Ya Think?
Ready Made Family
Because It's True
Just Sayin'
Whiny Beta Gamma Male Whines
Der Füher Cry Baby is so unhappy with this portrait in the Colorado State Capitol Building, that he whined about it. Let's hope the image doesn't get re-posted everywhere…
[Thanks, Rick!]
But This Is Trump
From Greg Fallis:
By now, everybody is aware of the colossal fuck-up in which senior Trump national security officials conducted a high level discussion about launching at attack in Yemen using…and it sounds so stupid to write this, but it's true…using a messaging platform that IS NOT approved for exchanging classified or secret intelligence.
These weren't low-level aides we're talking about. This was Trump's Vice President, his Director of National Intelligence, his National Security Adviser, his Secretary of Defense, his CIA Director and his Chief of Staff. Oh yeah, and the editor of The Atlantic. The fact that these people had this discussion on a commercially available cell phone app is scandal enough. But it's just ONE OF MANY scandals revealed by this fuck-up.
For example, Trump's national security team isn't quite sure if Trump has actually ordered the attack. They were discussing the timing of the attack–when the attack should take place–when Trump's Chief of Staff says, "As I heard it, the president was clear: green light." Seriously, this attack took place when it did because Stephen Miller interpreted some comment from Trump as a 'green light.' Apparently nothing was signed; apparently no official record exists authorizing an attack on a foreign nation. In any normal administration, that would be unthinkable. But this is Trump.
Another thing. One of the members of Trump's national security team, Steve Witkoff, was in Moscow at the time (he's Trump's Ukraine negotiator) meeting with Putin and his people. Let me just say that again. This guy was part of a group chat discussing highly sensitive information involving the military's attack capabilities, using an unapproved app on a cell phone while waiting for a meeting with Vlad Putin IN MOSCOW. In any normal administration, that would be unthinkable. But this is Trump.
There's more. During this astonishingly stupid group chat on a non-secure cell phone, Trump's Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, used the name of an active intelligence officer. He basically outed a working spy, which is a criminal act. In any normal administration, that would not only be unthinkable, but would lead to criminal charges. But this is Trump. His Attorney General and Director of the FBI will almost certainly refuse to investigate the matter, let alone bring criminal charges.

And if that's not scandal enough, when confronted by news media about the incident, Trump said he wasn't aware of it.
"I don't know anything about it. You're telling me about it for the first time."
This is Trump, so that's almost certainly a lie. Almost certainly, also because this is Trump. It's entirely possible his national security team 1) had decided Trump probably intended to order an attack on Yemen and didn't bother to get the decision confirmed, 2) were too lazy or incompetent to use secure communications systems to organize the attack, 3) and when it became public that they'd not only used wildly inappropriate and insecure tech to discuss the attack BUT ALSO INCLUDED A FUCKING CIVILIAN WHO WAS THE EDITOR OF A GODDAMN NEWS MAGAZINE, they decided NOT to tell POTUS that they'd fucked up. Which would mean Trump can't trust his own hand-picked national security team to keep him informed or tell him the truth. Which is entirely possible. Although it's more likely Trump just lied about not knowing, because that's what he does.
In any normal administration, an incident like this would lead to mass resignations and/or terminations as well as criminal charges. But this is Trump.
Right now, it appears the Trump administration is attempting to put the blame for all this on National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who set up the 'group chat' and accidentally included the editor of The Atlantic. But every single person who participated in the discussion should have known the proper protocol; they should have objected to having the discussion outside a sensitive compartmentalized information facility (SCIF); they should have refused to participate.
What will happen? Who knows? Democrats will be outraged, but will they actually DO anything? Who knows? Will anybody be held accountable for such a colossal fuck-up? Who knows? It's possible that this scandal, like every Trump scandal, will be buried beneath the next cascade of scandal. It's possible nothing at all will happen; nothing will change.
Because this is Trump. Nothing is ordinary anymore. No rules apply, no norms are maintained, no standards exist. There is only Trump and his cadre of trolls, banging around randomly, ignoring actual governance in their pursuit of performative trolling.
Oopsies! Plastered Pete Texted Classified War Plans To A Journalist. Was That Wrong?
From Jeff Tiedrich:
hey, remember when that commie rat-bastard Hillary Clinton ran a private email server? of course you do. it was the crime of the century — front page news on every paper. HILLARY FUCKS UP BIGTIME, the headlines screamed, in thousand-point boldface type. THE EMAIL LADY IS A WITCH. BURN HER! BURN HER!!!
Republicans fell all the fuck over each other in a mad dash to be the first to demand she not just resign, but impale herself on her dagger, immediately.
I mean, what the fuck, Hillary? how could you endanger national security like that?
