I don’t think anyone under the age of 70 knows who “Marshall” Matt Dillon was. People must have been scratching their heads wondering what he had against poor Matt Dillon the actor.
You can’t make this stuff up.
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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
Here’s the shooter’s manifesto. If he truly felt this way he did the stupidest, most destructive, immoral act he could have done if he believes that Trump is a threat to our democracy. All I can’t say to people who think this way is, stop helping. You’re only going to make things worse, whether you succeed or fail.
Hello everybody!
So I may have given a lot of people a surprise today. Let me start off by apologizing to everyone whose trust I abused.
I apologize to my parents for saying I had an interview without specifying it was for “Most Wanted.”
I apologize to my colleagues and students for saying I had a personal emergency (by the time anyone reads this, I probably most certainly DO need to go to the ER, but can hardly call that not a self-inflicted status.)
I apologize to all of the people I traveled next to, all the workers who handled my luggage, and all the other non-targeted people at the hotel who I put in danger simply by being near.
I apologize to everyone who was abused and/or murdered before this, to all those who suffered before I was able to attempt this, to all who may still suffer after, regardless of my success or failure.
I don’t expect forgiveness, but if I could have seen any other way to get this close, I would have taken it. Again, my sincere apologies.
On to why I did any of this:
I am a citizen of the United States of America.
What my representatives do reflects on me.
And I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.
(Well, to be completely honest, I was no longer willing a long time ago, but this is the first real opportunity I’ve had to do something about it.)
While I’m discussing this, I’ll also go over my expected rules of engagement (probably in a terrible format, but I’m not military so too bad.)
Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest
Secret Service: they are targets only if necessary, and to be incapacitated non-lethally if possible (aka, I hope they’re wearing body armor because center mass with shotguns messes up people who *aren’t*
Hotel Security: not targets if at all possible (aka unless they shoot at me)
Capitol Police: same as Hotel Security
National Guard: same as Hotel Security
Hotel Employees: not targets at all
Guests: not targets at all
In order to minimize casualties I will also be using buckshot rather than slugs (less penetration through walls)
I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary (on the basis that most people *chose* to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, and are thus complicit) but I really hope it doesn’t come to that.
Rebuttals to objections:
Objection 1: As a Christian, you should turn the other cheek.
Rebuttal: Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial. I’m not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration.
Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.
Objection 2: This is not a convenient time for you to do this
Rebuttal: I need whoever thinks this way to take a couple minutes and realize that the world isn’t about them. Do you think that when I see someone raped or murdered or abused, I should walk on by because it would be “inconvenient” for people who aren’t the victim?
This was the best timing and chance of success I could come up with
Objection 3: You didn’t get them all.
Rebuttal: Gotta start somewhere.
Objection 4: As a half-black, half-white person, you shouldn’t be the one doing this.
Rebuttal: I don’t see anyone else picking up the slack
Objection 5: Yield unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.
Rebuttal: The United States of America are ruled by the law, not by any one or several people. In so far as representatives and judges do not follow the law, no one is required to yield them anything so unlawfully ordered.
I would also like to extend my appreciation to a great many people since I will not be likely to be able to talk with them again (unless the Secret Service is *astoundingly* incompetent.)
Thank you to my family, both personal and church, for your love over these 31 years.
Thank you to my friends, for your companionship over many years.
Thank you to my colleagues over many jobs, for your positivity and professionalism.
Thank you to my students for your enthusiasm and love of learning.
Thank you to the many acquaintances I’ve met, in person and online, for short interactions and long-term relationships, for your perspectives and inspiration.
Thank you all for everything.
Sincerely,
Cole “coldForce” “Friendly Federal Assassin” Allen
PS: Ok now that all the sappy stuff is done, what the hell is the Secret Service doing? Sorry, gonna rant a bit here and drop the formal tone.
Like, I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo.
What I got (who knows, maybe they’re pranking me!) is nothing.
No damn security.
Not in transport.
Not in the hotel.
Not in the event.
Like, the one thing that I immediately noticed walking into the hotel is the sense of arrogance.
I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.
The security at the event is all outside, focused on protestors and current arrivals, because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before.
