The incompetent twatwaffle Donald Trump appointed to run the sprawling Department of Homeland Security agency appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It didn’t go well for her. Here’s a fellow Republican who voted to confirm her:
Tillis to Noem: “A 14 month old dog is basically a teenager in dog years. You decided to kill that dog bc you hadn’t invested the appropriate training, then you have the audacity to write a book & say it’s a leadership lesson! … Those are bad decisions not unlike what happened in Minneapolis”
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 3, 2026 at 12:55 PM
Tillis is retiring, so he went full honey badger, later calling for Noem’s resignation and threatening to throw sand in the Senate’s procedural gears if she keeps stonewalling on answers Tillis has demanded about how DHS fucked up investigations in North Carolina.
***
In other news, the demented president embarrassed the country in front of a foreign leader again. In a press avail with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump wrongly claimed his own shitty father was born in Germany.
The odious Fred Trump was actually born in an outer NYC borough. It was Trump’s cathouse-running grandfather Drumpf who was born in Germany and then kicked out for being a draft dodger, after which he made his way to the U.S.
Sounds like Trump would like to tariff Spain into supporting his unpopular war, but oops, SCOTUS:
Trump: “Spain has been terrible. I told Scott to cut off all dealings with Spain. They said we can’t use their bases. We could use their bases if we want. We could just fly in and use it. Nobody is gonna tell us not to use it.”
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 3, 2026 at 12:04 PM
But actually, Trump WON on tariffs, actually, despite SCOTUS plastering a big red L on his mottled orange forehead:
Trump: “We won on tariffs, actually. Somebody said, ‘You actually won the case.’ We won on tariffs. You had a decision that was wrong.”
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 3, 2026 at 12:11 PM
Oh, and invading Iran is super popular — and gas prices are going to fall back to $1 a gallon real soon, just you wait.
Trump on going to war with Iran: “I have never had more compliments on something I did. So if we have a high oil prices for a little while, but as soon as this ends these prices are gonna drop I believe even lower than before.”
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 3, 2026 at 12:09 PM
To sum up, what a pack of whiny-ass, buffoonish and incompetent losers.
Open thread.
Suzanne
I was so happy to see Tillis rip into Noem about her killing that dog. How can anybody do that to an animal?!
Jeffro
Is it too late to send Tillis a valentine?
platonically speaking, of course
Jeffro
“we could, you know, just fly in there (Spain) and use it”
hoo boy
NATO what NATO?
Raoul Paste
Trump: “ We can just fly in and use it…”
Man, that brain filter is absolutely gone.
gene108
@Suzanne:
Dog didn’t take to being a hunting dog, so she murdered it.
That’s so fucking nuts.
I think her kids were attached to the dog anyway, but it didn’t matter to her.
I wonder who else in this administration has a history of murdering animals?
Baud
If Trump does die in office, everyone in the Village will have a good chuckle about what a wild and crazy experience the Trump years were.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Yes they are his true base. And they are truly base.
Duke of Clay
Yes, gas prices will magically go down lower than ever before, just like Covid magically went away in the spring of 2020.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Good turn of phrase.
JoyceH
The latest gobsmack is at a presentation where he’s supposed to be selling the public on the necessity and high purpose of his war with Iran, he says it’ll take as long as necessary and he won’t get bored with it – and then less than a minute later starts waffling on about the beautiful drapes and the soon to be beautiful ballroom. Dat guy ain’t right in the haid!
Suzanne
@gene108: It’s fucking mental.
JetsamPool
I’m sure gas prices will fall when the recession finally gets here.
And it is about time she gets some blowback about the dog. What kind of person goes about casually killing animals like that, anyway. That is a rhetorical question, I have a pretty good idea as to the answer.
JoyceH
And did any senator question Noem about the bag of “personal items” that got left on the plane?
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: Yes they are. They hate boring, competent politicians because they aren’t fun to cover and don’t need the press’ approval. They love FFOTUS because he talks to them so much and longs for their approval, never mind what he actually does.
zhena gogolia
The way he talks about this war is sickeningly familiar. Remember how Covid was going to be over by Easter?
feebog
The musing about the drapes during a ceremony honoring military heroes was a perfect example of his rapid decline into dementia. They aren’t even trying to hide it anymore.
Baud
The Dow has pretty much recovered all its losses from this morning. The market likes the crazy.
zhena gogolia
@Duke of Clay: I see we had the same thought.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: 😂😂😂
Paul in KY
@Jeffro: Now that he’s retiring, he becomes Mr. Smith. Better late than never, I guess.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Astrology for dudes! Whatcha gonna do?
different-church-lady
@Suzanne: Sometimes I get confused: are we not supposed to call them Nazis or are we not supposed to call them sociopaths?
Paul in KY
@gene108: To me, the only reason you would put a dog down (in a farm situation) was if it started running the livestock. That’s a bad, bad thing for a dog to do, as it can cause the livestock to break ankles, etc.
