@492 shermanj: There is also an obvious other problem with Trump finding a way out of this war. His understanding of the world is grounded in everybody thinking like he does. He has demonstrated multiple times that he has trouble understanding when people are not willing to make deals based on power, when people take positions based on morals or principles. To the point where he largely thinks criminal prosecution is about power and maintaining power.
This is going to be a real problem negotiating with a government that takes positions based on religious beliefs. He isn’t going to understand some of the fundamentals of why the government in Iran wants to do things or why they won’t give in.
JMsays
@1 JM: I was talking about this post 492: shermanj. My post got moved to a new page by a sudden blitz of posting.
“This ‘Normal Guy From Like 1880’ Hopes You Will Hear Him Out About How Women Shouldn’t Vote”
“He’s pretty sure the Supreme Court can repeal the 19th Amendment, which they cannot.”
For the last few years, the hashtag #RepealThe19th has been popping up a whole lot on X The Everything App, frequently pushed by a ragtag group of edgelords, incels, pick-me girls hoping to get in on the tradwife/anti-feminist social media grift, and Christian patriarchy dudes like everyone’s favorite Temu Matt Walsh, Joel Webbon, and his pal Dale Partridge.
If you’re not familiar with Partridge, he’s your traditional Twitter pastor of the sort who is very prone to ranting about women wearing leggings in public but also used to run some sort of “massage” business. He describes himself as being a moderate, “normal guy from the 1880s.” He has publicly described his own marriage as not being “ideal” because his wife is of Mexican descent. He has also been known to impersonate said wife online and occasionally forgets to switch accounts before doing so. [social media post]
He also cannot count. [social media post]
Recently, Webbon, Partridge, and their pal Calvin Robinson got together to discuss Partridge’s latest book, the yet-to-be-released 19 Reasons to Repeal the 19th Amendment, which he believes will make a very solid case to all of America that only men should be allowed to vote. [video]
Partridge says the book will explore “the damage that has been done through the 19th Amendment, and why it’s not just wrong against scripture — coming from a biblical patriarchal perspective — but why it’s never been done throughout history from any other nation.”
Never been done! Throughout history! In any other nation! Except, you know, for all of the nations other than Vatican City (only cardinals are permitted to vote in the Vatican, and they are all men).
Via RightWingWatch:
“Any other nation that embraces such a view where you’re putting women in charge of making decisions for a particular nation, that nation falls,” Partridge claimed. “I think there’s going to be a lot of evidence, a lot of research [that] women suffer more from women’s suffrage.”
“When the 19th Amendment first came to be, there was a massive group of women that were against it and you never hear some of these narratives,” he continued. “So [the book will provide] the history of it, the argument against it, and many reasons justifying it. I think that by the end, people are going to go, ‘Wow.’ I think women at the end are going to go, ‘We must repeal this.’”
[…] We are, of course, entirely aware that there were women who opposed suffrage and what their arguments were. It’s just that those arguments did not convince enough people to keep the 19th Amendment from passing, even at a time when only men could vote.
“My hope is that we can get thousands of people to read this book and that we can— over maybe the next 10, 15 years — have a Supreme Court case repealing the 19th,” Partridge declared. “If we can repeal Roe v. Wade, then I think we can overturn the 19th Amendment. It’s just going to take time.”
“Wow,” replied Robinson approvingly. “Some good Christian sexism.”
“Yep,” agreed Partridge.
So, just to be clear, this guy wrote an entire book about repealing the 19th Amendment because women are, I guess, too stupid to vote, and he does not actually know how an Amendment gets repealed. Didn’t bother to look that one up. […]
On the bright side, the fact that neither he nor any of his pals seem to know that any change to the Constitution has to be ratified by two-thirds of the states and therefore cannot be repealed by the Supreme Court probably works in our favor. The less they know about how to do anything, I say, the better.
do not mistake Phillips description for something like a medical episode or a black out of some form. He insisted that he was traveling from location to location without experiencing the passage of time. […] Phillips also claimed that he had once felt his car “lifted up” and teleported forty miles to a ditch near a church.
