…that’s…I dunno if you can call it a blind spot when they keep making the blinkers bigger & the field of their tunnel vision shrinks…but…they can’t see the thing they paint themselves as being by their actions…somehow
Since 1958, West Point has honored one U.S. citizen annually with the Sylvanus Thayer Award for embodying the values of "Duty, Honor, Country."Tom Hanks was set to receive the award later this month. His ceremony was just abruptly canceled by the Academy.(thread)
The email from retired Army Col. Mark Bieger, head of the West Point Association of Graduates, did not clarify if the award has been revoked or if it will awarded at a later date. It remains unclear if West Point is throwing Tom Hanks under the bus.
But why?Col. Bieger offered some incredibly vague reasoning: "This decision allows the Academy to continue its focus on its core mission of preparing cadets to lead, fight, and win as officers in the world’s most lethal force, the United States Army."
As a former West Point cadet, I can confidently tell y'all that this doesn't make a damn bit of sense. At all. It's absurd.And although no further details have been offered, this has Trump's fingerprints all over it.
Tom Hanks has supported Democrats throughout his career. He endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Joe Biden in 2020. He's a supporter of LGBTQ rights. He's donated to countless Democratic campaigns.This feels a hell of a lot like political retribution.
We don't yet know what happened, and there's a small chance that there was some kind of complicating factor that resulted in the ceremony being cancelled. But I don't think that's it. I think this is Trump being petty over Mr. Hank's politics and getting revenge.
The President of the United States just essentially declared a war on Chicago because — wait for it! — Black and Brown people live here.This is not normal. This is not okay. And we are going to fucking fight back.
…chipocalypse now? …I know you mean chi ‘pocalypse…but…you know that reads chip ‘ocalypse…right? …&…eau de deportation smells like napalm & you’d happily murder civilians so you could surf a break on the lakeshore…or what…seriously…what the fuck are you even going for here…you gonna ride into pritzker’s back yard in a huey blasting the ride of the fucking valkyries now?
The “Rose Garden Club”?Trump has literally turned the White House into his private country club
…secretary of camera-ready makeup, maybe…that’s about as fierce as that prissy little madam gets…I’d give my grandmother even odds she could take him in a fight…& she’s been not so alive for a few years at this point
Some people have asked, the actual NDS hasn’t been actually published yet. I’m sure there will be *some* hawkish rhetoric vis-a-vis China but stuff gets leaked in advance to shape the narrative around said NDS which is why the politico story is the final nail in the coffin (in my book)
…& your boy SoD rock…he makes some solid sounding points
Yesterday, Politico reported that the Pentagon’s newly drafted National Defense Strategy, a document published yearly prepared under “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth is abandoning the long-standing emphasis on China and Russia as America’s principal threats and instead prioritizes defending the homeland and the Western Hemisphere.1 The draft represents a dramatic break from nearly two decades of bipartisan consensus that China’s rise required a robust forward-deployed U.S. military presence in Asia. Instead, the new strategy focuses on domestic deployments, border militarization, and hemispheric policing. The shift is not just bureaucratic tinkering. It exposes the final evolution of the so-called Republican “China hawks,” revealing that their loudest advocates of confrontation were never genuinely committed to sustaining America’s role in global order, just as I suspected way years ago. It’s unfortunate that this publication was not started earlier, as I would have put my views on record. However, alas, they were, in the end, frauds, and their pivot to isolationist retrenchment shows they are who they always were.
One can go back to the 2018 National Defense Strategy, crafted under then–Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby, was widely hailed as a turning point in American grand strategy.2 It identified China as the pacing threat, Russia as a persistent rival, and demanded that the United States prepare for great-power conflict rather than counterterrorism campaigns.3 Colby has become a leading intellectual voice for “strategic clarity” on Taiwan and a broader hard line against Beijing.4 Republican politicians from Tom Cotton to Marco Rubio once wrapped themselves in the mantle of China hawkery, framing confrontation with Beijing as the defining struggle of the century.5
Yet the new draft strategy, reportedly shaped by Colby himself in tandem with Vice President J.D. Vance, signals the opposite.6 It sidelines the Indo-Pacific in favor of a continental focus: National Guard troops assisting law enforcement in Los Angeles, Navy ships and F-35s patrolling the Caribbean for drug interdiction, and militarized zones along the southern border.7 This is not a posture designed to deter China in the Taiwan Strait. It is a posture designed to redirect the military inward, away from overseas commitments. The irony is obvious. Having accused Democrats of appeasement, weakness, or distraction, the very voices who most loudly demanded confrontation with China are now either engineering retreat or completely silent. Their hawkishness was always performative, a means of scoring political points rather than laying the foundation for sustained strategic competition. […] The consequences for America’s allies are immediate and destabilizing. The Baltic Security Initiative, designed to strengthen Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania’s ability to resist Russian pressure, is reportedly on the chopping block.11 NATO partners fear that a forthcoming Global Posture Review could result in the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Europe. Japan and South Korea, long reassured by Washington’s Indo-Pacific focus, now confront the prospect of an America unwilling to sustain forward deployments. These allies are not naïve. They remember the “America First” rhetoric of the Trump years and the undercurrent of skepticism toward alliances. But what makes the present moment so disorienting is the speed of the reversal. As late as 2022, leading Republicans accused the Biden administration of weakness on China, calling for greater defense spending and commitments to Taiwan.12 Now, under Republican leadership, the Pentagon is preparing for a retrenchment that looks like a 21st-century Monroe Doctrine redux. The whiplash undermines U.S. credibility and leaves allies questioning whether Washington is capable of sustaining any long-term strategy at all.
If the Pentagon is not preparing to deter China abroad, what is it preparing for? The answer, according to the Politico reporting, is domestic militarization. The new draft strategy envisions deploying uniformed troops to U.S. cities, building a militarized zone along the southern border, and redirecting air and naval assets to counter-narcotics missions in the Caribbean.13 This is less a foreign strategy than a domestic one, a repurposing of the Department of Defense into an auxiliary of Homeland Security and local law enforcement. This also fits a deeper pattern. Scholars of civil-military relations like Samuel Huntington emphasized the danger of politicizing the military by making it the arbiter of domestic disputes, and yet, that appears to be the strategy.14 The current draft strategy effectively blurs those boundaries, reimagining external threats as internal crises. In so doing, it allows the GOP to maintain the rhetorical posture of “national defense” while disengaging from the actual burdens of international security.
The final evolution of the China hawks is thus should not really be surprising, only clarifying. Their fraud lay in the mismatch between rhetoric and intent. They spoke of Beijing’s authoritarian menace but were never actually prepared to bear the costs of long-term confrontation. They denounced Democrats as soft on China, only to turn inward once in power. They claimed to defend democracy abroad, but now deploy troops to police cities at home. The hypocrisy has practical consequences. It undermines deterrence, emboldens rivals, and corrodes alliance networks built over decades. More profoundly, it reveals the hollowness of much of America’s strategic debate. The China hawk consensus on left and right was always brittle, dependent on posturing rather than planning. Now, its collapse demonstrates that the hawks were never hawks at all, but isolationists in hawk’s clothing.
…but boozehound mc willy-pete-face made sure they could go strapped in D.C. because he feels like half a man when he hasn’t got a gun & he’s about protecting his warfighters’ fragile feelings like that so their mascara doesn’t run when the sobbing starts or whatever
The GOP’s China hawks were never committed to a generational contest with Beijing. They were, from the beginning, opportunists leveraging the specter of China for domestic political advantage. Now that they are steering U.S. defense policy, their instincts: retrenchment, isolation, and domestic militarization. In this sense, the shift should not surprise us. I’m sure people like Mike Gallagher and Matt Pottinger will hem and haw, maybe they’ll even write an article or two criticizing the strategy, but they won’t leave the party because again, they are frauds. It’s a small consolation that they are who I thought they were, and perhaps who they always were: not the guardians of global order, but its saboteurs. Now, I will go to the Navy Yard to celebrate.
The State of Illinois at this time has received no requests or outreach from the federal government asking if we need assistance, and we have made no requests for federal intervention.
The safety of the people of Illinois is always my top priority.There is no emergency that warrants the President of the United States federalizing the Illinois National Guard, deploying the National Guard from other states, or sending active duty military within our own borders.
Donald Trump is attempting to manufacture a crisis, politicize Americans who serve in uniform, and continue abusing his power to distract from the pain he's causing families.We'll continue to follow the law, stand up for the sovereignty of our state, and protect Illinoisans.
The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal. Donald Trump isn't a strongman, he's a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.
"It's a new day, it's a new administration, and everything's going to come out to the public"Attorney General Pam Bondi, who oversees the Justice Department, to Sean Hannity, March 2025
…yeah but that’s not why they wanted him in charge
"By making landmark decisions and overturning lower court orders through brief, unsigned and unexplained orders, SCOTUS is creating unnecessary legal confusion while giving the public the impression that federal judges erred or abused their power.”
A win! The federal appeals court chose not to step in, leaving in place a lower court’s directive that the Trump administration must continue making billions in foreign aid accessible.
Fort Bliss is a prime example of how our government has treated immigrants with cruelty throughout history.Once used to intern people of Japanese descent during World War II, this military base is now running the largest immigrant detention center in the country.
The GENIUS Act barred stablecoin issuers from paying interest. But in allowing cryptocurrency exchanges to offer rewards, it set off a high-stakes clash with the US banking industry.
…now *that guy* sounds like a guy you could get on board with & maybe not be expected to act as a human fender so his boat doesn’t get scratched when that rising tide does its thing…in fact…he sounds like…something else?
“It is not a radical idea to say that every man, woman and child in America can have a decent standard of living.”
…it’ll get you called a disgusting radical by some truly hideous people with souls that are shriveled to the point of becoming vestigial
“No, **I** AM ASKING the questions”- @bennet.senate.gov.This feels like a shift from Senate Democrats. Have we ever seen Michael Bennet yell like this at someone powerful before? It may be that Dem leaders are finally ready to act like this is an emergency. Watch this clip.
Under Elon Musk’s leadership, X has become the perfect platform to supercharge the spread of dangerous disinformation during breaking news events like last week’s shooting in Minneapolis.
…team #youknowwhenyou’vebeentangoed can’t even compute that ad
serious question. does no one know anything anymore? you're saying the people you hate on bluesky are of the same type as the ones that produced the democratic wipeouts in the 1980s? you know, when the democratic party still had a conservative southern wing and strong support from white ethnics?
These bills amount to the greatest assault against DC home rule since it was established. A sweeping rollback of local self-governance through the imposition of MAGA policies on a city that almost universally opposes them. A stunning escalation in Republicans’ attack on the District’s democracy.
Much of the media continue to allow Farage to elide the figures for all immigration with asylum seekers, and the reality for asylum seekers, who are prevented from working, with other immigrants. He is repeatedly enabled to blow immigration issues out of all proportion.
Farage isn’t bound by the Ministerial Code but he might think what would have to change if he was He is bound by the Nolan Principles & should be investigated for multiple breaches now including murder of the National Anthem
There were at least 22 false reports of an active shooter at American colleges during the last week of August and early September, according to a Trace analysis of news reports.
The CDC doesn't understand disease control.The EPA doesn't understand environmental protection.Now it's clear the Dept of Energy doesn't understand energy.This administration is populated by imbeciles.
In case you’re wondering why ACEP is (sort of) singling out Dr. Houry, it’s because she is an emergency medicine physician who (I believe) still takes shifts at Emory Hospital, in addition to her work in CDC leadership. She genuinely works on the front lines of public health.
