Of course they are.

The paradox of the Dark Pit of Eternal Ignorance. What evidence can one present to someone who doesn't value evidence that they should value evidence?

Kruse for the win! 😎

I recall a Manager Ending Moment™️ in a talk with a GS-15 after he dropped the F-Bomb in a meeting while unfairly accusing a person on my Watch floor. My final question to him was, "Do you trust your people to do their job?" His answer, "No." I was looking through vacancies within the hour.

I don't see a way to fix the collapse of civic virtue. Voter went with Trump because they couldn't get themselves to vote for a black woman. They listened to his lies while ignoring his total lack of character, criminality and dictatorial ambitions. Potentially a nation ending failure.

Go to hud.gov and use the website feedback button to tell them the website is for all Americans and to take down this partisan propaganda. #ThisIsTrumpsShutdown

The Logic of Failure was a classic little book by Dietrich Dorner. He didn't examine this problem specifically, but more generally examined failure from a systems perspective. /1 grist.org/culture/clim...

Hegseth would undoubtedly designate the 100th "DEI hires." They were part of the 442d Regimental Combat Team and its 100th Battalion was and still is the most decorated unit in U.S. military history.

People on the right often ask “wHaT aBOut GuNs in cHiCAgo?” because Chicago has stricter gun laws than the rest of the country. And Kash provides a good illustration: guns flow from regions with weak gun laws to regions with strong gun laws. That’s why you need strong federal laws.

As it should be.

Trump wraps up a speech to military leaders that represented a major escalation of his effort to weaponize the armed forces into a tool he can use to violently quash domestic dissent. Hard to imagine how anyone with a shred of dignity can keep serving after this, which of course is the point.

Trump says he wants to take out his domestic enemies using the military. Trump has been a series of Big Red Button Moments,™️and that is definitely one of them. It's time for a review! mefletcher.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-...

Chef’s kiss.

"We are asking the Department of War to deploy to our cities" should be a statement that ends any Governor's political career.

I'm an advocate for Bacon's idea of Degrees of Belief. The accumulated evidence suggests that ICE must be considered so compromised that it cannot possibly be reformed. /1

A metaphor for our time? It reminds me of when the farmers in The Grapes of Wrath search for someone to blame for their plight, but can find no one. Instead, they discover that the cause is the system itself. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Democrats not moving to remove both of these men after the staggering failure both have displayed over the last months is quite telling. Jeffries, who was supposed to be a breath of fresh air, turned out to be a fetid gust of vested institutionalism; a cautious protector of the failed status quo.

The Lessons of the Cold War that NATO should take to heart today. Yes, Putin isn't the Politburo, who were indeed, overall, a cautious bunch who were just as worried about events spinning out of control their their US counterparts. /1 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"That's AI!" 😎

The underlying truth that fascists fear people will discover is that under all the macho posturing, ridiculous "tactical" uniforms, Operator beards, and masks they are just an absurd pathetic bunch of loser man-babies who want desperately to be seen as patriotic tough guys.

The possible reasons for Trump's Executive Order designating Antifa (a label, not an organization) as a terrorist organization have boiled down quite quickly. The evidence continues to mount that Trump and his minions and thugs want to label anyone who opposes him as a domestic terrorist. /1

The lesson from the Third Amendment and the military occupation of US cities mefletcher.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-...

Trump designating Antifa as a terror organization (It's not an organization in any formal sense. It's more label for - checking notes - people who oppose fascism) is so that he can label anyone who opposes him as a domestic terrorist.

It is difficult to come up with an example of a GOP initiative to turn the public good into private profit that doesn't involve corrupt crony capitalism or a money-grubbing grift. It's as if every public good has been turned into an ineffective health supplement being hawked by some GOP influencer.

Well..... No.😎

"The effect is a line-item veto for the president over spending... Once again, the rules magically change when Trump is in office... This is not behavior that a healthy democracy tolerates from its judiciary. It is the kind of constitutional rot that precedes the rule of law’s collapse."