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: I agree with you that the beltway press/courtiers absolutely love TACO.
That’s why I hate their guts.
different-church-lady
Anyone wanna talk about this?
Gregory Bovino Under Criminal Investigation in Minneapolis
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: It’s just so damn easy to report his nuttiness and stuff. No digging to be done. The articles write themselves!
Steve LaBonne
We are not a serious country, but we are an extremely dangerous country. Bad combination. Sorry, world.
SiubhanDuinne
I haven’t even looked at the comments, but you 💯 had me at the post title. LOL!
Suzanne
@different-church-lady: I call them Nazis, sociopaths, criminals, trash, pieces of shit, motherfuckers, anal fissures on the body politic, and many more.
Steve LaBonne
@Paul in KY: The billionaire media are not ever going to tell you what you need to know. Their purpose is to do just the opposite.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Baud: Wallstreet is full of aggressive skeevy jerks like Trump. They are primed to be optimistic about Trump’s actions. Plus, the capabilities of AI Agents has them seeing giant profits in the future. At some point, they will realize Trump is driving us into a deep ditch. When they panic, it will be really ugly.
hueyplong
Trump: “We could use their bases if we want. We could just fly in and use it. Nobody is gonna tell us not to use it.”
Yet in the very sentence preceding these three, he admitted that “[t]hey said we can’t use their bases.” Is there an Ambassador Nobody?
In the movies, he’d be the stupid oldest son of a successful mobster who, upon assuming leadership of his family, caused chaos until the other families banded together to see to it that he slept with the fishes. As it is, the ongoing assignment for FoxNews is to film him talking for, say 20 minutes, and then use the 10 seconds that make him seem semi-sentient, a technique recognized by all BalloonJuicers as one they first tried with Terri Schiavo back in the day.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@different-church-lady: I certainly hope Bovino winds up in jail. I’m not holding my breath though.
Soprano2
@feebog: That’s what it made me think of, too. Hubby doesn’t do that very often, but I’ve seen it happen before. He’s extremely easily distracted. He can go to the kitchen to do something, and by the time he gets there he can’t remember what it was so he does something else instead. I can’t ask him to do anything unless I supervise it because he can’t remember what I asked him to do 30 seconds after I asked him to do it.
Ishiyama
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: To me, it looks like some A.I. program is set to pump money into the market whenever there is a sharp decrease of more than X% in Y time frame.
WTFGhost
@Suzanne: To be brutal, what she did was no worse than taking a city or suburban dog or cat to the pound because of behavioral issues. What’s horrifying is that she presented it as some proof of something – “True Grit” maybe? – in a
fantasy novelbiographical work.So she “…took Cricket to a nice farm, further out in the country, where he can
slaughterresponsibly hunt all the birds he wants!” That kinda crap happens. You skip over that, or, you regret those moments. (“I still cry inside a bit, when I realized no one in the household could control our poor Cricket…” or some other such rot.)But instead, she came up with a nice, bloody, gory story, and became head of DHS. She understood Trump’s sadism better than anyone, I’m betting. “Two shots to take down Mr. Stinky Billygoat! That means she had to reload!”
@gene108: Per my understanding, it wasn’t that it didn’t take to being a hunting dog; Cricket was a bird dog. The dog misbehaved on the first hunt, because it hadn’t been trained to do any differently. It slaughtered a bunch of chickens, but that’s normal for an untrained bird dog. Cricket needed training (because you can’t always be there) and needed strict control until the training took. But Noem turned it into a snuff fiction possibility. I bet she’s sorry she doesn’t have video.
dexwood
@gene108: So many would have been happy to rescue that poor dog. A few years ago, we adopted an Australian Kelpie Maggie Sue, who had been abandoned in the desert of NW New Mexico. She’s a herding breed who has no herding instincts. We’ve speculated that as the reason she was dumped. Very smart, very intelligent super sweet.
Suzanne
@WTFGhost:
Disagree. If an animal has behavioral issues to the degree that they can’t safely be around people, they can be humanely euthanized by a vet. Shooting them raises the risk that you injure them and that they suffer. If a dog is just not a good working dog, you can keep it as a pet, or rehome it, or surrender it to a rescue organization.
HopefullyNotCassandra
@Suzanne: yes! One day of training will not a bird dog make no matter its breeding. Absurd sec Noem thought otherwise, sadistic human.
frosty
There’s the weasel word: “I believe”. He uses one of these in almost every statement – I believe, probably, others that I can’t remember right now. They’re a way of saying something but with a caveat so he doesn’t get called on it.
Geminid
An Iranian drone just hit the US Consulate in Dubai, and part of it is on fire.
I saw this post last night, from France24 reporter Wassim Nasr:
HopefullyNotCassandra
@Jeffro: no doubt he gets reams of violent hate mail. He would probably appreciate a love letter or two.
laura
Oh how I loathe this Confederacy of Dumbfucks.
cmorenc
FWIW, the inital huge loss today on the stock market (nearly 2% across NASDAQ & S&P combined or 1200+ pts on S&P) has decreased to around 0.8% by this afternoon, which indicates lots of buying on the earlier dip while at the same time still represents a war-induced downturn.