Like, this level of incompetence is insane, and I very sincerely hope it’s corrected by the time this country gets actually competent leadership again.
Like, if I was an Iranian agent, instead of an American citizen, I could have brought a damn Ma Deuce in here and no one would have noticed shit.
Actually insane.
Oh and if anyone is curious is how doing something like feels: it’s awful. I want to throw up; I want to cry for all the things I wanted to do and never will, for all the people whose trust this betrays; I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done.
Can’t really recommend it! Stay in school, kids.
Nuts, absolutely nuts. It’s like a middle schooler’s cutesy Instagram post. Is everyone in this country afflicted with arrested development now?
Trump just got a ton of sympathy just at the moment the country was beginning to really see the consequences of his leadership. The political system is working, however slowly, and we have a chance to check his power legitimately in just few months. If the intent is to stop the administration, we don’t need crazies committing violence in this already volatile situation.
We are so far down the rabbit hole now I wonder if we can ever climb back out.
Read all the way to the end of this excerpt and then get ready to throw something:
Saulo Kasekela died of AIDS on March 7, in a small town called Mpongwe in the copper belt of northern Zambia. He was a 37-year-old security guard, admitted to the mission hospital two days earlier. After his body was wheeled out of the men’s ward, a nurse set aside his chest X-ray, a clouded smear of lungs devoured by tuberculosis, a hallmark of advanced, untreated H.I.V. infection. A scrawled doctor’s note indicated the X-ray should be saved for medical students.
Of the eight patients in the ward that day, four had AIDS. Lewis Chifuta, 33, was bone thin, feverish and barely able to recognize his siblings when they reached his bedside.
A year ago, in Mpongwe, there was one case like this each month, or maybe two. In January this year, there were 28 new cases; in February, 28 more; in March, seven more.
During President Trump’s first month in office, his administration upended much of the flagship global H.I.V. program that had saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Zambia. The Zambian government went into emergency mode, desperate to ensure that people with the virus could continue to receive lifesaving medications.
But other crucial aspects of the program had to be scrapped — interventions that had helped stop the spread of the virus and protected the most vulnerable people, those like Mr. Kasekela.
Today, a pared-down system is operating on reduced U.S. support, and Zambia may lose that help entirely in the next few days. The Trump administration has set an April 30 deadline for the Zambian government to accept a new health funding agreement that is tied to giving the United States expanded access to the country’s mineral resources.
I don’t get the sense that there is any remorse on the part of the Trump administration. They’re all “shithole” countries in their minds. But they do have some valuable resources so maybe they might relent just a little bit.
Pure extortion with thousands of lives on the line.
He has been “impactful,” I’ll give him that.
However, he should probably take a closer look at the history of assassination attempts in the United States. Here’s a list of the presidents who have been the target of assasins and would-be assassins:
Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy, of course, were actually killed. Reagan, and Teddy Roosevelt were seriously wounded.
But assassinations were attempted or plotted against the following presidents:
Lincoln had several attempts against him before the one that succeeded as did Kennedy. Jackson, Taft, Hoover, FDR, Truman, Nixon and Ford all were targeted for assassination, most of them more than once. A would be assassin was stopped at the White House while Obama was away but the family was there.
So, while Trump may be enjoying the dubious “honor” of being so “impactful” that people want to assassinate him, one could make the argument that he isn’t all that special.
The pandemic split a generation
As an election watcher/worker, this Axios report that Gen Z is not monolithic caught my attention:
Gen Z isn’t one generation: Research suggests it’s two, split by the pandemic, and the younger half won’t sit still. After lurching right, the youngest voters are souring on the administration, per a recent Yale poll.
Why it matters: The generation raised on lightning-fast cultural and tech shifts has become a sought-after — and perhaps, predictable — swing group. Politicians and institutions treating them as a monolith risk misreading the country’s young people.
- That partisan split between two distinct sub-generations became evident in 2024, with young men, in particular, swinging rightward.
- The divide runs deeper than the ballot box, shaping the way younger and older members of the generation view institutions, brands and tech, and even how they develop trust.
