoving a 72-year-old clinic escort. His civil case did not fare well: A George W. Bush-appointed judge dismissed his lawsuit with prejudice.

    MS NOW confirmed this week, however, that Donald Trump’s Justice Department nevertheless agreed to a $1.1 million settlement with Houck. [JFC]

    If it seems as if the president’s DOJ has a pot of money it’s using to reward those politically aligned with the White House, it’s not your imagination. [!]

    It was nearly a year ago, for example, when Trump’s DOJ reached a settlement with the family of Ashli Babbitt, the Jan. 6 rioter who was fatally shot by a police officer during the attack on the U.S. Capitol. As part of the agreement, the Republican administration announced plans to give roughly $5 million to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Babbitt’s relatives.

    The settlement was awfully tough to defend, especially given the weakness of the civil case, but it was the first prominent example of the Republican administration offering generous, taxpayer-funded payments to those favored by the president. [taxpayer-funded payments from Trump]

    A few weeks ago, it happened again, when Trump’s DOJ also agreed to reward former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn with a $1.25 million check in response to an equally dubious civil suit.

    […] MS NOW reported:

    […] Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows recently renewed efforts to seek reimbursement from the Justice Department for his legal defense in Trump-related investigations […]

    Meadows first made the request to the Biden administration under federal law that offers protections for former government employees, but that administration took no action on it.

    Meadow’s lawyer, George Terwilliger, said the request is hardly unusual, adding that protections exist to protect those who “get entangled in lawfare cases, simply as a result of doing their jobs.”

    The trouble is, it’s tough to see Meadows as an innocent bystander who simply did his job. [So true.]

    Indeed, the former White House chief of staff has long been a central figure in the investigation into Trump and his efforts to seize power after losing the 2020 race. It was Meadows who was with Trump in the Oval Office during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. It was Meadows who was involved in the fake electors scheme. It was Meadows who was in frequent communication with far-right GOP lawmakers about efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

    It was also Meadows who allegedly (and quite literally) set fire to documents in a White House fireplace, several times, after having important post-election meetings, right around the same time that he reportedly told Cassidy Hutchinson, one of his top aides, that “things might get real, real bad” on Jan. 6.

    Naturally, federal investigators had quite a few questions for the former White House chief of staff, and Meadows racked up legal bills. If the latest reporting is correct, he now wants taxpayers to help pay him back for those bills, and if recent history is any guide, Trump’s DOJ likely will oblige.

    As for the broader context, a related NBC News report added that Meadows was charged in state cases involving the 2020 election in Georgia and Arizona, and he pleaded not guilty in both cases. The Georgia case was eventually dropped, though the Arizona case is still pending.

  65. says

    Mehmet Oz says Trump told him that diet soda might help kill cancer cells

    It’s not exactly a secret that Donald Trump has weird ideas about health and science. In fact, it was earlier this year when the president told The Wall Street Journal he routinely ignores the advice of physicians on daily aspirin use, in part because he’s “superstitious” and in part because he wants “nice, thin blood pouring through my heart.”

    This is the same Republican who also famously recommended research into treating Covid-19 patients with disinfectant injections and shining “very powerful” lights inside their bodies.

    So it doesn’t come a great surprise to learn the president also apparently believes diet soda possesses implausible health benefits. The New Republic noted:

    During the latest episode of Donald Trump Jr.’s ‘Triggered’ podcast, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the daytime television host the president picked to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, revealed some of the president’s unorthodox beliefs about health.

    ‘Your dad argues that diet soda is good for him because it kills grass, if poured on grass, so therefore it must kill cancer cells inside the body,’ Oz said.

    The former television personality went on to share an anecdote about seeing the president drinking an orange-flavored soft drink. Oz said the president “starts to, like, sheepishly grin. He goes, ‘You know this stuff’s good for me. It kills cancer cells.’ And then he tells me, ‘It’s fresh squeezed, so how bad can it be for you?’”

    Trump’s son, the host of the podcast, laughed at all of this, which was understandable. It was funny to hear fresh evidence of the president’s odd beliefs.

    Far less funny, however, is the person who harbors these bizarre ideas nevertheless claims broad authority on matters of public health, to the point that he’s urged Americans to follow his terrible advice. This is the same president, after all, who has offered public guidance on, among other things, how much Tylenol to take and what child vaccination schedules should look like.

    […] Oz’s anecdote is a timely reminder to the public that Trump’s judgment on matters related to health is better left ignored.

  67. says

    Vance draws embarrassingly small crowd at college event

    On Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance headed to Georgia, where he was supposed to sit down with Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk for an interview in an indoor arena near the University of Georgia. But rather than being greeted by a massive crowd, the event was sparsely attended, with only some of the chairs on the arena floor filled. [The arena was less than 25% filled.]

    Kirk didn’t even show up, with a Turning Point spokesperson claiming that “very serious threats” prevented her attendance, even though the vice president of the United States still turned up and has some of the best, if not the best, security in the world.

    […] Ultimately, it was just the latest in a series of embarrassing events for Vance, whose dismal approval rating and odious persona has made him a laughingstock rather than an asset for the Trump administration.

    It wasn’t just the crowd size that was embarrassing for Vance. He was also heckled by some of the few members of the audience over the Trump administration’s Middle East policy.

    “Jesus Christ does not support genocide!” an audience member yelled at Vance, likely referring to the attacks on the Gaza Strip.

    Soon after, a member of the audience shouted at Vance, “You’re killing children! You’re bombing children!” Indeed, the Trump administration is killing and bombing children, including nearly 200 girls at a school in Iran.

    While the paltry attendance on a large college campus was embarrassing for Vance, it is also indicative of the issues President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are now having with younger voters.

    After Trump made gains with the voting bloc in 2024, younger voters have quickly turned against Trump and the GOP. [I snipped polling details.]

  68. says

    Washington Post link

    “U.S. sends thousands more troops to Mideast […]”

    “The deployment includes sailors and Marines […]”

    The Pentagon is sending thousands of additional troops into the Middle East in the coming days, as the Trump administration attempts to pressure Iran into a deal that could end the weeks-long conflict there while considering the possibility of additional strikes or ground operations if a fragile ceasefire does not hold, U.S. officials said.

    The forces moving into the region include about 6,000 troops aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush and several warships escorting it, said current and former officials, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military movements. About 4,200 others with the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group and its embarked Marine Corps task force, the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, are expected to arrive near the end of the month.

    The infusion of firepower appears likely to coalesce with warships already in the Middle East just as the two-week ceasefire is set to expire April 22. […]

  69. says

    Russia ramps up ‘destructive’ cyberattacks on Europe, says Sweden

    “Moscow behind attack on Swedish heating plant last year, Swedish minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin said.”

    Russia-linked hackers are increasing cyberattacks targeted at Europe’s critical infrastructure, Sweden’s defense ministry said Wednesday.

    “Over the past year, Russia’s methods have shifted,” Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin said at a press conference in Stockholm. “Pro-Russian groups that once carried out denial-of-service attacks are now attempting destructive cyberattacks against organizations in Europe,” he added.

    Bohlin warned of more aggressive tactics and said Swedish targets are increasingly in the crosshairs. He pointed to a foiled attempt on energy infrastructure last year as a sign of Russia’s increasingly aggressive playbook.

    The minister said a group with links to Russian intelligence targeted a heating plant in western Sweden in spring 2025. The facility’s security systems stopped the attack, he added, declining to name the plant in question or give further details.

    Norway and Denmark have faced similar challenges, Bohlin said. “Taken together, this points to a change toward riskier and more reckless behavior which could potentially lead to damaging effects for society.”

    A group tied to Russian intelligence was blamed for a large-scale attempted attack on Poland’s power grid in December 2025 — one of the most significant strikes on the country’s energy infrastructure in years.

    Western agencies this month also exposed a sweeping campaign by the GRU-linked hacking group Fancy Bear, which infiltrated poorly secured Wi-Fi routers to siphon off passwords, emails and sensitive data from governments and militaries across Europe and North America.

  70. says

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—After JD Vance failed to strike a deal on Iran’s nuclear program over the weekend, on Tuesday former President Barack Obama offered to help Donald J. Trump reach such a deal, sources said.

    “I hear you’re having trouble keeping Iran from getting nukes,” Obama reportedly told Trump. “I have some ideas about how you might get that done.”

    “Just spitballing here, but it would be good to put limits on uranium enrichment,” he said. “And you’d want to set up regular inspections and monitoring to make sure they’re complying.”

    Although Obama thought he could be of assistance in crafting a nuclear deal with Iran, he added, “I don’t know how you’ll get them to stop blocking the Strait of Hormuz. It was totally open when I was president.”

    https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/obama-offers-to-help-trump-craft

    Satire

  71. says

    Our organization’s principles exceed being just secular humanist. We have always seen that, for centuries, the roman catholic corporation has been one of the most murderous, hypocritical, superstitious organizations. The pope is the head of that crime syndicate. However, he has uttered some very decent, moral statements recently. And, that imbecile vancehole has NO RIGHT to threaten the pope.

    Also, this article uses strong words, but backed by many truthful, credible links, they are not hyperbole:
    https://www.commondreams.org/further/the-terrifying-ridiculous-spectacle
    Abby Zimet Apr 13, 2026

  73. says

    Pressed on controversial FEMA official, Trump asks, ‘What does teleport mean?’

    “[Trump] finally commented on Gregg Phillips and his highly unusual claims about his experiences. The FEMA official’s job appears to be in doubt.”

    Even before recent revelations, Gregg Phillips was a poor choice for a leadership role at any federal agency. We are, after all, talking about a far-right activist who has spread baseless conspiracy theories and used violent rhetoric about his political opponents. What’s more, Phillips is an enthusiastic election denier who played a key role in the discredited “2000 Mules” project.

    Phillips was nevertheless tapped to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Office of Response and Recovery, and he’s served in the role since late last year. (He’s a presidential appointee who did not need to be confirmed by the Senate.)

    In recent weeks, however, Phillips has become still more controversial. CNN reported in late March that the FEMA official has claimed, more than once, that he was involuntarily teleported, including an incident in which he said he was sent to a Waffle House restaurant 50 miles away.

    “Teleporting is no fun,” he said on a podcast last year. “It was real.”

    In a follow-up report a week later, CNN noted that the FEMA official continued to insist on the validity of his claims.

    This week, Donald Trump finally commented on the burgeoning controversy. From CNN’s latest report:

    In a brief interview with CNN on his cellphone Thursday morning about Phillips, President Donald Trump said, ‘What does teleport mean? Was he kidding?’

    Told that Phillips was not kidding, Trump responded: ‘I don’t know anything about teleporting. … It just sounds a little strange, but I know nothing about teleporting or him, but I’ll find out about it right now.’

    The network’s reporting […] added that the White House contacted the Department of Homeland Security and urged officials to either “remove Phillips or keep him out of public view.” [“Keep him out of public view?” Sheesh.]

    […] Let’s also not forget that this guy was not rewarded for his political loyalties with some obscure position deep within the federal bureaucracy. On the contrary, CNN’s original report noted that despite his weird beliefs, Phillips is currently in one of “the most consequential” positions at FEMA, leading an office that makes decisions involving “search-and-rescue operations, emergency aid, infrastructure restoration and ultimately distributing billions of dollars in disaster assistance.”

    Will Phillips soon be teleported to some other job? Watch this space.

  74. says

    Even the dumbest senator knows the GOP is cooked

    In a shocking turn of events, Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama blamed his own party for the GOP’s bleak midterm prospects.

    “Hell, we ain’t done anything in the majority,” he said during an appearance on “The Benny Johnson Show” Wednesday. “Why should we keep the majority? We’ve got one bill passed.” [videos]

    What Tuberville failed to mention is that the GOP’s projected midterm losses may stem from broader issues within the party. Even as President Donald Trump posts historically low approval ratings, he remains far more popular than the rest of his party.

    And Trump’s repeated lies about ending wars, disastrous trade policies, and inflation-inducing Iran war have caused costs for everyday Americans to skyrocket.

    When you couple that with a job market that has been steadily grinding to a halt, it doesn’t take a political scientist—or even an ignorant Alabama senator—to understand why voters are desperate for change.

  75. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-made-up-fake-power-ranger-fairy

    “Trump Made Up Fake Power Ranger Fairy Princess Rambo Barbie Job Just To Distract Kristi Noem”

    Donald Trump may be a senile dumbass who knows so little about literally every subject that he’s too stupid to even grasp what he doesn’t know. But he does have a certain degree of gut smarts, the kind that knows how to be a conman, the kind that knows how to bullshit, and he knows how to use those powers on people who are every bit as daft, conniving, grifty, power-hungry, and vain as he is. Sometimes he uses those powers like one uses a laser pointer to distract a cat.

    When Trump fired Nazi Barbie Kristi Noem from the Department of Homeland Security, he made up a job for her. […] [social media post from Rubio]

    […] This report comes from PunchUp, a Daily Beast newsletter from veteran reporter Tom Latchem (paywall, that we paid, so that we might tell you things):

    President Donald Trump invented a senior government role for Kristi Noem to stop her from running for a seat in the Senate this year, administration sources tell PunchUp,

    The title of “Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas”—announced on March 5 by Trump, 79, as he publicly fired Noem from her role as DHS secretary—was effectively fabricated to ensure she missed the filing deadline for the South Dakota Senate race and would thus be unable to challenge incumbent Sen. Mike Rounds, according to multiple sources.

    “It was made up to keep her busy,” one source close to the administration told PunchUp of Noem’s new role. The source said the White House’s private view was that Noem had become so toxic it needed to “put her out to the glue factory”—and so invented an opening that kept her on the government payroll and off the ballot, but with no real power.

    […] What’s amazing is that this clearly did distract her, if this reporting is correct. She’s so irredeemably vapid, craven, and narcissistic that it sounds like she was like “YES I WILL BE PRINCESS OF THE SHIELD!” and literally nobody in her life was willing to tell her that wasn’t a thing. […]

    The Trump regime people apparently were scared that she could pose a challenge to Mike Rounds in deep red South Dakota, and it’s not like team Trump is known for loyalty, especially to Republican senators, so it must be because they realized that if she beat him in a primary, she’s such a complete joke now that she could lose a Senate seat in the ruby red state where she used to be the governor.

    There were whispers about this in Republican circles, reportedly. There was a deadline a-comin’. Quick, Trump, invent the Shield of the Americas and declare Kristi Noem its high priestess!

    To secure a place on the primary ballot, Noem would have needed to collect 2,171 petition signatures and file them by 5 p.m. on March 31.

    She had 26 days but no time, as she threw herself into her new job, with sources saying that Noem felt she had no choice but to show her willingness to toe the president’s line.

