Navy vet corrects Melania:
we don’t say hooya that is weird marine corps shit
— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) October 5, 2025 at 4:13 PM
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Oh my god
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) October 5, 2025 at 4:01 PM
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So 1) absolutely horrifying but 2) I suppose I need to find a longer version of the clip because at least here it looks like the jovial clapping stops basically dead when he makes his 'Democrats' comment.
— "Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux (@bretdevereaux.bsky.social) October 5, 2025 at 7:29 PM
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Hmm. We were still fighting in Afghanistan during Trump’s first term. How come we didn’t win “easy” then? Why did Trump sign a one-sided agreement with the Taliban that allowed them to take over?
— Max Boot (@maxboot.bsky.social) October 5, 2025 at 4:55 PM
Also the idea that we lost Vietnam because we weren't brutal enough is uh…
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) October 5, 2025 at 4:49 PM
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no sir please do go on, tell me more about the japanese, i am all ears
— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) October 5, 2025 at 4:43 PM
"And this is why, it is my great honor to announce, we're bringing back battleships. Gold, beautiful battleships."
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) October 5, 2025 at 4:25 PM
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Stolen valor here as Trump seems to take credit for … 9/11?
— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) October 5, 2025 at 4:54 PM
LMAO.
CIA began aggressively tracking Osama Bin Laden in 1995 and they setup a whole unit called Alec Station in 1996 that focused on him and Al-Qaeda.
They were aware of him since the late 1980s.— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yasharali.bsky.social) October 5, 2025 at 7:37 PM
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Trump, speaking to the Navy: "I was president in 2016, and then they rigged the election on me. And then we caught them, didn't we? We caught them."
— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) October 5, 2025 at 5:41 PM
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Idiocracy was unrealistic only because we got dumber quicker than the movie anticipated
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) October 5, 2025 at 4:34 PM
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Dancing to a Village People song with a bunch of sailors.
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yasharali.bsky.social) October 5, 2025 at 6:44 PM
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“Cousin Bobby — who is never gonna make Eagle Scout, I don’t think — was supposed to be keeping an eye on Ranty Granpa Don, but he got distracted, again… “
every enlisted person in that crowd is just counting the seconds until they can go crush beers and play spades
— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) October 5, 2025 at 4:09 PM
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Naval Academy football head cheerleader is actually a good full time job for him. That is something he actually appears to be qualified for.
— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) October 5, 2025 at 7:08 AM
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I'm afraid that this Navy celebration has roughly the following energy:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YjK…— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) October 5, 2025 at 4:15 PM
People Do Not Like What’s Happening
Baud
I honestly don’t know if young people today like this sort of influencer/social media type outlandishness
ETA: I could see enjoying it in a comedy or a parody. I would never want real life officials to constantly engage on it.
Ruckus
Correct me if I’m wrong.
What you are saying is that they are all insane.
Suzanne
DAFUQ?!
Chief Oshkosh
I wonder what the squids really thought of the “performances” of Dear Leader and Kegsbreath. When I was that age, I didn’t think much of incompetent authority figures.
Baud
@Suzanne:
He can’t be old because the media isn’t obsessed with his age. So it must be something else.
NotMax
Why not bring back coaling stations too?
Battleships were increasingly rendered redundant and tactically out of date following WW2.
Chief Oshkosh
@NotMax: Arguably before WWII, but we didn’t know that until after WWII…
rachel
@NotMax: This seems to me partly another symptom of his mentality being trapped 40~50 years ago and partly that he’s just basically ignorant overall.
Ruckus
@Baud:
This is not a comedy nor a parody.
This is insanity.
This is an old fart who was never all that and a bar of soap, and this is an aged out old fart that should not be in charge of anything or anyone because he’s no longer even in charge of himself. And never really was.
I just hope the country survives
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Suzanne:
So, if I have this right, Trump wrote to OBL in 2000 and told him he needed to watch… himself? And he wants to take credit for…what? 9/11? Absolute word salad that makes no sense
terraformer
MAGA is just so … cringe and pathetic. Buoyed by a captured press and media who dare not report that denizens of the entire Cabinet on down are cosplaying, clueless numpties
ArchTeryx
@Chief Oshkosh: Carriers supplanted them. We sank the Japanese’s biggest battleships the Yamato, with planes alone. They shot down a lot of planes, but the casualties were **far** less than a ship on ship attack, planes are far cheaper (and have a crew of 1-2, not hundreds!) and torpedo and dive bombers could literally sink anything on the water, including other carriers.
Once planes got into the mix the battleships as a mainstay of navies were doomed. Then it became all about missiles (for range) and anti-aircraft, SAM, interceptor and fighter screens, and battlegroups centered around carriers instead of battleships.
rachel
The lesson for the military going forward is “never applaud during a Trump speech for any reason, ever, because they may use that against your fellow Americans.”
Butch
Guessing that the cadets behind him were hand-picked to sit there and given strict instructions on how to act. And I’ve made this same comment elsewhere today, but listening to Trump the “we’re sorry, grampa, but give us the car keys” moment is long past.
Chief Oshkosh
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
The worrisome aspect of our reality is that this DOES make sense to an appreciable portion of our fellow citizens.
lowtechcyclist
I wonder if that was one of those love letters like he wrote to Kim Jong Un.
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: Did he send the letter to “Osama bin Laden, 123 Terrorist Street”?
AHHHHH EVERYTHING IS SO FUCKEN DUMB ALL THE TIME.
frosty
@ArchTeryx: The Japanese, too. They sank the English battleship Prince of Wales and battle cruiser Repulse on 10 December 1941 in the South China Sea with bombers and torpedo bombers.
p.a.
Can’t find the clip now, but he said something like “big beautiful gold battleship”😂😂😂ad infinitum.
Jeffro
(just tooting my own horn/recommendation one more time) #CALLCONGRESS
it’s hard not to be amused in a morbid way watching Dementia Don ramble, lie, and ramble some more but this shit is serious
like I said earlier
NotMax
@Suzanne
“I also wrote to his second in command Al. Al Kida. Not may people knew about him.”
p.a.
IIRC Pearl Harbor war games exposed the weakness of the battleship fleet to air attack but the games were shrugged off because of the belief (and I can’t remember the source but I know I read the USN was the most racist of the services) that the Japanese would be incapable of such a coordinated attack.
CaseyL
The average intelligence of the enlisted personnel is unlikely to be any higher than that of the general population, and the average intelligence of the general population is horrifyingly low.