NC Democrats’ chair Anderson Clayton, 28, was on the Bulwark Focus Group podcast on 3/21. The focus group was Gen Z. The very first audio clip played [timestamp 7:00] was a woman saying, “I’ve never really felt seen by either parties.” That’s what I’ve witnessed in 8 months of weekly rush-hour messaging to commuters: young people want to be “seen” more than “policied” at. They view politics as a red kid and a blue kid fighting in a sandbox over control of the sandbox and think: What has that got to do with my struggles? They don’t feel seen by politicians, so they don’t vote like seniors. Polticians don’t pay them as much attention because they don’t vote like seniors. It’s a vicious cycle.
That’s why YOUR LIFE SHOULDN’T BE THIS HARD draws thank-yous and requests for pictures week after week after month. It’s like instant trust. People feel seen.
Rachel Janfaza, author of “The Up and Up” explains that the Covid pandemic split Gen Z in two:
- Gen Z 1.0 graduated high school before COVID-19 and grew up without TikTok. Black Lives Matter was part of the cultural zeitgeist.
- Gen Z 2.0 graduated after the pandemic, their school years shaped by masking, quarantines and remote learning.
“No other generation in modern history had been through this once-in-a-lifetime pandemic,” Janfaza tells Axios. And, “no other generation has had the core mode of communication and culture shift as quickly as ours.”
What the polling looks like:
By the numbers: In Yale’s spring 2026 youth poll, 52% of voters aged 18–22 favored Democrats on the congressional ballot — a dramatic reversal from a year earlier, when they favored Republicans by nearly 12 points.
- The one exception: men aged 18–22, the sole young demographic that shifted away from Democrats.
- The earlier rightward tilt wasn’t driven by true conservatism, Edelman says, but by “rebellion and also being very frustrated with the status quo.”
Caveat: Yale’s 18–22 subsample skews male, according to the poll’s write-up.
I keep trying to get our people to pay more attention to and adjusting their pitches for younger voters. Almost half of younger registrants are registered independents. If they voted like seniors, they could upend American politics.
But then the Trump administraion is doing a pretty good job of upending politics all by itself.
The “stars” did not align
Another memorable night at the White House correspondents’ dinner. This time for gunshots in the lobby rather than cheap shots from the dais.
“Trump and Media Unharmed After Attack; Officials Swarm Suspect’s Home,” reads a headline on The New York Times landing page.
Journalists, media executives, celebrities, Trump administration officials, and others had assembled Saturday evening and taken their seats in the ballroom on the lower level of the Washington Hilton. Donald Trump had entered to “Hail to the Chief” and was situated on the stage. It was his first time attending as president. Waiters were clearing salad plates. A banner over the stage read “Celebrating the first amendment.”
Then, The Washington Post reports, “loud popping sounds” came from the lobby:
“I thought it was a tray going down,” Trump would say later.
For the third time in less than two years, Trump found himself under the threat of gunfire. Hundreds of people — table after table — dove to the floor, reporters huddling next to Trump officials and other dinner guests, some draped by white linen tablecloths, others pressed up against the ballroom’s walls.
“Get down, get down!” someone yelled out.
At the front of the room, Secret Service officers first rushed Vice President JD Vance off the stage, then Trump a few seconds later. Other officials in the line of succession, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, were quickly whisked away, too.
Men in tuxes and women in gowns ducked to the floor. Secret Service and security officers swarmed across the ballroom, some shouting, “Clear a path! Clear a path!” as they hustled officials from the room. Trump et al. retreated to secure locations.
The Times reports:
No one had a hint as to what was going on — except that Mr. Trump had been rushed from the stage, which was now occupied by a pair of security officials brandishing large guns. (Later in the evening, officials said that an armed man had charged a security checkpoint and that a Secret Service officer had been shot.)
Somebody came to celebrate his Second Amendment.
The Nerd Prom got cancelled quicker than Elon Musk shut down USAID. The “in” crowd got shown out. “Chaos and Confusion,” declares Politico’s headline.
Meaning just another day in Trump’s Washington. Trump later used the incident to pitch his proposed ballroom with its bulletproof glass. He’d prepared “the most inappropriate speech ever,” but now he’d have to shelve it.
