Open Thread

What’s on your mind?

Comments

[not guilty]

Are we going to have a pissing contest between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Admiral Frank M. Bradley as to who on September 2 ordered the illegal strike to kill survivors of the first strike in the Caribbean Sea? https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/12/01/hegseth-caine-boat-strikes-caribbean/

I would recommend indicting them both in federal district court for murder and conspiracy and let twelve men and women good and true sort it out. Tie their tails together and hang them over a clothesline to fight it out!

[bloocow2]

You forget that the Washington Post story was a complete lie, that they made it up just to make Trump and Hegseth look bad.

...what? They did!

[Josh R]

Leavitt acknowledged there was a second strike.

[loki13]

I believe you are responding to sarcasm.

Obviously, everyone with a functioning brain knew that the first response of this administration would be to obfuscate and lie, which was why it was so entertaining to see the rubes immediately launch into the "LAME STREAM MEDIA LIEZ!!!!! BAGHDAD BOB ... sorry, WHITE HOUSE SEZ SO! SUK IT LIBZ!"

Of course, there is now a 180 as the Administration has to push a new talking point when they realized that this time the truth was already out there. So ...

IT WASNT HEGSETH! AND TO PROVE IT, WE ARE THROWING OUR BRAVE PEOPLE SERVING UNDER THE BUS!!!!!

[Michael P]

This Two Minutes Hate brought to you by the people who insisted the cauliflower was as sharp as a tack. "Fuck you if you can't handle the truth. This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second."

[santamonica811]

Come on, whore...you can do better than that. You could (and, obviously, this is in the land of fantasy) even have the integrity to admit, "Yeah, this is a bad look for any administration."

Whining like a little b*tch about Biden here is just pathetic. And I can't believe you missed an opportunity to also bleat about Obama, and how he was born in Kenya, or any of a thousand things completely unrelated to our administration murdering suspected drug smugglers a million miles away from our country.

#sad

[JoeFromtheBronx]

"Come on, whore...you can do better than that."

Okay. Get a room.

[hobie]

Drink!

[Kazinski]

Here is what the NYTimes is reporting which contradicts the Post:

Hegseth Ordered a Lethal Attack but Not the Killing of Survivors, Officials Say

"Amid talk of war crimes, the details and precise sequence of a Sept. 2 attack on a boat in the Caribbean are facing intensifying scrutiny."
"According to five U.S. officials, who spoke separately and on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter that is under investigation, Mr. Hegseth, ahead of the Sept. 2 attack, ordered a strike that would kill the people on the boat and destroy the vessel and its purported cargo of drugs.

But, each official said, Mr. Hegseth’s directive did not specifically address what should happen if a first missile turned out not to fully accomplish all of those things. And, the officials said, his order was not a response to surveillance footage showing that at least two people on the boat survived the first blast."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/us/hegseth-drug-boat-strike-order-venezuela.html

[David Nieporent]

So Hegseth ordered the Code Red, but since he got caught he is now simply throwing the admiral under the bus. Or under the boat, I guess.

[Kazinski]

Can you provide an on the record confirmation of the post story?

It one corner we have the Administration on record backed by the NYTimes with its own anonymous sources vs the Washington Post with its unnamed sources.

Sounds like the story is falling apart.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Huh? The reporting has been consistent that Hegseth gave the kill everyone order, and Bradley implemented it by ordering the second strike.

Hegseth should throw Bradley under the bus, but he’s not.

[Riva]

The WP falsely quoted Hegseth as saying "kill everybody." (yeah, the slimes used quotes). I wonder if this gives any trolls here any pause on blindly adhering to the veracity of bullshit anonymous sources? Probably not. They fully understand it's all bullshit lies. They depend on bullshit lies for their political attacks. Ask the Russian collusion fraud and the 51 intel hacks.

[David Nieporent]

The WP truthfully quoted Hegseth as saying "kill everybody."

[Riva]

Not according to Hegseth himself who unequivocally denies the report, calling it "fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory." Now that is an actual quote. That would mean something that he really said. But wait, we can always assess his denails against the credibility of the WP "sources"....hold on....my bad... we can't actually do that. They're anonymous. Almost like no such statement was ever made and they just made it up. No, my mistake again. Not almost. They did make it up.

[David Nieporent]

Yes, and after calling it "fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory," he then in his next two sentences admitted it was actually 100% true:

As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be “lethal, kinetic strikes.” The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists [sic] who are poisoning the American people.

So again, they didn't make it up. Hegseth admitted it was true.

[Riva]

No, not very astute counselor. Or honest. He never used those words. It was a fabricated quote. That he intended lethal strikes on the armed narco terrorist boats is one thing (and something that is implied in any similar operational context) but that he specifically ordered that everyone be killed, regardless of their status in the actual execution of the operation, which is what the WP was clearly conveying in its false narrative and false quote, is something else. It’s called a lie.

Why must you be so fucking dishonest?

[myself]

Do we know if Hegseth was in contact with the Admiral during the operation? It could be the case that the Admiral interpreted the directive as meaning he should kill the survivors, and Hesgeth was made aware of that decision in real time but did nothing to stop it.

In that case, it's true that the Admiral ordered the second strike, but Hesgeth approved that decision before it was carried out.

[windycityattorney]

So an interesting side note: the Guardian is reporting that they have reviewed the classified OLC opinion giving legal cover for the strikes. Apparently, all the talk in public about self-defense is just made up talk for the public.

The legal rationale is that the military is being ordered to blow up the boats and destroy the drugs. Any humans on the boats are not the targets and are mere collateral damage. So its a drug interdiction mission (with the added bonus of 70+human deaths) but since the humans are not the targets they think this is all fine and dandy.

As if the drugs load themselves onto the boats and drive themselves. Very questionable legal rationale if that is indeed the rationale.

[Sarcastr0]

Among other weaknesses, it does not cover a double dap after the boat and drugs are out of commission.

[windycityattorney]

No but it does mean that the humans being 'designated terrorists' or whatever is somewhat irrelevant. Because even if they were just fisherman, they are not the target and mere collateral damage. And I don't think we have ever been in a state of armed conflict with 'kilos of cocaine' before.

But this much is true. We have been fighting the war on drugs for going on 55yrs and THE DRUGS ARE WINNING. These strikes don't do much of shit considering Trump pardons presidents of narco states convicted for actual drug trafficking anyway. A few boatloads is a mere drop of water in the vast ocean. So this is all performative murder bs anyway. But it could be interesting legally if indeed their rationale is that they are merely targeting the drugs and its just bad luck if people near the drugs happen to blow up.

[Sarcastr0]

I know this place isn't super libertarian, but I've been chagrined to see how many drug warriors crawled out of the woodwork.

As you said, a long history shows us that harsh measures on the supply nor demand side will make drug use go down.

Lots of 'something should be done, murder is something, lets do murders.'

[windycityattorney]

Bit of speculation on my part; but the administration keeps repeating it so perhaps there is something to it. It would appear that they really believe that blowing up these boats is a psychological tactic that will stop drug couriers from using the sea/ocean to transport drugs. Because they are somewhat scattered in location and random; they seriously believe it will have a major deterrent effect. Which is a very shallow understanding of how major international drug couriers and cartels get the bulk of their product into a different country.

Cartels, being the ultimate free market enterprise, are not constrained by governments and committees to adapt. While SouthCom is diligently scouting for these little go fast boats with small loads; tons of cocaine (or whatever) is being smuggled into ports on cargo ships. People are bribed. Shipments don't get inspected. They plan on some shipments being intercepted. Which is good. Because it eats up resources in that location using that method so they can send the same amount through a different location using a different method.

This war on drugs has cost so many lives and wasted so much taxpayer money I can't believe in 2025 we are actually ramping it up.

All that being said, it could also just be a ruse to justify putting massive military assets off the coats of Venezuela so we can get global corporations hands on those precious and large oil deposits. Which also is happening. Which would just mean all these people murdered via drone aren't even dying because of some silly belief in stopping drugs but to instead position US assets to take out another S American government to install one more sympathetic to our resource extraction goals. So ya. Double bad libertarian policy. Ramp up war on drugs + meddling in foreign govts via US military. Which of course MAGA will justify to themselves since their dear leader is the one doing it. Predictable as the sunrise.

[loki13]

Windycity,

The one major problem with your analysis is that there are tons of people who could easily explain better options re: drugs than what we are doing. And what we are doing doesn't require the military assets we have placed there.

Blowing up some fishing boats doesn't need an aircraft carrier, B52 flights, and bringing the bases in Puerto Rico back on line- let along a special ops boat and F35s.

Which means that it's just a pretext to get the assets in re: Venezuela. The boat stuff is just for show and for the rubes.

And for Hegseth's #bloodlust #nofatties fapping pleasure.

[Estragon]

Windy:

It’s not about interdiction. How could it be? It’s about conditioning the American public to accept increasing levels of violence— indeed to glorify it. We are on an ugly path.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Loki13 — I do not think we should overlook that not being actually at war with Venezuela has proved an awkward legal impediment to Trump's, *no due process, deport them all* program. Once Trump gets the air attacks going against Venezuela, won't he also get Bondi into court to argue a state of war justifies mass deportations without due process, at least for Venezuelans? And then it will turn out ICE has difficulty distinguishing among undocumented U.S. residents to discern which are Venezuelans.

[Bwaaah]

Reminds me of civil forfeiture jurisprudence. (Is that an oxymoron?)

"Take the drugs and the boat. The people in the water can file a claim."

[Josh R]

I wonder how long "Baghdad Bob" will endure in our culture.

[Kazinski]

So the NYTimes is now Baghdad Bob?

You can bet the NYYimes when they started investigating was trying to confirm the Post story, when they couldn't confirm it, they reported what they did find.

[Josh R]

I'm not arguing the facts. I am assuming facts and asking C_XY whether those facts support prosecution.

Perhaps Hegseth is in the clear and only the admiral is in trouble (in which case, Hegseth should be calling for a court martial). Perhaps both are in trouble. Perhaps neither. Let the investigations begin, knowing that we can't trust the DoD to conduct an investigation.

[MoreCurious]

The investigations will begin at the same time the Epstein files are released. In other words, don't hold your breath.

[hobie]

Stop me if you've heard this one:

Leonard Leo, Liz Cheney, Jeff Sessions, MTG and Admiral Bradley are approaching a bus stop together...

[Commenter_XY]

NG, there was neither murder nor conspiracy. And your constant whining incessant opining about it won't change that.

What there was: Members of a designated foreign terror group (designated by EO), were transformed to shark shit in int'l waters b/c they were attempting to smuggle drugs into America.

The constitutional tool you have is impeachment. All you need to do is persuade 67 Senators to your viewpoint. Start with Senators Blackburn and Hagerty.

Buena Suerte. 😉

[Josh R]

It's illegal under federal law to commit a war crime. Are you arguing no war crime was committed if the second strike targeted helpless survivors? Are you claiming the rules of war don't apply to designated terrorists (if so, citation)?

[Michael P]

Are you arguing that no one could have landed on the moon if it is made of green cheese? Are you claiming the law of gravity does not apply to astronomical bodies made of dairy products (of so, citation)?

[Riva]

That’s nonsense. No one targeted helpless survivors. That’s a bullshit WP false narrative based on more anonymous “sources.” (Shades of the Russian collusion fraud past). The armed narco terrorist boats remained a threat and were fair targets. Please provide a cite to any “rule of war” that provides that a military gets only one shot at a threat.

[ReaderY]

There has been no evidence that any of these boats were either armed or carried any drugs. Saying it’s so doesn’t make it so. Constantly accusing everyone else of lying is not evidence, and doesn’t make the line you are trying to sell true.

[DDHarriman]

Who do they need to present evidence to before striking?

Can you flesh that out some?

[Nelson]

Before? No. After? Absolutely. And they have never presented any evidence that they are being careful about attacking actual drug smugglers who are coming to the US.

Of course, killing actual drug smugglers who are coming to the Us is also murder, but that’s who we are now. We are a country that intentionally murders people without reason or justification.

[DDHarriman]

>Before? No. After? Absolutely.

To whom? Who does the military need to justify it's actions too after the action? To politicians of the minority political party? To media personalities? To tik tok influencers? To whom exactly does the military submit itself too for post-action permission?

[wvattorney13]

Agreed. They don't owe the posters here their classified dossier just so the posters can pivot and declare that none of THAT proves anything either and that we can't trust Trump not to fake that evidence and/or we shouldn't kill them anyways.

[loki13]

As has been repeatedly pointed out, it's not just the commenters here.

It's also the Congress. Not just the full Congress, the members of the specific committees that should be receiving this information. And the Gang of Eight that is supposed to be briefed.

Those are the people that have, in the limited way they are allowed to, been raising the alarms over these issues.

The repeated answer is, "We're not going to tell you. Trust us."

Except ... wait for it ... they lie. They lie. They lie.

At every opportunity, they have lied. Remember when the WaPo broke the story that we are talking about now? What was the administration's FIRST response? You remember, don't you?

They said the story was false, fake news, blah blah blah.

Then when they realized the story had traction and Congress was going to investigate, they had to pivot to new lies.

And here you are .... still carrying their water.

[DDHarriman]

Woah! Congress is going to investigate?

Congress investigating stuff is a BIG DEAL, it's always so POWERFUL and a source of real TRUTH, not partisan politics, targeted leaks, lies, or other political games!

Maybe it will just as truthful and honest as the J6 Committee, or as fruitful as the Benghazi investigations!!!

[John 4]

Sounds like wva (attorney, really?) would prefer the federal government be able to kill with impunity. Sounds like a great idea and very well thought out.

[DDHarriman]

John 4,

Do you demand the Ukrainian army or their NAZI battalion AZOV publish evidence to support their actions to prove to you who they are killing are really active combatants?

[Nelson]

“ publish evidence to support their actions”

You mean Ukraine, that is defending themselves against a foreign invader? An invader who, by the by, doesn’t get any say on whether or not Ukrainians should tolerate Nazis. Or Communists. Or cannibals. Or any other kind of person, no matter how loathsome they may be.

Although given that the invader is Russia they wouldn’t have opposed Communists, since the worst thing that happened in the 20th century was the fall of the Soviet Union (according to Putin).

Their evidence is Russian troops are in Ukraine, where they don’t belong and aren’t wanted. They have presented that as evidence.

[Riva]

No, the WH and Department of War have clearly outlined the threats. Asserting they have no evidence or that these boats were innocent recreational jaunts is absurd. What is your basis for claiming the Administration and Department of War have no intelligence? What is your basis for claiming these boats were unarmed and piloted by innocents? The Vindman bros? Another Steele “dossier”? A letter from 51 intel hacks? Has the WP come out with more anonymously sourced bullshit?

[Nelson]

“ No, the WH and Department of War have clearly outlined the threats.”

The White House and the Department of Defense have made absurd proclamations about the “threats”. That is vastly different than actual threats. When either the White House or the President say something, you can be certain it is somehow dishonest and incorrect. Like the “armed conflict” nonsense.

“ Asserting they have no evidence or that these boats were innocent recreational jaunts is absurd.”

And yet, they can’t present any evidence that they knew who they were murdering. And that’s not even counting the killing of helpless people clinging to wreckage.

“ What is your basis for claiming the Administration and Department of War have no intelligence?”

What is the basis for claiming they do? When Congress has asked for the evidence, the White House has said, “We don’t wanna”. If they had it, why wouldn’t they share it with, at the very least, the Gang of Eight? Combine that with the well-documented history of lying by the President and the White House and there is amole reason to conclude they are, at the very least, being careless with lethal force.

“ What is your basis for claiming these boats were unarmed and piloted by innocents?”

The onus is on the military to make sure they are armed and the occupants aren’t innocent. Of course, there is no justification for killing drug smugglers rather than interdicting, arresting, and trying them, so they are already dishonorable murderers so I guess we can’t expect any better. I’m certain the honorable soldiers have been assigned elsewhere to prevent anyone with a conscience from objecting.

But since you are posting from Russia in a group that ends in “Bear”, your rhetoric is suspect to begin with.

[Riva]

President Trump was elected and entrusted with the office of the President. Part of those duties include his role as Commander in Chief and entail military operations based on intelligence and other classified information, the details of which need not be argued publicly before an operation. Nonetheless, the WH and Departmaent of war have made repeated statements/communications via multiple sources. You distrust their information. That does not mean the information does not exist. And Congress was absolutely provided information, including classified details.

In sum, you have patently lied about disclosures to congress and the lack of evidence. Simply because your TDS riddled brain distrusts the administration does not mean that evidence does not exist. Even common sense alone suggests that these boats were not recreational fishermen looking to catch some swordfish.

[Nelson]

“ include his role as Commander in Chief and entail military operations based on intelligence and other classified information, the details of which need not be argued publicly before an operation.”

No one is talking about public disclosure of classified materials, Strawmanner. But they aren’t even willing to show it to the Gang of Eight, which has the clearance, the authority, and the obligation to examine military operations both before and after the action.

“ In sum, you have patently lied about disclosures to congress and the lack of evidence“

And yet there have been no disclosures to Congress, so you are lying, not me. Not even to the Gang of Eight.

“ Simply because your TDS riddled brain distrusts the administration”

It doesn’t take TDS to know that Trump lies. Constantly. And his Administration does the same.

Trust is earned. This administration hasn’t earned it.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

"Department of War" is a Hegseth playing-acting device.

[David Nieporent]

What is your basis for claiming the Administration and Department of War have no intelligence?

Besides multiple years of experience with the people running it, the fact that they have refused to present it — and indeed have taken extraordinary steps to avoid having to present it, like freeing later survivors of their attacks rather than prosecuting them.

What is your basis for claiming that they have relevant intelligence?

[Commenter_XY]

There was no war crime. That is you (and others) mentally masturbating.

There is no proof of a second strike (another WaPoop anonymous source, lol); and, even if there was a second strike, it is not a war crime. Nothing requires the US military to risk their lives saving soon to be shark shit armed narco-terrorists.

Maybe you missed the memo: The rules have changed.

And BTW, the tool you have is impeachment. Have fun with that.

[Sarcastr0]

"White House says admiral approved second deadly boat strike"
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/01/white-house-second-boat-strike-00671488

Also mentioned above.

You've taken to just saying stuff you want to be true.

Also, WaPoop? Good lord you're lame.

[SRG2]

This is exactly the story that the cultists claimed wasn't true because it was in WaPo and the sources were anonymous.

[not guilty]

That Politico article quotes the Press Secretary Karoline Levitt as saying, “The president has made it quite clear that if narco-terrorists again are trafficking illegal drugs towards the United States, he has the authority to kill them. That is what this administration is doing.”

Sorry, but a president saying something doesn't make it so. "No matter the context, the President's authority to act necessarily 'stems either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself.' " Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593, ___, 144 S.Ct. 2312, 2327 (2024), quoting Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 585 (1952).

Defining and punishing Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations is the province of Congress, as are making Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water, and making Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces, all pursuant to Article I, § 8 of the Constitution. That same article and section empowers the Congress "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof." [Emphasis added.] This bolded language necessarily applies to (and circumscribes) the President while acting as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States pursuant to Article II, § 2.

No act of Congress authorizes the wanton killing of civilians and noncombatants on the high seas, let alone making a second strike to kill survivors of the initial strike.

[John 4]

*crickets*

[Nelson]

“ Nothing requires the US military to risk their lives saving soon to be shark shit armed narco-terrorists.”

No kne is saying anything about saving them. They are saying you can’t kill helpless people clinging to wreckage. That is, unambiguously, a war crime.

“ Maybe you missed the memo: The rules have changed.”

And you’re OK with “We don’t have to follow the law or care about the guilt or innocence of our targets”? That is the thing that scares me the most about MAGA. Civilized behavior and laws are disparaged and barbarism and lawlessness are lauded. It hurts my soul to see what the country I love has become. My only consolation is from slavery to Prohibition to Vietnam to heterosexual-only marriage, when America realizes that they have supported evil, they turn away from it and embrace good. We aren’t perfect, but we learn from our mistakes.

“ And BTW, the tool you have is impeachment. Have fun with that.”

Nonsense. This is a legal issue, not a political one. Saying, “I’m a political person so you can’t prosecute me” is patently false.

[David Nieporent]

“ Nothing requires the US military to risk their lives saving soon to be shark shit armed narco-terrorists.”

Well, there's basic human decency — something you apparently lack — and also they actually are legally required to do so, but also we're talking about whether they were affirmatively murdered, not whether we merely failed to save them.

[Commenter_XY]

We lose ~100K Americans to drug ODs; fentanyl is roughly half the total, cocaine and meth have increased also. The pandemic really walloped America, look how fentanyl use spiked. It is sobering. And it must end.

https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates#Fig2

I'm not Ok with Fentanyl, Cocaine or Heroin dealers shipping their drugs to America. Think about who those 100K ODs are. They all have a story, and there is usually a family left behind. Do they not matter? Those three drugs alone are killing middle and lower class America. Stopping the trans-shipment of illegal drugs into America will go a long way in addressing and reducing this problem. The wealthy can afford detox.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"We lose ~100K Americans to drug ODs; fentanyl is roughly half the total, cocaine and meth have increased also. "

80,400 in 2024 (still a lot). Of that. less than 30,000 were cocaine associated and of those, 80% also involved heroin or fentanyl. Marginally decreasing cocaine importation by blowing up boats (22 so far, it seems) in the Caribbean may make cocaine a bit more expensive, but won't significantly impact the flow of cocaine, fentanyl, and heroin into the US and won't make a dimple in the number of drug overdose deaths What we are witnessing is homicidal performance art.

The simple fact is that the drug trade is demand driven and if you want to save American lives the only effective way to do that is by curtailing demand. How to accomplish that? That is a hard question. Maybe all you big brained Trump suckers can come up with the answer, I sure don't have it.

[Life of Brian]

Marginally decreasing cocaine importation by blowing up boats (22 so far, it seems) in the Caribbean may make cocaine a bit more expensive, but won't significantly impact the flow of cocaine, fentanyl, and heroin into the US and won't make a dimple in the number of drug overdose deaths

Even if that math is correct, it doesn't take into account any leverage created by the new reality that the probability of any given go-fast/submersible unsuccessfully completing its mission just skyrocketed. I would imagine this makes it a good deal harder for the cartels just to forecast a certain slippage rate as they historically have, based on the marine equivalent of the big sky theory. IOW, I think it's way too early in the game to declare how much of an effect this new policy will or can actually have.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"the new reality that the probability of any given go-fast/submersible unsuccessfully completing its mission just skyrocketed."

Did it skyrocket? 22 boats so far, out of how many? What percentage of cocaine is trafficked by these boats as opposed to other methods? How much of the cocaine that is smuggled into the US either originates or passes through Venezuela?

" IOW, I think it's way too early in the game to declare how much of an effect this new policy will or can actually have."

As someone else pointed out, we've been fighting the war on drugs for a long time and the drugs are winning. I stand by my assertion: if you want to significantly decrease importation of drugs and the consequent human toll on Americans, the best way, perhaps the only effective way, is to reduce demand.

[loki13]

The person you're replying to (can't tell) is an idiot, who replaces supposition with actual knowledge. I mean, I'm guessing he doesn't know what JIATF is (although will likely quickly google it to cover up his lack of knowledge).

Anyhoo, the vast vast vast majority of drugs (meth and fentanyl) are manufactured in Mexico and smuggled through overland routes. Because there are so many well-established and great overland routes (and this includes both clandestine routes as well as smuggling through recognized ports of entry), this is also the primary entry point for trans shipments of Cocaine and Heroin as well.

The majority of the violence between cartels in Mexico is due to battles over two things- the ports (to control the ability to receive precursor drugs) and the overland routes. For example, the Sinaloa cartel has achieved such power not just because of their long-established overland smuggling routes (mainly near-total control over Arizona routes as well as significant California routes), but also because of their control over the ports of Mazatlan and Manzanillo.

And so on.

As I already pointed out, almost no cocaine flows from Venezuela to the US. Venezuela is used as a trans shipment point for Columbian cocaine to Europe- it goes to Venezuela, and then is shipped to other European Caribbean islands (see, e.g., T&T) before going to Europe- but not the US.

But these are just, you know, facts. Things that this administration and its bootlickers are allergic to.

[Life of Brian]

Did it skyrocket? 22 boats so far, out of how many?

When I said "skyrocket" I was talking about the ex ante odds of failure that a cartel would have to take into account given that any craft can now be far more efficiently targeted by forces it can't outrun, but we can look at the actual stats as well.

Figure 6 of this report shows Coast Guard seizures of cocaine for 2020-2023 (a map of the referenced districts is on page 18). Those run about 140-150 metric tons per year, or 12-13 per month.