Another day, another Iran WAR SECRETARY OF WARFIGHTING presser from […] Hegseth. He began this one by yet again whining and moaning that the Fake News wasn’t sufficiently [praising Trump] for the Iran war he and his WARFIGHTER secretary of WAR, SIR, YES SIR! have blunderfucked their way into.
But in this one he did some new, particularly gross things.
Like toward the end, when he told the (allegedly true, possibly a lie) story of how he told his 13-year-old son that the troops who are dying […] died instead for him. And by him, he meant his son. That these troops who died because of shitty planning and execution of a war nobody besides war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu asked for and the world didn’t need died for Pete Hegseth’s son.
Watch. You’ll recoil if you have a functioning moral compass: [video]
HEGSETH: My 13-year-old son popped into my office last night while I was editing these remarks. He asked about the war and the families I met at Dover. And I looked at him and I said, they died for you, son, so that your generation doesn’t have to deal with a nuclear Iran.
Yeah, that’s some sick shit. Hopefully one day his son will realize that.
[…] a real president and a real man, Barack Hussein Obama, negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran over 10 years ago that was working. Indeed, it was one of his greatest foreign policy accomplishments, aside from that time he was the guy who killed Osama bin Laden […] So spoiler alert, Barack Obama was protecting Hegseth’s son from a nuclear Iran long before Deadbeat Dad even tried and fucked it all up! And then Donald Trump, the vilest, stupidest, saddest excuse of a human ever to hold the presidency, ripped up Obama’s deal because he couldn’t stand that Obama had accomplished yet another thing he hadn’t.
[…] The world is far more dangerous because of what Trump and Hegseth have done […] How bad? Read this article from Ilan Goldenberg, a former US official who used to wargame Iran for the Obama administration. “This is the worst-case scenario,” he writes for Zeteo.
It’s that bad. (And the only winner is Putin. Surprise!)
But hey, if the troops died for Pete Hegseth’s son, did those little schoolgirls Daddy bombed die for him too?
Just asking.
At the beginning of the presser, Hegseth tried out an impersonation of human emotion, describing his experience witnessing the dignified transfer of troops’ bodies at Dover Air Force Base. And he said the people there, the families of the fallen, told him, “[F]inish this. Honor their sacrifice. Do not waver. Do not stop until the job is done.”
[…] an interview with family members of one of the fallen troops sure does suggest it’s a lie.
Charles Simmons is the father of 28-year-old fallen hero Tech Sgt. Tyler Simmons, who was killed in the refueling plane crash in Iraq last week. He said he and Hegseth didn’t talk about anything like that.
“I can’t speak for the other families. When he spoke to me, that was not something we talked about,” he told NBC News in an interview Thursday. […]
He said he told the defense secretary, “I understand there’s a lot of peril that goes into making decisions like this, and I just certainly hope the decisions being made are necessary.”
And to be clear, did he say “finish the job”?
“No, I didn’t say anything along those lines.”
Now here’s a funny thing. Because NBC News notes that Donald Trump said almost the exact same thing about his meetings with the families of the first six troops he and Hegseth got killed in Iran for no good reason. And Trump did tell it as a “sir” story, which tells you with 100 percent accuracy that it is a fucking lie:
Trump met with those families in Dover at a ceremony on March 7. Speaking to reporters two days later, Trump said that the families were “unbelievable people” and that “every single one” told him the same thing: “Finish the job, sir. Please, finish the job.”
Bull. Fucking. Shit. NBC News even reports that an official who heard Trump talking to the families didn’t hear anything of the sort.
We are left to conclude that Pete Hegseth is so fucking pathetic he’s copying “sir” stories from Trump. […]
Seems like a good time to hop back into the presser, specifically Hegseth’s [complaining] about waaaaaaah fake news. [video]
HEGSETH: A dishonest and anti-Trump press will stop at nothing, we know this at this point, to downplay progress, amplify every cost and call into question every step. Sadly, TDS is in their DNA. They want President Trump to fail, but you, the American people, know better.
[…] The American media loves war. […] If this was anything other than a failure and a shitshow […]
HEGSETH: The media here, not all of it, but much of it wants you to think just 19 days into this conflict that we’re somehow spinning toward an endless abyss or a forever war or a quagmire.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Hear it from me, one of hundreds of thousands who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, who watched previous foolish politicians like Bush, Obama, and Biden, squander American credibility. This is not those wars. President Trump knows better. Epic Fury is different. It’s laser-focused.