The evidence is mounting that the Star Chamber Six on SCOTUS and the White House have come to an accommodation. They have agreed to continue to support his dictatorship, and they get to keep pushing their pet political and dominionist ideologies past the Constitution. /1

JUST NOW AT THE UN…

Be sure to emphasise the word "tactical" in the advertising for any product marketed to insecure man-babies. It works every time. 😎

Even Trump must realize that this won't fly. The now fully corrupt Department of Injustice is going to get the Mother Of All Side-Eyes™️from a Federal Judge. It likely it won't even make it to jury. /1

Even if we disregard the reference to the potential for Hindsight Bias, this tracks with what we know about the dynamics of human behavior. Even the Roman upper classes complained about the fickleness of the Mob. The cause(s) behind the sudden change of heart can even appear trivial to an observer.

Russian authoritarian leaders have had the ROC in their pocket since the time of the Czars. Throughout history religious institutions and secular leaders have often worked together to control the population. Our current times are not exempt. www.reuters.com/investigatio...

More evidence that the number of training hours that ICE gets on dealing with protestors is zero. "The use of force is the last refuge of the incompetent." These are thugs, out of their depth, poorly trained and horribly led, who have no answer to a situation other than to respond with force.

I was never happier about canceling my NYT subscription than when I saw a reference to a Maggie Haberman article on the Comey indictments. 😎

Kimmel’s defiant return highlights one of the most disturbing dynamics of Trump II, that so many people in positions of leadership are chickenshit frauds who would rather fold in advance than put up anything resembling a fight www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Somehow, this reminds me of a video of Saddam Hussein talking to a room filled with Iraqi officials. It became a loyalty test. He said there was at least one traitor in the room. If I recall correctly, at least one man was denounced (while swearing he was innocent) and then led from the room.

".... that virtually everyone came from somewhere else, and everyone’s genetic background shows a mix from different waves of migration that washed over the globe." My value-added comment is that the much beloved idea of "God given land" is even bigger bullshit. /1

It's long past time for the international community to do all it can to rein in the lawless Netanyahu government and its policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Appearance? The Earth also appears to be orbiting the Sun. Or, to paraphrase a Scientific American editorial, "Who are we to convinced by mountains of evidence of impropriety?"

(Once) nice government you got here, would be a shame if anything happened to it

The extreme irony is that Comey's "...but her emails!" moment (which was highly inappropriate and should have gotten him fired by Obama) was one of the main reasons Trump won in 2015.

okay, whew this is factually, firmly fascist abcnews.go.com/Politics/new...

"This isn’t normally a problem prosecutors face, as they start with a crime, then figure out whodunnit, rather than starting with a person and only then deciding whathedun. But Trump wants Comey charged and is convinced he’s guilty of something, and it’s your job now to figure out what."

Judges and juries are sticklers for this thing called evidence. As there appears to be an urgent requirement for remedial training for Trump's lackeys at the Department of Injustice, here is a helpful reminder: That is spelled, E V I D E N C E.

Trump is bailing out a fellow economic wrecking ball because he craves those touching bromances he tries to cultivate with his fellow strongmen and despots.

The prevailing Trump wind come from the direction of Moscow, with only occasional variability. Diplomatically and militarily, one can rely on him about as much as farmers can rely on the weather.

My current hypothesis as to why yet another failed Rapture prophecy: We were all left behind! Nobody ascended because the people on this planet couldn't even pass even the basic Wheaton Rule test (just like the last 1000 times mystics decided to try their hand at Rapture prediction.) /1

People are doing rapture jokes like there’s no tomorrow.

Appeasement never works. This is the way. www.politico.eu/article/pola...

Sea level rise is the sleeping giant of the Climate Disaster. A significant rise is already baked-in because of the delays in and inertia of the climate system. It could ultimately displace billions, as over 3 billion people live within 60 miles of an ocean. Consider a world without glaciers: