Modeling The Behavior

There are some very disturbing things to consider here.

Charitably: Maybe Noem really is just trying to tell us she's capable of handling the shitty things the rest of us don't want to deal with ourselves.

But what exactly are those shitty things? And who is she willing to do those shitty things for?

Politics is not a strictly face-value proposition. There's almost always something behind or underneath everything a politician says or does.

Plainly stated, this smells a whole lot like, "I'll dispose of the undesirables for you."

Trump VP contender Kristi Noem writes of killing dog – and goat – in new book

South Dakota governor includes bloody tale in campaign volume – and admits ‘a better politician … wouldn’t tell the story here’

In 1952, as a Republican candidate for vice-president, Richard Nixon famously stirred criticism by admitting receiving a dog, Checkers, as a political gift.

In 2012, as the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney was pilloried for tying a dog, Seamus, to the roof of the family car for a cross-country trip.

But in 2024 Kristi Noem, a strong contender to be named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has managed to go one further – by admitting killing a dog of her own.

“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” the South Dakota governor writes in a new book, adding that the dog, a female, had an “aggressive personality” and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.

What unfolds over the next few pages shows how that effort went very wrong indeed – and, remarkably, how Cricket was not the only domestic animal Noem chose to kill one day in hunting season.

Noem’s book – No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward – will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.

Like other aspirants to be Trump’s second vice-president who have ventured into print, Noem offers readers a mixture of autobiography, policy prescriptions and political invective aimed at Democrats and other enemies, all of it raw material for speeches on the campaign stump.

She includes her story about the ill-fated Cricket, she says, to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it simply needs to be done.

By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”.

Noem describes calling Cricket, then using an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control. Nothing worked. Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another”.

Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like “a trained assassin”.

When Noem finally grabbed Cricket, she says, the dog “whipped around to bite me”. Then, as the chickens’ owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologised, wrote the shocked family a check “for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime”.

Through it all, Noem says, Cricket was “the picture of pure joy”.

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.

“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”

Noem, who also represented her state in Congress for eight years, got her gun, then led Cricket to a gravel pit.

“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realised another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

Incredibly, Noem’s tale of slaughter is not finished.

Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was “nasty and mean”, because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.

Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down”.

At that point, Noem writes, she realised a construction crew had watched her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.

“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”

In what may prove a contender for the greatest understatement of election year, Noem adds: “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.”

These fuckin' people.

Enemies

Sending beans, bullets, and bandaids to Ukraine now means we won't be sending body bags to Poland later.

Today's WTF

When there's a rich guy, who doesn't hold elected office struts around wielding power over the government - doesn't that seem kinda Swampy?

Any MAGA rubes out there wanna weigh in on this and 'splain it to me?

Cult45

It's a cult - plain and simple.

Sharon Reed

Manipulating

And

Grifting

Americans

Something's Cooking

1. Greg Pence IN-06
2. Mike Gallagher WI-08
3. David Valadao CA -22
4. Chip Roy TX-21
5. Thomas Massie KY-04
6. Larry Bucshon IN-08

All of those Republicans are at least mildly rumored to be contemplating resignation before the end of the session.

I don't know the rules for those states - ie: special election vs governor appointments, or what - but we do know that Ken Buck's resignation, due a week from tomorrow (Mar 22), carves the GOP majority down to 218-213.

It's too much to hope for, but if all 6 on that list quit early, it's bye-bye Mike, and hello Hakeem (prob'ly - for a short while anyway).

So there may be something afoot that fucks MAGA, but allows the wingnut Freedom Caucus to survive more or less intact, while saving a little face, and ducking some of the Trump rage, because he'll miss the point and blame Taylor Swift or some-fuckin'-thing (?)

And, of course, I don't know. As usual, my crystal ball is busted and there's all kinds of weird shit that goes on that we don't get to see.

Five Other House Republicans Could Resign After Ken Buck

Five more Republican representatives may join Ken Buck in resigning from the House of Representatives if they continue to be dissatisfied with the party's nominee for the presidential election, Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, Buck, a Colorado congressman, suddenly resigned, leaving his seat vacant from next week and shrinking the Republican's slim majority in the House to 218 to 213. Previously, he had announced his intention to retire from Congress at the end of his current term.