“I don’t know if I could ever be as rough as I was going to be tonight. I think I’m going to be probably very nice,” Trump said. “I’ll be boring the next time.”
A California man is in custody, reports The Guardian:
The suspect was in custody and being “evaluated” at a local hospital, though he did not appear to have been struck by gunfire. He was identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, the Associated Press reported, citing two law enforcement officials.
Jeffrey Carroll, the DC police chief, said investigators believed the suspect fired a shot and was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and knives. He also said the suspect was believed to have been a guest at the hotel. A motive for the attack had not yet emerged, officials said.
Jeanine Pirro, a US attorney for the District of Columbia, said the defendant was being charged with two counts of felony firearms and assault charges and would be arraigned on Monday. She expected more charges to follow.
Al Jazeera offers this preliminary background on the suspect:
Facebook posts appearing to be linked to Allen indicate he was recognised as “Teacher of the Month” in December 2024 by the Torrance branch of C2 Education, a national private tutoring and test-preparation company for college-bound students.
A LinkedIn profile under the suspect’s name describes him as a “mechanical engineer and computer scientist by degree, independent game developer by experience, teacher by birth”.
I’ve been to many less opulent “rubber chicken” dinners, and a couple in that ballroom. My neurons fire funny. The Times headline about officials “swarming” the suspect’s home immediately brought to mind chicken “swarm-a.”
Update: Of course, they did. Helluva choir.
Right now, the Arabs have screwed us out of enough American dollars to come right back and with our own money buy General Moters, IBM, ITT, AT&T, DuPont, US Steel, and 20 other American companies. Hell, they already own half of England! So, listen to me. Listen to me, God damn it. The Arabs are simply buying us! There’s only one thing that can stop them. You! You!I want you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the phone. I want you to get up from your chairs, go to the phone and get in your cars, drive into the Western Union offices in town. I want you to send a telegram to the White House… By midnight tonight, I want a million telegrams at the White House. I want them wading, knee-deep in telegrams at the White House. I want you to get up right now and write a telegram to President Ford saying, “I’m as mad as Hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore! I don’t want the banks selling my country to the Arabs. I want the CCA deal stopped! Now! I want the CCA deal stopped! Now!”
– Howard Beale, from Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976); screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky
Last night [President Trump] motorcaded over to a dinner hosted by Paramount, which is awaiting Trump administration approval for its bid to buy CNN’s parent Warner Bros. Discovery. The dinner invite said Paramount would be “honoring the Trump White House and CBS White House correspondents.” Anti-Trump and anti-Paramount protesters held signs and wore costumes outside, some ridiculing David Ellison by name.” “Block the Trump-Ellison merger,” one of the signs said.
For purposes of the president’s travel, the dinner was deemed “closed press,” which meant the TV press pool representative (who happened to be from CBS!) and other pool journalists were not allowed inside. Some of my CBS sources are still being tight-lipped this morning. But I’m told that editor in chief Bari Weiss and president Tom Cibrowski were both there, along with a handful of CBS correspondents from the DC bureau who were invited and attended in an off the record capacity.
Yesterday underscored how much Paramount-WBD has become a political football. The day began with an anti-merger protest outside WBD’s headquarters in NYC. The city’s mayor Zohran Mamdani also added his name to the list of opponents.
Then the virtual WBD shareholder vote took place and, as expected, the deal was “overwhelmingly” approved. Trump allies like Jason Miller, who reportedly advised an investor on Paramount’s side, celebrated on social media.
Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren quickly came out and said “the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger isn’t a done deal. State attorneys general across the country are stepping up to stop this antitrust disaster. We need to keep up this fight.”
California AG Rob Bonta, appearing on MeidasTouch with Scott MacFarlane, strongly suggested that his office will sue to block the deal in the coming weeks. There are “red flags everywhere,” he said. But he also noted that “we haven’t decided yet our formal position.”
