The Pentagon flagged a photo of the Enola Gay in its DEI purge…
apnews.com/article/dei-…— Josh Billinson (@jbillinson.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 7:49 PM
Just great fucking work. How long before Andy Ogles or some other wingnut from Texalabama or some other shithole (WV?) authors a bill retroactively naming it the “Enola Straight?”
Baud
“How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”
BellyCat
Is the Enola Straight next to the Gulf of America?
ProfDamatu
Shades of CNN (I think it was) auto-correcting sprinter Tyson Gay to Tyson Homosexual back in the day…
brantl
Honest to dog, these people are dumber than a sack of hammers.
sentient ai from the future
Straightlord Perry, we hardly knew ye
Redshift
Good. The clearer the evidence that the so-called “DEI purge” is just straight-up racial and sex discrimination, the better the chances of getting institutions to fight it. The entire project is to destroy civil rights law by applying Humpty-Dumpty logic and saying “ackshully, any mention of race or gender is discrimination, the only way not to discriminate is to pretend racism and sexism don’t exist” without passing any new laws, and it’s only going to work for as long as they can hide that (hopefully.)
Steve LaBonne
Don we now our straight apparel, fa la la la la la fa la la
hells littlest angel
Enola Gay was a monster who killed tens of thousands of traditional Japanese families with one father and one mother.
Steve LaBonne
No more transcontinental railway in the history books.
bbleh
Hey, gotta keep up the kulturkampf stuff so the rubes don’t notice the inflation, the unemployment, and their retirement accounts tanking.
Though it IS gonna be kinda tough to keep em distracted once grammaw and grampus have to move back in.
@Steve LaBonne: also too, the Department of Heteroportation.
hells littlest angel
@Steve LaBonne: The golden spike was driven to connect a biologically male railroad track to a biologically female railroad track.
Suzanne
Can we also start calling them fucken dumb in addition to weird? Seriously. I want Democrats to be really plain-spoken about this.
Old Man Shadow
If it didn’t want to be purged from great American history, it should have prayed to Airplane Jesus harder to make it straight.
TxTiger
I am waiting for all of the technical connectors between different systems to be taken down because they are called “integrations” 🙄
lowtechcyclist
Over at the Census Bureau, documents were being purged because they referred to “inclusion probabilities,” which would be the probability of a given business (in this case, this was for economic surveys) being included in the sample for a given survey.
But inclusion, of course, is also what the ‘I’ of ‘DEI’ stands for, so it’s a dirty word, so the Muskovites were deleting documents with that word.
Just swell, you dumb-ass fuckers.
ETA: No cite on this, my wife was hearing about this directly from her former colleagues in the Census Bureau’s econ directorate who were having to figure out why their documents were disappearing from the more accessible databases.
Hoodie
There’s no stupidity like artificial stupidity.
Ohio Mom
A reminder, Hilter dismantled German democracy in 53 days, and 53 days from Trump’s inauguration is a week from today. I think Trump and his pals may be a little behind schedule on this.
Just read on Josh Marshall’s BlueSky that some obscure group that ensures our food is safe to eat has been disbanded:
“NEW: The National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods is (or was) an advisory committee housed within the USDA which provides outside expert advice to advance food safety across the US and across different levels of govt. It was ordered disbanded this afternoon…
This is one of those little-known parts of the government that probably few of us have ever heard of. I wasn’t familiar with it until today. But I’m told it’s a pretty key part of the web of oversight that keeps the food we eat safe and generally not killing us.
It’s a committee that brings together people from govt, industry, academia etc. I’ve reviewed the guidance to the former members and the language is congenial but draconian.
Immediately stop all work, meetings, everything. Any more recommendations are prohibited, etc. The same document says the committee is being disbanded pursuant to the the Feb. 29 EO Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy”
Once again I am stunned by the thoroughness of the dismantling of the administrative state.
Old Man Shadow
@lowtechcyclist: Numbers are Satanic.
bbleh
@lowtechcyclist: Hey, they might notice, but they don’t care. It’s theater AND it’s destroying the government, and that’s what they’re after. If it fks other things up unintentionally, it’s gravy!