IOW, no way to tell how many of the grunts (of any service) are receptive to this bafflegab; but probably more than is comfortable.
Suzanne
@NotMax: “And Al came to me with tears in his eyes, and said, ‘Sir’.”
Ruckus
Folks
I was, long ago a mental health counselor for almost 5 years. We studied constantly about the work and we reviewed with other counselors and doctors about our clients and if they are normal people with a minor fixable problem or someone who needed full time professional help. This is now way, way, way beyond anyone we saw, discussed or heard about. This is a not an all that and a box of laundry soap past normal human. This is not an aging out human, this is an aged out human. Who is in charge of this country, it’s money, it’s military, it’s day to day being part of the rest of the world, it’s existence as a nation, this person, who has NEVER been all that and a cheese sandwich, has aged out completely, totally, even as he was never all that and a slice of cheese. This is a person that even his own party has to recognize has gone by by, aged out, is waiting for his diploma for having graduated to complete and utter old fart. And is doing so as the leader of this country, and it’s extremely likely can’t even lead himself to the bathroom. We’ve never seen this before in our government, and I can’t think of any other country that has had a leader be this far/deep into aged out and still the one that is supposed to make life and death decisions, let alone run a country of millions of humans on a day to day basis.
So who is actually running it?
NotMax
@p.a.
“It’s the tropics. There’s no such thing as a nip in the air.”
//
Skippy-san
I’m so glad I am retired. I could not have sat through that bullshit, and I had to sit through two Bill Clinton campaign speeches during the day.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Suzanne:
That’s another thing! How the hell would a private citizen send a letter to an under the radar (from the general public) Islamist terrorist in the ME? Or even know who the hell he was in pre-9/11?
I don’t think OBL was well known outside intelligence circles
Suzanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Everybody — including normies like me — knew who Osama bin Laden was on 9/11. He masterminded the WTC bombing in the early 90s, and I was a kid when that happened. I was speculating later in the day on 9/11 that it was ObL, and I was just in college. He was already notorious.
In short: there is no way to have just “sent him a letter”. This entire line of discussion is absolutely batshit.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chief Oshkosh:
I know.
I’ve talked about my MAGA uncle and holier-than-thou Christianist aunt here before. The aunt who defended Trump saying bleach could be used to kill COVID in the body back in 2020?
Well, apparently they don’t want to get the flu shot this year because “it may not protect against all of the strains this year” or some such garbage when they had gotten them for years before.
I can only suspect RFK Jr and Trump for this seemingly new antivaxxer attitude. She’s 74 and he’s 69. The flu can be dangerous for people their age
Ruckus
@p.a.:
It was that and the concept that bigger was always better so a battleship was the top of the heap. (They never said what the heap was made of….)
Time didn’t have to go on very long for them to see the error of it and that the concepts of naval warfare were changing and did change significantly. In navel ship design times it took maybe 15 years for everyone to be convinced but they were. Technology won over size and bravado. They found out that they could build far more and better smaller ships and aircraft carriers, and do more damage to an enemy. Far more. Technology won over size.
gvg
A gold battleship?! All warships have to be looked at as possibly getting sunk. And gold is shiny and soft and heavy. No armor value, and being easy to see is not a positive attribute in war. It won’t stop bullets or missles and would slow any ship down if it had much. This guy hasn’t even played war games, or even read any good stories or watched and understood any movies. He is only, and totally a decadent nepo baby. He should be making the chairborn experts laugh.
Belafon
We lost because Trump dodged the draft and refused to serve. He should have prove why he didn’t go.
Belafon
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): someone put up an interesting chart of the view of the economy by party affiliation over like the last 20 years. And the actual state of the economy pretty much tracks with the Democratic view of the economy, regardless of who is president. The Republican view of the economy tracks with who is president.
Booger
@p.a.: Sounds like “Millennium Challenge.”
Kelly
@NotMax: Clean Coal!!!!!!!
Ruckus
@rachel:
I think it’s longer than 40-50 years ago. It’s more like 70-80 years ago.
When some people age out they really, really age out and only things long ago stored in their brains is accessible. The storage and recall ability also diminishes as the brain ages out. And his seems to have done that. As well, the accuracy of the recall ability gets worse and worse.
NotMax
@Kelly
Gotta link it.
Baud
@Belafon:
You could say the same thing about reality.
mr perfect
@NotMax: With drone technology today, anyone would be able to sink a battleship.
My mother is 86 years of age and has Vascular Disease. Her dementia started around five years ago and I see many of the signs I see in Orange Yeller. Paranoia, racism (which is getting worse) memory loss, confusion, outbursts of emotion. The difficult part of Orange Yeller is telling how far his dementia is because of his narcissism and the fact he incessantly lies all the time but I would say it is further along than my mother’s.
Baud
@mr perfect:
I thought you were about to tell a story about how your 86 year old mother sunk a battleship with a drone.
schrodingers_cat
Not going to watch any video featuring you know who. Any attention he gets only makes him stronger. Our press is worse than Godi media.
mr perfect
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): That’s crazy. I’m 67 years old and fully vaccinated as is my wife and my father who earlier this year fell and broke his hip then caught COVID while in the hospital recovering from surgery. He also developed pneumonia after recovering from COVID, the fourth time he’s had it. Still alive at 92 years old and wouldn’t be if it weren’t for the COVID vaccine.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: I was, too.
B9…you sunk my battleship!
They Call Me Noni
@Suzanne: First I heard of OBL was many, many years ago when I subscribed to Newsweek and Madeleine Albright wrote an article warning that we needed to be keeping an eye on him.
mr perfect
@Baud: Ha! Five years ago, maybe.
Ruckus
@Belafon:
Not defending shitforbrains but a lot of people protested. And a lot of people enlisted. But yes coming home every day from work and wondering if that envelope was in the mail was hard. Many did what I did, eventually enlisted, because being drafted at the time meant that you either had to have some pretty strong reason not to be drafted or didn’t pass the test that very, very few failed and you ended up in the army or marines. And very, very likely ended up in Vietnam. I took my draft physical in 1967 and saw that everyone under 300 lbs passed because they wanted bodies and at least seemingly didn’t give two shits about the bodies other than they
neededwanted them. (One could/would lose weight in boot camp, would being the better word)Time Travelin
YMCA when In the Navy was right there. tsk tsk
MazeDancer
Good news from the opposite end of the spectrum from crazy, toxic male malarkey, in honor of its 150th birthday, Smith College announced, starting next year, tuition for students coming from families making less than 150K a year will be free.