The day concluded with Trump and Ellison breaking bread together off-camera. Paramount execs continue to project confidence that they’ll receive all the necessary regulatory sign-offs between now and September…
Spooky, isn’t it? Right down to the Arab investors:
Other questions of political influence [regarding the pending Warner-Paramount merger] have piled up. The Justice Department and company leadership have maintained that politics will not play a role in the regulatory process. But Trump himself has publicly waded into Warner’s future at times, despite backpedalling on what he once suggested his personal role would be.
Trump also has a close relationship with the Ellison family, particularly billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who is putting billions of dollars on the table to back the bid for his son’s company.
Meanwhile, Paramount has secured money from several sovereign investment funds — including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, as well as funds from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, per regulatory filings. But such investors will not have voting rights in a future Paramount-Warner combo, the filings noted. Paramount has not publicly specified how much they’re contributing.
Other countries, including European regulators, are scrutinizing the deal.
Shares of Paramount fell nearly 6 per cent on after Thursday’s vote, and Warner Bros. slipped as well.
Writing, as I do, about the movies, I am prone to frequently quote from them. And if there is one film I am prone to quote from more often than most these days (well, Dr. Strangelove aside), it is Network.
Back in 1976, this satire made us chuckle with its outrageous conceit-the story of a “fictional” TV network who hits the ratings g-spot with a nightly newscast turned variety hour, anchored by a self-proclaimed “angry prophet denouncing the hypocrisy of our time”.
50 years later, the film plays like a documentary (denouncing the hypocrisy of our time). The prescience of the infinitely quotable Paddy Chayefsky screenplay goes deeper than prophesying the onslaught of news-as-entertainment (and “reality” television)-it’s a blueprint for our age. As I wrote in a 2015 piece:
I love it. Suicides, assassinations, mad bombers, Mafia hitmen, automobile smash-ups: “The Death Hour”. A great Sunday night show for the whole family.
-from Network, screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky
There is an oft-repeated lament that Hollywood and/or television has “run out of original ideas”. Which is (mostly) true, but not necessarily indicative of a dearth of talent or creativity in the business. The blame for this particular writer’s block, I believe, can be laid fairly and squarely at the feet of…Reality.
Short of plundering Middle Earth or the comic book universe for ideas, it’s getting harder to dream up a scenario as “outlandish” as, say, having to undergo a security check before taking your seat at a movie theater, or as “unthinkable” as switching on the local TV news and witnessing the horror of what happened to the 2 WDBJ reporters and the interviewee while live on air last Wednesday.
You’re television incarnate, Diana. Indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer.
-from Network, screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky
While just as horrified and empathetic as anyone in their right mind should be when the WDBY story broke, I’m sad to report that I wasn’t necessarily surprised. It was only a matter of time. The on-camera assassination of two TV reporters filing an innocuous story about a mall seemed a relatively tiny jump from the random murders of two theater patrons in Lafayette earlier this month…who likely assumed they weren’t risking violent death by seeking out 2 hours of escapism at the matinee showing of a romantic comedy.
In the opening scene of Network, drunken buddies Peter Finch (as Howard Beale, respected news anchor about to suffer a mental breakdown on-air and morph into “the mad prophet of the airwaves”) and William Holden (as Max Shumacher, head of the news division for the “UBS” network) riff on an imaginary pitch for a news rating booster-“Real live suicides, murders, executions-we’ll call it The Death Hour.”
Soon afterwards, Beale shocks colleagues and viewers by going off-script during one of his nightly newscasts and soberly announcing:
“I would like at this moment to announce that I will be retiring from this program in two weeks’ time because of poor ratings. Since this show is the only thing I had going for me in my life, I’ve decided to kill myself. I’m going to blow my brains out right on this program a week from today. So tune in next Tuesday. That should give the public relations people a week to promote the show. You ought to get a hell of a rating out of that. 50 share, easy.”
The network’s initial impulse is, of course, to take Beale off the air for an indeterminate hiatus; but Howard begs Max to give him one more chance, if only to publicly apologize for what he essentially describes as a momentary lapse of reason. Reluctantly, Max acquiesces.