    Latchem’s sources say Trump really threw that shit together. Made up an event at Trump National Doral, got whichever Latin American leaders were willing to hop on planes we guess for the sole purposes of honking horns and jangling keys to make Kristi Noem laugh and distract her until the filing deadline passed. Rubio was there, Secretary Hegseth, plus the leaders of Argentina, El Salvador, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

    And then she got to go on a trip, around Latin America! Yay! And Corey […] got to come with […]

    The White House panicked as they realized Noem was treating the role as substantive rather than symbolic. “They didn’t expect her to take it so seriously,” the administration source said.

    So they had created a monster, one under the impression that it had been sent on a secret mission.

    […] They tried to unring the bell by having her report to one of Rubio’s underlings instead of Rubio himself. That guy, Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau, “has now nuked the whole thing,” says Latchem’s source in the administration.

    She tried to bring 10 staffers along to her fake job. Three have already been fired, from even more fake jobs. […]

    And now Kristi Noem will probably have to be Cricketed to death from her new (fake) job because oh boy, they really did not think she would be taking this so seriously, oh boy, this sure did get out of hand!

    Well, if all else fails, she can always run for president. It’s not like it’s gonna be JD Vance.

  77. StevoR says

    @57. whheydt : “NASA didn’t replicate Apollo 13 (and a damned good thing, too). They replicated Apollo 8.”

    They went further than Apollo 8 and in a new much improved and larger spacecraft.

    The Artemis program will eventually replicate and improve on Apollo and its achievements. Which was the most extraordinary thing our species has ever done.

  78. hillaryrettig1 says

    We lost a good one:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/us/ishmael-jaffree-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.bFA.aQga.rkEVwnEq2ol8&smid=url-share

    One afternoon in 1981, Ishmael Jaffree’s son came home from kindergarten and asked about God.

    Mr. Jaffree, a lawyer in Mobile, Ala., was agnostic, and he recoiled when his son and his two older children, both second graders, told him that their teachers had been leading their classes in prayer. The Supreme Court had banned mandatory prayer in public schools in 1962, but a series of recent laws in Alabama had made it easier to bring religion into the classroom.

    Mr. Jaffree complained to the teachers, then the principal, and then the district superintendent. His objection was about more than principle: When his kindergartner son refused to pray along, his classmates bullied him.

    After Mr. Jaffrey failed to get any answers, he filed a federal lawsuit in 1982, charging that the Alabama laws violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

    In 1985, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in his favor, restricting states from allowing anything more than a belief-neutral “moment of silence” in classrooms.

  79. whheydt says

    Re: SteveR @ #77…
    Artemis, like Apollo 8 had a “free return” orbit (that is, without any active measures, they would return to Earth). Apollo 13 was NOT in a “free return” orbit. Without the use of the Lunar Lander descent engine (with the ascent engine as a backup), they would not have come back to Earth. Since the recent Artemis mission did not, so far as I know, include a lander, had they had the sort of problem that happened to Apollo 13, it is a very good thing they had a “free return” orbit. And, indeed, without the life support capabilities of the Apollo 13 lander or equivalent, a similar incident might well have doomed the crew altogether.

    Granted, Artemis II went farther from Earth that Apollo 8, or–for that matter–any Apollo mission, the profile was otherwise far more similar to Apollo 8 than Apollo 13.

  80. whheydt says

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/former-trump-attorney-john-eastman-disbarred-california-2020-election-rcna332076

    John Eastman, a former attorney for President Donald Trump who helped engineer a last-ditch strategy to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, was disbarred in California on Wednesday over his efforts more than five years ago.

    The California Supreme Court said in a filing that Eastman could no longer practice law in the state, upholding a State Bar Court recommendation, and ordered him to pay $5,000 in sanctions.

    An attorney for Eastman, Randall A. Miller, said in a statement that Eastman will seek review of the case before the U.S. Supreme Court to “repudiate this threat to the rule of law.”

  82. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    birgerjohansson @2:

    Oxford Study EXPOSES USA: Americans Twice as Poor as Europeans
    […]
    does this seem legit? I know about PPP, but… average 63 minutes to earn a dollar?

    First some text that was the basis for the video. Then an assessment.

    I haven’t seen an explanation for that particular statistic. Olivier Sterck’s paper this month frequently cited World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Platform. A dollar every 63 minutes is $8343 per year. “Earn” may not be the right word, as it includes households’ children and unemployed adults, but also includes safety net income.

    Olivier Sterck at The Conversation – Measuring poverty on a spectrum instead of an arbitrary line conveys a more accurate picture of inequality

    Having spent more than 15 years researching poverty as an economist, I believe that whether the government ought to draw this line at $33,000, $100,000 or $140,000 is not the real issue. […] there is no magic threshold below which you are poor and above which you’re doing fine. […] all public debates, research and policy treat poverty lines as legitimate—as if this threshold really exists. […] Even among experts, there is little agreement on where the poverty line should fall. As a result, debates about poverty lines often reveal more about the choice of threshold than about poverty itself.
    […]
    poverty can be defined as the inverse of income, and its unit is simply inverted. If incomes are measured in dollars per day, poverty is measured in days per dollar. […] The time to get $1 refers to a day of life for anyone at any age and in any circumstance, not just the hours worked by someone with a job. […] My proposed measure casts the U.S. in a strikingly different light from traditional poverty statistics. In the U.S., I’ve calculated that it takes 63 minutes on average to get $1 in income. That’s much slower than in many other high-income countries: United Kingdom: 34 minutes. France: less than 31 minutes. Germany: about 26 minutes. This indicates that average poverty is substantially higher in the U.S., even though U.S. average incomes are higher than in most Western European countries.
    […]
    this seems paradoxical. How can a rich country’s economy grow and yet get poorer? […] the U.S. has one of the most unequal economies in the world, and by far the most unequal among rich countries. […] income distribution has been getting more unequal even as the average income has risen.

    Olivier Sterck at VoxDev – Global poverty trends through a new lens

    All mainstream poverty measures share the same fundamental feature: they ignore everyone above the chosen line. With the extreme poverty line of the World Bank ($2.15/day), someone earning $2.16/day is treated as equally non-poor as someone earning $10, $100, or $1,000/day. Billions of low-income people—who most would agree still live in poverty—are therefore excluded from the statistics. And because there is no consensus on where to set the line, it is tempting to pick the one that tells the story you want.
    […]
    In the US, average poverty increased by about 1.2% per year since 1990, as inequality growth (2.3% per year) outpaced income growth (1% per year). […] while in Ghana, strong income growth more than offset rising inequality, leading to substantial poverty reduction.

    And the assessment.
    /r/AskEconomics Teammember:

    It would not be surprising to find a measure of poverty that is higher in the US than in European countries given that the US welfare state is much less generous than other high income countries. Having said that, I don’t think their measure is saying what […] the article is saying.

    I think what is happening is that because the measure is something like:

    (1/n) * \sum_i (1/y_i)

    where n is population, i indexes a person, and y is income. You’re basically calculating an intensity-weighted poverty measure. So someone who is rich gets basically zero weight, and someone who is poor gets weight increasing to infinity. At the extreme, if someone in your population makes zero dollars you have infinite poverty.

    The fact that the US experienced increases during the 1990s, when welfare reforms moved money from the very poor to the really poor (the earned income tax credit, for instance, is weird amongst anti-poverty tools in that it has a phase-in, meaning the lowest income receive nothing).

    The COVID drop then makes sense because stimulus checks would be the single best thing to do by this measure because reducing extreme poverty counts more than anything else.

    So what the measure is telling you is that the US has a larger number of people who have very, very low incomes. I don’t think that tells you much about what the “typical” american is, relative to say median incomes.

  83. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Militant Agnostic @81.

    Wikipedia – List of Amazon worker fatalities

    On December 27, 2022, Rick Jacobs, aged 61, died of cardiac arrest. Employees claimed that a makeshift barrier of large cardboard bins was erected around the deceased while business at the warehouse continued as normal.

  84. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Lynna @31: “I don’t have access to the rest of this report.”

    Wired – Government workers say they’re getting inundated with religion

    One USDA employee called the email “grotesque” […] “This has never happened before,” […] The employee says that this behavior would not even be normal for military chaplains, for whom faith is part of their work.
    […]
    The USDA is not the only agency espousing overtly religious rhetoric: At the Department of Health and Human Services, the Small Business Administration, and the Department of Labor, federal employees have been alarmed to watch Christianity’s creep into the government since President Donald Trump’s return to office.
    […]
    faith offices have sprung up across agencies […] A July 2025 memo from the Office of Personnel Management titled “Protecting Religious Expression in the Federal Workplace” permits federal employees to essentially proselytize to their colleagues, so long as trying to “persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views” doesn’t cross the line into harassment. The memo also permits workers to “encourage” their colleagues “to participate in religious expressions of faith, such as prayer.” […] At the Department of Labor, […] the director of the agency’s faith center, hosts monthly worship services. A DOL employee […] says that these prayer services are “very abnormal.” [“]This is very explicitly Christian, and even within the realm of Christianity, a very narrow representation of that.”
    […]
    “I’ve thought about complaining, but I would worry about some form of retaliation if I were to do that, to be honest,” the employee says. […] Another DOL employee […] says that “the vibes are bad and people don’t like it,” […] [An SBA employee said] “Honestly, I don’t know anyone who actually went to them because they are optional but it’s still uncomfortable to know that there’s a Christian prayer service happening in a government building, which is supposed to be religiously neutral.” The employee says the emails instructed workers not to share the invitation or the link to a video of the service with anyone outside the agency.
    […]
    Last year, HHS lent full support to religious exemptions for vaccines; in February, the agency announced the expansion of funding for “faith-based” addiction treatments. […] Kennedy recently authorized HHS employees to leave work early on April 3 “in observance of Good Friday,” […]

    “From executive orders to agency-wide directives to even early dismissal emails, it is abundantly clear that this administration is not so much proudly Christian as it is belligerently so,” says one HHS employee
    […]
    the Pentagon has hosted a monthly prayer service featuring well-known evangelicals like Franklin Graham and his son Edward Graham, as well as Doug Wilson, a Christian Nationalist preacher who has argued for the establishment of a theocracy and said that women should lose the right to vote. […] On Good Friday, the DOD hosted a prayer service only for Protestants. […] Hegseth has repeatedly framed the US war in Iran as a “holy war,” calling Iranians “barbaric savages” and called on Americans to pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ.”

    Hegseth, a guy obsessed with unconstrained lethality and disses elite education, calls others barbaric savages while he bombs their UNESCO World Heritage sites.

  85. KG says

    The Artemis program will eventually replicate and improve on Apollo and its achievements. Which was the most extraordinary thing our species has ever done. – StevoR@77

    If we’re talking about positive things, I’d nominate wiping out smallpox. But even in the area of space exploration, there are a number of things I’d put above the Apollo landings, which were primarily a Cold War political stunt.

  86. KG says

    Kirk didn’t even show up, with a Turning Point spokesperson claiming that “very serious threats” prevented her attendance, even though the vice president of the United States still turned up and has some of the best, if not the best, security in the world. – Lynna, OM@67 quoting Daily Kos

    I’d guess the “very serious threat” was being associated with Vance, whose star is clearly waning after his failures in Hungary and Pakistan, while Kirk thinks hers is still rising.

  88. StevoR says

    @79. whheydt : “Granted, Artemis II went farther from Earth that Apollo 8, or– for that matter – any Apollo mission, the profile was otherwise far more similar to Apollo 8 than Apollo 13.”

    Yes – fair point. There are other more ambitious Artemis missions to come of course.

    …without the life support capabilities of the Apollo 13 lander or equivalent, a similar incident might well have doomed the crew altogether.

    Also true altho’ I’m unsure whether the Artemis crew needed to stir their oxygen tanks or not and suspect the tech has likely improved in that regard as well as so many others.

    Plus the Lunar lander will be coming for later Artemis missions too starting so I gather with their next one.

  89. JM says

    Newsweek: People Ask if Pete Hegseth Just Quoted Quentin Tarantino’s Version of Bible

    Viewers watching a Pentagon worship service this week noticed something familiar about a prayer recited by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: its language closely echoes a monologue made famous by the 1994 film Pulp Fiction.
    During the service at the Pentagon complex on Wednesday, Hegseth explained that the prayer—known as “CSAR 25:17”—had been recited by “Sandy 1” to combat search‑and‑rescue crews ahead of CSAR missions, including a recent operation involving two U.S. Air Force crew members who were shot down over Iran.

    This is Ezekiel 25:17. It’s a real bible verse but is just 2 sentences, the long monologue in Pulp Fiction is a made up elaborate version. Hegseth’s quote follows the long version from Pulp Fiction. This isn’t really Hegseth’s fault if the military is actually using a prayer that follows the made up version. Still a little funny for a guy who takes his religion so seriously to mention a made up bible quote as if it’s real.

  90. says

    Sky Captain @84, thank you.

    In other news: ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES: ‘Outrageous’: American journalist detained in Kuwait after posting Iran war video

    “This is the most clear-cut example of criminalizing journalism and speech. It is outrageous,” says Chris Hayes on Kuwaiti-American journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin’s ongoing detention in Kuwait after sharing a publicly available, verified video.

    Video is 6:46 minutes

    ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES: ‘George Santos with a gun’: GOP Rep. Cory Mills faces new calls to resign

    Congressman Cory Mills is facing growing pressure to resign over a range of conduct issues. Roger Sollenberger joins to discuss the man one Capitol Hill Republican described to him as, “George Santos with a gun.”

    Video is 10:32 minutes

  91. says

    Pardoned Jan. 6 rioter to plead guilty in child sexual abuse case, adding to pattern

    “Trump’s pardons for Jan. 6 rioters were already indefensible. As many of them run into fresh trouble with the law, the move continues to look even worse.”

    New, related video at the link.

    It’s been quite difficult to keep up with the number of pardoned Jan. 6 rioters who have run into fresh trouble with the law, even after receiving clemency from Donald Trump, in large part because the list keeps growing. NBC News reported on the latest in an ugly series:

    Another Jan. 6 rioter pardoned by President Donald Trump will plead guilty in a separate case involving child exploitation of multiple victims, according to federal court records.

    David Daniel has reached a plea agreement in connection with a pending charge of sexual exploitation of a minor and possessing sexually explicit images of children in federal court in the Western District of North Carolina.

    Daniel was first arrested in 2023 for his role in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, and he ultimately admitted he assaulted law enforcement personnel during the attack. He was among the many to receive a Trump pardon anyway.

    But as the NBC News report added, as part of the probe into Daniel’s role in the pro-Trump riot, investigators also uncovered evidence of child sexual abuse and filed charges, and now Daniel is prepared to plead guilty.

    The developments come three weeks after a different Jan. 6 rioter who received a presidential pardon was sentenced to four years in prison on child pornography charges. [!] Earlier in the month, a different Jan. 6 rioter, who was also rescued by Trump, was sentenced to life in prison for molesting two children. [!]