When asked by Axios whether he was coming under pressure from colleagues over his decision, Buck then hinted that more colleagues might resign, saying: "I think it's the next three people that leave that they're going to be worried about."

Buck did not elaborate on who might be next to depart Congress, but there are a few Republicans who have publicly voiced negative opinions about Trump and could potentially be next out of the door.

One is David Valadao, but a spokesperson for the Congressman confirmed to Newsweek that he has no plans to resign and is actively running for reelection in the 22nd district.

Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie backed former presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in his failed bid to become the Republican nominee.

In a January interview with Fox News he accused Trump of "bullying tactics" in securing endorsements from Republicans who are scared of opposing him.

Chip Roy, of Texas, has criticized Trump for issues at the U.S.-Mexico border. In November, he told CNN that Trump "failed to actually fully secure the border" amid concerns about a rising number of migrant encounters.

There appears to be no love lost between the pair as Trump too has spoken out against Roy, calling him a "RINO" (Republican in name only) on social media.

But on Thursday, a Roy office spokesman told Newsweek: "This speculation is unfounded. Congressman Roy has no plans to resign."

Larry Bucshon has also pilloried the former president. In August 2023, the Indiana Republican predicted Trump would not be the GOP nominee because of controversies around him. In October 2023 he said Trump should apologize for comments he made about migrants "poisoning the blood" of the country during a campaign rally. He also called Trump out for the Capitol riots in 2021, claiming he incited them.

California Republican David Valadao was one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in 2021 and has said he is not endorsing the former president in his reelection bid.

Meanwhile, Indiana Republican Greg Pence and Wisconsin Republican Mike Gallagher have both announced they will retire from Congress at the end of their terms. Gallagher did not join in efforts to disrupt the result of the 2020 election, however he twice voted against impeaching Trump. Like Buck, Pence and Gallagher may opt to resign sooner, leaving the House Republicans with a 216-213 majority

Newsweek contacted representatives for Bucshon, Gallagher, Massie and Pence by email to comment on this story.

The Crack Up

I don't think you can live your life in a constant state of untruth and not suffer some emotional and intellectual damage.

And since it seems to be pretty widely understood that Trump's cheese is rapidly slipping off his cracker, it gets easier to understand why MAGA is trying so hard to project it onto Biden.

"Like someone pulled the metaphorical plug": Dr. John Gartner on Trump's "accelerating dementia"

"Trump looks blank, stops in mid-sentence (or mid-word), his jaw goes a little slack"

Since at least 2016, some of the world’s leading mental health professionals have been sounding the alarm that Donald Trump appears to be emotionally and psychologically unwell – and perhaps even a sociopath or a psychopath. Unfortunately, throughout Trump’s presidency, the COVID pandemic and his willfully negligent response to mass death and suffering, the Jan. 6 coup attempt and the attack on the Capitol by his MAGA forces, and now several years beyond, their warnings have repeatedly proven to be correct. Donald Trump only appears to be getting worse, not better, as he ages, and the pressures of his multiple criminal and civil trials and the 2024 presidential campaign grow heavier.

In a recent conversation with Dr. John Gartner, a prominent psychologist and contributor to the bestselling book "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President," the former faculty member at Johns Hopkins University told me that based on Trump's speech, memory, recall, and other behavior, he appears to be “hypomanic” and cognitively deteriorating at a rapid rate:

I had to speak out now because the 2024 election might turn on this issue of who is cognitively capable: Biden or Trump? It's a major issue that will affect some people's votes. Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden's gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden's brain is aging. Trump's brain is dementing.

Almost as if on cue, in a series of speeches and interviews at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and elsewhere last week — which took place after my conversation with Dr. Gartner — Donald Trump again manifested these symptoms. So I spoke with Dr. Gartner again on Tuesday about Donald Trump’s recent behavior, what comes next if his apparent cognitive challenges and related maladies continue to worsen, the dilemma of having human sympathy and concern for a vile person like Donald Trump, and why so many medical professionals (and members of the news media, political class, and others with a public platform) are continuing to be silent about the corrupt ex-president’s very troubling and dangerous behavior.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length:

We spoke last week about how Donald Trump's apparent mental and emotional challenges and pathologies appear to be getting much worse. That conversation was widely read and circulated — including by the British and other foreign news media. Why do you think your warnings gained so much traction?