The finest education money can buy for women will no longer require money.
Smith.edu
cain
I think we should be talking about the fact that the president of the United States described the opposition as gnats in front of the military with some hint that he plans are using it against us.
When just 3 weeks ago they were upset about political violence but now doing nothing but political violence. Where are all the editorials by centrists or Dem politicians?
Baud
@MazeDancer:
Cool. Interestingly, some state schools in red states started doing something similar. There’s pressure under the surface making good things happening.
Deputinize America
@Suzanne:
I’m old enough to remember back when Bill Clinton got pilloried by the right for bombing a factory in Sudan in order to kill bin Laden.
Hoodie
“The problem with Vietnam, we, you know, we stopped fighting to win. We would’ve won easy. We would’ve won Afghanistan easy. We would’ve won every war easy. But we got politically correct. ‘Oh, let’s take it easy.’ We’re not politically correct anymore, just so you understand.”
Stuff like this is exhibit one that Trump is a bad remake of an already shitty movie, i.e., the Nixon administration. The main revelation of the Pentagon Papers was there was no way to win in Viet Nam and, of course, the Russians failed to pacify Afghanistan because of their notorious political correctness. This line of greatest hits typically ends with some form of a call for nuclear annihilation of those who choose to reject our embraces. That will probably come in a future speech, after his brain has fully dissolved.
Belafon
@Ruckus: My dad enlisted in order to avoid being drafted, and graduated from boot camp on his 18th birthday. Became a helicopter mechanic, and came home having seizures every month (more often if his mother was around), which finally stopped in the late 80s. We now figure they were probably PTSD related.
They Call Me Noni
@They Call Me Noni: Had it not been for that I wouldn’t have ever heard his name until 9/11. FFOTUS reads coloring books so I seriously doubt he was reading Newsweek.
JML
@Baud: Except a lot of it is marketing, rather than real increases in aid. (And deceptive too, because it’s almost always “tuition” that’s paid for not cost of attendance.)
For example, my state did a “free tuition” program at public schools for families making less than $80K. Except it was a “last dollar in” program and only covered tuition, so after other financial aid (not loans) it wasn’t actually doing a lot for most students, other than confusing them and their families who thought it was “free college”.
Suzanne
@JML: My state started playing games around the cost of tuition. They made “tuition” very low in accordance with state law, but then added “program fees”, which were different by department, and they were much higher than tuition.
Anything that lowers the cost is good, of course, but reducing the cost of tuition was very much a squirt-gun-in-a-forest-fire scenario.
Another Scott
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’m not a 47 whisperer, but it’s worse than it appears, it seems to me.
I think he’s trying to say that either he wrote to GHWB, telling him in 1992 that he should watch out for bin Laden before the first WTC bombing. Or that he wrote to Clinton in 2000 that he should watch out for bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks.
The 1992 timeframe doesn’t make any sense because he was too busy declaring bankruptcy with his casinos.
The 2000 timeline doesn’t make much sense either. He started his 2000 campaign grift in October 1999. He dropped out in February 2000.
There’s no indication he had any interests at all then except NYC society and his crappy real estate and casinos and trying to make sports happen. Certainly nothing about foreign affairs in the middle east.
I think in the story yesterday he conflated Obama and Osama, mixed up the dates, and in actual reality did nothing at all to warn anyone about bin Laden. But he wants everyone to give him credit anyway.
“You tell them and they believe. They just do.”
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Ruckus
@gvg:
Is it possible that he meant that they cost like they were made of gold?
A lot of things changed around the middle of the last century. How war was fought, how the weapons were made, how the weapons were designed, how they were used, what the weapons looked like. Manufacturing was changing dramatically at the time and continued to change a lot for the rest of the century and into this one. Why? Computers. Electronics. I owned the manufacturing business that my dad started and electronics was changing how everything was done. Look what we are doing here today. We brought machines that removed metal with electricity. Literally. It’s called Electrical Discharge Machining. EDM. It used carbon electrodes that we would make and use to do things that had been impossible prior. The early machines were somewhat crude but worked. The last machine I bought did this 24 hrs a day, without anyone standing there and it cost $255,000. Over 25 years ago. This world is different in so many ways over the last half a century that I doubt any one person could find/know all the ways it has changed. And a lot of that change is from electronics. Such as what we are doing now and even how we are doing it and how wide spread the changes have been. Look back at the first home computer and what you can purchase today.
Kelly
@Ruckus: My Uncle enlisted in the Navy to avoid possible draft by Army or Marines. A good typist he got a Yeoman rate and took care of supplies on the giant base at Danang. When he got back he spoke of taking cover from random rocket or mortar shots “But at least they weren’t shooting at me, personally”.
Old School
@Another Scott:
That’s what I thought when I read the post. Trump is trying to say he warned Obama, but… that doesn’t make any more sense.
Ruckus
@Belafon:
I enlisted in the USN when I was 20. I couldn’t take the pressure of possibly seeing that envelope in the mail. Thing was, you had no control over what you were trained to do, where you went, or how it worked out for you. I use the VA and see, not as often any more, people that really, really did not have an in any way reasonable time in the military. I went to boot camp in San Diego, next door to Marine boot camp. Two 8 ft tall chain link fences about a foot apart with a lot of barbed wire on both sides separated USN and USMC boot camps. I am SO FUCKING GLAD I didn’t get drafted into the Marines. USN boot camp was like a holiday on the Riviera compared to the Marines.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
,…with size of the army they were willing to deploy in Vietnam. I think the estimation was 2.2 million soldiers was needed to keep Vietnam American when they were sending 500,000. Just imaging the cost in blood and money for 2.2 million.
Geminid
Speaking of sailors, the Israelis deported another 171 activists from the Sumud Flotilla today, to Greece and Slovakia. Greta Thunberg was on the plane to Greece.
Rich Gardner
It certainly WAS weird for Melania to repeat “Hoo Yah” three times, but yeah, I was a sailor in the 90s and definitely used the term. Marines, BTW, use “Oo-Rah.”
ArchTeryx
@Ruckus: Full Metal Jacket was hardly a documentary, but R. Lee Ermey said that it was almost perfectly normal for Marine boot camps during the Vietnam War. They’ve always been insanely rough and tumble, even by boot standards.