    […] In February, a different pardoned Jan. 6 rioter was convicted in Florida of child molestation and exposing himself to children. [!] (The man, Andrew Paul Johnson, attempted to bribe one of his victims by saying the administration would send him money as part of restitution for those who attacked the Capitol.)

    […] Last fall, Robert Keith Packer, a pardoned Jan. 6 criminal best known for wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt inside the Capitol, was arrested in a dog bite incident. That came on the heels of another pardoned Jan. 6 criminal being convicted on child pornography charges. [!] Two weeks earlier, another pardoned Jan. 6 rioter was convicted of plotting to kill FBI agents. [!]

    They have plenty of company. Zachary Jordan Alam, months after receiving a Jan. 6 pardon, was convicted in connection with a home invasion. Andrew Taake, weeks after receiving a Jan. 6 pardon, pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor. [!] Emily Hernandez, weeks after receiving a Jan. 6 pardon, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for driving while drunk and killing a passenger in another car.

    A recent report in The New York Times noted a variety of other examples [I snipped details]

    What’s more, this growing list doesn’t include John Banuelos, a Jan. 6 rioter who was arrested in October on kidnapping and sexual assault charges. [!] Banuelos wasn’t pardoned, but he saw his Jan. 6 criminal case dropped by the Justice Department the day after Trump’s second inauguration.

    To be sure, when making a list of the worst things the president has done since returning to power, the competition is fierce, but his decision to pardon Jan. 6 rioters, including violent felons, is near the top. But the fact that so many of these recipients continue to run into legal trouble makes Trump’s move look even worse.

    […] the editorial board of The Times recently published a notable opinion piece that argued, “The American public deserves to understand the mayhem that the Jan. 6 pardons have unleashed.”

    Given the circumstances, the appeal was hardly unreasonable.

  92. says

    Tulsi Gabbard impresses her audience of one […]

    “The director of national intelligence is engaging in pitiful antics because her job likely depends on it.”

    New and related video at the link.

    Last summer, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard unveiled a report with a title that read, “Declassified Evidence of Obama Administration Conspiracy to Subvert President Trump’s 2016 Victory and Presidency.” [FFS]

    In an accompanying press release, the hapless DNI added, “The information we are releasing today clearly shows there was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government.”

    In reality, the report showed no such thing, and independent analyses characterized Gabbard’s report as “ludicrous.” An analysis from The Bulwark explained, “[E]ven a cursory look at the actual substance of Gabbard’s dramatic claims shows … a nothingburger. There is no actual substance.” Officials from Democratic and Republican administrations urged the public to recognize Gabbard’s conspiracy theories for what they were: obvious nonsense.

    The DNI sent her findings to Donald Trump’s Justice Department nevertheless, and wouldn’t you know it, the hyper-politicized DOJ took Gabbard’s vacuous findings quite seriously. [JFC]

    Eight months later, a suspiciously similar process is unfolding. MS NOW reported:

    Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department related to a former intelligence community inspector general and a whistleblower whose complaint helped trigger the first impeachment of President Donald Trump. [Not good]

    The whistleblower complaint, deemed credible at the time by then-Inspector General Michael Atkinson, set off a chain of events that culminated in Trump’s impeachment in 2019 for pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate his then-political rival Joe Biden. The Senate later acquitted Trump in a largely party-line vote.

    […] Rep. Jim Himes, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, responded to the developments with a written statement that read, “The whistleblower who made Congress aware of Donald Trump’s efforts to extort Ukraine and falsely smear his opponent followed all the rules and demonstrated courage and principle. No amount of sycophantic lickspittle will erase the fact that the ‘perfect’ call was released, and the American people could see Trump’s corruption and abuse of power firsthand.” [All true, and well-phrased.]

    […] As this week got underway, Gabbard took aim at the extortion scandal that led to Trump’s first impeachment, claiming that nefarious “deep-state actors within the Intelligence Community” secretly conspired to “usurp the will of the American people and impeach the duly-elected president of the United States,” whom she characterized as a poor and unsuspecting victim.

    […] the point wasn’t about exposing actual wrongdoing. Rather, Gabbard — no doubt aware of scuttlebutt about her possible firing after 14 months of failures, controversies and embarrassments — was likely trying to impress her audience of one.

    There’s reason to believe it worked.

    On Wednesday night, the president used his social media platform to tout the DNI’s latest partisan antics [of course he did], which followed two items posted earlier in the week, both of which were built around the idea that Gabbard’s latest foolishness should help the president’s crusade to “expunge” his first impeachment — a priority he’s pushed intermittently for years. [Another one of Trump’s delusions on display.]

    […]

  93. says

    Steve Benen comments on a report posted by Reuters:

    Insert obligatory “imagine if this were Hunter Biden” comment here: “Donald Trump’s son Eric, who oversees the family business empire, will accompany the U.S. ​president on his trip next month to China, a spokeswoman for the family organization told Reuters on Tuesday.”

    Signs of corruption expanding in the Trump family.

    Steve Benen comments on a report posted by The New York Times:

    Probably the best possible outcome given the circumstances: “The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which had been set to shut down in May, will keep publishing after all. A nonprofit journalism organization has stepped up to acquire the newspaper, which has survived for more than two centuries.”

    Yes, that is good news.

  94. says

    Follow-up to JM @89

    Hegseth Compares Press to the Pharisees

    A thin-skinned and prickly Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went off on journalists in his press conference this morning, resorting to the classic “attack the messenger” defense to a unpopular war going poorly.

    It’s not the first time Hegseth has succumbed to blaming a lack of patriotism among reporters for unfavorable headlines and critical reporting on a Middle East conflict ignited by the Trump administration. But today’s screed was striking for how it mixed the old worn-out reflexive questioning of the loyalty of reporters with biblical references that reflect Hegseth’s personal Christian nationalism: [social media post, plus video]

    “Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on,” Hegseth said. “It’s incredibly unpatriotic.”

    […] Questioning the loyalty of journalists — or any regime critics — harkens to earlier dark eras of America history and to authoritarian regimes worldwide. But Hegseth’s diatribe came with a strong Christian twist, as he compared journalists to the Pharisees who rejected Jesus in the Bible:

    “The Pharisees, the so-called and self-appointed elites of their time, they were there to witness, to write everything down, to record, but their hearts were hardened, even though they witnessed a literal miracle, it didn’t matter,” Hegseth said.

    “They were only there to explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda. As the passage ends, the Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel against him, how to destroy him,” he continued.

    “I sat there in church and I thought, our press are just like these Pharisees, not all of you, not all of you, but the legacy Trump-hating press, your politically motivated animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors,” he added.

    Hegseth — callow, reactive, driven by a warped theology of nationalism, and poorly grounded in history — personally represents a dramatic break from decades of training, education, and refining of a professional officers corps. In 15 months in office, Hegseth has done more to politicize the military than any secretary of defense in at least the last half century.

  95. JM says

    The Military Show: INSANITY… Russia Is Throwing Tank Units Into Battle WITHOUT Tanks
    Russia has reached the point where they are sending soldiers from tank units to infantry assault units. Part of it is that Russia doesn’t have the tanks and there is no sign of them being replaced any time soon. Entire tank units exist only on paper because they are waiting for replacement tanks and Russia has begun sending those soldiers to the front on foot. The second part is that tanks are less important to the Russian military. The Ukrainian defense is built on drones, defensive fortifications and a contested ground zone as much as 20KM wide. Russian tanks struggle to reach the front, they are being kept at the rear to intercept any Ukrainian units that penetrate the front and that just isn’t as important for the Russians.

  96. says

    Steve Benen summarizes campaign news, as reported by the Texas Tribune:

    While there’s no need to treat every quarterly fundraising report as national news, there are some exceptions: In Texas’ Senate race, Democratic nominee James Talarico raised $27 million in the first three months of the year. The Texas Tribune noted the haul is “the largest-ever sum for a Senate candidate — in any state — in the first quarter of an election year.”

    Good news for Democrats.

  97. says

    Debunking Trump’s lies about tax refunds:

    […] Trump and congressional Republicans have been boasting that Americans received large tax refunds this year due to the “One Big Beautiful Bill” the GOP passed last year.

    “This is a tax season unlike any other because three big things are happening: lower taxes, bigger refunds, and more money in the pockets of hardworking Americans,” House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote Thursday morning in a post on X. “Thanks to Republicans’ Working Families Tax Cuts, Americans’ tax rates are reduced permanently.”

    However, this year’s tax refunds were actually far smaller than expected, according to an analysis from Heather Long, the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.

    “The White House (and many economists) expected $700 to $1,000 higher refunds, on average,” Long wrote in a post on X, adding that “the reality is closer to $375” for members of her credit union.

    The IRS’s own data shows a slightly smaller average refund increase of $346.

    What’s more, rising costs elsewhere have eaten into whatever additional refunds Americans received, making for a net loss in most cases.

    For example, the One Big Beautiful Bill slashed health care subsidies that millions of Americans used to afford their Affordable Care Act health insurance plans. In many instances, insurance costs more than doubled.

    And Trump’s idiotic and illegal tariffs and boondoggle of a war in Iran have raised the price of goods and gasoline, additional costs that eat into whatever refund Americans may have gotten.

    “So far, the refunds aren’t coming in as high as expected,” Long wrote in a post on her Substack. “Yes, the refunds are up. Yes, this is likely to be the largest tax refund season ever. But there’s a difference between a $1,000 boost to the typical American household’s income and a $375 boost. It means less spending. It means less of a growth boost. And that’s before factoring in higher gas prices eating up a lot of the tax refund.” […]

    Link

  98. says

    RATS, as of 1145 AZ time, bluesky site is down. No embeded articles will show on other sites. I haven’t been able to find out why.

  100. whheydt says

    Re: shermanj @ #98…
    There was a link embedded in a comment to today’s “Russian Stuff Blowing Up” on Daily Kos indicating that the BlueSky problem started around 3 AM (EDT) with a DDoS attack. Reports in the article are that major feeds are down, but individual feeds are working better.

  103. birgerjohansson says

    Considering that the House was only one vote away from reclaiming the war powers from the president – one Dem joined the Republicans – it is time to start demanding purity tests from candidates. The Republicans fear their voters. The Democrats despise them.

    .
    And Chuck Shumer disgraced himself as the Senate voted to keep supporting Israel.

  105. says

    MS NOW:

    Israel and Lebanon have agreed to a 10-day ceasefire, which President Donald Trump said will begin today at 5 p.m. ET. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he agreed to the truce ‘to advance’ peace efforts with Lebanon.

  106. says

    New York Times:

    The United States military said it had struck a boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Wednesday, killing three people that it accused of smuggling drugs. The U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, announced the strike on social media.

    That’s the third strike in three days. Number of strikes overall? 51.

  107. says

    New York Times:

    Russia launched a vast missile and drone attack across Ukraine overnight and early Thursday morning, killing at least 18 people and destroying any thought that the temporary Easter truce announced by President Vladimir V. Putin meant anything more permanent.

  108. says

    New York Times:

    Pope Leo XIV is not backing down. Amid a growing dispute with the Trump administration over the legitimacy of American attacks in Iran, Leo used a speech on Thursday in Cameroon to express ‘woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.’

  109. says

    Associated Press:

    The world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, broke the U.S. record Wednesday for the longest post-Vietnam War deployment, a nearly 10-month span that saw it take part in both the military raid in Venezuela and the Iran war.

  110. says

    EXCLUSIVE: Drugmakers raised prices on hundreds of meds despite Trump deals

    “The findings raise questions about whether the administration’s ‘most favored nation’ deals are having a meaningful impact on patients.”

    […] Trump has repeatedly said his deals with drugmakers would bring down prescription drug prices in the U.S. But a report released by Senate Democrats finds prices have continued to climb — in some cases, sharply.

    The report — released Thursday by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the ranking member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, ahead of a hearing focused on drug prices — found that companies that signed drug pricing deals with Trump have raised the cost of hundreds of medications and launched new ones at an average price of $353,000 a year.

    “American people continue to pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, and that was true before President Trump was president. In most cases, it is even more accurate today,” Sanders said at the hearing.

    The price hikes include expensive gene therapies, cancer medications and multiple sclerosis drugs.

    The report also said the companies that signed deals with Trump have made huge profits during his second term in office. In 2025, the companies made a combined $177 billion in profits, up from $107 billion the year before.

    […] The findings raise questions about whether the administration’s “most favored nation” deals — which Trump said would lower U.S. drug prices to match those in other wealthy countries where drugs are often far less expensive — are having a meaningful impact on patients. […]

    “One of the more frustrating aspects of recent drug pricing announcements has been the lack of transparency into the so-called deals that are being made by the administration,” said Stacie Dusetzina, a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. “In fact, once you dig into the details, it appears that the administration’s efforts to date have mostly served to help drug companies.” [yep]

    […] As a part of the deals, drugmakers agreed to offer some of their products for a discounted price for people paying with cash, not insurance, on TrumpRx.gov, a discount prescription drug platform. Many of the discounts are the same as those found on GoodRx, another discount site. [!]

    […] the list price of Keytruda, a widely used cancer treatment made by Merck, rose by 6% to about $210,000 a year in the U.S., far higher than prices in countries like Japan ($37,900) and France ($88,100), according to the report.

    Novartis’ Kesimpta, a multiple sclerosis drug, increased by nearly $10,500 to $141,000 a year, according to the report. The annual price of Kesimpta in Germany is $17,300 and the yearly price in Canada is $23,500.

    The annual list price of Opdivo, Bristol Myers Squibb’s immunotherapy, rose 4% to $260,000, more than double the price in other countries, including France ($90,300) and the United Kingdom ($113,000).

    […] while average brand-name list prices declined in 2026 for the first time, that shift was largely driven by policies from the Biden administration, including Medicare drug pricing negotiations.

    […] The report also found that companies that negotiated deals with Trump launched new medications, many of them cancer drugs, with six- to seven-digit price tags.

    According to the report, Johnson & Johnson’s cancer drug Inlexzo launched at a price of about $1 million; AbbVie’s cancer drug Emrelis is about $719,000; and AstraZeneca’s Datroway is about $419,000.

    Novartis’ Itvisma, a one-time gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy, has a list price of about $2.59 million. Another gene therapy from Novartis — Zolgensma, for spinal muscular atrophy — increased by nearly $200,000 to more than $2.5 million for a single course of treatment, according to the report.

    Pfizer increased the price of its lung cancer drug Vizimpro by about 5% to about $208,000 a year, according to the report. […]

  112. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: whheydt @100, shermanj @98.

    (PDS, Personal Data Server, is like running your own blog to compose posts, which Bluesky then scrapes and relays to everyone else.)

    mcc:

    Bluesky is down today. “Hah”, I think, “since I use a self-hosted PDS for posting and Blacksky for viewing posts, I can go on using the service just fine.”