When the following evening’s newscast (during which Beale once again goes off the rails) attracts an unprecedented number of viewers, some of the more unscrupulous programmers and marketers at the network smell a potential cash cow, and decide to let Beale rant away in front of the cameras to his heart’s content, reinventing him as a “mad prophet of the airwaves” and giving him a nightly prime time slot. The “show” (as it can really no longer be described as a “newscast”) becomes a smashing success.
Eventually, some of the truthiness in his nightly “news sermons” hits too close to home with network brass when Beale outs a pending business deal the network has made with shadowy Arab investors, and it is decided that his show needs to be cancelled (with extreme prejudice). Besides, his ratings are slipping.
The most famous scene in the film is Beale’s “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” tirade, a call to arms (borne from a “cleansing moment of clarity”) for viewers to turn off the tube, break the spell of their collective stupor, literally stick their heads out the window and make their voices heard. It’s a memorable and inspired set piece.
For me, the most defining scene is between Beale and Arthur Jensen (CEO of “CCA”-wonderfully played by Ned Beatty). Jensen is calling Beale on the carpet for publicly exposing a potential buyout of CCA by shadowy Arab investors. Cognizant that Beale is crazy as a loon, yet still a cash cow for the network, Jensen hands him a new set of stone tablets from which to preach-the “corporate cosmology of Arthur Jensen”. I think it is screenwriter Chayefsky’s finest monologue.
Beatty picked up a Best Actor in a Supporting Role Oscar (just for that one scene!). The entire cast is superb. Faye Dunaway, who won a Best Actress statue for her performance, steals all of her scenes as Diana Christenson, the soulless, ratings obsessed head of development who schemes to turn Beale’s mental illness into revenue (“You’re television incarnate, Diana,” Max tells her at one point.) William Holden was nominated for Best Actor, for scenes like this:
Holden lost to fellow cast member Peter Finch, who was awarded with a Best Actor Oscar posthumously (sadly, he passed away shortly after filming wrapped). I have to say, that particular monologue about “primal doubts” is much more resonant to me at age 70 than it was the first time I saw Network during its first theatrical run in 1976 at age 20.
Another well-deserved Oscar went to Beatrice Straight. She had a bit more screen time than Ned Beatty, but likewise earned her statue for one particular scene (and it’s a doozy).
Robert Duvall was curiously overlooked for his indelible performance as corporate “hatchet man” Frank Hackett; but the Academy did award a statue to Paddy Chayefsky for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen. Sidney Lumet was nominated for Best Director, and the film nominated for Best Picture, but lost to Rocky in both categories.
Fans of the film will be happy to learn that it has (finally!) been given the Criterion treatment. The package features a new 4K digital restoration, which is a noticeable picture upgrade from all previous editions (I’ve owned them all), and a crisp uncompressed monaural soundtrack.
Extras include an archival audio commentary by the late director, Paddy Chayefsky: Collector of Words (2025), an excellent feature-length documentary about the screenwriter by Matthew Miele (it premiered last year on TCM), a six-part “making of” documentary from 2006, and an insightful written essay by writer and New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie.
Previous posts with related themes:
One scene to the next: RIP Robert Duvall
Explore the review archives at Den of Cinema
— Dennis Hartley
I’m not sure why I find this so shocking but I guess it’s just seeing the numbers. How can we possibly trust these people on the bench or anywhere in the government?
All 40 of [Trump’s] nominees to lifetime federal judgeships so far have given misleading or false responses to questions about the 2020 election in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Demand Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group, has been analyzing judicial nominees’ written responses to questions from senators on the panel and found they are nearly identical in their strangely worded, evasive characterizations of the election.
All have been directly asked by the committee, “Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?” Instead of just saying yes, they have either pointed to Biden’s “certification” by Congress or said Biden “served” as president. Both responses allow them to skip the part about Biden actually winning the election and move on to him simply becoming president.
This is the same tactic Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have long used to avoid publicly contradicting Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.
“Our theory from the beginning was that this was a litmus test for Trump,” Josh Orton, Demand Justice’s president, told HuffPost. “These district judges are announced on Truth Social; they know they could have their nominations pulled just as quickly on Truth Social.”
