Jonathon M. Floyd

The "it's antizionism, not antisemitism" crowd should be very loud in condemning antisemitism. Not just because it's the right thing to do (which it is), but because it would drive their point home. But most aren't. At every turn, they are trying to minimize or excuse antisemitism.

"It's okay to shoot up and firebomb sanctuaries if I disagree with their politics" is exactly the same position as the Birmingham KKK in the 1960s and I don't know why anyone would ever want to be counted in such company.

"Congratulations Donald Trump on losing the Iraq War 15 years after it 'officially ended'" is the kind of headline that would've popped up as a nonsensical throwaway on the Colbert Report in like, 2007

Iran's government is basically betting on US domestic political realities forcing Trump to back down before they run out of Shaheds, rockets, and mines or, alternatively, lose power because they have no money and/or can no longer continue repressing opposition at home.

Can Iran sustain a conventional air and sea campaign? No, they transparently cannot. But they can mine the Strait of Hormuz and keep lobbing rockets at passing ships for a long time, and it would take a committed and protracted land intervention to fully quash their ability to keep that up.

This is a phenomenal thread about the realities of Iran's economic situation, and I'll just add one observation: Iran is much more like a big militia than a modern military. Its military is largely built for asymmetrical warfare, meaning its key weapons are mostly cheap and easy to hide and deploy.

*sobs*

I'm sorry ma'am, but your son perished on Kharg Island in a valiant effort to create Wii Bowling meme videos for the White House X account. In the face of danger, he was not cringe; he was based to his last breath. Please have this commemorative Epic Fury challenge coin. Yes that's Punisher, ma'am

They can pry tabs 150-200 from my cold, dead hands

This literally shortened WWII in Europe, because the Germans knew they needed to surrender to the western Allies before the Soviets got to them or they were probably going to suffer some War Crimes.

This administration does something unprecedented virtually every day, so I do not understand how any rational human being could think that an unprecedented response to its actions is somehow impossible. But even then, what earned the block was the dooming about the midterms.

I genuinely do not know what people hope to accomplish by posting inane blather like this in my replies, but what they *do* accomplish is getting blocked instantly.

Parroting the party line is all well and good when you're largely conducting a war via drone strikes and B-2's, but if Trump actually sends in ground forces, I think it's going to become much clearer up and down the chain of command that he and Hegseth are psychopaths and also very stupid.

While this is true, at least to an extent, the broader MAGA political movement has never really been asked to sacrifice anything it actually cared about to accomplish its goals. These people are potentially going to be asked to die for no reason that Trump can articulate.

Whether that looks like Direct Action or just threatening it enough to force Congress/the cabinet to impeach or invoke the 25th, I do not think the military command will lightly send its forces into a pointless meat grinder to satisfy the content generation desires of a group of juvenile fascists.

If they do put boots on the ground, it's going to be a disaster the likes of which we have possibly never seen from a modern, developed country. If it gets bad enough and Trump can't, or won't, find an off-ramp, I think there is a slim but real chance that the military finally says "enough".

I still don't think it's especially realistic to expect the military to Do Something about this administration--the norms against it are overwhelming--but Trump and Hegseth are mad-kinging their way through this totally unnecessary war to such an incredible extent that I don't think it's impossible.

Yet again I am begging people to learn a Standard Day of Medicare Unit cost.

I am genuinely worried that history is going to whitewash the worst of Trump because the world of the future is going to just flat-out refuse to believe that a group of people this evil, criminal, and breathtakingly stupid could possibly have ascended to power in a more or less functional republic.

Yeah, it kinda makes sense that the Venn diagram of people who are both sane and stable enough to run a government *and* evil enough to want to be a totalitarian dictator and do the things necessary to pull it off has historically been fairly sparsely populated.

They should have riffed on this in DS9 - "Abraham Lincoln: Pa Wraith Hunter"

If you read one thing today, make it this brilliant article by @mckaycoppins.bsky.social in the Atlantic. I promise you are not scared enough of, and angry enough towards, organized gambling. It's a fantastic and chilling piece of reporting.
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

"the precursor to Doing is Saying" is an admirably precise way of explaining why more Dems need to be Saying, loudly, even if they do not currently have the power to Do

Maybe this has always been true, but it's clear one of the biggest problems we face in the 21st century is:

The Venn diagram of "people who understand material plenty isn't magic but instead depends on a whole world of logistics" and "people with political charisma" has a vanishingly small center.

I get that this has been almost entirely theater but I actually think it's quite bad if the people of DC become habituated to the presence of military personnel in the streets, for a whole host of reasons

So, I actually knew a retired Delta Force CSM who used to joke about having to have someone from the DOD in the operating room whenever he was sedated for a surgery, in case he talked in his sleep.

Absolutely the case.

The funny thing is that the methodology by which they became the canonical Gospels is completely wrong (the Church thought all four had apostolic authorship) but they really did end up with pretty much the best / earliest plausible options. You can maybe make a case for Thomas

I mean, I think that objectively qualifies as insanity. With our society's broadly accepted moral background, I don't believe a normal, mentally healthy adult is capable of being a eugenicist. I think that is definitionally insanity in 2026.

The thing about Trump is that at no point does he consider the well-being and best interests of the nation independent from what he believes is best for him. So because he, personally, does not want to split with Putin, he is unable to process the fact that Russia is very much an adversary.