Volume per boat varies a good deal, but from this list of recent interdictions an average of 1.5-2 metric tons for a go-fast boat is probably in the ballpark, with submersibles probably running 2-3x that.

So back of the napkin, 22 vessels are probably good for 40+ metric tons.

Add that to the ~45 metric tons of traditional interdictions since early August, and you're looking at 80-90 metric tons over 4 months, or 20+ per month.

Consumption statistics are of course tougher to nail down, but one source estimated 145 metric tons in 2010. So again back of the napkin, Coast Guard alone was seizing about 1x consumption, and now we're pushing that closer to 2x. That seems pretty seismic from a supplier's perspective.

I stand by my assertion: if you want to significantly decrease importation of drugs and the consequent human toll on Americans, the best way, perhaps the only effective way, is to reduce demand.

I don't at all disagree that we need to continue to work on the demand side as well. But I don't think it's controversial that a decent slice of the demand is opportunistic rather than addictive, and that will be responsive to price just like any other market good.

[Life of Brian]

As I already pointed out, almost no cocaine flows from Venezuela to the US.

I mean, there was a time not too terribly long ago when we were able to frankly discuss how patently untrue that is, but I understand these days it's far more trendy to contort into pretzel knots trying to make anything the administration does look as grotesquely wrong-headed as possible.

That inconvenient fact aside, no doubt someone as worldly-wise as you've assured us you are has at some point consulted a map of the actual locations of the strikes, and would know that not even close to all of them are neatly clustered around Venezuela, or even in the same body of water.

And since I know you know that, this sort of chin-stroking, red-herring-acronym-spouting faux analysis is far past the realm of innocent mistake.

[Sarcastr0]

In addition to the numbers not working as Stella Link's Ghost pointed out, even if they did 'problem big so murder is on the table now' is not how any of this works.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

I find it difficult to understand how an person with even a bit of moral integrity can justify the summary execution of people for crimes which do not warrant capital punishment in our legal system. Next thing you know we'll be blowing up people for overtime parking..

[not guilty]

We lose ~100K Americans to drug ODs; fentanyl is roughly half the total, cocaine and meth have increased also. The pandemic really walloped America, look how fentanyl use spiked. It is sobering. And it must end.

https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates#Fig2

I'm not Ok with Fentanyl, Cocaine or Heroin dealers shipping their drugs to America. Think about who those 100K ODs are. They all have a story, and there is usually a family left behind. Do they not matter? Those three drugs alone are killing middle and lower class America. Stopping the trans-shipment of illegal drugs into America will go a long way in addressing and reducing this problem. The wealthy can afford detox.

Do you know what your screed here omits, XY? Any vestige of legal authority for the Caribbean strikes. The rule of law matters. Interdiction, confiscation of contraband, arrest and trial of the traffickers advances and respects the rule of law. Wanton killing of suspected traffickers destroys it.

[David Nieporent]

Fentanyl doesn't kill people; people kill people.

[Nelson]

“ We lose ~100K Americans to drug ODs”

And? They make their choices. No one is holding them down and forcing them to take drugs. While some may have come by their addiction due to the organized lies of people like the Sacklers, the vast majority of addicts are people who chose to take drugs.

The war in drugs is a failure and a terrible policy. People sell drugs because other people want drugs. It isn’t on the suppliers, they’re just providing what people want.

“ It is sobering. And it must end.”

There’s a reason Prohibition failed. People like taking drugs, be it alcohol or weed or coke or opioids. No amount of effort on the part of the government will ever change that. Your end-goal is impossible to achieve.

“ They all have a story, and there is usually a family left behind”

Everyone has a story. Millions of people use illegal drugs every day and are perfectly functional, contributing members if society. The fact that a small percentage, through tgrir own choices, screw up their lives and the lives of their families isn’t s justification for the government to kill people.

Personal accountability is a thing. No one else is responsible for your poor life choices.

“ Do they not matter?”

No one said that. But they also aren’t a justification for murder.

“ Those three drugs alone are killing middle and lower class America.”

What sort of dystopian idiocy is that? Addiction and drug use has existed forever, and it will continue to until the heat death of the universe. Middle and lower class America is exactly the same now, give or take a few points, as it’s always been. It certainly isn’t failing or dying.

“ Stopping the trans-shipment of illegal drugs into America will go a long way in addressing and reducing this problem”

That will never happen, no matter how lawless or cruel the government chooses to be. It is a multi-billion dollar industry because of the demand. And that demand will never end. Someone will always step up to address that demand.

I have to ask: why are you so irrational about this subject? There are plenty of other subjects that you have strong opinions about, but acknowledge reality when it exposes the nuance in a topic. You frequently ask for information and ask genuine, good faith questions.

The only thing you are this irrational about is Israel, but that makes sense given your religious beliefs (possibly Ultra-Orthodox?) and the relentless threats Israel faces. So while I think you go way, way, way too far in your unchallengeable support for Israel and your blind hatred for anyone even tangentially opposed to their actions, it is at least understandable.

But your equally vehement hatred of drug smugglers (and their willingness to supply Americans with the drugs they want) doesn’t make sense. You don’t have a dog in the fight and you usually don’t support murder without some sort of evidence. What gives?

[Bob from Ohio]

"helpless people clinging to wreckage"

Oh, is that the new spin from your side?

Living crew on an intact boat is what the WaPo implied. No "wreckage".

[Sarcastr0]

Living crew seems the material bit here.

[David Nieporent]

Living crew on an intact boat is what the WaPo implied. No "wreckage".

The WaPo's exact language was "Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck." That not only does not "imply" an intact boat, but expressly uses the term wreck.

[Josh R]

Maybe you missed the memo: The rules have changed.

I did miss the memo that war crimes do not apply to killing helpless terrorist survivors of (an assumed) lawful strike. Please provide a citation for that memo.

[David Nieporent]

1. There was in fact murder. People were killed unlawfully. More than one person did it. That makes it a conspiracy.

2. Even if the president could magically make someone into a terrorist by saying, "I declare you a terrorist," it would be irrelevant, as there is no terrorist exception to the homicide laws.

3. They were absolutely 100% not attempting to smuggle drugs into America even if you believe the government correctly identified them, which there is no reason to believe because the government has abjectly refused to present any evidence. They were nowhere near America and could not reach America.

[Malika la Maize]

The thing is, Riva-bot, Mikie Q, etc., are totally ok with murder as long as their guy does it.

[Sarcastr0]

Not just OK - it seems important to them that the regime can murder people without consequence if it declares it's important.

[Malika la Maize]

That’s a good correction. I think they wake up every day with a burning desire that some people get murdered. Bad people! As designated by their thought police.

[Commenter_XY]

First, I reject your premise = There was in fact murder. -- No, there was not. You are wrong. There was a strike against narco-terrorists who were members of a designated foreign terror group in intl waters. That ain't murder. Neither is double-tapping. They're armed.

Ok David, a certain class of speedboat with unusually high performance characteristics (and submersibles!) carrying drugs in intl waters near America (meaning, the Western Hemisphere) is not attempting to smuggle drugs to America (the worlds largest market economy). How I could be so obtuse? Yes there is an innocent explanation for all of that. By all means counselor, what is that benign explanation?

David, the problem you have is every POTUS from Ike onward has undertaken missions to kill terrorists who are members of foreign terror groups. And they have; all of them. There isn't a 'but, but, but President Trump' exception to that. Did Pres Obama murder Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki? Osama bin Laden? He did not.

Take it up with Congress. Persuade 218 House members to impeach, and 67 Senators to remove him from office. Aside from the Congressional nutjobs, there isn't a hue and cry in Congress that I can hear, so you have an uphill battle on impeachment, as I see it. Buena Suerte. 😉

Do you know when there will be a hue and cry? When wealthy drug consumers start feeling the pinch of higher prices and stricter enforcement (along with mandatory prison time). Then, there will be wailing.

[John 4]

Your entire first paragraph does not even attempt to deal with the rule of law. It is just a statement of your feels and vibes.

[DDHarriman]

He believes in a Living Rule of Law, the corollary to the Living Constitution.

The Rule of Law means whatever we want it to mean in contemporary times and it doesn't constrain us with anachronisms that are no longer relevant.

You know, just like the Constitution.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

just a statement of your feels and vibes

It is, however, where we are at these days.

The Administration insists that something is so. We then see if their say-so is in practice enough as a matter of raw power.

Or, worse, Congress or the Supreme Court backs them up.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"Do you know when there will be a hue and cry? When wealthy drug consumers start feeling the pinch of higher prices..."

I can't help but think that this is increasing prices -- in addition to the value of the drugs lost, they gotta but new boats and recruit new crews, who are going to want more money to assume the increased risk.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"Do you know when there will be a hue and cry? When wealthy drug consumers start feeling the pinch of higher prices and stricter enforcement (along with mandatory prison time). Then, there will be wailing."

You are unwittingly making a point. The people smuggling drugs in the Caribbean are employees of American drug consumers. They are being killed for violating the law of supply and demand.

[David Nieporent]

First, I reject your premise = There was in fact murder. -- No, there was not. You are wrong. There was a strike against narco-terrorists who were members of a designated foreign terror group in intl waters. That ain't murder.

Describing it in more words doesn't change its nature. What you just said = murder.

Neither is double-tapping. They're armed.

Another made-up fact which is also irrelevant. Killing survivors of a sunken ship is murder. Period. End of story. It is also a war crime. There are no words you can add to the sentence to make it legal.

[Bob from Ohio]

"sunken ship"

Oh, it was sunk now. As the facts slip away from you, you are making stuff up now.

[Nelson]

“ There was a strike against narco-terrorists who were members of a designated foreign terror group in intl waters.”

A declaration of “designated foreign terror group” doesn’t make killing them legal. It only allows for financial actions. If you don’t believe me, here is the information: https://www.state.gov/foreign-terrorist-organizations/

Note there is nothing about allowing indiscriminate killing.

“ Neither is double-tapping”

According to both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions, that is absolutely, unambiguously a violation of the rules of war, and murder.

“ Yes there is an innocent explanation for all of that.”

That’s never been the argument. You’re strawmanning. The argument is that military strikes against drug smugglers aren’t legally justified. A designation of a foreign terrorist organization doesn’t allow it, no matter how much you repeat the falsity.

Drug smugglers are subject to interdiction, arrest, trial and incarceration. Military strikes against criminals isn’t a valid use of lethal military force.

“ Take it up with Congress.”

“Congress doesn’t think it’s illegal” isn’t a valid argument against the law. This is a legal, not a political, issue.

[not guilty]

"First, I reject your premise = There was in fact murder. -- No, there was not. You are wrong. There was a strike against narco-terrorists who were members of a designated foreign terror group in intl waters. That ain't murder. Neither is double-tapping. They're armed."

Au contraire, Commenter_XY. Per 18 U.S.C. § 1111:

(a) Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. Every murder perpetrated by poison, lying in wait, or any other kind of willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated killing; or committed in the perpetration of, or attempt to perpetrate, any arson, escape, murder, kidnapping, treason, espionage, sabotage, aggravated sexual abuse or sexual abuse, child abuse, burglary, or robbery; or perpetrated as part of a pattern or practice of assault or torture against a child or children; or perpetrated from a premeditated design unlawfully and maliciously to effect the death of any human being other than him who is killed, is murder in the first degree.
Any other murder is murder in the second degree.

(b) Within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States,
Whoever is guilty of murder in the first degree shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for life;
Whoever is guilty of murder in the second degree, shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life.

Article 118 of the Uniform Code of Military justice, codified at 10 U.S.C. § 918, defines murder as follows:

Any person subject to this chapter who, without justification or excuse, unlawfully kills a human being, when such person—
(1) has a premeditated design to kill;
(2) intends to kill or inflict great bodily harm;
(3) is engaged in an act which is inherently dangerous to another and evinces a wanton disregard of human life; or
(4) is engaged in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of burglary, rape, rape of a child, sexual assault, sexual assault of a child, aggravated sexual contact, sexual abuse of a child, robbery, or aggravated arson;
is guilty of murder, and shall suffer such punishment as a court-martial may direct, except that if found guilty under clause (1) or (4), such person shall suffer death or imprisonment for life as a court-martial may direct, unless such person is otherwise sentenced in accordance with a plea agreement entered into between the parties under section 853a of this title (article 53a).

Which word or group of words in either of these definitions creates any exception for the premeditated and intentional killing of suspected narco-terrorists who are suspected to be members of a designated foreign terror group in international waters (where no determination of either fact has been made by any tribunal), XY?

[not guilty]

Still waiting, XY. Where is the "narco-terrorist" asterisk in 18 U.S.C. § 1111 or 10 U.S.C. § 918?

[DDHarriman]

>They were absolutely 100% not attempting to smuggle drugs into America

Look at this traitorous piece of shit. You have to be getting paid by an enemy country. How else could you say that with such certainty?

[David Nieporent]

Already answered: BECAUSE THEY WERE NOWHERE NEAR THE U.S. AND COULD NOT REACH THE U.S. Smuggling involves bringing things into the country. Which one can only do if one is at the border.

[DDHarriman]

Oh I see. When smugglers want to smuggle something they poof into existence at the border.

lmao wtf is wrong with your kind

[Stella Link's Ghost]

You are, of course, missing the point. If, for example, some Columbian peasant moves cocaine from one place in Columbia to another place in Columbia and that cocaine is destined to be smuggled by someone else into the US, that Columbian peasant doesn't become guilty of smuggling into the US.

But consider the American drug consumer. By financing the entire duge smuggling enterprise, is the American drug consumer guilty of engaging in a conspiracy to smuggle drugs into the US?

[Bob from Ohio]

"Columbian peasant doesn't become guilty of smuggling into the US"

Sure he does. Everyone engaged in transport of the drugs from point A to point B is engaged in a conspiracy to smuggle.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

" Everyone engaged in transport of the drugs from point A to point B is engaged in a conspiracy to smuggle."

Including American consumers who are financing the whole enterprise?

[DDHarriman]

American consumers are not innocent in the drug trade. That's kinda why it's illegal here, you know?

[Stella Link's Ghost]

" Everyone engaged in transport of the drugs from point A to point B is engaged in a conspiracy to smuggle."

So, are the people who sold Mangione the 3d printer used to make the gun and suppressor, and the people who sold him the code to do it guilty of conspiracy to commit murder?

Do you ever consider the implications of the things you write?

[Bob from Ohio]

Your are just being stupid.

The Columbian peasant is acting in furtherance of an agreement to participate in a criminal act. Its the very definition of a co-conspirator.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"Your are just being stupid."

Talk about being called ugly by a frog.

[DDHarriman]

If Mangione said "Hey, I'm going to murder X, will you take me there" to a friend.

Is that friend guilty of anything related to the end result, or is he just giving Mangione a ride -- innocently?

[David Nieporent]

You are, of course, missing the point.

He's not missing the point. Unlike some of his comrades here, he's not dumb. (Not saying he's smart — just not dumb.) He's evil, not dumb.

[loki13]

Again, XY, I provided an actual researched link. Here it is again-

https://www.justsecurity.org/125948/illegal-orders-shipwrecked-boat-strike-survivors/

It's not just a war crime under international law. It is not just murder. It is also, per se, an unlawful order. It is an order that not only makes the person giving the order liable, but exposes our service members to legal risk because the bloodthirsty moron (I would say Hegseth, but I repeat myself) put them in the position of either doing their duty to obey orders, or deal with the consequences of standing up to an a per se unlawful order.

I would add that this, unfortunately, already shows the rot that has set in when you have a Secretary of Defense (which is what it is called until Congress changes the name) that has gutted the legal department in the Pentagon.

Moreover, there is nothing mas manly (and I am sure that makes your nether bits tingle) than a Secretary of Defense who, at the first sign of trouble due to his lack of impulse control, immediately casts around for the closest bus to push his subordinate under. LEADERSHIP!

[Commenter_XY]

I read it, the article was informative, and makes a case. It was helpful. By case, I mean the case that Jake Sullivan (Advisory Board member) would make, and the case the Congressional nutjobs are currently making.

Impeachment and removal from office is the tool you have, if you want it stopped. It looks like an uphill battle to me. Do you disagree?

[loki13]

....uh, no. I think you are conflating separate issues. That article is specifically about the murder (the "double tap").

There are plenty of other sources you can read about why the whole operation is not lawful. That's ... well, every single "expert" or "military lawyer" or even "John 'I came up with the GWOT and love torture' Yoo" agree on, and is the reason that our allies no longer supply us intel in the area ... because they don't want to get caught up in, um, war crimes. But we can put that aside.

If the reporting is true, and ... you know, it's looking close to 100% now with the administration scrambling to craft new lies (or omissions, or throwing our brave soldiers under the Hegseth bus) to cover the old lies ... then the double tap isn't just an impeachment issue. It isn't a war crime (because despite what you are saying, there is no armed conflict) ... although it is a violation of international human rights law (so Hegseth probably shouldn't be booking foreign flights in the future after this administration).

It's also something that the soldiers could be court martialled for - if not in this administration, in any future one. More importantly, it's a violation of federal and state laws. Because ... it's murder. And there is a special place in hell for Hegseth for putting our soldiers in that jeopardy.

It's an extra-judicial killing not authorized. You read the article, right? Hegseth, unlike our king, doesn't get immunity. And because of the fact that this is clearly delineated as an unlawful order, you can't claim it's authorized in any way.

It's not impeachment. It's a crime. I'll let others dive into it (because Trump will pardon Hegseth, assuming Hegseth can spare some drinking money for it) as to the issues with federal / state prosecutions, but ... this is not just "oh, partisan differences."

This is murder, XY. Not just "killin' brown people 'cuz it's fun and Trump sez they bad." No. Just plain murder. Killing people clinging to wreckage with no justification and a clear prohibition on doing so.

[TwelveInchPianist]

The order Hegseth gave was probably illegal because the boats weren't legitimate targets in the first place.

But assuming that's not the case, an order directed at otherwise legitimate targets to "kill everyone" without more context simply isn't a "no quarter" order. Not every order has to have a disclaimer, destroy the target unless they surrender, become hors de combat.

[Bob from Ohio]

"simply isn't a "no quarter" order."

Its just telling them to pull out all the stops, make a maximum effort.

WaPo strongly implied the "order" was between missiles.
The herd here ate that up because everything Trump does is bad. But it doesn't seem to be true.

[Sarcastr0]

This is the second time you got mad at the WaPo for what you claim they implied.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"The herd here ate that up because everything Trump does is bad. "
That's just bullshit. The herd is objecting to this not because Trump is bad, but because blowing up those boats is bad. I know that you disagree with that but that's because you are an immoral, deviant, worthless pervert too cheap to buy a lifetime subscription to OnlyFans.

"WaPo strongly implied the "order" was between missiles."

That may be true and it may turn out that the narrative provided by the Secretary of Defense (there is no such thing as the Secretary of War) is accurate. But, if Hegseth's order was to kill them all, or words conveying that meaning he is still culpable even though he will face no repercussions.

[Bob from Ohio]

"That's just bullshit. " "immoral, deviant, worthless pervert"

A hit dog hollers.

[David Nieporent]

But assuming that's not the case, an order directed at otherwise legitimate targets to "kill everyone" without more context simply isn't a "no quarter" order. Not every order has to have a disclaimer, destroy the target unless they surrender, become hors de combat.

Without knowing the exact wording, it's silly to pretend that the admiral misinterpreted it, which is what you have to do to make your argument.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Of course. As I've said ad nauseam, it's possible Hegseth gave an illegal order, but nothing reported so far establishes that. For all I know he said, "Give them no quarter!". But that's not the reporting.

[wvattorney13]

I'm imagining that before D-Day suppose Ike gave an order to "kill all the Krauts on that beach." I don't think anyone would extrapolate that to say that Ike was ordering the execution of surrendering German troops.

It seems that "because Trump" the media is uncharitably interpreting Hegseth's order in exactly that way.

[loki13]

How do you know that someone who is an attorney is talking out of their posterior by throwing out hypotheticals without having any actual knowledge of the legal framework involved?

Hint: they tell you by their post. But sure, why don't you spitball some other concepts that don't actually fit what is going on?

"You know, if an Islamofascist ISIS member that Congress declared war on is about to blow up a playground full of orphans, I bet Joe Biden would probably fall asleep before he let our military deal with it. That seems exactly like what we are talking about here, amirite?"

[Sarcastr0]

This isn’t D Day. Your scope is way off.
This isn’t a massive invasion it’s one boat.

Also there is no war.
And no threat to military personnel.

Why did you think this was a good analogy?

[TwelveInchPianist]

It's a good analogy because it eliminates all the other confounding stuff and gets at the main issue.

The claim is that even assuming arguendo none of the other issues exist, the order to "kill them all" is an illegal order because it amounts to an order to give no quarter. The analogy shows why that's not correct.

[wvattorney13]

None of those complaints are relevant at all to the construction of the "kill em all" order.

[Sarcastr0]

You don't think the scale matters? That kill 'em all as applied to an invasion might be different than when applied to a single boat?

You're kind of a psycho, eh?

[TwelveInchPianist]

Why would kill 'em all as applied to an invasion have an implicit exclusion for hors de combat personnel but not kill 'em all as applied to a boat?

You're kind of an idiot, eh?

[Commenter_XY]

I read the article. I reject the central premise; there was no murder. There was not. There was a military operation against narco-terrorist members of a designated foreign terror group that resulted in the narco-terrorists becoming shark shit, and no US casualties.

You see murder, I see a successful (and lawful) military operation in intl waters.

FTR, I would feel exactly the same way if Obama did it (BTW, he did), or George W Bush did it (BTW, he did too), or George HW Bush did it (BTW, he did as well), or Bill Clinton did it (Yeah, he did). It wasn't murder when they did it, and it is not murder today.

Nobody is court-martialing the 4th Fleet. Get real.

[loki13]

Okay, XY.

The specific article was premised on the "double-tap" operation.

So why don't you actually explain to me, as if I'm a slightly dumb golden retriever, what you disagree with.

Assume the operative facts of the reporting are true-
1. There was a successful first strike.
2. After the first strike destroyed the boat, there were two (2) survivors that were clinging to wreckage.
3. A subsequent order (the "Kill 'em all" order") was issued. This is a "no quarters" order.
4. Pursuant to the subsequent order, a second strike was made, killing the two survivors.

Based on that fact pattern, explain how the SECOND ORDER was not an unlawful order.

Feel free to use legal sources including the Department of Defense legal guides, U.S. Statutes, fancy terms like "hors de combat," mandatory reporting, and so on.

Or, if you want, explain why the DoD uses the Lladovery Castle case as a CANONICAL EXAMPLE of an illegal order that must be refused, and then explain to me the salient difference in that case with what happened here re: survivors.

Go on. Instead of just making assertions, explain to me why the second order was a lawful order. You keep saying that this was a lawful military operation. In a lawful military operation, when is an order to kill survivors or a maritime attack justified?

Use all the words to create your argument that you feel are necessary, but do not try and obfuscate the issue- this is about the SECOND ORDER to KILL SURVIVORS. Good?

Finally- if you are going to WHADDABOUT, please be specific. Give me the exact WHADDABOUT where Obama or GWB ordered that the survivors of a maritime attack be murdered.

Dates, orders, etc.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Assume the operative facts of the reporting are true-"

This list of facts is not what's being reported, including from Loki's link:

Note that “Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had ordered the military prior to the operation to ensure the strike killed everyone on board, but it’s not clear if he knew there were survivors prior to the second strike, one of the sources said,” CNN reported.

So the order of events is this:
1. Kill 'em all order.
2. Successful first strike.
3. Order by Bradley, pursuant to kill 'em all order, to finish the job. This order was clearly unlawful.

[Bob from Ohio]

" This order was clearly unlawful."

clearly!

[Sarcastr0]

Imitation, flattery, sincerest, etc.

[not guilty]

I suspect that asking Commenter_XY to furnish actual legal authority makes him break out in hives, as it does many other MAGAts.

[loki13]

By the way, if that link was too legal-y for you, I just pulled up another one that explains it again, giving some historical context as to why America has these rules (and adopted them) and why everyone any knowledge on the issue is so upset about the second strike. It was written by Charles Blanchard (former GC of the US Army and later the US Air Force):

https://notesfortheperplexed.substack.com/p/was-it-murder-a-law-of-war-primer

I will again repeat- when the news first came out it was over the weekend, and I hoped that it wasn't true, because ... well, I couldn't imagine it. But here we are, aren't we? If the facts are true, they are damning, period. You can try to justify it with a hatred of brown people or something*, but you can't get a more textbook example in the military of an unlawful order- mostly because it's an example that is used for an unlawful order.

*Again, this isn't about drug smuggling as I've gone over repeatedly. It's about stationing assets around Venezuela. But if you think it's about drug smuggling, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you at attractive rates.

[David Nieporent]

I read the article. I reject the central premise; there was no murder. There was not.

Stomping your feet and saying lalalalalalalalalaIcan'thearyou doesn't change the facts.

There was a military operation against narco-terrorist members of a designated foreign terror group that resulted in the narco-terrorists becoming shark shit, and no US casualties.

Well, it was an operation by the military, but it wasn't a military operation because we're not at war. But setting that aside, an operation by the military against civilians that involves deliberately killing noncombatants who aren't attacking is called… wait for it… murder. There is no "It's really cool to watch things blow up" exception to homicide.

You see murder, I see a successful (and lawful) military operation in intl waters.

No; you see a murder. It's just that you get an erection when people you don't like suffer, so you're pretending that not using the word means the word doesn't apply.

[Riva]

There is no “case” made. The justsecurity.org screed is premised on the false narrative from the WP fake anonymous “sources.” If anything the case is just another in a long line of leftist pile ons to “get Trump.”

The latest democrat obsession also seems to be a welcome distraction from the seditious six color revolution messaging and the real political violence this country is experiencing due to the policies of Biden and the democrats.

And the democrats also seem to be highly incentivized to change the topic from the billion dollar industrial level welfare fraud committed pretty exclusively by Somali immigrants in Minnesota enabled by democrat misfeasance/ malfeasance. And just a billion seems to be a lowball first estimate. By the way, a lot of that money made it back to Somalia to enrich terrorists. Well done Walz.

[hobie]

So far I've not heard any evidence who these boatmen are, what organization they belong to, what and how much they are carrying, if non-combatants are on board, if any US citizens were on board, were they armed, were they headed to America? Since we know all these things to such certainty that we can take their lives, I figure we could at least release the data.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

These are really fast boats. What other evidence do you need?

[Zarniwoop]

Adm. Bradly is reportedly on Capitol Hill today talking to lawmakers. (via The Hill).

So we may shortly get a sense of who is underbussing who.

[not guilty]

NG, there was neither murder nor conspiracy. And your constant whining incessant opining about it won't change that.

What there was: Members of a designated foreign terror group (designated by EO), were transformed to shark shit in int'l waters b/c they were attempting to smuggle drugs into America.

Commenter_XY, you quite conspicuously omit from your analysis any actual authority supporting your vapid, ipse dixit assertions. Here is an essay by someone who actually sees where the bear went through the buckwheat, composed before the second strike to kill the survivors came to public attention, explaining how the initial strike on September 2 violated federal criminal law as well as the Uniform Code of Military Justice. https://www.justsecurity.org/120296/many-ways-caribbean-strike-unlawful/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Professor Lederman explains that the State Department’s designation of Tren de Aragua as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” and as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists” provides no authority for the President’s order to use lethal force:

Even assuming that the State Department had a sufficient factual predicate for those designations, and even assuming further that the persons onboard the vessel were members of Tren de Aragua (which the War Powers report notably does not assert), the State Department designation merely triggers the government’s ability to implement asset controls and other economic sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and other statutes—it has nothing to do with authorizing DoD to engage in targeted killings … which is why the U.S. military doesn’t go around killing members of all designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations. [Ellipsis in original.]

Secretary Hegseth and Admiral Bradley have criminal exposure for ordering the strike under 18 U.S.C. § 2, which provides:

(a) Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal.
(b) Whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him or another would be an offense against the United States, is punishable as a principal.

And the order to kill the survivors of the first strike is plainly a war crime prohibited by 18 U.S.C. § 2441(a). Professor Jack Goldsmith, a former head of the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel, has a cogent analysis: https://www.execfunctions.org/p/a-dishonorable-strike

Glib references to "shark shit" here are reprehensible.

[bernard11]

So you concede there was a second strike, now that Hegseth has admitted it. The Washington Post wasn't lying.

I wonder how many of the "It never happened" crowd will admit they were wrong.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I have a better idea -- jailing everyone at the Washington Post until they identify their sources, and then court martialing them for release of classified information.

And I mean EVERYONE...

[David Nieporent]

Um, a president has no power to "jail" people, and if the story isn't true then by definition nobody released classified information.

[Malika la Maize]

Fascists gonna wish!

[Stella Link's Ghost]

Also, approximately none of the "everyone at the Washington Post" is subject to the UCMJ and is not at risk of a court marital. Net even if MTG exhorts the Court Marshal to convene one.

[David Nieporent]

Dr. Ed is really stupid, but he's also a bad writer, and in this case I think the latter won out over the former; when he said "court martialing them" I think he meant the WaPo's sources, not the WaPo employees.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"I think he meant the WaPo's sources, not the WaPo employees."

Ok, you got me there. I saw parallel objects. Jailing everyone and then court martialing them. Upon reflection, I can see that Mr Ed didn't mean that "everyone" and "them" were the same.

[Riva]

First things first. We’ll address other commendations after we give the turtle a medal. https://x.com/PeteHegseth/status/1995291042346852861

[Stella Link's Ghost]

Well, if Giuliani can get a medal, why not a turtle?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce939gy19nxo

[Stella Link's Ghost]

Contemplation leads me to wonder: what would Giuliani do with a turtle if he were awarded one.

[Frank Drackman]

You really want to start this Bullshit? Barry Osama killed more Civilians in Iraq/Afghanistan, and Bill Clinton ordered the killing of actual Amuricans at Waco. Indict both, umm, maybe in Hayden Lake Idaho and let twelve men and women good and true sort it out.

Fran

[Malika la Maize]

Let a man who can’t spell his own persona’s name figure this out!

MAGA, folks!

[hobie]

And you know that no Americans have been on these boats...how?

[TwelveInchPianist]

Good Lord, journalists are terrible.

Hegseth should be throwing Bradley under the bus, but he isn't.

The reporting was that:
1. Hegseth ordered the team to "Kill them all" or something similar.
2. Based on that order, Bradely made the decision to order an illegal second strike.

So Hegseth isn't distancing himself from anything. His out would be that Bradley misunderstood his, orders, that he didn't mean for Bradley to go after people clinging to the wreckage.

But his latest comments make that harder for him to claim.

[DDHarriman]

Secretary of War, your subversion partisan.

[Bob from Ohio]

"indicting them both in federal district court "

I'm sure Pam will get right on that!

[not guilty]

Fortunately, Pam (bottle) Blondie will not be Attorney General forever. And no statute of limitations applies to federal capital crimes.

[santamonica811]

Was anyone else bothered (amused? frightened???) by Trump's response to questions about his recent MRI? I'm talking about him saying that he had no idea what part of his body had been scanned.

I've had more than a dozen MRIs and CT-scans over the years. And if you asked me what body part had been checked; of course I could have given an immediate response. (If Trump had given this sort of response after he was shot, then of course I would not expect a perfect or even an accurate memory . . . it would be completely normal for someone shot to not be thinking clearly at all.) Or if someone had been in a bad car accident, and was unconscious in the hospital, then no one would be shocked that you weren't aware of what had been scanned...especially if several different body-parts had been injured. You weren't awake at the time, so that's completely understandable.

But here? He went in for some advanced testing, and fortunately all seems to be well re his heart, internal organs, etc.. But the fact that he had *no idea* what part of his body had been checked is worrisome to me. That was my dad's response, during the first few years of Alzheimers.

The letter from his doctor should be reassuring to me. But after the crazy "All is good, and Trump could live to age 120" reporting from his old doctor (Dr. Harold Bornstein), I don't think I can trust any medical professional associated with our President.

[Mr. Bumble]

"I've had more than a dozen MRIs and CT-scans over the years."
You should take better care of your health.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Bumble, many patients suffer chronic, progressive medical problems. Some inflict those problems on themselves, with unhealthy practices. Others are afflicted genetically, or on account of environmental exposures they were powerless to control, especially if those happened while the patients were young. Thus, your uninformed criticism is inappropriate.

[Mr. Bumble]

"Thus, your uninformed criticism is inappropriate."
Applies more so to you than to me.

[Sylvie1]

Sometimes, for some (including me), getting such scans is an integral part of taking care of our health.

[santamonica811]

Bumble,
Thanks for your concern. Most were related to sports injuries, plus recreational injuries hang gliding and paragliding. In the past few years, sadly, multiple kidney stones (which I would not wish on Trump or on my worst enemy), which all required CTs. And I had at least 6 CTs and MRIs in the two months before spinal surgery.

So, let me readjust my earlier figure. I've had 20+ CTs and MRIs over the years. That's even worse, of course. 🙂

[Bwaaah]

I had a sports-related spinal injury (cervical) and concomitant MRI a couple of years ago. I thought my sport days were over given the condition I was in and what I saw in the images. The road back to "fully functional" (but not quite the same as before) was slow and painful, powered by hope and prayers and ongoing (self-directed) physical therapy that has become a way of life for me. But I now have lingering fears of regression, and intimate familiarity how quickly and disabling such injuries (or degeneration) can become.

Bumble's "you should take better care of yourself" is presumptuous. No matter how good any of us takes care of ourselves, life is a terminal degenerative state, and we're all going down in the end. As my grandfather told my mother, "You don't get out of this life alive."

Good luck with all that tough stuff. I hope chronic pain is not one of your issues now.

[Dr. Ed 2]

You do know that the MD reading the MRI is not the MD who ordered it, right?

I had a recent MRI to look for something in my lungs that fortunately wasn't there and it included a summary of my heart, liver, and other things in the immediate area. So if I were, say, a busy POTUS with a lot of other things on my mind -- and knew that I was receiving the best of medical care from a caring and qualified staff of MDs, I might not ask exactly why they wanted the MRI and when it came back exactly as mine did, say it said that there was nothing wrong with me without knowing (or caring) why it was done.

I think that medical & legal people look at this sort of thing differently from how a busy executive -- who has always essentially had boutique health care -- looks at it. My guess is Trump asks "anything I need to know" and accepts "no" as an answer.

[David Nieporent]

You do know that the MD reading the MRI is not the MD who ordered it, right?

I love this fake public service announcements from Dr. Ed, in which he makes up some claim, pretends he's informing people by saying it, and it has nothing at all to do with the issue.

I had a recent MRI to look for something in my lungs … without knowing (or caring) why it was done.

And then a rambling anecdote meant to make a point that actually makes the opposite. In this anecdote, which may or may not have happened, Dr. Ed actually did know exactly what was being MRIed. But somehow he thinks this defends Trump's claim not to know what was MRIed. And Dr. Ed tries to change the topic to "knowing why it was done" to defend Trump, except that the anecdote doesn't even support that, because Dr. Ed did know why it was done.

[Michael P]

There was no "exactly what was being MRIed" for Trump. They MRIed his entire torso, checking "cardiovascular and abdominal health". The doctors weren't looking at anything specific for Trump, but any finding would have become the focus of the MRI.

[Dr. Ed 2]

You can't help but see everything.

[David Nieporent]

There was no "exactly what was being MRIed" for Trump. They MRIed his entire torso,

Those two sentences contradict each other.

[Commenter_XY]

That is a lot of radiation = I've had more than a dozen MRIs and CT-scans over the years

After the pandemic, and The Cauliflower's presidency, with all the lies that were told (for our benefit, of course), how can you really trust any federal medical professional? To borrow Loki13's phrase: they lie, they lie, they lie.

POTUS Trump plays golf regularly (did you see him sink the chip shot from off the green last week), eats well, has money to take care of small problems before they become big problems.

Cognition isn't the problem here, for you. Political viewpoint is.

PS: Stay tuned for a special Hanukah drink. You know I will dig something up for you and your partner. 😉

[Frank Drackman]

There's no radiation with MRI's. Gonna put on my Physics Hat, Hydrogen Atoms have 1 Electron which rotate around the Nucleus, either Clockwise or Counter Clockwise, to keep the Universe from Exploding, there are equal #'s of both types. Whew!
The MRI magnet produces FM Radio waves that momentarily "flip" the Electrons in every Hydrogen Atom in your Body(Your Body is 98% Water, Mandrake, which means you're 98% Hydrogen) to spin in the same direction. When the magnet's turned off, the Electrons go back to their normal directions and the Elves inside the machine use that to make the pretty pictures. No Radiation, Radio Waves.
But that magnet is what we call in Medicine "Strong as Shit" which is why you can't have an MRI if you have a Pacemaker, it'll pull that thing out of your chest like the Alien in "Alien". And any medical equipment used around MRI machines has to be non-magnetic, which is why they have these cheap ass plastic stethescopes instead of the normal metal ones.
CT Scans, OTOH, use what we call in Medicine a "Shitload" of Radiation, I think remembering that an Abdominal CT was the same as 50 Chest X-rays. Advantage to CT is it's fast, which is why it's used in Trauma, you can get a "Pan-Man-Scan" (C-Spine, Chest, Abdomen/Pelvis) in about 10 minutes, 5 if the guy is really sharp.
MRI's take alot longer, those Elves don't work fast.

Frank

[Brett Bellmore]

Actually, the last time I had a CT scan it took about 45 minutes. CT guided biopsy of a tumor sitting inside my aortic arch. Wrapped up like a mummy, lead graph paper taped to my chest. Take a scan. Tap a needle the size of a knitting needle in a little ways. Take a scan. Tweak the angle and tap it again. Over and over until we reached the tumor without hitting anything vital.

Got enough radiation that if I worked at a nuclear power plant I'd have ended up retired...

[Bwaaah]

"tumor inside my aortic arch"

Jeesus, Brett. Between that and everything else you've described, how the hell are you still alive?

Miracles, baby. Life. Science. Technology. Practice. Skills. Miracles.

God bless (or whatever it is you say to this kind of stuff).

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"Jeesus, Brett. Between that and everything else you've described, how the hell are you still alive?"

He won the genetics lottery, obviously.

About this genetics lottery: two of my grandparents died before the age of 40 and one died at 45. I and all my siblings are still alive and three of us are older than 75 and, despite the odds, none of us is "desperately ill" or using a walker. What are the odds?

[Brett Bellmore]

It's the nice thing about really aggressive, fast growing cancers: They are highly responsive to chemotherapy. At the time, my particular lymphoma had an 85% cure rate if it was caught early, and mine was, thanks to an x-ray I happened to have taken as part of my pre-surgical physical for an unrelated cancer.

So two cancers for the price of one, that's not exactly winning the genetic lottery. Actually, I wish it had been for the price of one, cancer #1 was treated in Dec., and #2 starting in January the next year, so my deductible had reset before the chemo started.

On the bright side, even banks blink if you tell them that you're going through chemo and might be dead in a few months, so the negotiations over the short sale of our house went smoothly...

[Bwaaah]

"even banks blink if you tell them that you're going through chemo and might be dead in a few months"

Though we may call it/them "the man," as in, "I need the man to give me some time to sell my house," we're actually talking about people. People [almost always] have a certain amount of latitude to exercise discretion. And though people can misuse their discretion, only few get gratification from doing so.

Most of us enjoy a chance to be a good guy (even those of us who work for the man).

Amid it all, there's still a lot of people, and their goodness, in the world.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"There's no radiation with MRI's"

Then how come it's actually "nuclear magnetic resonance imaging" and what about the Radon transform?

Ok, that's a joke. But, does MRI not use EMR?

[Brett Bellmore]

He probably meant "no ionizing radiation". The electromagnetic radiation in MRIs is radio frequency. It will definitely warm you up like being stuffed into a microwave oven, but it won't cause cancer.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

'He probably meant "no ionizing radiation""
Well, duh.

Is it definitely true that exposure to EMR cannot cause cancer? Is this another subject about which you claim to know everything?

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, the EM radiation in an MRI is too low of energy to break chemical bonds, so it can't directly damage DNA, the usual way radiation causes cancer.

That doesn't definitively mean that getting frequent MRIs couldn't cause cancer by some obscure, presently unknown mechanism. Might be a unicorn behind that tree over there, too. Want to show me the evidence?

[Stella Link's Ghost]

You are the one that made the claim that MRIs don't cause cancer. I asked you if that is definitely true. Seems to me to be perfectly reasonable to question you about a claim that you have made, seemingly without thought or evidence.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Frank, there is growing evidence that the electromagnetic radiation of the MRI isn't harmless, that strong magnetic fields are also harmful.

We've been arguing about the magnetic fields from high voltage power lines for at least 50 years now, it isn't as clear as the damage from X rays

Remember how a microwave oven works -- water is a bent molecule, so the changing magnetic field spins the water molecules, causing friction which heats the food.

[David Nieporent]

He eats incredibly poorly. Is there anything you won't say in defense of a fat old senile guy that you like because he kills brown people for fun?

[Brett Bellmore]

Meet the Man Who Smoked 10-12 Cigars a Day and lived to 112

If you've got bad genes, you can lead a perfect life and die in your 20's. If you won the genetic lottery, you can abuse your body like there's no tomorrow and live to over 100.

Diet and exercise only matter to those of us in the middle.

[Sarcastr0]

Trump has won the genetic lottery in Brett's mind.

Aristocrats are just made better.

[Brett Bellmore]

Sarcastr0, Trump is 79 years old. Life expectancy for his cohort was about 73 years, and you'd expect most of those reaching 73 to be desperately ill. Instead he's walking around without even need of a cane.

So we already have established that he's a healthier than average guy. You might try taking that into account.

Yes, he won the genetic lottery, even if that annoys you.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

As I understand the information available:

In 1946 when Trump was born, it was expected that half of the males born in that year would live to be older than 73. But, it didn't work out that way. In 2019, more than half of the males born in 1946 were still alive though I don't know how to easily find out what percentage. In 2017, when Trump was 71, it was expected that about half of the surviving males born in 1946 would live to be about 85 or so. That implies that more than 25% of American males born in 1946 will live to be 85 or older. Of those surviving to be 79, about half will live beyond 88.

For Trump to be in the more than 25% of males born in 1946 who live beyond 79 hardly indicates that Trump is a winner of the "genetic lottery".

As for Trump's health compared to the average US male of 79, considering his history (social status, wealth, never having worked in a hazardous job, excellent health care, etc) it shouldn't be surprising if he is healthier than the average male of 79.

"you'd expect most of those reaching 73 to be desperately ill."
That's a really stupid statement. Of those that I know who are 73 or older, very few are "desperately ill." I would bet that your experience is similar though I doubt that you would admit it, having such a big brain as you do. What is beyond dispute is that most who are 73 today can expect to live to be 85 or older. Hardly makes sense to claim that most of them can be expected to be desperately ill.

As for Trump's health, we don't actually have a good idea about it nor how it compares to the health of the average 79 y.o. American male. But, we do know that he's had balance issues, has a strange gait, and that he can't walk a couple hundred yards (needs a golf cart to stroll with other world leaders).

Here we see again that Big Brain Brett typically has no clue. Just like Donald John Trump, he doesn't know his ass from his elbow.

[Sarcastr0]

He's rich. Your stats are irrelevant to that demographic slice.

You're putting on nature something that is at least as much about circumstance.

You do this a lot. You have some instinct for the inherent superiority of people you favor.

[wvattorney13]

It really is unbelievable. Their hate for Trump won't allow them to concede anything. It really is undisputed that a guy who is almost 80 should not be outrunning his younger underlings, but he is.

You would think that they would just curse the fact that Trump has had the staying power that he has instead of laughably pretending that he doesn't have it.

[Sarcastr0]

What is unbelievable is you assume motives and so don’t bother to engage.

My issue is not Trumps health it’s invoking superior genes.

You may be projecting.

[Frank Drackman]

Diet doesn't matter, it's just a way for Doctors to say "You're too Fat" without saying "You're too Fat"
(AP Breaking News 10-9-2025)
"Varinder Singh Ghuman: Professional bodybuilder and actor Varinder Singh Ghuman has died of cardiac arrest on Thursday, sparking an outpouring of grief. He breathed his last at the age of 41, PTI reported. Ghuman was widely popular as 'Vegetarian Bodybuilder'.
Citing Ghuman's nephew Amanjot Singh Ghuman, PTI reported that the actor was experiencing shoulder pain and had gone to a private hospital in Amritsar for treatment. He also said that the actor suffered a heart attack in the hospital around 5 pm."

[Brett Bellmore]

I've read that sort of thing is actually common in bodybuilders. Being a bodybuilder is probably more of a heart attack risk than a bad diet, actually.

[SRG2]

Being a bodybuilder is probably more of a heart attack risk than a bad diet, actually.

Add steroid usage as a confounder

[Brett Bellmore]

But apparently not the sole cause. Evidently extreme exercise by itself can cause heart problems.

[SRG2]

Thanks! Interesting though unsurprising paper.

[Malika la Maize]

Science take from a guy who, by his own story, hasn’t learned basic English in decades of exposure!

[Brett Bellmore]

I have an abiding interest in gerontology; My parents married late, so I got to watch most of my relatives die as a teen, and was keenly aware the same fate awaited me. It is highly frustrating to me that it wasn't until a few years ago that Alan Harrington's exhortation got any traction: "Spend the money, hire the scientists, and hunt death down like an outlaw." Billionaires are finally doing that, probably too late for me. I hope in time for my wife and son.

You can roughly divide people into three groups.

Group 1 drew the genetic short straw, and clean living is futile, they're going to end up sickly and die young.

Group 2, by far the largest, are average. Clean living allows them to stretch things out a bit, but they're still likely to die in their 70 no matter how careful they are. (I fall in this bin, and annoyingly close to the bad edge of it.)

Group 3 are the genetic lottery winners, and barring being run over by a car, they're going to live a long time whether or not they treat themselves well.

And doctors do mean "you're too fat!" when they say to pay attention to your diet.

[SRG2]

But the Group 3'ers who don't eat well are likely to suffer from years of unpleasant ill-health. I doubt Trump's incontinence is a symptom of well-being, for example.

[Brett Bellmore]

If true it would be pretty trivial at an age where most people are pushing a walker if they're not pushing up daisies. But, as it is:

Fact Check: Supposed Trump post on 'incontinence issues' is fabricated, stems from satire

Snopes: Did President Trump Experience Diarrhea on a Golf Course? Spoiler: No, he didn't.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"If true it would be pretty trivial at an age where most people are pushing a walker"

It's your claim that most American's Trump's age are "pushing a walker{sic}"? You're nuts.

[Brett Bellmore]

Fair, I was exaggerating. Only about 1 in 8 people Trump's age are using a walker.

But most people Trump's age ARE pushing up daisies.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"But most people Trump's age ARE pushing up daisies."
Which has fuck all to do with anything. Most Americans born in 1946 who have reached 60 (in 2006) are still kicking. You are neglecting the fact that a lot of American males die prematurely as a result of assorted causes not related to genetics.

As for people of born into families with the economic status of Trump's family, it would be my bet that most are still alive at age 79. Do you disagree?

"Fair, I was exaggerating. " Or just making shit up.

[loki13]

Seriously, Brett, where do you come up with your "big brain" made-up facts? Most people at 79 are pushing a walker?

My father passed aware a few years ago at the age of 83 (just before his 84th birthday). Six months before he passed, he was still playing tennis and had a handicap of 8 (which, admittedly, was down from his scratch handicap that he had most of his life). But for an aggressive cancer that took his life, he was in pretty good physical shape and certainly didn't need a walker.

Nor did his friends in that age cohort. Do some elderly people? Sure. But you're just making things up now. What I do know, and you probably do as well, is that age often comes in waves, and quickly. A person can be fine, fine, fine, and then in the course of a short period of time ... age dramatically, Dorian Gray style.

I don't think we should have Presidents that are over 70. Honestly, I think that we should probably think twice before having them at 60+.

But two things can be true-
1. Not all old people are in terrible health, like you claim, in order to make Trump some superhero paragon of physical fitness. Which is ... bizarre. We have eyes, you know.

2. If you've watched Trump, or listened to him, you know that there are issues. I would not diagnose him, and there is a fine line between "old and rambling," and "old and showing signs of forgetfulness, word find problems, and occasional lapses" and "old and showing some signs of dementia," but it seems pretty clear that there are times when he just isn't up to snuff. And you don't have to go into conspiracy mode about his bruises or swollen parts or other features to have observed ... his physical deterioration over the last eight years, either.

It's getting old. It happens to all of us. How is it that you parsed the last President with all of your powers of observation, and now you somehow manage to miss what is in front of you? I think you know the answer.

[Estragon]

Trump’s got your Dad beat— he claimed last week the be scratch… or maybe under!!

[Brett Bellmore]

I think it would be fair to say that all elderly people are in poor health by the standards of non-elderly people.

