They love the language of blood and gore

My Sunday movie was Glitter and Gold, Ice Dancing. This was released by Netflix a few days before the Winter Olympics to serve as a companion to the Ice Dancing competition. I didn’t have a chance to watch it then. It is a three episode documentary, 2:45 total length, as three top ice dancing couples prepare for their time in the Olympics. Two of the couples are: Madison Chock and Evan Bates, who had won gold medals at lesser competitions, but had not won an Olympic medal. Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, who had also won a lot of medals and known for a more eccentric style. Poirier said he is gay and that it affects the choices he makes when designing a program. Laurence Fournier-Beaudry and Guillame Cizaron were the third couple. He had won Olympic gold in 2022 with a different partner. I don’t remember why his partner left. His new partner had lost her previous partner because he had been suspended for a sex assault accusation. That ruling was overturned and appealed, but not resolved in time to prepare for this year’s games. A year before the Games the ice dancing world was pretty confident that Chock and Bates would take gold and “Piper and Paul” would take silver. That calculus was upset when the Fournier-Beaudry and Cizaron paring was announced. In ice dancing, especially when the competitors are still in their teens, there is a lot of splitting and forming partners. There is even a website where one can fill in their stats in hopes of finding a partner. That can mean partners are from different countries, creating strange situations. An English woman was paired with a Spanish man and got a Spanish passport to qualify. That man left the sport and she paired with a German man. The German man could more easily get a Spanish passport than the English/Spanish woman could get a German passport, so they represented Spain though neither was Spanish. This was brought up because Fournier-Beaudry had to get a French passport and hope the paperwork went through before the Games. By the time a pair is Olympic quality they’ve usually been together for a decades, sometimes more than two. The French pair had to overcome a lot for being so recently paired. Ten months out the pairs create their short and long programs based on the types of things they do best and their own personal style. They choose music and work with choreographers. They talk to costume designers. They have to consider whether the programs are “Olympic enough.” Six months out they start to show their programs to judges to get feedback on what works (what pleases the judges) and what doesn’t. But each pair must decide if what the judges say conflicts with what they understand their personality to be. There are a few scenes of the woman putting on makeup before performing. Their male partners are beside them also putting on makeup. And Poirier showed how much stuff he puts in his hair so that it is as unmoving as a helmet. Then come the qualifying events in which they go to arenas around the world and perform before audiences. How well they place affects whether they get to the Olympics. Their performances may suggest whether parts of their program need to be reworked. Of course, their Olympic performances are not included in this documentary. Though I watched the competition I had forgotten how they finished and had to look it up. I finished the book The Bump, a novel by Sidney Karger. This is the story of Wyatt and Biz, a gay couple. Yes, Biz is a nickname – real name Massimo – gotten perhaps because he was a busy boy, he seemed to be bouncing off the walls (ADD?), or because as a teen he was in show business. Maybe both. They have been together about a dozen years. A baby is about to be born for them through surrogacy. But as the story opens their relationship is showing strain. So instead of flying from from their home in Brooklyn to California, where the surrogate is, they decide on a road trip. Wyatt plans for them to visit gay enclaves – Provincetown, Saugatuck, Palm Springs – before being responsible parents puts a stop to that. They get to Provincetown, but Wyatt’s mother soon calls him to come to Boston, where he begins to learn why his father left when he was a boy and his mother won’t talk about it. Saugatuck gets replaced with a visit with Biz’s huge and boisterous family near Chicago, where Biz begins to confront his fears that he won’t be a good enough father. He compares himself to his own father, who is a gem. This is an enjoyable and satisfying story. It’s a love story with a bit of maturity to it. Even so, it’s a bit of a lightweight. Thom Hartmann of the Daily Kos community and an independent pundit wrote that (though their cruelty was visible long before the first bombs dropped) the war with Iran demonstrates the nasty guy, the vice nasty, Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller, Russel Vought, Karoline Leavitt, Elon Musk, and many more have a severe case of bloodlust.

Trump, Hegseth, Vance, Miller, Leavitt, et al think this sort of thing makes them seem “macho” and “tough.” Nearly 90% of Republican voters agree with them. What it really does is reveal them as psychopaths, the very human embodiment of evil. ... This isn’t the language of leaders reluctantly using force as a last resort; it’s the rhetoric of psychopaths who see the rest of humanity as disposable, as dots in a video game, as objects whose death is entertainment, so long as their own luxury and power are secure. ... They delight in death and destruction. They love the language of blood and gore. They’re monsters.