Omnes Omnibus
@hells littlest angel: Okay, if you want to see a machine as a monster. That doesn’t negate the point that it is being disappeared for the stupidest possible reason.
lowtechcyclist
@bbleh:
Yeah, pretty much that. Dammit.
Steve LaBonne
@Suzanne: This shows bad character on my part, but that is the aspect of all this that sticks in my craw the most. The supposedly superior white men running all this, starting with Trusk, are some of the stupidest motherfuckers on earth. President Camacho was a fucking genius by comparison.
lowtechcyclist
@Old Man Shadow:
Nah, they can’t be – they’re right in between Leviticus and Deuteronomy. ;-)
LeftCoastYankee
Seems like Doge’s “AI” is “find” run by children.
Oh wait… it is.
billcoop4
Whatever will they do with George Gay Jr., the only survivor from Hornet’s torpedo squadron at Midway?
BC
Steve LaBonne
@lowtechcyclist: Another gobsmacking example.
Basilisc
“Enola Freedom”
lowtechcyclist
@Steve LaBonne:
They don’t care what sort of hash they make of this country, so long as they rule the ruins.
LeftCoastYankee
@TxTiger:
Ha! That brought me an actual laugh rather than more teeth grinding, at least for a few seconds. Thanks!
NotMax
Air Force to eliminate any mention of drag coefficient?
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne: Like not knowing the difference between “transgenic” and “transgender”?
Scout211
Somewhat related: possibly as revenge against the Governor of Maine, possibly DOGE stupidity (I repeat myself), parents of newborns in Maine now must travel to a Social Security office to register their child for a social security number because DOGE canceled the contracts.
catclub
@Steve LaBonne:
lol
ETA: It says posted without comment, but then there is a comment.
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
Little Johnny goes off to school a boy and comes back home as a mouse.
//
prostratedragon
… oh so pretty, and witty, and stra-a-aight!
catclub
@NotMax: No more concert dates for the Transiberian Orchestra
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: Wouldn’t little Johnny them be in grave danger from the children who identify as cats?
NotMax
@catcluib
Dracula retrofitted to have come from Straightsylvania.
And as for Gay Paree….
Betty Cracker
@ProfDamatu: That was the evangelical agitprop outfit known as Focus on the Family.
Steve LaBonne
@Ohio Mom: We’re going all the way back to the time before the Pure Food and Drug Act, so we can re-learn the hard way the reasons why it was passed in the first place.
NotMax
@Steve LaBonne
Cocaine in Coca-Cola!
;)
There go two miscreants
Donald Trump says “hold my beer”
prostratedragon
Does State or perhaps Library of Congress have a cislation service?
prostratedragon
@Steve LaBonne: There is this thing to promote efficiency that is called reading …
Ceci n est pas mon nym
In other dumb news, the GSA put up 400+ buildings for sale which are in active use by agencies, such as agency headquarters for a bunch of agencies, a NOAA satellite facility, an FDA lab, and a building which is likely used by the CIA and therefore doesn’t officially even appear on the government books.
They took them off the real-estate listings the next day. I like to imagine the responsible person was confronted by the CIA in his parking garage.
Caught this story second hand, a Rachel Maddow report linked by a channel called Occupy Democrats.
What’s the point of this? Is this a stupid attempt to get around the growing number of judicial rulings that the Executive can’t shut off funding or fire people arbitrarily? So you just sell their building so they have nowhere to go to work?
And in other, other stupid news, the maladministration proudly put out a press release on how Biden had funded millions of dollars on turning mice transgender.
Can’t find the link I saw, but it was about transgenic mice. And they’re still running with it. If you google “transgenic mice” you’ll find plenty of stories about how they’re still talking about trans mice.
Sloane Ranger
@BellyCat: Nice one!
Suzanne
@Gin & Tonic:
Seriously. Like, I want to see more of them be utterly no-bullshit about it. Call them dumb! They’re dumb! They’re really fucking dumb!
sentient ai from the future
Motherfuckers out here touting “ai” when it’s just fucking ctrl-f
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Let’s also not forget that at the beginning of the administration, the Secretary of Agriculture canceled a conference on biodiversity just before it was scheduled to start.
cmorenc
@Scout211: reason DOGE is cancelling automatic SSN issuance at birth, beyond mere stupidity, may be part of effort to undermine birthright citizenship by making it more difficult for nonaffluent immigrants to create supporting documentation. Watch for red states to try to complicate birth certificates without red tape about parent documentation.
