not complaining, but I do wonder why it's taken them so long: open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

Warner rejects Paramount's all-cash, hostile bid. gift link: www.wsj.com/business/med...

Trump's war on Science, chapter 13,743

John Dowd: I was Donald Trump’s lawyer. Jack Smith should be celebrated, not vilified. www.ms.now/opinion/jack...

Fentanyl, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and What Actually Works – Steve Hendrix with the “Global Minute” #Fentanyl #OpioidCrisis #DrugPolicy #PublicHealth #BorderSecurity #SteveHendrix #ForeignPolicy #InternationalAffairs #GlobalSecurity #ForeignAffairs #GlobalMinute youtu.be/MnS336nVqUg?...

Europe believes a deal that favors Moscow risks a wider war that could engulf the whole continent. Russia could emerge from peace negotiations with vastly expanded military production capacity, confident it can redraw borders by force, viewing NATO as weak. www.wsj.com/world/europe...

Now these goons want to rig federal employees'annual performance evaluations... www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

This is completely nuts. First they're shipping us fentanyl. (They're not). Then he wants their oil. (He still does). Now they stole something from us, but he can't identify what it is. bsky.app/profile/atru...

The Coast Guard’s policy softening the definition of swastikas comes as antisemitism is on the rise globally...No Republicans on the subcommittee spoke out against the language. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Morten Mørland, The Times

Adan Zyglis, Buffalo News

Trump's playing favorites with some companies over others at the same time he claims to be working on behalf of the American people: www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Wiles lies to try to duck blame. "In the interview, Wiles took issue with the quote about [Musk's] drug use. 'That’s ridiculous, I wouldn’t have said it and I wouldn’t know.' But Whipple played a tape for The Times in which she could be heard saying it." www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/u...

Obvious and I guess naive question: Given everything she says in the Vanity Fair interview about Trump's cruel, foolish, and destructive policies, how can Susie Wiles live with herself as Trump's chief of staff? Proximity to power tends to corrupt, and close proximity to power corrupts absolutely.

"We suffer through daily reminders of the weakness of his mind, but the U.S. has muddled along with other dim presidents. Where Trump occupies a category all his own is in his breathtaking moral depravity. The man is a moral abomination, and so are his defenders." open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

Secretive Rapid Response Networks Are Operating in Communities ‘Terrorized’ By ICE Raids talkingpointsmemo.com/feature/secr...

Kori Schake: “The men who built this international order weren’t leftist college professors sitting around the faculty lounge. They were the people who had fought World War I and World War II and saw the damage of an unstable order.” www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/fea...

Now that Trump has signed an Executive Order proclaiming fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction, let's think about the billionaire Sackler family, who launched America's whole opioid crisis... and who used the mass profits they secured from it to fund the GOP. Funny how Trump never mentions them.

Peter Baker summarizes Susie Wiles' interviews about a White House driven by drug abuse and conspiracy theories.

While Susie Wiles describes Trump and his senior entourage in the most unflattering terms, she reserves her real scalpel for JD Vance. Politics drives everything he does, she tells us, and he rarely believes anything he says. But he is a voracious consumer of conspiracy theories.

Columbia University is portrayed here as having a uniquely dysfunctional and dishonest board of trustees. This is what you get when you recruit trustees over years who have no concept of what a university is and accept the appointment for prestige and personal gain, rather than service.

Diplomacy, Trump style. Gone is the age of professional diplomats backed by an army of experts. In is place, Trump has brought his own entourage of not-particularly smart grifters hellbent on using the power and authority of the United States to advance their own personal financial interests.

Ed Luce documents how China's Xi has outmaneuvered Trump at every turn, largely by playing to his own vanity and greed. The real victim in the end of the day is the United States and its people, who are being put through the wood chipper of international diplomacy and commerce.

As the US drops out of the list of nations supporting Ukraine, the Baltics and Scandinavia are in the forefront

Corruption 'r Us. The Trump administration has broken with decades of settled practice on corruption issues, and the American people will pay the price, writes Christian Caryl.