[…] Never before have we had a wartime Pentagon led by somebody who didn’t really get promoted beyond “hairstyles” during his military career and decided to make his resentment about that his entire personality.
HEGSETH: Our objectives, given directly from our America First president remain exactly what they were on day one.
Objectives? OK.
He babbled and he babbled and he babbled like this. Just absolute word salad about the alleged objectives “we” are accomplishing here. […]
HEGSETH: [A]s we’ve said, we’re on plan. So, we’re looking at those metrics very closely, relaying that to the president and the national security team, but feel confident that as, again, we’re — more stand in means we’re over the top even further in and we have even more of an exact sense of what we’re striking and why and even more dynamically, meaning because the intelligence improves, we’re able to more quickly identify targets when they — let’s say they come out of an underground facility where they’ve been hiding and able to strike it before it strikes or right after it shoots.
But we are very much on plan, and that’s why I want to speak to the American people here. You hear a lot of noise about widening or new missions or speculation about what we should or should not be doing. This is a clear set of objectives. The president has given us every capability we need to accomplish that.
[Well, I see that Hegseth can’t even produce word salad that sounds good.]
They’re on plan with the metrics and what they’re striking, dynamically, on plan, not widening, but they’re doing the objectives, with their capabilities, we think that you will agree that yes.
[…] He made “jokes” about how we are sharing the ocean with Iran, and they get the bottom half. (They were not his personal jokes. He is not that creative.)
He hallucinated or just made up 47 years of Iranian attacks on the United States.
He referred to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — Trump’s two real estate dipshits currently serving as the real secretary of State — as “our two best folks.” (You heard the latest on Jared’s corrupt self-dealing off Trump’s wars? Boy howdy holy fuck.)
And like the radical Christian extremist cleric he is, he finished with this: [video]
HEGSETH: May almighty God continue to bless our troops in this fight. And again to the American people, please pray for them every day on bended knee with your family, in your schools, in your churches, in the name of Jesus Christ.
[…] it’s no wonder that according to some reporting, certain military commanders are feeling free to let their Christian nationalist terrorist flags fly.
[Full presser] [video]
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #3…
Looks like your source didn’t look up how amendments to the Constitution are ratified, either. It takes 3/4 of the states to ratify, not the 2/3 that is stated.
In the days ahead of his nomination, Mullin’s penchant for elaborate storytelling made headlines. On March 2, in an appearance on Fox News, Mullin, who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, offered up an evocative description of the reality of conflict. […] he has not actually served in the armed forces.
[…]
Mullin has regularly touted his status as a former professional cage fighter. […] Multiple MMA databases identify Mullin as having an undefeated 3-0 record. […] the details of Mullin’s three documented victories. One came in 2006 against a man named Bobby “Huggie Bear” Kelley, who, at the time was 18 years old. Mullin was 29 years old. “I have a lot of questions around a man in his late 20’s who choked out a teenager, but that counts as a victory I suppose,” […] two other documented professional victories came in 2007 against a man named Clinton Bonds. According to MMA databases, Bonds’ record includes just one win and 11 losses.
[…]
a Brazilian jiu-jitsu coach […] interviewed several years ago for a staff position with Mullin’s House office. […] “In the middle of the interview, he goes, ‘Oh, I see you have jiu-jitsu on your resume. I’m a black belt world champion,'” […] Mullin went on to say he […] had fought in the finals against one of the members of the Gracie family, the clan that helped create both the sport of BJJ and the Ultimate Fighting Championship. […] The coach said he asked which of the Gracies Mullin supposedly fought. He claimed Mullin replied that he did not specifically remember.
[…]
Records show that, as a member of “Oklahoma Fight Club,” Mullin participated in a jiu-jitsu competition in Miami at a blue belt level in 2010. He won a match there. Those achievements are a far cry from holding a black belt or winning a championship in Brazil. A win of that magnitude would typically be extensively documented.
“Things looked bad ten days ago, when I noted the “Arrogance of Ignorance.” And now….