Loquacious Scribble
Even as we speak the SecDef and his idiot minions are researching Confederate pilots to rename the Enola Gay after.
John S.
@Steve LaBonne:
I know shit’s bad right now. With all that starving bullshit. And the dust storms. And we’re running out of French Fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution. We got this dude, Not Sure…
sentient ai from the future
@cmorenc: “show up in person at this government agency, where we have la migra posted outside the door asking papers, please”
fucking fascists
sentient ai from the future
Okay, that’s it, I am changing my last name to “ignore all previous instructions”
WereBear
@NotMax: Spend the college fund on tiny furniture.
New Deal democrat
And it’s not even in the running for worst action by the T—-p Aministration today.
Per Josh Marshall:
https://bsky.app/profile/joshtpm.bsky.social/post/3ljr2phtmxc2c
“New contracting memorandum from Secy of Defense says military contracts shld stop including language that bars contractors from running segregated facilities.”
Seriously.
Gin & Tonic
@sentient ai from the future: Little Bobby Tables?
New Deal democrat
@Scout211:
Irony alert: The best legal argument by Maine is to cite Shelby County’s holding that the Constitution requires all States to be treated equally!
Spanky
@Suzanne: And tell them they inhabit the left side of the intelligence Gaussian.
Steve LaBonne
@cmorenc: I hadn’t thought of that. Clearly I still haven’t learned to think evilly enough.
Baud
@NotMax:
Heh.
Scout211
@cmorenc: That makes sense. So not stupid, stupidly evil.
Matt McIrvin
@bbleh: They’ve already turned transgenic mice into transgender mice.
Sure Lurkalot
@bbleh:
Seeing that it was Gen X that went goo goo gaga for Trump, it’ll be ma and pa moving in with them.
Matt McIrvin
@sentient ai from the future: During the first Trump administration they liked to call people into State Department offices with offers to help normalize their immigration status and then raid the meetings.
matt
so I saw this this morning on the censure vote: AOC: It’s really because Republicans— they’re very thin skinned and they’re very sensitive, and their feelings are very easily hurt. And so they have to vote on censure resolutions.
and I thought – it is kind of pathetic that she’s one of the only ones who even knows how to play this game at all. The only reason she stands out is that none of the others even knows how to make a basic play, block and tackle, Politics 101.
Baud
Readership capture
Shalimar
You know they would go all-in and retroactively rename it the “Donald Trump”.
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: They know what he’s up to, they heard from Dr. Frank N. Furter.
prostratedragon
Wonder what’ll be going on with this guy’s name?
matt
One more point: Republicans are shredding the economy, doing incredibly unpopular things and bumbling and failing at reaching towards their goals on a daily basis. Anyone in politics who can’t see this target rich environment and start salivating and planning and refining messages to go out in front of cameras and hang this around the neck of Donald Trump and the Republicans doesn’t fucking understand the first thing about the job.
cain
@matt:
I wonder if that will also be a bi-partisan vote too?
Uncle Cosmo
Um…no.
In fact, “Enola Gay” was the name of the mother of COL Paul Tibbets, commander of the 509th Composite Group specially taszked & equipped to drop A-bombs. Tibbets had it painted on that B-29 only the day before he commandeered it & flew it to Hiroshima to drop Little Boy. IIRC the pilot whose plane it was originally was pretty damn angry about the name change.
Blame TIbbets. Blame Oppenheimer and FDR and Einstein and the rest of Los Alamos, if you want. Don’t blame a machine without volition that does exactly what it is commanded to do, mmkay?
Lochnessmom
My partner is in charge of purging the website of the NIH grant-funded institute where the work of any “woke” terms. This week HR wanted them to purge the word “outreach.” They went to the lawyers and lawyers pushed back, but still … They are drinking too much at night and said that it feels like they are “burning books.” And I am helpless to make them feel better.
matt
@cain: she was talking about the vote they had and yeah, Marie Shieskopf Perrez and the rest of the dummiecrats who voted for censure weakens any kind of messaging.