Anyone who’s watched the movie and gone through boot camp can immediately pick up the mistakes Ermey’s character made, though – it turns out, very fatal ones. (I won’t bother with all the details, unless someone actually wants to hear them).
Jager
@Suzanne: “And he was a big guy for an A-Rab, big fellow…”
Belafon
@Suzanne: My son goes to University of Oklahoma, and we’re in Texas. The fees this year were more than tuition.
Peale
@Another Scott: In this timeline, Trump wrote to Osama bin Laden telling him to knock it off. Which enraged Osama bin Laden. He had sent men to the US to go to flight school with the intent of hijacking an airline as part of his new reality TV show where he has men take over a jetliner and fly it off to the Canary Islands for surprise 2 week all expense vacations for all the passengers. “Oh, you…Osama” was going to knock Survivor off its perch.
But…no…Trump’s letter pissed him off so much that changed the purpose of the training. So if anything, 9/11 is actually Trump’s fault.
Geminid
@Geminid: Meanwhile, negotiators in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt are hammering out details of a ceasefire agreement intended to end the war in Gaza.
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
I think they do. I base this on that asshole’s popularity among the high schoolers I’ve been around since 2015. Except for the handful to students who were politically engaged – about 5% – he was the only political figure the rest expressed any interest in. Obama might as well have been 40 years ago to the class of 2018.
This is anecdotal experience with high school students in Los Angeles, 90% from or with heritage from Mexico or Central America, 10% African American. The males, in particular, expressed admiration for him.
Karen Gail
A number of veterans have given answers why they joined; the biggest factor was poverty. I know from comments heard over the years that often those who end up in military grew up where they either had choice of low paying back breaking work that would chew them up and spit them out or get out of town by joining the military. How many farm boys have seen that with no viable skills that translate to even a factory job have ended up in military? Then there are those who in Korea a number of them were given no choice at all. Worked at prison for juveniles for a short time some of the workers there had been in prison there when it was for juveniles that skipped school, who were rebellious or who managed to get on wrong side of local law. One old guy said that when he was there teen murderers were locked up with adults not in separate prison; he said the place we were was more a juvie hall than a prison. He said that some were given choice by their local judges juvie or army.
p.a.
@Ruckus: My impression, and he slurs (both meanings actually) from the video captioning using “gold”, is he wanted a gold-painted ship.🙄 Like you’ve said, there’s no there there.
Princess
@Another Scott: I think you are right. He’s trying to tell us he warned Obama about Osama in 2000. Who knows for sure about his pudding brain?
Tom Levenson
@NotMax: During WW2.
Pearl Harbor and the sinking of the Repulse and Renown pretty much put an end to the idea of a line of battle.
(Yes…I know about crossing the T at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, but except as ocean-crossing artillery platforms, battleships were largely irrelevant to the war at sea.
ETA: the thread above took care of this point long ago.
Peale
@gvg: If that ever sunk, there would be a mad rush of salvagers to the point where we would be forced to tie up a carrier group just to protect a sunken ship.
Melancholy Jaques
@Another Scott:
Trying to make sense of what that asshole says can be hazardous to your peace of miind.
Geminid
@Tom Levenson: In the last two years of the Pacific war, battleships were used for fire support for amphibious landings; also, as anti-aircraft platforms protecting the more lightly-armored aircraft carriers from Japanese planes.
Soprano2
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Do you think anyone in the press will notice?
ArchTeryx
@Geminid: If I recall correctly the main reason that worked is while the Japanese Zero fighter could outfly almost anything early in the war, its torpedo and dive bombers absolutely sucked, unlike the Germans.’ We’d have probably lost the battle of Midway if they’d found us first and their antiship planes were any good.
AM in NC
Called Senators Budd and Tillis and referenced the deranged speeches before the Navy and Flag Officers specifically.
Would they be ok with a Democratic POTUS saying the US Armed Forces should be used against Republicans? I sure wouldn’t. So why are they staying silent when a POTUS politicizes our troops in order to threaten to deploy them against Americans who are Democrats? NO other POTUS, regardless of party has done this. It’s wrong. It’s anti-American, and all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. And that’s all I’m hearing from my Senators: NOTHING.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: My first inkling of what had happened that day was when I stopped at a gas station and there was a guy in cutoff shorts and sunglasses jumping up and down shouting, “It’s Osama bin Laden! It’s Osama bin Laden!” Then I turned on the radio and heard.
The guy in cutoff shorts was not Donald J. Trump, in case you were wondering.
Omnes Omnibus
@Karen Gail: Many people join the military for job training or educational benefits. People learn to be mechanics, medical technicians, and all sorts of jobs on Uncle Sam’s dime.
Timill
@Tom Levenson: Repulse and Prince of Wales. Renown survived to go for scrap in 1948.
Karen Gail
Noticed that at least one main street media has picked up Trump comparing Democrats to gnats that need to be taken care of.
Another place has brought up that the judge who ruled against Trump had her house burned down, seems to have started with an explosion; while her husband was injured jumping from second story to escape fire.
Soprano2
@cain: I agree, that’s probably the most appalling of all the appalling things he said.
Tom Levenson
@Timill: Of course. I actually knew that; brain bubbles induced by a sustained bout of grading student papers.
Karen Gail
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, I know but poverty is also a big driver. Moved after divorce to small papermill town and discovered that most of those who wanted to get out of town and have a better life saw the military as only choice.
There are probably a number of studies that link poverty to military enrollment; I have read one study that not only links poverty and military but includes probability of major depression as a result of both the poverty and military experiences. (I end up reading a lot of weird stuff when can’t sleep.)
H-Bob
@gvg: He probably doesn’t understand why ships can be made of metal.
Omnes Omnibus
@Karen Gail: Poverty would of course have nothing to do with people who want job training and education benefits.
prostratedragon
When those kazoos first broke into harmony, it was like — experiencing the Heimlich manuver. Thanks so much!
sab
@Karen Gail: My stepdaughter dated her half-cousin for a while (very ick but actually legal in Ohio.) She is adopted out of foster care. This cousin is her birth family not us. Anyway, this young man told me he enlisted in the Army out of necessity, and for the first time in his life he had enough to eat.
gene108
No one is going to question Trump’s lack of connection to reality about writing bin Laden…
Karen Gail
@Omnes Omnibus: Poverty is a big driver, if you can’t afford to go to a tech college and get the skills you need then your choices are limited.
