The Conversation -- March 30, 2025
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Adam Entous of New York Times: Two months after the Russian army invaded Ukraine in 2022, U.S. Lt. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, “proposed a partnership [to top Ukrainian generals]. Its evolution and inner workings visible to only a small circle of American and allied officials, that partnership of intelligence, strategy, planning and technology would become the secret weapon in what the Biden administration framed as its effort to both rescue Ukraine and protect the threatened post-World War II order. Today that order — along with Ukraine’s defense of its land — teeters on a knife edge, as ... [Donald] Trump seeks rapprochement with Mr. Putin and vows to bring the war to a close.... Now, with negotiations beginning..., [Mr. Trump] has baselessly blamed the Ukrainians for starting the war, pressured them to forfeit much of their mineral wealth and asked the Ukrainians to agree to a cease-fire without a promise of concrete American security guarantees — a peace with no certainty of continued peace.... Mr. Trump has already begun to wind down elements of the partnership sealed in Wiesbaden that day in the spring of 2022.
“Yet to trace its history is to better understand how the Ukrainians were able to survive across three long years of war, in the face of a far larger, far more powerful enemy.... A New York Times investigation reveals that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood. At critical moments, the partnership was the backbone of Ukrainian military operations that, by U.S. counts, have killed or wounded more than 700,000 Russian soldiers." MB: The page is a slow-loader. It took several minutes to come up on my computer & I have pretty fast Internet service.” ~~~
~~~ Entous has a “takeaways" report here: “... for nearly three years before Mr. Trump’s return to power, the United States and Ukraine were joined in an extraordinary partnership of intelligence, strategy, planning and technology whose evolution and inner workings have been known only to a small circle of American and allied officials.... A New York Times investigation reveals that America’s involvement in the war was far deeper than previously understood. The secret partnership both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: While I am not one to follow the intricacies of warmaking, I didn't think U.S. involvement in Ukraine's war effort was especially secret. I've seen numerous stories about how much U.S. & allied intelligence sources were helping Ukraine fight the war against the Russian invaders. And one would assume that the planning and strategy and all have been kept secret. Or at least one would have assumed. If Entous' story contains new information about how the ops worked, then I suppose Mike Waltz accidentally read him in on some of Drunk Pete's Signal chats. And speaking of Pete, looks like he's been cribbing his not-so-secret war plans off a Heritage Foundation doc ~~~
~~~ Alex Horton & Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post: “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reoriented the U.S. military to prioritize deterring China’s seizure of Taiwan and shoring up homeland defense by 'assuming risk' in Europe and other parts of the world, according to a secret internal guidance memo that bears the fingerprints of the conservative Heritage Foundation, including some passages that are nearly word-for-word duplications of text published by the think tank last year.... The first Trump administration and the Biden administration characterized China as the greatest threat to the U.S. and postured the force to prepare for and deter conflict in the Pacific region. But Hegseth’s guidance is extraordinary in its description of the potential invasion of Taiwan as the exclusive animating scenario that must be prioritized over other potential dangers — reorienting the vast U.S. military architecture toward the Indo-Pacific region beyond its homeland defense mission.... Senior U.S. military officials have directly tied Heritage’s vision to Hegseth’s guidance.”
Maggie Haberman & Tyler Pager of the New York Times: “For much of this week..., [Donald] Trump was consumed by a single question. What should he do about his national security adviser, Michael Waltz? 'Should I fire him?' he asked aides and allies as the fallout continued over the stunning leak of a Signal group chat set up by Mr. Waltz.... In public, Mr. Trump’s default position has been to defend Mr. Waltz and attack the media.... [However,] he told allies ... that he did not want to be seen as caving to a media swarm.... And he said he was reluctant to fire people in the senior ranks so early in his second term.... He has wanted to avoid comparisons to the chaotic staffing of his first term, which had the highest turnover of top aides of any presidential administration in modern history.... But for Mr. Trump, the real problem ... was that Mr. Waltz may have had some kind of connection to [Jeffrey] Goldberg, a Washington journalist whom Mr. Trump loathes. The president expressed displeasure about how Mr. Waltz had Mr. Goldberg’s number in his phone.... [Also,] Mr. Trump Even before the Signal leak, Mr. Waltz was on shaky footing, viewed as too hawkish by some of the president’s advisers and too eager to advocate for military action against Iran....” ~~~
~~~ Marie: This report is in line with a Politico report by Rachel Bade & Dasha Burns, linked here yesterday.
