Pauliehedron

#StaceyAbrams explains how to achieve an #autocracy in 10 steps.

We're at step 9.

The military is in our streets. Is our democracy worth the effort to defend it?

In a conversation with TPM on Tuesday evening, Peter Whitford, Meridian's CEO, suggested that his company was unaware where state officials were using its products. "When we supply the Division of Emergency Management out of Florida, we supply product to them," Whitford told TPM. "What they do with that product is not part of our purview. "You're reading a contract I have no visibility to," he added. Whitford declined to review the contract TPM obtained via the FACTS system. "I do not need to see any document other than what I get from the division of Homeland Security," he said. "I do not know what they're doing with that. I do not know if one set is going there or 100 sets are going there. So, for me to make a comment on hypothetically where they're going would not be appropriate."

I spoke to the CEO of a company that has a nearly $12 million contract to provide barriers to "Alligator Alcatraz."

He told me that he didn't know his products were going to the facility.

I offered to show him the contract. He declined to look at it. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/contrac...

Trump on trade deals: "I really don't want deals. I just want the paper to get sent. It's true."

Speaking of corrosive. How about a bunch of thugs circling you with assault rifles and cosplay gear.

"Allowing unidentified and unverified actors to engage in forceful detentions is not only reckless -- it is dangerous and corrosive to the rule of law."

"In the room where I was detained, there were posters on the wall... it said in English, 'Are you detained and separated from your children?' ... We are normalizing family separation, we are normalizing due process rights violations, we are normalizing the destruction of constitutional democracy."

"I'm happy to report I'm just fine. I lost a button. But I'm gonna sleep in my bed tonight, safe, with my family... At that elevator, I was separated from someone named Edgardo... Edgardo is in ICE detention and he's not going to sleep in his bed tonight."

This is possibly the most disastrous thing Trump has tweeted. The demand for “unconditional surrender” from a country we are not yet at war with locks US policy in an unachievable dead end. I have FOUR chapters of my book devoted to that phase and how it prolonged WWII in Germany and Japan.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY APOD!

This was a brilliant idea early on in the days of the internet: a daily cool astronomy/space pic with a brief description and links. It brought science to millions of people.

Meaning: we are going keep arresting immigrants, but will create a detention work program to loan back to the farmers - Arbeit macht frei

Idiocracy was a documentary.

AI chatbots are increasingly being used by online users as fact-checking tools.

But incorrect answers by ChatGPT and Grok are misleading users about the origin of photos showing National Guard troops, sent to Los Angeles during the recent unrest, sleeping on floors.

Cops are rioting, again.

The disparity btwn what’s actually happening in Los Angeles and the way it’s being mischaracterized is one of the biggest stress tests of modern media in recent memory. Botted socials, AI, old clips, declining literacy—it’s like seeing a broken emergency response system hit by a storm.

Coalition casualties in Afghanistan - Wikipedia

Czech soldiers died in Afghanistan - 14

Nobody will send military for US help anymore, ever.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaliti...

These are the most shameful and dishonorable comments would could possibly make about those who came to America's assistance and sacrificed for you.

back then had to do before their parliament for permission to send our troops to fight elsewhere?

I don't know what they think. But after these comments I think many of them are sick to their stomachs at the derision directed toward their families, to their service and their sacrifice. 5/n

So how do you think the men who served think reading these comments. What do the children of those who fell or whose fathers lost a leg or were permanently disabled think?

What do the people in the countries that sent troops think?

What will today's political leaders think if they, like me 4/9

Estonians were among the first to go in. They were mainly stationed at Forward Operating Base Wahid, 30 km inside Taliban territory. You could only get there via helicopter flying fast at low altitude. I visited them when I was in office in December 2010.

I'm the one with the white shirt 3/9

This is a picture of the monument our troops put up at Fort Bastion to their fallen comrades. When Estonian troops left, they took home their monument too. The picture is of the monument they built. A young son of one of the fallen was there when I officially opened the monument. 2/9

🧵
My small country, Estonia, population 1.3 million sent 2003-2014 over 2500 soldiers. 9 were killed in the line of duty. 109 wounded, half of them so seriously they could no longer lead a normal life.

In Iraq 2003-2009 we had more than 440 soldiers. 2 were killed. 18 seriously wounded.

1/n

Two things about this:

1. Miller is a very dangerous person

2. Miller is nowhere near California and is just making shit up, and sharing images/footage of actual people doing normal stuff is going to be important to break through this nonsense

Canada’s military took on southern Kandahar province, which every single American I met in Afghanistan admitted was the toughest patch there was.

One hundred and sixty-six Canadians died fighting a war provoked by an attack on U.S. soil, including my colleague Michelle Lang

BREAKING: A few minutes ago, a vehicle of three people was rammed by a truck belonging to federal immigration authorities in Boyle Heights, CA. According to security footage shown to me, they deployed chemical munitions & detained the driver at gunpoint. All are US citizens according to the wife.

@anneapplebaum.bsky.social Some of your bsky is also coming from Mastodon since you have the bridge enabled.

Oh, honey . . . You can’t even get your wife back.

The Day That Trump and Musk Torched Their Partnership An afternoon of escalating attacks left the men threatening to wield their power against each other.

What a shame. “DOGE affiliated staff, some of whom were responsible for pushing out thousands of federal workers, texted one another on Thursday about whether they would be fired next, according to administration officials.” www.wsj.com/politics/elo...

Leading Colorado Republicans are blaming Democrats for the antisemitic terror attack in Boulder. Aurora City Councilwoman Danielle Jurinksy says Gov Jared Polis and other state leaders are not really Jewish and belong to a “demonic cult.” #copolitics

bsky.app/profile/davi...