Last week I wrote that the preceding few days had been the most wantonly self-destructive period for the United States in my lifetime […] At the whim of one man […
Since then, things have gotten worse.
It is simply impossible to keep up with the torrent of deceit from the administration, damage to the world economy, destruction of lives and communities and structures, disorder everywhere. Especially if, like any “normal” person, you have interests or obligations beyond staying glued to the news.
Even as I type: Warfare is spreading through Lebanon; Israel says it has killed more leaders in Iran; ships and refineries are in flames; oil prices gyrate wildly, taking all economies except Russia’s along with them; and casualties mount everywhere, especially in Iran. […] Not once has Trump gone to Congress for advice, consent, or even discussion. Nearly everything he has said, in response to shouted questions at press gaggles, has been a delusion or a lie.
So my own small step toward finding order in chaos, for the moment, is to look again at the five questions and maxims I mentioned in the preceding post and see how they apply now. Here we go:
1) ‘How does this end?’
[…] This week, we’re even farther away from a plausible answer to the question.
That’s because official stories about why the US and Israel started this war keep shifting. Regime change? Imminent threat? Inspiring the oppressed Iranian public? Donald Trump’s “feeling” that the time was right? These are all different beginnings to the story, which imply different endings. It doesn’t help that our only partner in the war, Israel, keeps offering shifting stories of its own. These range from eliminating once and for all the “existential” threat of Iranian nuclear forces, to “severing the head of the snake” of Iranian-sponsored terrorism, as Benjamin Netanyahu recently put it, with Hegseth-like grace.
And meanwhile the damage keeps spreading, in new ways, to more places, with more victims. […]
Every current military leader has heard the Sun Tzu maxim that “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Through history the most respected military leaders have planned carefully for combat, but viewed it as a last resort. That is in part because they know wars are so much easier to start than to end.
That is not the Trump-Hegseth way. “For 47 long years, the expansionist and Islamist regime in Tehran has waged a savage, one-sided war against America,” Pete Hegseth said in the heady first days of the bombing:
We didn’t start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it… We will finish this on ‘America First’ conditions of President Trump’s choosing—nobody else’s.
Even as he spoke, Iranians were closing the Strait of Hormuz—their most predictable countermeasure, with ever-expanding and still unknowable effects. And the “America First conditions” for “finishing” this job will be … what, exactly? Or even what, approximately?
The closest we have come to an authentic-sounding answer was when Donald Trump said on Fox last week, “I’ll know it’s over when I feel it. When I feel it in my bones.” That quote was chilling because we know that in those few seconds he was, atypically, speaking the truth. And revealing his blindness to the other side’s role in determining when a war is over.
1A) A very stupid statement. And a very wise one.
That Trump quote will be remembered because it was so stupid. A different comment on “how this ends” should be remembered because it was so wise. It came last week from Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich, now commander of US forces in Europe, who spent most of his career as an F-16 fighter pilot and instructor.
You’ll never meet a fighter pilot or an Air Force general who doesn’t believe in air power. But—admirably, and amazingly—General Grynkewich warned a Senate committee about the limits of air power in attaining nearly any of the goals the current war was supposed to achieve.
As he put it, with emphasis added:
We must be clear-eyed about what strategic bombing can and cannot do. Historical data—from the Second World War to more recent campaigns—demonstrates thatbombing campaigns rarely, if ever, break the will of a population or force a government to surrender. In fact, they often harden domestic resolve and allow regimes to unify the public against a foreign ‘aggressor.’
While we are effectively destroying Iranian military infrastructure, we are not necessarily achieving the political goal of regime submission.
[…] Trump and Hegseth exult in seeing things blow up, as in a video game, and crowing like teenagers because they’ve “won.” That is not how this story is likely to end. […]
2) ‘In war, the moral is to the material, as three is to one.’
[…] this familiar quote from Napoleon refers both to the morale of troops, for reasons ranging from supplies to leadership, and to the moral aspect of their cause.
On the morale front, I keep noticing a small but significant tell. When presenting any briefing of the ongoing war, military figures will almost always begin by acknowledging and honoring US troops in action. Especially if some of them have just been killed. It’s a solemn duty to comrades. It shows that respect flows both up and down. […]
Donald Trump never does this. (Except when forced to read from a script, as at a State of the Union.)