Dan Diamond & Dan Keating of the Washington Post: “In his presidential campaign last year, Donald Trump vowed to supercharge U.S. scientific research efforts, pledging to 'unleash the power of American innovation' to combat cancer, Alzheimer’s and other diseases. But Trump has instead unleashed cuts and chaos that are paralyzing ongoing research, prompting layoffs and threatening America’s perch as a global scientific leader, researchers and scientists warn. The brunt of the pain stems from changes at the National Institutes of Health, which provides the bulk of biomedical research funding in the United States and supports more than 300,000 researchers across the country. Since Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, NIH funding has dropped by more than $3 billion compared with grants issued during the same period last year....” MB: Sorry, but “science” and “RFKJ” do not belong in the same sentence.
Marie: If you live in the United States, unless your sole place of residence is New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston or Philadelphia, you probably can't get by without a car. Not only that, transportation is one of your biggest expenses. Donald Trump “couldn’t care less”: ~~~
~~~ Cleve Wootson of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump said on Saturday that he 'couldn’t care less' if car prices spike because of his 25 percent tariffs on auto imports, saying the levies will prompt more people to buy American cars. 'I couldn’t care less. I hope [foreign automakers] raise their prices, because if they do, people are going to buy American-made cars. We have plenty,' he said in the interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker that aired Saturday.... On the campaign trail, Trump vowed that prices would begin to come down on the first day of his presidency, but they remain stubbornly high, with potentially more economic pain in coming days as more tariffs take effect.... Economists have warned that tariffs amount to a tax on U.S. consumers and could tip the country into a recession....” The NBC News story is here. ~~~
~~~ Jeff Stein & Theodoric Meyer of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump is pushing senior advisers to go bigger on tariff policy as they prepare for what the White House has called 'Liberation Day,' the April 2 date he has set for a major escalation in his global trade war.... Although many of his allies on Wall Street and Capitol Hill have urged the White House to take a more conciliatory approach, Trump has continued to press for aggressive measures to fundamentally transform the U.S. economy.... Trump’s advisers are in intensive deliberations about the exact scope of the import duties to be imposed, which officials have described as affecting trillions of dollars’ worth of trade.” MB: Obviously, “senior advisors” aren't what they used to be. And not one of these cowards, of course, his willing to fall on his sword and say, “Mr. President,* this is the dumbest idea you have ever had. And you've had lots of remarkably dumb ones. Sir.”
Rebecca O'Brien of the New York Times: “Federal worker unions have sought over the past two months to lead the resistance to... [Donald] Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency, filing lawsuits, organizing protests and signing up new members by the thousands. This week, Mr. Trump struck back with a potentially crippling blow. In a sweeping executive order denouncing the unions as 'hostile' to his agenda, the president cited national security concerns to remove some one million civil servants across more than a dozen agencies from the reach of organized labor, eliminating the unions’ power to represent those workers at the bargaining table or in court.... [Dueling lawsuits followed.] The move added to the list of actions by Mr. Trump to use the levers of the presidency to weaken perceived enemies....With his order, Mr. Trump ... [claimed] many workers in the Veterans Affairs, Treasury and Energy Departments as well as the E.P.A., among others. Huge portions of the Department of Health and Human Services were also designated as vital to national security, in addition to 'most components' of the Justice Department. The order was clear in its purpose: to neutralize groups that have been able 'to obstruct agency management.'”
Gary Fields & Chris Megerian of the AP: “Most employees at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a congressionally created and funded think tank now taken over by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, received email notices of their mass firing, the latest step in the Trump administration’s government downsizing. The emails, sent to personal accounts because most staff members had lost access to the organization’s system, began going out about 9 p.m. Friday....”
Here's another group of young people Trump has stranded: ~~~
~~~ Aryn Baker of the New York Times: “Students at the American University of Afghanistan in Qatar fear having to return to their Taliban-ruled homeland after aid and visa cutoffs by the Trump administration.... The U.S. government had promised refugee status for [the students. But] on Jan. 20..., [Donald] Trump signed an executive order suspending refugee resettlement.... A month later, [the] university lost most of its funding when Mr. Trump dismantled American foreign aid programs, to reorient spending in line with the administration’s foreign policy goals.... On March 15, [came] word that Mr. Trump was considering putting Afghanistan on a list of countries whose citizens would be barred from entering the United States.... The American University of Afghanistan was established in 2006 as a coed liberal arts college, with instruction in English. It was designed to educate the next generation of Afghan leaders and innovators, imbued with Western ideals of justice, freedom and democracy.... The U.S. government has invested more than $100 million in the university, and until last month, funding from the United States Agency for International Development, or U.S.A.I.D., covered more than half of its operating costs.”
