They may not find Donald to be personally impressive, but they have to be impressed by their own decision (well, that of the majority) that Donald can call on Seal Team Six to assassinate anyone he likes–and face no consequences.
Time for a mulligan … no can do? Oops.
Bondi seems to have given Trump a parting gift:
So, like Akhenaten he will be erasedhistory from . Unlike Akhenaten he’ll do the job himself.
As a pharaoh, Akhenaten is noted for abandoning the traditional, polytheistic ancient Egyptian religion, and introducing Atenism, or worship centered around Aten. … This culture shift away from traditional religion was reversed after his death. Akhenaten’s monuments were dismantled and hidden, his statues were destroyed, and his name excluded from lists of rulers compiled by later pharaohs.
Using Safari? ‘Cause mine does that sometimes.
What could possibly go wrong with this?
Hegseth Allows Troops to Carry Personal Firearms at Military Bases
Many shootings at military bases have involved troops bringing guns they purchased onto base grounds and opening fire on fellow service members.
Gift link. I guess.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday directed military commanders to allow troops to carry personal firearms while stationed at bases, an effort to end longstanding restrictions at military installations.
Members of the military are typically barred from being armed while on base grounds, unless they are on guard duty or training. Military police officers are allowed to carry firearms.
Mr. Hegseth cited a series of mass shootings at military bases to justify the order, saying that troops should be able to carry firearms at all times in order to protect themselves from potential attackers.
…
My bold.
Anyone care to explain that (excuse the expression) reasoning?
Duh! The more guns are in more hands, the more safer everyone will be from all the guns in everyone’s hands! It’s basic math!
Naw, that’s all on me. A last-second edit and no attention paid.
Everything they are doing regarding the military these days seems to suggest that this admin expects to be attacked from outside and inside the U.S. Maybe paranoia from knowing deep down that their actions are evil and they are pissing off everyone on the planet who isn’t them.
Or more seriously, much of the Right treats guns as magical talismans instead of weapons. Carrying guns will make them safer because carrying a gun makes you safer. Like carrying a cross if you fear vampire attacks.
That seems a remarkably matter of fact description. You’d have thought (well, in my naivety I would) soldiers would have learnt fairly strict discipline about handling weapons.
That just means that one who decides to go on a rampage will tend to be a better shot.
There have been actual mass shootings on US military bases. All involving military folks who went wacky then shot the place up using some personal weapon. In peacetime, the military folks like infantry whose combat role involve shooting but aren’t police have neither their issued guns nor issued ammo in their possession the vast majority of the time.
I’ve told this story before but back in about 1984 my then-GF and later wife was a military lawyer (JAG). One case she prosecuted was a Marine rifleman who burst into a lounge full of his fellow Marines waving his M-16 around and threatening to kill them all. He was instantly charged, disarmed, and thoroughly beaten by the guys who’d been watching TV a moment before. His rifle was loaded with commercial ammo he’d bought at the base exchange (think department store). He only hesitated a couple / few seconds but that was his undoing. And a good thing too; there could have been real carnage.
So yes, it happens.
Of course allowing a random subset of your soldiers to arm themselves however they see fit is a nutty response to something that virtually never happens. But is totally in keeping with the current criminal regime’s ideas to raise up a subversive force within the military guided by their worst impulses following the worst of their “leaders”.
I expect that substantially the entire executive branch is destroying records all day every day that are required to be preserved. And the farther up the food chain you get, the more frenetic the action.
Plus of course all the records that aren’t being made while stuff is done via the Telegram app, innuendo, and other record-free means.
It’s similar to the cries from the Right any time there’s a school shooting: “If only teachers were armed, this wouldn’t happen!” The logic being that the more Good Guys With Guns™ there are, the less some nutbar will shoot up a school, church service, or military base, for fear of dying in a hail of gunfire from those Good Guys.
What that logic fails to account for is that sometimes, the nutbars want to cause havoc, and take as many with them before they inevitably die in, yep you guessed it, a hail of gunfire. A slightly different take on the “suicide by cop” idea, but the principle is there. Plus, there’s the added bonus of a bunch of armed people shooting every which way.