Most of us have known someone, possibly in our own families, who’s had Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia. The diagnostic signs are not subtle. My warnings and conclusions about Trump simply confirmed what many people had already observed and concluded for themselves but didn’t have the authority to assert. I was giving voice to what ordinary people see with their own eyes, and they were grateful for validation from a mental health professional.

Why do you think so many of your peers who also have expertise in psychology, the brain, aging, and related topics and subjects are remaining silent?

I've been reaching out to several colleagues who are real experts in this area. They were happy to share observations and diagnostic conclusions about Trump’s severe organic mental decline, privately, but even among colleagues who were once outspoken, there's a new high level of fear, not to mention exhaustion, that we didn’t see before. Each of these experts convinced me they weren’t being paranoid when they believed there was a good chance, they would lose their jobs if they went on the record, not to mention other forms of retaliation, especially for those who live in red states.

How are you processing the reality that if Trump wins, there is going to be retaliation against his critics and anyone else who has dared to oppose him and the MAGA movement and American fascists more broadly? Trump has repeatedly said this. Revenge and punishing “the enemies” of the regime are central to Project 2025 and Agenda 47, for example. They're going to get even; there's going to be score settling for the truth tellers.

Wow. That is a powerful way of putting it — yes, there is going to be score settling for the truth-tellers. We're really seeing in real time how a people can be beaten down. People who were enthusiastic members of "the resistance" against Trump and the MAGA movement are now saying, "I can't do it. I'm intimidated." The reality and potential for retaliation by Trump and his followers is extremely real. In 2016, what were my peers afraid of? The American Psychiatric Association? What was the worst that could have happened to us? We could have been expelled from the American Psychiatric Association. So what?! With Trump trying to come back to power, people are looking over their shoulders out of a reasonable fear of professional, social economic, and even criminal retaliation, as well as the threat of political violence from the right wing. We weren't making those risk assessments before.

Pathocracy is a term used to describe a government run by leaders with personality disorders.

Trump, who is a pathocrat, and what he symbolizes and has channeled and summoned, is impacting all of us.

It's taken a psychological toll on the population, both clinically and non-clinically. Exhaustion. Depression. Fear. Being detached and disengaged mentally and intellectually. The collective trauma of Trumpism has put many Americans in survival mode.

In our last conversation, you warned that Trump is suffering serious cognitive decline as shown by his speech, memory, and other behavior. Almost on cue, Trump manifests these symptoms at CPAC and at other events over the course of several days. Once you see this pattern of aberrant behavior you can't unsee or otherwise ignore it.

This weekend, Trump showed more evidence of his accelerating dementia. Trump named the wrong month for the primary, said that Putin would rather see Biden as president and he agreed with him, and that he made Israel the capital of Israel. But most important are the fundamental breakdowns in his ability to use language. Once you become aware of a symptom, you start to notice it, whereas before you might have overlooked it.

Trump manifested a number of phonemic paraphasias. He was trying to say evangelist, for example, but haltingly said "evangelish.” He was trying to say “three years later," but said, “three years, lady, lady, lady.” Trying to spit out the word “lately,” he sounded like a car with a bad battery struggling to turn over. When Trump can't find a word his whole demeanor changes. It’s almost like someone pulled the metaphorical plug. Trump looks blank, stops in mid-sentence (or mid-word), his jaw goes a little slack, and when he starts to talk again, he slurs, speaks haltingly, and often looks confused. Trying to get the word out, he shifts to a non-word that is easier to pronounce. When people are losing their ability to use language they use non-words. They start with the stem of the real word, and then they improvise from there.