    Blacksky can’t show me my own posts. I can make them and they show up on my PDS, but my profile shows none more recent than last night. I wonder if Blacksky is coincidentally having server problems, or if Blacksky has a still-undisclosed dependency on Bluesky services. (It *does* have disclosed use of Bluesky moderation; maybe that’s it.)
    […]
    P2P is a world where naturally the more people use it, the faster and more resilient the network becomes. Load gets distributed. Working nodes talk to each other and ignore nonworking nodes. That’s how the primitive, BitTorrent era systems worked.

    Bluesky somehow applied superfancy alien future technology to invent P2P traffic jams. When one node goes down, the others go down because they depended on it. Because it’s a mesh of interoperating microservices by different providers, not federation.

    This appears to be the explanation:

    Rudy (Blacksky CEO): Even their relay seems down(?) Trying to switch some things to use [a Blacksky relay].

    In Bluesky, the PDS talks to the relay talks to the appview goes to the client. Blacksky set up all four last year. But they only deployed their PDS and client, at first. They used Bluesky’s relay and appview. This wasn’t clearly disclosed. Then there was a censorship scare, and they switched to their own appview. But apparently they’re still using Bluesky’s relay. This wasn’t clearly disclosed. Now relay death can screw Blacksky.

    Now, interestingly, this means that Blacksky users can continue talking to Blacksky users. I can read Rudy’s posts on Blacksky. Because that bypasses the relay. But¹ to read my *own* posts, *on a self-hosted PDS*, Bluesky is apparently required, because Blacksky relies on Bluesky’s “relay” to scrape my PDS before it gets added to the Blacksky appview database. […]

    And it’s extremely relatable why Rudy took this shortcut of “build out our own stuff, but rely on Bluesky’s components until we’re forced to drop it”: *Because standing up your own Bluesky stack is nightmarish!* It is a borderline miracle that a team his size made this work at all; I’m not sure a third team could replicate to the extent Blacksky has […]

    Because this is the other “we used future alien technology to make it worse” thing about Bluesky. In the “natural”, Hobbesian form of P2P, the more nodes you add the less work per node you need to do, because of work sharing.

    But Bluesky’s “federation” is like blockchain. When you create a second “instance”, that instance must duplicate *literally all the work* of the first instance. It must scrape all the posts itself. It must archive all the posts itself. It must CSAM-scan the posts itself.

    This is why I believe Bluesky was never meant to be federated. To create a Bluesky “instance”, like Blacksky is heroically attempting, you have to perfectly duplicate every server Bluesky runs. But Bluesky is a business operating at a loss by burning unlimited-for-now VC cash.
    […]
    ActivityPub [the protocol behind Mastodon, etc.] has problems, but not these.
    […]
    Updates
    – Over the last two hours the problem has gone from “I don’t see my posts” to “I see my posts 1 hour after I make them” to “17 minutes” to “3 minutes” to “it’s fixed(?)”. I interpret this as the relay firehose pointer, whatever relay is in use right now, gradually catching up.

    – I need to stress the above thread is a mix of fact (ATProto federation is duplicative and often brittle) and conjecture (I can’t know what relay is being used internally by Blacksky except if Rudy tells us).

  116. Silentbob says

    @ ^

    I think it’s hilarious how you just inserted “Man.” in there. X-D

    Why do you think it’s relevant Stevo?

  117. JM says

    StudioBinder Academy: The Poor Man’s Process (How Movies Fake Driving Scenes)
    Little video on the Poor Man’s process, how films do driving scenes fairly cheaply. Shows why you see so many scenes from inside cars where the background can’t be seen. Essentially a good illusion of movement can be created by moving lights without a visible background.
    The channel itself has a lot of videos that are on how to use the StudioBinder software but there is more interesting stuff about film process and interviews mixed in.

  118. JM says

    CNBC: Iran declares Strait of Hormuz open to shipping; Trump says U.S. blockade still active

    Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz open to all commercial ships following the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.
    However, vessels must transit through a “coordinated route” announced by Iran’s maritime authorities, Iran’s foreign minister said.
    President Donald Trump thanked Tehran for opening the strait, but said the U.S. blockade of Iran’s ports remains in effect.

    I take it coordinated route means that Iran isn’t removing sea mines yet, removing the blockade does mean that Iran has given up on charging for transit for the moment. Iran is happy about Israel and Lebanon but likely also wants to stop angering everybody globally and would like to get it’s ports open. They have made their point about being able to close the Strait of Hormuz and can use that in negotiations.
    Trump says the US will continue it’s blockade of Iran’s ports while allowing shipping through the Strait until there is a deal. This follows the Trump administration policy of max leverage under all situations no matter how counter productive it may be. Iran in turn will likely shut down the Strait at some point if there is no deal because it’s the only leverage they have.

  119. says

    ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES: Democrat Analilia Mejía joins Chris Hayes after defeating Republican in N.J. special election

    AP projects Democrat Analilia Mejía to win the special election to replace Gov. Mikie Sherrill. Congresswoman-elect Mejía joins Chris Hayes to talk about her victory in New Jersey.

    Video is 5:17 minutes

    ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES: Pope slams ‘tyrants’ who spend billions on wars days after Trump attacks

    “Pope Leo is not scared of Donald Trump,” says Chris Hayes, on the Pope’s pointed remarks in Cameroon on Thursday. Father James Martin joins to discuss.

    Video is 7:36 minutes

    ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES: Hayes: Trump pushed us into the ‘worst possible sustainable equilibrium’

    “This is what Trump does. He lights our national house on fire. He lets it burn for 15 minutes before he shows up with a fire hose. And then he demands a prize for putting out the blaze while the rest of us stand here in the smoldering ruins,” says Chris Hayes.

    Video is 8:29 minutes

  120. says

    Seven weeks into the war with Iran, the White House doesn’t want to talk about the price tag

    “The questions are going to keep getting louder, and Russell Vought’s reluctance to disclose the cost details is likely to prove unsustainable.”

    […] What exactly is this war of choice costing American taxpayers?

    Roughly a week after Donald Trump launched combat operations, congressional sources with knowledge of the matter said the war was costing the United States an estimated $1 billion a day. A week later, a congressional source told MS NOW the administration, during a private briefing for lawmakers, revised that number to $1.6 billion a day. [!]

    More than a month later, the questions persist, but the White House apparently doesn’t want to answer them. The New York Times reported:

    The White House declined to estimate the cost of the war with Iran at a congressional hearing on Thursday, prompting some Senate Democrats to criticize the Trump administration for its lack of transparency.

    In a second appearance on Capitol Hill this week, Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, sidestepped questions about the price tag of the U.S.- and Israel-led conflict.

    At one point, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, suggested Vought, instead of giving lawmakers a precise dollar amount, could share with the committee a general range of the cost. He refused. [!]

    At the same hearing, Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon asked whether the administration has spent $50 billion on the conflict, as some media reports have indicated. Vought, who was in a position to know the answer, said he didn’t want to “make a characterization.”

    Merkley later told The Hill that Vought was trying to “hide” the cost of the war for political reasons, adding, “He doesn’t want a number to be out there because it’s a big number and it’s very disturbing to Americans.” [!!]

    Murray also made her dissatisfaction clear.

    “You’re just not going to tell us, because you don’t want us to know how much is being spent,” she told the White House budget director during the proceedings. “We have a responsibility here; Senator Merkley mentioned that. We have to know how much is spent so we can put our budgets together, so we can make our annual appropriations. And I just find it outrageous that as director, you’re not willing to tell us what those costs are. It’s your job to know.”

    To state the obvious, fair-minded observers would agree the most important cost in any war is the human cost, and this avoidable conflict has already taken a brutal toll.

    […] it’s also important to acknowledge the fact that this is an election year, and many […] have already seized on the growing financial costs of the unpopular war.

    These questions, in other words, are going to keep getting louder, and Vought’s reluctance to disclose the details is likely to prove unsustainable.

  121. says

    Wall Street Journal:

    The House passed a bipartisan measure Thursday that would reinstate temporary legal protections for Haitian immigrants living in the U.S. …

    The 224-204 vote marks a rare GOP rebuke of President Trump’s agenda. Trump maligned Haitian immigrants on the campaign trail and moved to strip their legal protections, known as Temporary Protected Status, soon after taking office. The bill will next head to the Senate, where the prospects for a vote are unclear.

    Some Republicans went against Trump’s directives in order to pass the bill in the House of Congress. And that’s on one of Trump’s signature issues: immigration.

  122. says

    […] Team Trump seems to realize that it has a problem. Whether it knows what to do about that problem is another matter entirely.

    […] Donald Trump’s approval rating for his handling of the economy fell to just 31% — the lowest across both of the Republican president’s two terms — while 27% of Americans approved of his handling of inflation. […]

    When Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, for example, was asked Thursday about public attitudes, he replied, in reference to American consumers, “in their heart of hearts they feel good,” regardless of what they tell “the survey people.” [LOL] [video]

    […] Trump’s message was hardly better. During a brief Q&A with reporters at the White House on Thursday afternoon, the president was asked how much longer consumers should expect to see high gas prices. Trump challenged the premise of the question. [video]

    Prices at the pump, Trump replied, are “not very high,” [Oh JFC. More bitter laughter.]. At the same gaggle, he claimed that he inherited the worst in inflation in American history — an absurd assertion that, as the president surely knows, has been discredited many times. He added that as far as he’s concerned, inflation is “still low” right now [eyebrows raised]

    The president soon after hosted an event in Las Vegas, where he argued that the U.S. economy is the best it’s ever been (yet another absurdity), while denouncing “fake inflation,” driven by the war he launched in Iran. [head/desk]

    Taken together, it seemed as if Trump and his team decided the way to change public attitudes is to try to pull some kind of Jedi mind trick, telling people upset about the economy that the economy is great, telling people upset about high gas prices that gas prices are low, and telling people upset about inflation that inflation is “fake.” […]

    Link

  123. says

    The Christian Nationalist Project

    Sarah Posner in TPM: “The Trump regime has a preferred religion — a bellicose, nationalist Christianity — but its expression, as we saw this week, can be very erratic and often theologically incomprehensible. But one thing is clear from all the chaos. The Trumpist establishment of religion is made up of various fiefdoms within the federal government, all aimed at protecting, and even justifying, the regime’s impunity.”

    Judge Scoffs at Trump’s New National Security Rationale for Ballroom

    U.S. District Judge Richard Leon of D.C. has once again blocked above-ground construction of Trump’s vanity ballroom project on top of the ruins of the demolished East Wing of the White House. An appeals court shipped the case back to Leon for clarification on Trump’s spurious new claims in the case that the ballroom construction is driven by national security imperatives.

    Leon was having none of it. “National security is not a blank check to proceed with otherwise unlawful activity,” he wrote, as he allowed below-ground construction of bunkers and other security measures to continue.

    Link

  124. says

    […] The goal of the Christian nationalist project is to subvert democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.

    In Trump’s second term, both the White House and federal agencies have been bludgeoning federal employees, the press, and the public with religious pronouncements of moral superiority to perceived enemies.

    Vance has been Catholic for seven years and starts fights with the pope over his anti-war statements (even as Vance leaks to the press, with an eye to 2028, that he was against the war).

    Through his prayer meetings and press conferences, Hegseth aims to compel Americans to embrace his Christian nationalist bloodlust and war crimes, and this week compared reporters to Pharisees for insufficiently cheerleading for the military.

    The scandal-plagued Labor Secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer — who is under investigation for, among other things, ordering staffers to bring wine to her hotel room while traveling on government business, and for her husband’s and father’s alleged predatory behavior toward agency employees — has promoted her Catholicism in prayer meetings modeled on the ones Hegseth hosts at the Pentagon.

    The Department of Justice released a highly deceptive report, accusing the Biden administration of anti-Christian bias because of its prosecution of anti-abortion protesters under a federal law protecting patients from harassment and violence at abortion clinics.

    Now, the DOJ is using that same law to prosecute journalists covering and activists attending an anti-ICE protest at an evangelical church in St. Paul — seeking to criminalize both a free press and activists who are motivated by a Christianity opposed to ICE’s lethal immigration crackdown.

    All these moves are designed to crush dissent, marginalize other Christianities and religions, and empower government officials to violate the law. […]

    Congress, too, and particularly House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), has rooted its conduct in biblical imperatives about how government is supposed to work, laying bare the willingness of congressional Republicans to relinquish their constitutional duty of checks and balances. Johnson believes that government is a “design of God,” so he is answering to an authority that he considers higher than the Constitution. (Yes, Trump.) […]

    Link

  125. JM says

    @118 JM: CNN: Iran declares Strait of Hormuz ‘completely open’ for remainder of truce

    US President Donald Trump said Iran committed to never closing the waterway again, but that a US naval blockade will continue until a deal with Iran is “100% complete.”

    Not sure if Trump is lying, didn’t understand what Iran promised or if Iran just plans to break a promise if need be. Which is the case that statement isn’t worth anything, if Iran feels that it is necessary they will close the Strait.

    Officials are hoping a broader deal to end the war could be finalized as early as this weekend, though areas of disagreement remain, sources tell CNN. The Trump administration is considering unfreezing $20 billion in Iranian assets as part of ongoing talks, sources say. Trump also said the US will acquire Iran’s enriched uranium and that no money would “exchange hands.”

    It’s sounding more and more like Trump is negotiating his way back to the Obama deal with some slight rewording so it isn’t so obvious.

  126. says

    Baffled by his own ‘corner store’ reference, Trump’s problems with groceries persist

    “The president can wax rhapsodic about his marble preferences and his affection for Corinthian columns. ‘Corner store,’ however, left him badly confused.”

    […] As The New York Times noted, the president ran into fresh trouble during an event in Las Vegas on the economy.

    Trump was touting tax cuts for small businesses when he came across the term ‘corner store’ as he read off prepared remarks. ‘What is a corner store? I’ve never heard that term. I know what a corner store is, but I’ve never heard it described a corner store,’ said Trump. He looked up sharply and said, ‘Who the hell wrote that?’

    Evidently, he didn’t familiarize himself with the text that someone else had written for him ahead of the event. [video]

    After years of struggling with this issue, it’s amazing he hasn’t yet familiarized himself with the basics. Early in his first term, for example, Trump insisted that consumers need to show identification while buying groceries, including cereal and bread. (None of this was true.)

    In 2019, during a government shutdown, the Republican also argued that supermarket owners would allow furloughed federal employees to buy groceries on credit, because “they know the people.” (That didn’t make any sense.)

    In his second term, his approach to the issue has grown weirder, to the point that he even began characterizing “groceries” as an exotic word last year.

    “It’s such an old-fashioned term, but a beautiful term: ‘groceries,’” Trump said last April, as if he were introducing the public to foreign terminology. “It says ‘a bag with different things in it.’”

    More recently, the president also said he’d had enormous success in lowering grocery prices, even as grocery prices climbed.