HopefullyNotCassandra
@gene108: she gave her dog one day of training before rendering her murderous decision. One day
mappy!
@different-church-lady: At this point? Just Republicans will suffice.
The Thin Black Duke
It’s a brutal indictment of our system of government. It is painfully obvious that Trump doesn’t have two brain cells left to rub together, but the only way he’s ever going to leave the White House is feet first. There is no viable mechanism in place to remove him from office.
The Thin Black Duke
dexwood
@Suzanne: Agree with you.
Warblewarble
@Paul in KY:
@Paul in KY: Correction: The articles whiewash themselves.
Warblewarble
@Paul in KY:
@Paul in KY: Correction: The articles whiewash themselves.
RevRick
@Duke of Clay: The notion that gasoline prices are going to somehow fall and stay below $3/gallon is absurd. It defies all economic logic.
First, we have tapped all the low hanging fruit of crude oil, so now we have to go after the harder to reach sources through fracking. That means more complex drilling coupled with with the costs of producing, transporting and injecting the fracking mixture to shatter the shale formations.
Second, every oil field is depleting, which means we have to drill ever more wells just to stay in place in terms of production. The hundred wells drilled today will require one hundred and ten tomorrow.
Third, the cost of the drilling equipment and piping is always increasing. Add in the pipelines and trucking. Add in the labor costs. Add in the costs of refining, especially if the quality of the initial crude oil is declining.
The prices may fluctuate depending upon demand and supply, but the long term trend is only higher prices at the pump.
RevRick
@Duke of Clay: The notion that gasoline prices are going to somehow fall and stay below $3/gallon is absurd. It defies all economic logic.
First, we have tapped all the low hanging fruit of crude oil, so now we have to go after the harder to reach sources through fracking. That means more complex drilling coupled with with the costs of producing, transporting and injecting the fracking mixture to shatter the shale formations.
Second, every oil field is depleting, which means we have to drill ever more wells just to stay in place in terms of production. The hundred wells drilled today will require one hundred and ten tomorrow.
Third, the cost of the drilling equipment and piping is always increasing. Add in the pipelines and trucking. Add in the labor costs. Add in the costs of refining, especially if the quality of the initial crude oil is declining.
The prices may fluctuate depending upon demand and supply, but the long term trend is only higher prices at the pump.
Warblewarble
@Paul in KY: Correction: The articles whitewash themselves.
WTFGhost
@different-church-lady: ICE aren’t Nazis. CBP aren’t sociopaths. It’s an important distinction.
@Suzanne: Well, I would recommend anal abscesses, over fissures. Abscesses are toxic, and could poison the blood, and almost certainly far more painful (to say nothing of more dangerous).
I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just suggesting more… precision. Yeah, precision is what I favor.
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Well, per Wolf Of Wall Street, they’re all addicted to adrenaline (when not addicted to so-called “recreational pharmaceuticals” as well) War is good for adrenaline, and sometimes, you can get deals you’d never get except from a nation facing a potentially existential threat.
RevRick
Sorry about the duplicate but my iPad froze.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: @Baud: Thanks
Heh I have been questioned about my English skills or lack thereof on this forum. Usually by DSA adjacent people who resort to bigotry when their Lord and Savior is questioned.
Warblewarble
@Paul in KY: Correction: The articles whitewash themselves.
cmorenc
Both Trump’s grandfather and my own were German nationals of military age who escaped service in the German Armed forces during WW1. The difference is that Trump’s grandfather was a draft-dodger, whereas my grandfather was a 20yo seaman aboard the German ship Crown Princess Cecile halfway across the Atlantic from a trip to the US back to Hamburg harbor, when the Lusigania was sunk and Britain declared war on Germany. The captain of the Crown Princess Cecile,promptly turned the ship back around to the US and barely evaded captue or sinking by the British Navy who w hunting for ithad promptly begun hunting for it. The CP Cecile made it back to Boston Harbor, where the ship and its crew were effectively marooned in Boston harbor for the duration of the war. The US government ordered the ship’s crew to be interned on the ship, but my grandfather and some of his shipmates successfully jumped ship, making him an illegal immigrant to the US. Post-war, he wisely decided to remain in the US rather than return to war-devestated Germany, and became a US citizen. The Kaiser would no doubt have wanted to feed a strapping young man like him into military service had the CP Cecile made its voyage 3 days earlier and made it back to Hamburg.
sab
@Baud: Stock traders are mostly MAGAs.
dexwood
@dexwood: Could not edit for punctuation corrections.
Geminid
@cmorenc: The Hessians George Washington captured at the Battle of Trenton were sent south to a camp near Charlottesville, Virginia. A lot of them stayed when the Revolutionary War ended.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The past few months have not been great on Wall Street– the moment when the Dow briefly was at 50,000 was a meaningless factoid. The market does not, in fact, like the crazy until they’re convinced it can’t hurt them.
