Bomb Oman? Sure, why not? What could go wrong?

Trump’s desperation over his failed war with Iran is getting more obvious, especially his threat to bomb Oman, a long-time ally, using his usual vulgar language.

“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them,” Trump told Fox News on Monday, the second time he has directed such a threat at Muscat, a longtime US strategic partner that has traditionally served as a key backchannel between Washington and Tehran.
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Trump also dismissed concerns that Washington’s own arsenal was being depleted by nearly six months of fighting, telling Fox News that what the US had expended against Iran so far is “peanuts”.

He suggested many of the US’s more advanced munitions, including air defense systems, had already been “given away” to Ukraine under his predecessor, Joe Biden – a claim that echoes warnings from defense analysts earlier in the war that US and allied stockpiles were being drawn down faster than they could be replenished.
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In a casual aside at a cabinet meeting in May, the president also threatened to “blow up” Oman if it failed to “behave”.

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Trump and Pirro’s Lincoln pool problem may well get worse

Greg Sargent argues that simply because the justice department has dropped all the charges against the four people who had been accused of deliberately vandalizing the Lincoln Reflecting Pool does not mean that the problems for Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for Washington DC, who gleefully announced the indictments before later dropping them, will go away.

When the charges were dropped, they were done ‘without prejudice’ meaning that they could be filed again. Norm Eisen, the lawyer for David Hearn who had been charged with a felony that could have had him imprisoned for ten years, is first seeking to have the charges dropped ‘with prejudice’ to prevent Pirro from carrying out what Trump clearly wants, which is to charge them again. But in addition, he is seeking to have the transcripts of the grand jury proceedings that led to the indictments released, because they will show if the jurors were grossly misled by Pirro, which could result in sanctions against her.

Eisen and Hearn’s other lawyers are not letting this drop. For some time now, they’ve been seeking access to full transcripts of the grand jury proceedings—including instructions that prosecutors gave jurors on charging guidelines—to determine whether prosecutors misled them to secure Hearn’s indictment.
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The live-streaming menace

I did not know anything about the person known as Perez Hilton but his name occupied the periphery of my consciousness because of its occasional appearance on the splash pages of the news sites I frequent. His real name was Mario Armando Lavandeira Jr. but he adopted his pseudonym deliberately because of its similarity to the better known Paris Hilton, so that it would be catchy.

He suddenly vaulted into the mainstream news when a few days ago he live-streamed harming himself in what looked like a suicide attempt, that resulted in a rescue team being called in and him being taken to hospital.

So what was his claim to fame before this? Brady Brickner-Wood gives some background into what seems like an odious person who achieved celebrity status by viciously gossiping about other celebrities.

Before “troll” became commonplace in the internet lexicon, Hilton embodied the definition: a prurient, prolific shitposter who drew dicks and semen on paparazzi photos, called Adam Sandler’s two-year-old daughter “ugly,” and, after Heath Ledger’s accidental overdose, sold T-shirts with the slogan “Why couldn’t it be Britney?” On his website, which at its peak, around 2007, received as many as eight million hits a day, he outed celebrities, picked apart stars’ appearances, and mocked their addictions. He cloaked his cruelty in camp, suffusing his blog posts with exclamation points and cheap puns.

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Farage beats Count Binface

As expected, Reform party leader and generally odious person Nigel Farage has won the Clacton byelection that he triggered by resigning his seat. There were 34 candidates but none from any of the major parties, who accused Farage of pulling a stunt to try and avoid a parliamentary inquiry into money he received from a cryptocurrency billionaire.

But Farage cannot be pleased with the result, because of the low turnout and that his main opponent was Count Binface, a joke candidate who won nearly 27% of the vote, the first time that he has not lost his deposit of £500, which requires a candidate to get 5% of the vote.

After a campaign in which a record-breaking 34 candidates vied for the coastal seat, Farage held on to Clacton, with 22,239 votes (62.8%) of the vote.

His nearest competitor, Count Binface, a parody candidate dressed as an intergalactic rubbish bin, won 9,455 votes (26.7%). The turnout was 44%.

Farage did not attend the traditional ceremony where the results are announced, because he was afraid that he would be embarrassed by Binface.