The only reason it isn't is that effort was blocked by the NRA. They prevented the CDC from studying it like one, from compiling the data, from linking the gun statistics across states. The bought & sold congress did this. Money did this.
…up there with hey, let’s relocate the people who listen out for nukes to a place that isn’t set up for that, like, at all for just fantastical amounts of willfully & woefully embarrassingly fucking head-up-your-ass
NEW: Did you know the Trump Administration has been demanding that states hand over ALL of your voter data? “It's literally everything that you would need to steal someone's identity,” says one expert. More on what’s at stake:
This hot mic Zuckerberg moment show their numbers are all lies, undercutting Trump’s entire economic agenda. In a rational world every media outlet would be leading with it.
Well, let’s take a closer look at how politics tends to work surely all of this is just coincidental. In late June 2025, Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire chair of Blackstone Group, donated $2 million to Pine Tree Results PAC, a
BREAKING: Judge Chen has blocked the Trump administration from canceling protected status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and Haitians.Chen found both decisions were preordained, with baseless pretextual explanations.storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us…
my thesis for where things are at is its very scary that there isn't civil society mobilization against such a horrifying moment in our history, but also this house of cards could fall apart incredibly quickly because they've really not done any of the work needed to backstop a political collapse
Prop 8 banned same sex marriage. Yggie's been nursing grudges for a long time over some interesting things, or the people on the tech guy group chat have. This isn't an example of the left shooting first, it's perhaps an example of the left hitting its target instead of being stomped on
NatCon founder Yoram Hazony is a piece of work. He RTd this post by British agitator Tommy Robinson (a Steve Bannon ally), which quotes Hazony as follows: “In America, u have the luxury of pretending Jews are your enemies, because their aren’t enough Muslims yet, ur going the wrong direction.” 1/
…trivial fucking people in the most fundamental sense
We know how Trump, Republicans and Jillian Michaels feel about museums, history & slavery. But what do historians, scholars & educators think about what this administration is doing
The story of the military occupation of DC began 388 years ago when a drunk, undocumented immigrant with a criminal history went on a crime spree & refused to self-deportThe end is always the same.
‘That the futurists who want to break the bounds of mortality are the ones most committed to the immutability of gender says something about how useful the concept is to them. Their insistence on masculine hegemony is an insistence on order and hierarchy.’ Emily Witt: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4…
“So, the rise of these industrial-scale computing facilities that are needed for A.I. and other Internet applications is certainly one of the factors driving up prices.”
“And I think there’s a chance that A.I. is going to drive our bills even higher in the future.”
“Tren de Aragua being designated as a foreign terrorist organization is a purely domestic law enforcement designation. It offers no authority for the military to use deadly force,” said Todd Huntley, an active-duty judge advocate for more than 23 years. For more: theintercept.com/2025/09/05/p…
had a conversation with a prominent pundit recently who did not seem to realize that the departments of the executive branch are congressional creations, so not surprised at this
Psychologists have long studied how children develop theory of mind—an intuitive understanding of what other people know, think, and feel. What role does humor play?
…less funny when the kids are in their declining years
For the history buffs, a Déjà News addition from @idaronson.bsky.social :The Epstein scandal isn’t the first time a country has been consumed by a saga of wealth, criminality and political connections.www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo…
“We’re gonna unleash our American warriors to the EXTREME-“<pulls out can of Mountain Dew Baja Blast>“-ULTRAMAX-“<dumps soda out, pours in a handle of bourbon, immediately chugs it>“-GNARLIEST BROS TO EVER BRO-DOWN A GAUNTLET-“<pukes, sends training regimens to unsecured Signal chat>
Ravi bought insurance thinking it would deliver on its promise of access to mental health care providers. After 21 phone calls and multiple hospitalizations, no one could find him a therapist.“I don’t want to die,” he told his mom.(Published Sept. 2024)
Thanks, @tiffanymuller.bsky.social & the @endcitizensunited.bsky.social team! Grateful to have your support in this race as we fight to lower costs for working families across California.