I am old enough to remember and have gone to a community college after high school; today’s young people don’t have that choice. At the time lab fees, books; were about the only thing you paid for, though there were some classes that you paid a small fee to be part of.
One of the complaints have heard is that there are very few places that still offer an apprenticeship. Ex worked at a tool and die shop that still offered unskilled the chance to learn while his son works at a place that doesn’t.
Matt McIrvin
Bill Clinton tried to kill Osama bin Laden with a cruise missile attack back in the 1990s and across the whole political spectrum, Americans wondered “who is that guy?” and made “Wag the Dog” jokes.
Karen Gail
Just followed a link; White House briefing, Leavitt’s justifications are more of the same lies about how Portland and Chicago are war zones.
Deputinize America
@Matt McIrvin:
1996, the aspirin factory in Sudan. Limbaugh was particularly vicious.
Omnes Omnibus
@sab: Drill sergeants in Basic often talk about how some of the soldiers have more than one pair of shoes for the first time in their lives when they join up. The army issues two pairs of boots and a pair of dress shoes. People have to provide their own running shoes. So, four pairs.
I am not arguing that poverty is not a factor in people choosing to Jin the military. I am just pointing out that people on poverty may join for something more that 3 or 4 years of getting a paycheck and then being dumped back where they came from.
sab
@gene108: This wasn’t even a lie. It was pure delusion. Our president even lies about his delusions.
I used to think our government was better than parliamentary systems which fall on a dime, and go 180° every election.
But we have this loon for another three years when he is obviously in severe dementia, even making allowances for narcissistic personality disorder. NPD aside, he is still just out of it and delusional.
sab
@Omnes Omnibus: Were we arguing? Apparently I missed that. I try not to argue with you because you are so much more streetwise than I am. ( no ///).
Karen Gail
Leavitt telling news people to play the clips Fox has been running and they will see for themselves just how bad it is.
No clips that show people ICE fishing; they are putting doughnuts on sticks on string and hanging them in front of ICE people “guarding” facility.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Suzanne:
Didn’t know he masterminded the first WTC attack in 1993. A little before my time.
You’re absolutely right that the whole thing is crazy
Matt McIrvin
@sab: One advantage parliamentary systems do have is that everyone knows who to blame. Since the ruling party controls everything, the opposition can’t simply block the President’s party from getting anything done and bet the people will blame him for it.
But I suspect that here that level of control would just lead to outlawing the opposition. One man, one vote, one time.
Jeffro
“That, Ms. Leavitt, is THE PROBLEM: only Fox News clips seem to show much of anything going on at all…
…most other networks are depicting life as usual in Portland and Chicago, albeit with the occasional ICE kidnapping on the street”
-no national snooze report ever, unfortunately
Melancholy Jaques
@Omnes Omnibus:
Taught high school in Los Angeles for 16 years. Every single one of my students who enlisted in the military did so for exactly those reasons.
trollhattan
We just wrapped the annual metroplex metalhead four-day thing and evidently yesterday, this happened.
Why can’t the Libs behave?
RunningStealing the country would be so much easier if they would only behave themselves.Anyway, you gwo, Gwar. Don’t let them bring you down, it’s only castles burning.
Jeffro
Folks, I am telling you, as luck and work and vacations would have it, this summer and early fall I went to Portland, Chicago, New York AND Washington and somehow survived.
Froette (who accompanied me on 2 of those trips) and Mrs. Fro (who was with me on the other 2) called it “The Smoking Ruins Tour“, knowing that our RWNJ relatives were aghast at our death-defying feats of…traveling through the best of modern America.
I don’t know what to do with that info. I’m going to write some sort of op-ed about it, and maybe call the blessed Times too.
Geminid
@ArchTeryx: Japan’s pilots started out as or more proficient as the US’s, but they lost their most experienced pilots when the U.S. Navy sank their four carriers during the Battle of Midway. After that fewer pilots survived long enough to get good at their trade.
sab
@Matt McIrvin:Backbench Brits who come to America ( apparently we do have or did have such a program) are amazed and charmed that any backbencher with a cause they adore can draft legislation they care about and round up signatures. So all our legislators are in theory equal and divided only by competence/political talent.
That is not how it works in parliamentary sysytems. Keir Starmer is all you have.
trollhattan
@lowtechcyclist: Tapiocahead is having some issues. More than the usual.
Lucky us.
trollhattan
@Omnes Omnibus:
Once the MCAT scores were posted the Navy and Army started recruiting the hell out of Runner Girl. She’s not tempted. Now. But if the 24 extant med school apps all implode, then I expect a reevaluation. Which is so not her but there has to be at least a little temptation for entering the service as an officer who gets to order others around. Playing to her strengths, and all.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Jeffro: I think it means everything is your fault
ArchTeryx
@sab: Starmer is the party leader, but AFAIK the party leader is not the source of all legislation. Anyone in the House of Commons can introduce a bill, but there is a much stronger influence in the Executive whether that bill gets a vote or how much he’ll pushed to get it passed. Then again, our own Speaker of the House can block any bill that isn’t discharged by petition, and getting the votes needed is what our whips are for. The Executive can push for bills to pass and block them by veto. I don’t see enormous difference in the sausage making, much more in how elections, the leg and the executive are structured.
ArchTeryx
@Geminid: Indeed, but torpedo bombers and dive bomber piloting was as much luck as skill, at least that’s what my father (who used to fly P-32s in WWII) said. He said the fighter was the best plane to get assigned to; Torp bombers and dive bombers were acutely risky and dangerous, and heavy bombers, well… look up the casuality statistics or watch Masters of the Air. Nobody with sense wanted to be in a heavy bomber during the European war.
JCJ
@Suzanne: late to the thread, but it might have been possible to send a letter to his family’s construction business in Saudi Arabia with the thought that it might reach him. Having said that I doubt he dud any such thing
lowtechcyclist
@Hoodie:
“We had to destroy the
villagecountry in order to save it.”With both Vietnam and Iraq, it was impressive how quickly people forgot in both cases that one of our primary motivations was to rescue the people who lived there. Rescue the South Vietnamese from the commies, and rescue Iraqis from the brutal rule of Saddam Hussein.
And within a few years of escalation/invasion, especially the right wingers who wanted us to go big in those places in the first place wanted to just bomb them back into the Stone Age.