The Thin Black Duke
My apologies for the double post.
different-church-lady
@WTFGhost:
How so?
Jackie
@gene108:
Besides Noem and probably roadkill Sec. Brainworm? I wouldn’t rule out FFOTUS. His sons enjoy killing exotic animals for blood sport.
Aziz, light!
@Baud: The stock market is not the economy. It’s a casino for the rich, who can afford to take some losses. It will keep cruising along as long as whales are at the table.
zhena gogolia
@cmorenc: Haha, my father was drafted by Franz Josef, but he was in Milwaukee already.
Professor Bigfoot
@different-church-lady: Because actually they’re both slave-catchers.
WTFGhost
There is, it just requires that a small majority of Republicans decide to join with all Democrats to remove him from office.
The problem is not that our Constitution prevents us from doing a lot to rein in (or “reign in” as appropriate) Trump; it’s that Republicans are derelict in their duty to their nation. They’ve chosen their personal political survival, and the good of Republicans, over the good of America. Someday, people are going to realize that, I hope, and punish Republicans for Trump-enabling.
sab
@HopefullyNotCassandra: Sounds a lot like her current idea of training for ICE. Who needs training?
Betty Cracker
@The Thin Black Duke: Appears to be a system glitch since it affected multiple people — no worries!
Jackie
@Duke of Clay:
My daughter paid 80 cents a gallon MORE today than last week/same station. She wasn’t happy. She’s mostly a normie, but she immediately knew WHY.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: That always amazes me. I think you have made maybe two typos in your entire history of commenting here, and never a grammatocal error. I do that daily.
steve labonne
@WTFGhost: I can turn that around, though. The fact that partisanship outweighs the good of the country even in such an extreme case of unfitness shows that the mechanism is unlikely ever to work. The lesson Republicans learned from Nixon is that they will never again allow a Republican president to be removed.
Lily
Saudis gave $$$. Quatar gave a plane. More I forgot. So what did they want in return…how about take down Iran.
Darkrose
@Suzanne: It would have been nice if he’d cared about the dog before he voted to confirm her.
Captain C
@Jeffro:
Yeah, that’s not rapey talk at all. Certainly wouldn’t expect that from an adjudicated rapist.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
Still want to know what year Bolt you bought. Initial thoughts?
Betty Cracker
I ordered a pair of shoes online last week. Usually I buy shoes in person because I want to make sure they fit right, but these are a replacement for a pair I already had, so it seemed okay to order online. Well, today I checked the status, and the shoemaker’s site says TWO shipments are pending. So, now I’m wondering if I’m getting two pairs of shoes by mistake or if they’re splitting the pair to send one shoe each in two separate boxes. Hmmm.
WTFGhost
@different-church-lady: Well, it’s not nice to call ICE “Nazis.” Polite people call them “sociopaths,” so as not to hurt their feelings.
Likewise, it’s not nice to call CBP “sociopaths,” you know, words can hurt more than actions! So polite people call them “Nazis” instead.
I know, I know, eventually, they’ll both be not Nazis, not sociopaths, not grizzly bear puke, not pus from a pilonoidal cyst that carries with it the screams of the pain of draining it, not dog crap on the bottom of your shoe and on your mom’s new carpet, not rancid effluvium from Hell’s lavatory, etc., etc., but for now, it’s easy to keep track of.
gene108
@Paul in KY:
Also, people around Trump leak like mad to the press, so it’s easier to get stories.
A competent disciplines White House, where people aren’t using the press to stab each other in the back is BORING!
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@WTFGhost: Yeah, there’s a mechanism, all right, but it’s not viable in the face of an entire Cabinet and a majority party holding the levers of power who are all betraying the oaths they took to their country, not to their party or their glorious leader.
The Founding Fathers anticipated a lot of things, but gross treason on the scale we’re seeing in the past decade wasn’t one of them.
Betty Cracker
I love how Senator Welch openly mocks Noem at around the 2:40 mark in the clip below. He puts air quotes around Corey Lewandowski’s “special advisor” title. Everybody knows what’s going on.
FelonyGovt
@hueyplong: “When you’re a star they let you do it”
gene108
@The Thin Black Duke:
Impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate.
Unfortunately, this mechanism doesn’t account for the possibility that half of Congress would willingly aid presidential corruption.
Trivia Man
@WTFGhost: she might have video! Nothing is too low for this crowd
Steve LaBonne
@gene108: I just have to point out again that not only does the indiscipline make it very easy, the lurid dementia and depravity would make for plenty exciting and click-producing reportage. It doesn’t happen because the owners don’t want it (just look at the evisceration of WaPo).
trollhattan
@gene108:
It’s like the rule about never get fond of any Game of Thrones characters applies equally to pets in the Noem household. Kids assured of becoming messed-up adults.