Adam Geller of the AP: “A right-wing Jewish group said some [protesters] identified with [its facial-recognition] tool were on a list of names it submitted to ... Donald Trump’s administration, urging that they be deported in accordance with his call for the expulsion of foreign students who participated in [what it deemed to be] 'pro-jihadist' protests. Other pro-Israel groups have enlisted help from supporters on campuses, urging them to report foreign students who participated in protests against the war in Gaza to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.The push to identify masked protesters using facial recognition and turn them in is blurring the line between public law enforcement and private groups.” MB: The article refers to Mahmoud Khalil as a person who “helped lead demonstrations against Israel’s conduct of the war.” I'm not sure if that's true, as numerous articles have described him as someone who helped negotiate between protesters and authorities. That's different.
Ted Johnson of Deadline: "The White House Correspondents’ Association has dropped plans to feature a comedian at its April 26 dinner. Amber Ruffin had been announced as the featured entertainer. WHCA President Eugene Daniels wrote in a letter to members today that “the WHCA board has unanimously decided we are no longer featuring a comedic performance this year.... The White House has been critical of the choice of Ruffin, citing her past humor at the expense of Donald Trump. Trump is not expected to attend, and there are reports that his supporters are planning a competing event." Thanks to RAS for the link. Do see RAS's commentary near the end of yesterday's thread. ~~~
~~~ Angie Hernandez of the Washington Post: “Comedian Amber Ruffin’s headlining performance at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner was canceled Saturday, a day after a member of the Trump administration [-- Taylor Budowich --] accused her of being 'hate-filled' and took aim at the association that puts on the event for booking her.... The dinner will .. take place amid tense relations between the WCHA and the White House after the Trump administration took unprecedented control over the makeup of press pool, stripped the Associated Press’s access to White House events ... and ordered government entities to cancel news subscriptions around the world.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: For decades, the White House correspondents, with some exceptions, have showed themselves to be lame excuses for journalists. After failing to boycott the White House when it kicked out the AP for not changing their style guide to reflect Donnie's preference for "Gulf of America," the entire corps was on life support, in my book. (Johnson does point out that "The WHCA ... has supported the Associated Press in its lawsuit against the Trump administration.") But dumping the comedian because she might tell mean jokes on the president*? That's it. It is astonishing that an organization of self-identified journalists would cede its own First-Amendment prerogatives to a lackey for the authoritarian president* from whom that very group is supposed to protect us. The WHCA is dead. Vive la Résistance!
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Reader Comments (19)
Worm Brain body shames W Va Governor
So you’re the governor of West Virginia. You support some of Polio Bob’s ideas about healthier foods, and he pays you a visit. Does he say “Gee, Guv, thanks for the support”?
Before you answer, remember, this us the guy who says “What, me worry?” as kids in Texas are dying of a disease he helped bring back from oblivion.
“‘I'm going to put him on a really rigorous regime. We're going to put him on a carnivore diet,’ Kennedy said on Friday in Martinsburg.
‘Raise your hand if you want Gov. Morrisey to do a public weigh-in once a month,’ he continued as the crowd applauded. ‘Then when he's lost 30 pounds, I'm going to come back to the state and do a celebration and a public weigh-in with him.’
‘You're welcome, Denise,’ Kennedy added, referring to the governor's wife.”
So, instead of thanking the guy, this asshole shoes and and says “Boy, are you fat! You need some public body shaming!”
A “carnivore diet”. What is that, roadkill?
Hey, how about we do a monthly science quiz for this imbecile? Then when he demonstrates he’s learned what fourth graders know, we have a public celebration and slap a gold star on his empty head. What an asshole.
You can lose weight, but you can’t lose stupid.
@Akhilleus: No, no, that must have been RFKJ's performance to get brownie points with Trump. Remember, the main character trait required of a Trump/Musk Cabinet member (or Cabinet hopeful) is cruelty (characterized by complete disregard for the needs and well-being of others, but with consuming self-regard and expressed umbrage at even an unintended slight). So killing and sickening kids with measles and fat-shaming an ally gets a couple of merit badges or at least a certificate for effort.
You look at everything these bastards do, and they do it in the cruelest way possible. Every administration will change policy priorities, but there are ways to do so without devastating or even killing people the way the Trump mob is doing. Let's say you determine that a department is not meeting your goals. You can just fire everybody by email at midnight on a weekend, and sever union representation, the way Trump does. Or you can change the department's mission and reorient staff. You can reduce staff by attrition and/or give them opportunities to transfer to other positions in other departments.
Sure, some specialists will not be able to find a fit with the new mission or elsewhere in the federal system, so they may have to go outside the government to find work for which they're suited. But the point is that a responsible administrator minimizes pain as much as possible. It isn't easy, and it doesn't happen overnight, over-the-weekend. It isn't splashy. And it isn't stupid.
Although he lied about it (because he's a sniveling phony), Marco Rubio claimed that his parents fled Cuba to escape the horrors of the Castro regime. (They didn't.) Yet with such an origins story, albeit invented, Marco is still happy to destroy the lives of immigrants and other non-citizen residents. He doesn't care if he endangers them. He had no trouble morphing from "mi pobre familia!" to "fuck you, kid; get out!"
These are hateful people. All of them.
And in the RFK,J's case the imitation has to be conscious. Saw a short clip of an interview in which the (Chris Cuomo?) talking head asked him about his first impression of H and HS when he first arrived on the scene.
His answer: the hordes of employees enthusiastically welcoming him.
Sure sounded like that biggest inauguration crowd ever.
A good history of nuts:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/opinion/medical-freedom-cancer-rfk.html
Surprise
"ICE Revoking Students’ Immigration Statuses Without Their or the University’s Knowledge
“Never seen something like this,” say university officials about the secret targeting of Middle Eastern students.
University officials say that targeted students hail from the Middle East and Muslim-majority countries. They’ve also reported inconsistent notification patterns: some students have been informed about the revocations by the government, some have not; some only found out after officials manually checked internal visa status databases – while universities and officials themselves have mostly seemed to not be informed by the government."
SNL Opening text chain.
Interesting stat…there are four times as many kids in Texas suffering from the measles than there are trans kids competing in sports…in the entire country.
Guess which group the MAGAts are most concerned about?
There are currently over 400 kids in Texas with the measles, a number that grows by the week.
“In May 2023, Newsweek interviewed researcher and medical physicist Joanna Harper, and asked her to estimate the number of transgender athletes competing in US sports.
‘While we don’t know the exact number of trans women competing in NCAA sports, I would be very surprised if there were more than 100 of them in the women’s category,’ Harper replied.
That number is even smaller when it comes to middle school and high school athletes. Newsweek also spoke to Gillian Branstetter, a spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who told Newsweek that Save Women’s Sports, a leading voice in the bid to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports, identified only five transgender athletes competing on girls’ teams in school sports for grades K through 12.“
(From pinknews.com)
None of these MAGAts give a shit about a potential public health disaster cooking in Texas, but over half the states in the nation now have hair-on-fire legislation to prevent the “tsunami” of evil trans kids from “cheating” by playing sports.
Cheating, by the way, is Fat Hitler’s only strategy for engaging in his chosen sport, for which he routinely gives himself giant trophies and gold medals.
Calling Dante!
Here’s a fun thing to do on the Lord’s Day as so many Evangelicals are sitting in churches thanking the Lord for sending them his only begotten (but very fat) son, Jesus Trump.
Google “Trump closes food banks”.
About a week ago, Trump, Musk, and the Doggie Hitler Youth gleefully cut a billion dollars in aid earmarked by the Biden Administration for food banks to help feed starving children and destitute families.
As the money has dried up, you see panicked news reports from around the country (but especially in Red States) where shelves in local food banks are now picked clean. As Elon Musk siphons off $9 million a day from government handouts, and as he and the Orange Monster have put tens of thousands out of work, more and more Americans are going hungry. What better time to make triple their pain by making them starve.
Cruelty isn’t just the point. It’s their raison d’etre.
As the MAGAts who put these evil demons in power go home to their Sunday dinners.
Calling Dante: new ring of hell needed. Make it really bad, and make it BIG.
What’s worse (yes, it can always get worse in Trump World)?
That billion dollars taken away from starving families is being used to give Trump, Musk, and their billionaire pals even larger tax breaks.
Evil is as evil does.
Wonkette
"Billionaires Need Tax Cut, So Food Banks Gotta Get By Without The 'Food' Part"
The Bees
"The U.S. beekeeping industry is in crisis over the shocking and unexplained deaths of hundreds of millions of bees over the last eight months. It’s an unfolding disaster for the industry. Blake Shook, one of the nation’s top beekeepers, has found tens of thousands of dead insects at his businesses. He said that he’s never seen losses like this. “The data is showing us this is the worst bee loss in recorded history,” Shook told CBS Saturday Morning.