But the FDA persists in refusing to classify aging as a disease state anyway, which is starting to seriously impede anti-aging research: Even if you find something that slows aging, it can't be approved for that purpose!

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"I think it would be fair to say that all elderly people are in poor health by the standards of non-elderly people."

All people over 30 are in poor health by the standards of those younger. All people over 50 are suffering from dementia judged by the standards of those younger.

You're funny.

"Even if you find something that slows aging, it can't be approved for that purpose!"

We don't need no stinking approval, just market it as a nutrition supplement or whatever excuse is used to market quack bullshit like Prevagen or Neuriva or cryonics or homeopathy. As they say, a sucker is born every minute.

[Sarcastr0]

You can roughly divide people into three groups.

This is vibes.

Eugenics vibes.

[Brett Bellmore]

Oh, stuff your vibes where the sun don't shine.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"Oh, stuff your vibes where the sun don't shine."

You make shit up and espouse crackpot theories and get all exercised when your fantasies are pointed out. You are a very unserious person, despite having one of the biggest brains that's ever been a brain (self described).

[loki13]

SLG,

You have to feel some sympathy for Brett. Just think about the size of his brain.

Now think about how gi-normously massive his head must be to fit his mega-brain.

Finally, think about the tears that fall down his face when he realizes that he can't buy a MAGA Trump trucker hat that can fit over his supersized cranium.

Truly a tragedy.

[Ridgeway]

Did Brett really claim to have a "big brain", or have we just been invited to look at it, because Brett knows why they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese a "Royale with Cheese" in France?

[TwelveInchPianist]

What does Eugene Volokh look like?

(The joke probably would work with Sarcastro or Loki.)

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"The joke probably would work with Sarcastro or Loki."

I don't know that Sarcastro and Loki frequently regale us with stories about what geniuses they are.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'd say that at one time I was a genius, but aging and aggressive chemotherapy have reduced me to merely a well read clever dyslexic with an ever more faulty memory.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Brett, why do they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese a "Royale with Cheese" in France?

[bernard11]

Brett, why do they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese a "Royale with Cheese" in France?

I missed that discussion, but my guess is that French has no easy way to express a weight of 113.4 grams.

Somehow, "Cent treize virgule quatre grammeser" doesn't have the marketing punch of "quarter pounder."

[TwelveInchPianist]

OK, fine. Check out the big brain on bernard11!

[Ridgeway]

Well allow me to retort!

[Stella Link's Ghost]

It's also bullshit. People who win the "genetic lottery" can greatly reduce their life expectancy by leading risky and unhealthy lives. The cigar smoker who lived to be 112 probably didn't win the "genetic lottery," probably he won the cancer avoidance sweepstakes.

[Commenter_XY]

I only wish that you and I could get away with eating so poorly, David. I mean, just think about it. A chef prepares our daily meals (and others do the clean up!), using the finest ingredients available in a commercial kitchen. Yeah, incredibly poor eating. 😛

[David Nieporent]

Chef Ronald McDonald?

[Brett Bellmore]

Hey, Beef Wellington probably gets boring after a while, and while I'm more of a Burger King guy, (Habit burgers when I can get them.) Chef Ronald McDonald serves up some tasty burgers.

[David Nieporent]

To be clear, I'm not criticizing Trump for eating fast food. I enjoy a cheap burger too — when you have kids, it's often the simplest option — and there are so many inherently sociopathic character traits he has that it would be weird to pick this one even if it were bad.

I am simply pushing back on the "He eats well" claim.

[Mr. Bumble]

So what passes for eating well in Whitelandia?

[Commenter_XY]

Well no, I'm thinking Five Guys (or In-N-Out burger); they're pretty good. They aren't organic, sadly. I wish they were, I would go a lot more often, lol.

To your point. The sight of RFK Jr gobbling down McD's was hilarious. POTUS Trump has snatched McD's from a tray when hosting athletic teams at the White House. He has a Diet Coke button on his desk.

He is a billionaire, David. He eats well. I don't worry about POTUS Trump's diet. I worry more about an assassins bullet.

[Joe_dallas]

DN providing a medical diagnosis. Not surprising he got the diagnosis wrong with the exception of old.

[David Nieporent]

English isn't your native language; I provided no diagnosis of any sort. "Big Macs are not health food" is not a medical diagnosis. I did also call him fat, old, and senile, but the first two aren't diagnoses and are objectively true, and the third is a colloquial assessment, not a medical one; it's not the name of a specific condition.

[Joe_dallas]

David Nieporent 10 hours ago
Honesty is not your native habit

You provided a medical analysis of "senile". Not surprising you would deny your own statement.

That is especially problematic coming from a person who was an active participate in perpetuating the Biden doesnt have dementia theme.

[Mr. Bumble]

"Health food" belongs in the pantheon of terms like super food and organic that are meaningless bullshit.
All things in moderation for the poison is in the dose.

[santamonica811]

XY,
You and I profoundly disagree about politics (and about the meaning of 'doing the right thing.'). But you so often make good suggestions re vegetarian recipes, drinks...and I think you also chime in with book recommendations. [Unless I am confusing you with other crazy conservatives who nonetheless have great taste in books and movies. LOL]

(You were joking about Trump eating well, yes? I think Trump is famous--across the political spectrum--for how poorly he eats, in terms of Big Macs, litres of soda, and not a salad or vegetable in sight. The fact that he's alive and kicking at his age I attribute to hitting the genetics jackpot, rather than anything approaching a decent and balanced diet.)

So, overall, you are all right in my book. If we ever met in person, I expect we would have civil and interesting conversations on just about anything that was unrelated to politics.

[Commenter_XY]

If we ever meet sm811, I promise interesting conversation, good food, and drink. Especially drink. Along with much laughter. Those things I can promise you.

[Bwaaah]

And I'd gladly be in for all the same reasons.

[Riva]

You’re a clown. He was answering facetiously an overly aggressive reporter. And the same media would never have even questioned Biden’s inability to understand that he even had a test.

[Frank Drackman]

Remember in 2020 when Sleepy Joe challenged the Reporter to a Pushup Competition? Pussy Reporter should have taken him up on it, would have saved us 4 years of (Redacted)

[Malika la Maize]

Person who doesn’t know basic English questions mental capacity of others!

MAGA!

[Bwaaah]

blah blah, too

[Frank Drackman]

Not everyone's a Hypochondriac like you. I see Veteran's every day who say they have no Heart problems when they have a CABG scar on their chest.

[Brett Bellmore]

So, you don't trust his new doctor because his new doctor agrees with his old doctor? That seems silly; The more doctors agree that he's healthy, the more certain you are that he isn't?

Look, when I've gotten a CT or MRI, it's always been because I already had a specific problem that needed to be checked out. So, OF COURSE I knew what they were looking at! Same for you, I expect.

MRIs are EXPENSIVE. People of modest means don't get them done unless there's an indication they need to be done.

But Trump is not a man of ordinary means; He could afford to get an MRI done every day on a whim, and it wouldn't materially affect his bottom line. HE isn't getting this annual MRI to check out a specific concern, he's getting it as part of a routine physical. He goes in, gets it done, then a team of doctors go over every cubic inch of his body to see if there's anything they should take a second look at.

That's an entirely different situation from you or I getting one done. His getting this MRI is about as much an indication of medical problems as you or I getting our blood pressure taken during our annual physical.

So it's perfectly ordinary that he wouldn't know what they were looking for. THEY didn't know what they were looking for.

[David Nieporent]

So it's perfectly ordinary that he wouldn't know what they were looking for. THEY didn't know what they were looking for.

Even if your theory were true, you — like Dr. Ed — have desperately tried to change the subject. Trump did not say, "I do not know what they were screening for." He said that he had no idea what part of his body was MRIed.

[Brett Bellmore]

Oh, give me a break already. I've got 4 years of human biology, never met a biology class I didn't ace. I actually understand the physics behind MRIs, and can recognize what I'm looking at on one. So, I'd never say something like that.

Nobody ever said Trump was a medical genius, or that he spoke concisely. If I weren't already bald I'd tear my hair out listening to him talk.

You're reading way too much into this.

[Sarcastr0]

I've got 4 years of human biology, never met a biology class I didn't ace.

LOL

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, mom wanted me to be a doctor, I didn't want to enter a profession where my customers would tend to be dying. So I set out to get a career in medical instrumentation design, instead. Then life intervened, and I eventually became a mechanical engineer.

The point is, reading too much into a guy who notoriously is imprecise not being specific about something.

[David Nieporent]

He was entirely specific. He just specifically said something different than what you pretend he said.

[Sarcastr0]

Leaning on your own lay expertise is some prime Internet fail, Brett.

Especially when your expertise doesn't really apply to your chronic habit of sanewashing Trump's stuff.

[Brett Bellmore]

The only thing I was saying is that you'd expect somebody like ME to be precise about such a thing. I'd probably insist on getting a copy of the MRI to look at, I actually enjoy watching surgical videos. So if I got an MRI and couldn't explain what was being looked at, that would be a very bad sign indeed.

In Trump? It doesn't mean anything.

You might as well resign yourself to this: As a 79 year old guy with no obvious health problems, while his chances of dropping dead in the next 3 years are non-trivial, the odds are he's still going to be walking around and pissing you off when he leaves office in 2029.

[SRG2]

As a 79 year old guy with no obvious health problems

aside from the obvious ones...

[Brett Bellmore]

Too obvious to mention, yeah.

[John 4]

“The only thing I was saying is that you'd expect somebody like ME to be precise about such a thing.”

Is this real life? Legit lol.

[Mr. Hook]

Do you insist on interpreting your own medical test results? Surely any doctor would have to concede your qualifications when you explain those four years of undergrad courses decades in the past.

Christ, if you act this way in real life, you must leave a storm of snickers in your wake.

[Brett Bellmore]

I do have interesting conversations with my doctors, yeah. They actually find it refreshing to have a patient they don't need to talk down to.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

When I go to the doctor and discuss a medical issue about which I understand a little and then my doctor explains it a bit, I concede that it's probably my doctor, with about 35 years of clinical experience, that has a better idea of what's going on.

[Bwaaah]

"I do have interesting conversations with my doctors, yeah. They actually find it refreshing to have a patient they don't need to talk down to."

Same here. Doctor's don't have enough time to engage the matters of a patient nearly as much as the patient can himself. And when it comes to the more complicated stuff, the experts often know not near enough to prognosticate confidently.

Though I have little general medical expertise, in the matters in which I had medical problems, my case-specific knowledge and understandings got pretty high up there where the doctors and I were talking about roughly the same things.

And for those of you who "just do what the doctor says," you do your doctors no favors by being a dutiful bystander in your medical life.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

'And for those of you who "just do what the doctor says," you do your doctors no favors by being a dutiful bystander in your medical life.'

Well, when my doctor evaluates all my symptoms and indications and makes a prognosis and prescribes a course of action based on 35 years of clinical experience treating people with exactly those symptoms and indications, I tend to trust my doctor. Not because I'm totally ignorant of what's going on or because I'm "a dutiful bystander," I'm not, but because the odds of my doctor understanding this stuff better than I do are enormous.

[Bwaaah]

None of which I dispute, nor does that conflict with what I said.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"None of which I dispute, nor does that conflict with what I said."

Of course it does. More succinctly: I "just do what the doctor says," because when it comes right down to it, my doctor knows a hell of a lot more about this stuff than I do even though, according to my doctor, based on the questiions I ask and the discussions we have, I am better informed than most all of his other patients.

[Bwaaah]

"I just do what the doctor says."

Woops. Looks like Stupid just entered the room. And now you suggest that we have a difference. Do we?

A doctor doesn't typically even tell a patient what to do. (I never had one act like that.) He/she typically offers suggestions (a.k.a. "advice"), which often include options that can be mutually exclusive.

I never had a doctor tell me what to do, nor encourage me to just do what he says. They're not all-knowing. They don't pretend to be all-knowing. And a good patient is more of an interested party than a dutiful subject.

It's also worth mentioning that I've never found myself, in the final analysis, at serious odds with the opinion of any MD that treated me.

But I don't think you intended the kind of mindless passivity that you intimated there.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"A doctor doesn't typically even tell a patient what to do. (I never had one act like that.) He/she typically offers suggestions (a.k.a. "advice"), which often include options that can be mutually exclusive."

I go to the doctor because, for example. I have high blood pressure. We discuss things a bit, I offer observations, the doctor offers observations and tells me what I need to do to lower blood pressure. I am told what to do. I either do it or I don't. most often, so long as it doesn't require eating corn beef and cabbage or liver and onions, I do it. In other words, the doctor tells me what to do and I just do it. That's the way it's been my entire life. Go to the doctor with a poison ivy rash, doctor says get this prescription filled, take the pills, rub the cortisone cream on the rash and it will go away. I just do it. What do you do, flip a coin? Consult your horoscope? Ask for advice on reason.com? You don't strike me as an idiot -- I'll bet you just do it.

Sometimes there are alternatives. Doctor says, I can do this or that or the other thing or I can die. Doctor says pick. I do what the doctor says. I make a choice and I just do it.

[Bwaaah]

" What do you do, flip a coin? Consult your horoscope? Ask for advice on reason.com? You don't strike me as an idiot -- I'll bet you just do it."

No. I do research. I try to get up to date on current understandings of my condition. I like to have a very strong grasp of my medical issues. (I view medicine in a very conventional sciency way...I rely on the same literature that typical doctors rely on. It takes me much longer to read and grasp that literature than it does for doctors.)

But there's nobody to whom I delegate decision-making over my life by simply following as a rule. (There could be extreme exceptions to that, such as a person holding a gun to my head.)

With respect to health care, I think an MD's advice is [statistically speaking] a much better bet than, for example, the advice of a naturopath or a public health official. But I don't place my bet arbitrarily at a doctor's will. I seek counsel in a doctor. I listen. I consider. I question. I consider. I decide.

But you can just do what a doctor tells you to do. That's a way.

[Sarcastr0]

There's engaged in your healthcare, and there's war on experts.

Don't do a war on experts and think doing your own research means you're the MD now.

[ducksalad]

Well, guys, it's been interesting to read this philosophical debate about intellectual autonomy and if it is possible for one committed to such autonomy to nevertheless recognize superior knowledge in another.

But it seems to have little to do with the most common situation, which is roughly this: there is near-zero actual uncertainty among informed laymen or trained professionals about what pill one needs to take; or, there was uncertainty at the first visit and diagnosis but not afterward. Access to that pill without breaking the law requires permission from a doctor; and we both know the main reason I am there is to periodically exchange my money for his permission.

[Bwaaah]

All I'm saying is I think many people can serve themselves well by having a more active attitude toward their health care decisions than simply, "Do what he say." The implication that such an approach is in conflict with the role of a doctor, or that it's contrary to one's own interests, is by no means inherently so.

With detour signs pointing to a "war on experts" and "I need a doctor who'll be my scrip bitch," I'll bow out now.

[Mr. Hook]

Yes, you would be perceptive enough to tell that they sincerely value a patient who believes he knows as much as them.

I'm sure this story pre-dates the internet, but it's gotten a boost via social media, especially on university-related forums. Someone claims to be a current student in a university course and has shown up the prof in the middle of a lecture. Just flat-out beats them like a dog in both knowledge and argument. So the prof decides to get back at them and says, well, if they think they're so smart, why don't they teach the rest of that day's class The student does and, to the prof's frustration and humiliation, gets a standing ovation from their classmates because they do it better than the prof. Sometimes the student is an earnest lefty, other times a right-wing genius, but their victory over the so-called expert is always confirmed. Reading Bellmore's and "Dr" Ed's declarations of expertise in so, so, so many areas of human and perhaps even divine knowledge brings me back to that story. Their days are filled with besting those with actual training and experience.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

" Their days are filled with besting those with actual training and experience."

More likely, their days are filled with fantasizing about besting those with actual training and experience

[Mr. Hook]

That ain't how they remember it!

[ducksalad]

I imagine doctors would like to put up the same sign in their offices that auto mechanics put up in their shops.

https://artpictures.club/autumn-2023.html

But the style and rustic lettering wouldn't match the office decor.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"I've got 4 years of human biology, "

I thought you claimed to be a college dropout.

" I actually understand the physics behind MRIs"

I seriiously doubt that. I've spent a lot of time studying NMR as applied to petrophysics . There is a world of difference between being familiar with the basic idea and understanding the physics.

[loki13]

"I've got 4 years of human biology,"

...I assumed it was a #humblebrag.

I read it as, "I have only had sexual relations four times, but, like Sting, I last a really long time. One year a pop! Which sounds awesome, until you get into the chaffing."

[Brett Bellmore]

"I thought you claimed to be a college dropout."

Yeah, senior year, when my mom was in a bad auto accident, and needed somebody present 24/7 to take care of her while she recovered.

"I seriously doubt that."

What can I say? I WAS aiming for a career in design of medical instrumentation. But, yeah, I'm not saying I could build one, just that I understand the general concept, polarizing hydrogen spins, giving them a kick, and then reading off the radiation produced by their precession.

[Magister]

Nobody ever said Trump was a medical genius

Actually, Trump, self-proclaimed very stable genius, boasted of a natural ability to understand medical science, and said maybe he should have been a doctor (it seems unlikely that he would have killed more people that way than by mishandling the pandemic).

[Joe_dallas]

He didnt mishandle the pandemic -
Your response shows the complete idiocy of woke leftists. Somehow a president is supposed to be more powerful than mother nature.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"He didnt mishandle the pandemic -"

He certainly did. Perhaps you were sleeping. Those of us who were not comatose (i.e. the woke) observed it in real time.

He does deserve some credit for the "warp speed" vaccine thing though any president who was not dumber than Pike County Bob would have done the same thing.

[loki13]

It's funny, isn't it? The one thing I would definitely give credit to Trump's first term in office for is the warp speed vaccine program.

And yet, because of the rise of the anti-Vax GOP, it's the one success that he is doing his best to undo.

That's our Trump!

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"That's our Trump!"

Indeed. Of all the things Trump has done, giving the Felcher in Chief any authority within the government has to be among the worst.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"THEY didn't know what they were looking for."

Let's get real, Brett -- they didn't want to be the people responsible for not finding something they could have. The real scandal here is that the taxpayers paid for an unnecessary test.

[Bunny495]

As a 79 year old male who had a medical doctor as a father and basically had better than average medical care (if not exactly the same at least similar to Trump) I feel my personal experience allows me to comment on this. I should point out I have completed 15 Ironman distance triathlons, which has both pros and cons related to health. Also should mention I have two brothers; one who claims 'you are what you eat' while the other one says 'seems like everything I eat turns to shit'.

Point is time takes it's toll. As Jim Morisson sang 'no one here gets out alive'. As for Trump he has always seemed better than Biden both physically and mentally. Not claiming he is the same as he was ten or twenty years ago, just that for his age he seems far above average.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

" As Jim Morisson sang 'no one here gets out alive'"
Hank Williams sang about it a bit earlier -- 1952:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyR8b_05HFc&t=5s

Hank was certainly right as he didn't even get out of his Cadillac alive on Jan 1, 1953. The song's cowriter, Fred Rose, died on Dec 1, 1954. Williams was 29 when he died; Rose was 56 when he died. Both died, so they say, of heart failure, no doubt brought on by bad genes.

A rather irreverent tune about Williams's death:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFfM0oLgzwA

[wvattorney13]

What exactly is the dig here against Trump? I can't figure it out.

It seems that he got a comprehensive exam, better than you or I will ever get, because he is both rich and POTUS. They did so many tests that he is not sure what they were looking for and when. But the takeaway is that he is in good shape for a 79 year old.

So, what is the latest conspiracy based on that?

[Stephen Lathrop]

wvattorney13 — What's your over and under on Trump's actual weight? I hope you see the point of the question. He got a doctor to tell a grotesque lie about that. That has implications for the credibility of the rest of his public medical reports.

Someone above—was it you—characterized Trump as outpacing his juniors. Lately, I do not recall seeing Trump doing anything but tottering when he moves around, and clinging to doorjambs while he stands to excoriate reporters on Air Force One.

[Kazinski]

I'm glad the heartfelt concerns about President Trump's health turned out to be baseless.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5lx240greo

"US President Donald Trump "remains in excellent overall health" after undergoing a "comprehensive executive physical", according to his White House physician.

Captain Sean Barbabella released a memo on Monday that said advanced imaging of the 79-year-old president's heart and abdomen came back "perfectly normal".

He wrote the president underwent the MRI during a physical in October "because men of his age group benefit from thorough evaluation of cardiovascular and abdominal health".

The release comes as Democrats, including Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, have been pushing for the results of the scan amid concerns about Trump's age in his second term."

Its good to know Tim Cares.

"In his memo, Barbabella wrote that there was no evidence of arterial narrowing impairing blood flow or abnormalities in Trump's heart or major vessels.

The doctor added that overall, Trump's cardiovascular system "shows excellent health".

Likewise, the doctor, a US Navy emergency physician who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said results of Trump's abdominal imaging showed that "everything evaluated is functioning within normal limits with no acute or chronic concerns".

The doctor called the scan "standard" for an "executive physical" for someone at Trump's age."

[Mr. Bumble]

The likes of not guilty, santamonica811 and the other usual suspects will not be happy until Trump's medical report is in the form of an autopsy.

[Commenter_XY]

They're still pissed that Crooks missed.

[Dr. Ed 2]

More that Trump can eat the diet he does and not have massive coronary artery deposits. Which would have shown up on a MRI and apparently didn't because they apparently aren't there.

[Frank Drackman]

Stick to whatever your pretend Doctorate is Dr. Jill, I mean "Dr. Ed". Diet has abso-tu-lutely nothing to do with Coronary Artery Disease. Elevated LDL Cholesterol is a different story, and is mostly determined genetically. The other 3 proven risk factors are Smoking, Family History of early MI, and Hypertension.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"Diet has abso-tu-lutely nothing to do with Coronary Artery Disease. "

hypertension and LDL cholesterol is a different story.

Therefore, "diet has abso-tu-lutely nothing to do" with hypertension and LDL cholesterol.

[santamonica811]

Bumble,
That's unkind. And untrue (I'll speak only for myself here.) I have absolutely no wish for Trump to die prematurely. And I'm incredibly glad that the attempted shooting was unsuccessful.

There were far too many right-wing nuts calling for Obama's and Biden's death. And too many left-wing nuts currently calling for Trump's death. It's one of the ugliest aspects to 21st Century politics. Trump is an awful person, and an awful President. But wish him dead? . . . absolutely not!!!

[Bwaaah]

I think Bumble's got you caught in that "you're either with us or you're against us" thing.

[Mr. Bumble]

...and speaking of Minnesota Governor Dancing Queen Tim Sgt Major Pepper Walz; are the walls closing in yet or will the Minnesota Morons re-elect this prancing retard?

[Joe_dallas]

All the while, our leftists friends voted for two of the most unqualified individuals. A great reflection of their critical thinking skills.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

Harris and Walz -- not a great option, but much, much better than voting for the barely literate, narcissistic dotard and the simpering sycophant. Given the chance, I'd do it again, as many times as possible.

[Mr. Bumble]

Sure, four years of the dohtard from Delaware wasn't enough.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

When it comes to fucking shit up, Biden was a piker compared to DilDon.

[Mr. Bumble]

So what's fucked up in your life because of Trump?
Lose your landscaper and housekeeper?

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"Lose your landscaper and housekeeper?"
No. I live in Texas where the illegals, so far, have been pretty safe.

In general, nothing in my life has been fucked up because of Trump nor was anything in my life been fucked up becasue of Biden. I've been very lucky. Our country under Trump, not so much.

[Bob from Ohio]

His boy toy?

[Stella Link's Ghost]

Of course your mind jumps to perversion.

[Mr. Bumble]

"Perversion"? Projection much?
So you're OK, how has Trump "fucked up" the country?

[Josh R]

The doctor called the scan "standard" for an "executive physical" for someone at Trump's age."

Sounds like bullshit. Something prompted the imaging.

[Sylvie1]

Sounds like you want that to be the case. Do you?

[Frank Drackman]

The Doctor ordered it, or maybe "45/47" asked for it, patients do ask their Doctors to order things. There's a company that advertises all the time about their Scans that supposedly saved peoples from Cancer/Heart Attack/Strokes.
I've thought about getting one just to see what my Pancreas looks like but afraid I'll jinx myself.
Too bad Parkinsonian Joe's Doc didn't order a $45 PSA (that Joe wouldn't even have had to pay) 15 years ago (His Doc was just following the "Standard of Care") might have saved him from dying a painful death from Metastatic Prostrate Cancer.

Frank

[Sarcastr0]

Safe assumption is that Trump's fine. But this wasn't his annual checkup, this was bringing him in for an MRI.