    But his remarks in Las Vegas managed to break new ground. Trump, who used to live in a gold tower in Manhattan, and who now splits his time between a presidential mansion and a glorified country club in Florida, can wax rhapsodic about his marble preferences and his affection for Corinthian columns, but confronted with the words “corner store,” he was utterly baffled. […]

  127. says

    New York Times link

    […] The Punchiest Punchlines (Arc de Trump Edition)

    “But it’s an idea Trump lifted from the Arc de Triomphe of Paris, which was commissioned to honor French war heroes. The Arc de Triomphe has the names of generals who fought and died for France engraved on its face. Ours will have the name of the draft dodger who killed America on it.” — JIMMY KIMMEL, on the new ‘Triumphal Arch’ President Trump hopes to build near Arlington National Cemetery

    “Trump’s arch is opposed by a lot of people, including a coalition of veterans and preservationists. They are his arch archnemeses, if you will.” — JIMMY KIMMEL

    “It’s going to be beautiful. It strikes the perfect balance between Scientology and Liberace that we have come to expect from our president.” — JIMMY KIMMEL

    “It will be situated near Arlington National Cemetery, the burial site of thousands of American soldiers whose fathers weren’t leasing office space to a podiatrist.” — JIMMY KIMMEL

    “Arlington, it’s a beautiful place. It’s set up uniformly so that each grave is given equal significance. Until now. Now, this will loom above it all.” — JIMMY KIMMEL […]

    Video at the link. Many more jokes in the video.

    Video is also available here: YouTube link

  129. says

    Europe to accelerate effort to secure Hormuz despite Trump’s order to ‘STAY AWAY’

    “More than 30 leaders joined a video conference call on Friday to map out an international mission to secure the Strait of Hormuz.”

    uropean leaders pledged to rapidly ramp up a multinational effort to secure the Strait of Hormuz after Iran said it would reopen the vital waterway to maritime traffic, even if Donald Trump doesn’t want their help.

    French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and the prime ministers of Italy and the United Kingdom, Giorgia Meloni and Keir Starmer, jointly announced Friday that they would be spearheading what Starmer called a “defensive” mission to ensure freedom of navigation in the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas travels.

    “We agreed to accelerate the military planning, I can confirm that France and the U.K. will lead a multinational mission to protect freedom of passage as soon as conditions allow,” said Starmer, adding that details would be shared at a military planning conference in London next week.

    The United States, however doesn’t appear inclined to accept that assistance.
    After announcing that Tehran had agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz following Israel and Lebanon’s agreement on a 10-day ceasefire, Trump wrote Friday on his Truth Social account that his NATO allies were “useless” and weren’t needed.

    “I received a call from NATO asking if we would need some help. I TOLD THEM TO STAY AWAY, UNLESS THEY JUST WANT TO LOAD UP THEIR SHIPS WITH OIL,” he wrote.

    Trump and other top U.S. officials have expressed deep frustration in recent weeks with allies who have refused to either back U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran or assist in ensuring the freedom of navigation in international waters while the fighting was still ongoing.

    France and the United Kingdom have promised to help secure the waterway only once a ceasefire is reached between Washington and Tehran. Friday’s meeting was an opportunity for European leaders to showcase that they can contribute effectively to either keeping the peace or ensuring the stability of global trade flows.

    “Our mission is defensive and comes after the ceasefire,” said Starmer. “We will see how we will play our part, but we want no tolls and no restrictions.”

    […] After the meeting in Paris on Friday, which included leaders from more than two dozen countries via videoconference, Meloni offered to deploy Italian frigates to the region. Germany on Thursday said it would contribute minesweepers.

    It’s going in the right direction, even if the opening of Hormuz is conditional to coordination by the Iranian authorities and the United States has said it is going to maintain a targeted blockade,” Macron said.

    “Recent developments are encouraging but we must take them with caution,” the French leader added.

    But Europeans are at odds about whether the United States should be included in the mission, with France insisting the mission should only include non-belligerent countries, and Germany keen on including an American contingent.

    On Friday, that rift still looked open. Merz said it would be “desirable” to include the U.S., while Macron insisted the coalition should be “neutral and separate from the belligerents.”

  130. says

    Good short summary from MS NOW:

    The Iranian foreign minister said this morning that the Strait of Hormuz has been reopened for passage in line with the 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, which went into effect yesterday. President Donald Trump followed the announcement with a post on Truth Social saying the U.S. blockade of Iran’s key ports remains in effect.

    Meanwhile, as reported by MS NOW:

    An Israeli strike in the area of Kounine in central Lebanon hit a car and a motorcycle, killing one person and wounding three, including a Syrian citizen, Lebanon’s health ministry said Friday. It was the first airstrike and first fatality reported since a 10-day truce between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah took effect overnight.

    Also from MS NOW:

    Trump told Axios today that he expects a deal with Iran ‘in the next day or two.’ U.S. and Iranian negotiators are expected to meet this weekend in Islamabad, though that has not yet been confirmed, where Trump said he believes the two sides will come to an agreement.

    Sounds like wishful thinking from Trump, and/or an attempt to influence the stock market before it closes for the weekend.

  131. says

    Reuters:

    A federal judge ​on Friday rejected the U.S. Department of Justice’s bid to force Rhode Island to ‌turn over non-public data on nearly 750,000 registered voters so the Trump administration could probe ‘election integrity’ in the Democratic-led state. The judge in the case went on to accuse the Justice Department of trying to conduct a ‘fishing expedition.’

  132. says

    MS NOW:

    Amid the White House’s ongoing political attacks on Pope Leo XIV after he rebuked the president’s deadly and economically destructive war with Iran, the administration has canceled an $11 million contract it had with Catholic Charities, a faith-based nonprofit that helps unaccompanied migrant children.

  133. says

    Trump’s buildingpalooza BS continues unabated

    One “triumphal” arch isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Three arches.

    Or so thinks one of the Donald Trump-appointed weirdos on his Commission of Fine Arts. Rodney Mims Cook Jr. is as obsessed as Trump is with big beautiful arches, and began bothering lawmakers about erecting the structures in our nation’s capital 30 years ago.

    Weirdly, he’s an actual architect, unlike some other people Trump stuffed into the commission, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t full of terrible Trumpy ideas.

    On Thursday, the extremely agreeable commission members approved the giant arch with relatively minimal requested changes. [!] The very rigorous deliberation process seems to have consisted only of looking at Trump’s little flipbook of renderings, basically, because this is how government works now.

    But Cook wants more.

    “I think the president should do three,” he declared.

    Why three? Because Cook thinks that three arches would fulfill the L’Enfant plan, architect Pierre L’Enfant’s design for the capital, and Trump is the man to do it.

    “He wants to complete the L’Enfant plan,” Cook claimed. “No one has.”

    That sounds fine until you learn there is no evidence whatsoever that the L’Enfant plan referenced arches anywhere. Cook’s logic is that since L’Enfant’s design drew from other cities with arches, he implicitly somehow planned to build three arches in Washington, D.C. It’s neat that Cook can commune with L’Enfant from the grave […]

    Of course, the public does not share Cook’s enthusiasm for even one arch. Most Americans oppose it, and, per the panel secretary, of the almost 1,000 messages the commission received about the arch, “One hundred percent of the comments were against the project.” [LOL]

    […] A group of veterans has already sued to stop this thing, and there is no question whatsoever that Congress must approve the arch. However, the administration is currently making the unhinged argument that when Congress approved a bridge design in 1925, it also somehow implicitly approved the arch 100 years later. So Trump is not going to Congress for approval. [eyebrows raised]

    He’s also not going to Congress to get approval for his bribe-funded White House ballroom, but he is going to Truth Social to rant about it.

    U.S. District Judge Richard Leon continues to bedevil Trump and just will not buy his argument that the entire ballroom is a national security necessity, a “shed” for all the Top Secret stuff underneath.

    Last week, Judge Leon blocked above-ground construction, but carved out an exception for anything necessary for national security. Trump promptly decided this included the entire ballroom, because it would stop drones and missiles and keep Trump and his family safe and cover up the secret lair below.

    This, unsurprisingly, led to the plaintiffs asking Judge Leon to clarify his injunction, which he did on Thursday, saying that his order stopped all above-ground construction, but not below-ground construction. Leon pointed out that all along, the White House had argued that national security applied only to the below-ground construction, so shifting to the claim that the whole ballroom was also a national security need was not really a persuasive argument.

    […] [Trump is] supposed to be shifting to focusing on the midterm elections, touting how great his tax cuts are in the hopes of suckering voters into preserving a GOP majority in Congress. Instead, he spent quality time yelling about the ballroom, calling Leon a “Trump Hating” judge, blathering about how the ballroom is now, ok, wait for it, because this gets long:

    “Safe and secure large scale Meeting Place, or Ballroom, one with Bomb Shelters, a State of the Art Hospital and Medical Facilities, Protective Partitioning, Top Secret Military Installations, Structures, and Equipment, Protective Missile Resistant Steel, Columns, Roofs, and Beams, Drone Proof Ceilings and Roofs, Military Grade Venting, and Bullet, Ballistic, and Blast Proof Glass.”

    Where … where will all this be?

    Trump also said straight-up that he doesn’t believe Leon’s decision binds him at all.

    “Too much hard work, time, and money spent in order that a Judge can claim that he ruled against ‘DONALD TRUMP,’ something which I have gotten very used to, BUT WILL NOT ACCEPT!” […]

    He also complained that Judge Leon’s decision means that he wants taxpayers to pay for the ballroom instead of Trump’s bribe-y “donors.” But all Leon has ordered at this point is to get congressional approval for the project, which Trump simply refuses to do.

    And in case you were wondering if Trump was planning some additional new ugliness? Of course he is.

    Trump wants to paint the granite facade of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building with what he calls “magic paint,” a secret formula that will strengthen the granite, prevent staining, and rarely require repainting. Actual experts say this is totally not a thing, [!] in no small part because paint requires primer, so any magic paint would not be binding to the granite.

    […] If we had to have a megalomaniac remake D.C., it would have been nice to have someone with a bit more taste.

  134. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/doj-asks-court-to-pretty-please-un

    A few days after Donald Trump whined that the Pope is “weak on CRIME,” Trump’s Justice Department on Tuesday filed paperwork asking the federal appeals court for the DC Circuit to vacate the convictions of members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers terrorist groups for seditious conspiracy and other federal treason crimes.

    The move will wipe away the criminal convictions of the handful of Trump-loving seditionists whose sentences were commuted by Trump right after he took office, but who weren’t among the more than 1,500 January 6 criminals who received full pardons. Trump instead commuted the sentences of the 14 people convicted of seditious conspiracy to time served, letting them out of prison, but leaving the convictions in place.

    Once the requests from “US Attorney for DC Jeanine Pirro” — a phrase that still makes us snort-laugh in disbelief — are approved, They’ll erase the only remaining criminal convictions of people involved in the January 6 coup attempt/tourist visit. The requests will almost certainly be approved, because as the Washington Post lawsplains, “prosecutors have broad discretion to pursue or drop criminal charges, even after defendants have been convicted.” […]

    Because they’ll no longer have felony convictions against them, they’ll again be free to own guns. [!!] Lots and lots of guns […] Some of those poor persecuted lambs are also suing the Capitol and DC Metro Police for having defended the Capitol, so the inevitable settlement with the DOJ may bankroll the rebuilding of rightwing militia arsenals.

    Among those who’ll benefit are Oath Keepers founder and head Oaf Elmer Stewart Rhodes as well as other Oafs and Proud Boys who were convicted of seditious conspiracy. They include Dominic Pezzola, the Proud Boy who was first to breach the Capitol by smashing a window with a riot shield taken from a cop. [I snipped the rest of the list.]

    Trump fully pardoned Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio on his first day in office, even though Tarrio was given the longest prison sentence — 22 years — of any of the seditionists.

    In the court filings, Pirro didn’t attempt to explain why the dozen seditionists deserve to have all their January 6 crimes erased […] She simply said that the “United States has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice.” […]

    The Post points out that there was some very convenient timing here, too

    The Justice Department’s request came one day after Tarrio and Rehl had publicly accused Pirro and her office of fighting their efforts to overturn the convictions.

    “We shouldn’t have to fight Jeanine Pirro for the truth that everybody already knows,” they wrote in an essay published by Gateway Pundit […] “The President … knows these cases were a farce. Yet his own DOJ is still counter-signaling him.”

    […] We’ll also point out that Rhodes’s estranged family has long dreaded the possibility that he’ll again have access to firearms, fearing that he will come after them for revenge. […]

    As Judge Amit Mehta noted at Rhodes’s sentencing, there’s every reason to consider Rhodes, based on his own statements about the need to pursue armed insurrection against the government, presents “an ongoing threat and a peril to this country and to the Republic and the very fabric of our democracy.” [!]

    […] a bunch of the top leaders of Trump’s last coup attempt will now be able to buy all the guns they want in advance of the 2026 midterms.

  135. says

    New York Times link

    “A Stunning New Verdict Rewrites the Rules of Corporate Morality” By M. Gessen

    .As the judge read her verdict in Paris Criminal Court on Monday, police officers walked to the defense table to arrest Bruno Lafont, the 69-year-old former chief executive of one of the world’s largest cement manufacturers, Lafarge, and Christian Herrault, the 75-year-old former deputy head of operations. They would begin serving their prison sentences immediately: six and five years, respectively, for financing terrorism in Syria and beyond. [Amazing]

    […] but the big news was something else: For the first time in France, and possibly for the first time ever, anywhere, an entire corporation had been put on trial and found criminally liable for enabling terrorism. [..] Also exceptional was the scathing tone of Judge Isabelle Prévost-Desprez’s verdict, which took almost four hours to read.

    The court had concluded that between 2013 and 2014, the cement maker paid about $6.5 million to the Islamic State and other terrorist groups in Syria, to facilitate the company’s operations there. Lafarge […] will have to pay about $1.3 million in fines for the crime of financing terrorism and $5.3 million for violating international sanctions. In another case, Lafarge is facing charges of complicity in crimes against humanity. If that case goes to trial and Lafarge is again found guilty, a new chapter in the prosecution of war crimes may begin.

    In the best-known war crimes prosecutions — at Nuremberg, in Jerusalem, in The Hague — most of the defendants were military or paramilitary officers. But at Nuremberg, industrialists who had aided and abetted the Holocaust were also put on trial. These cases largely fizzled, in part because the defendants successfully claimed that they had merely been doing what businesspeople do, which is try to maximize profits, and that they hadn’t known what kind of atrocities they were enabling.

    Eighty years later, Lafarge executives attempted the same basic defense strategy. Prosecutors showed extensive email correspondence documenting agreements with terrorist organizations to help secure the Lafarge cement plant’s continued operations in Syria. [I snipped details.]