Bees play a critical role in U.S. food production. In addition to making honey, they pollinate 75% of the fruits, nuts and vegetables grown in the U.S. That’s $15 billion worth of crops."
I can’t understand the rich, and the ultra rich. They don’t stop at having enough. They don’t stop at bilking the masses for a couple of dimes each to put tons of money in their pockets. They are now taking needed assistance from the desperate. Zero empathy.
About a wek ago there was a story about four missing U.S. soldiers in training with NATO forces in Lithuania. Their vehicle was found submerged in a pond and they were initially reported as dead, Then with no bodies recovered they were listed as "missing". Command apologized for the prior listing.
But then the story disappeared from the news. The last mention I've seen was in the "The Lede" in this site we're on.
Today there was a story on one of the soldiers wife trying to get any information on her husband. Apparently the army ain't saying anything.
You would think there would be something reported on this, at least to the families involved.
Naturally, I find this article after typing the above inquiry: My apologies.
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/state/wife-identifies-husband-one-of-four-missing-fort-stewart-soldiers-lithuania/85-eccbf87f-1d81-4128-bc33-c1b74deccfbb
Much different from other account.
Has anyone ever voiced to the correspondents' dinner planners precisely why it got on the bad side of Fat Hitler? That the "insufferable" mistaken black president had laughed at him in the audience? If anyone has ever said it out loud with the exception of blogs such as this one, no one ever told the board, I guess. Everyone knows the only memories FH has are the times he has been mocked or trashed out loud (heard Columbia U didn't buy some plot of land he wanted to sell them back in the dark ages--) and yet, they still invited a black comedienne to fascinate the dinner-attenders. I'm not excusing them. Since not one of those people stood up for justice and freedom of speech, and no one in the heavily biased WH press corps objected when they heard they had to be "picked" to appear, and the press in the Hogsbreath Hovel is now on a rotating office assignment (worst merry-go-round ever) I think we can stop listening to any of them, as well as reading Politico and the clueless NYT.
Our governor Shapiro is suing to get the money allocated to food banks. I doubt if the people who need the food will realize that the shelves are cleaned out by the guy they voted for cuz he would lower the price of food on Day 1... Yup. Irony yet again. I am willing to bet that Fatso Mango Mungo has never missed a meal in his bulging life. (He eats so much probably that the food is coming out his head in that famous photo showing his bald "spot" crawling toward his fat neck.)
Gross gorgan that he is, he still thinks we don't know his disgusting mess of fake hair is no longer hiding his sheer horribleness.
We all know how important it is for MAGA controlled states to keep a bulging eye out for anything sex related, what with the chance of going to hell for even thinking about sex, unless you’re the rapist president* or a cheating, lying, philandering attorney general named Paxton.
And there is no MAGA state more paralyzed by sexy time stuff than Texas (speaking of cheating, lying, philandering Ken Paxton.)
It seems Texas legislators are completely obsessed by…dildos. Yup. And what could be a more important subject on which to spend inordinate amounts of time and taxpayer money than…dildos?
Texas lawmakers are now trying to make it a crime to purchase…dildos…unless you can show seven kinds of ID to prove you’re 18 or older.
Is there a rush by 14 and 15 year old kids to collect…dildos? Well if there is, by god, Texas has that covered too with a law making it illegal to own more than six…dildos. Woof. Had me worried there for a second. Cuz I know, when I was 15, my single goal in life was to amass a yuuuuge collection of…dildos.
But hang on. Texas does allow some kids in Texas to own…dildos. That’s if you are a child bride (which is fine in Texas) and your 48 year old husband brings one home as a present. Of course Jesus suggests bundling that…dildo…with a teddy bear and a copy of “Good Night Moon”.
Don’t forget, this is the state that largely controls what textbook companies print as American history for students around the country.
Guess that means no chapters on…dildos.
The SNL weekend update guys outdid themselves this week. It’s likely they could have gone on for another 20 minutes. The Fat Hitler dumpster fire of an administration is a target rich environment. (The Kristi Noem Only Fans joke was a good one.)
Fatty is lucky Greenland is not still controlled by Vikings. Had it been, they likely would have sent him Vance’s severed head as a message. “Thanks, but no thanks”. Which wouldn’t have been a terrible thing. Vance only uses it to scout out new sofas.
Cheeto Face was probably afraid that funding the food banks might mean a shortage on his bronzer.