I cannot see this policy having a happy ending, sadly.
It also tends to ignore that people caught by surprise are prone to freezing in shock, running away, shooting the wrong person and otherwise not acting like action heroes with perfect reflexes and unerring aim.
Agree 100% but don’t want to derail the tread.
ICE Agents Detain Newlywed Spouse of Soldier Training to Deploy
The 22-year-old wife of an Army staff sergeant came to the U.S. as a toddler. She was taken from a military base where the couple planned to live.
Gift link, I hope.
A U.S. Army staff sergeant and his wife arrived at his base in Louisiana last week, expecting to begin their life together as newlyweds.
The couple checked in at the visitor center, identification in hand, ready to complete the steps that would allow her to move into his home on the base.
Within hours, that plan had unraveled.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents entered the base and detained his wife, an undocumented Honduran immigrant who was brought to the U.S. as a toddler. By nightfall, she was in a detention facility with hundreds of women facing deportation as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
The detention came just days after Annie Ramos, 22, a college student with no criminal record, and Matthew Blank, 23, celebrated their marriage with family and friends. Sergeant Blank, who enlisted more than five years ago, is assigned to a brigade at Fort Polk, La. that is set to begin training at the end of the month for deployment.
…
Why on earth sould this guy be interested in fighting for this country?
Just heard this on Rachel Maddow:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week posted a list of more than two dozen types of testing that have become unavailable.
This is not the first time the CDC has paused some of its lab testing. But it is pausing more kinds of tests than ever before, and it is not totally clear why, said Scott Becker, chief executive officer of the Association of Public Health Laboratories.
…
The pausing of lab testing comes in the wake of the dramatic downsizing of the CDC in the last year through layoffs, retirements, resignations and the nonrenewal of temporary appointments. Staffing fell by 20% to 25%, according to different estimates, and was felt across the agency — including in the laboratories.
The pox virus and rabies labs lost about half their prior staff, and the CDC’s malaria branch was gutted even more, according to the National Public Health Coalition, an organization of former and current CDC workers that formed in the wake of the downsizing.
…
My bold.
Um… fallout from DOGE, maybe?
From Paul Krugman’s Substack today (free link – subscription is free):
MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science
–>Note that this chart shows the proposed percent of BUDGET REDUCTIONS in each agency.<–
With all the other terrible news right now, you may not have noticed that Donald Trump is in the process of killing American science.
OK, that’s an exaggeration — but not that much of an exaggeration. The Trump administration’s latest budget proposal calls for a gigantic increase in military spending combined with severe cuts to social programs. But as the chart above shows, it also calls for debilitating reductions in research funding.
…
Why have Republicans turned so anti-science? Part of the answer is that they believe that scientists don’t support them. And they’re right! A study of who scientists give money to shows that only a small percentage gave money to Republicans even 20 years ago, and that almost none of them donate to Republicans now…
…
Why are there almost no Republican scientists? It’s not a mystery. GOP political orthodoxy includes positions that are at odds with the scientific consensus on multiple issues, ranging from the validity of the theory of evolution, to the reality of climate change, to the efficacy and safety of vaccines. In each case the scientific consensus is solidly grounded in evidence. But even before the rise of MAGA the U.S. right was increasingly hostile to evidence-based policymaking — especially, of course, where the evidence is unfavorable to fossil fuel interests or quack medicine, both financial mainstays of right-wing politics.
So scientists don’t support Republicans, and the feeling is mutual. Today’s Republican Party doesn’t like science or scientists. It doesn’t like having its preconceived views challenged by appeals to evidence. It knows that very few scientists are on its side electorally. In general, it sees scientific research as a threat to its grasp on political power.
…
Let’s face it: the main plank of the Republican party is “Ignorance is good. Knowledge is bad. Keep everyone from the top down as stupid as possible.”
No one can say they don’t walk the talk.