Marc
While that may be true in some cases, for most I believe it just means tuition is waived. One still has to pay fees, residence, and meal plans. At the kid’s private university 5 years ago, tuition was roughly 35% of the total yearly cost of living on campus. Loans are often needed to cover the rest.
Geminid
@trollhattan: I did a paving project for a couple who had served in the Army after medical school. The were posted in Germany for while.
Former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam was an Army doctor. Northam practiced as a pediatric neurosurgeon after his service; still does.
Eyeroller
@Another Scott: Allow me to sanewash this.
“A year before 9/11 I wrote [somebody, as noted he was likely thinking about Obama] warning him that Osama bin Laden was a danger and it was important to monitor him. I should receive credit for my perspicuity in comprehending that the threat was imminent.
Of course none of this bullshit has anything to do with reality even if we can parse what he thought he was saying.
jonas
@NotMax: Those nuclear reactors powering subs and aircraft carriers? Green communist energy! Gotta get rid of those and bring back coal and sail. Anything less wouldn’t be manly enough for our manly, manly navy.
And they actually played “In the Navy”? That’s just *chef’s kiss* right there.
WTFGhost
@Baud: That has long been one of my bugaboos. People have normalized Trump, partly by responding to him as if he *is* normal, and he’s not.
“Trump made another stemwinder of a speech, swearing that he knows warfighting better than a bunch of military folks, in spite of his lack of military experience, and his willingness to see extremely important US national secrets sit in the crapper at MAL, while they protect US national secrets with their very lives, knowing they will get in big trouble if they tell some Aussie business man closely held secrets of our nuclear subs, unlike the man standing before them. ‘He is privileged above us!’ they can say, and if Trump is correct, they will be pleased that he is held to an easier, lighter standard. If Trump is wrong, well… I’d be angry to be lectured by a man who thought a cardboard box was adequate protection for nuclear secrets.”
Suzanne
@Melancholy Jaques: I think a lot of younger people, who have grown up with phones in their hand, correlate being highly visible with strength and leadership. All that “attention economy” stuff. It is a difficult dynamic. I think our pols, being a lot of law school grads, find it a bit of an adjustment. Not a natural fit for a lot of people.
SiubhanDuinne
@Princess:
In 2000, Obama was a back-bencher in the Illinois state senate. He had no national profile at all, and there’s no earthly reason why Trump should even have heard of him then, let alone warned him about Osama bin Laden.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
How many times have we heard that one before?
Baud
@Suzanne:
Not too different with how peasants and serfs viewed royalty in the olden days. It’s why they invented pageantry.
WTFGhost
@Eyeroller: In the actual quote, he said (IIRC) “and we keep hearing of threats, this month it’s Osama bin Ladin, next month it will be someone else!”
So he did mention ObL, but he totally did not suggest he was a special threat. His “warning” is as much bullshit as the people dancing in Jersey over the fall of the twin towers, or the claim Clinton had ObL in his sights.
(Clinton never had a shot at ObL. He had what might have been an innocent person targeted, and rather than killing a random nobody, chose to wait for confirmation it was ObL. There was a famous person who was a *constant* false sighting for ObL. The chance was lost, pre-confirmation. Unlike Trump, Clinton isn’t a mass serial killer – T has 21 confirmed kills, what serial killer in the US has more? He might be going for the record! And he doesn’t have to worry about the FBI-Mindscape folks chasing him down, he can’t be indicted!)
jonas
@Kelly: Probably knew my uncle, in the AF, also deployed to Danang in a supply brigade and that’s exactly what he talked about, too. Getting shelled out on the tarmack.
Eyeroller
@Suzanne: I alluded to this phenomenon somewhat in one of the earlier threads. In many states (not sure about low-tax-obsessed red states), state support per student has been roughly flat in real dollars for several decades. What has changed is the cost of providing the education that is expected. Want your children taught by real faculty and not grad students or adjuncts? Faculty are a lot more expensive. Want really nice dorms and gyms and student union facilities? Want meaningful undergraduate research experience? All that costs money. IT also costs more now. And on and on.
Beyond that, it’s true that other activities of the higher-ranked universities, such as research, lose money and are to some degree subsidized by undergraduates. But everybody here says that we must keep doing science, right? That’s part of the cost.
But the politicians want tuition to stay “low” so the alternative is fees. For example, engineering students often pay very large fees to pay for the software and extra materials they need.
dnfree
@Ruckus: My husband did not pass the physical in I think 1965 because he was two pounds under the minimum weight. So they told him to come back every couple of weeks. But the people who passed were put on buses THAT DAY.
Before his return he got a letter from his doctor about his asthma (which was real, and severe throughout our marriage until better treatments came along.)
HopefullyNotCassandra
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): take him at his word
he was in correspondence with the architect of 9/11. That is what he said.
@Butch: yes, especially since this grandpa just said he was pen-pals with Bin Laden.
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): yes. The mass murdering Bin Laden was known. Bill Clinton attacked him and his Afghanistan compound. Some screamed “wag the dog”. Many of those screamers support this president now.
Mr. Bemused Senior
When Trump says “I wrote” do you really think he means “I wrote a letter to someone?”
I mean, he could just as easily mean “I wrote it on a piece of paper” or “I had an idea.” Or just “I am imagining now.”
It’s like during Covid when he later said ‘I knew it would be a pandemic.” Probably he didn’t even know the word “pandemic” before.
sab
We used to have actual open threads here, not ” we are discussing THIS!! bit of course you can talk about other stuff but we won’t be happy.”
ETA Also too. We all know Trump is many ways nuts. Alzheimers or vasular dementia or narcissistic personality disorder. So many ways nutz but the basic is we don’t want him as commander in chief or holding the nuclear codes.
Suzanne
@Eyeroller: I have degrees from two Giant Not-Selective State Universities, both R1. I follow what’s going on at both, and it very much matches what you say….. state funding is flat, additional costs are made up by fees, and they actively seek wealthy out-of-state and international students, because in-state students (like me) are much more likely to need financial aid. In my profession, there’s basically been an invention of a degree (Ph.D. in architecture), in order to keep money rolling in. No one needs it to teach, it essentially didn’t exist before 2010. But…. money!
There are shortages of skilled professionals in many fields, including mine, and Mr. Suzanne’s, and much of that is a pipeline problem. It is cost-prohibitive for many Americans to get advanced education.