I haven’t looked at the work of Sarah Kendzior in a while. She had been co-host of Gaslit Nation and now runs her own newsletter on Substack. A post from the end of February is a Q&A with her subscribers. A top topic is the Epstein scandal. Here are a couple excerpts from close to the top of the post.

Will the Epstein files bring accountability? SK: Yes, some — but not necessarily in the US. We’ve seen predators face arrest in other countries. In the US, we’ve seen them resign from jobs. This gives me little hope since MeToo produced more backlash than justice, and many who lost power later regained it. I do think the release has forced politicians and pundits to finally address the massive criminal conspiracy that was in the public domain for two decades. What’s revealing is that they view redacted emails by predators as more credible than consistent statements by victims. There is something very wrong with the way Americans trust criminal elites to be more reliable sources than the people they hurt. ... Will the rest of the files be released? SK: As I’ve said before, I think they were waiting to release an Epstein trove once: 1) they felt they had consolidated power 2) AI was so ubiquitous that the veracity of the evidence would be questioned. That moment is now. We have seen a lot of emails, though one period of interest — the time around 9/11 — is largely absent. We have not seen much video. I believe the most damaging information is on video. We know Epstein had rooms wired with cameras to film pedophiles assaulting victims. I will not watch that if it comes out. But it may come out, and should that happen, the assaulter will claim it’s fake. This wouldn’t have been a convincing excuse a decade ago, but it will be now due to AI. I’ve wondered if Grok posting child pornography on demand shortly before the Epstein files were released was a trial run for this tactic.

Perhaps this is why many of the richest tech companies are investing so deeply in AI? I’ve accumulated a bunch of pundit roundups for Kos. Let’s see how many I get through in the time I have. In the roundup for Saturday at the end of February Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Sarah Fitzpatrick that included a link to an article in The Atlantic. Fitzpatrick’s comment:

At least 6 Trump Cabinet members or senior admin officials were in contact with Epstein. It’s unclear if these relationships w/ Epstein were raised in background checks or security clearances. Every agency involved declined to answer my questions.

The title and subtitle of the article:

The ‘Crazy’ Plot to Release the Epstein Files How an unlikely duo of lawmakers partnered with victims to try to hold the powerful accountable.

In the comments, a tweet (though it doesn’t show as a tweet) by Matthew Yglesias:

Trump warned me that if I voted for Kamala Harris we’d have higher prices and a government-run economy at home and new wars abroad, and I voted for Harris and that’s exactly what we got.

A cartoon posted by The Wolfpack and by John Darkow shows Musk (labeled “DOGE”) pushing an old lady in a wheelchair labeled “Social Security” towards the edge of a cliff. Musk says, “So, which one are you, Granny? Waste, Fraud, or Abuse?!” Another cartoon posted by The Wolfpack and by Daniel Boris, shows Hillary Clinton saying, “Donald Trump’s name is mentioned 38,000 times in the Epstein files, and I am the person Republicans ask to testify under oath. Makes perfect sense!” In the roundup for last Wednesday Dworkin quoted Shanaka Anslem Perera on X:

Satellite imagery shows an Iranian ballistic missile struck the AN/FPS-132 phased array radar at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. If the damage is as severe as the imagery suggests, Iran just destroyed a $1.1 billion piece of equipment that took years to build and cannot be replaced on any timeline relevant to this war. The AN/FPS-132 is not an ordinary radar. It is one of a handful of early warning sensors in the entire US global missile defence architecture. It detects ballistic missile launches at ranges exceeding 5,000 kilometres. It provides the initial tracking data that allows Patriot, THAAD, and Aegis systems to calculate intercept solutions. Without it, every other layer of missile defence in the Gulf theatre is operating with compressed reaction times and degraded situational awareness.

David Schuster of Blue Amp:

We now know that a woman came forward in 2019 alleging that, as a minor, she was sexually assaulted by Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. Investigators did not laugh her out of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They interviewed her four times. Four. In the careful, plodding world of the FBI, that is not a courtesy; it is an acknowledgment of credibility. Agents summarized each session in the bureaucratic catechism known as an FBI 302 report. Three of those summary reports are now missing. Not delayed. Not misfiled. Missing.