In my family we call sandwiches “slamichs” because that’s what my stepson called them when he was three. It was cute then. It’s not cute watching an adult man regress to the mental age of a three-year-old. It can make you even feel sorry for Trump in those moments when he appears so vulnerable, confused, and disoriented. I asked several highly specialized experts about Trump's use of language, and they told me that what Trump is doing in total, but especially the phonemic paraphasias, were almost certain evidence of brain damage. This is not minor, or within normal limits, like forgetting who the president of Germany is, for example, as Biden has been pilloried for. Trump is evidencing formal thought disorder, where his basic ability to use language is breaking down.

Trump is also showing signs of "semantic aphasia" where he is using words in the wrong way. For example, when Trump talked about "the oranges of the investigation." We saw an example of that this weekend, as well. Trump said, “We’re going to protect pro-God….” In mid-sentence, he goes blank and looks at the ceiling. The words he uses to complete the sentence don’t really make sense: “…context and content.”

Trump is bragging about passing the MOCA, a screening test for dementia, as if it made him MENSA, when it’s a test any kindergartener should pass. Specialists tell me a patient can be in steep diagnosable organic decline for an extended period before they fail the MOCA. Someone with an advanced degree from an Ivy League school, for example, has a lot of IQ points to give before they hit kindergarten level. If you pass the MOCA it certainly does not mean you’re cognitively equipped to be President of the United States. Trump can’t even name the current president of the United States. Seven times he’s said he’s running against Obama. That’s not a gaffe or joke. That’s hard clinical evidence of serious organic brain damage.

When this is happening to Trump, how is he feeling? Does he know what's happening?

One of the things that's most notable is Trump's lack of awareness when he makes these mistakes. He very rarely corrects himself or goes back, typical for someone with this kind of organic decline. Ironically, Trump boasted that “If I were cognitively impaired, I’d know it,” but actually he wouldn’t, and he doesn’t. Sometimes a patient with organic brain damage will have what we call a "catastrophic reaction," where they suddenly realize "Oh, my God, I can't think!" They'll then have an anxiety attack or begin weeping because their denial has been broken through and suddenly, they realize just how serious their condition is.

As for Trump's MAGA people and other supporters, in a healthy relationship, they would become concerned for Trump and realize that what appears to be his worsening cognition and other behavior actually makes him not qualified for the presidency and that he should seek help. Instead, the worse Trump's behavior becomes the more they seem to adore him. This is textbook collective pathology.

Trump’s hypomanic energy gives him power and makes him charismatic to his followers. Trump's behavior has a type of primal appeal to his followers. As I warned in our conversation last week, whatever personality disorder someone has, it gets dramatically worse as their cognitive functions decline. All of Trump's viciousness, hostility, and unpredictable and other pathological behavior is only going to get worse. In the end, Trump and the MAGA movement are a cult, and he is the leader.

Does Donald Trump deserve pity if he is indeed struggling with these types of challenges?

In psychology, we often try to use our reactions to understand the patient and to develop a diagnostic workup. Trump is someone who many people despise because he is evil. Yet, when Trump acts in what appears to be a demented way, our reflexive reaction is actually sympathy. He seems vulnerable. He seems confused. He reminds you of your relatives. In a way, such a reaction to Trump is a type of confirmation that something may be seriously wrong with him. You're reacting to him in such a protective way, you feel sorry for Trump, and you want to help him because he's a doddering old man. Trump is confused. Seeing Trump or anyone else in such a state brings forth our normal human empathy.

Is there a social taboo, especially among the news media, that is limiting our much-needed discussions of these types of health issues as seen with politicians and other leaders?

I don’t want to say the mainstream media is covering up Trump’s cognitive disability, but they certainly aren’t covering it like the 5-alarm fire it is. The media will show Trump being combative and saying something outrageous and his audience reacting to it — but they are consistently not showing the parts of Trump’s speeches and interviews where his eyes go blank, his jaw goes slack, he looks confused, and slurs words, uses non-words, can't finish a sentence, rambles, perseverates, confabulates and babbles incoherently. That’s what should make the 6 o’clock news. Doesn’t the media have a duty to warn the public that the man who wants the nuclear codes back (not including the ones he probably stole) is publicly displaying unimpeachable evidence of a broken and deteriorating brain?