Orton is referring to Trump’s social media website, where he randomly makes major news or has full-blown meltdowns in the middle of the night.
Judicial nominees’ refusals to plainly state that Biden won in 2020 “is the show of their loyalty to Trump,” he added, “their willingness to continue this lie about losing the 2020 election and attempting to overthrow the government.”
Trump’s court picks have also been avoiding another basic question: “Was the U.S. Capitol attacked by a violent mob on January 6, 2021?” None of Trump’s 40 court picks have said yes, per Demand Justice’s analysis, with the vast majority characterizing the violence of that day as “a political debate” or “political issue.”
They either lied under oath or refuse to believe their own eyes, either of which renders them completely unfit to be a judge. It’s astonishing that they have actually been confirmed and I think they should all be impeached on that basis.
This is truly Orwellian and since it seems to have happened in slow motion we’re all just going along with it.
If he was a woman there would not be any question:
Speculation ramped up this week over which ranking administration chief will go next after Pentagon head Pete Hegseth ousted his Navy secretary — with President Donald Trump’s blessing. Now, a top White House official tells Dasha that Patel is likely the next Cabinet-level official to go.
“It’s only a matter of time,” the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, said of the FBI director.
There are several reasons, the official said, but top among them is the number of negative stories centered on the FBI director is “not a good look for a Cabinet secretary,” and Trump is fed up with the level of distraction.
Earlier this month, The Atlantic published a story recounting allegations that Patel had episodes of “conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences.” Patel denied the allegations and sued The Atlantic for defamation. The New York Times reported in February that Patel instructed FBI agents to provide a full-time security detail for his girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins. The FBI told The Times she needed the protection because she faced death threats.
The FBI declined to comment on Patel’s future. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “Under President Trump and Director Patel’s leadership at the FBI, crime across the country has plummeted to the lowest level in more than 100 years and many high profile criminals have been put behind bars. Director Patel remains a critical player on the Administration’s law and order team.”
I suspect that Trump may be upset about the boozing. He doesn’t like drunks although he has tolerated quite a few of them in his orbit. But the bad press plus booze may be what tips the balance on Kash.
The word is that he’s “in a bad mood” and ready to start the purge. Whether it’s Kash or Tulsi or maybe even Lutnick. it looks like they all need to start setting up their own “cash out” plans. I’m sure it will be very lucrative for all of them.
This Frontline report made me want to cry. People are not getting their kids vaccinated for no good reason. They’re starting to get sick and some are going to end up disabled or dead. Again, for no good reason.
Just two years after a deadly outbreak of polio raged across the country, the children lined up in the basement gymnasium of a Pittsburgh elementary school for what became the largest medical experiment in America.
One by one, they were led to tables draped in white cloth and covered with vials, waiting for their turn to be injected with a vaccine newly created to combat the catastrophic disease.
One giggled. Others fidgeted. Some of the youngest shrieked as needles with the red liquid were inserted into their arms.
In less than two hours, it was over. Dr. Jonas Salk, the creator of the vaccine, injected 137 children before they were led to an area shrouded by curtains to rest.
Under the glare of news cameras, the first public trial of the vaccine at Arsenal Elementary School in 1954 was a turning point in the battle against an epidemic that had left thousands of people dead and even more sickened and paralyzed.
The shots would nearly eliminate the polio cases spreading across the country and help build a broad acceptance of childhood immunizations for decades to follow.
But the Pittsburgh school that helped launch one of medicine’s most towering achievements is now at high risk of another dangerous childhood disease: measles.
We are intentionally going backwards because we have allowed a political faction that is hostile to science for religious (evolution) and capitalistic (fossil fuel) reasons to dominate our society to such an extent that they have convinced people to reject the advances that made our country the most advanced in the world. Now we’re going to have to learn it all over again the hard way.
This is not an accident and it wasn’t not inevitable. I don’t want to hear anything about how people are threatened by modernity and losing their status and can’t help being racist or anything else. This was a concerted campaign to devalue science by very specific institutions in our society and a political party that exploited it for power. That’s what happened and we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking otherwise.
You can watch the whole thing at the link. It’s depressing but unsurprising.