"I said they betrayed the country, and they’re still betraying the country" - Senate expert Ira Shapiro

Still in a state of shock trying to process the tragic loss of one of the most gifted men in the entertainment industry & his wife when the Embarrassment-in-Chief disgraces common human decency with this repulsive, deranged statement. #NoWords 🤮

Truly embarrassing

and just like that...it only took two years: www.wsj.com/world/trump-...

In Butler County, Nebraska, constituents are incandescent about their sky-rocketing health care insurance costs. "He’s 62, and she’s 64; she’s going to get on Medicare next year. Their premium is going to $3,000," Flood said... “$3,000/month is obscene. That buys you the best house in Butler Co.”

Josh Kovensky's report describes a disturbing gala event; New York’s Young Republicans Beg for More, But Fret About a ‘MAGA Civil War’ talkingpointsmemo.com/news/new-yor...

America’s True Strength — Standing Up for All Our People #America #Humanity #Immigrants #History #Unity #SteveHendrix #ForeignPolicy #InternationalAffairs #GlobalSecurity #ForeignAffairs #GlobalMinute

So poignantly haunting yet heartening. Chag Sameach.

Shock. Horror. Tragedy. open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

📜Happy Bill of Rights Day to all of us! President Franklin Roosevelt established this day to commemorate the ratification of the first ten amendments to the US Constitution. ⚖The Bill of Rights spells out the fundamental rights and civil liberties guaranteed to those in the US by our government.

"Alex Kleytman, an 87-year-old Ukrainian Holocaust survivor, was celebrating Hanukkah with his wife of 57 years, Larisa Kleytman, also a Holocaust survivor, when the attack began. He was killed while shielding Larisa from the bullets with his own body." www.timesofisrael.com/chabad-rabbi...

This is nuts. Sounds fairly close to a horrific midair catastrophe tied to whatevet the fuck trump thinks hes doing in venezuelan air space. abcnews.go.com/Internationa...

New post: William R. Staplin shares his impressions after attending a meet and greet for #IASen candidate Josh Turek. Turek's message has always been built upon hope for what persons of disability can accomplish. www.bleedingheartland.com/2025/12/14/w...

If Any Dem Can Be Governor of Alabama, It’s This Guy. It Still May Take a Miracle. open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

3 part series from Talking Points Memo: talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/two-m...

John Cassidy in The New Yorker: many of the Trump oventures are privately owned... But in tracking company announcements, official filings, etc. a clear picture emerges: enrichment of the First Family on a scale that is unprecedented in American history. www.newyorker.com/news/the-fin...

WSJ editorial board thrashes DHS for arresting a Chinese human rights hero, Guan Heng, and says he must be granted asylum.

News from DeSantisstan: Gov Ron DeSantis’ administration illegally diverted more than $35 million in taxpayer funds as part of a brazen effort last year to defeat two ballot amendments.

Why the World Is Quietly De-Dollarizing – Steve Hendrix with the “Global Minute” #GlobalEconomy #Dollar #Crypto #BRICS #Trade #SteveHendrix #ForeignPolicy #InternationalAffairs #GlobalSecurity #ForeignAffairs #GlobalMinute

Masked men wearing ICE vests—but who refused to present a warrant or identify themselves—roped off a construction site, trapping two men on a roof for hours in subzero temps. Protesters gathered. Masked men eventually left, and one man on the roof was taken away by ambulance kstp.com/kstp-news/to...

Under Kash Patel, the FBI's counterintelligence capacity is being systematically deconstructed and downgraded. There must be a reason for that. But here two real experts take a deep look at where things stand and where they're going.

A Trump undersecretary of state travels to Germany and instantly seeks out a Neo Nazi Russian stooge... details here

The cost of grid-scale solar plus batteries has become so cheap that spreading solar power out over 24 hours is now cost-competive with building new natural gas plants in many cases.