That's not a "thorough evaluation" thing.

As with so many statements from this admin, Captain Barbabella's statement doesn't add up.

[Joe_dallas]

Josh R 4 hours ago
The doctor called the scan "standard" for an "executive physical" for someone at Trump's age."

"Sounds like bullshit. Something prompted the imaging."

Josh and other leftists jumping to conspiracy theories. - Full body scans are somewhat common for the wealthy and would certainly not be unusual for Trump.

[Kazinski]

Here is a company that offers MRI body scans just so people can check cardiovascular risk, without a Dr's referral

http://www.simonone.com/why-simonone

Here is another that doesn't use MRI but ultrasound:

https://www.lifelinescreening.com/lp/findahealthtest?

"Get Screened For Stroke and Heart Disease Risk
Preventative screenings for heart disease, stroke, and other diseases offered at 14,000 locations."

Costs 159$

Do you ever actually research anything before calling it bullshit Josh?

[Joe_dallas]

Bottom line - leftists are lining up with conspiracy theories.

[Josh R]

Trump doesn't know what the scan was for. So, he didn't request it. Therefore, the doctor ordered it. It sounds like bullshit that he ordered a routine scan, moreover than between annual checkups.

[Joe_dallas]

Josh R 3 hours ago
Flag Comment
Mute User
"Trump doesn't know what the scan was for. So, he didn't request it. Therefore, the doctor ordered it. It sounds like bullshit that he ordered a routine scan, moreover than between annual checkups."

At this point you are just making Shit up

[Sarcastr0]

What specifically do you claim is made up?

Specifically. No hand waiving.

[Joe_dallas]

Everything - are you intentionally dense?

[Sarcastr0]

I said no handwaving.

Strike 1.

Pick something, lazybones.

[Estragon]

All of these “this is perfectly normal” takes are going to look really dumb in 6 months.

[Brett Bellmore]

Or not. We'll see.

[Joe_dallas]

stragon 53 minutes ago
"All of these “this is perfectly normal” takes are going to look really dumb in 6 months."

Is that supposed to be a joke after 3 or so years denying Biden's dementia?

[Nelson]

Well, according to his White House physician he is 6’ 3” and 215 pounds. So perhaps it shouldn’t be trusted?

For reference Derwin James, Pro Bowl safety for the Los Angeles Chargers, is the same size. Do yiu see the physical similarities? Neither do I.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"Well, according to his White House physician he is 6’ 3” and 215 pounds."

Trump has long lied about both his height and weight. He has never been 6'3" and though he has lost weight, is no longer as big an asshole as he used to be, he's obviously way over 215#.

[Bob from Ohio]

obviously!

[Brett Bellmore]

I kind of suspect he's 6'3" the way I'm 5' 9.5": Like, I was years ago, honest. Just haven't been in years.

[Sarcastr0]

So his doctors are lying.

Awesome how you're so chill about that.

[TwelveInchPianist]

When's the last time your doctor measured your height?

[Estragon]

Every year at my physical? This may knock your socks off but they weigh me too, and even take BP.

[David Nieporent]

Actually, probably the nurses do it. /pedantry.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

I don't think anyone's measured my height in years. They just ask me how tall I am and I say 7'11" and they write it down.

[Estragon]

True… on both counts

[TwelveInchPianist]

Huh. They take my BP but just ask my height and weight.

[Mr. Bumble]

@ Brett:
Gravity is such a bitch.

[Kazinski]

I believe the nurse measured 6' 3", with his shoes on.

The nurse never asks me to take my shoes off when they check my weight and height.

[Kazinski]

He can't be in that bad of shape with his golf regimen.

[Estragon]

Ah yes the punishing regimen of driving a golf cart around. He could, of course, walk, which would be great for his health and I’m sure at some point the docs have suggested that.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

During his first term at some meeting of various imortant political people Trump had to take a golf cart to complete a leisurely stroll. To walk 18 holes would be what, about 3 miles or so (300 yds/hole, maybe). According to the internet, so it must be true, Trump Doral has an 18 hole course that is about 4.3 miles. I hope Trump doesn't try to walk that as I don't hope for his death.

[Kazinski]

A lot of courses require carts to speed up play. I don't know if Trumps courses do, but even where it's not required its often considered polite to keep pace of play up. A 78 year old may benefit from walking a course but anyone trying to play behind them is going to get a little frustrated.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

This is funny. You claim "He can't be in that bad of shape with his golf regimen." It's pointed out to you that his golf practice is about as strenuous as watching Fox News and you reply, well, he probably couldn't get much exercise on the golf course even if he were capable of walking that far (which he is not.)

[Kazinski]

18 holes of golf using a cart is plenty of exercise for a 79 year old.

Now admittedly the better golfer you are the less exercise it is, an 82 is a lot less exercise than 120. But to be able to achieve a 10 handicap you have to be in decent shape.

[Estragon]

What about “scratch or better than scratch” at 79? What kind of shape would you need to be in for that?

[Estragon]

No offense but you don’t sound like a golfer. Pace of play is minimally dependent upon mode of transport— indeed, those on foot can be quicker in certain cases. Much larger considerations include sense of urgency (be at your ball ready to hit before it’s your turn), long setup, and slow play on and around the greens. The only courses I’ve ever been to with cart mandates are ones where there is a significant distance between holes, and those are rare. I am not aware of a single top 100 course where cart is mandatory— if anything it is more likely to be the opposite.

Your comment is also silly for all the reasons Stella Link’s Ghost points out.

[Kazinski]

For a 79 year old? I would say if you are under 60 and in decent shape then a golf cart might not speed things up.

But if it doesn't help with pace of play then why do some golf courses require golf carts?

Arizona Grand Golf course is just one example of a course that requires carts.

[Estragon]

It’s right in my comment: distance between holes or other idiosyncratic considerations would lead to cart mandatory. But it is not common in the main. Of course at 79 the cart makes him faster: the guy can barely walk as is. But he’s not riding a cart because of pace of play, quite self-evidently. He’s riding because he’s 79 and in poor health and has trouble walking! Who would be heard to complain about slow play?! At his own course of all places? Let’s not be silly here.

[wvattorney13]

You guys kill me. Golfing for an 80 year old, even with riding a cart, is excellent physical exercise. A lot of young guys don't walk the course because it takes a lot longer and it is several miles of walking.

[Bunny495]

Just my two cents about getting an MRI. I described it to my primary care doctor as being stuck in a big 50-gallon drum and then someone beats on it with a hammer, she said that about sums it up.

[Stephen Lathrop]

You want to hear a loud noise? Take a high-speed pneumatic angle grinder to the rim of an empty 55-gallon drum. Maybe the loudest noise one person can create without resort to explosives.

But actually, don't do it. To make sparks around steel drums—maybe especially around, "empty," ones—is a bad idea. Residues and vapors. Steam clean those out before you put a steel drum to another use.

[Bob from Ohio]

"heartfelt concerns about President Trump's health"

They are ashamed about falling for all the Biden is sharp as a tack bull, so they are saying Trump is having the same mental problems and worse. Its all hypocrisy.

[Dr. Ed 2]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/person-rescued-house-fire-somerville-201513262.html

Somerville is an old once-gritty, now-yuppie city next to Boston. Eversource is an electric & gas utility holding agency.

Why am I thinking that corporate legal is going to be giving that guy a whole lot of grief for doing this?

[Commenter_XY]

https://www.breitbart.com/pre-viral/2025/12/01/organizations-rage-texas-gov-abbott-deeming-cair-terrorist-organization/

A question about this. What are the limits to these declarations.

Suppose a red state governor states that the Democrat Socialists of America is a foreign terrorist organization and transnational criminal organization. Or even better, a blue state governor makes that same designation toward the Republican Party.

What stops them from taking state action (stripping of property and/or financial assets, for example) based on the state (not federal) designation? The states have broad latitude via their police powers; how far do state police powers go?

[Dr. Ed 2]

See McCullen v. Coakley, 573 U.S. 464

[Brett Bellmore]

You're kind of, like, ignoring the possibility that it's a valid designation. That a lot of the Muslim organizations the left like actually ARE fronts for groups like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. That "From the river to the Sea!" actually IS a threat of genocide.

I'd say that's the appropriate limitation on such designations: You need to actually make the case.

Abbot has made some factual claims. Now CAIR will have the opportunity to dispute them in court.

But they seem pretty solid. Abbot's got a long list of CAIR personnel, highly placed, who've been convicted of terrorism related activities.

Their founding member in Texas, sentenced to 65 years in prison for financing terrorism. Checks out.

Their civil rights coordinator, sentenced to 20 years for conspiring to aid Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Checks out.

Their community relations director, pleaded guilty to fraud to funnel money to terrorist causes. Checks out.

Maybe you ought to consider the possibility that they're not accidentally hiring this sort of people? That they actually ARE a front group for terrorists?

[Sarcastr0]

Commenter was positing a hypothetical, which you ignore because you want to cheerlead Texas here.

Abbot has made some factual claims. Now CAIR will have the opportunity to dispute them in court.

Not how the burden should work. The worst libertarian.

Did you ever research these accusations? You lay them out. They're not very good.

The community relations director thing is from 2003
The 'founding member' is a dude from the *Texas* chapter. That's from 2002.
The civil rights coordinator thing is from 2004 and he doesn't seem to have been highly placed.

As always you tune your skepticism depending on what you want to believe, and no surprise you come down in favor of a conspiracy. You've always had a thing for Muslims having an internet tendency towards evil.

Think about if this was a Jewish organization, of national reach, with 3 members scattered across state and national orgs over 10 years ago, charged with...I dunno, failing to register as foreign agents or something. Do you see how some governor randomly declaring they were a money laundering operation might present some antismeitism issues?

Don't be a bigot.

[wvattorney13]

"Not how the burden should work. The worst libertarian."

That is literally how it works every single time the government accuses anyone of anything.

You do realize that the government must prove its case in court as well? There is no accepting the accusations as true and then burden shifting.

[Sarcastr0]

No, it's not. Hence grand juries and trials.

What proving of innocence are you talking about if it's pre trial?
What the fuck law school did you go to?

[Commenter_XY]

Brett, there is no doubt in my mind that MB and CAIR were appropriately designated as transnational, foreign terror groups. I am not questioning that.

My question is how far can a governor go?

Sarcastr0 offered a valid hypothetical; suppose a governor designated AIPAC or Nefesh b'Nefesh as transnational terror groups. They are not, of course, but the question remains. Could a state, like IL, strip those organizations of their assets in IL by the governor simply declaring them transnational terror groups?

My thought is that they can, under police power. Am I wrong?

[Brett Bellmore]

I think you'd, as CAIR is, get an opportunity to dispute it in court. CAIR is probably screwed at that point, AIPAC not so much.

So, "simply" declaring it? I don't think the courts would sign off on that. Declaring it with relevant findings? Maybe they would, if they were persuasive findings. It probably helps (Texas!) in CAIR's case that Texas isn't exactly going to get any federal resistance on this.

After that, yeah, Texas has the general police power, the federal government constitutionally doesn't. Will the relevant lines of the Texas Penal and Property codes stand up in court? No idea, frankly.

But I suspect they'll have the DOJ on their side in this, not opposing them.

[Sarcastr0]

'The government can do what it wants, you can just dispute his accusations in court' is some terrible libertarianism.

'The feds are into targeting Muslims' is also a tellingly awful rationale to deploy. But here you are.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, you know what? We don't live in a libertarian society.

So don't expect descriptions of the legal realities to line up with libertarianism.

States do not get to conduct their own foreign policies in conflict with the federal government's. If it's aligned with the federal government's foreign policy, they generally will get away with it.

[Sarcastr0]

You're saying 'let them prove their innocent once the government makes the accusation.'

We don't live in that society either.

If it's aligned with the federal government's foreign policy, they generally will get away with it.
Not under current standing doctrine and Constitutional law they won't.

You seem to be into it for the groups you don't like, though.

The worst libertarian. I shudder to think how your aristocratic anti-immigrant maybe-eugenics-has-a-point paranoid conspiracy libertopia would actually operate.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, actually we DO live in that society. Maybe we shouldn't, but we absolutely do.

[Sarcastr0]

No wonder you claim Trump's activities are normal for a President, if this is how deep your misunderstanding of government process goes.

[David Nieporent]

Maybe you ought to consider the possibility that they're not accidentally hiring this sort of people? That they actually ARE a front group for terrorists?

Even if it were true, Texas doesn't get to conduct its own foreign policy.

Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council, 530 U.S. 363 (2000).

[Bored Lawyer]

Terrorism is a matter of foreign policy? Who knew?

[Nelson]

I believe that the point is that naming something a *foreign* terrorist organization requires an authority that only the federal government possesses.

[David Nieporent]

A question about this. What are the limits to these declarations.

There are no provisions of the U.S. constitution other than perhaps the 27th amendment that this whole thing doesn't violate.

[Commenter_XY]

27A: No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened.

I am not following you, David. Are you saying it is perfectly legal? FTR, I think that it would be, under a states police power.

Please tell me I am wrong. I would like to be wrong in this instance.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, no, he's saying that the 27th amendment is the only part of the Constitution Abbot ISN'T violating with this action.

Which is a bit of hyperbole, but I'd have to say that it's not comprehensively wrong. If the legislature had enacted this proclamation, at least parts of it would be a clear bill of attainder. I'm kind of expecting the courts to say, "This sort of penalty requires conviction after a felony trial."

Of part of it, anyway. I think the first part, invoking § 71.01, might stand up, as it just enhances penalties upon conviction of established crimes.

[wvattorney13]

" If the legislature had enacted this proclamation, at least parts of it would be a clear bill of attainder. "

The fact that the Legislature did not do it is precisely what makes it not a bill of attainder. Here the executive made an allegation. That is more more bill of attainder-ish than the local prosecutor accusing you of speeding. It is a direct allegation based on evidence.

[not guilty]

The full text of the proclamation is here: https://gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/press/PROC_declaring_Muslim_Brotherhood_and_CAIR_Transnational_Criminal_Organizations_IMAGE_11-18-2025.pdf

Governor Abbott has reportedly posted on X: “Today, I designated the Muslim Brotherhood and Council on American-Islamic Relations as foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organizations. This bans them from buying or acquiring land in Texas and authorizes the Attorney General to sue to shut them down.”

I can't imagine how this designation is constitutional. Among other things, the members of the designated organizations have the First Amendment right to associate and advocate for their common interests. To disqualify such members from purchasing or acquiring real property on that basis would seem to run afoul of the unconstitutional conditions doctrine.

The right of the individual to contract is a substantive liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause, see Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399 (1923), which clause does not contain any asterisk excepting the purchase of land in Texas.

As to procedural due process, while I haven't looked up the various Texas statutes cited in the proclamation, I am highly skeptical that either of the target entities was afforded any opportunity to be heard at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner before the governor made his incendiary designations.

[Mr. Bumble]

...and in social news:
NJ Senator Cory "Spartacus" Booker has acquired a"beard" at age 56.
Does this mean he has plans for higher office?

[Commenter_XY]

Mazel Tov to Senator Booker and his bride.

May they have a life together filled with joy, happiness, laughter and love of Torah. For the uninformed, Senator Booker used to study Torah with Rabbi Boteach.

[loki13]

I didn't much care for Senator Booker based on what I knew of him publicly.

But I was able to listen to him on an extended interview on a podcast earlier this year (Freakonomics) and he was thoughtful, engaged, and while I didn't agree with everything he said, I appreciated the thought and conviction that he had in his positions. I came away from that with a much greater appreciation of Senator Booker (and yes, it also touched on the Torah study).

I've found that there are several politicians that are very thoughtful and can be quite different than you might expect from the coverage or the stereotypes. It's part of the coarsening of the discourse. Some others that come to mind-

AOC- She had a spot on 99% Invisible's series on The Power Broker (about Robert Moses) where she really digs into the issues with the tension in politics between getting things done and checks and balances, and how her own views on the issues and frustrations have changed.

Zohran- This is a weird one, but I saw this link...
https://bsky.app/profile/zohrankmamdani.bsky.social/post/3m6sgf54xv225

I mean .... c'mon. This is communism? No, this is the type of sensible reform that I would hope that everyone would support. I'm not saying it means that you should support everything he does, but it might be Nixon/China thing- maybe you need a Zohran to cut through red tape for small business? I support that!

Don Bacon- I have to admit, a lot of the current GOP seems the same to me. But a few years ago, I heard him speak at length about his upbringing and his past and, again, while I can't agree with everything he does, he had a fundamental .... American decency that shone through.

I think it's hard to actually know what pols are really like, given the need to raise funds and run when the climate only rewards anger and pwning the other side.

[Stephen Lathrop]

loki13 — I know you were not trying to be comprehensive. But maybe Senator Coons of Delaware would not belong on your list because there is no surprise when an evidently decent, moderate person takes decent, moderate advocacy into politics. But whenever the anti-politics cynics among the commenters start acting up, I have been tempted to mention Coons. So I just did.

[loki13]

I'm sure that there are a few others! I was just listing a few that had personally and recently (except Bacon, that was a while back) surprised me.

It's unfortunate, because IMO the best and most thoughtful politicians either don't get much publicity or, in the alternative, have to "play the game," and are just seen as caricatures.

Whereas the truly mendacious morons succeed naturally by being themselves. See, e.g., Jim Jordan.

I really wish that Congress would go back to defending its own institutional prerogatives instead of just partisan interests; not that they shouldn't defend partisan interests, but institutional interests matter just as much in the long run.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

Bacon reached the rank of 07 in the Air Force. Not a guarantee, but most idiots get weeded out before that. Personally, I've never known a dummy who reached that rank though I have heard of some.

Among the more thoughtful of today's senators I would include Michael Bennet of Colorado. I was quite disappointed when he didn't gain any traction as a presidential candidate.

[David Nieporent]

Among the more thoughtful of today's senators I would include Michael Bennet of Colorado. I was quite disappointed when he didn't gain any traction as a presidential candidate.

I liked what I saw and heard of/from him; he seemed the most libertarianish of the Democratic candidates.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

I've been paying attention to him for years and was pleased when he made his attempt though it came to nought. He's a decent, dedicated guy honestly trying to accomplish things for the country without a lot of flash or bluster. Too few like him, I think.

[DDHarriman]

Of course he did. He wanted to rise in US politics, and the best way is to cuddle up to the ZOG overlords.

[Nelson]

Hey, has anyone ever seen Rob Misek and DDHarriman in the same place at the same time? Suspicious, no?

[SRG2]

Nice to see a fellow Queensman doing well

[Bob from Ohio]

"Does this mean he has plans for higher office?"

Probably, most senators imagine they would make a fine, fine president.

But higher office has no plans for him.

[Frank Drackman]

I don't get it, he looks clean shaven to me.

[Commenter_XY]

The kids are alright....really, they are.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2025/12/teens-say-media-is-fake-biased-and-untrustworthy/

From the article:

The report opens with a blunt assessment:

“A majority of teens (84%) offered a negative word to describe news media… including ‘Fake,’ ‘Crazy,’ ‘Boring,’ ‘Biased’ and ‘Sad.’”

Those negative words weren’t vague sentiments. They were specific accusations. The largest category (19%) used terms tied to deception:

“Fake,” “False,” “Lies,” “Misleading,” and “Untrustworthy.”

Are they wrong? Not this time.

[David Nieporent]

"I have the same views on national issues as uninformed teenagers" isn't the flex you thought it was.

[Michael P]

That emperor has no clothes.

[Nelson]

Please, no. No one needs to see Trump naked.

[JohnSmith97]

As opposed to the billboard some leftist group bought near me, which is the quote from Epstein about Trump being the worst person ever.

I get that the left "doesn't care" about Epstein, but holding him up as some sort of paragon of virtue isn't the flex you thought it was.

[Malika la Maize]

2025 ACC Football Predicted Order of Finish (Media Vote)

Rank Team Points
1. Clemson (167) 3083
2. Miami (7) 2679
3. SMU (2) 2612
4. Georgia Tech (2) 2397
5. Louisville 2370
6. Duke 1973
7. Florida State (4) 1920
8. North Carolina 1611
9. Pitt 1571
10. NC State 1505
11. Virginia Tech (1) 1412
12. Syracuse 1381
13. Boston College 953
14. Virginia 871
15. California 659
16. Wake Forest 576
17. Stanford 426

Current standings

2025 Football Standings
SCHOOL ACC OVERALL
Virginia 7-1 10-2
Duke 6-2 7-5
Miami 6-2 10-2
Georgia Tech 6-2 9-3
SMU 6-2 8-4
Pitt 6-2 8-4
Louisville 4-4 8-4
Wake Forest 4-4 8-4
NC State 4-4 7-5
California 4-4 7-5
Clemson 4-4 7-5
Stanford 3-5 4-8
Florida State 2-6 5-7
Virginia Tech 2-6 3-9
North Carolina 2-6 4-8
Boston College 1-7 2-10
Syracuse 1-7 3-9

[Kazinski]

College football has gone nuts, here's the standings for coach buyouts paid:

Jimbo Fisher: $76.8 million (Texas A&M)
Brian Kelly: $53.8 million (LSU)
James Franklin: $49 million (Penn State)
Gus Malzahn: $21.5 million (Auburn)
Billy Napier: $21.2 million (Florida)
Willie Taggart: $18 million (Florida State)
Charlie Weis: $19 million (Notre Dame)
Tom Allen: $15.5 million (Indiana)
Tom Herman: $15.4 million (Texas)

[Frank Drackman]

Add Dr. Freeze's $15.8 Million, which works out to ummmm,
"Undefined" $$$ per win over Alabama/Georgia, his total "Package" works out to about $30 million or about $5million per SEC win.
And there was another Coach we don't even mention for 2021-2022 that we paid $15 million to go away (after 4 SEC wins)

Frank

[bernard11]

It's insanity.

Are these payouts funded by donors?

[Malika la Maize]

Stupid Maryland leaving… not that they would have made a difference here.

[ReaderY]

ICE has begun a surveillance program where it monitors the movements of vehicles, ostensibly to detect patterns of vehicles going to and from the border to identify potential smugglers. However, this program also and incidentally permits a massive database on the movements of every American vehicle that could potentially be used for any purpose. Because of the connection to the border, however, search warrants and privacy aren’t a problem.

This action is a step in the direction of “commerce clausing” border security - letting ICE do things internally, perhaps anything, that has some arguable connection, however slight, to border security. As is now being done with federal regulation of commerce, such an approach would allow ICE to bypass constitutional restrictions on internal surveillance and law enforcement by expanding the concept of border activities exempt from ordinaty 4th Amendment restrictions to cover essentially anything.

This is not just a Trump thing. Recently, the NY Attorney General attempted to “commerce clause” commercial speech, effectively arguing that any speech with virtually any connection to commerce constitutes commercial speech with reduced First Amendment protection.

The fact of the matter is, the logic underlying the Court’s Commerce Clause jurisprudence opens a path to effectively eviscerating just about any constitutional right that an administration cares to bypass. And if judges approve of this bypass strategy, their approval would be every bit as legitimate, indeed practically indistinguishable from, what is now routine Commerce Clause jurisprudence.

It seems that judges are now reluctant to do this. The Third Circuit recently turned down the New York Attorney General’s bid to “commerce clause” a First Amendment bypass by interpreting speech about everything potentially subject to the Commerce Clause as commercial speech and giving it only lesser First Amendment protection. But the Third Circuit had no real legal argument against this. Its reason for rejecting it was that if accepted, the First Amendment would be essentially eviscerated. But that’s an expression of idiosyncratic personal distate that another judge could easily and equally idiosyncraticly disagree with, not a legitimate general legal argument. If it had any general validity as a legal argument, Commerce Clause jurisprudence wouldn’t be what it now is. If the 10th Amendment can be eviscerated by these sorts of arguments with no problem, why not the First Amendment? Why not the Fourth? Being shocked, shocked by an a strategy when it is applied to eviscerate some parts of the constitution but not others seems just a matter of taste.

[Brett Bellmore]

The 1st amendment gets special status, it's the only amendment in the Bill of Rights the judiciary treats more than halfway seriously.

That's why everybody tries to shoehorn their civil rights claims into the 1st amendment; If they can get away with it, the government actually faces something vaguely like strict scrutiny.

So, yeah, there's no principled reason why interstate commerce clause reasoning doesn't apply to the entire Bill of Rights, but the 1st amendment is the last amendment in the Bill of Rights you'd expect the courts to play along with that on.

[Sarcastr0]

BrettLaw.

[Brett Bellmore]

Is there some part of that you actually disagree with? Or do you just like typing "BrettLaw"?

