Just like every generation gets their own quagmire, every generation gets their own Ollie North:
The CIA is working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran, multiple people familiar with the plan told CNN.
The Trump administration has been in active discussions with Iranian opposition groups and Kurdish leaders in Iraq about providing them with military support, the sources said.
Iranian Kurdish armed groups have thousands of forces operating along the Iraq-Iran border, primarily in Iraq’s Kurdistan region. Several of the groups have released public statements since the beginning of the war hinting at imminent action and urging Iranian military forces to defect. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been striking Kurdish groups and said on Tuesday that it targeted Kurdish forces with dozens of drones.
I wonder how Erdogan feels about this or if he even knew? I am sure this will end fabulously and none of those weapons will slip into the wrong hands and end up being used against us because nothing like that has ever happened before.
The names of four of the first six dead American military members have been released:
The Defense Department has identified four of the six service members who were killed over the weekend by an Iranian attack. All four Reserve soldiers were assigned to the 103rd Sustainment Command, based out of Des Moines, Iowa.
Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota; and Sgt. Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa, were killed on March 1 in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait by an Iranian drone attack, defense officials announced on Tuesday.
The names of the other two service members killed in the attack have not yet been released.
“We honor our fallen Heroes, who served fearlessly and selflessly in defense of our nation,” Lt. Gen. Robert Harter, Chief of Army Reserve and Commanding General U.S. Army Reserve Command, said in a statement. “Their sacrifice, and the sacrifices of their families, will never be forgotten.”
Killed in a retaliatory drone strike while Trump was partying with billionaires at Mar-a-lago. They won’t be the last. We will be paying a price for this war for a long time to come.
The pathetic piece of shit Noem was in front of the Senate today being grilled, and there were some heated exchanges and she didn’t remember or didn’t know about apparently everything that has happened underneath to and include things she herself said:
When pressed by Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, about why Noem labeled Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by federal law enforcement in Minneapolis in January, a domestic terrorist without evidence, she would not admit she was wrong.
You can watch the whole Durbin line of questioning here– she’s just garbage and Durbin is too polite. I am just so instantly repulsed whenever I see any of these fucking people. The Tillis grilling is pretty fun to watch:
In other ICE news:
Support for abolishing ICE has hit a new high in this week’s Economist / YouGov poll. Half (50%) of Americans now somewhat or strongly support abolishing ICE. Only 39% oppose abolishing the agency.
This marks the first time support has reached 50% in YouGov polling. Support for abolishing ICE has been steadily growing since January. At the same time, opposition to abolishing ICE has fallen since the start of the year, and now sits at an all-time low.
And in one last piece of ICE news, in North Carolina last year, a Democrat defected to the Republicans on a pro-Ice vote, and she is currently just being destroyed in her primary today, as are several other Dems who were voting with the Republicans. So it could be a really big night in NC, and that jackass Republican Dan Crenshaw is being nuked into orbit by a Trump MAGA loser in his primary. They both vote the same way on all the important shit, so I am much happier with a frothing lunatic in the seat than someone the media can give a shiny patina to. Fuck off, Crenshaw, you smarmy shit.
Behold, dinner (for some reason I can not upload images to balloon juice tonight so I uploaded it to bluesky and am embedding- Watergirl probably already has a fix on the way or has emailed me and I didn’t check because look at the end of the day sometimes that personal email account is brutal):
My new dinner hyper fixation (3 out of the last four dinners) has been a massive bowl of tabouli with feta on top with a grilled chicken breast and some castletrevano olives
— Cake or Death (@johngcole.bsky.social) March 3, 2026 at 7:23 PM
I’m off to relax. Be cool.
Texas Primary Results – This Should Be Interesting! (and NC!)
Update at 7:45 pm:
I was thinking of Texas, but NC primary is today, too. NC peeps, what are the key primary elections there?
(MSNOW)
Republicans and Democrats are locked in epic primary battles to set the stage for November in the Texas Senate race. Sen. John Cornyn is running for a fifth term and faces serious competition from Attorney General Ken Paxton in the GOP primary. U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico are vying for the Democratic nod to face the winner of the GOP contest. If no candidate nabs a majority of the vote, a runoff will be held on May 26.
