Welsh rarebit

Is he trying to make us believe all this hasn’t happened yet?

The endless stream of grievances!

We know Trumps loves payback. Well this looks like the South's payback for Sherman's march through Georgia.

Tbh I’m puzzled by how much energy is going into a quarrel about a word when there are so many actual, like, things we should be worrying about.

Any potential opportunity for sowing conflict among Americans, Trump can be counted on to seize it and exacerbate it.

The driver of the first case was a nation’s refusal to accept its defeat in war. The driver of the second is a nation’s refusal to recognize a racial minority as equal citizens.

We haven’t reached the stage where fascism would be an accurate description, but we’re on a trajectory that is far from encouraging.

There’s always the prize for mathematics. He must be a shoo-in for that.

His education about war comes from repeated viewings of the movie Patton. That's it.

He cut his ties with the world of truth and facts a long time ago. Now he just says whatever suits him and counts on his powers of threatening and bullying to make it come true.

And grifters.

Man, does she plan on him being President for the next 250 years?

These exchanges read like the argument of The Death of Expertise come to life.

Afraid so.

And, if we have watched Republican debates and rallies over the years, we know that they are making a straightforward appeal to the sadistic streak in their supporters, and that it has again and again proved an effective strategy for mobilizing them.

Yet more evidence of how Trump encourages people to give in to their worst impulses.

Can one overdo the stuff about “aging” etc? If Trump vanished tomorrow, power would remain with Vance, Vought, and Miller. All of them young, but no less extreme.

When someone told Adlai Stevenson that he had “all thinking people” on his side, he famously replied “That’s not enough, madam. I need a majority.”

It would be extraordinary if people are still doubting this. Trump’s admiration for dictators, the more violent the better, and his longing to be one himself have been obvious for years.

The next three years? Judging from the increasingly manic pronouncements of Stephen Miller, the next three weeks may be more accurate.

Believable. His long term plan is still presumably to turn Gaza into a replica of Palm Beach with the Palestinian population removed to who knows where.

Um … sounds bit like the “biological” approach to law enforcement adopted by the Nazis. The question isn’t who committed which crime, it’s finding out who is biologically predisposed to commit crime.

The Russian intelligence services have enormous expertise in the psychological manipulation of their agents, both conscious and unconscious. (Not sure if that idea comes from reading too much Le Carre.)

There’s also an implied threat, isn’t there. If you show insufficient gratitude, we may withdraw the favor that we’ve shown you (by pretending to treat you as an equal).

… for you, the white voter …

By naming Stone etc he also just confirms that this is all about payback, not about the merits of the case.

Yes, but Hegseth has already told us that he doesn’t care if his actions are legal or not. Legality now falls under the heading of wokeness.

Hegseth said they were replacing legality with lethality. Less cutely expressed, what it means is they’re killing for fun

Same old same old. In both world wars Germany claimed that its aggression was its last resort to forestall national extinction.

I’d add that there’s an excellent dramatic reading of excerpts on YouTube. Title: The War That Never Ends.