[Sarcastr0]

This is just vibes and utopianism. The exclusionary rule is quite serious. Jury trials are protected. We have restrictions on the death penalty. We take EPC seriously, as well as incorporation under the 14th.

You have a personal take on how rights should be adjudicated, and declare that it's just not fair that the 1st is, in your view, taken seriously and the others are not.

I have lots of rights I'd like to be taken more seriously. I don't claim it's bad faith by the judiciary when they don't agree with me.

[Commenter_XY]

Serious question ReaderY.

If you could wave a wand and do three things that would prevent a commerce clause override on any of our rights, privileges and immunities, what would they be? (What cases would have to be overturned)

[Brett Bellmore]

You'd have to overturn Wickard itself, and reestablish that the only thing Congress can regulate under the interstate commerce clause is the interstate commerce itself. That affecting or having traveled in interstate commerce doesn't mean squat.

So that if an activity isn't itself commerce that crosses one of the relevant boundaries, it's simply beyond reach.

[ducksalad]

Wickard itself depended on other earlier decisions that would also need to be undone, for example, the opinion claims that it is based on U.S. vs. Darby

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/312/100/

which does the same thing for labor that Wickard did to wheat.

[Brett Bellmore]

Not much earlier.

Central economic planning was a real fad back then, before the Nazis gave it a bad name, and FDR got to nominate enough justices that anything in the Constitution that got in its way was going down.

[bernard11]

Wickard was fine, given the Agricultural Adjustment Act.

A cartel intended to maintain price levels assigns production quotas to its members. The principal problem it then faces is preventing leakage - excess production - because it will bring the market price back down.* In fact, even an unsold surplus does this, because the overhang may end up being sold if prices rise.

Excess production, then, damages the entire cartel scheme, whether it is for personal use a la Filburn or sold intrastate, so to protect wheat prices it is quite reasonable for the regulation to cover all production.

*This is the reason most cartels fail. The ones that succeed usually feature enforcement by government, as in this case.

[ducksalad]

There's an implicit assumption here that creating and maintaining cartels is a legitimate power of the federal government.

I recognize you're not an originalist, but I think a decent case could be made that organizing cartels was not part of the original public meaning. Evidence would be other parts of the constitution designed to prevent Congress from limiting exports from a particular state, like the no-export tax clause.

[bernard11]

There's an implicit assumption here that creating and maintaining cartels is a legitimate power of the federal government.

Yes. But there's nothing implicit about it. I did write, "Wickard was fine, given the Agricultural Adjustment Act."

If you want to object to punishing Filburn for using his wheat as feed then the proper argument is not that it was strictly intrastate but that the cartel itself was unconstitutional to begin with. Once you accept creating the cartel, and enforcing its policies, as legitimate behavior by the government, Filburn has no case.

[Dr. Ed 2]

You'd have to admit that Rand Paul was right, the 1964 Civil Rights Act is UnConstitutional.

[Sarcastr0]

The CC does not override rights, or privileges and immunities.

Rights is a whole separate kind of inquiry than is a federal action within delegated powers.

[ducksalad]

One of our enumerated rights is freedom from federal authority that has not been granted to them by the constitution.

Interpreting all commerce as interstate, and commerce as "everything" makes that one meaningless.

[Sarcastr0]

One of our enumerated rights is freedom from federal authority that has not been granted to them by the constitution.

Enumerated where?

[ducksalad]

Um, Bill of Rights? Read the last one. It has a number on it, in case there's any doubt about it being enumerated.

[Bwaaah]

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

And even if that doesn't suffice, your implicit objection to the point is typical you.

GoooOOOO GOVERNMENT!!!!!!

[JoeFromtheBronx]

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men

Yes. Go, government, including courts that protect us from violations of our rights.

[Bwaaah]

Yes, go government, when in support of our rights. And no, DON'T go government, when in denial of our rights.

And no, to Sarcastr0, who plays stupid to the question of whether any such rights are enumerated.

[Sarcastr0]

I, too, support the government doing good things and don't support it doing bad things!

Weird take that I was pretending not to have the 10A categorized correctly in some grant scheme to convince people the 10A wasn't a right.

I am not your posting nemesis. You don't need to strain for weird takes to show how bad I am.

[Bwaaah]

"Enumerated where?"

[Sarcastr0]

Contrast you assholing it up with Joe answering my question.

[Bwaaah]

Right. Good. Now you know.

Mark the date.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

I think the 10A is the usual go-to here.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Justice Ginsburg in the first Bond v. U.S. case noted that "Bond, like any other defendant, has a personal right not to be convicted under a constitutionally invalid law."

So, she framed it as a "right" issue that "In this case, Bond argues that the statute under which she was charged, 18 U. S. C. §229, exceeds Congress' enumerated powers and violates the Tenth Amendment."

[Sarcastr0]

I'm not 100% that the 10A enumerates a right given it's language, but Joe's precedent seems pretty on point.

Appreciate the pointer.

[Brett Bellmore]

Before "Lochnerism" became a judicial swear word, economic liberty was part of our rights, privileges, and immunities.

So, yeah, it actually did.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, we are all aware you look at the 1930s and think it's got more freedom for the worker than today.

It goes well with your belief that the rich are built better than the little people.

[Life of Brian]

However, this program also and incidentally permits a massive database on the movements of every American vehicle that could potentially be used for any purpose.

Do you have a source for "every American vehicle"? Even this recent and fairly extensive piece can't seem to do any better than "found a few cameras a bit further in from the border than the traditional 100-mile buffer zone."

Because of the connection to the border, however, search warrants and privacy aren’t a problem.

Serious question: if I don't even have a reasonable expectation of privacy in who I talk to on my own personal cell phone, why in the world would I have a reasonable expectation of privacy in where and when I drive my car in plain public view?

[Stella Link's Ghost]

"why in the world would I have a reasonable expectation of privacy in where and when I drive my car in plain public view?"

I don't think you do have any expectation of privacy about where and when you drive you car. One may argue that you should, but my understanding is that you don't.

[Life of Brian]

Oh, I agree. That's why I was so surprised at OP's appeals to privacy and process for an area where to my knowledge neither applies.

To be clear, I have long held a deep concern for what our lives become in the shadow of massive we're-here-to-help databases of activity of all sorts, but unfortunately the 9/11 era pretty squarely overrode the national resistance to that concept and there doesn't seem to be anything uniquely offensive about this instance.

[David Nieporent]

I don't think you do have any expectation of privacy about where and when you drive you car. One may argue that you should, but my understanding is that you don't.

But see Carpenter (maybe I can summon Prof. Kerr if I say it three times while looking in the mirror?). You do have some reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to your movements. (I am using shorthand here, not rigorously describing the holding.)

[Life of Brian]

I would be overjoyed if the rationale in Carpenter for location data that tracks everywhere a given cell phone goes might someday be extended to a license plate camera that captures every car that passes by a specific location, but I'd personally rate those odds as slim to none since the two applications are vastly different below the 30k-foot level.

[wvattorney13]

"Serious question: if I don't even have a reasonable expectation of privacy in who I talk to on my own personal cell phone, why in the world would I have a reasonable expectation of privacy in where and when I drive my car in plain public view?"

Well, in fairness to the argument, doesn't it seem like bootstrapping for the government to require a unique identifier on your car and then argue that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy because you are exposing your car's whereabouts to others?

If the state did not require a license plate as a condition of driving then people would not be voluntarily exposing their locations.

And this is sort of a Jones issue. While the police could see that there is Life of Brian on the road, to have a database of your movements would have required a massive effort at the founding. Today they can do it with technology. As technology improves there will be little left of privacy.

[Life of Brian]

Well, in fairness to the argument, doesn't it seem like bootstrapping for the government to require a unique identifier on your car and then argue that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy because you are exposing your car's whereabouts to others?

I hear what you're saying and don't disagree in concept, but I'm not sure that it helps in this use case since the state requires the license and the feds are using the plate info.

As technology improves there will be little left of privacy.

Agreed, and as I mentioned above very unfortunate. I wish we could have headed off this avalanche a couple of decades ago.

[Kazinski]

This is completely incoherent:
"This action is a step in the direction of “commerce clausing” border security - letting ICE do things internally, perhaps anything, that has some arguable connection, however slight, to border security. As is now being done with federal regulation of commerce, such an approach would allow ICE to bypass constitutional restrictions on internal surveillance and law enforcement by expanding the concept of border activities exempt from ordinaty 4th Amendment restrictions to cover essentially anything."

What allows license plate reader databases is exactly the same thing that allows people to video tape ICE raids on public streets.

What happens in public is public and can be photographed. and scanned.

Where there might be a scope for public regulation is private companies selling the data they compile, but that does seem legal based.

Where states may be able to curtail the use of license plate reader services is to forbid any state or local public entity from subscribing to or paying for license plate reader data, or using their own trades and storing the information. That would reduce the market, and might help curtail its use if enough states did that.

But I can imagine a jurisdiction like NY or California allowing their own law enforcement agencies to use and buy license plate reader data, and then trying to pass a law that outlaws ICE using the data.

That won't fly.

[Swede425]

Got two good-sized does this firearms season. Oldest son got a 4 point. Son-in-law got an 8 point (on the golf course his grandparents own).
I'm thinking of picking up the bow again after firearms season but it has gotten cold here in Michigan and even colder in Northern Michigan where my property is. I hunt in mostly wool but I find it harder to endure the cold when my chest freezers are almost full already.

[Brett Bellmore]

Growing up, even before we moved out to the country an uncle owned serious acreage in the Northern lower peninsula, (Roscommon) and Dad would go deer hunting there, I got to do some rabbit hunting. Then we moved out to the country, and I could do that stuff in my own backyard.

In short, I have no experience in finding a place to hunt, and haven't hunted since we had to relocate to a suburb in SC.

Not that we don't have deer, there are plenty. Just a month ago one of them was in our chicken coop grazing on the chicken feed while the birds were out in the backyard.

But I suspect I'd get in trouble if I shot any. Maybe if I took up bow hunting.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Check with the warden -- most states have exceptions for "nuisance" animals that harm your livestock. Breaking into your chicken coop strikes me as that -- my guess is he'll come out, see the damage and give you permission to shoot the deer the next time.

[John 4]

Wow, the Washington Post was right again. Shocking.

[loki13]

Also shocking? The administration lied again.

In other news, the sun rose, and will set tonight. Also, your dog will lick itself.

[JohnSmith97]

"Tim Walz is crumbling, along with his 2028 hopes"

I assume you mean this opinion piece.

[DDHarriman]

The Seditious Six are now out there giving speeches about how the military isn't about lethality or war fighting, but the "Rule of Law".

We are watching a color revolution in progress. Let's hope the good guys win, or every White person in the US will be living past their "best buy" dates. The trajectory started a few decades ago by the Globalists to eradicate the Goy will pick back up and accelerate.

Your White children will likely be the last, if the Democrats are successful in a second coup.

[grb]

DDHarriman : "The Seditious Six are .... (incoherent babble)"

Two Points :

1. The "Seditious Six" are looking pretty prophetic now, aren't they?
2. I'm a White person and sleep just fine.

Of course, I'm not a whiny 24/7 Victim™ rightwing pearl-clutching snowflake loser like you, DDH. Finding whinging perpetual victimhood boring is one reason I could never be a rightwinger. (Also, it looks like you're required to have a lobotomy to get club membership).

[Sarcastr0]

I think "Seditious Six" is from Stephen Miller.

The man has a talent for putting out red meat rhetoric MAGA finds irresistible to adopt and pass along, but which everyone else finds off-putting at best.

[DDHarriman]

>Of course, I'm not a whiny 24/7 Victim™ rightwing pearl-clutching snowflake loser like you, DDH.

That's fucking rich. Tell us where the White Supremacies and Global Warmings hurt you.

[Kazinski]

You are getting tiresome with the White victim shtick.

You really aren't any different from the Alphabet victims, victims of color, and every other class claiming their special flavor of victimhood.

I'm not a victim, and I have no craving to be one, but you do you.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Man sues hospital for correctly listing his "gender", "sex", "birth sex", and "sex assigned at birth".

[Life of Brian]

Amazing. From page 3:

Even now, under MSK’s new electronic records system launched in February 2025, MSK records continue to list her “sex assigned at birth” as “male,” despite the fact that Ms. Capasso’s birth certificate correctly lists her sex as female

This is what happens when you give an inch. We allow people like this to go back and retroactively change information on their birth certificate, and now this douche is suing someone for having the temerity to suggest that we've actually not always been at war with Eastasia.

(And that's aside from the fact that this particular defendant is a hospital system that -- work with me here -- just might have some genuine need to somewhere capture in their records the actual, rather than hallucinated, sex of an individual they're treating.)

[TwelveInchPianist]

Yup, that's why there's no point in going even a little bit down the rabbit hole.

They want you to say that they're women, you say, OK, you're women, we'll just call women biological women when we want to make a distinction. Then they want you to call them biological women...

[Dr. Ed 2]

I refuse to acknowledge that I *have* a sex that "was assigned at birth" -- that it could be "assigned" as opposed to simply being.

[wvattorney13]

It is easy to see the little shell game they are playing here. Although it could be argued that God or nature "assigned" you a sex at birth, and these people will feint towards that if pushed, the real hammer is that they want to say with straight face and claim the obvious import of their words mean that society "assigned" them a sex at birth and therefore society can now re-assign that sex.

I've seen way too much of this in my life to be fooled by it.

[Gasman]

Includes the claim that the doc performing a sigmoidoscopy (viewing the sigmoid colon via the anus) used the wrong pronoun. The doc is inches away from a very male appearing pecker and ballsack.
Maybe cut some slack that he was only applying the anatomy lessons learned in medical school.
Stay away from crazy chicks. Especially ones who are probably in denial that their choices caused their cancer (https://www.everydayhealth.com/cancer/gay-and-bisexual-men-are-at-higher-risk-for-these-cancers/)

[Sarcastr0]

Smells like nutpicking.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Wash your hands.

[Gasman]

When this patient recorded conversations among the operating room staff surreptitiously on multiple occasions, whom was the consenting party?
Just because one has a sensitive microphone does not automatically allow one to record and disseminate that recording of every side conversation around them. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/250.05
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/250.00

[DDHarriman]

You can't hate the MSM enough:

What to Know About Trump’s Targeting of Somalis in Minnesota—and Allegations of Fraud

https://time.com/7337670/somalia-minnesota-fraud-walz-trump-tps-explainer/

[Estragon]

"I really do kind of not only wanna see them killed in the water, whether they're on the boat or in the water, but I'd really like to see them suffer. I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so they lose a limb and bleed out."

-Megyn Kelly, 12/1/25

We have truly lost our way.

[DDHarriman]

Yes, we should weep for the people who are killing our children!!!

We've lost our way!!! Just like Kelly said, we should have a Dept of Peace and Gay Love, not War. Our Navy should be escorting these brave, innocent, CCP-funded innocent drug deliverers... there are White families that need destroying!!!

[Glaucomatose]

Low-level drug runners need to be killed without trial. They are killing our children!!!

The brave, innocent, El Chapo-backed kingpins who oversee decades-long conspiracies to traffic hundreds of tuns of drugs into the United States, who brag about how "We are going to stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses," and who are properly convicted and sentenced need to be pardoned and set free. Trump's friends told him so!!!

[DDHarriman]

Social justice for a POC. Why aren't you celebrating justice against White Supremacies?

[Glaucomatose]

If you had any defense for this, you would have offered it by now. But you don't, so you haven't.

[DDHarriman]

I don't think there is anything wrong with the US military intervening against Narco-Terrorists.

Nothing at all wrong. There's the defense. They are protecting our society. That's their job.

Yours, being a Democrat, is to ruin it as much as possible and to create massive human suffering (at least according to the history books).

[Glaucomatose]

That wasn't the question. How is it defensible to blow up suspected drug runners' boats and kill everyone on board without so much as a criminal charge, while setting free a man who ran a national conspiracy to traffic 500 tons of cocaine into the United States?

[DDHarriman]

You say "suspected drug runners" I say "Narco-Terrorist".

It's totally okay to blow up terrorists wherever they are found.

I do not have any problems at all with that.

>while setting free a man who ran a national conspiracy to traffic 500 tons of cocaine into the United States?

I support setting POCs free no matter what the crime or charge just like all those Democrat magistrates and judges. It's a matter of social justice. Brown Lives Matter. In fact, if you're White you should apologize to him for causing him to do that. You should also tell him he's too stupid to get a Voter ID since he's not White.

[Glaucomatose]

Proving me right yet again.

You know, you could just admit Trump blew this one.

[loki13]

Updating the scoreboard for Megyn Kelly-

Pre-Trump: AGAINST SEX TRAFFICKERS. WHAT IF IT WAS UR DAUGHTER?

Trump: I think we need to have a real conversation about the differences between pedophiles and the natural healthy attraction of men to 14 year olds, amirite?

Pre-Trump: Transform anger into forgiveness.

Trump: All of Trump's enemies need to suffer, BIGLY! I'd like to transform my anger into their pain, but MOAR pain and MOAR suffering. We shouldn't kill survivors, we should keep them alive so we can dismember them slowly and I can enjoy them screaming and begging for mercy while I watch the light in their eyes go out slowly over hours ...

[Estragon]

I’m reading an autobiography of a German fellow right now who was about 12 at the end of WWI. So obviously it is focused on the 20’s and 30’s in Germany— you know, when the bad stuff started to happen. And it wasn’t a straight line from collapse to Hitler— there were a lot of false dawns and seeming restorations of normalcy and sanity in the early-mid 30s. But something had been unleashed and it was irreversible. And we all now know how the story ends. Quotes like this from Ms Kelly make me think that something has happened here that isn’t going away even if we manage to elect AOC or Mark Kelly or whoever and have a few years of adults back in charge. That young republican text chain shows where this is all heading eventually. Casual sadism doesn’t just wash out like a mustard stain on your shirt, you know?

[loki13]

I hate to agree with you on this (mostly because I really resist the impulse the go to ... that analogy) ... but I do.

It's not just that. It's reading the accounts of people at the time and how, during the rise of the Nazis, there was this lack of concern ... because the Nazis were treated as a joke by many of the Germans. As in, "How can you take these people seriously? You see them, you hear them, it is laughable!"

It was laughable until it wasn't.

[Sarcastr0]

I'm more optimistic, given the average age of the FOX News viewer, (I presume the associated fringier outlets like wherever Megyn Kelly is got a similar demographic).

This too shall pass, if we can hang on.

[loki13]

Maybe. But Estragon is right to point to the Young Republican chats.

I think a lot of "the kids" today are alright. But I think that we underestimate the radicalization that has been caused by social media (broadly defined) at our peril.

Most days I agree that we will muddle through this. We muddled through a civil war. The turbulence and assassinations of the '60s. The Great Depression.

But there are times when I think that the center will not hold, and that the creaky institutions that have persevered for centuries will finally break.

[Ridgeway]

Did you read the depressing piece by Rod Dreher (not exactly a lefty shill) a few weeks ago where he estimated that 30% of young Republican staffers in DC were Groypers? There was some pushback that 30% was probably too high, and that the real number was more like 10-20%, but even that is a scarily high number.

[Bob from Ohio]

Rod Dreher lives in Hungary and has for sometime. He has zero knowledge about young Republican staffers in DC think.

[Sarcastr0]

Bob has forgotten how the Internet works.

[Bob from Ohio]

So, he made a comprehensive study of all the social media of all young GOP staffers?

[Life of Brian]

Ironically enough, people pompously pontificating about things from which they're largely disconnected in the real world is exactly how a great deal of the internet works.

[Ridgeway]

If anyone is interested, here is the article.

https://www.thefp.com/p/jd-vance-versus-the-groypers

[David Nieporent]

My reaction to Dreher's piece was, "The call is coming from inside the house!" Dreher was perfectly comfortable with/part of the phenomenon when gays were the target. It was just when they moved on to Jews that he suddenly got alarmed.

[Sarcastr0]

There has always been and will always be a fascistic 20-30 of the population.
The Internet and associated democratization/balkanization of media has given them an outsized voice, being as they're generally loud, willing to lie, and have lots of free time.

But the beast adapts, as you can see from demographic slices.

Though I would not be surprised if we saw the Fuentes cohort come to the fore in the GOP soon, I'm optimistic that it won't command much above that fascistic floor that they get for showing up.

[Estragon]

“The older generation had become uncertain and timid in its ideals and convictions and began to focus on “youth,” with thoughts of abdication, flattery and high expectations. Young people themselves were familiar with nothing but political clamor, sensation, anarchy and the lure of numbers games. They were only waiting to put into practice what they had witnessed, but on a far larger scale.”

He’s talking about 1924 here.

[Sarcastr0]

I don't think that describes most of our young people.

I'd more fear a left-wing radicalism frankly.

[Estragon]

I think that is extremely misguided, but whatever. We’ll probably both be dead before the real bad stuff happens. Don is the beginning, not the end.

[Brett Bellmore]

Are you imagining that your own side of the political spectrum isn't similarly contaminated?

[Sarcastr0]

Some I'm sure. But at the moment, the one offering authoritarianism is Trump. So thats where all the fascists are.

Note that I'm not using your weirdo definition of fascist where it just means regulations on businesses.

[Bob from Ohio]

"There has always been and will always be a fascistic 20-30 of the population."

You have a very low opinion of US citizens.

[Sarcastr0]

I'm aware of history.

[Bob from Ohio]

Apparently not US history.

[Sarcastr0]

KKK.
Know Nothings.
Business Plot.
America First.
Father Coughlin
McCarthyism

I can love this country with clear eyes. Because I am not a child requiring everything be unalloyed black and white.

[Bob from Ohio]

None of those examples equaled 30% of the US population, most far less.

"Business Plot"

If true, and the only source was a kook, it was a handful of people.

"KKK"

Racism is not "fascistic" . For instance, Al Gore's dad or Bob Byrd.

"Know Nothings"

Anti -immigration is not "fascistic".

America First

"800,000 members in 450 chapters at its peak" Not 20% I'd say. Vibe math maybe.

Coughlin opposed FDR from the left.

McCarthyism

Oh , Bobby Kennedy was a fascist?

Basically, your list is "everything I do not like is facism".

[Sarcastr0]

We were talking history, not social science.

I need to jump but there are plenty of studies. Not about Americans in particular, but about humans.

[not guilty]

Bob, Senator Albert Gore, Sr. was no racist, even though he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.* He refused to sign the Southern Manifesto in 1956, which called for reversing the Brown v. Board of Education, which determined that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional, in the name of "states' rights."

He supported the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960 and 1968. He supported most of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs. He opposed confirmation of Clement Haynesworth and G. Harrold Carswell to SCOTUS. During his unsuccessful campaign for re-election in 1970, Gore was a major target of the Nixon White House. Gore was pejoratively referred to as "the third Senator from Massachusetts" -- a dog whistle based on Senator Edward Brooke being black.
___________________________
* Sen. Gore supported the public accommodations title of the 1964 Act, but opposed the employment discrimination title as well as the title depriving funds for segregated schools.

[Estragon]

Here’s one more passage that really hit home for me:

“And then there was the content of those speeches: the delight in threats and in cruelty, the bloodthirsty execution fantasies. Most of those who began to acclaim Hitler at the Sportpalast in 1930 would probably avoid asking him for a light if they had met him in the street. That was the strange thing: their fascination with the boggy, dripping cesspool he represented, repulsiveness taken to extremes. No one would have been surprised if a policeman had taken him by the scruff of the neck in the middle of his first speech and removed him to some place from which he never would have emerged again, and where he doubtless belonged. As nothing of the sort happened and, on the contrary, the man surpassed himself, becoming ever more deranged and monstrous, and also ever more notorious, more impossible to ignore, the effect was reversed. It was then that the real mystery of the Hitler phenomenon began to show itself: the strange befuddlement and numbness of his opponents, who could not cope with his behavior and found themselves transfixed by the gaze of the basilisk, unable to see that it was hell personified that challenged them.

Summoned as a witness before the highest German court, Hitler bellowed at the judges that he would one day come to power by strictly constitutional means and then heads would roll. Nothing happened. The white-haired president of the Supreme Court did not think of ordering the witness to be taken into custody for contempt… When he said it again at his next meeting, the audience tittered, as if it had been tickled. One night six stormtroopers fell on a “dissident” in his bed and literally trampled him to death, for which they were sentenced to death. Hitler sent them a telegram of praise and acknowledgment. Nothing happened. No, something did happen: the murderers were pardoned.

It was strange to observe how the behavior of each side reinforced that of the other: the savage impudence that gradually made it possible for the unpleasant little apostate of hate to assume the proportions of a demon; the bafflement of his tamers, who always realized too late exactly what it was he was up to— namely, when he capped it with something even more outrageous and monstrous; then, also, the hypnotic trance into which his public fell, succumbing with less and less resistance to the glamour of depravity and the ecstasy of evil.”