In the comments is a tweet by Veterans Against Trump:

Reporter: What’s the worst case scenario that you have planned for in Iran? Trump: I don’t know of there’s a worst case... I guess the worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person., right? That could happen.

The Maine Wonk added:

Gee, I wonder why every administration for 50 years has avoided outright war with Iran and regime change. But sure, the Host of the Apprentice is the only person in history with a plan that will change everything in a matter of weeks. We live in the dumbest timeline ever.

In last Thursday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Michael Deck of Niemann Lab discussing the 3 million pages of Epstein documents with 180,000 images and 2,000 videos. Search of all that is a big problem. A solution: AI.

These types of AI-powered transparency projects have only become more important as trust in government institutions and the Trump administration’s handling of the files erodes. Last week, NPR reported that the DOJ intentionally withheld and removed documents in the Epstein Files that named Donald Trump, including an accusation by a woman that he had sexually abused her when she was a minor. [...] Since the first Epstein Files were released last year, newsrooms have been using machine learning and LLMs to parse documents and find story leads. Earlier this month, New York Times AI projects editor Dylan Freedman explained how he and his colleagues built “bespoke software applications” to help reporters search photos visually, identify document duplicates, and generate video and audio transcripts. The Times has also been using a proprietary search tool developed by its Interactive News desk to break news about the files and comb through the documents for investigative leads.

In the comments paulpro posted a cartoon by Sheneman showing the nasty guy saying:

People say my big, beautiful war has no clear objective, fake news! Since when is war profiteering not a clear objective?

Way down in the comments is a cartoon by Jesse Duquette in response to generals expecting the Iran war to usher in the End Times. It shows Jesus in a red cap talking to followers: “One day I will return but only once you bomb a bunch of kids because a pedophile told you to.” In the comments of Friday’s roundup paulpro posted a cartoon, author not mentioned. It shows two men talking, the second one in a red cap:

First: So, you’re now supporting a warmonger and pedophile protector. Second: Yeah, its’ tough to keep up with what I believe in... First: But still with Trump? Second: Sure, gas is still under $3. First: Ah... I’ve got some bad news...