Republicans, as everyone knows, are careful stewards of America's security. you'd never catch a Republican doing something as foolhardy as, for instance, absconding with dozens of boxes of classified documents, lying about having them, refusing to return them, hiding them, bragging about their contents to golf cronies, waving them in the faces of randos, scrawling to-do lists on them, even sleeping with them — and then stashing them in the unspeakably ugly shitter of their vermin-infested Florida golf motel.
that simply wouldn't happen. that shit's for traitors like the email lady.
you would never catch Republicans doing anything as clownfucklingly insane as texting war plans to each other over a phone app. and you would most certainly never ever, ever, EVER catch one inadvertently including a journalist in such a discussion, because that would be—
oopsies.
The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.
I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.
was that wrong?
because Piss-Drunk Pete has to plead ignorance on this thing. because if anyone had said anything at all to him when he first started at the Department of Defense that that sort of thing was frowned upon…
seriously, check out this Three Stooges level of dipshittery. a couple of weeks ago, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was minding his own business, when out of the clear blue—
I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz. Signal is an open-source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering. I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump's national security adviser.
and then,
Two days later—Thursday—at 4:28 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Signal chat group. It was called the "Houthi PC small group."
Goldberg's phone started blowing up with actual fucking war plans.
so, who besides Couchfuck McGee and Piss-Drunk Pete were on this text chain? according to Goldberg, he received messages from Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller, Tulsi Gabbard, Susie Wiles, Scott Bessent, and other sundry Sewer Clowns.
now, the government has its own secure means of communicating internally. there's no need to use third-party messaging apps that are prone to, y'know, facilitating embarrassing fuck-ups. so why do it? over to you, Heather Cox Richardson.
The decision to steer around government systems was possibly an attempt to hide conversations, since the app was set to erase some messages after a week and others after four weeks. By law, government communications must be archived.
so, were any laws broken? of fucking course laws were broken — this is Donny's administration we're talking about here. openly flouting the law is what they do. Heather Cox, please explain it to the nice people.
the use of Signal may also have violated the Espionage Act, which establishes how officials must handle information about the national defense. The app is not approved for national security use, and officials are supposed either to discuss military activity in a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, or to use approved government equipment.
and then on top of that, there's that whole we sent classified information to a journalist who didn't have clearance thing.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was fucking steamed, and immediately called for everyone involved to be prosecuted.
"when I'm president of the United States, neither she nor any of these other people are going to be above the law. whether it's her, or Eric Holder, for what he did on Fast and Furious, or any of these other folks. people are going to be held accountable if they broke the laws of this country. nobody is above the law, not even Hillary Clinton."
[taps earpiece] hold on, I'm being informed that this clip isn't from yesterday. it's from January 12, 2016, when Marco was campaigning for president and vowing to throw the email lady in jail.
by the way, it should be stated that — despite the howls of outrage from the entire wingnut media ecosystem — no classified information was ever found on Hillary's server.
so Marco, you were fairly pissed off when Hillary allegedly played fast and loose with her emails, do you have anything at all to say about Donny's entire administration disseminating war plans to a reporter?
we'll take your silence as a no, then.
let's check in with Nosferatu McGoebbels. he's had a lot to say about the email lady over the years.
"One point that doesn't get made enough about Hillary's unsecured server illegally used to conduct state business (obviously created to hide the Clintons' corrupt pay-for-play): foreign adversaries could easily hack classified ops & intel in real time from other side of the globe."
but about today's scandal? no comment from Stephen Miller. he's busy having lunch.
oh, looky here — it's Piss-Drunk Pete himself.
"imagine if it was, I don't know, Donald Trump, what the media would be doing to him right now. eviscerating him. or imagine if it was a member of the military … they still go after these guys for a tiny tiny fraction of what she willfully did."
fortunately, we no longer have to imagine. let's see whether or not media is actually eviscerating Donny right now.
"I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic. to me it's a magazine that's going out of business. but I know nothing about it. you're saying that they had what?"
weird how Donny never knows anything about anything. in eighty years we've gone from the buck stops here to why the fuck is should I know what's going on?
watch Donny and the Sewer Clowns sweep this whole thing under the rug — and watch how the media will be too distracted by the inevitable next scandal to follow up on the one that's happening right under their noses today.
(credit where credit is due: props to Bulwark Sarah Longwell, who did the hard work of tracking down all those old tweets and clips.)
365 Days Of UNF: March 25th
A Certain Aesthetic
Boys Will Be Boys
No Lie Detected
Unintended Consequences
Don't Be Afraid To Call Things By What They Are
Not Even Remotely Interested
This Country Is Broken
RIGHT?!?