Ramalama
@sab: OK well. Came home from vacation last week to see a green bug thick as a thumbnail, dead, on my desk in between the wood boards. There are three boards total that make up my desk. Mr. Bug looks like he’s ready to lift himself up and onto my desk proper.
I can’t seem to want to throw out the carcas.
It’s perfect.
HopefullyNotCassandra
The flu can kill anyone of any age.
This last flu season we lost twenty-one kids. 109 kids, half of whom were previously healthy, got very sick with encephalitis. Once you get that once, it is more likely to recur.
publications.aap.org/aapnews/news/33419/Rare-neurological-flu-complication-strikes-at?autologincheck…
rikyrah
Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) posted at 1:55 PM on Mon, Oct 06, 2025:
Trump-appointed judge: Protests in the city have been “small and uneventful” for months, Trump’s order deploying National Guardsmen “was simply untethered to the facts.” t.co/DxSZ4olcX8
(https://x.com/MattGertz/status/1975273650262843646?t=dfCTxOYp5Ay28kI2nS9z0Q&s=03)
Trivia Man
@Deputinize America: “nothing but a missile shot up a camel’s butt” was very common interpretation i heard many times.
sab
@Ramalama: Sounds like a japanese beetle. Those guys are devastating to gardens but gorgeous dead or alive.
rikyrah
UH HUH
UH HUH
MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) posted at 1:54 PM on Mon, Oct 06, 2025:
NEWS: A top federal prosecutor in Virginia has informed colleagues the she is DECLINING to charge NY AG Letitia James, despite pressure from Trump himself to indict her on bogus charges.
New via Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian of MSNBC. Link in reply. t.co/f8ajPYwmoE
(https://x.com/MeidasTouch/status/1975273518129664361?t=L8rt0P6cLReOiX2S1ijX8Q&s=03)
Karen Gail
CNN is interviewing Miller.
Stephen Miller: “The Black people in Chicago are thrilled that we’re getting the illegal aliens out of their communities who are stealing their housing, jobs, and resources.”
CNN: Is it the case that you are profiling brown people?
STEPHEN MILLER: What a dumb question
CNN: You are gonna charge someone with terrorism?
STEPHEN MILLER: Well, I would like to
trollhattan
Mister Donny, he gonna be mad.
jonas
No there isn’t. Remember, you can just hire a bunch of old dudes on disability. Problem solved!
Karen Gail
Oh, wait; it gets “better;”
Stephen Miller claims that in Portland “ICE officers have to street battles against antifa, hand to hand combat every night, to come and go from their building”
Stephen Miller: “This is the textbook example of domestic terrorism … it must be put down.”
Stephen Miller: “The administration will abide by the ruling insofar as it affects the covered parties, but there are also many options the president has to deploy federal resources under the US military to Portland.”
trollhattan
@Karen Gail:
What, no cat eating, no dog eating? Hrrmph.
Belafon
@Karen Gail: Miller’s imaginary black people need to get together with Schumer’s imaginary family.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: What’s with the rhetorical question? Don’t use me as a sounding board, say what you think
Ed. But if you’ve tuned out Gasa news as many mve, this could be a good week to tune back in. Middle East Eye, Andalou Agency and Times of Israel are three of the many good sources covering these events.
trollhattan
@Karen Gail:
Said by a man who never lifted a textbook.
p.a.
@rikyrah: “Untethered” would be a great title for a book about this admin.
Scout211
@rikyrah: @trollhattan: Good for her.
But I hope she has her lawsuit ready when Bondi tries to fire her.
Karen Gail
@p.a.: How about “Untethered From Reality”
WTFGhost
@Suzanne: It’s not just that – to young folks, people screaming hate at CPAC is normal. This is how *exciting* politicking is done! And Trump does it a lot, and he wins, so… why aren’t the Ds?
@lowtechcyclist: Well, that, and, remember, in Vietnam, the commies were poised to win national elections if given the chance, so we were protecting them from their chosen leadership. All in the name of “domino theory.” I’m not sure even cold war nightmares can account for the sheer insanity of some thinking back then.
Ramalama
@sab: What I’m doing is aesthetically correct then. Check. Will keep this excuse in my back pocket the moment my wife notices it.
Trees grow like mad in our yard. Hostas, too. But the only edible things that work are herbs in boxes around the deck. And 6 different kinds of lettuce. Nobody messed with any of it except for taking bites out of the basil. I kept wondering why the small bites? Not even a full leaf but many little bites out of many basil leafs. I guess I’ll stop shaking my fist at the squirrels.
rikyrah
Not shocked
Izzy Gardon (@iGardon) posted at 11:49 PM on Sun, Oct 05, 2025:
WOAH. CBS News reports ICE has been making bogus calls to 911 and filing false police reports in Chicago. t.co/tnPCYlWHIi
(https://x.com/iGardon/status/1975060748725629233?t=-GavrpR8M0TDVdVm9NSSCw&s=03)
WTFGhost
@Eyeroller: Another factor is, more students = more money, and a lot of colleges try to make their campuses desirable and fun for students, which also costs money in excess of education. For a while, “smart money managers” found ways to extract a lot of money from colleges, and now that they’ve extracted all that, the business model is collapsing.
rikyrah
Clandestine (@WarClandestine) posted at 10:53 AM on Sun, Oct 05, 2025:![]()
There’s the magic word again
Trump says that “insurrectionists” are burning Portland to the ground.
This is not an accident. Trump and his administration are beginning to use this word frequently for a reason.
The Insurrection Act is coming.
t.co/8f9C3S0tki
(x.com/WarClandestine/status/1974865506034483603?s=02)
Karen Gail
Last one from interview with Miller.
Stephen Miller: “If you can’t see that since we’ve taken office, there’s been an organized, systemitized campaign to delegitimatize, dehumanize, threaten, impede, obstruct, and physically assault ICE officers in their duties, then I can’t persuade you of it.”
Belafon
@Karen Gail: “If you won’t let us insert ICE into places they’ve never been before, then you’re the bad guy.”
lowtechcyclist
@Jeffro:
I’ve been saying for years that if I heard one word about the smoking ruins of Portland/Seattle/Minneapolis/wherever from any of my RWNJ in-laws, I was going to make a proposition: I’d buy us two round-trip tickets to whichever city, and if they couldn’t show me the smoking ruins, they’d have to pay me back.
I think they’ve come to realize that talking politics with me is a bad idea, because I never had the opportunity. But now that Trump himself is talking about how Portland is a smoking ruin, some reporter really needs to make a similar proposition to whatever Administration official is having a presser that day. Each person can bring their own videographer.
