Duncan Murrell

The Marines have some roles in the physical security of the White House. I'd imagine that a giant ballroom full of people, with open windows everywhere, would be a security issue. Secret Service has main role in all this, but the Marines have some role.

We can’t be parsing Hegseth’s aryan tattoos while giving Platner’s (charitably) dumbshit one a pass. We need to be outraged at both, and intolerant of both. And he’s acting like a paranoid pol now. Come on, we’re better than this.

Hey y’all, @votevets.org , @altusmc.altgov.info , when are we going to talk about Platner? This Marine vet doesn’t think we should give him a pass because he’s a vet and we want more vets running for office. He f-ed up.

YouTube video by 4K Remasters “Are We the Baddies?” — That Mitchell and Webb Look

www.youtube.com/watch?v=h242...

We are less safe now,

Marco Rubio betrayed intelligence assets, actual people who were in U.S. custody and who will certainly now be murdered by Bukele’s goons back in El Salvador, so that Bukele could cover up his agreements with and ties to MS-13. Don’t believe them when they talk about their war on drug cartels.

Gutted the CDC again, leaving the federal government nearly powerless to respond to public health emergencies; invented the fiction that "antifa" is an organization, with a "founder" whose "girlfriend" they "arrested"; and House Repubs continue to move heaven and earth to protect Trump's pedo bros

This week Trump goons zip-tied children in the streets of Chicago, attacked a priest and journalists; Trump lackeys made it clear that they prefer cutting taxes for billionaires than preventing your healthcare premiums from skyrocketing or paying the military; and Trump crashed the stock market

Seriously, you can look away, bro

This is just absolutely wild. Trump is nowhere in Steve Coll's books. Lawrence Wright was writing about UBL in The New Yorker in the 1990s. ABC *interviewed* bin Laden in 1998. UBLwas very high profile in 1998 after U.S. embassy bombings In Kenya and Tanzania.

“Warfighting,” a small book also know as “Fleet Marine Force Manual 1” when it was published in 1989, was required reading for all Marine officers for decades. It’s well known throughout the services. Written by the commandant of the Marine Corps, has little/nothing in common with Hegseth’s nonsense

In light of today’s absolutely fucking deranged “I’m in a war movie” speeches by Trump and Hegseth, I give you the plaque at West Point.

Well, sticking around long enough to refuse a loyalty oath and be part of a mass firing would have far more impact. I don't think they should be doing Hegseth's work for him.

It doesn't matter what their influence would be?

Sure. But I think you're overestimating their influence once they're out of uniform. I'd doubt that very many people could name more than two of the eight flag-rank officers fired early on in the administration, and most people wouldn't be able to name any.

I didn't say it was. I interpreted your hope that they would do something because they "know what comes next," as hoping that they would do something while in uniform because their oath to the constitution required them to oppose the administration's general lawlessness and unconstitutionality.

And one of my takeaways from that "meeting" was that Hegseth and Trump are lightweights who are not up to the task of overcoming that. If the point is that they should be resisting the executive branch's general unconstitutionality, then you're talking about a coup, and no on should want that.

Ok. But don't underestimate the power of the military to grind down the Secretary and the President by sheer inertia and institutional maneuvering. Just because the public hasn't heard of resistance within the military doesn't mean it's not happening.

Do you really think the resignation of a 3-star deputy commandant for logistics is going to get people worked up, no matter what he says in his resignation letter? One news cycle. What would matter would be resigning rather than following a specific illegal order. Not generalized opposition.

They should be getting involved in what, though? Politics?

How do you read that silence?

I'm having a hard time imagining what these generals would brief their staffs on, following this. There's nothing of real substance for the *generals,*, this was a speech directed at American citizens, the audience was a prop.

He got a smattering of applause, really anemic, for about a second before the Marine Band loudly kicked in, surely to the relief of all in attendance

Brief smattering of applause, anemic applause, before the Marine Band kicked in, thank god.

THE END!

Quick meditation on the word "lore," apropos of nothing

We've hit the 2.5 hour mark!

Now he's describing weapons and how they work as if these generals have never seen them before, like he's got special knowledge.

"We got many of you out of here," he says, as if they don't already know that.

He literally asked the generals, show of hands, who didn't like the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and decided that the fact that no one raised their hand (obviously) meant they like him. Caine is fine, but this treating generals like grade school kids is some bullshit.