American history through the eyes of the Natives

The Sunday Detroit Free Press has expanded its arts coverage, which is how I learned about a play at a live theater and went out to see it Thursday evening. The play is Broke-ology or the science of being broke. It is at the Tipping Point Theatre in Northville. Alas, it finishes its run on Sunday. The story is about three black men in Kansas City. William is suffering from MS and is getting worse. His sons Ennis and Malcolm are trying to work out how to care for him. Occasionally, their mother Sonia appears, usually in William’s dreams. Ennis is older, his wife is about to have a baby, he is working at a wings restaurant, and is feeling stuck. Malcolm has just gotten his master’s degree at U Conn and his afraid of staying too long and becoming stuck in Kansas City. He has a job waiting for him at U Conn. But Ennis wants Malcolm to help with the burden of caring for their father. It’s a messy situation with no easy solution. Having little money doesn’t help. The title comes from Ennis teasing Malcolm about having a graduate degree. Ennis considers himself an expert in broke-ology and has even come up with equations for how it all works. People with parents near the end of life know these issues. That includes me. The acting by all three men was excellent. I was particularly impressed with the guy who played William who had to keep the physical symptoms, especially the tremors, of MS going through nearly all of the play. Alas, there were only three dozen people in the audience. I finished the book The Rediscovery of America, Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk. It is a history of America from the viewpoint of the Natives starting with first contact with Europeans. We’ve learned the basics in history lessons in school, but with the view that Europeans and their descendants were supposed to rule the continent and those pesky Natives should just get out of the way. So reading the story from the Native side is refreshing. For that I highly recommend the book. But it is also hard. Even with our knowledge of just high school history we know this is an endless cycle of violence and disease that killed off a great deal of the Native population, of treaties made and broken. Of course, I learned a lot. I wrote close to 3 pages of things I had learned. I can’t put all those points into this post, but I will include quite a few. I knew the Spanish had been in the Southwest. I hadn’t realized it was a full century before the Pilgrims. That contact and subjugation was mostly in the Pueblo communities in New Mexico. The reason for the violence was labor for mineral extraction, mostly silver. There was an uprising by the Pueblo Natives and there was an uneasy truce afterward. It is why the culture of that region is a mix of Native and Spanish. By the time the Pilgrims (English) arrived in 1621 there had been a lot of trading between Europeans and Natives and a lot of Native death from European disease. The Pilgrims wouldn’t have been able to move in if the Native population was at full strength. At a time when Africans were brought to America to be slaves more than 600,000 Natives were taken as slaves to England, Spain, and around the world. Pilgrims didn’t enslave – their religion said labor was good for them. But their religion also said it was the best religion and Natives should be converted. We think of the Pilgrims being concentrated around Massachusetts Bay, but there were a lot of settlements and violence against Natives along the Connecticut coast, an area sheltered by Long Island. The French came to trade, not so much to colonize. They had a presence in about 2/3 of North America – Canada, Great Lakes and down to the Ohio Valley, and west of the Mississippi. Their fiercest opponent was the Iroquois federation. The French agreed to a Great Settlement in 1701 that brought peace to the region. Thousands of tribes sent representatives. There is no coincidence that Detroit was founded that year. The English moved in on the French. The English took over a fort on an island near the entrance to the St. Lawrence River, which meant the French lost their ability to bring in goods to trade. A part of this long conflict was called the French and Indian War, but was really a French – English war. The French wanted to trade and the Natives tolerated that. The English wanted to the land to settle on, and the Natives didn’t want that. I was puzzled by one thing. The book said the French lost control of all of their North American holdings at the end of the French – Indian War. But didn’t we buy the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803? We’re used to thinking of the area west of the Appalachian Mountains as the frontier. To the Natives, this was the Interior. As settlers moved there the English tried to block the move. The English wanted peace, which many settlers saw as siding with the Natives. That was an important reason for the American Revolution. Pennsylvania created a Constitution in 1776. Most of the delegates were settlers. One important idea from it became important when the US wrote a Constitution 11 years later. That idea is that a central government is needed to subdue the Natives. That’s the reason why the Articles of Confederation didn’t work. The Constitution said nothing about the new US being able to buy land to make it part of the country. President Thomas Jefferson and to create a legal justification. He also had to justify turning the white residents into citizens. Georgia wanted the Choctaw to be removed. Congress said they were protected on their land. Then President Andrew Johnson sided with Georgia, leading to the Trail of Tears. I hadn’t known there was significant trading along the Pacific coast starting about 1760. The traders were Spanish, English, Russian, and a few others. Of course, the Natives were hit with violence and disease. And colonial extraction was at work as the traders wanted pelts, primarily otter, and fish, primarily salmon, which reduced the animal populations. I hadn’t known that before the railroads, when travel was on foot, horseback or stagecoach, a gathering of thousands of Natives meant there would be tens of thousands of horses. While much of the East was preoccupied with the approaching Civil War settlers poured into the West. Worse than all those people were the mines, which were quite good at polluting the environment. Mining camps were mostly male and mostly Anglo-Germanic, and also highly supremacist. Approaching and during the Civil War US soldiers stationed at forts in the West felt they were missing out on the important battles. They were brutal in their treatment of Natives. After the war settlers assumed they were to displace the Natives. The Senate ratified treaty after treaty, usually taking land while granting rights to Natives. Ratification didn’t include the House, which began to pass bills limiting and overturning treaties, though the Constitution does not give them that power. It meant treaties were violated and then replaced with something more advantageous to white settlers. From the Civil War to about 1910 the goal was to assimilate the Natives, which included extensive boarding schools that worked to separate the Native child from their heritage. Between 1910 and WWII assimilation efforts ended and tribes had a time of their own sovereignty. The expansionist policies of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were inspired by the US treatment of Natives. A German official said, “The native must give way” to the colonizer as Germany looked eastward. After WWII assimilation resumed, but in a different way. The US government offered to buy tribal land. But they made that offer to tribal members, not to the tribe leadership. That set up a conflict between a member and their community. Members were offered travel expenses to cities with a promise of a much better life. But an urban Native was usually as much in poverty as a reservation Native. Native self-determination efforts began in the late 19th century. They began to seriously change thinking of those in the federal government about 1970. Since then the federal government has recognized tribal sovereignty and able to tell states to keep their hands off. Many tribes do quite well with gaming, but many other tribes and their members remain in poverty. The book is 450 pages of text plus another 100 pages of notes. Blackhawk relied on growing scholarship of what Native life was like. Even with leaving much out my two pages of notes came out to two pages of full sentences and paragraphs. In the pundit roundup for Daily Kos for Friday a week ago Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet from Sam Stein:

Shot: Pentagon demanding Anthropic drop insistence that its AI model not fire weapons without some form of human sign off Chaser:

The chaser is a headline and subtitle from New Scientist:

AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations Leading AIs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases

An article in Axios adds:

"The contract language we received overnight from the Department of War made virtually no progress on preventing Claude's use for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons," Anthropic said in a statement.