Words of Wisdom
For those who are stressed out and depressed by reading about politics, but don't want to completely block it out and risk being uninformed, here's a tip: Focus your reading on solutions, not problems. Read only articles and posts about what is being done to solve the problems we face, or about what should be done about them — about those who are fighting back against Trump's depredations in various ways, how you can help do so, how the Democrats need to change in order to win elections in the future, and suchlike. Skip the ones that are basically just "here are all the latest terrible things that are happening" or "here's yet another example of how bad and awful and terrible Trump is". You already know bad things are happening and you already know Trump is awful. Wallowing in more of that will just depress you further while providing nothing positive. Reading exclusively about resistance and positive action will keep you still informed but a lot less stressed out. – Infidel753
[Thanks Rick]
Alternate Timeline
Will He Be Deported Or Die Of A Ketamine Overdose First?
"What Are You Waiting For?"
FUCK TESLA
Your Moral Compass Is Broken
Relaying A Message
Mark Elias: An Open Letter to Elon Musk
(via http://ishouldbelaughing.blogspot.com/)
Elon Musk attacked democracy defender and superstar court lawyer Marc Elias as "undermining civilization," taunting him by asking if he suffered "generational trauma" and Elias's response was brilliant and worth amplifying:
Mr. Musk,
You recently criticized me and another prominent lawyer fighting for the rule of law and democracy in the United States. I am used to being attacked for my work, particularly on the platform you own and dominate.
I used to be a regular on Twitter, where I amassed over 900,000 followers—all organic except for the right-wing bots who seemed to grow in number. Like many others, I stopped regularly posting on the site because, under your stewardship, it became a hellscape of hate and misinformation.
I also used to buy your cars—first a Model X and then a Model S—back when you spoke optimistically about solving the climate crisis. My family no longer owns any of your cars and never will.
But this is not the reason I am writing. You don't know me. You have no idea whether I have suffered trauma and if I have, how it has manifested. And it's none of your business.
However, I will address your last point about generational trauma. I am Jewish, though many on your site simply call me "a jew." Honestly, it's often worse than that, but I'm sure you get the point. There was a time when Twitter would remove antisemitic posts, but under your leadership, tolerating the world's oldest hatred now seems to be a permissible part of your "free speech" agenda.
Like many Jewish families, mine came to America because of trauma. They were fleeing persecution in the Pale of Settlement—the only area in the Russian Empire where Jews were legally allowed to reside. Even there, life was difficult—often traumatic. My family, like others, lived in a shtetl and was poor. Worse, pogroms were common—violent riots in which Jews were beaten, killed and expelled from their villages.
By the time my family fled, life in the Pale had become all but impossible for Jews. Tsar Nicholas II's government spread anti-Jewish propaganda that encouraged Russians to attack and steal from Jews in their communities. My great-grandfather was fortunate to leave when he did. Those who stayed faced even worse circumstances when Hitler's army later invaded.
That is the generational trauma I carry. The trauma of being treated as "other" by countrymen you once thought were your friends. The trauma of being scapegoated by authoritarian leaders. The trauma of fleeing while millions of others were systematically murdered. The trauma of watching powerful men treat it all as a joke—or worse.
As an immigrant yourself, you can no doubt sympathize with what it means to leave behind your country, extended family, friends and neighbors to come to the United States. Of course, you probably had more than 86 rubles in your pocket. You probably didn't ride for nine days in the bottom of a ship or have your surname changed by immigration officials.
As new immigrants, life wasn't easy. My family lived in cramped housing without hot water. They worked menial jobs—the kind immigrants still perform today.
Some may look down on those immigrants—the ones without fancy degrees—but my family was proud to work and grateful that the United States took them in. They found support within their Jewish community and a political home in the Democratic Party.
I became a lawyer to give back to the country that gave my family a chance. I specialize in representing Democratic campaigns because I believe in the party. I litigate voting rights cases because the right to vote is the bedrock of our democracy. I speak out about free and fair elections because they are under threat.
Now let me address the real crux of your post.
You are very rich and very powerful. You have thrown in with [The Felon]. Whether it is because you think you can control him or because you share his authoritarian vision, I do not know. I do not care.
Together, you and he are dismantling our government, undermining the rule of law and harming the most vulnerable in our society. I am just a lawyer. I do not have your wealth or your platform. I do not control the vast power of the federal government, nor do I have millions of adherents at my disposal to harass and intimidate my opponents. I may even carry generational trauma.
But you need to know this about me. I am the great-grandson of a man who led his family out of the shtetl to a strange land in search of a better life. I am the grandson of the three-year-old boy on that journey. As you know, my English name is Marc, but my Hebrew name is Elhanan (אֶלְחָנָן)—after the great warrior in David's army who slew a powerful giant.
I will use every tool at my disposal to protect this country from [The Felon]. I will litigate to defend voting rights until there are no cases left to bring. I will speak out against authoritarianism until my last breath.
I will not back down. I will not bow or scrape. I will never obey.
Defiantly,
Marc Elias