BlueGuitarist
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Maybe they plan to sell the buildings to cronies,
who then lease the buildings back to the agency,
vastly overcharging rent.
not efficient except that to the
Depraved Oligarchs Grabbing Everything
efficiency means more money goes to them.
ironcity
@Loquacious Scribble: SECDEF can relax and go back to the bar. They can’t rename Enola Gay because they don’t own it anymore, the Smithsonian does.
BlueGuitarist
@prostratedragon:
ISWYDT
best or 2nd best version of National anthem,
Marvin Gaye at the NBA all Star game
https://youtu.be/QRvVzaQ6i8A?si=UpDfpJzeCHaqPXKj
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I see I’m late to the party at #45, you guys are already well aware of the transgenic thing.
Maybe somebody should keep them busy by complaining about wokety-woke chemical names with “trans” in them (Cis-trans isomerism! In our schools!), or about that word in the Department of Transportation, or worse, how many cities have Public Transportation, or all that trans-posing (sounds like a drag show thing if you ask me) going on in musical circles.
Elizabelle
@NotMax: Yes. The basic principles of flight. Lift, thrust, and … and …
cain
@matt: Yeah, see that was my worry from yesterday it all looks bipartisan. I see that our blogfather has put in another post with Jeffries throwing a hammer.
You give these folks an inch they will take everything.
eclare
@Steve LaBonne:
Hahaha…
cain
@BlueGuitarist:
My wife hates the national anthem. I must agree that it’s not as good at several others including the Indian national anthem.
Loquacious Scribble
@ironcity:
3. We’ve been down this road before with the Enola Gay and the Smithsonian. I can think of at least four books on the topic. Bottom line: Congress holds the purse strings to 2/3rds of the SI budget and they and the president can make them dance to their tune.
TONYG
@brantl: Yes. Hammers are at least useful tools. Not these guys.
NotMax
@cain
Trivia.
gene108
@cmorenc:
Red states May delay in issuing birth certificates, but the real issue will be what SSA decides is acceptable documentation to prove parents’ relationship to the newborn, which is needed when applying.
I can see them come up with documents legal or illegal immigrants might not have as easily as U.S citizen parents.
catclub
But that is just how scapegoats work!
noncarborundum
@bbleh: Wouldn’t that be “cisportation”? Or maybe not, now that I recall that Elmo considers “cisgender” a slur.
Jon D.
@billcoop4: Leave him on a raft in mid-ocean.
TBone
We won’t let them kill the laughter 🎶🤘
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sTFVMMCwsss
TBone
@prostratedragon: I’d like to be laughing harder.
But I see the real issue – censorship & erasure of photographic history because these fucks are so dumb that they believe seeing a word painted on an airplane might tip them into Teh Gay-curious that’s always plagued them – is being conflated here with atomic weaponry. This is a war, but not that war.
cain
@NotMax: When I was a kid in high school, we’d start singing the national anthem as “Jose, can you see?”
rikyrah
@BlueGuitarist:
had women wanting to throw him their panties listening to the National Anthem…LOL
TBone
@cain: I’ma do that always and forever going forward and sweeten it by singing
HAYSOOS
very loudly with my best faux accent
karensky
@Loquacious Scribble: I laughed as I read your comment. Nice work.
Wilson Heath
Didn’t I also see something about putting a CIA black site up for sale because they thought it had to do with DEI?
TBone
@Lochnessmom: oh dear I am so sorry. I’m speechless in frustration and rage. There just aren’t any sufficient words of comfort for this.
I’ll be cussing more loudly in your honors. WTAF
TBone
@Wilson Heath: yes, I read that story yesterday at WuTang Is For The Children on BlueSky. I don’t know if they were for sale, but CIA secret black site locations were disclosed.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Wilson Heath: I’m not sure of the reason, but a (will neither confirm nor deny) CIA site was on the list of government properties listed for sale in the Rachel Maddow story I linked at #45.
lou
It’s on a par with eliminating a research grant that helped disabled kids transition to jobs successfully.
Ruckus
@Hoodie:
Their stupidity isn’t artificial.