The obvious comparison here is Ronald Reagan. I am no fan of Reagan and do not understand the worship of that man. We now have confirmation that towards the end of his presidency that he was basically senile. The United States and the world were very lucky that Reagan was surrounded, mostly, by very serious people who were institutionalists. By comparison, Donald Trump is surrounded by fascists, white supremacists, Christian nationalists, plutocrats, corporatists, and other malign actors who are going to take advantage of the situation to get what they want. That possibility — if not outright certainty — should terrify any reasonable thinking person.

There will be no guardrails to Trump's absolute most primitive, impulsive, destructive, and insane actions. There will be no pushback from within his inner circle and regime. It is certainly very possible that a person in a state of cognitive decline is in a state where they are highly vulnerable to suggestions and being manipulated by others. I can easily imagine a scenario where Trump is a figurehead and there is a real power behind the throne pulling the strings.

What is the difference between someone being older and getting older, and someone being mentally and emotionally ill? Given how Biden is being unfairly maligned because of his age while Trump's obvious deficits, which are far more serious and dangerous, are being mostly ignored, that distinction needs to be emphasized — repeatedly.

They're not the same thing. I feel like older people should take offense to Trump's behavior being explained away by aging. There are natural things that happen with aging such as occasionally using the wrong word or calling someone the wrong name because they remind you of someone you worked with. President Biden is confusing names, not people. The Dementia Care Society says “mixing up people and generations” is a sign of dementia. Recently Trump confused Nikki Haley and Nancey Pelosi, for example. He also mixed up the generations in his own family when he said his father was born in Germany, when it was his grandfather. Michael Wolff said Trump frequently didn’t recognize old friends. And most importantly Biden isn’t showing a fundamental breakdown in his ability to use language. The whataboutism narrative is that this is a race between two old men. True but one has an aging brain, and the other a dementing brain. If Trump were your relative, you would be reaching out to doctors in a state of alarm. If Joe Biden were you’re relative, you might have to remind him of things from time to time.

How do you think Trump is going to respond to the experts and other such voices who are publicly sharing their concerns about his apparent worsening cognitive and other intellectual and emotional challenges?

As I said earlier, Donald Trump is going to make theater and spectacle out of it. But Trump will keep betraying his denials through his behavior. He has other symptoms as well. These physical symptoms include a wide base to his gait, his leaning posture, and his loss of fine motor control. A dementia diagnosis is not limited to an interview. To reach a firm conclusion one needs observations, reports from informants and other people around the person in question, and an MRI for example to see exactly what is going on with Trump's brain. In my opinion, Trump is showing a level of symptoms where no real expert would think that there is not something seriously wrong with his mind and brain.

- More -

• Dr. John Gartner on a tale of two brains: "Biden's brain is aging. Trump's brain is dementing"
• MAGA fatigue and the "exhaustion of outrage addiction"

Are They Waking Up?

This popped up on my Twixter feed this morning:

The rhetoric coming from the MAGA leaders is still pretty vehemently about "voter fraud", and wanting to do nothing but paper ballots, and only one day for voting, and hand counting, and announcing the results that evening. Which, of course, when taken together all but guarantees failure - which, of course again, is probably the point. Kill everybody's confidence in the process, and you can do away with all that inconvenient democracy stuff.

Then this was down the page in the replies:

It may not be so much that the rubes are being fooled, though some certainly are. It seems more like a lot of them have become thoroughly conditioned to accept the contradictions - or they're so caught up in the power game that they've decided to take a full part in it, passing the bullshit on to whoever might buy it, and reinforcing their own commitment to it (?)

Like they know what they're being told is bullshit, but they have to internalize it and rationalize it in order to make it through the day without their heads imploding.

It's a puzzlement, and I have to feel some encouragement that Ayn Rand's rule about contradictions is playing itself out.

Contradictions can and do exist, but they don't prevail, because they can't.

Decide

There's lots of smoke in your house, and some flames are becoming visible.

Two rather elderly firefighters show up.

Fireman Joe has a hose hooked up, ready to go, and dozens of people already working the problem.

Fireman Don has a bunch of guys with him too, and they're all carrying full cans of gasoline.

This is not a difficult choice.

Where We're At

Generally, people are kinda tired of Trump's drama queen antics, and some are starting to understand they're not getting much out of it.