“we actually understand what a queen is, what a knight is, what a rook is. What a piece is. And it [AI] never understands anything. It’s one of the most profound illusions of our time that most people witness these things and attribute an understanding to them that they don’t really have.”
The FBI uses a lot of shitty people as cooperators and informants but Trump is a great example of someone they wouldn’t use — a pathologically narcissistic braggart who could never keep a secret or maintain focus. It would be like asking the Trix rabbit to wear a wire.
Q: Can you say if the administration has engaged with North Korea on that incident?TRUMP: I don't know anything about itQ: Can you confirm that it happened?TRUMP: I'm hearing it now for the first time(Trump reportedly approved the botched operation)
Bootstraps are for poor people NOT them like women especially single moms, black folks, brown folks and anyone who isn’t a white man descended from pioneers who stole Native land, fought said Natives when they got pissed and whose dominion is because they are white, Xtian and male.
Yeah I really don’t understand how farmers were so stupid as to support him. Everything he talked about with immigration and tariffs would fuck them over.
I am sure there are plenty of farmers saying “WE FUCKING TOLD YOU SO” to other farmers, but that’s not going to save them either.
…I’d only looked at text descriptions of that SNAFU…but that’d be the thing he green-lit but says in one of those embeds up there he was never told about…because if it doesn’t go well he doesn’t know it ever happened…hallmark of a serious leader, that…don’tcha know?
…so…asking for a friend…but the phrase “a parody of themselves”…that’s still a thing enough people say that you could be forgiven for assuming they understand what it means…or
What this would morally allow Epstein victims to do is left as an exercise to the reader.
…should I just be assuming people don’t hear themselves & it’s weird that I should have trouble imagining how they think it looks & sounds when these words come spilling out of them in the order they do…because we live in the future now?
Did you lose your bootstraps?
Trump-voting farmers beg for government handout
Bootstraps are for poor people NOT them like women especially single moms, black folks, brown folks and anyone who isn’t a white man descended from pioneers who stole Native land, fought said Natives when they got pissed and whose dominion is because they are white, Xtian and male.
Yeah I really don’t understand how farmers were so stupid as to support him. Everything he talked about with immigration and tariffs would fuck them over.
I am sure there are plenty of farmers saying “WE FUCKING TOLD YOU SO” to other farmers, but that’s not going to save them either.
This gets more insane every fucking day. “Yeah, he’s wrong, but fuck it, who cares?”
Trump breaks from RFK on vaccines: “Pure and simple, they work”
More like Canklepocalypse Now!
Col Bruisemore?
Col Chubsmore?
Or General Kurtz aka fat Brando aka General Fatz.
Someone fixed the AI pic…
Embarrassing disaster SEALs surveillance clusterfuck.
When the SEALs discovered a boat, they decided to shoot first and ask questions later. Killed two civilian fishermen.
The Trump admin decided to not mention it to Congress.
…I’d only looked at text descriptions of that SNAFU…but that’d be the thing he green-lit but says in one of those embeds up there he was never told about…because if it doesn’t go well he doesn’t know it ever happened…hallmark of a serious leader, that…don’tcha know?
To be fair, he’s got dementia. He may legitimately not remember it. Same shit happens to my mother-in-law all the time.
Yep, and unless there’s a Signal chat about it, this administration doesn’t like to put things in writing.
Oh shut up. Not you RIP. Click on the link.
Now this is more like it:
Bernie Sanders Assails Democrats for Not Endorsing Mamdani
(Bernie Sanders turns 84 tomorrow, just in case you want to send a card.)
…so…asking for a friend…but the phrase “a parody of themselves”…that’s still a thing enough people say that you could be forgiven for assuming they understand what it means…or
…should I just be assuming people don’t hear themselves & it’s weird that I should have trouble imagining how they think it looks & sounds when these words come spilling out of them in the order they do…because we live in the future now?