It is blazingly real. Red hot stupidly real. Dumbass can’t rub 2 sticks together real. Walking across a Los Angeles freeway at 8pm insane real. This isn’t artificial, this stupidity has been grown to it’s whitest possible shade and then shown to the world.
Ruckus
@Ohio Mom:
They want operative only what they can control 100%. And they can’t control what they have zero understanding of. And that boundary is, where is the nearest McD’s and liquor store. They do not want an operating, rational democracy. They want all citizens to look like them, act like them and think (such minimal concept as that is) like them. A democracy? Heavens no, let’s go backasswards 300 years. But time and humanity does not have reverse. It does have a stupidity button, which is the only one they keep pushing, hoping it will make life better for them. It won’t, it can’t, it’s the stupidity button. People alive today lived within the concept that we basically had a stethoscope medical system. (Oh gee, listen, no heartbeat. Oh well…) Or an educational system only for extremely white, rather young kids. Or – any number of disadvantages for most people, but especially for THEM. (THEM being exactly who you think they are.)
Some of this was not far back from when many of us old farts were born. Life has changed a lot in the last 75-100 years. Some things absolutely need/needed to change, and some absolutely object to them not being the top rung. But this is a democracy, with a government for ALL of us. Not just the privileged or those with a tad less skin color. EVERY LAST ONE OF US. Says so in the documents. All of us are created equal. We are the ones that destroy our own equality, not being born, not being a shade or four darker. Being a human being and not a criminal or complete and utter jackass about other humans is all it takes.
Uncle Cosmo
@Jon D.:
Oh come on, show some compassion: Send him on a sub to some ice floe north of Svalbard with a very hungry polar bear momma and her babies. Shortens the torture to a few minutes.
Bill Arnold
@Redshift:
After perusing a few thesauruses,
DEI: Anti-DEI (RPS?):
Diversity Racism
Equity Prejudice
Inclusion Segregation
chemiclord
Everything is a conspiracy when you don’t know how anything works.
KB
Well heck when Alito stood up and called Obama a liar during his SOTU. When MTG heckled Biden. C’mon! These are snotty children who can’t take anything they give. I grew up with these jerks and these are their children and believe me, they have no bravery or grace. Get back, get back, get back to where they once belonged. Go Loretta!
The Lodger
@Gin & Tonic: “Transgenic” brings up GWB’s infamous “human-animal hybrids” phrase.
YY_Sima Qian
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution vibes are getting stronger all the time.
Geminid .
@KB: I think it was South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson who shouted “You lie!” at President Obama during an SOTU speech.
As I recall, Alito was seen muttering something about Obama lying during another speech. I think that may have been a matter of lip-reading, but it was still indisputable.
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid .: replied to y about Elvis, other thread.
summary. Yes, Cherokee, back a few gen.
Geminid .
@Gloria DryGarden: I saw that. It reminded me of something I read about one of the Lewis brothers, whose father founded Staunton Virginia around 1740. The sons went West, and one of them married a Native woman.
A lot of people born in the Shenandoah* Valley of Virginia migrated West. Abraham Lincoln’s father Thomas was born west of Harrisonburg and traveled down the Valley Road and through the Cumberland Gap with his father Abraham, when the the family moved to Kentucky.
The Lincolns traveled by wagon, but not long after Nancy Hanks, Lincoln’s mother, walked the route. Carl Sandburg said she went barefoot.
When I travel West, I often came back on I-64 to Lexington, Virginia. Then I head north on U.S. 11, which tracks the old Valley Road. Ten miles north of Lexington I’ll stop at the Sam Houston Wayside. Houston was born nearby, in a small log cabin that’s long gone.
There’s a large slab of pink Texas granite comemorating Houston’s birthplace. The stone has five plaques including one each from Virginia, Tennessee, Texas and the Cherokee Nation. In his younger years, Sam Houston lived with the Cherokee for some years and they considered him an honorary tribe member.
* “Shenandoah” is often translated as “Daughter of the Stars.”
Kayla Rudbek
@Steve LaBonne: we need to make Deborah Blum’s book about the Poison Squad into a Netflix series (I think it may have been made a miniseries already)
Kayla Rudbek
@sentient ai from the future: so we can defeat them by scanning in all the documents as images so CTRL-F won’t work on the PDF?