Sarah Matthews

It occurs to me that my fondness for these Bulwark contributors kinda harkens back to a time when we could disagree and punch around with each other over policy differences, and still be able to hang out together because we both knew the other one was keeping the faith - we both wanted what's best for the most, we just thought we needed to go about getting the best in different ways.

At least, that was the pleasant, comfortable, fragile understanding (some say fantasy) that let us sleep better at night.

The truth is that there are always - have always been - will always be - assholes who can't be satisfied with winning the debate. They have to dominate, subjugate, and dictate. And that desire - that need - to be able to dictate everything to everyone is the real fantasy. Because it doesn't work in the long run.

People will be free.

It's been said that you don't want to set up a system of government that requires a change in human nature in order to work well. And democracy's opponents - those people who need to rule instead of serve - believe they have the winning argument against it. Because in a democracy, we have to give a little. We have to go against our basic animal instincts of "I Me Mine" and work in the interest of the whole.

That doesn't mean anybody is required to be "selfless", but that's a whole big messy can of worms. That one always leads me back to Ayn Rand, and Milton Friedman, and Freddie Hayak, which requires a lengthy dissertation on how it sounds pretty good at first, but almost immediately crashes and burns in The Logical Extreme (where even good ideas go to die).

Anyway - Sarah Matthews, and our family shit is not to be paraded in front of strangers.

A Quote

At the UN, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez took to the podium, raising a small blue book - the United Nations Charter.

"They didn't ask us to keep it in a display case. They asked us to comply with it."

Regime Change

I'll take that deal all day every day.

A Leader Speaks

Helluva speech. I wonder if I could be Canadian for a while. I just need to decompress a bit.

About The Greenland Thing

The big mover-shakers are all het up about Greenland because it's going to become a "resource vital to US national security".

First, we have to overlook how these assholes immediately go into slaverin' dog mode when they think about an opportunity to grab some land and exploit whatever they can get their slimy little meathooks into.

Slaverin' dogs they are, and a bunch of these jerks have been telling us for decades that Climate Change is a bullshit hippie hoax. But now suddenly, they're saying (tacitly - with their greedy money-grubbing actions) that they know Climate Change is a real thing, and it's going to change the geography of the Arctic, making the ocean navigable, which will make it feasible to rush in and steal whatever's there to steal.

And let's go ahead and spend a trillion tax dollars to set it all up for the plutocrats to ransack.

So fun. So fucking fun.

Banning Brown People

... and some not-as-brown-but-Muslim-so-yeah-banned.

• Afghanistan
• Myanmar (aka Burma)
• Chad
• Republic of Congo
• Equatorial Guinea
• Eritrea
• Haiti
• Iran
• Libya
• Somalia
• Sudan
• Yemen
• Burundi
• Cuba
• Laos
• Sierra Leone
• Togo
• Turkmenistan
• Venezuela

Our "government" takes the horrific act of gun violence against a couple of National Guard troopers - who shouldn't have been there in the first fuckin' place - and use it to show the world further evidence that we're a country of Stupid Racist Assholes.

And I guess I don't have to bother referencing any of the other horrific acts of gun violence that happen every day, which hardly merit a mention by the Press Poodles.

Gun Violence Archive shows 381 mass shootings as of today, the 337th day of 2025.

Indications

It seems we're getting more - and more frequent - signals that the world not only has little respect for us, but doesn't really fear us all that much either. 

“Not a Signal Chat”: Mike Waltz Interrupted in Middle of U.N. Speech

Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations was embarrassed while speaking to the General Assembly.

That infamous Signal chat keeps coming back to haunt the Trump administration.

On Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz was interrupted in the middle of a speech before a U.N. General Assembly vote on whether to condemn U.S. economic restrictions on Cuba.

“Mr. Waltz, this is the United Nations General Assembly,” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said, cutting off Waltz. “It is not a Signal chat. Nor is it the House of Representatives,” he added, also calling Waltz’s remarks “uncivilized, crude and gross.”

Waltz was not happy.

“I am well aware of the location in which we are speaking,” the ambassador responded. “And this is also not a Communist illegitimate legislature in Havana.”

Waltz attacked the Cuban government as “illegitimate and brutal,” claiming that he was correcting “the fake news, the misinformation, and this false reality the regime seeks to create year after year with this vote.”

Ultimately, Waltz’s tough talk swayed few, if any, countries, as the U.N. General Assembly voted 165–7, with 12 abstentions, Wednesday to condemn the American economic embargo against Cuba, the thirty-third year in a row it has done so. The resolution is symbolic and carries no legal weight, but reflects global opinion.

The whole reason Waltz is the U.N. ambassador is because, while previously serving as national security adviser, he set up a Signal chat where secret military plans were discussed with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and other top government officials and then mistakenly added The Atlantic’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg. Waltz was removed from his position and instead nominated to the U.N. post, a job that requires diplomatic savvy, which he seems to be lacking.