Last Sunday, when asked aboard Air Force One about the six Air Force members killed in a KC-135 crash, Trump clearly heard the question. He flashed a look of annoyance, ignored it, and turned to other reporters, saying “Who else?”
Trump is visibly uncomfortable talking about or even being near people who have paid gruesome physical prices for serving the nation. Remember when he mocked John McCain for having been captured and made a prisoner of war (and then being tortured). Remember how furious he was at the Atlantic report, later confirmed, that he considered American war casualties to be “losers” or “suckers,” and that he thought it looked bad for him to be near disabled veterans. Now his administration is notably slow in releasing information about this war’s casualties.
The picture at the top of this post is of Trump at a “dignified transfer,” a ceremony at which a president’s demeanor is meant to signal the entire nation’s respect. He manages to makes it all about him. No previous president has ever behaved in a remotely similar way.
[…] it’s wrong. […]
2A) Which brings us to morals.
-No representative of the US government has yet apologized to anyone in Iran for the slaughter of some 175 school children, by a US missile. No apology could undo the damage or erase the memory. But its absence is deeply immoral. As are a president’s continued lies about the tragedy.
-While noting people who stand up and speak up for moral principles, let us recognize Ryan Clark, former defensive back with the Pittsburgh Steelers. On The Pivot podcast last week, he was asked about the White House video that used clips of him and others delivering “hard hits,” alongside film of bombs exploding in Iran.
In the three minutes below, you’ll hear more serious discussion from Clark about the morality of war, and of what 99% of Americans owe to the 1% in uniform, than you have heard from anyone in today’s administration. This video has gotten a lot of attention, but in case you haven’t seen it, it’s worth spending those three minutes listening to Clark: [video]
Here are some samples of what Ryan Clark says about dignity, respect, and demeanor, again with emphasis added.
War is not a comedy. And for these people to be risking their lives … [and] for our regime to be as unserious, as unprofessional, as laughable and as illegitimate as our leadership is right now, is embarrassing
And it tells you the difference between a public servant and a reality star. Because the reality star needs everybody to know at all times. “Oh, look at me! Look at the attention I’m garnering! We’re doing this for me.”
And the public servant stands at attention for 45 minutes in a salute. Because he understands what those soldiers who gave their lives have done for our country.</blockquote.
He concludes this section:
And I think we’ve lost 100% any credibility. We’ve lost all decorum. We’ve lost all integrity. We’ve lost all character. And I believe that the latest White House post, involving myself and other NFL players, is absolutely disgusting and despicable.
[…]
3) ‘The persistence of memory.’
Two months ago, at Davos, Donald Trump was ridiculing European countries as “parasites,” whose leaders were “weak” and “stupid,” and whose countries “would not even function without the United States.” Writing off NATO as a joke. Saying that the US “had to have” Greenland, no matter how much a pipsqueak country like Denmark might whine.
Now he demands that these same countries support his Iran war effort—which none of them were consulted about. He wants NATO countries to pay a “protection fee” to the US Navy for operations in the Strait of Hormuz. [!] He wants them to send ground troops to Iraq and Syria, to relieve Iran-related strain on US forces there.
[…] They have told him, in essence: Go to hell. The way Germany’s prime minister put it was, “This is not our war.”
4) What if the war comes home?
I asked that question ten days ago. The answer has become almost too obvious, and painful, to discuss. The violent episodes of the past week will almost certainly not be the last.
Sky Captain @8, thanks for the additional information.
In other news;
[…] Some airports might have to shut down because of the five weeks and going strong DHS funding shutdown, demanding serious changes to how DHS runs ICE. I’m sorry but I can’t believe the Democrats haven’t folded yet, and I’m so fucking proud of them. (Yeah yeah, famous last words.) (Fodor’s)
California is changing the name of the official state Cesar Chavez holiday to Farmworkers Day following the New York Times investigation (Robyn’s Wonkette post) showing the labor hero molested and raped young teenagers … as well as his labor-leader partner Dolores Huertas. Farmworkers Day works for us! More on Huerta from the AP.