We're getting more confirmation it was never really about "economic anxiety". Maybe that anxiety helped fuel the rage, but it was always about the rage itself, and, as is typical of Wingnut Populists, Republicans channeled that rage into the basic fascist ploy of amping up the rubes and telling them who to blame.

The Koch PAC pulling their funding from the Haley campaign is not a sign of her crumbling.

I think it has more to do with the Plutocracy Project's main supporters looking to quiet things back down a bit, while they shift their emphasis back to the state and local levels.

Remember, one of the main objectives is to be in a position to call for a States' Constitutional Convention. They need ⅔ of the states (34) to agree to calling the convention, and in the last few cycles, they've lost some ground - Republicans had full control of the legislatures in 28 states, and now it's down to 23.

So it makes a lot of sense for them to refocus on trying to buy up those 11 states, since they're losing pretty badly at the national level.

Redux

Calm The Fuck Down, MAGA

Bless their hearts

The Rubes Are Getting Restless

Seems the MAGA elitists are getting a little bored and beginning to lose interest.

Maybe they know the game is almost up, and they won't be able to tag along, picking up the perks they've been getting from associating with a guy who was never a winner in the first place, but who could snooker enough rubes to create opportunities for the hangers-on to make a few bucks.

The fever has to break sometime, in some way, and maybe we're seeing it come down now so we won't run quite the risk of bloodshed that has seemed so inevitable.

Today's Beau

It's such a terribly serious, potentially world-ending threat, MAGA Mike called recess and sent everybody home.

Reminder:

Mike Johnson is not "Speaker Of The House". He's a clerk. He might not even be in charge of his own bathroom schedule. He's just another one of Trump's butt boys.

More:

House Intel Chair Warns Biden of Mysterious ‘Serious National Security Threat’

Rep. Mike Turner has cited unspecified “information” about a threat and called on the president to declassify it so that “our allies” can help.

The chair of the House Intelligence Committee issued on Wednesday a cryptic warning of a “serious national security threat” that might require help from “our allies” to deal with it.

Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) cited unspecified “information” about the mysterious threat that he said “all members of Congress” had already been briefed on. He called on President Biden to declassify the information.

“I am requesting that President Biden declassify all information relating to this threat so that Congress, the Administration, and our allies can openly discuss the actions necessary to respond to this threat,” he told House members Wednesday.

Capitol Hill sources told ABC News the threat was regarding Russia wanting to put nuclear weapons in space to use against satellites.

An unnamed Democratic source was quoted telling NBC News: “This is a serious issue that could lead to a destabilizing situation and a national security threat.” Apart from describing it as a “potential foreign threat,” however, the source provided no further details. CNN, meanwhile, cited unnamed sources who said the threat is related to Russia and is “highly concerning and destabilizing.”

In a statement, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said there is “no need for public alarm,” adding that he will press Biden’s administration to take “appropriate action.”

“Steady hands are at the wheel, we’re working on it, there’s no need for alarm,” he cautioned.

In a White House press briefing, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan acknowledged the threat, but said he can’t reveal anything about it. He said he was surprised Turner went public with the information just a day before he was slated to meet with the congressman in a classified briefing, which is still scheduled.

“That’s his choice to do that,” Sullivan said of Turner. “All I can tell you is that I’m focused on going to see him sit with him as well as the other House members of the Gang of Eight tomorrow. And I’m not in a position to say anything further from this podium at this time.”

Sullivan was later asked if he could tell Americans there’s nothing they have to worry about regarding the threat. He responded, “That question is impossible to answer with a straight yes.”

Democratic Rep. Jim Himes (CT) was quoted telling reporters “people should not panic” about the threat, suggesting it might not be as urgent as it was made out to be. He said, “It’s something that the Congress and the administration does need to address in the medium to long run,” The Hill’s Mychael Schnell reported on X.

I'm Not Racist But...

... I think the Dems are the racists because they blame white people who're just trying to keep the brown people from ruining this country.

Weird Lonely Insecure Men

Colin Cowherd on MAGA rubes losing their whole shit over Taylor Swift being on screen for maybe 30 seconds of a ball game that runs about 10,800 seconds.