    […] Documents showed that Lafarge executives knew they were paying groups classified as terrorist organizations by the United States and international agencies. And in an email message that was introduced into evidence, Herrault observed: “You don’t need much research to see that, internationally, they are hard-core terrorists.” But a lawyer for Bruno Pescheux, the former director of the Lafarge plant in Syria, claimed ignorance on her client’s behalf: “Your court says that everyone knew who ISIS was, and I say to you: Not Mr. Pescheux!”

    […] The defendants had known, the judge concluded, that staying in Syria would require cooperation with terrorist groups. That made Lafarge complicit — not only in atrocities committed in Syria but also in acts of terrorism that the Islamic State carried out in France. […] Judge Prévost-Desprez [said] “I am trying to make you understand how choices made in your offices, thousands of kilometers away, turned into Kalashnikov bullets, into blood,” the judge said.

    […] Prévost-Desprez wrote. “Thus, by knowingly paying extremely large sums over many months to three terrorist organizations, Lafarge SA enabled them to expand their influence and fuel their deadly campaigns, ultimately leading to attacks committed abroad as well as on French soil.”

    […] Prosecuting corporations is particularly difficult for at least two reasons. One is the problem of intent, which is essential to determining guilt in a criminal trial. Does a corporation have a mind? Can it have intent? The defense in the Lafarge trial claimed that the company’s and its executives’ only intent was to keep the Syria plant in operation; the judge concluded that the executives’ exclusive focus on this goal was itself incriminating, since it could be achieved only by cooperating with armed groups terrorizing and plundering Syria. [!]

    But the bigger problem with prosecuting corporations, in Hamilton’s [Rebecca Hamilton, a war-crimes lawyer who is now a law professor at American University in Washington] opinion, is resource disparity. “These cases are mind-bendingly complex, involving subsidiaries, across different countries, regulated by different laws,” she wrote to me. “They take decades. The defendants in these situations are multinational corporations with effectively unlimited resources to throw at a lawsuit. On the other side, we have victim communities and their nonprofit lawyers urging public prosecutors — who may have had no previous exposure to international crimes — to bring charges.” […]

    […] By convicting both the executives and the corporate entity itself, the court made it harder for Lafarge either to blame its misconduct on a few individual bad actors or to treat the financial penalty as the cost of doing business. [!!]

    In October of last year, a federal jury in a civil trial in Manhattan found BNP Paribas, an international bank, liable for aiding atrocities in Sudan. (The bank is appealing.) A verdict in the Lundin trial in Sweden is expected this year. The second Lafarge trial — on charges of complicity in crimes against humanity — may get underway in France. And last summer, the U.N. Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, released a report that laid out <b<the role of corporations in the genocide in Gaza with unprecedented clarity. (Albanese was immediately subjected to U.S. sanctions.) […]

    The court in Paris has just ruled that cynicism and an exclusive focus on profits can constitute a crime. [!!] We are not in Paris, of course. But one reason it was so gratifying to watch Lafarge be convicted and its executives, in their stiff-collared shirts and well-cut suits, be placed under arrest is that these men had surely never imagined that they could be punished for what they did.

    More at the link.

  136. StevoR says

    @116. Silentbob : “I think it’s hilarious how you just inserted “Man.” in there. Why do you think it’s relevant Stevo?”

    Because otherwise it would read “Owen Jones interviews a Jewish. Iranian. Anti-War. Meet Etan Mabourakh.” which doesn’t really make sense. I could’ve uysed perosn but Etan Mabourakh is a man and I thinka biut of alliteration is nice being memorable and flowing better.

  137. StevoR says

    Slowly, the issue of the state of the US president’s mind is becoming the subject of serious discussion, rather than just the butt of the jokes of late night talk show hosts.

    As it should.

    The New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker wrote a lengthy piece this week about the mental capacities of the nation’s commander-in-chief in a time of war.

    “A series of disjointed, hard-to-follow and sometimes-profane statements, capped by his “a whole civilisation will die tonight” threat to wipe Iran off the map last week, and his head-spinning attack on the “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” pope on Sunday night have left many with the impression of a deranged autocrat mad with power,” Baker wrote.

    There has been a hesitancy to discuss the state of Trump’s mind in much of the media, let alone on the international political stage, even as his behaviour has become increasingly erratic, and as it has become dangerous for the entire world.

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-18/fallout-iran-war-spreads-focus-donald-trump-mind/106576096

  138. StevoR says

    @116 & #137. Fix : I could’ve used person but Etan Mabourakh is a man and I think a bit of alliteration is..

    ” Jewish. Iranian. Anti-War” are adjectioves and a noun was required to specify what – in this case who – was Jewish. Iranian and Anti-War.

    Not hard to figure out or unreasonable.

  139. JM says

    The Guardian: Newly unsealed records reveal Amazon’s price-fixing tactics, California attorney general claims

    Hundreds of previously redacted records reveal how Amazon has put pressure on independent sellers using its platform into raising their prices on the sites of competitors such as Walmart and Target, so that Amazon can appear to have lower prices, California authorities allege.

    We shall see how it fares in court but the basic of the allegations is that if you sold on Amazon then Amazon would monitor the price from other stores and punish you if it was cheaper anyplace else.
    It’s a tricky situation legally because Amazon is allowed to try and convince companies to offer better deals on Amazon. There are limits to what they can do and Amazon wasn’t stupid enough to just drop companies. Instead they would punish individual products, reducing their search priority and making them harder to buy in the interface.

  140. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    StevoR @138: “a noun was required”
    “a Jewish anti-war Iranian” would’ve saved a word.

    In search of meaning, I’d considered “Jewish. Iranian. Anti-War. Man.” as a possible series of oppositions: to regimes of Israel, Iran, and the flamboyant toxic masculinity of the US gov. But that was a stretch.

  142. says

    “Discipline means organization, chain of command, and logistics.” — Master Sun Tzu

    In “The Art of War,” his famed treatise on military strategy from the 6th Century B.C.E., the legendary Chinese strategist Sun Tzu spends much of his time on the need to keep armies well fed and supplied. It appears America’s self-styled “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth skipped over those parts of the ancient manuscript.

    On Thursday, USA Today reported that U.S. service members on board ships deployed to the Mideast as part of the war in Iran are facing food shortages. Family members of troops in the region told the newspaper military personnel are rationing their supplies and are out of fresh produce amid prolonged deployments and President Donald Trump’s frenetic dealmaking. The report included grim photos of meal trays sparsely filled with chunks of greying processed meats provided by family members whose efforts to supplement the supplies with care packages from home have been stymied by disruptions in mail service.

    While Hegseth seemingly hasn’t spent too much time on the basics of effective battlefield strategy, he has been focused on sermonizing from behind the Pentagon podium. Over the past week, the former “Fox and Friends Weekend” co-host showed off his unique brand of Christian nationalism in attempts to complain about unflattering media coverage and rally the troops. [I snipped details which were already posted in comments 94 and 124]

    [Hegseth’s comments] came on the heels of Trump repeatedly posting AI images of himself with, let’s say, messianic overtones […] On Wednesday, during a prayer service at the Pentagon, Hegseth quoted a prayer that was apparently used by a team involved in a rescue mission in Iran. Critics quickly pointed out the militaristic version of a Bible verse more closely matched a memorable scene from the movie “Pulp Fiction” than the King James Version.

    Hegseth’s prayer may not draw on ancient treatises on strategy or actual Biblical doctrine. However, he’s not letting any of that get in his way. As he sermonized on Wednesday, before dipping into the gospel of Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson, Hegseth quipped about his own lack of expertise.

    “I’m not a theologian,” Hegseth said, “But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.”

    Link

  143. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/kash-patel-often-too-drunk-to-show

    Well if we don’t have egg on our face. Here we’ve spent the last year making crack after crack about Defense Secretary and beau ideal of white man mediocrity Pete Hegseth being the biggest drunk in Trump Town. But it turns out that […] another high-level Trumpist was boozing it up […] (ALLEGEDLY!)

    […] The Atlantic published a story that reads as if every knife that administration officials had out for FBI Director Kash Patel. got planted into his back at once. Benders, unexplained absences from the office, meetings that had to be rescheduled because he was too drunk to attend them […] [Yikes.]

    Even the lede is fantastic. The piece’s author, Sarah Fitzpatrick, claims that just recently, Patel was having trouble logging into an FBI computer system. Anyone who has ever worked with a company computer network — which is to say, everyone in America under the age of 90 — knows that there are a gazillion dumb reasons for such a problem: incorrect password, some administrator somewhere checked a box that was supposed to remain unchecked, gremlins, whatever.

    Patel, however, is paranoid and worried about his job security. When he couldn’t log into the computer, he assumed he had been canned:

    [H]e panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House, according to nine people familiar with his outreach. Two of these people described his behavior as a “freak-out.”

    […] Patel had not been fired. Fitzpatrick has two sources who say the problem was a technical issue that was quickly fixed. But that’s just the sort of tantrum that makes us feel so secure about the temperament of one guy who the nation really needs to stay cool during a crisis.

    The story does not get better from there. We are told that Patel is known to “drink to excess” at a private club in DC and The Poodle Room in Vegas, where he spends whatever weekends he’s not flying the FBI jet to listen to his girlfriend sing the national anthem at D-list wrestling events.

    Then there is this:

    On multiple occasions in the past year, members of his security detail had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated […] A request for “breaching equipment”—normally used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings—was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors, according to multiple people familiar with the request.

    Let us repeat that: The director of the nation’s largest law enforcement agency was so blackout drunk that his security detail had to knock down a door like the SEALs entering bin Laden’s compound just to make sure that he, soused to the gills, hadn’t choked to death on his own vomit.

    Needless to say, actual FBI agents […] are worried that Patel’s behavior is a threat to public safety. One agent told Fitzpatrick that since Trump launched his war on Iran, the possibility of a domestic terrorist attack happening when Patel is snookered “keeps me up at night.” […]

    As of Friday night, the administration was standing behind Patel. White House Spokesdip Karoline Leavitt told The Atlantic that “crime across the country has plummeted to the lowest level in more than 100 years,” implying that Patel had something to do with that. (He didn’t.) The public affairs office at the FBI denied everything, calling it “one of the most absurd” stories they had ever heard, and promised a lawsuit.

    But the best denials were from Patel, who told the magazine if they printed all these alleged tall tales, he would see it in court and it should bring its checkbook [social media post]

    […] Is Kash Patel in danger of getting fired? Who knows. Trump still likes how aggressive the FBI director has been in pursuing his enemies and firing every agent with even the remotest connection to any of the investigations of the president from the last decade. But even Trump is going to have his limits with the bad press. And there has been so, so, so very much bad press.

    For our money, we kind of hope Patel stays. […] we’d rather have his bumbling, stumbling, drunken ass doing a poor job than some competent hard-right MAGA guy who can do the job of pursuing retribution against Trump’s enemies with ruthless efficiency. That is a lot scarier to us than having an FBI director who’s a useless lush.

    Neither option is good.

  144. says

    Washington Post link

    “Iran says it has closed the Strait of Hormuz again, citing U.S. blockade”

    “Iranian forces also opened fire on a tanker attempting to cross the strait Saturday morning […]”

    Iran’s military announced Saturday that it was closing the Strait of Hormuz, citing a continued American blockade, leaving the status of access to a vital waterway unclear a day after President Donald Trump and the country declared it open. A tanker attempting to cross the strait also was reported to have come under fire from Iranian forces […]

    Trump told reporters Saturday that the United States remained engaged in “very good conversations” with Iran and acknowledged that Tehran “wanted to close up the strait again.”

    “They can’t blackmail us,” Trump said of Iran, adding that he would have more information on the talks with Tehran “by end of day.”

    Iranian forces Saturday morning also opened fire on a tanker attempting to cross the strait, according to the British military. Two gunboats affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps opened fire on a tanker about 20 nautical miles northeast of Oman, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre (UKMTO), a monitoring agency that is part of the British Royal Navy. The agency said all crew members were reported safe.
    The incident was also reported by ship tracking firm TankerTrackers.com, which said a crew member aboard the tanker radioed Iran’s military for help as it was under attack. In the distress call, the crew member claims the tanker had been given permission to cross the strait and asks Iran to allow the tanker to turn back, according to the report.

    UKMTO also reported two other incidents that appear to be attacks on vessels in the strait. A container ship was hit by an unknown projectile, causing damage to some of the containers, and a cruise ship reported seeing a nearby splash.

    […] The U.S. will continue its naval blockade of Iranian ports until there is a peace deal with Iran, Trump said. But on Saturday, Iran accused the U.S. of “banditry and piracy under the guise of a so-called blockade.” [Hmmm. WTF?]

    “Until the United States ends its interference with the full freedom of movement for vessels traveling to and from Iran, the status of the Strait of Hormuz will remain under intense control and in its previous state,” said the statement published on Iran’s semiofficial Fars media outlet.

    […] Israel Defense Forces claimed in a statement Saturday that it had identified several incidents it considered ceasefire violations in southern Lebanon, warning that the “IDF is authorized to take the necessary measures in self-defense against threats, while ensuring the security of Israeli civilians and the soldiers deployed in the area.” […]

  145. says

    Follow-up to comment 144.

    US military prepares to board Iran-linked vessels

    The U.S. military is readying to board ships linked to Iran and seize commercial vessels in international waters in the coming days as President Trump looks to expand a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, a source familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal military planning, told The Hill on Saturday.

    The planning comes as the military is already enforcing the naval blockade in the Gulf of Oman, turning back 23 vessels that attempted to leave Iranian ports on Monday.

    The expanded enforcement could come as Iran has effectively closed the strait […]

    Iran has reportedly attacked several vessels in the channel, a day after its foreign minister claimed the waterway was “completely” open for commercial ships following the temporary truce reached between Lebanon and Israel. The move caused oil prices to drop dramatically on Friday. […]

  146. JM says

    The Moscow Times: Leningrad Region Asks Veterans to Join New Air Defense Units After Drones Smash Oil Export Terminals

    Authorities in northwestern Russia’s Leningrad region announced Friday a recruitment campaign for military reservists to bolster air defenses following a recent uptick in Ukrainian drone strikes on critical oil and export infrastructure.
    Governor Alexander Drozdenko said new “mobile fire groups” will be stationed at key facilities to counter aerial threats. He urged veterans of the war in Ukraine, as well as former Soviet and Russian soldiers, to sign three-year contracts to man the units.

    The Russian government is looking for people to man new air defense units. I don’t expect that the soldiers that have gotten out of the Russian army are interested. Anybody motivated by patriotism or money has already joined and criminals would know that they are likely to be transferred to front line infantry. It also shows how desperate the Russian army is, so much of the army is committed to the front that they can’t get units in the rear.