[Estragon]

And that final piece I think has a lot to say about the murderboating. I often see it said around these parts that these boat strikes are about “sending a message” or “making a statement.” In one sense this is a tacit admission that these airstrikes are, at best, pinpricks in terms of interdiction.

However, it is curious to me that folks never seem to want to complete the final logical step— who exactly is the message intended for? I suggest that anyone who says “the cartels” is wrong. It’s US. We are the audience. This is about seeing the limits of what the public and the military will accept. It is also designed to desensitize the public to violence. This is the hypnotic trance the author above is speaking about. After the murderboating, Venezuela. After Venezuela…?

[DDHarriman]

>Pre-Trump: Transform anger into forgiveness.

What sort of insane delusion is this?

[Bunny495]

REALITY CHECK TIME
Here is a general breakdown of the age of consent in EU countries:

14 years old: Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal.

15 years old: Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, France, Greece, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden.

16 years old: Belgium, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta (with exceptions, though the general age of consent is 18), Netherlands, Spain.

17 years old: Cyprus, Ireland.

18 years old: Malta (highest age).

[Dr. Ed 2]

We could use White Phosphorus....

[ducksalad]

Among the hundred plus items that our president posted last night is a clue to how Trump vs Maduro could end:

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115648156487924297

[Bunny495]

Saw a blurb about last night. Seems 400 posts attributed to Trump were done in an hour. I can type 130 words a minute but have never come close to that level. Guess I need to pump up my rookie numbers to be in Trump's league.

[grb]

Worth a long quote:

"This is not really breaking news. Trump is an emotionally stunted man-child, mentally unstable, amoral, deeply insecure, needy, venal, vain and vengeful, pathological liar and con man who has lived his entire life on the edge of the law (and outside it) using his father’s fortune to shield himself, and now the U.S. Supreme Court. All but the last was true before unserious Americans elected Trump president and he delivered that “American carnage” inauguration speech in January 2017 that former President George W. Bush described as “some weird shit.”

Now in serious mental and political decline not one year into a second term, the United States of America looks to the rest of the planet as a deeply unserious country. With his on-again, off-again tariffs, his cabinet-load of cranks, and attempts to sell out Ukraine to Russia, Trump is quadrupling down on unserious.

Daily Beast this morning reports that Trump’s Truth Social account Monday night posted “over 160 times between 7:09 p.m. ET and 11:57 p.m. ET, with most posts shared twice. At one point the president was firing off more than a post a minute.” Many were reposts of others’ content, but Trump included some of his own targeting his usual list of enemies. What serious world leader does that? What serious CEO does that?

For that matter, what world leader hires a weekend TV host with a drinking problem, a “kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out” ethos, and the immaturity revealed in the image at the top of this post to lead the world’s largest military? Or hires a vaccine crank to run his national health agency? Or men who don’t seem to understand economics to stand before cameras and spew economic inanities on his behalf? Or selects a psychopath as his chief advisor? Or puts a Christian nationalist in charge of dismantling the government he’s charged with leading? Or redecorates the storied Oval Office to look like Liberace’s bedroom?

If one were to conceive a plan for reducing the world’s last superpower and guarantor of world peace to a laughingstock, would it look any different from this Trump administration?"

https://digbysblog.net/2025/12/02/reducing-the-u-s-to-a-laughingstock/

[DDHarriman]

Hear that guys? Before Trump the US was the guarantor of World Peace. Now we're not. That's why there is so much armed conflict post-Trump and there was practically zero pre-Trump!

[TwelveInchPianist]

If only the other side hadn't tried to pull a "Weekend at Bernie's" last election, had tried to introduce minimal controls at the border, hadn't tried to print an unlimited supply of money, etc.

[grb]

And if "your side" hadn't nominated a half-brain-dead sleazy lifelong-criminal huckster buffoon as president, that might have helped.

There'd be additional benefit if "your side" would stop giving Trump's shoe leather a dog-like tongue polish after his every corrupt, incompetent, childish, dishonest, or embarrassing act.

But what are the odds of that? Trump supporters whored away every last ounce of integrity long ago.

[TwelveInchPianist]

If you want to win, you have to do better than a half-brain-dead sleazy lifelong-criminal huckster buffoon. That's the point.

[Sarcastr0]

Are you But Bidenning to justify Trump posting like he’s on crack?

[TwelveInchPianist]

No.

[Jerry B.]

Could the Congress issue letters of marque and reprisal against the narcosmugglers and have privateers capture drug running boats and turn them over to the Coast Guard for a percentage of the value of the drugs? Worked pretty good during the Revolution and War of 1812.

[loki13]

Well, that's actually an interesting question (legally) since .... they haven't been used for a very very long time.

IIRC, the idea was mooted about for a while to deal with the Somali pirate situation, but never gained serious traction.

Fundamentally, the major issue with it that I can think of (other than, um, all the others) is this-
If you remember the history, the difference between a privateer operating lawfully under a letter of marque, and a pirate not doing so, was recognition.

Right now, international consensus is ... let's just say ... very much against the legality of our operations. If we were to issue these letters, they wouldn't be recognized by most countries, which means that other ships would be able to view private vessels operating under these letters as pirates. Which would be problematic.

Of course, we could use our navy to defend these private vessels. But if we are using our navy to defend them ... what are we really doing?

[Bunny495]

Obligatory post

Great song by my favorite musician

Britannia needs her privateers
Each time she goes to war
Death to all her enemies
Though prizes matter more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YDPsHznyRU

[Ghost]

How about Paul Clement arguing to the Supreme Court yesterday that in his personal opinion universities should reduce the internet speed it provides to students, because apparently a fast internet connection enables the students to pirate copyrighted content and there is no need for a fast internet connection? Clearly this dude went to college pre-internet and is clueless about the modern world.

[loki13]

.......this is the problem with gerontocracy.

[Bunny495]

Need more details. Plenty of lawyers argue positions they don't privately hold.

[Ghost]

Ok, below is a chunk of the transcript that provides the context. Clement's statement about reducing University speeds is at the end. His statements about hotels' free internet is also way off base.

JUSTICE ALITO: So, all right, the ISP tells the university: Look, you know, a lot of your -- your 50,000 students are infringing my copyright, do something about it. Now the university then has to try to determine which particular students are engaging in this activity. And let's assume it can even do that. And so then it -- it knocks out a thousand students, and then another thousand students are going to pop up doing the same thing. I just don't see how it's workable at all.
MR. CLEMENT: Well, look, I'm not sure that -- this record certainly doesn't support the notion that there are universities that have sort of undifferentiated service to 70,000 students or whatever the hypo is. I don't actually think that's how it works in practice.
JUSTICE ALITO: How does it work in practice?
MR. CLEMENT: Well, the way it works in practice is with, let's say -- let me -- let me take something that I know a little bit better like a hotel. And so, like, a hotel has lots of guests. So the hotel is provided Internet service and the hotel then can do things starting with terms of use, but a lot of hotels actually don't provide their guests -- at least in a normal way don't provide their guests with services at a speed that are sufficient to do peer-to-peer downloading precisely because they don't want to be in the position of having guests that are staying there largely so they can sort of upload and download copyrighted works. And if a particular hotel wants to be, you know, the –
JUSTICE ALITO: Do you think that's what a university should do so students can't -- students have -- are restricted in -- in -- in what they can do?
MR. CLEMENT: I don't think it would be the end of the world if universities provided service at a speed that was sufficient for most other purposes but didn't allow the students to take full advantage of BitTorrent. I could live in that world.

[wvattorney13]

I'm not the biggest tech guy at all but isn't the speed at which students can watch YouTube or Netflix--the expected usage for a modern internet connection--the same speed that is good for downloading pirated material?

What would Clement's speed be? Dial up?

[ducksalad]

Yes, or more relevantly, the speed at which students can watch recorded or live lectures that are required coursework.

Also, if Paul Clement can provide a list of hotels that deliberately throttle connections to the point they meaningfully impacts copyright violations, that would be very useful.

[wvattorney13]

That is what was confusing to me. Modern hotels allow you to log in to your personal streaming services. If a guest can do that, what would stop them if they were so inclined from logging into a pirate website and downloading copyrighted material in the hotel?

Clement seems to imply that the hotel speed is limited so that doesn't happen.

[Bunny495]

I am not claiming Clement did not say it, rather that he may be representing a client that believes it. I still am not sure what the case is. From what I can tell it is about copy right infringement. That horse is already out of the barn and it did not happen last week. I can still remember the information wants to be free crowd.

My real question is what is the case about.

[wvattorney13]

"I am not claiming Clement did not say it, rather that he may be representing a client that believes it."

Yes, but if your client believes something that is manifestly untrue it is your job to do your own research so you don't repeat bad arguments that torpedo your position once it is exposed to adversarial testing.

[Bob from Ohio]

"gerontocracy"

Clement is 59.

[Mr. Bumble]

loki13 is 13.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"universities should reduce the internet speed it provides to students,"

That's not an usual opinion in academia, sadly.

The bigger issue is that the record barons want to force Cox Cable to engage in the same corrupt practices of universities...

[ducksalad]

Can you clarify "an usual"? Was it supposed to be "an unusual", "a usual", or was it as intended and you pronounce "usual" really funny up there in the Northeast?

[Sarcastr0]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/nyregion/immigration-judges-fired-trump.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Immigrants have rights, but not if this Admin can help it.

The Trump admin is systematically firing immigration judges across the country for no reason other their above average grant rates.

Not hard to see that the goal is to transform an imperfect system aimed at fairness into a rubber stamp mill.

How can anyone see this kind of shit and not realize we are the baddies?!

[DDHarriman]

Sarcastr0's post in one month:

Undocumented citizens have rights, but not if this Admin can help it.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

See also:

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/due-process-in-third-country-removals

[Bob from Ohio]

"rubber stamp mill"

Win an election.

[Sarcastr0]

What an irrelevant objection.

It's not at all clear Trump supporters voted for this.
And even if they did, the populous votes for bad things all the time.

I don't know why you get off on performatively declaring how you don't like how rights and due process, but it's a tired act at this point.

[Bob from Ohio]

No person who entered the US without prior permission or broke the terms of the prior permission [overstaying a tourist visa for instance] should be allowed to stay. Simple as that.

Letting junior executive branch officials interfere with that by misplaced empathy is bad.

I think most Trump voters would agree with my position.

[Swede425]

Nope!
Once you make it past the magical border it's olly olly oxen free!
Or at least it was until now.
That seems to bother some people.
But not others.

[Sarcastr0]

And determining whether any of that is true is why we have these courts.

Nothing about misplaced empathy in making your metric purely a blind cut based on clearance rates.

But you know all that.

[Bob from Ohio]

They aren't courts.

[Sarcastr0]

So?

[David Nieporent]

Not hard to see that the goal is to transform an imperfect system aimed at fairness into a rubber stamp mill.

Last week, DHS published an ad on Twitter for hiring more immigration judges, except in the text of the ad, they actually called them "deportation judges", which describes neither their legal title nor their actual legal role.

There is no good faith whatsoever on the part of this administration. Every member of it needs to be fired and permanently barred from public employment once sane people are back in charge.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Yesterday was World AIDS Day.

World AIDS Day is a global movement to unite people in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Since 1988, communities have stood together on World AIDS Day to show strength and solidarity against HIV stigma and to remember lives lost.

https://worldaidsday.org/

The State Department issued a terse statement last week saying, “an awareness day is not a strategy.”

The result is that on December 1, the United States is not commemorating World AIDS Day. It’s the first time the U.S. has not participated since the World Health Organization created this day in 1988 to remember the millions of people who have died of AIDS-related illnesses and recommit to fighting the epidemic that still claims the lives of more than half a million people each year.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/12/01/g-s1-99925/world-aids-day-trump

A related NYT article (I will avoid a third link) noted:

The decision not to mark World AIDS Day is in line with the administration’s broader approach to WHO and the United Nations more broadly. Trump has been critical of multilateral organizations like the U.N. and of the WHO’s handling of COVID. One of his first moves, on inauguration day, was to start the process of removing the U.S. from the WHO.

International efforts against health problems have been present for over a hundred years.

The League of Nations, for instance, addressed epidemics, the fight against malnutrition and infectious diseases (malaria, tuberculosis, and yellow fever), infant mortality, and so forth.

The U.S. did not join the LON (the Farmer's Daughter, a very good film quite fitting for these times, has a scene where the main character reads a speech about that), but did support such efforts.

[DDHarriman]

If homosexuals can't be assed to wear a condom, why the fuck should we keep throwing billions of dollars at this problem?

This entire tens of billions of dollars industry exists so that a very small segment can enjoy the extra pleasures of high-risk bareback sex.

It's utterly demented and immoral for a society to waste so much of it's limited resources chasing such a selfish and minority pleasure.

Nothing else in human history compares to such unnecessary waste and selfishness.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

People who wish to find a more informed summary can start here:

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/hiv-aids

[DDHarriman]

Look at the havoc wrought by those selfish fucking homos.

Look at all that pain and misery.

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/11/science/new-homosexual-disorder-worries-health-officials.html

ASERIOUS disorder of the immune system that has been known to doctors for less than a year - a disorder that appears to affect primarily male homosexuals - has now afflicted at least 335 people, of whom it has killed 136, officials of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said yesterday.

My favorite part:

The cause of the disorder is unknown. Researchers call it A.I.D., for acquired immunodeficiency disease, or GRID, for gay-related immunodeficiency.

Gross. There is nothing more selfish and vile then upending society and harming millions of lives, all so you can experience just a little more pleasure by barebacking strangers in the back rooms of bookstores and alleyways.

[Brett Bellmore]

In the US, it's primarily spread by gay sex and needle sharing. So, yeah, a large component of "you brought it on yourself".

In Africa, I've heard it's mostly spread by rape. That makes me rather more sympathetic towards the victims.

[David Nieporent]

In the US, it's primarily spread by gay sex and needle sharing. So, yeah, a large component of "you brought it on yourself".

So if one catches it through straight sex, it's just god accidentally mis-aiming his punishment?

[John F. Carr]

"International efforts against health problems have been present for over a hundred years."

As the State Department observed, a day of ceremony is not an effort. The Trump administration has attempted to cut back on actual efforts. I forget whether the injunctions or the stays are in the lead when it comes to HIV funding.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

As the State Department observed, a day of ceremony is not an effort.

Days of "ceremony" are part of efforts. Efforts have a variety of aspects, and the website provided shows that.

It's a silly statement. Is a wedding merely some "ceremony" that skipping is meaningless? How about funerals?

Are they going to not celebrate Memorial Day next since it is merely a "day of ceremony"? Nope. Since that is not the real reason. They honored various other "days of ceremony" involving other causes.

"We are men of action. Lies do not become us."

Princess Bride

[Gasman]

Always been told to run/walk against traffic. Quick search of running sites confirms this as dogmatic.
But... as a driver making a right turn, I am looking left, for the big fast moving thing that could t-bone me. I glance to the right, nothing on the road, there is a sidewalk but it's dark, there are trees, a curve in the road, and a runner pops out of seemingly nowhere. Same for a left turn, I am eyeing toward the left, then check to the right on the far side of the road, because that has the big fast moving traffic. Runner on my extreme right running against traffic is again positioned well away from where I'm looking, and in a visual dead spot(shade, trees, etc.)
Bicyclists are much easier to notice simply because they are in the same place and same direction as where my attention is focused. Runners, not so much.
Thoughts?

[Bwaaah]

As a pedestrian, I go against traffic not to be seen and avoided, but so I can see and, if necessary, avoid.

On blind curves, I'll switch to the outer side of the curve in order to increase my ability to see oncoming traffic, and to increase my visibility to that traffic. (And vehicles tend to cut in tight to curves regardless of their direction.)

Also, as a pedestrian, I am acutely aware at intersections of whether drivers are aware of my location (by seeking to make eye contact with them before ever crossing their paths). The who-has-right-of-way question tends to be pretty irrelevant to me when I'm the pedestrian and the other party is commanding a motor vehicle.

[ducksalad]

Exactly.

This is one rule they actually thought through pretty carefully.

[John F. Carr]

Sometimes traffic laws don't make sense when applied to a particular situation. I've walked illegally on the right side of the road when traffic was backed up on the left side of the road.

Another one is signalling 200 feet before a turn. If you're going to turn into the gas station just after the traffic light you have to signal a turn while waiting at the light, misleading other cars about your intention.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

President Donald Trump on Monday launched into a late night meltdown on his social media platform that saw him promoting a conspiracy theory about former first lady Michelle Obama signing presidential pardons on Joe Biden’s behalf.

The president turned up the dial on his typical Truth Social post spree, making over 160 posts and reshares from 7 p.m. to nearly midnight on the East Coast.

And people think loki is posting a lot!

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-truth-social-meltdown-michelle-obama-biden-autopen_n_692e49c0e4b02d38edef47cf

[DDHarriman]

lmao that man is awesome! He doesn't Sundown like ol' you know who

[Bunny495]

I posted earlier about this. One outlet noted during on period he was making more than one post a minute. Even 160 posts in less than five hours is around one every two minutes. Seems like everyone posting here only have rookie numbers.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Quite unlikely that he posted all the content without help.

[Bunny495]

maybe the auto pen has an internet connection

[DDHarriman]

>Earlier Monday, Tania Nemer sued the Justice Department on the grounds she was terminated from her post as an Ohio immigration judge because of her gender, a citizen of Lebanon and was a Democratic candidate for local office.

https://nypost.com/2025/12/02/us-news/8-immigration-judges-canned-by-trump-admin-after-another-sues-claiming-she-was-discriminated-against/

Holy what the fuck Batman's. Obama/Biden were appointing foreign nationals as immigration judges?

[ducksalad]

You left out that Ms. Nemer is a US citizen. Nice try.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/lawsuit-accuses-trump-administration-bias-immigration-judges-firing-2025-12-01/

This article has a link to the complaint. She's a dual citizen of Lebanon and the U.S.

[David Nieporent]

The NY Post is filled with bad journalists and worse writers. For instance, Ohio does not employ immigration judges, and if it did, it would hardly make sense for one who was fired to sue the DOJ. She was actually a federal immigration judge, not an "Ohio immigration judge."

And she is an American citizen, not a "foreign national," as a real news outlet explains:

Tania Nemer, a former immigration judge in Ohio, filed a lawsuit Monday claiming she was dismissed based on her gender, her dual citizenship with the country of Lebanon, and her previous run for local office as a Democrat, in violation of civil rights law.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/immigration-judge-fired-trump-administration-files-lawsuit-claiming/story?id=128014324

[Bob from Ohio]

"immigration judge in Ohio" and "Ohio immigration judge" are just different ways to say she lived in Ohio.

Bob from Ohio aka Ohio Bob

[Mr. Bumble]

David Notsoimportant is one of those kids who spent a lot of time stuffed in his locker.

[DDHarriman]

She cant access NOFORN classified materials even if she had security clearance.

That's weird.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

The Ex-President Whom Trump Plans to Pardon Flooded America With Cocaine

Juan Orlando Hernández, whom Mr. Trump called a victim of persecution, helped orchestrate a decades-long trafficking conspiracy. It ravaged his Central American country.

https://archive.ph/FDm1Y

Not to be confused with the former baseball player.

He once boasted that he would “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses.” He accepted a $1 million bribe from El Chapo to allow cocaine shipments to pass through Honduras. A man was killed in prison to protect him.

But on Friday, President Trump announced that he would pardon Mr. Hernandez, 57, who he said was a victim of political persecution, though Mr. Trump offered no evidence to support that claim. It would be a head-spinning resolution to a case that for prosecutors was a pinnacle, striking at the heart of a narcostate.

Some more details:

Prosecutors said Mr. Hernández was key to a scheme that lasted more than 20 years and brought more than 500 tons of cocaine into the United States.

Investigators said that Mr. Hernández went to pitiless lengths to cover his tracks. One accused co-conspirator was killed in a Honduran prison to protect the president, according to court documents. He used drug money to manipulate the vote in two elections, the documents said.

For many Hondurans, his conviction was a rare taste of justice. A woman in a crowd outside the courthouse celebrating his punishment had held a sign that read “No clemency for narcopolitics.”

But on Saturday, Mr. Trump said in a statement to The New York Times that “many friends” had asked him to pardon Mr. Hernández: “They gave him 45 years because he was the President of the Country — you could do this to any President.”

[grb]

There are only two possibilities that explains the Hernández pardon:

1. All anyone has to do is tell President Addled Half-Wit a person in federal prison was “targeted by Biden” or “treated very unfairly” and Trump signs any pardon put in front of him. There's no pretense of review or examination of the facts. There's no consideration of justice, concern over the criminal's victims, or contemplation of the consequences. When Trump was asked about the evidence against Hernández or how he was treated "unfairly", the old man just started babbling incoherently. He was told to sign (treated unfairly...), so he did. At least Trump didn't use an autopen!

2. On the other hand, it might be much simpler: Someone used their spare-change drug money to buy a pardon. With Trump, business hours run 24/7. When it comes to selling the presidency, he never closes.

[ducksalad]

Actually, I think in this case the last stated reason in JftB's quote is the correct one.

Recall how Hernandez ended up in US custody - he lost an election and his successor's justice department had him arrested and extradited to the US.

Trump is horrified by the idea that President Alexandria Harris Newsom or Colombia could extradite him to Venezuela to face murder charges. And yes, we do have an extradition treaty with them.

[Glaucomatose]

What a fantastic idea.

[Bob from Ohio]

Criminal prosecution of Trump worked out well last time for you!

[Nelson]

My guess is another country wouldn’t have the willingness or motivation to ignore Trump’s criminality like Republicans. They may or may not be principled, but they’re almost certainly better than the GOP.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

The reply provides a possibility, but financial reasons also might factor in.

https://substack.com/inbox/post/180390669

[M L]

Why don't they convict the former Honduran president down in Honduras? The U.S. president would have no say over that.

[hobie]

He wasn't convicted in his own country so we were forced to do so here!

[John F. Carr]

Is college basketball about to say, 'So long, Cinderella?'

Writer Jeff Eisenberg describes the fallout from subjecting college sports to antitrust law. Restricting transfers is an illegal restraint of trade. Top schools and rich schools attract transfers ensuring they remain top programs and second tier schools never have a chance for a Cinderella story. The winning percentage of second tier schools playing against top schools is way down.

Major sports leagues have salary caps to prevent this problem. They also have the benefit of labor laws which are very supportive of contracts negotiated between the single players' union and the league.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

In other news, Bitcoin is up about 7% today. Still down a lot this year. Buy the dip?

How about DJT which is very close to its all time low. Some time ago someone in these very comments informed me that DJT had good long term prospects. So, should we buy the DJT dip? Are people still holding DJT because of its good long term prospects?

[bernard11]

In other news, Bitcoin is up about 7% today. Still down a lot this year. Buy the dip?

No. Never.

Trying to time the market is a losing plan.

[Stella Link's Ghost]

I'm not going to buy Bitcoin, DJT, or gold (or any commodity). I'm smart enough to know that I'm not smart enough to swim in those waters. I will admit, though, that I'm not smart enough to completely ignore responding to influences in ways that some might call market timing. Win some, lose some, with amounts that don't matter. Sort of like buying lottery tickets though not as guaranteed to lose in the long run.

[Stephen Lathrop]

bernard11 — What do you have to say about structuring a portfolio with assets which tend to move counter to each other. Then continuously re-balancing asset proportions to keep them within predefined fractions of total portfolio value.

The obvious attraction is that it structures a method to buy low and sell high, and almost puts that on autopilot.

The questions I note are two-fold:

1. Can you actually rely on asset classes to move counter to one another, and identify which will likely do that?

2. Can you nevertheless get blown up during a big market correction which forces almost everything to go one way or the other?

What comments might you offer? It is not a novel idea. I presume there has been systematic thinking, but never encountered much discussion about it.

[loki13]

I think we should start a new game show.

You're given a quote. It will only be slightly modified to replace honorifics / names to obscure the origin.

You have to identify it as:
A. North Korean Propaganda
B. An Onion Article
C. An actual quote from a Trump Cabinet Meeting

Today's challenge!

"Dear Glorious Leader, you made it through hurricane season without a hurricane. You kept the hurricanes away. We appreciate that."

If you guessed .... C .... YOU WIN TODAY'S PRIZE!

That's right. That was everyone's favorite Dog Murderer and Serial Prevaricator (I put in the dog killer because serial prevaricator doesn't differentiate members of the Trump cabinet) Noem praising our Dear Leader for single-handedly keeping hurricanes away!!!