Today's Stoopid

OK fine, I'll chime in on this crap too.

MAGA is fraught with radical skepticism, and melting down as they watch one thing after the next "go against them".

And they're so well-conditioned to look for "signs" of The Great & Evil Librul Cabal in action, they glom onto anything - and I mean any-fuckin'-thing - that helps them deny that they're losing, that they're insistent on following losers, and that they're more and more desperate about being made to feel comfortable with the fact that they're losing - and denying.

They double down, and triple down, and fourple down on denying that they're denying.

The uncomplicated, dumb engine driving political false claims about Taylor Swift

A team won a football game, which is obviously part of a devious plot for Democrats to retain power via a pop star

I am professionally obligated to begin this article by explaining to you who Taylor Swift is, who Travis Kelce is and why I am talking about them. I know this will come off as condescending (if not insulting) to most of you, but for that one person who, this very morning, emerged from a 20-year-long meditative retreat atop Aconcagua and — as one would — opened The Washington Post’s website: Here you go.

Taylor Swift is a musician. More specifically, she is one of the most famous musicians that has ever existed on this Earth, in the company of Michael Jackson, certainly … if not, like, Beethoven. Travis Kelce is a football player who was well-known in sporting circles a year or two ago but who, by virtue of dating Swift, is now also well-known among Swift fans and, by extension, most Americans.

The reason I am talking about them is that Kelce’s team, the Kansas City Chiefs, won a playoff game Sunday that will return them to the championship game. And in response, a surprisingly large section of the American political right decided that this was somehow related to politics.

There are lots of manifestations of this, including multiple presentations on the right’s preferred cable news channel. The iteration that attracted perhaps the most attention, though, came from former presidential candidate and Donald Trump cheerleader Vivek Ramaswamy (speaking of people who suddenly emerged in the public consciousness to polarizing effect).

In a social media post, a prominent right-wing conspiracy theorist linked Swift to … let’s see here … ah yes, George Soros. In response, Ramaswamy offered a prediction.

“I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month,” he wrote. “And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”

The implication (again: forgive my telling you something obvious) is that the Chiefs are being ushered to the Super Bowl … somehow … to secure Swift’s endorsement for President Biden.

This makes a lot of sense because the Chiefs haven’t been to the Super Bowl since, uh, last year, when they won. But before that they hadn’t been since, well, two years before. But that one they lost! But they’d won the year before that.

You can see why they need … someone … to give them a boost. Because otherwise, Taylor Swift wouldn’t endorse Biden, something she hasn’t done since 2020 — the last time Biden ran.

A lot of the responses to this broad line of argument — that the commingling of the Chiefs and Swift is somehow targeted at politics — note that it’s probably not wise for Republicans to side against the NFL. The NFL is wildly popular, and attacking popular things is not a good way to yourself become more popular.

But this backlash from the Fox-News-iverse isn’t about electoral politics. It is about appealing to a more immediate source of power on the right: online and on-air attention.

This was the crux of Ramaswamy’s entire presidential campaign. He understood, having observed Republican politics over the past decade, that attention can be parlayed into a lesser form of power, elected office. Trump blazed this trail, certainly, showing others the path and helping clear it of overgrowth. Ramaswamy’s 2024 bid was centered on jumping into the online conversation and bringing its themes and rhetoric to the campaign trail. It built him a loyal following of similarly online types, enough to get him about 4 percent of the primary vote by the time he dropped out.

But this is the incentive path that’s feeding the Swift clamor. The wilder your assertion, the more traction it’s going to get. Your allies will riff on it and build on it, and you can come along for the ride. Maybe you’ll end up as a member of the House of Representatives from Georgia or Long Island. Maybe you’ll go higher: landing a recurring spot on Sean Hannity’s prime-time show.

It’s important to recognize the overlaying element here: The speculation should leverage the widespread belief on the right that Democrats only get legitimate votes by brainwashing their idiotic base. (Republicans also believe Democrats get lots of stolen votes too, of course — a similarly incorrect theory.) This idea comes up a lot, that Democrats win by snookering college kids or duping credulous city voters into ignoring their apocalyptic surroundings. (This is ironic, given that believing that cities are hellholes requires a credulous acceptance of propaganda from the right, but I digress.)