It does not help that Cricket was a German shorthaired pointer and our pooch is a German shorthaired pointer, the bestest canine friend anybody can ever hope for.
All Quatloos awarded for “Underpants Noem.”
Trivia Man
@RevRick: you lack the proper perspective. Eliminate all environmental regulations and safety standards. That is worth AT LEAST a buck a gallon drop.
gene108
@cmorenc:
Trump’s grandfather Friedrich dodged Prussian military service in the 19th century. Trump’s dad was born around like 1905 or so.
Grandpa Friedrich had taken his Canadian brothel money and settled in NYC by the start of of the 20th century.
Booger
@Geminid: Is that Germanna?
JaySinWA
@Betty Cracker: Heels and soles. Some assembly required
ETA alternatly “We didn’t have a 7.5 so we sent one 6 and one 9 to average out.”
trollhattan
@JaySinWA:
That’s what happens when you order the Kὅbblᾰ (tan, size 32) from Ikea. Don’t lose the wrench.
Archon
@gene108: Trump was taught by daddy to despise military service, hence why he thinks American KIA are losers.
Gretchen
@WTFGhost: Reporting is that Trump made Noem DHS Secretary because he LIKED the dog story.
Sen. Kennedy went after her too: “Do you think that spending a quarter of a billion dollars on TV ads featuring yourself is a good use of taxpayer funds?”
I wonder what it means that Republican senators are going after her hardest. Fire her to distract from Iran?
CNN is reporting that Iran bombed our embassies in Dubai and UAE.
The Republic of Stupidity
“The incompetent twatwaffle Donald Trump appointed to run the sprawling Department of Homeland Security agency…”
I must say, Ms Cracker, you do have a way with words!
You’re turning common vulgarity into an art form… I doff my chapeau to you!
trollhattan
US Navy ships are immune from missiles. Pass it on.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Gretchen:
That these idiots bumbled into a hornets nest is one of the least surprising things. Iran will be sending fewer drones to help Russia as it needs them for their own war. Now it won’t just be Ukrainians dying from Iranian drones. So much terrible, unnecessary bloodshed.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I think it’s three years now. I generally like electric and it works well with my driving needs, which is mostly short distance. There are a couple of small QC issues I have had, but it’s mostly been pretty solid. I think newer cars don’t let you use Android Auto but have their own proprietary system, so I’m glad I got it when I did.
zhena gogolia
@Darkrose: I know, right?
Princess
@trollhattan: As if Trump’s insurance scheme will ever pay back someone whose ship has been blown up. It’s a shakedown operation. You can’t insure tankers in a war zone. And the US Navy has already said they don’t have the resources. It’s almost like no one planned this thing at all, beyond “big bomb go boom.”
Betty Cracker
@Gretchen: The Dems went after her hard too, but yeah, it is striking that Repubs are willing to be that brutal with one of their own. Maybe she’s about to get shit-canned so Trump can appoint a different sociopath.
Kirklin
The straits are the place Iran’s midget subs have best advantage against US naval vessels. So yeah, let’s run record though them.
WTFGhost
@steve labonne: Yes, but no system can work in the face of massive, deliberate, corruption. It’s not the fault of the system, if enough people do the exact opposite of what their duty requires. Saying “Republicans will never convict and remove a Republican President,” is robbing them of agency. It should be a list of Republican Senators, each of whom is willing to neglect an oath to see impartial justice done, and is thereby derelict in their duty to the Constitution and to the People of the United States of America.
There are a lot of evil men, all of whom are willing to do terrible things, and see even worse things done in our name, all because they’d rather Republicans have power, than have someone who wants to make the country better for everyone in power. That incredible bloc of outright mendacious maliciousness have abused the system to attack only their enemies, and to excuse their friends. Well, America voted them into the majority, but that’s not an indictment of the system as a system. It is probably an indictment of something, but I’ll shut up about what that might be.
The SCOTUS in their hubris will reject any criticism, since they consider themselves to be the arbitrator of what the correct decision, rather than the detective who uncovers it from a tangle of law, facts, and (we hope) justice.
bbleh
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: @Baud: this. And as many have noted, this is about “expectations.” Right now the skeevy jerks expect things to work out just fine, no serious economic consequences due to oil flow disruptions or to things not changing much for days and into weeks (except of course more casualties) or or or … BUT expectations can change in a moment, and they are, as the term has it, contagious.
Bulls may or may not be a good metaphor for the market, but in one respect they are: they’re herd animals, and they are prone to stampedes.
Suzanne
@Darkrose: TRUTH.
Sigh. All of these people are terrible. Even the “best” of them lack conviction, the worst…. etc etc etc.
Elizabelle
Waiting for Underbused Noem.
The Felon may just be keeping her, and a lot of his craptastic Cabinet, to deflect attention from himself and his own culpability.
Also expect to see the mother of all lawsuits if The Felon attempts to pardon these horrible people for actual and provable crimes.
I kind of hope he just dies unexpectedly without pardoning them (soon, soon). And that we blow the doors off with the midterms.
Tonight’s results from the Texas Senate primary should be interesting, and maybe instructive.
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle: He’s already attempted to pardon people for *state* crimes, which he doesn’t have the power to do… and then attempted to punish the states in question for not making it real. That’s what killed the National Center for Atmospheric Research– he tried it in Colorado with someone involved in the 2020 fake electors plot. And killed a vital research institution as a temper tantrum.
lowtechcyclist
@Jackie:
Huh. Prices here in northern Calvert County, MD appear to be ten or fifteen cents higher than this time last week. Within the range of normal fluctuations, really.
Ksmiami05
@The Thin Black Duke: yeah I think the American experiment is pretty much a failure without serious changes to the system that favors morons and grifters over a government that moves its citizens forward
Timill
@Elizabelle:
Be careful with that…
WTFGhost
@Gretchen: Yes, that was something I was alluding to in my response (I think). Which (shudder).
@Trivia Man: Answer 1: I didn’t want to speculate
Answer 2: Yeah, but, there were witnesses, so she probably had to ditch the camcorder, where it fell into the gravel pit.
Nod. And you really can’t plan for this kind of corruption. What you need to do is make it visible, so people stop thinking “meh, politicians,” and instead think “grr, Republicans.”
bbleh
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: yeah probably not treason but simply a total lack of honor and of respect for the rule of law.
It’s the same problem with a lot of the “emergency” powers Congress has granted the President over the years: they assume that s/he will act to at least SOME degree in good faith.
But MAGAts have no honor, they do not act in good faith, and they do not respect those who do (quite the contrary; they consider them suckers). And that applies to both their leaders in politics and business and to MAGA people themselves.
THAT to me is the really sobering lesson of the last decade-plus. A YUGE chunk of the country are not merely ignorant bigots; they have no concept of honor or honorable behavior, nor of respect for the rule of law per se (although they certainly respect law that benefits them personally).
jonas
I’m really looking forward to the day where you can see the American president sitting in an Oval Office that doesn’t look like it was decorated by Bob Guccione.
different-church-lady
@The Thin Black Duke: There’s a completely viable mechanism. Two, in fact. The MAGA led senate refuses to use one, and the cabinet will never use the other.
jonas
@Elizabelle: If those Senators want to know who to blame for Trump’s Clowncar of Corruption cabinet, they can take a long, hard look in the mirror. The whole point of “advice and consent of the Senate” is to say no if a president wants to appoint a manifestly unqualified loon to run a federal agency. These feckless bastards will never be forgiven for Noem, Gabbard, RFK, Jr., or Hegseth, either in this life or the life to come.
different-church-lady
@bbleh:
In fact, that’s really the problem with the entire set-up at the moment. The framers thought everyone would act in some degree of good faith, and that if one person didn’t the others still would.
This is why checks-and-balances and “guardrails” aren’t working. The people who could check this rogue president instead think they can ride the tiger, and the people who built the guardrails never imagined someone would try to deliberately drive a semi straight through them.
Trivia Man
@Betty Cracker: Bet: “acting” appointment to bypass pesky questions
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Right. There’s no way to remove a prime minister in a parliamentary system either, if his party or coalition continues to back them. The problem is that Republicans don’t feel public pressure because the public doesn’t want to turn to Dems as an alternative.
Trivia Man
@different-church-lady: even worse, if the cabinet accidentally voted to remove him, he just says “nuh uh” and he stays active until they jump a few more hoops.
different-church-lady
@Baud:
Which gets us right back to sparrows and curtain rods.
Like I said a couple of days ago: I don’t know how you fix the electorate, and apparently nobody else does.
Professor Bigfoot
The Founders never envisioned a Black President.
Baud
@Baud:
@different-church-lady:
The bigger problem is that there’s no alternative to the Veep taking over. In a parliamentary system, the party could choose anyone to replace the PM.
Geminid
@Booger: I think Germanna was named before the Revolutionary War. The Trenton Hessians were camped out not far west of Charlottesville. I worked a job one time out there. We were doing a foundation. The owner told us to keep a lookout for uniform buttons, that the soldiers’ camp included that property.
During WWII, there were German prisoners working on farms in Albemarle County. They might have been captured in Tunisia. I expect a lot if them were glad to be out of the war.
davek319
@Paul in KY: Yup. They are the Oroboros of fascism, feeding off each other in a miasma of mutual self regard, game acknowledging game.
ironcity
@Princess: Re #102: I don’t know how marine insurance works exactly but I do know something of aviation and have been told it is similar to ships. For Desert Storm the airlines/carriers that were working for the military had to insure their airplanes and cargos. They usually do this in the commercial market. Flying into a war zone that insurance was totally unaffordable if it could be had at all. Enter Uncle Sugar, with war risk insurance. There were 2 kinds, premium and non-premium. The federal government would write the insurance and pay up if the carrier had a loss while working for the military. Early on, internal to the government there was some trepidation about what we would do if there was a loss because we didn’t have any money. Lucky for all concerned there were no complete hull losses and when the war was over the government had the opposite problem of what to do with all the premiums. They were not refunded. One airline, who shall remain nameless, tried to claim a trashed engine from ground fire but you shoukdn’t try that when the insurance carrier is also the regulatory agency and when a flight standards inspector pulled the logbooks and looked at the engine they found one that had gone significantly beyond the allowed time between overhauls and was pretty much scrap on the wing. Claim laughed at and they were lucky they weren’t fined and their operating authority pulled.