(Note- I replace "Sir" with "Dear Glorious Leader," but otherwise the quote is verbatim. Seriously, you can't parody these cabinet meetings. Honestly, I think that North Korea looks at them and says, "Eh, putting it on a little thick, aren't you?")

[grb]

(ya beat me to it)

[Estragon]

Justice for Cricket.

Imagine thinking telling a story about you murdering your own puppy would help your Presidential ambitions. I guess she got the last laugh… and a new face and a new plane, to boot.

[grb]

Estragon : " ...and a new face and a new plane, to boot."

And lots of cool cosplay costumes!

[Estragon]

Speaking of cosplay, anyone got a size medium FBI raid jacket I can borrow? Oh, and it has to have special patches.

[grb]

For folk having trouble keeping abreast of all the clown-antics of this clown-show administration in all it clownishness, this:

FBI Director Kash Patel is trying to joke about a humiliating report that he wouldn’t get off a plane to investigate the murder of his friend Charlie Kirk because he didn’t have the right outfit. He refused to deboard the plane until someone got him a medium-size FBI raid jacket. He ended up taking a female agent’s jacket but then complained it didn’t have the proper patches on it. So he refused to disembark until SWAT team members lent him their patches.

[Ridgeway]

I saw that story in the NY Post, which indicates it came from someone in the administration and sympathetic to MAGA. So my first question was: Who leaked it? My money is on Bondi, but it may have been the Big (Orange) Cheese himself.

[Estragon]

The most sensible take I’ve seen is that this is the beginning of more serious factional infighting within the Administration, which would seem to indicate that Trump is slipping and folks are positioning themselves for what’s next. That said, this is life or death for Kash. He’s just seen Trump go after one former FBI director.

[DDHarriman]

FBI Director Kash Patel is trying to joke about a humiliating report that he wouldn’t get off a plane to investigate the murder of his friend Charlie Kirk because he didn’t have the right outfit. He refused to deboard the plane until someone got him a medium-size FBI raid jacket. He ended up taking a female agent’s jacket but then complained it didn’t have the proper patches on it. So he refused to disembark until SWAT team members lent him their patches.

...said two people familiar with Patel's thinking...

[Ridgeway]

Putting Ka$h to the side, is that a humble brag that you can still fit in an M?

[Estragon]

Nah, I’m 6’3” 215lbs.

[Nelson]

Mr. President? Is that you?

[DDHarriman]

You wanna go out to the curb and kneel for every black that walks by like the Biden FBI used to do?

[Estragon]

His name was Kash Patel, size medium.

[DDHarriman]

said a person familiar with Patel's thinking...

[wvattorney13]

Did you bother to watch the video and the audio? There was laughter at both of those statements and it was obviously intended as a joke.

So, except for the fact that the term "Dear Glorious Leader" was not said, and it was a clear joke, it is exactly like a North Korean meeting.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Because only leftists are permitted to say things in jest....

[grb]

I can't say I ever wondered how a North Korean cabinet meeting sounds (translated into English), but now I don't have to. With all the sycophantic toadying to our own Dear Leader, we have a homegrown example. From today's meeting, starting with the plasticine Barbie in charge of national security:

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (gushing): “You made it through the hurricane season without a hurricane…you kept the hurricanes away.”

Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin (fawning): “Thank you, Mr. President, for being willing to take a bullet for this country.”

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins (starry-eyed): "I don't know that there has ever been an organization like this, at least a government like this in the history of our country."

Actually, I'm kinda on-board with that last one, though not in the way Ms. Rollins intended. Meanwhile, people around the world hear this comical bullshit and snicker how the United States is now just another jokey banana republic.

[loki13]

If someone just filmed a cabinet meeting, and took it back a decade ago, and tried to insert it into a satirical film about how American politics could devolve ...

I think it would have been too over-the-top to be effective.

[Ridgeway]

How about two decades? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

The depiction of the justice system is uncanny as well.

And my favorite quote: "Go away! 'Batin!"

[Dr. Ed 2]

BUT if someone went back THREE decades ago, and filmed then Mass Senate President Billy Bulger at a St Patrick's Day roast, it would have been quite similar.

[Estragon]

To be scrupulously fair, the hurricane thing was obviously a joke.

[Zarniwoop]

I sure hope Rubio brought his kneepads to the Cabinet meeting:

This is a very talented team,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, turning to Trump. “As you know, because you picked every single one. You deserve tremendous credit for doing that.”

Barf me out ... gag me with a spoon!

[DDHarriman]

New Docs Reveal Jack Smith Intentionally Violated Congressional Republicans’ Constitutional Rights

https://thefederalist.com/2025/12/01/new-docs-reveal-jack-smith-intentionally-violated-congressional-republicans-constitutional-rights/

----

The Biden Administration okayed Special Counsel Jack Smith’s subpoenaing congressional phone records knowing the subpoenas were unconstitutional, emails released last week revealed. That same trove of documents also established the illegality of the nondisclosure orders issued by the courts to prevent the telecommunication providers from alerted the members of Congress of the unconstitutional seizure of their toll records.

Prison time boys, time get some of these Democrat assholes.

[David Nieporent]

Prison for what?

[DDHarriman]

New Docs Reveal Jack Smith Intentionally Violated Congressional Republicans’ Constitutional Rights

https://thefederalist.com/2025/12/01/new-docs-reveal-jack-smith-intentionally-violated-congressional-republicans-constitutional-rights/

RTFA

[not guilty]

The content of your link doesn't support the inflammatory headline thereof.

No privilege attaches to telephone metadata records held by service providers. If there were such a privilege, it would belong to the phone company.

There is no Fourth Amendment problem with the subpoenas for such metadata. Application of the Fourth Amendment depends on whether the person invoking its protection can claim a "justifiable," a "reasonable," or a "legitimate expectation of privacy" that has been invaded by government action. Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 740 (1979). A telephone subscriber has no "legitimate expectation of privacy" regarding the numbers he dialed on his phone. Id., at 742. Even if a member of Congress did have some subjective expectation that the phone numbers he dialed would remain private, this expectation is not "one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable." The Supreme Court consistently has held that a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties (such as the phone company). Id., at 743-744, quoting Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 361 (1967). Unlike the electronic interception of the content of telephone conversations at issue in Katz, the subpoenaed records here showed only call times, durations and numbers.

While the linked Federalist article kvetches about the Speech or Debate Clause of Article I, § 6, the issuance of the subpoenas for telephone metadata pose no such problem. That clause provides as to members of Congress that "for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place." No member of Congress was questioned here.

Tthe Clause has not been extended beyond the legislative sphere. As SCOTUS has opined:

Legislative acts are not all-encompassing. The heart of the Clause is speech or debate in either House. Insofar as the Clause is construed to reach other matters, they must be an integral part of the deliberative and communicative processes by which Members participate in committee and House proceedings with respect to the consideration and passage or rejection of proposed legislation or with respect to other matters which the Constitution places within the jurisdiction of either House. As the Court of Appeals put it, the courts have extended the privilege to matters beyond pure speech or debate in either House, but "only when necessary to prevent indirect impairment of such deliberations." United States v. Doe, 455 F.2d [753,] 760 [(1st Cir. 1972).]

Gravel v. United States, 408 U.S. 606, 625 (1972). Disclosure pursuant to subpoena of call times, durations and numbers does not impinge upon the legislative process.

[Nelson]

Wait, the Holocaust denier/Trump fanboy/bigot swallows the fringe clickbait of The Federalist as gospel truth? And it’s completely wrong? Imagine my surprise.

[Bob from Ohio]

No Dutch eurotrash today

Our fake Norse god making up for it. Get an editor for goodness sake.

[Mr. Bumble]

Sigyn took the day off and the venom has been dripping on loki all day.

[Bob from Ohio]

Dripping from him is more accurate.

[Mr. Bumble]

True. All day and every day.

[John 4]

You morons deserve every bit of it

[Sarcastr0]

This mean girls shit is sad.

He's got the rent free package.
I doubt he thinks much of you at all.

[Mr. Bumble]

Deep Thoughts from Il Douche.

[loki13]

For those of you keeping track, Hegseth has now stated on the record that ... he didn't order the second strike. He didn't even know about the second strike until hours afterwards.

Do I believe him? Honestly, no. I don't. Because he lies. Is it possible that he's telling the truth? Sure, but I wouldn't put money on it.

It does mean that when Admiral Bradley testifies on the Hill later this week, it will be an interesting ... question. Because we have what is increasingly a very-well sourced story, which I would bet came from people that have grave concerns about what is going on.

And on the other? We have an administration that lies, and is looking to scapegoat the officers and affirmatively stating that it was the Admiral who issued what any Admiral would know is clearly an unlawful order.

So we will see.

Also, for the people looking to see which way the Trump wind is blowing so you know which way to extend your tongues, I will remind you that Trump has consistently stated that he would not have ordered the second strike.

So ... well, just remember that when you're trying to reconcile what you've been posting the last few days with whatever the New Truth(tm) is going to be in a little while.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Because we have what is increasingly a very-well sourced story, which I would bet came from people that have grave concerns about what is going on."

None of whom are claiming that Hegseth ordered the second strike.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Above and beyond that 12IP, think about what would have had to have been logistically implemented for him to be able to do so.

Yes Obama could watch the murder of Osama in real time, but this would have been on a highly-secure, high-bandwidth link that would have taken time and resources to set up. It's highly unlikely that would have been done for this -- more likely an approval to find the boat and sink her, given some time before -- and the assumption that the order would be carried out.

It wouldn't be logistically possible to give the order to shoot a second time.

It's also entirely possible that the order was to sink the ship -- not to kill the crew but to sink the ship and this would be similar to "take down that aircraft" -- and if the boat wasn't sunk, a second strike would be well within the Geneva Accords.

[wvattorney13]

"It's also entirely possible that the order was to sink the ship -- not to kill the crew but to sink the ship and this would be similar to "take down that aircraft" -- and if the boat wasn't sunk, a second strike would be well within the Geneva Accords."

That's another point worth considering. The assumption on the left is that this could be nothing less than a bloodthirsty execution. As you said, if the objective is the ship, and that makes sense given that we don't want the drug dealers to go out and rescue their drugs, then hitting the ship until it sinks is legal even if there are survivors hanging on.

It would be like destroying a bridge across a particular river in WWII Europe. If the objective is to destroy the bridge, then it doesn't matter if there is a surviving German soldier on the bridge who would like to surrender.

This whole thing is just a left wing yankfest.

[Sarcastr0]

The assumption on the left is that this could be nothing less than a bloodthirsty execution.
Have you just not been paying attention to Hegseth's tweets? It's not an assumption, it's what he was flexing before this blew up.

At this late date, how are you taking this administration as truth telling, rule of law caring, or even life respecting?

I mean, at this point you're taking Dr. Ed seriously. It's bad.

[David Nieporent]

It would be like destroying a bridge across a particular river in WWII Europe.

It would be like destroying a bridge across a particular river in 1927 Europe, what with there being no fucking war. What is it with you bloodthirsty lunatics? We. Are. Not. At. War. Ordering soldiers to kill people in war is legal. Ordering soldiers to kill people when we aren't at war is like ordering police to kill people, or ordering an Amtrak employee to kill people. It. Is. Murder.

The president has no lawful authority to order bridges to be blown up, or boats to be blown up, or drugs to be blown up. Unless we are at war.

[David Nieporent]

And on the other? We have an administration that lies, and is looking to scapegoat the officers and affirmatively stating that it was the Admiral who issued what any Admiral would know is clearly an unlawful order.

While I'm sympathetic to your analysis, I have to point out that even if Hegseth did give the order, that doesn't excuse the admiral.

[OpinionsVary]

Some of Hegseth's tweets rather read like he's getting ready to shove Bradley under the bus. I wonder if Bradley comes out swinging in response or takes the fall, possibly with a promise of a pardon for his 'years of sterling conduct yatyatayata'.

[Paladin_44]

ADM Bradley - meet bus. You're going under...

[not guilty]

"Some of Hegseth's tweets rather read like he's getting ready to shove Bradley under the bus. I wonder if Bradley comes out swinging in response or takes the fall, possibly with a promise of a pardon for his 'years of sterling conduct yatyatayata'."

I suspect that this will wind up with Secretary Hegseth and Admiral Bradley pissing all over each other.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I don't see that. The "Hegseth distances himself from second strike" line of reporting is fake news.

None of the coverage claimed that Hegseth had anything to do with the second strike other than to order that everyone be killed prior to the first strike. Hegseth's claims that he supports Bradley's decision aren't throwing him under the bus, literally no one (except maybe Loki13) is claiming that the second strike wasn't Bradley's decision.

[bernard11]

Hegseth also bizarrely claims the whole thing was due to the "fog of war." One boat does not create that fog.

And if Bradley or Hegseth had in fact been blinded by this hypothetical fog, how did they know to order a second strike?

[David Nieporent]

the "fog of war." One boat does not create that fog.

It also doesn't create a war!

[grb]

Every time the Trump Administration harms this country in a new way, people wonder whether corruption, incompetence, or freak imbecility lay behind the toxic action. With RFK Jr, it's pretty much all three stirred together in one rancid cesspool mix.

He was a man born to every possible advantage, albeit with the heavy burden and tragedy that accompanies his famous family. So he became a kook, druggie, and worthless wastrel. Only by going down the conspiratorial rabbit hole did Junior find first a purpose, then the money, relevance, & power he lusted for.

So it's pointless to ask whether he sincerely believes the loony-tunes nonsense he espouses. He has to, otherwise he's a total complete Nothing again. And - yes - he lies, cheats, and weasels without shame, but that just reflects the desperation that lies just below the surface. And - yes - he's actively working to harm the healthcare of millions of Americans, but he's too hopelessly incompetent to have "relevance" in any positive way. Too bad the rest of us have to suffer because of his self-image issues:

"Delaying the timing of vaccinating infants against hepatitis B, an idea RFK Jr's federal vaccine advisory group will vote on this week, won't improve the effectiveness of the vaccine nor make it safer to give to babies. But it will increase in the number of young children who become chronically infected with hepatitis B, an infection that carries a high risk a child will develop liver disease early in life, a report released today suggests. Modelers at several U.S. universities attempted to quantify the impact of changing the current vaccination policy. The study concluded delaying the start of vaccination could lead to more than 1,400 babies becoming chronically infected with hepatitis B in the first year after the change, which could then result in 304 cases of liver cancer and 482 hepatitis B-related deaths among the affected children as they aged."

But - hey - small price to pay if it allows a worthless piece of shit like Junior to feel good about himself, huh?

[Mr. Bumble]

I thought Drank Franckman was the site's pretend medical professional.

[grb]

There's nasty & there's NASTY. Comparing me to Frank is the latter, Bumble. It's way beyond the pale.

[hobie]

Is there anyone in this administration that isn't a billionaire elite? At this point, I'd settle for just a millionaire

[Mr. Bumble]

There are 813 US billionaires. How many are you assuming are "in this administration"?

[hobie]

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/how-many-billionaires-are-in-trumps-administration-and-what-is-their-worth

"n President Donald Trump’s new administration, the path from Forbes’ billionaires list to federal service is unusually well-traveled.

President Donald Trump – who campaigned on a promise to “rescue our middle class” and champion the everyday American – has surrounded himself with at least a dozen billionaires tasked with shaping his administration and running the federal government.

The sheer concentration of ultra-wealthy individuals in Trump’s inner circle marks one of the starkest contrasts between campaign rhetoric and governing reality....

The total net worth of the billionaires in the Trump administration, as of June 4, equals at least $450 billion...By comparison, former President Joe Biden’s Cabinet total net worth was about $118 million"

[Mr. Bumble]

"The total net worth of the billionaires in the Trump administration, as of June 4, equals at least $450 billion."
"By comparison, former President Joe Biden’s Cabinet total net worth was about $118 million"
These two things are not the same.
You've lumped advisors, ambassadors, cabinet members and a who;e host of others (including Elon Musk whose $400 billion plus eclipses all the others combined) with Biden's cabinet (really a small cupboard).

[Dr. Ed 2]

The Mayo Clinic says:
"Hepatitis B is caused by the hepatitis B virus (HBV). The virus passes from person to person through blood, semen or other body fluids. It does not spread by sneezing or coughing.

Common ways that HBV can spread are:
Sexual contact. You may get hepatitis B if you have sex with someone who is infected and you don't use a condom. The virus can pass to you if the person's blood, saliva, semen or vaginal fluids enter your body.
Sharing of needles. HBV easily spreads through needles and syringes that are tainted with infected blood. Sharing equipment used to inject illicit drugs puts you at high risk of hepatitis B.

Hepatitis B is avoidable -- vaccination should be optional.

[hobie]

I became informed that there is forming a movement for 'Happy Cake Day'. A way to remember those who wouldn't be fed due to religious extremism. As I understand it, we should give little desserts or cupcakes to those gays who wouldn't be able to buy any for themselves like anyone else could. Hopefully, like the lunch counters in the South, we'll look back on this time.

[hobie]

Just remembered: like the mass starvations in Gaza, and SNAP and USAID, and defunding all US food banks and the aforementioned lunch counters, denying people food seems to be a hillbilly fetish. It makes one feel better. So I take back what I said above...because it is pointless.

I work the food and bread lines every month. Sometimes it's neegroes and brown people. Sometimes it's formerly wealthy white people.

Back in Portugal where all the wealthy English retire, there is a subset of white couples who lived so long that they ran out of money. They lost their house and nearly everything else. Because there is no charity lines in socialist Portugal for anyone, a lot of us chipped in to keep these poor people afloat. The English people call these folks 'gentile poverty'

[Armchair]

Thought experiment...is it worth keeping Spain in NATO?

Spain is...pretty worthless as a NATO member. Its military spending is low. 1.28% of GDP. It only joined NATO in 1982/1986. And it refuses the spending hikes demanded by NATO. Even many EU diplomats agree. Spain wants a free ride, and its example shows to other member nations.

What's the alternative?

1) Kick out Spain.
2) Bring in Morocco to NATO.
3) Support Morocco's claims to Ceuta and Melilla.

I'm gonna be honest. If Morocco decided it wanted Ceuta and Melilla back, and it was just a fight between Spain and Morocco, Morocco may very well win. Morocco has a much larger army, more armed vehicles, and the conflict would be in Africa.

At the very least, threatening this course of action may kick Spain into actual. Mutual defense means mutual defense. It doesn't mean "We pay for your defense and you do nothing".

[hobie]

Usually I swap the word 'tranny' or 'gay' or 'Jew' when you MAGA go after a class of people in order to denigrate them. It is a vain exercise on my part to get you to understand what is hurtful if it pertains to something you supposedly care about. So today, I'll try Jew:

"Thought experiment...is it worth keeping Jews in NATO?

Jews are...pretty worthless as a NATO member. Jews want a free ride, and its example shows to other member nations.

"What's the alternative?

1) Kick out the Jews.
2) Bring in Palestine to NATO.
3) Support Palestine's claims to Palestine?

I'm gonna be honest. If Palestine decided it wanted Palestine back, and it was just a fight between Israel and Palestine, Palestine may very well win. Palestine has a much larger army, more armed vehicles, and the conflict would be in Africa.

At the very least, threatening this course of action may kick Israel into actual. Mutual defense means mutual defense. It doesn't mean "We pay for your defense and you do nothing".

[Bwaaah]

Wow. "Nation" is the same as "religious group."

Serious category error.

Work it, Hobie. Work it.

[hobie]

"Work it, Hobie. Work it."

Oh I intend to. Let me ask you this, would you be upset if some Jews were denied gas or food by some Muslims?

[Armchair]

Sometimes, you just have to ignore the idiots.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Israel was a valued ally during the Cold War, when we needed them.
Spain under Franco was almost an enemy.

At least Turkey let us use their mountains for listening posts.

[ducksalad]

Arm, what do you think the modern purpose of NATO is, or does it still have a purpose?

I think back in 1948 it didn't have much to do with contribution - it's not like Iceland would ever contribute a whole lot, and some of the founding members' militaries were more or less ruined. It was about marking off territory and signaling to the USSR that violating that area would trigger WW3.

If that's still the purpose then that needs to be the criterion. I think most of NATO would rather "lose" Morocco to being a Russian client state than Spain. But neither is very likely, so it could be the best decision would be to implement your step (1) regardless of contribution. I take it (2) and (3) were just thrown in for fun.

[David Nieporent]

it's not like Iceland would ever contribute a whole lot,

Iceland contributed a base in the North Atlantic.

[ducksalad]

What I meant was that their expenditures as a government were not the reason they were brought in. Armchair is concerned about Spain not spending enough, as if our safety depends at all on whether they spend 1% vs 3% of their GDP on defense.

[Armchair]

"Arm, what do you think the modern purpose of NATO is,"
-It's a mutual defense treaty. Emphasis on mutual.

"I think back in 1948 it didn't have much to do with contribution"
I'm not asking for the countries to contribute outside their capability. But if they literally say doing the bare minimum "just can't be done"...well, what's the point? It's not mutual defense. It's us just paying for their defense.

"It's not like Iceland".
-Within their capability. In 1948, Iceland had a population of just 140,000 people (as well as a key location in the North Atlantic). Spain by contrast has a population of 49 million today. I would...expect more...from Spain.

"But neither is very likely"
True

I take it (2)...
Not necessarily. Morocco has 500,000 people in its army. That larger than the army of France, the UK, and Spain....combined. Sometimes, you just need manpower. Morocco can provide that. Morocco spends 8.5% of its GDP on defense. It takes it seriously That's far more than can be said for Spain.

[not guilty]

The only nation to invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty since its adoption is the United States, in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

[ducksalad]

Well, I hope you won't be offended if I say hogwash. Can you deny any of the following with a straight face?

1. You'd toss "mutual" out the window the first time Spain wanted to do something the tiniest bit different from the US.

2. It does not make the slightest bit of difference to your, or my, sense of security here in the US if Spain spends 1% vs 3% on GDP.

3. You would not sleep better at night knowing that the powerful Moroccan army is ready to defend the US if we are attacked.

Admit it - your objection is more like seeing a fare jumper. It offends you that someone is not doing what they should, but it has close to zero practical effect on you. Putting the fare jumper in jail would not cause the ticket price to go down, and making Spain pay up would not make the slightest difference in how much the US spends on defense.

The benefit of Spain being in NATO - like Iceland - is that we have access to their landing fields and ports, and our enemies do not. Their actual military responsibility is merely to make sure no one can easily grab those fields and ports. If some powerful country tried, we'd come to their aid but never the other way around.

And thus the whole "mutual defense" thing is diplomatic politeness.

PS Morocco would be a decent candidate - only for the reasons given above, not because we need their spending - except that they have an unresolved conflict in Western Sahara and we don't want to be obligated to help. That alone is disqualifying.

[David Nieporent]

The benefit of Spain being in NATO - like Iceland - is that we have access to their landing fields and ports, and our enemies do not.

I think it's less about that and more about control of entrance to, and exit from, the Mediterranean.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Iceland was essential to Operation Chrome Dome -- and had a nuke event, although Spain did too.

[ducksalad]

Guys, I don't deny that Iceland the geographical object is important. Armchair is complaining about spending, and Iceland could spend 100% of their GDP on defense and it would barely make a dent.

[David Nieporent]

Iceland had nothing to do with Operation Chrome Dome.

[DDHarriman]

Minneapolis Police Chief just stated he was going to go to war with ICE if they try to arrest & deport any of the Somali fraudsters.

https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1995956308902879320

Democrats are sick vile monsters. They hate America and everything that has made her great.

[David Nieporent]

I know I'm taking the bait, but for those who might be fooled, always just assume Voltage! is lying. You will be right 400% of the time. The police chief didn't say anything like that.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The chief starts at 16 minutes on this: https://www.youtube.com/live/jFdRnc80h2c

I think they say enough to look at some serious Federal charges.
To "facilitate protests"???

[Dr. Ed 2]

WOW -- Look at what the Chief says at 30 minutes,
And it gets worse.

This is Inciting to Riot, 101.

[David Nieporent]

This is Inciting to Riot, 101.

Unfortunately, Dr. Ed never attended class, and didn't even have the prerequisites necessary to enroll. As such, he flunked every quiz and never even took the final. There is no riot and no inciting. Not at any of the timestamps cited.

[Dr. Ed 2]

https://www.youtube.com/live/jFdRnc80h2c

They essentially said that the police will defend the 80,000 Somalis against ICE and enable them to protest ICE, who inevitably will be arresting the wrong people.

These are some of the most irresponsible people I've ever seen.

[David Nieporent]

I know, but until Trump leaves office we can't fire all those ICE agents.