The DOJ is specifically covering up the Jeffrey Epstein-DEA-drugs-money-laundering investigation. Why do you suppose that might be? (Heather Cox Richardson) […]
Excerpt from Heather Cox Richardson’s substack post:
[…] Back on February 23, Daniel Ruetenik, Pat Milton, and Cara Tabachnick of CBS News reported on a newly uncovered document in the Epstein files showing that beginning in December 2010 under the Obama administration, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was running an investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and fourteen other people for drug trafficking, prostitution, and money laundering.
The document showed the investigation, called “Chain Reaction,” was still underway in 2015. But the investigation disappeared, although the document suggested that it was a significant investigation and that the government was on the verge of indictments.
As soon as the story broke, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said: “It appears Epstein was involved in criminal activity that went way beyond pedophilia and sex trafficking, which makes it even more outrageous that [Attorney General] Pam Bondi is sitting on several million unreleased files.”
Wyden has been investigating the finances behind Epstein’s criminal sex-trafficking organization: it was his investigation that turned up the information that JPMorgan Chase neglected to report more than $1 billion in suspicious financial transactions linked to Epstein. […]
He noted that Epstein and the fourteen co-conspirators were never charged for drug trafficking or financial crimes […]
Wyden asked Cole to produce a number of documents by March 13, 2026, including an unredacted copy of the memo in the files, information about what triggered the investigation, what types of drugs Epstein and his fourteen associates were buying or selling, when Operation Chain Reaction concluded and what was its result, why no one was charged, and why the names of the fourteen co-conspirators were redacted.
Today Wyden sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche “[…] the government had ample evidence indicating Epstein was engaged in large scale drug trafficking and prostitution as part of cross-border criminal conspiracy and that Epstein was likely pumping his victims, including underage girls, with incapacitating drugs to facilitate abuse. I am at a loss to understand why you are blocking further investigation of this matter.”
Noting that the document in the files was “clearly marked as ‘unclassified’ at the top of every single page,” Wyden noted: “There is absolutely no reason to withhold an unredacted version of this document from the U.S. Congress.” […]
The president made the comment in a post on social media Friday evening after another climb in oil prices sent the U.S. stock market sharply lower.
Trump’s statement seemed at odds with his administration’s move to send more troops and warships to the region and request another $200 billion from Congress to fund the war.
In his post, the president also left a muddled picture of whether the U.S. would police the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping lane. Trump had said this week that the U.S. didn’t need help, while also complaining that other countries did not help.
With Trump’s minute by minute flip flops on Iran there is no telling what will happen but Trump is thinking about declaring victory and going home. Leave and let somebody else deal with the Strait of Hormuz. Let Israel do whatever they want against Iran without direct US support. This would be a disaster for the US but it’s hard to see any strategy that ends well at this point. It might be the best strategy for Trump, as he can say the US won or just ignore questions.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth imposed a total ban on microphones at the Pentagon on Friday, complaining that press briefings were making him sound “like a giant idiot.”
“I’ve been watching so-called news coverage of me and every word out of my mouth sounds stupider than the last,” he said. “I blame microphones.”
After expelling all sound-capturing equipment from the Pentagon media room, Hegseth proceeded to conduct an hourlong briefing entirely in mime.
According to a new poll, Americans strongly support Hegseth’s new policy since it saves them the trouble of muting him.
“Europe’s longest-serving leader won the fight over Ukraine’s €90B loan. By the next summit he could be a distant memory.”
Viktor Orbán has been attending European summits for 16 years. At what may turn out to be his swan song, he faced EU leaders […] hoping to persuade him to approve a €90 billion loan to Ukraine.
He saw them all off. But his victory may be short-lived.
[Orbán is] facing an election in less than a month that he’s forecast to lose […]
“Nobody can blackmail the European Council, nobody can blackmail the European institutions,” European Council President António Costa, who chaired the meeting, told reporters, in an extraordinary broadside. “It is completely unacceptable what Hungary is doing.”
The Hungarian prime minister reneged on a promise he’d made at a summit in December to approve the loan. In doing so, he’s undermining the very fabric of EU decision-making, which relies on governments sticking to iron-clad commitments, leaders said.
[…] With Europe looking impotent as war in the Middle East escalates, leaders hoped they could at least get money flowing to Ukraine to help it fend off Russia — in a conflict where the EU feels it actually has some sway.