  147. JM says

    Euromaidan Press: Either Russia’s air defense doesn’t work, or NATO is launching drones, says Russia’s Shoigu

    Russian Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu has stated that Russia “will defend itself” in response to Ukrainian drone attacks. According to Moscow’s version, these drones may be based on the territory of Finland and the Baltic states, TASS reports.
    He presented two possible interpretations of the drones’ origin: either Russia’s air defense is ineffective, or neighboring countries’ airspace is allegedly being used for the attacks.

    The problem is that Russia’s air defense is failing. Ukraine making deep strikes with long range missiles has forced Russia to spread it’s air defense thinner. At the same time they are running out of radar and missiles, to the point they have begun pulling air defense from some areas not considered important enough.
    Shoigu can’t admit that of course and is instead making lightly veiled threats.

  149. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Stat – Don’t believe headlines saying that vaccine skepticism is widespread

    On Monday, Politico published a poll on vaccine attitudes titled, “More Americans doubt vaccine safety than trust it, Politico Poll finds,” followed by the subhead, “Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s views are commonplace across the land.” […] Within hours, other credible outlets ran headlines such as “Vaccine skepticism now the norm for many Americans.”
    […]
    Here is the actual question from the poll:

    “Which of the following comes closest to your view?: The science on vaccines is clear and it is damaging to question it | The facts on vaccines are still up for debate and it is damaging to enforce their uptake.”

    […] Did you notice the problem? You weren’t asked about one thing; you were asked about four different things simultaneously.
    1 Is the science on vaccines clear?
    2 Is it damaging to question vaccine science?
    3 Are the facts on vaccines still up for debate?
    4 Is it damaging to enforce vaccine uptake?
    […] Survey methodologists call this approach a “double-barreled question.” This question has four barrels.
    […]
    research from the last several years show a slow erosion in confidence but remarkably resilient support for vaccines. A Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted in February found that 84% of Americans, including 81% of Republicans, said vaccines like the measles, mumps, and rubella shot are safe for children. Seventy-four percent said the government should require children to be vaccinated to attend school. A February poll from the Partnership to Fight Infectious Disease found that 89% of Americans—including 82% of Republicans—said vaccines are essential for public health.
    […]
    the weight of the evidence says vaccine support remains the norm. But that reality is not immune to the stories we tell about it. […] If enough people hear a misleading message that most of their neighbors are skeptical about vaccines, some will start to doubt, too. Unfortunately, this week’s poll became the raw material for that normalization.

  150. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Former Democratic Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax shot and killed his wife and himself

    Both of the pair’s teenage children were home at the time of the murder-suicide. Their son was the one to call 911. […] They were in the midst of contentious divorce proceedings
    […]
    Justin Fairfax was lieutenant governor of Virginia under Gov. Ralph Northam. He was elected in 2017 and his time in office was marred by scandal and several sexual assault and rape allegations.

  151. JM says

    The Guardian: First trailer released for western starring AI version of Val Kilmer

    A trailer has been released for the first film to star an authorised generative AI version of a major Hollywood actor.
    Val Kilmer was cast in western As Deep As the Grave before his death in April 2025. Production delays meant he never shot any scenes, but the creative team worked with UK-based company Sonantic to create an AI speaking voice based on his old recordings.
    His estate and daughter Mercedes collaborated with the film-makers on the visual deepfake of the actor.

    As long as it has the actor’s or family’s approval I can’t see a reason to stop it but I probably won’t be seeing the movie either. I don’t want to support this happening on a large scale.
    One reason is that actors need to be replaced, otherwise it just turns into eternal money generation for whoever owns the rights.

  152. JM says

    Bleeping computer: WordPress plugin suite hacked to push malware to thousands of sites

    More than 30 WordPress plugins in the EssentialPlugin package have been compromised with malicious code that allows unauthorized access to websites running them.
    A malicious actor planted the backdoor code last year but only recently started pushing it to users via updates, generating spam pages and causing redirects, as per the instructions received from the command-and-control (C2) server.
    The compromise affects plugins with hundreds of thousands of active installations and was spotted by Austin Ginder, the founder of managed WordPress hosting provider Anchor Hosting, after receiving a tip about one add-on containing code that allowed third-party access.

    Obvious possible attack but the first time I have heard of this being done in the real world. The attacker, currently unidentified, purchased ownership of the code in the EssentialPlugin package. This let them add backdoor code through normal plugin updates. They slowly did this over a year to give it a chance to spread widely before using the backdoor.

  153. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Elia Ayoub (Journalist, Lebanese diasporan):

    Day 1 of the “ceasefire”. Israel has already bombed Lebanon at least twice today. At least 1 killed and 3 injured. This comes as Trump said Israel was “PROHIBITED” (in all caps) from bombing Lebanon.

    This is day 2 of the “ceasefire”. Israel detonating what’s left of Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon. They were already destroyed. Israel is obliterating everything. [Video clip]

    Middle East Eye – Israeli army says attacks in Lebanon fall under ceasefire terms

    Al Jazeera reported continued artillery, shelling and machinegun fire on several villages, along with two air strikes
    […]
    Israel said […] the actions did not violate the ceasefire, which allows it to act in “self-defence” under terms released by the US State Department.

    Eiynah Mohammed-Smith (Polite Conversations): “Israeli understanding of a ceasefire is quite literally that everyone else ceases and they fire.”
     
    Al Jazeera

    The US president has taken to his Truth Social platform to praise Israel. “Whether people like Israel or not, they have proven to be a GREAT Ally of the United States of America,” he wrote. “They are Courageous, Bold, Loyal, and Smart and, unlike others that have shown their true colors in a moment of conflict and stress, Israel fights hard, and knows how to WIN!”

    The comments come a day after he told Israel that it is “prohibited” from bombing Lebanon and “enough is enough”.

    Al Jazeera – Israel says established a ‘yellow line’ in Lebanon, as it has in Gaza

    Since a “ceasefire” in Gaza took effect in October, Israel’s so-called “yellow line” has divided the Palestinian territory into separate zones, with an eastern area controlled by the Israeli military and a western area where Palestinians face fewer restrictions on their movement. Israeli troops routinely fire on anyone approaching the line, and they have demolished hundreds of homes in the zone under their control. Israeli attacks have killed at least 773 people and wounded more than 2,000 since the start of the “ceasefire”.

    […] the Israeli military’s announcement of a “yellow line” in Lebanon appeared to represent the “continuation of the ‘Gazafication’ of southern Lebanon”.

  154. StevoR says

    It has been about a year since the pale octopus began disappearing from an area they were once in abundance.

    Leon Van Weenen, South Australia’s only commercial Octopus pallidus fisher, has been catching the species for 14 years.

    Throughout that time Mr Van Weenen has averaged 350 kilograms of the nocturnal species per trip on the lower Spencer Gulf.

    But for the past year, despite operating 20,000 of the 24,000 traps in the state, Mr Van Weenen’s average catch has dropped to as low as a handful of octopuses.

    “We went out in January, February, and in March [2025, and] we noticed the decline in the catch,” Mr Van Weenen said.

    “The next month when we went out, it went from 15 kilograms (which is about 45 octopus) down to like eight octopus.

    “It was a drastic change, and it got to the point where it was unviable to even go and have a look.”

    Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-19/octopus-pallidus-disappearance-spencer-gulf-south-australia/106573138

  155. says

    What Clarence Thomas doesn’t understand about democracy

    “The Supreme Court justice’s insistence that rights come from God, not government, couldn’t be more wrong.”

    Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gave a speech Thursday at the University of Texas at Austin attacking progressivism as the enemy of all that America stands for — or at least what he believes it ought to stand for. “Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government,” he said, because “it holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God but from government.”

    […] while Thomas may cast himself as the truest defender of the American system, what he actually revealed was his contempt for the foundations of our democracy — one that is all too common among conservatives today.

    The idea that rights come from God, not government, couldn’t be more wrong. And as someone who routinely wields the power of government to deprive Americans of their rights, Thomas ought to know.

    Thomas began his speech by citing Thomas Jefferson’s line in the Declaration of Independence asserting that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Deploying the essay-writing technique familiar to mediocre middle-school students everywhere, he added, “The American Heritage Dictionary of English Language defines self-evident as obviously true and requiring no proof, argument, or explanation.” […]

    As proof, Thomas offered his own history growing up in the Jim Crow South. “When you lived in a segregated world with palpable discrimination and the governments nearest to you enforced laws and customs that promoted unequal treatment,” he said, “it was obvious that your rights or your dignity did not come from those governments, but rather from God.”

    So who was it who delivered the nation from the cruelty and injustice of Jim Crow? It was not a divine light of heaven sweeping across the land. It was government — or more specifically, democratic citizens who worked tirelessly to change the laws, and eventually forced those with power in the courts, legislatures and the executive branch to join their cause.

    And it’s the laws passed and enforced by the government that guarantee those rights. To repeat, Thomas knows this perfectly well, since he and his conservative colleagues on the high court are in the process of destroying one of the key pillars of that effort, the Voting Rights Act.

    Thomas never asks why, if God is so intent on providing all of us with these political rights, he took so long to offer them to almost anyone. Few citizens anywhere were guaranteed their supposedly God-given rights until a mere 250 years ago (and even then, it would be almost 200 years more before they were truly available to all Americans). God decided to allow thousands of generations of human beings to live from birth to death with no political rights, subject to the whims of kings, warlords and potentates — and yes, religious leaders, whose history of sins against fundamental rights is long and bloody.

    Whatever support one might find in a selective reading of scripture for ideas such as universal equality (and one does have to cherry-pick rather aggressively), it wasn’t until the Framers created a government capable of guaranteeing those rights that they eventually became real. […]

    And critically, rights are more than vague notions about “equality” or “dignity.” Rights are specific and procedural, or else they are meaningless. God does not grant you the right to equal protection under law, or a fair trial if you are accused of a crime or the freedom of speech; it’s government that does that. Indeed, freedom of religion itself existed almost nowhere until the Constitution — a plan for government — created it. Even today, it is absent in many places, God’s supposed wishes notwithstanding.

    Listening to Thomas’ speech, one can’t help but notice it comes at a moment when not only does his Republican Party hold a grip on national power, but the Trump administration he has done so much to support has brought to our government an aggressive and exclusionary Christian nationalism. [I snipped examples.]

    Americans know that when their rights are being trampled on, it is not God who will come to their rescue. Only government can do that — and it only does so when we as citizens demand it and have the power to ensure it.

  157. says

    Trump Threatens War Crimes in Iran Again

    In a Truth Social tirade on Sunday morning, […] Trump claimed that Iran violated their ceasefire agreement with the US by firing shots at ships in the Strait of Hormuz and again threatened to commit war crimes by taking out the country’s energy infrastructure.

    “Many of [the bullets] were aimed at a French Ship, and a Freighter from the United Kingdom,” Trump contended about Iran’s targeting of the ships, without evidence. “That wasn’t nice, was it?”

    The US and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire in early April. The agreement is set to expire later this week, and the US continues to negotiate next steps around access to the Strait—the world’s most important oil transit corridor. “We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it,” Trump wrote in the same social media post. “If they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!” [JFC]

    International law experts consider strikes on infrastructure—even if they qualify as military targets—to be war crimes because they cause disproportionate harm to civilians. [Social media post from MeidasTouch.]

    On Saturday, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations organization, developed by Britain’s Royal Navy, reported two incidents of ships being hit in the Strait of Hormuz. Those ships, along with several others, turned back. The two vessels appear to both belong to India, according to India’s ministry of external affairs.

    This reported attack took place the day after Iran re-established an effective closure of the strait on Saturday, overturning its announcement less than 24 hours before to “completely open” the shipping waterway during the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire.

    According to Al Jazeera, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy explained on Saturday that the nation decided to close the strait until the US withdraws its blockade on all ships entering and leaving Iranian ports. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker, said in a television interview that the blockade, which began last week, was “a clumsy and ignorant decision” and violated the ceasefire agreement. [!]

    Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened that ships attempting to cross the strait during Iran’s closure would be considered in “cooperation with the enemy” and “any violating vessels would be targeted.” That same day, reports began to come out of the two ships hit in the strait.

    Trump announced in the same Truth Social message that US officials will arrive in Pakistan on Monday to resume negotiations with Iran. According to the Associated Press, Iran did not immediately confirm whether they would send representatives to meet the US delegation. […]

  158. says

    Trump’s executive order on psychedelics research could make some rich men richer.

    […] Trump signed an executive order on Saturday calling for the acceleration of research on certain psychedelic drugs as treatments for depression and other conditions. Podcaster Joe Rogan stood with him as he signed the order—and Trump indicated that Rogan was a major inspiration behind the push to fast-track legalizing ibogaine, which is used outside the United States to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

    Rogan has championed ibogaine for years. A year ago, on his podcast, he said “Ibogaine, in particular, has helped a lot of people. It gives you, like, a review of your life, apparently.” Two weeks ago, he interviewed the CEO of Americans for Ibogaine, who also stood by as Trump signed his order to ease access to the drug.

    […] Rogan’s texts to Trump, he told reporters, were what brought this to fruition: “Sounds great, do you want FDA approval?” Rogan said Trump responded. “It was literally that quick.”

    Rogan isn’t the only nationally prominent figure pushing psychedelics. The drugs’ path to legitimacy is fueled by early-stage investors hoping to stake their claim to a market many view as the next cannabis.

    Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel has spent the better part of the past decade investing heavily in psychedelic pharmaceutical companies. He’s a major backer of Compass Pathways, a British company seeking to commercialize psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms, in particular for therapeutic use. He’s also invested in AtaiBeckley, a German company working on hallucinogens. On Thursday, the stocks of both companies spiked on news that Trump would likely be giving his stamp of approval to ibogaine this weekend.

    Another financial beneficiary might be the state of Texas, which announced it would be conducting its own ibogaine clinical trials in late March, to the tune of $50 million. And then there’s the Mercer Family Foundation, a major conservative grantmaker that helped get Trump elected, which has donated over $1 million toward psychedelics-related treatment for PTSD in combat veterans.

    At the White House Saturday, Trump didn’t talk much about the money behind all this. Instead, he asked if he could get some ibogaine.

    “Can I have some, please?” he said. “I’ll do whatever it takes…I don’t have time to be depressed. If you stay busy enough, maybe that’s what works too, that’s what I do.”

  159. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/robert-f-kennedy-jr-nowhere-near

    “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Nowhere Near As Good At Bullsh*tting As He Thinks He Is”

    “He’s got the NYT fooled, but not anyone who actually pays attention to him.”

    As if things have not been batshit enough as of late, we got to end the work week with not one, not two, but three RFK Jr. hearings — before the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday and before the House Education and Workforce Committee on Friday. This meant that I got to watch at least six hours of America’s least favorite gravelly voiced, raccoon-dick-cutting, anti-vaccine, conspiracy theorist be impossibly condescending to anyone trying to get a straight answer from him about anything.

