It’s March 3rd and the governor is saying that we won’t have time to pass any more legislation for the entire rest of the year. I’m really fucking tired of this excuse. Are we taking fascism seriously or do debate club rules take priority?

(AP) — Damage to three Amazon Web Services facilities in the Middle East from Iranian drone strikes highlights the rapid growth of data centers in the region, as well as the industry's vulnerability to conflict. apnews.com/article/amazon-aws...

New from me @zeteo.com: the coming US-Israel split over Iran.

It is baffling to me why Dem leadership returns again and again to these procedural critiques. Does anyone find them compelling? Is the problem with this war really that Trump didn't tell Schumer about it sooner?

"I'm testifying remotely because I couldn't get work off on such short notice. I didn't expect you to defund Amtrak and Safe Routes to School on a Tuesday morning with hours of notice." - Jordan Lewis in testimony at OR Leg just now

The first few days of this war involved lots of people outside the administration saying Trump had no idea what he's doing. Helpfully, we've now gotten to Trump saying he has no idea what he's doing.

Tillis to Noem: "A 14 month old dog is basically a teenager in dog years. You decided to kill that dog bc you hadn't invested the appropriate training, then you have the audacity to write a book & say it's a leadership lesson! ... Those are bad decisions not unlike what happened in Minneapolis"

did a little back of the envelope math for how much all this shit is costing. on the order of $1-2 billion per day just in direct spending, maybe 10 times that much in indirect effects

I’m just thinking of all the prominent people in Bend who insisted that Lori is a “moderate” and tsk tsked bringing up her personal character. This behavior is not new! Might want to look closer at some of her staffers while we’re at it. Just saying…

Would just remind folks that a GSA employee named Jeff Neely went to federal prison for throwing lavish parties during a 2010 government conference, then claiming it was all business. He was sentenced to 90 days. You can absolutely imprison dipshits for flamboyantly wasting taxpayer dollars.

for the youths who werent around for the iraq installment - dont believe anything the govt says about progress - no the democrats dont have to say getting rid of the baddie was good and therefore they have to support the war - the war needs to be ended - the media is not your ally and they love war

Reports that Israel bombed the Assembly of Experts meeting in Qom while they were voting on the next supreme leader. Haven’t seen any news yet about how many people were killed. They really are no norms or laws governing targeting at war anymore are there.

Israel simply does not have the power to force the US government to do something it does not want to do. What Rubio is doing here, by claiming Israel forced the US hand, is making Israel the scapegoat for a US policy he knows is unpopular. This framing is going to be so bad for Diaspora Jews.

Now U.S. has closed two embassies in Mideast & told Americans in 14 countries to leave. But most airspace is shut down, there are no flights. Reading about people from around the world stranded. Why are they only now telling Americans to leave? No planning, they weren’t expecting it to spiral.

The trick with a culture of elite impunity is that you also have to protect the law enforcement baronial class to keep them on side.

Reminder that Trump is receiving some kind of ongoing medical treatment that includes a huge number of blood draws &/or IV infusions, he’s got something on his neck, he’s got dementia, & we know nothing about his diagnoses, treatment (including medications & side effects), capacity, or prognosis

This Republican administration is firing Mideast experts before launching a war mostly out of idiotic ignorance. But the last one did so intentionally, fearful their sloppy excuses for war would be undermined by experts. Remember Bush propping up Richard Perle and the “Office of Special Plans”?

two days into the war and he's already trying to pass the blame off to Biden for why things aren't going perfectly. Any other president would be getting buried by the media right now, but Trump bought and corrupted ours.

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

Another one.

Remember that Donald Trump, Jr. is involved with both Polymarket & Kalshi — and the Trumps’ social media company is launching its own prediction market. Meanwhile, Trump’s regulators have announced they will fight any state that attempts to regulate prediction markets. Always follow the money.

If a 27 year old woman was randomly killed on the streets of Capitol Hill by *anything* other than a motor vehicle it would be all over the front pages this morning. Cars are the thing that make me fear the most for my safety in this city and yet this is how the local paper of record responds.