[…] EU leaders divided into two groups to convince Orbán to change his mind. […]
“It was very, very harsh criticism and the feeling was this simply cannot go on like this,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told reporters. “I have never heard such hard-hitting criticism at an EU summit of anyone, ever.” […]
There were some leaders who tried the opposite approach. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and, though less effusive, Belgium’s Bart De Wever, attempted to appeal to Orbán’s ego, speaking sympathetically about understanding his position, five diplomats and an EU official granted anonymity to speak freely told POLITICO.
“You have to treat him like a 6-year-old child, you have to humor him,” said one of the diplomats. [Sounds like how people have to treat Trump.]
[…] The EU was prepared to hold back from dispensing the money until oil flowed through the Druzhba pipeline, which brings Russian oil to Hungary and was damaged by a Russian drone in January […]
Zelenskyy has said he doesn’t want to repair a pipeline that the Russians have repeatedly attacked, [a pipeline] which helps fund the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of his country. […] Russia damaged the pipeline 23 times since launching the full-scale invasion.
“What I have done today is to crush the oil blockade, which [was] imposed on us by Zelenskyy,” Orbán said after the summit. “So I defended the interest of the country.” [unbelievable spin]
[…] While Ukraine desperately needs the EU’s €90 billion, Zelenskyy now has more time after the International Monetary Fund approved an $8.1 billion loan late last month. Kyiv should have enough money to stay solvent until early May [important point]
[…] The Hungarian prime minister got up from his seat and stood behind the other leaders, looking on with contempt as Zelenskyy appeared on their screens, according to a diplomat.
After 90 minutes, with Zelenskyy digging in and the Hungarian not budging, the leaders decided to shut down the debate, issuing a statement that “the European Council will revert to this issue at its next meeting.”
The bet is that one way or another, things will be different after Hungarians go to the polls on April 12. […]
punishments may be on the table at a leaders’ gathering in Cyprus on April 23-24, including freezing more funding, suing Hungary in the EU’s top court, issuing fines, and even the so-called nuclear option, Article 7, which strips countries of their EU voting rights. […]
It means the saga of the EU’s loan to Ukraine, which at one point the bloc was hoping to have resolved as long ago as a summit in October, is delayed for at least another month. [Important point]
[…] “There was no way Orbán was going to say yes anyway,” one of the EU diplomats said.
it’s starting to mess with headlines in the traditional “10 blue links,” […]
For example, Google reduced our headline “I used the ‘cheat on everything’ AI tool and it didn’t help me cheat on anything” to just five words: “‘Cheat on everything’ AI tool.” It almost sounds like we’re endorsing
[…]
The good news, for now, is that these changed headlines seem to be few and far between […] Mostly, Google’s answers tried to normalize the idea of replacing headlines in search—suggesting that this is just one of the “tens of thousands of live traffic experiments” […] But I want to be clear: This is not normal. I’ve edited tech news for 15 years, paying close attention to SEO, and I’ve never before seen Google overwrite a headline in search results with something it created itself.
Damn! Sad news. Used to love Buffy the Vampire Slayer :
Nicholas Brendon, best known for his role as Xander Harris in all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has died aged 54. In a post to his Instagram page, his family posted in a slide post saying: “We are heartbroken to share the passing of our brother and son, Nicholas Brendon.” It said he died in his sleep of “natural causes”.
The Pentagon’s own publication, Stars and Stripes, was disinvited from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s latest Iran war press conference – as he continues to clamp down on press coverage. “Stars and Stripes was not approved by the Pentagon to attend this press conference. I will be watching it on a screen instead,” Matthew Adams, a reporter at the outlet, said in a post on social media.
I’ll just leave this here.
StevoRsays
South Oz’es state election today. I’ll be voting for the Greens and sending a message to the ALP here becoz I can – because thank fuck we have a far better political system than the “United” States of America has..
A record number of South Australians — 454,800 — have already made their decisions since early voting opened last Saturday, according to the Electoral Commission of SA (ECSA).
“To put that into comparison, four years ago at the last state election, the total number of people who voted early was 212,000, so more than double have already voted,” commissioner Mick Sherry told ABC Radio Adelaide on Saturday morning.