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
@davek319: Maybe more like human centipede.
Ruckus
@Raoul Paste:
Man, that brain filter is absolutely gone.
In this case it never existed.
Today the issue is a dumbass is aging out. So he will only get worse, because this horse only has one direction and speed. Stupider and slower.
jimmiraybob
I haven’t seen anybody address it yet, but can someone tell me the difference between the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor and Trump’s bombing of Iran. In broad terms.
bbleh
@jimmiraybob: one story has it that the Japanese embassy at least had instructions to inform the US prior to the attack but just administratively weren’t able to do it. If that’s true, then I’m thinking that’s a difference in this case
@different-church-lady: the people who built the guardrails never imagined someone would try to deliberately drive a semi straight through them.
And indeed, it’s pretty near impossible to construct guardrails short of heavy reinforced concrete walls that someone CAN’T deliberately drive a semi through, and there the metaphor breaks down because it’s human beings and not concrete and steel.
Jeffro
@Geminid: had no idea – thanks! Looks like I have some reading to do…
Steve LaBonne
@jimmiraybob: In broad terms, as the most military powerful country on earth attacking a far weaker regional power, we have even less excuse than the Japanese had.
Eolirin
@RevRick: That assumes demand doesn’t decrease significantly globally, and as long as major countries are still engaged in efforts to shift to green tech, that’s what’ll happen.
If demand for oil continues as it has we’ll all be dead long before we run out of it.
geg6
@Soprano2:
I feel you, girl. I feel you.
Jeffro
Perry Bacon in TNR has a few good ideas; I was planning on writing that up for a short post of some kind.
hint: you don’t “fix” it…you “change” it. ;)
Chief Oshkosh
@jimmiraybob:
The Japanese had a plan for beyond Day 1? (Though not a great plan, but still, a plan.)
Princess
@ironcity: Very interesting!
Eolirin
@Chief Oshkosh: They also didn’t try to assassinate the entire civilian leadership of the US with the strikes.
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: My dad got to be like that. Short term memory just gone.
Paul in KY
@WTFGhost: She truly is a horrible human being.
Paul in KY
@cmorenc: Man was he fortunate! Almost sure to die in that meatgrinder on the Western Front. Glad he jumped ship! Probably didn’t have a Totenkopf tattoo either!
The Republic of Stupidity
It’s a shame that someone close to Tump didn’t get a chance to explain the law of unintended
consequences to him BEFORE he decided to start bombing Iran…
‘The law of unintended consequences states that deliberate actions, particularly in complex systems like government or society, often create unanticipated and undesirable side effects. Popularized by sociologist Robert K. Merton, it warns that interventions can fail or cause “perverse effects” that make problems worse.’
And now we all get to live with those unintended consequences…
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Make sure you are not getting a return that someone else sent back.
FelonyGovt
@Betty Cracker: Not that I have even an eye dropper’s worth of sympathy for Republicans representatives, but I wonder if they are finally beginning to chafe at all the horrible Shitgibbon decisions they’re being called upon to defend.
Paul in KY
@gene108: I will say that the next time (oh please dear God) we get in, there needs to be someone in the White House staff that is dedicated to fluffing/kissing up a bit to the elite press. Not fun doing it, but can help.
Paul in KY
@jimmiraybob: I think, after the negotiating process broke down, the Japanese were sending us a formal declaration of war, but it took too long to decode it, so we received it late.
We were still ‘fake negotiating’ with the Iranians when we started bombing them.
See the difference?
Edit: see bbleh beat me to it!
Marc
This is the domain of the quants, mathematicians, financials engineers, and high-pay programmers who develop algorithms which decide to buy/sell/hold stocks with latency measured in microseconds from the actual market. A single mistake can (and has) cost upwards of hundreds of millions of dollars in a few seconds. This is real money, for all the talk of AI, no one (except maybe Hegseth and Elon) is stupid enough to put 100% trust in AI when the stakes are this high.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
It might help if we didn’t have someone like our current whatever it is he is in charge. At least he is in charge on paper, and legally. But given his “brain,” as it currently exists – and has for some time, I expect nothing positive out of his office. I’d almost bet that in mathematics he can only add 2+2 and even that’s with assistance.
He’s not showing us anything positive and considering what he’s shown us prior I expect nothing to change in any positive way for the people that pay his salary – most of us. (Some of us are too young or too old to work) OH WAIT – HE’S AGED OUT, he’s too old to work. We all do this at some point in time if we live long enough, and he’s past his point. For me I wonder who is actually running the place. Cause I’d bet it isn’t him at 79, and soon to get to 80 years old.