BJ peeps in Texas, is there a good site to watch the election returns?
MSNow seems to be the best of the ones that don’t require a login or turning off an ad blocker.
Texas Primary Results – This Should Be Interesting! (and NC!)Post + Comments (69)
Open Thread: Warner Bros. Paramount’d
Maybe I’m just a Cynic, but this whole saga reads to me like one of the We are no longer bound by your puny Rules!!! indicators that come just before a major economic crash. Per the WSJ, “Six Months, 9 Offers and $81 Billion. How Hollywood’s Nasty Takeover Was Won” [unpaywalled version]
For six months, the son of one of the world’s richest men kept hearing the same unfamiliar word: No.
Even before he closed a deal to combine his company with a much bigger one, David Ellison was already plotting to do it again. Once his Skydance Media took control of Paramount, he turned his attention to a Hollywood icon, launching an audacious takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery that would give the Ellison family control of a sprawling media empire.
His first offer was swatted away. So were his second and third. By the time Ellison made his sixth offer, Warner Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav stopped responding to his texts. Even when Warner officially accepted a rival offer from Netflix, Ellison refused to take no for an answer.
As the battle dragged on, Ellison sweetened his offers, ratcheted up the pressure, took the hostile bid directly to shareholders, threatened a bruising proxy fight, brought in President Trump allies to lobby, and treated the existing term sheet like paper waiting to be shredded.
On the ninth offer, the wealth and influence of the Ellisons finally won…
And once Netflix dropped its own $72 billion deal for Warner’s studios and HBO Max streaming business, the scion of software billionaire Larry Ellison was poised to become one of the most powerful people in a town that once derided him as a nepo-baby.
Ellison, 43 years old, as Paramount chief executive will now control much of our attention: the shows we watch, the news we consume and the screens we stare at all day long, with a family portfolio that will include HBO, CNN, CBS News, the historic Warner Bros. studio lot and crown jewels such as DC Comics and Harry Potter.
As much as Ellison and his team had been telling anyone who would listen that his business would ultimately prevail in buying a company five times its size, the reaction on Friday from Hollywood to Washington to Wall Street was astonishment…
On Friday, Paramount paid a breakup fee of $2.8 billion to Netflix.
At NYMag, “Paramount Wins, Everybody Loses”:
Backed by his billionaire dad’s bankroll and the full support of many in Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, Paramount CEO David Ellison won the battle for Warner Bros. on Thursday, successfully quashing a surprise bid by Netflix to take over the storied movie and TV company. Ellison is no doubt celebrating his victory over the streaming powerhouse, ditto Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders who stand to gain from Paramount’s sweetened offer. But for everyone else, this deal feels like a colossal dud, one that will result in a new company burdened with billions more in debt — almost surely leading to thousands of layoffs, fewer movies and TV shows getting made, and the creation of a combined CBS News–CNN operation likely to lean well to the right of where either is now.
In fairness, Netflix closing a deal for Warner Bros. would have had numerous downsides too. Many in the film business, including notable figures such as director James Cameron, were vehemently opposed to the streamer getting its mitts on WB given its business model to date has had no real use for theatrical distribution. And as the Writers Guild told Vulture in December, “The problem is the acquisition and pending consolidation of two media giants, not who the buyer is.” Industry consolidation in this century, including Disney’s purchase of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox entertainment assets or Amazon’s gobbling up MGM, has rarely been good for everyday people. A Netflix “win” wouldn’t have been great news for the average viewer or moviegoer either.
But as one Warner Bros. veteran told me late last year, the Netflix bid felt very much like the “least worst option,” and I think that’s exactly right. For all the downsides the tech giant’s now-dead deal would have had, Paramount’s winning is the worst-case scenario for Hollywood — and America.
Another Win for Democracy Docket
Another win for Democracy Docket!
The Department of Justice (DOJ) abandoned its defense of President Donald Trump’s retribution campaign against law firms that challenged his political agenda or represented his political opponents over the years.
This makes the big law firms that rolled over the administration look even more weak and cowardly and feckless than they did before.