Hegseth’s logistical failures

Napoleon Bonaparte is reported to have said that an army marches on its stomach, suggesting the importance of keeping troops well fed and otherwise well taken care of if they are to be an effective fighting force. This is why logistical planning is such an important part of any military operation, to ensure that supply lines are well established so that one does not run out of essentials. One assumes that the same sentiment can be expanded to the naval forces as well. If so, the US is failing badly, according to this report.

Concerns are rising about food shortages aboard US warships deployed in the Middle East, as service members report limited portions and declining meal quality. Dan F, whose daughter is a Marine stationed on the USS Tripoli, said he was alarmed after seeing a photo of her meal. “A lunch tray, two-thirds empty, carried one small scoop of shredded meat and a single folded tortilla,” he was quoted as saying to USA Today. Another image from the USS Abraham Lincoln showed “a small handful of boiled carrots, a dry meat patty and a gray slab of processed meat.”

Families say troops have started rationing food as supplies tighten. Dan’s daughter told him that fresh produce is no longer available and provisions are running low.
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Communities across the United States have mobilized to support deployed troops, but many care packages have yet to arrive. “The food is tasteless, and there’s not nearly enough, and they’re hungry all the time,” said Karen Erskine-Valentine, a West Virginia pastor assisting sailors’ families. “That kind of breaks your heart.” With no clear timeline for restoring mail delivery and deployments continuing at sea, families say uncertainty is deepening over both food supplies and the well-being of their loved ones.

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Trump’s list of enemies gets even weirder

The TV channel C-Span is watched mainly by a small audience of wonky types who are interested in the details of government and public affairs.

Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN /ˈsiːˌspæn/ SEE-span) is an American cable and satellite television network, created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises proceedings of the United States federal government and other public affairs programming. C-SPAN is a private, nonprofit organization funded by its cable and satellite affiliates. It does not have advertisements on any of its television networks or radio stations. However their official website has banner advertisements, and streamed videos also have advertisements. The network operates independently; the cable industry and the U.S. Congress have no control over its programming content.

Since it mainly passively shows public events, it rarely creates any controversy. But at 9:25 a.m. ET Monday on its program Washington Journal, it had a representative from the Center for American Progress (an organization that supports Democrats) discuss an analysis that found that Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to American cities, a move that was widely criticized, had no effect on crime rates in those cities.
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Another good election day for progressives

Yesterday saw primary elections in several states in which, on the Democratic side ,progressives were pitted against establishment candidates.

The big win was by progressive Peggy Flanagan for the US senate race in Minnesota, who easily defeated Angie Craig by a margin of 59%-39%.

Peggy Flanagan, Minnesota’s lieutenant governor, won decisively on Tuesday after a campaign that attacked Angie Craig, a US representative, on her immigration record.

At the center of the attack was Craig’s vote for the Laken Riley Act, which requires immigration detention for undocumented immigrants accused of local crimes, and Craig has since expressed regret for voting for it.

The role of the Israel lobby played a significant role.
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Another reason that the US is running short of weapons for the Iran war

They are being used to protect Trump while he plays golf.

One photo shows Trump wielding a wedge with an Avenger behind concertina wire in the background. There is another photo of an Avenger, but it is unclear if it is the same one. There are certainly other protection platforms we don’t see, especially electronic warfare systems.

The White House on Monday confirmed the authenticity of the photos to us.

The amount of taxpayer money spent on his golf outings must be astounding.

Backlash against Facebook and Meta’s pervert glasses

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has introduced eyeglasses that can record what the user sees with only the smallest indication that the people who fall into the field of vision are being recorded. That this would lead to a serious problem should have been obvious but they plowed ahead anyway and now they are facing a backlash with content creators who use them being barraged with hostile comments, even leading to calls for the glasses to be banned in the UK

Despite being marketed as the latest must-have gadget, Meta’s smartglasses, which can record video footage while being worn, have faced a vicious backlash, particularly relating to concerns about surveillance. There are widespread fears about the glasses being used to film people, especially women, without their consent, and the resultant footage being posted on social media. This has earned them the label of “pervert glasses”, and content creators, no matter how they are used, have faced a flood of negative comments for deploying them.
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Letter from an ex-slave to his former owner

The podcast This American Life had the following segment.

In 1865, a formerly enslaved man named Jourdan Anderson received a letter from his former enslaver, asking Jourdan to return to the plantation and work. Actor Laurence Fishburne reads Jourdan’s response. 

This letter was performed in New York City at an event for Letters Live, which stages live readings of famous and remarkable letters in front of a live audience.