YY_Sima Qian
@jimmiraybob: I’ve made the parallel before, there is little difference. Both initiated undeclared wars w/ sneak attacks, in the middle of negotiations, when they face no imminent threat from their targets. Well the difference is that what Imperial Japan did was once considered beyond the pale by “civilized” nations. What Trump is doing (not just this time, & not just versus Iran) has been normalized in the past few years, by the US, Russia, Israel, etc.
Well, Israel & the US broke another norm by targeting the opposition leadership right off the bat. That also used to be strongly frowned upon in interstate wars.
Eyeroller
@trollhattan: Actually a German wirehair pointer. Google insists that Drahthaar (literally “wire hair”) is a different but similar breed, though I wonder about that.
kalakal
@YY_Sima Qian: The Japanese had form in this respect. The 1904-5 Russo-Japanese War began with a Japanese surprize attck on Port Arthur a day before they declared war. The Russians were so shocked by this conduct it took them 8 days to declare war back.
YY_Sima Qian
@kalakal: & still the Russian defenses (& its copy of the Maxim machine gun) halted & ground up the Imperial Japanese Army, in another preview of the wanton slaughter that would be WW I. Imperial Japan would have lost that war had the Imperial Russian Fleet not performed so ineptly. The IJA was on its last strings in men & materiel trying to breach the fortifications around Port Arthur, substantial Russian Army reinforcements had arrived in Manchuria via the Trans-Siberian Railroad. But the Russian Baltic Fleet was annihilated at the Tsushima Strait, & Port Arthur fell before the Russian land reinforcements had a chance to turn the tide.
The Japanese launched a surprise attack on Qing forces stationed on the Korean Peninsula to kick off the 1st Sino-Japanese War in 1895. Its steady encroachment on China was achieved through a series of undeclared surprised attacks, from the Mukden Incident in 1931 through clashes w/ Chinese warlords & the ROC along the Great Wall regions in the early 1930s, culminating in the 2nd Sino-Japanese War in 1937, at the Marco Polo Bridge incident.
Imperial Japan had a strategic culture dominated by über-militarists, nihilists drunk on Bushido (& a perverted version at that), ever ready to throw the dice & bet the fate of the empire on another high risk-high reward adventure. It won the bet in the 1st Sino-Japanese War, & the indemnities (in addition to Taiwan) it extracted from the Qing helped to further fund its industrialization & armament to be perhaps the leading power in East Asia. It rolled the dice again & won again against the Russian Empire. It rolled the dice in the Mukden Incident (a Kwangtung Army operation w/o approval from Tokyo) & seized Manchuria (because Chiang Kais-shek requested the well armed local warlord to stand down & withdraw). It rolled the dice again in 1937 & got into an exhausting quagmire in China. That & the tightening US sanctions from 1940 onward forced it to turn its gaze toward SE Asia, & gambled again in 1941.
That last gamble was a sure loser, taking on a drastically superior industrial power, whose homeland Imperial Japan could not hope to place at risk. Unless the US lost its nerve early on, while the IJA & the IJN rampaged across SE Asia & the Western Pacific seemingly unstoppable, defeat was inevitable for Imperial Japan. Laughably outclassed on industrial capacity & population (against the combined allied nations & those under occupation that it needs to police), fleeting in any technological edge it might have had, reliant upon commodities shipped in from the conquered territories, w/ most of its manpower tied down & hemorrhaging in China.
Jay
@WTFGhost:
Assistance Programs are infamous for taking dogs that fail at guiding the blind, detecting strokes, heart attacks, anxiety, seizures, etc out to gravel pits and shooting them.
Government programs are infamous for taking dogs that pail at detecting drugs, contraband, bombs, tracking suspects or being a K9 dog, etc, out to gravel pits and shooting them.
NOT
Instead, they become pets, often of the people who trained them and failed them.
My Grandfather had , well, I can’s say his name here, and it is offensive, but he was named for his colour. His bloodline went back over 100 years as a Champion Retriever. He was apparently, (9 Provincial Championships, 2 Nationals), a phenomenal retriever and bird dog. He sired a litter, and my Grandfather kept Coal, the most promising when just a pup. Grandad trained him like he trained his Dad, but Coal failed. So he just became a house pet and companion.
Grandad bought back Soot, one of the other pups, trained her up and Soot went on to win 6 Provincials, and was apparently a great dog to shoot over.
My Dad got Tammy, one of Soot’s pups, trained her up, and she was a good gun dog, until my Mother got pregnant and my Brother was born. After that, she did not want to hunt, was useless in the field, because all she wanted to do was protect and comfort my Mom and my Brother.
Both my Grandfather and my Dad were often raging assholes, but they never took a dog out to a gravel pit.
Paul in KY
@YY_Sima Qian: That summs up late stage Imperial Japan pretty well.