Well, hang on, maybe I spoke in haste. They were completely weak and cowardly and feckless before; I’m not sure they could look worse. But somehow they do!
The Department of Justice (DOJ) abandoned its defense of President Donald Trump’s retribution campaign against law firms that challenged his political agenda or represented his political opponents over the years.
The DOJ dropped its appeals of four lower court rulings that found Trump’s executive orders sanctioning Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie* and Susman Godfrey were unlawful and issued specifically to punish the firms for exercising their constitutional rights.
Last year, Trump attempted to paralyze the firms’ ability to represent clients in dealings with the federal government by signing a series of orders that terminated contracts and stripped their lawyers of security clearances and access to government buildings.
In addition to firms, Trump also targeted individual lawyers through his orders.
The DOJ dropping its defense of the orders represents a major win for the rule of law. By targeting firms based on the clients they represented, Trump’s orders represented a direct assault on the country’s adversarial system of justice.
Some law firms — including Paul, Weiss — folded in the face of the orders and pledged tens of millions of dollars worth of pro bono legal work for causes favored by the White House in order to get Trump’s sanctions lifted.
Other firms successfully sued. The first to do so was Perkins Coie, which argued that it was being illegally targeted because it challenged the Trump campaign’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and for its work on voting rights cases.
“The government’s decision to dismiss its appeal is clearly the right one,” WilmerHale said in a statement. “As we said from the outset, our challenge to the unlawful Executive Order was about defending our clients’ constitutional right to retain the counsel of their choosing and defending the rule of law. We are pleased these foundational principles were vindicated.”
Several district court judges overseeing the suits gave impassioned defenses of the rule of law and warned that Trump’s orders risked intimidating attorneys or law firms that might represent the president’s political opponents.
In a March hearing on Perkins Coie’s complaint, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, said the government’s defense of Trump’s order sent “chills” down her spine. A DOJ attorney had claimed that the president could also issue a retaliatory order against Williams & Connolly, a major law firm that was representing Perkins Coie in its suit.
Talk about people and institutions rising to the occasion. Where would we be without Marc Elias and Democracy Docket?
I would love to hear from our legal peeps about whether and how this has affected the world of big law. Have the big firms that rolled over lost standing in the legal world?
I’m tired. You’re tired. We’re all tired. But we have to keep on fighting the good fight.
Underpants Noem (Open Thread)
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.
Tuesday Morning Open Thread
Eclipse of the Blood Moon…
am i planning on staying up until 5 am for the lunar eclipse? yes.
is it worth it for this view? yes.— Jasmine 🌌🔭 (@astrojaz.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 3:05 PM
Iraq War Veteran Crow: Trump announced the start of this war with Iran at Mar-a-Lago. He talked about the fact that service members were going to die. Then he literally walked behind the curtains to his private club and he hosted a million dollars a plate dinner and dance party that night.
— FactPost (@factpostnews.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 5:56 PM
The MarkWayne Indicator strikes again!
(MarkWayne Indicator: If the GOP is shoving Mullin out to defend their latest atrocity… it means nobody with better thinking skills is willing to put themselves in the line of fire.)— Anne Laurie (@annelaurie.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 6:58 PM
Hunt: “Did the president not run on not starting a war with Iran?”
Sen. Mullin: “He ran on ending wars. He's ended eight of them.”
Hunt: “He started this one.”
Mullin: “This isn’t a war.”— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) March 2, 2026 at 5:13 PM
When you are shoveling that much shit it helps to have a plumber on speed dial.
— Jason Barscheski (@jasonbarscheski.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 8:41 PM
MarkWayne, just following orders…
Very putinesque.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 7:01 PM
My government has a real “we didn’t know starting a war would cause a war“ vibe going on which I realize I should be outraged about in the abstract but find myself mainly nonplussed by at this point.
— Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast (@irhottakes.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 3:23 PM
On The Road – pat – Calendar 2020
pat
I’ve been putting together calendars every year since 2013. This was put together in 2019, before Covid hit.
January
Bald Eagle in an oak tree next to the Mississippi, near the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, MN