Listening to oral args now and Barrett is questioning the constitutionality of the 1968 Gun Control Act because Congress didn’t take into account the dangerousness standard that SCOTUS made up the 2020s. That’s…not how any of this should work, but it is what Bruen demands.

Iran fired 1200+ projectiles at 5 countries in the first 48 hours. Most were drones. These saturation attacks aim to overwhelm air defenses and drain interceptors. $20-50K Shaheds vs. $4.19M air defense interceptors put US partners on the wrong side of the cost curve.

As the laid off Middle East News Editor, I concur. Management eliminated the positions of every single staff correspondent and bureau chief in the Middle East.

who made this

I'll save everyone the click, it's just this chart:

"If you listened to the campus left over the years.." Most adults actually don't spend much time thinking about what college students are up to. That's a bizarre hobby that only exists in the elite media clique.

"No stupid rules of engagement" is how you shoot down three of your own F-15s in one day. Just a shocking display of martial ineptitude.

The top 1% in America now hoard $55.8 trillion — more than the G.D.P. of the United States and China combined.

without the nuclear excuse, this is a settling of boomer grievances

The Secretary of Defense calling rules of engagement stupid should be an immediately impeachable, if not criminal, offense.

Epstein, ICE and war on Iran are all driven by the same agenda: to attack and destroy anyone who does not look, pray or live like the MAGA Murder Regime deems worthy.

Just wait until gas prices hit transit operations budgets. If blue states continue to fumble their support of transit (see esp. OR, IL, PA) there's going to be a lot of things breaking next year.

I grew up and went to school on military bases in the US and abroad. During the first Gulf War, 3rd grade in Germany, they made us wear little pouches around our necks containing emergency contact info in the event of a terrorist attack. Pretty sure folks would have been upset if we were killed.

This is what I heard in Europe after we reelected George W Bush in 2004. So much of the response overseas to the Iraq war and general belligerence was “I don’t hate Americans, I hate your govt” That changed when we elected Bush. This explains the excitement over Obama including the Nobel.

Maybe I’m not seeing it, but it is a bit surreal all the things that sparked Americans to hoard toilet paper and fuel up the car but… not this?

This part right here.

Would be fun to watch their expressions as the career professional calmly says: “If you cut Precheck we’ll need even more TSA employees on duty to handle the backed up lines.”

If this were coded differently by the culture warlords, they might howl about millions on handouts just to keep their voter base happy. Of course it’s not that simple but it never stopped them from saying that about things as fundamental as food or housing.

Misunderestimate.

Just gonna say that this behavior is not new and is the sort of thing that oppo should discover in one of the top ten congressional races in the country… if only national Dems would invest in the work. There were signs out in the open on LCD’s personal Facebook page!

Also similar to centrist concern trolling about “where are all the protests” when they refuse to look at anything other than their alumni group chat or X the everything app.

If leaders are serious about fighting Trumpism there are a ton of things to do where Trump can’t fight back. Things like fixing how we run our governments in blue states. From the tax code to the legislative calendar, there are things we COULD do. But ten years on… leaders STILL don’t WANT to.

Oregon is currently in a 35 day session! Fighting fascism is an emergency, right? Every state Democrat running for reelection is going to tell you how much they’ll FIGHT. Gonna spend millions on postcards telling you that. But they’ll only fight on these few days…

My one sincerely held conspiracy theory is that the billionaires really are trying to destroy the PC and home computing and forcing us into using thin clients where we own nothing and subscribe for access. Maybe they stumbled on it by accident after screwing up the RAM market, but are now all in.

The City of Bend passed a $190 million transportation bond and earmarked $8 mil for transit projects. Five years later, no transit projects have been identified to receive the funds so they’ll be reallocated. Just a failure of leadership.

Just enforcing the law… right?

Modest proposal: extend the legislative calendar beyond 35 days! Seems like there’s plenty of work to do! So why do we have a legislature designed for horse and buggy times??