Dr. Catharine Young tweeted the cover of The Lancet which has this text:

The destruction that Kennedy has wrought in 1 year might take generations to repair, and there is little hope for US health and science while he remains at the helm.

In the comments Eastsidebill posted a list he got from a friend. The list of 100 entries is things the nasty guy has done. They’re mostly in alphabetical order. Here’s just some of it:

1. $25M judgment 2. “Do us a favor” 3. “Find 11,780” 4. 34 felonies 5. Atlantic City Bankruptcies 6. Bible sales 7. Big Lies 8. Birtherism 9. Black tenants 10. Branded Bibles 11. Cabinet corruption 12. Casino fines 13. Census meddling 14. Central Park Five 15. CFPB neutered 16. Charity fraud 17. Civil fraud 18. Classified files 19. Coin schemes 20. Comey firing

Wars are a tool of undermining and undoing democracies

Brother and I had a nice visit. We also had a great lunch with Sister, two Nieces, and Cousin. Sunday evening Brother and I watched a great handbell concert recorded that afternoon. If you want to see what handbells can do this is a wonderful place to start. The performers are 150 of the best handbell musicians around. The event is Distinctly Bronze East 2026 and the concert is here through the end of March. In the handbell world, since the bells are made of bronze, something described as bronze is top level, not like Olympic third place. After Brother arrived midday Friday we didn’t listen to much news. We were a bit surprised Saturday morning on hearing that Israel and the US had bombed Iran. Had we missed something on Friday? No we hadn’t. The start of the war happened overnight. In early afternoon on Saturday Meteor Blades, staff emeritus of Daily Kos reported what we knew of the attack at that time. The post begins with an update with the original story below. Between that and all the other news sources reporting on the war I don’t have anything to add here. News Corpse of the Kos community posted late Saturday commenting on a tweet from the nasty guy that quotes other sources that say the reason why he started the war was because, “Iran tried to interfere in the 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump.” News Corpse notes that there is no evidence of this allegation. Missing from the nasty guy’s tweet is a discussion of the evidence that Russia did interfere in the 2020 election. Midday on Monday Oliver Willis of Kos reported the nasty guy spent the weekend talking to various news organizations, including some he accused of “fake news,” and seemed to tell each of them a different reason why he issued the orders for the attack. Late Monday afternoon Emily Singer of Kos wrote:

The right-wing pundits who usually defend President Donald Trump's most idiotic moves are not pleased with his decision to start an open-ended war with Iran. They’re issuing surprisingly forceful statements condemning the Trump administration's inability to state a clear rationale for getting into yet another Middle East conflict.

Singer quoted far right pundit Matt Walsh, who wrote on X:

So far we’ve heard that although we killed the whole Iranian regime, this was not a regime change war. And although we obliterated their nuclear program, we had to do this because of their nuclear program. And although Iran was not planning any attacks on the US, they also might have been, depending on who you ask. And although we are not fighting this war to free the Iranian people, they are now free, or might be, depending on who seizes power, and we have no idea who that will be. The messaging on this thing is, to put it mildly, confused.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted a press release by Maine Sen. Angus King (independent) who a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He has questions, listed in the release:

1) Why hasn’t President Trump made the case to the American people (and to their representatives in Congress) for such a major commitment of American forces, which could include troops on the ground? 2) Why now? All reports were that negotiations with regard to Iran’s nuclear program were proceeding positively this week with the possibility of a long sought-after diplomatic solution, and there is no indication that new malign actions by the regime were imminent. 3) What, if any, is the plan for an endgame now that the goal has moved from elimination of Iran’s nuclear capacity to regime change? 4) What is the legal and Constitutional authority for this extraordinary action? The Constitution explicitly places the power (and the responsibility) for taking our country into war in the peoples’ representatives in Congress for a reason—the commitment to war is much too important to rest in the hands of one person.

Dan K of the Kos community reported:

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) reports that it is getting a big increase in complaints from troops who are being told that Trump’s attack on Iran is the opening round of the End Times war: MRFF Inundated with Complaints of Gleeful Commanders Telling Troops Iran War is “Part of God’s Divine Plan” to Usher in the Return of Jesus Christ.

Dan K quoted from the MRFF article:

“This morning our commander opened up the combat readiness status briefing by urging us to not be “afraid” as to what is happening with our combat operations in Iran right now. He urged us to tell our troops that this was “all part of God’s divine plan” and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. He said that “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” — MRFF active duty NCO client, writing on behalf of themself and 15 other unit members MRFF has received over 200 calls from more than 50 military installations across all the services since Saturday reporting similar disturbing pronouncements from their Christian zealot commanders. [emphases in original]

Dan K said this idea would not have entered the nasty guy’s head because he would not have known or understood the meaning. But even before Pete Hegseth was sworn in as Secretary of Defense he was known as a religious warrior. A couple links to Hegseth’s statements are provided. Dan K concludes, “Anyone still want to bet this ends well?” Lisa Needham of Kos reported on Tuesday the nasty guy and the State Department have asked Americans, between a half and full million of them, to evacuate from 14 Middle East countries. But the State Department has provided no help in doing so and since the airspace has closed there are no commercial flights. This is in contrast to France, Belgium, and Britain along with the European Union using charter and military flights to get their citizens out. In Monday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted David French of the New York Times:

Here’s the bottom line: Trump should have gotten congressional approval for striking Iran, or he should not have struck at all. And because he did not obtain congressional approval, he’s diminishing America’s chances for ultimate success and increasing the chances that we make the same mistakes we — and other powerful nations — have made before.

Tom Nichols and Shashank Joshi tweeted that the most abused words since the attack started have been “preemptive” and “imminent.” Will Bunch tweeted a link to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. In the tweet Bunch wrote:

No wonder Trump went to war with Iran in the dead of night, with the Capitol empty, most Americans soundly asleep This war is illegal. Full stop. The worst abuse of presidential power in American history aims to cement a dictatorship on U.S. soil.

The title and subtitle of the article:

A mad king’s illegal war on Iran is a cry for regime change ... in Washington. Democracy really did die in darkness as Donald Trump’s unconstitutional war in Iran stamps America as a dictatorship.

Timothy Snyder in his Substack:

From the United States, the most plausible angle of view is domestic politics, not foreign policy. Wars are a tool of undermining and undoing democracies. Given that we have multiple examples of this from both modern and ancient democracy, and given the behavior of Trump and his allies in general, this must be an interpretive method for these attacks. The relationship between foreign war and domestic authoritarianism can take two basic forms: 1) we must all rally because there is a war and everyone who oppose the war is a traitor; 2) we must hold elections under specific conditions favorable to the party in power. This is utterly predictable and should be easy to halt and indeed to reverse.

Jon Ralston quoted and provided a link to an article in the Nevada Independent:

“This is chutzpah taken to a new level, gaslighting done better than Charles Boyer could have executed: Persuade people that elections are compromised so you can compromise elections.” Trump and his enablers are laying the groundwork to muck around in the Nov. election.

In the comments is a cartoon by Toonerman showing Jiminy Cricket talking to Pinocchio, who is looking at articles about what the nasty guy has said.

No Pinoch... it’s still wrong to lie. It always will be, even if you are the president, or a powerful pol, or a religious leader, or a trusted “news network.” Lying corrupts the most important aspect of being human; the ability to make free and rational choices, and by lying, you’re trying to rob others of their freedom to choose rationally. Lying chips away at trust. Liars are losers.

In Tuesday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect who noted Bush II decapitated the Iraqi regime by forcing out Saddam Hussein. The nasty guy seems to have done the same thing in Iran.

Such are the limits of government decapitations. They are not a form of regime change. Absent the ability of the populace to take the power that should be theirs, decapitations may just be a form of upward mobility for the regime’s surviving elites, now that there are unfilled slots above them.

Vanda Felbab-Brown of The Brookings Institution wrote:

In the first days of airstrikes, the United States and Israel killed the ayatollah as well as several top leaders of the Iranian military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), adding to those killed in July 2025 during the joint attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. But the Iranian regime is vast, with sprawling religious authority, layers of officers across various armed branches and militias, and widespread control of the country’s economic assets. Even if the United States and Israel continue mowing down newly-replaced leaders for weeks, the IRGC and various armed forces and their economic assets will not just melt away, even if they eventually fracture. [...] The Trump administration broke a cruel, brutal, and dangerous regime with little clarity, planning, readiness, and accountability for how to foster a new, desirable replacement system.

Sophia Tesfaye of Salon:

The president did not deliver a traditional address to the American people on network television, instead posting a hastily-edited eight-minute video statement to Truth Social. Israel assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of an adversarial state. American service members are dead — and the president has acknowledged there will likely be more to come. Iranian missiles are flying, hitting Israel and U.S. military outposts and interests throughout the Middle East. And the best the American people receive is a 3 a.m. Truth Social announcement delivered in a MAGA hat. No senior administration officials have appeared on the flagship public affairs programs that, for all their flaws, have long served as a forum for democratic accountability. Instead of structured briefings, Trump spent the weekend personally calling journalists — more than a dozen of them — fielding one or two questions at a time from the comfort of Mar-a-Lago. He spoke with reporters from The Atlantic, the Washington Post, Axios, the New York Times, ABC News and other media outlets, offering a scattershot array of justifications and timelines. To one outlet, the aim is “freedom for the people” of Iran. To another, perhaps this can end “in two or three days” with a deal. To a third, it might take “four to five weeks,” and he has “three very good choices” to take control in Tehran — until, in another conversation, he suggests those choices are dead. [...] Donald Trump’s war on the media has paid off. When the president bypasses traditional forums, it feels like just another norm shattered in an endless stream of shattered norms. When he declines to brief the public in a sustained way, it barely registers. When contradictions pile up, they are chalked up to style rather than substance. In the end, however, the punditry did not need to be coerced into cheerleading. It just needed, as it always has, the opportunity.

The Editorial Board of The New York Times wrote about four law firms that were attacked by the nasty guy and sued him rather than submit. Courts have already struck down the executive orders that attempted to punish them. And now the nasty guy’s administration has accepted defeat.

Nine other firms folded and struck deals intended to mollify the president. The deals included promises to perform millions of dollars of pro bono work on behalf of Trump-friendly clients. These nine firms all failed a high-stakes character test. Their leaders faced a choice between submitting to a bully and doing the right thing. The firms are not household names to most Americans, but it is worth listing them here. We hope that clients looking for fearless attorneys and law students deciding where to work will remember which elite firms were unwilling to fight back. Meekness is not a quality most people seek in a lawyer.

In the comments is a tweet by Saul Staniforth:

Pete Hegseth: "If you kill Americans.. anywhere on earth we will hunt you down without apology & without hesitation and we will kill you" Unless the American is killed by Israelis in the occupied West Bank, in which case we'll do nothing while we continue arming your killers.

John Karalis added:

*Offer not valid in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Commenter kurious quoted an article from Raw Story about military commanders saying the Iran attack will bring about the End Times. Here’s a bit of the quote:

"Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100 percent accordance with fundamentalist Christian end of the world eschatology," MRFF president Mikey Weinstein added.

Babylonbros posted a cartoon showing two people arguing:

One: Let’s go Trump!! Taking care of Israel and taking out Iran! Two: I’m writing that down! One: Okay. Two: Sign it, please! One: Okay. Two: Now date it! One: Okay. – Why? Two: I’m going to show it to you the minute yo blame the price of gas on Democrats!

AMusingFool responded to the comments, “Maybe this war will turn out fine.”

Just want to flag this line. There’s no such thing as a war turning out fine. Might end up as a geopolitical win, but that requires ignoring a s***-ton of terrible stuff in the middle.

Raging Pencils posted a cartoon showing a discussion between a teacher and student Billy:

Teacher: Billy, can you tell us the three branches of government? Billy: Sure! Reality TV, Fox News, and the Heritage Foundation. Teacher: Not quite, Billy. Try again. Billy: How about the extortionists, the lap-dogs, and the jaundiced? Teacher: Now Billy... Billy: Malfeasance, incompetence and sadism? Quisling day-care, the confederate short-bus, and pay-for-play due process? Teacher: Uhhhh... Billy: Child-f***ers, conservative enablers, and racists royalists! Am I getting warmer? Teacher, with head on desk, “Hot. Red hot.”