    Naturally, The New York Times made a heroic effort to sane-wash Kennedy, breathlessly reporting that he had “shifted his tone” during the hearings on Thursday by “admitting” that the measles vaccine is safe “for most people” and that getting measles is not good, writing:

    In back-to-back hearings on Capitol Hill, Mr. Kennedy testified that the measles vaccine is safe and effective “for most people” and agreed it was safer than getting measles. Under questioning, he also allowed that the vaccine might have saved the lives of two unvaccinated children who died of measles in Texas earlier this year.

    His comments, while carefully couched, stand in stark contrast to his previous statements about vaccination. Coupled with Mr. Trump’s announcement of Dr. Erica Schwartz, a deputy surgeon general in his first administration, as his new pick for C.D.C. director, they provided the latest evidence yet that Mr. Kennedy is trying to publicly put his efforts to overhaul American vaccine policy behind him. [bullshit]

    Is he though? I think we can be pretty sure he is not.

    This is the same “tone” he puts on every time he’s forced to talk about his nonsense in front of people who are not of his tribe. It’s the same “tone” he used to convince Sen. Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor, that he totally wouldn’t mess with vaccines or claim they cause autism during his confirmation hearing, which he obviously went on to do. The “for most people” is a dog-whistle, and the anti-vaxxers know exactly what he means when he says that. It means that “Sure, it will be fine for most, but some kids will become autistic and you need to decide for yourself whether or not that is a risk you want to take.”

    There was also not a tone-shift in his defensiveness or in his condescension to Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pennsylvania), to whom he was responding. [video]

    He even tried to claim that the increase in measles deaths was not on him, as many of the children who contracted the virus were around five or so years old. Rather, he says, it was because people lost trust in vaccines after COVID. Of course, the reason that happened was because of people like Kennedy fear-mongering about it.

    […] the decrease in children getting vaccinated means that herd immunity is far more difficult to maintain, so unvaccinated children are more likely to get it than they would be in an environment where a high percentage of people were vaccinated.

    Additionally, saying “it’s possible” that the measles vaccine would have saved the lives of those children is not some kind of major admission, either. [..]

    In the past, Mr. Kennedy has said vaccination should be a personal choice, and advised parents of newborns to “do your own research” before deciding whether to vaccinate children. During the measles outbreak, he acknowledged that the vaccine was the best way to prevent transmission, but steered clear of pronouncing it safe and effective.

    […] Far less easy to fool than The New York Times was Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama, who had some questions for Kennedy regarding a 2024 interview he did on the YouTube show High Lvl Conversations, hosted by “wellness” influencer 19Keys, in which he had some real interesting ideas about sending Black children to rural “wellness farms” to get “reparented.” [video]

    Via The Daily Beast:

    At one point during the conversation, Kennedy, 72, said that if elected, he would create “Wellness Farm” rehabilitation facilities in rural areas all around the country.

    “Every Black kid is now just standard put on Adderall, SSRI, benzos, which are known to induce violence. And those children are going to have a chance to go somewhere to get reparented,” said Kennedy, who now serves as President Donald Trump’s health secretary.

    During a congressional hearing Thursday about his department’s budget, Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama read Kennedy’s comment back to him and asked if he had ever parented or “re-parented a Black child.”

    Naturally, Kennedy just insisted that he had never said any such thing and didn’t even know what that meant […]

    Conveniently, however, the recording is online and it even has subtitles. He actually brought it up twice, so it’s hardly as though he misspoke. If he now does not know what he meant by that, perhaps he’s got some cognitive issues of his own to deal with.

    “So, you are not a doctor, have no formal medical training, and you’ve never parented a Black child,” Sewell said. “And yet you are suggesting that the federal government should take Black children away from their families and ‘reparent’ them, and send them off to some wellness farm instead of providing them with evidence-based…”

    Clearly averse to the phrase “evidence-based,” Kennedy immediately interrupted her and accused her of having made it all up, which she did not. She attempted to ask him several more questions about those statements, and he kept accusing her of making up the whole thing and insisting that he doesn’t even know what reparenting is. Except he clearly did know what he was talking about when he did that interview, because he went on for some time about how the plan would be to send adolescents who are “addicted” to either street drugs or the medications prescribed by their doctors to farms in order to “rehabilitate” them with child labor, organic food, and lack of access to “screens.”

    I would like to point out, by the way, that Black children and adolescents are actually medicated at far lower rates than are white children [!]— and, in fact, are underdiagnosed and undertreated for mental and behavioral health issues [!], thanks to the usual disparities in our healthcare system. […]

    During his hearing before the House Education and Workforce Committee on Friday, Kennedy continued his assault on psychiatric medications and ceased any attempts to “shift his tone” on the subject of vaccines.

    Indeed, when asked by Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Michigan) about the ways he’d attempted to restrict access to vaccines, his tone was somehow even more condescending than it was on Thursday.

    “You questioned the effectiveness of the measles vaccine, and then in September, your handpicked vaccine panel voted against recommending the combined measles vaccine for children under 4,” Stevens said.

    “It was dangerous,” Kennedy responded, incorrectly [!]. He then asked her if she thought we should be giving children vaccines that were not “safety-tested,” which is not true of the MMR vaccine. It has been in use for decades and we know that it is safe and far, far less of a risk than actually getting the diseases it prevents.

    Both Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Georgia) and Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-Connecticut) asked Kennedy about the gun violence epidemic, which he insisted was not his problem at Health and Human Services.

    Rep. Hayes, pointing out that funding for various gun violence prevention programs like the Safer Communities Act had been cut, asked the secretary what he had done to keep children safe from gun violence.

    […] “We did a study on school shootings, looked at what the shooters have in common, what medications they may have been receiving, whether they were on SSRIs, whether they were on benzos. [aiyiyi, such a bullshit “study”] We’re expanding that now across the, across the agency to do even more of those,” Kennedy told Rep. Hayes.

    Will someone please tell this man that doctors are not going around indiscriminately prescribing “benzos” to teenagers? Only 1.8 percent of anyone under 18 has ever been given a single “benzo” by a doctor, and almost exclusively for epileptic seizures or truly acute anxiety attacks.

    Rep. McBath, who lost a son to gun violence, pointedly asked Kennedy to estimate how many kids last year died from “fluoride toxicity” versus gun violence, pointing out that gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and adolescents. Failing to get the point, he merely whined that her question was absurd because he never said fluoride kills people. [video]

    […] As far as Black maternal mortality was concerned, Rep. Summer Lee asked Kennedy how he intended to deal with the fact that Black women are disproportionately likely to die in childbirth if no one is allowed to say “Black” because of the administration’s anti-DEI nonsense that eliminated funding for all studies and interventions mentioning the word “Black.” [video]

    […] “[…] why aren’t you putting forth serious policies that actually address the health crises in this country instead of just these unserious conspiracy theories and this wellness influencer mess?” she asked.

    Kennedy responded by insisting that his plans to address maternal mortality for all women without regard to race were sufficient, which they are not.

    […] One thing RFK Jr. has certainly made clear during his tenure at HHS is that he has no problem putting the health of anyone at risk so long as he gets to see his pseudoscientific dreams come true. [!] He doesn’t care if people get sick from raw milk, if kids die from measles, if pregnant mothers suffer in pain without the only painkiller it is safe or them to take, if kids get shot, or if their teeth fall out. [Unfortunately true.]

    […] He does not care about real problems or health consequences, he cares about getting his own way, and he does not care how many people have to die in order for that to happen.

  160. says

    A follow-up of sorts to comment 159.

    “8 children killed in Louisiana shooting, police say”

    “The victims ranged in age from 1 to about 14, police said. The shooter, who was related to some of the children, is dead.”

    Eight children were killed Sunday in a shooting in Shreveport, Louisiana, that police say appeared to be linked to a domestic disturbance.

    Shreveport Police Chief Wayne Smith said that the victims ranged in age from 1 to about 14 and that a total of 10 people were shot. The gunman, who was shot by police, is also dead, Smith said.

    Officials said they were still gathering information Sunday afternoon at the crime scene, which extended across multiple residences. Smith said some of the children killed were related to the gunman.

    This is a developing story and will be updated.

    Washington post link

  161. birgerjohansson says

    It is 71 years (and one day ) since Albert Einstein died.

    It is 30 years since From Dusk Till Dawn was released.

  163. says

    GOP gaslights on gas prices

    Republicans know that surging gas prices caused by […] Trump’s boondoggle of a war in Iran will impact what were already shaping up to be devastating midterms this November.

    But instead of doing anything to stop the war or the impending economic doom, Republicans are still praising their Dear Leader and trying to gaslight Americans into thinking that the pain they’re feeling at the pump is a worthy sacrifice.

    Get a load of Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina who, as chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is tasked with crafting messaging to protect the GOP’s Senate majority.

    He made this doozy of a comment on Fox Business when asked how he’ll prevent rising oil prices from sinking the GOP’s chances in November.

    “Well, they’re still lower than they were under President Biden, so that’s good news,” Scott said. “No. 1, yes, affordability will be solved. No. 2, the gas prices are coming down. And No. 3, we can thank President Trump and Republicans for doing both.” [Whoa! What a load of lies.]

    […] Other Senate Republicans made similarly ridiculous excuses for rising gas prices.

    “I’m sorry that gas prices are going up, but help is on the way, and your national security is even more important than your pocketbook,” Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas said on Fox News, even though polls show that Americans believe that the war is actually making them less safe. [Yep]

    Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming also spewed a load of bullshit on Fox News, saying that the people he speaks to aren’t mad about rising gas prices, even though polling says the exact opposite.

    “They love the president, support the president in what he’s doing, specifically with Iran,” Barrasso said. “Gas prices are on their minds as they always are for our producers—our farmers and ranchers and people that drive long distances in Wyoming. They also understand that what the president is doing is an effort to provide stability in that part of the world will have good long-term impacts in terms of energy prices.”

    He continued, “They also understand that Republicans are the party of energy dominance. Democrats like high gas prices because of their radical climate agenda. So people understand what the president is doing, agree with him, and know that we need peace and stability and need to protect America long term.”

    Other Republicans also seemed to try to convince themselves that rising gas prices won’t hurt them.

    “No one is willing to trade lower gas prices for Iran becoming a nuclear state,” Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio wrote on X. […]

    Ultimately, Republicans are panicking about gas prices behind the scenes, as they have increased more than $1 per gallon on average since Trump’s war began. […]

    Even Trump seems to understand that, whining on Fox News that the midterms are looking bleak for the GOP.

    Leave it to the so-called party of personal responsibility to refuse to take accountability for their actions.

  164. says

    New York Times link

    “Iran War Updates: Tehran Pushes Back After Trump Announces New Round of Talks”

    “President Trump said U.S. negotiators would head to talks mediated by Pakistan, but Iranian state media said no meeting had been confirmed. The two-week cease-fire is set to expire this week.”

    Just days before a two-week cease-fire between the U.S. and Iran was set to expire, President Trump and Iranian officials disagreed on Sunday over whether top officials would meet this week in Pakistan for a second round of negotiations to end the war.

    Hours after Mr. Trump said American officials would attend talks in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, Iranian state media said Tehran had not yet agreed to any such meeting. […]

    A White House official said Vice President JD Vance was expected to lead a U.S. delegation, accompanied by the top Trump aides Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. [Same inexperienced team of doofuses that failed before!]

    […] the economically vital Strait of Hormuz remained all but closed, a move Mr. Trump characterized in a social media post on Sunday as a “total violation of our cease-fire.”

    […] Mr. Trump’s announcement of U.S. participation in the talks came with a renewed threat to attack Iran’s civilian infrastructure if the strait is not reopened and an extension of the cease-fire is not reached.

    […] In recent days, Mr. Trump had repeatedly said Iran had assented to nearly all of his demands on the country’s nuclear program. Iranian leaders vehemently denied that claim, dampening hopes for an immediate agreement.

    […] Strait of Hormuz: Iranian forces were maintaining their tight grip on the strait, […] Iranian officials said the strait would stay closed in retaliation for Mr. Trump’s blockade of Iran’s ports. Even if the strait opened fully, it would take weeks for oil and gas prices to recover.

    Pakistan: Pakistan appeared to be readying for a fresh round of talks between the U.S. and Iran, an indication that the talks were likely to go forward even as the two sides sent conflicting public messages. Islamabad, the capital, went on a security lockdown on Sunday night and officials said they would deploy 10,000 extra security forces in the city.

    Lebanon: Thousands of displaced Lebanese families were making their way back home to Lebanon’s south on Sunday soon after a 10-day cease-fire went into effect. The head of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, said this weekend that the group was willing to cooperate with the Lebanese authorities to end the war with Israel and laid out a series of conditions for a lasting truce. […]

  165. says

    Trump says U.S. seized Iranian ship as tensions rise amid ceasefire

    Related video at the link.

    […] Trump said Sunday that U.S. forces had seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship that allegedly attempted to breach a U.S. naval blockade.

    In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the nearly 900-foot cargo vessel TOUSKA was intercepted by the Navy destroyer USS Spruance in the Gulf of Oman after ignoring warnings to stop. He said the ship was disabled and boarded, and that U.S. Marines now have custody of the vessel. Iran has not publicly commented on the reported seizure.

    The incident underscores how fragile the ceasefire remains, with both sides accusing the other of violations and at odds on when to resume peace talks.

    […] Iranian officials have pushed back Trump’s announcement of new talks. Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency denied reports of a second round of negotiations in Islamabad, saying there is “no clear prospect” for talks under current conditions. It cited what it described as excessive U.S. demands, shifting positions and the continued naval blockade, which Iran views as a violation of the ceasefire.

    […] Iranian officials said Saturday that new U.S. proposals were under review. Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said progress has been made toward a peace deal, with some issues “concluded,” but he warned Iran still has a “complete distrust” of the U.S. negotiators.

    Speaking on state TV on Saturday night, Ghalibaf, who also serves as Iran’s chief negotiator, said officials had “stated our demands firmly,” adding: “Some issues in the negotiations have been concluded, while others have not. There is still a distance to a final agreement.”

    […] Ghalibaf said the strait had been closed because the U.S. was only “partially implementing the ceasefire,” adding that it will remain closed if the “naval blockade against us continues.”

    “If the ceasefire is not implemented, we will not continue negotiations, and we will start the war,” he said.

    […] Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Sunday that Trump was seeking to deny Iran its “nuclear rights” and that Iran was trying to end the war “with full dignity.”

    “If a human being does not defend himself, he is dead,” he said. “They attacked us, and we defended.”

    The Trump administration said its blockade of Iranian ports remains in force, with more than 20 ships turned back since Monday.

    Following a summit of 51 countries that was co-chaired by France and the U.K. on Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer “called for the unconditional, unrestricted, and immediate re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz.”

    They also announced a joint neutral mission to provide reassurance to merchant vessels in the region.

  166. Militant Agnostic says

    Lynna @159

    Apparently the opinions of a Kennedy trump the facts provide by less famous people.

    “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”
    Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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