He described the figure as an “incredible number” that “exceeded our expectations”.
@492 shermanj: There is also an obvious other problem with Trump finding a way out of this war. His understanding of the world is grounded in everybody thinking like he does. He has demonstrated multiple times that he has trouble understanding when people are not willing to make deals based on power, when people take positions based on morals or principles. To the point where he largely thinks criminal prosecution is about power and maintaining power.
This is going to be a real problem negotiating with a government that takes positions based on religious beliefs. He isn’t going to understand some of the fundamentals of why the government in Iran wants to do things or why they won’t give in.
@1 JM: I was talking about this post 492: shermanj. My post got moved to a new page by a sudden blitz of posting.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/this-normal-guy-from-like-1880-hopes
“This ‘Normal Guy From Like 1880’ Hopes You Will Hear Him Out About How Women Shouldn’t Vote”
“He’s pretty sure the Supreme Court can repeal the 19th Amendment, which they cannot.”
For the convenience of readers, here are some links back to the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-6/#comment-2295804
ProPublica – DOGE goes nuclear: How Trump invited Silicon Valley into America’s nuclear power regulator
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-6/#comment-2295808
US speeds up deployment of thousands more Marines, sailors to Middle East
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-6/#comment-2295767
U.S. War Planes and Helicopters Kick Off Battle to Reopen Hormuz
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-6/#comment-2295760
‘Flat-out sociopath’ Trump is leading a war with no end in sight
Re: Reginald Selkirk: How, is that not The Onion!?
[Archive link] RollingStone – Top Disaster Response Official Claims He Teleported to a Waffle House
https://www.wonkette.com/p/sicko-pete-hegseth-telling-his-kids
“Sicko Pete Hegseth […]”
Re: Lynna, OM @ #3…
Looks like your source didn’t look up how amendments to the Constitution are ratified, either. It takes 3/4 of the states to ratify, not the 2/3 that is stated.
TPM – Markwayne’s World: the ‘cinematic’ and ‘fantastical’ life of Trump’s DHS pick
The Folly of War Grows Worse, by James Fallows
“Things looked bad ten days ago, when I noted the “Arrogance of Ignorance.” And now….
whheydt @7, thanks for the correction.
Sky Captain @8, thanks for the additional information.
In other news;
Embedded links are available here:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/its-not-great-bob-tabs-fri-march
Excerpt from Heather Cox Richardson’s substack post:
AP News: Live updates: Trump says he is considering ‘winding down’ Middle East military operation
With Trump’s minute by minute flip flops on Iran there is no telling what will happen but Trump is thinking about declaring victory and going home. Leave and let somebody else deal with the Strait of Hormuz. Let Israel do whatever they want against Iran without direct US support. This would be a disaster for the US but it’s hard to see any strategy that ends well at this point. It might be the best strategy for Trump, as he can say the US won or just ignore questions.
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/hegseth-bans-microphones-at-pentagon
LOL
How ‘unacceptable’ Orbán defeated the EU again — but maybe for the final time
“Europe’s longest-serving leader won the fight over Ukraine’s €90B loan. By the next summit he could be a distant memory.”
The Verge – Google Search is now using AI to replace headlines
Climatologist Dr Gilbz latest clip here – It’s always “worse than expected” which is a good 17 mins long round up of some latest climate science news.
Dr Becky A new type of exoplanet discovered | Night Sky News March 2026 – 20 mins long with the title story starting at the 11 and a half mins mark. The update from Dimorphos and Didymus is pretty neat too I reckon..
Damn! Sad news. Used to love Buffy the Vampire Slayer :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-21/nicholas-brendon-xander-harris-in-buffy-dies-aged-54/106481916
Latest and pretty intresting episode of If You’re Listening here – Iran is running out of water – 22 mins long.
@12 Lynna, OM: Independent: Pentagon bans its own publication from attending Pete Hegseth’s morning press conference
I’ll just leave this here.
South Oz’es state election today. I’ll be voting for the Greens and sending a message to the ALP here becoz I can – because thank fuck we have a far better political system than the “United” States of America has..
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-21/polls-open-for-south-australia-election-2026/106477506