Republicans losing the presidential popular vote in 2016, the House majority in 2018, the presidency in 2020 and underperforming expectations in the 2022 midterms has built a strong incentive to look for nonpolitical explanations for strong Democratic performance — since many Americans don’t know anyone who holds opposing political views, including Republicans baffled at the idea of voting Democratic. So, particularly given Trump’s insistence that the 2020 race was “rigged” by media and cultural elites … somehow, it is quite fashionable on the right to suggest the existence of intricate plans aimed at securing Democratic votes from glassy-eyed voters.

Like, say, that a football team gets ushered into the Super Bowl to secure an endorsement from Taylor Swift.

I’ve avoided doing so but I can no longer resist: How would this work? Did the Baltimore Ravens take a dive? Did someone pay them? Are they just that committed to Democratic politics that they all agreed to lose? Did the Buffalo Bills before them? And the Miami Dolphins before the Bills? Or does the government have some Havana-Syndrome-esque device that it trains on opponents, causing field goals to go wide right? What’s the mechanism, exactly?

It doesn’t matter, obviously. These are not rational conclusions drawn from observed facts. They are, instead, clout-chasing assemblages of words that, through a process of grim Darwinism, seek rewards in the right-wing conversation.

Never mind that the supposed outcome here — the Swift endorsement — is itself wildly overpowered in the right’s imagination. One of Swift’s first prominent endorsements came in 2018 when she backed the Democrat in Tennessee’s U.S. Senate race. Polling was close; he then lost by double-digits. You think that Swift — whose fan base includes millions of people younger than voting age — is so valuable an endorser that you’re going to rig the NFL? Okay. Sure.

It’s all silly, but the silliness exists over a range that runs from innocuous to bizarre.

I’ll leave you with the wise words of Ramaswamy, almost certainly responding to the (wonderful! desired!) controversy he’d stirred up with his football observations.

“What the [media] calls a ‘conspiracy theory’ is often nothing more than an amalgam of incentives hiding in plain sight,” he wrote. “Once you see that, the rest becomes pretty obvious.”

The natural Step 2 here: When the media points out that my comments make no sense, it proves that I’m right. Okay.

Wait. Actually, I’ll leave you with an observation attached to Ramaswamy’s second post, one that comes from the world’s most prominent seeker of attention by way of posting controversial/bizarre/unnecessarily-political comments.

“Exactly,” wrote Elon Musk.

Fly Away Now

Why vote for Biden?

Cuz he beat Trump last time by 7 million votes, and he'll beat him again.

Jennifer Rubin

Trump has a strangle hold on the GOP. If there's any good news, it's simply that the Republican party is shrinking, so he has more and more influence over fewer and fewer people.

The MAGA GOP has entered its final Geejy Bird phase.

There is reason for hope

Today's Beau

Run away now, BoHo.

Ready, set, nope.

More Than Just A Wingnut

 

My simple advice to young men:

Find a woman.

Fall in love.

Get married.

Have more children than you can afford. Have an insane amount of kids.

God loves you and He has a purpose for you.#AMFEST2023 pic.twitter.com/dq9ZuAtcJ7

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 18, 2023

 

On August 12, 1938, Adolf Hitler institutes the Mother’s Cross, to encourage German women to have more children, to be awarded each year on August 12, Hitler’s mother’s birthday.

The German Reich needed a robust and growing population and encouraged couples to have large families. It started such encouragement early. Once members of the distaff wing of the Hitler Youth movement, the League of German Girls, turned 18, they became eligible for a branch called Faith and Beauty, which trained these girls in the art of becoming ideal mothers. One component of that ideal was fecundity. And so each year, in honor of his beloved mother, Klara, and in memory of her birthday, a gold medal was awarded to women with seven children, a silver to women with six, and a bronze to women with five.

Another Shoe

Why there's no reason to believe a conspiracy fantasy when it requires total secrecy on the part of lotsa people.

Like they say:

Three people can keep a secret -

as long as two them are dead.