Eyeroller
@WTFGhost: There are demographic issues as well; the number of 18-year-olds has plummeted. It won’t affect the most “desirable” colleges, but a lot of small, less-prestigious institutions may go under.
Most of the larger state schools try to limit the number of students, with the flagships often fighting their state legislatures, because after a point the extra money from more students is outweighed by the higher costs. They also try to get as many out-of-state and international students as possible to subsidize in-state students, for whom there are often grant programs. (See Suzanne’s comment above about her experience.) Now the Trump administration is trying to severely restrict international student enrollments.
Betty
@Suzanne: I am thinking he meant to say Obama not Osama which is also crazy, but slightly more likely what he meant because he knows Obama took out Osama even though it was years later. Just my guess.
MagdaInBlack
@Karen Gail: Did he get access to Elon’s ketamine stash?
lowtechcyclist
@Karen Gail:
If I were a reporter, I would be SO “let’s you and I and a photographer or two fly out there, and you can show me where this is happening.”
C’mon, even our press corpse should be able to resurrect itself just enough to think of that.
jonas
@trollhattan: The problem is she oversees criminal prosecutions, which require things like evidence and indictments. Trump wants someone to oversee political prosecutions.
WaterGirl
@Jeffro: I will look forward to seeing that!
cain
@Soprano2:
He is de-humanizing half this country.
Captain C
@lowtechcyclist: Cut to Miller running, screaming and panicking like an unhinged muppet, from three toddlers having a water balloon fight on a hot day.
Duke of Clay
@frosty: You and ArchTeryx provided much of what I would have said. One additional point: The Yamato and the Musashi were two of the largest battleships made and both were sunk by carrier based airplanes. Another fun fact, their sister ship, the Shinano, was converted from a battleship to an aircraft carrier half way through construction. ArchTeryx– one nitpick which doesn’t dispute your point — torpedo bombers had a crew of three, pilot, turret gunner, tail gunner/radio operator.
Belafon
@lowtechcyclist: Where would that video get played?
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
“How many times have I heard that one before?” used to be a familiar colloquial expression, implying that that person being addressed had said the same thing a number of times before and usually or always turned out to be wrong.
My Google search suggests that it may have dropped out of the language, since it turned up a lot of other phrases using some of the words, but nothing really close in meaning. But I’m sure Firesign Theatre had no doubt that their audience knew what it meant when they had one of their characters say it in 1969’s “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers.”
billcoop4
And I’d note that at the start of the war, the Japanese torpedo planes and dive bombers (B5N and D3A, respectively (“Kate” and “Val”)) were of very good quality with excellent crews, although both were beginning to obsolesce.
BC
Mr. Bemused Senior
@lowtechcyclist: “Immobility, immobility, immobility! How many times have we heard that plaintive cry?”
[from the audience] “Three times!”
ArchTeryx
@Duke of Clay: I think it depended on the model. IIRC (and I may not) American carrier-based torp bombers had two-man crews, as did the Dauntless dive bombers (pilot and rear gunner, to try to protect their tail during a bombing run). But I’m a lot less familiar with those planes so I could well be wrong!
Dave
@Chief Oshkosh: My biggest weakness was always that I can’t pretend to respect clear idiots with authority on any more than the most surface level and I was far worse at it when I was that age.
Amazed what I actually got away with back in that day.
persistentillusion
@MazeDancer: My father is turning in the grave. Paid for 2 daughters to attend, long ago. Just missed out on his employer covering tuition with the second daughter.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist:
You could have just said that. I’d rather you had then pose some snarky rhetorical question.
But you quoted this:
Where am I wrong? Negotiators *are* fact meeting in Sharm El-Sheikh and hammering out details of a ceasefire intended to end the war in Gaza.
I did not say or imply that they would be successful. I happen to believe there is a good chance they will be, but I did not say that.
If you were really interested in this war you would have more closely followed the events of the past two weeks that led up to today’s meeting in Sharm El-Sheikh, and you might not have asked your clever question.
But reactions to this war demonstrate a phenomenon I have observed more generally: people can care about a story, even intensely, and still not be interested enough to go out of their way to learn more about it, and to keep up-to-date.
I know my posts about this war are disagreeable to some here, but I will keep posting about it. And if someone wants to try to one-up me with a snarky rhetorical question, I will push back.
persistentillusion
@Karen Gail: My ex, who enlisted in 1972 to avoid being drafted, told about guys in his platoon who needed indoor plumbing and toilet explained. They’d never seen either.
mayim
@Eyeroller:
Although the in-state grant programs have their drawbacks.
I’m not sure what the grants are now, but when my father graduated from high school in 1947 in Buffalo, the NYS regents scholarship he got for going to college in-state was $250. When I also graduated from a Buffalo high school in 1984, if I had gone to college in NYS, the same scholarship would have been…. $250. Very little incentive to stay local, and I didn’t.
Just looked, it’s now $500 or $1500 per year, so a bit more.
minachica
@Geminid: Thank you. I’ve been appreciating your comments for a while now, and it’s past time I said so!
persistentillusion
@Ramalama: In my neck of the woods, small bites out of a leaf = grasshoppers. (Shakes fist)
Geminid
@minachica: Thank you! I appreciate the encouragement.
Pappenheimer
@ArchTeryx: in 1942, Japanese naval aircrew were probably the best in the world, and had the best torpedo in the world. If they’d found the US carrier groups at Midway first, it would have been a massacre. Even Hiryu’s remnant strike unit, 1 carrier, had no trouble dealing with the Yorktown (though at severe cost in planes and crew)
Pappenheimer
@Pappenheimer: of course, we knew they were coming, we had Catalinas out scouring the ocean, and Nagumo half-assed his search pattern. The odds were good
.
Jay
@Another Scott:
Dolt 47 wrote Osama Bin Laden in 2000, suggesting he bomb the WTC so Dementia Don would have the tallest buildings in New York.
Kayla Rudbek
@mr perfect: I love the meme comparing aircraft carriers with three countries using ships and the Ukrainians using a semi truck.
Duke of Clay
@ArchTeryx: My dad flew in TBM Avengers off of aircraft carriers in WW II. He was the tail gunner/radio operator (He was only 17 when he enlisted), so I’m pretty familiar with them. Check out nasflmuseum.com/theavenger.com