Trump may just be Trumping with the name from his distracted perspective, but step back, take a longer view and it is indeed a perfectly accurate name. Epics are long like the Illiad you say? I'm 72 and bloody Mideast wars have been going on as long as I can remember. And what is that blood but a sign of fury? If Trump doesn't present as epic or furious... well it isn't really his war now is it. Bibi's been spoiling for war with Iran since the last millennium, a pretty epic time span. And if you want a domestic face of 'epic fury', how about Bill's old neo-con bud John Bolton?
On the one hand this version of the war may indeed be over before April Fool's Day, but methinks the war itself will go on, and on, and on.
I was gonna' crack wise that maybe he's dyslexic, but that would continue to promote a long-standing myth and be so patently unfair to countless people disadvantaged by something not of their own making, but who can still differentiate right from wrong backwards and forwards all day long.
Unlike Hegseth, whose moral compass may somehow have been accidentally placed aboard that Tomahawk missile from that now-infamous Iranian girl's school strike.
When you say young women, are you referring to young women or women on the younger side (erstwhile, usually just called girls)? You see, semantics matter. ☺️
Well, Chrysis was unmarried and Briseis was married to Mynes, a son of the King of Lyrnessus who was killed by Achilles. History does not tell us their actual ages.
Young women and women "on the younger side" are not girls. Girls are not women. Girls are children.
I am fascinated by the descriptions we get of these young women. By all accounts Briseis seems to have had a unibrow which may or may not say anything about Achilles taste in women. And then poor Polyxana sacrificed at Achilles grave whose feet are described as small or perfect. She was used as a human sacrifice and people remember her feet!
Not that this has anything to do with ancient Greece, but 16th century Turkish and Persia women drew in a unibrow with kohl because it was the preferred cosmetic arrangement. =)
Even funnier to me is that Florsheim shoes haven't been made in the US in a long time. They may be an "American brand", but you can guess where they are actually made now. They used to be wonderful, durable shoes that looked great for a long time. Now they are a sad shadow of what the brand once was.
Yeah, I don't buy the Iran war is a distraction from Epstein. If you do a distraction from something unpopular and hurts you politically, you do not pick something that is even more unpopular and hurts you even more politically. There are a lot of things Trump could have picked if he wanted a distraction. He could have picked a long prolonged fight with the women's hockey team. Bottom line, Trump is not that smart nor is he clever. Just keep that in mind.
Trump is not teachable. He doesn't learn, he doesn't listen. No one can tell him anything. If you recall, in his first term, he stated that he knew more than the generals.
If his current military leaders suggested that Iran was not a good idea, because they knew how Iranians thought and functioned as a theocracy, he ignored them.
Trump is a waste of oxygen.
I just want to know when his MAGA base will realize that the doesn't give a rat's ass about them and their problems.
Not teachable, no. But he is manipulable. You can talk him out of or into almost anything if you frame it in terms of his vanity and fears and keep going back so you are the last person he talked to and the person he talked to most. The problem is access, knowing how to package specifically for him, and being able to stomach the whole process.
Andrew: "Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth banning press photographers from the Pentagon briefing room for releasing pictures of him he considers insufficiently hot."
Exactly the type of person you want running a complex, multi-billion dollar operation during a time of war, right, MAGA?
Hegseth had an assistant make a run to the local Walmart to buy out the petroleum based hair and skin products he prefers before they disappear from the epic fury shelves.
I'm genuinely curious if the consequences of this war come back to American shores, will the people connect the dots? Or will they once again rally around a "strong" president and retrench in the us vs them mentality? If the latter, it seems like we're doomed to repeat this cycle every 15 years ad infinitum.
I'd never rule out rally around big tough Republican daddy. However, the vibes are different now. I don't think political support for Republican daddy is 100% anymore.
I also think the level of trust with the government is so low right now, I can't imagine ever returning to the ~80% post 9/11 support for any government. In some respects, that's probably a good thing.
Re AI: just a few minutes ago, I was in Word, letting the Editor (its own kind of AI) check my spelling and grammar. It flagged a reference to “48 hours” and suggested I go with “about four days.”
I think even 12-year-old humans wouldn’t make THAT error.
My mind also thinks that there are people who literally loaded that particular missile and did the targeting and crewed the vessel that launched it. I don't know where the chain of traceability ends for a strike like that, but I'm sure the people who carried out their mission did so with confidence and trust that is now lessened by the fact that the missile fell on a school. I know I have a problem with that, and it would feel much closer if I was on the ship or armed the ordnance ect...
That's why in my opinion you don't follow illegal orders. Maybe that leads to discipline or discharge or whatever, but you also don't have the blood of hundreds of elementary school children on your hands/conscience.
The fact that the military keeps following these clearly extralegal orders and killings (like the Caribbean boat strikes) makes me very uneasy.
My guess is that in a case like this no one directly involved realized that the targeted location was a school. Whether someone in the chain should have realized or if risk of civilian casualties should have been better mitigated are different valid questions. None of that makes the actual situation better if it's true, but it is a different kind of bad.
The point of military training is group cohesion. Very much needed...most of the time. To break from that is very hard to do, as we keep seeing with My Lai and Abu Graib.
Regarding the strike on the girl's school that is often being left out of the reporting: "The U.S. Built a Blueprint to Avoid Civilian War Casualties. Trump Officials Scrapped It."
Hegseth cut the personnell that mitigate civilian harm and help review targets by 90%. IOW this was an active choice by Hegseth to increase these kind of mistakes because he thinks preventing excess civilian casualties is "woke".
Um, why don't they just buy themselves a pair of identical Florsheim shoes in the correct size? At $145, those things cost less than my sneakers. Expecting Trump to tell the difference is insane, unless he had Tulsi bug the shoes.
Oh, now that I think of it, I bet he did have Tulsi bug the shoes. Or he at least wants his subordinates to think the shoes are bugged.
There's a risk in this approach; it implies that you think the Big Guy bought you the wrong size shoes. He might not like that, so it's better to just perambulate in the ill-fitting ones. It really is a perfect real-world demonstration of the state of affairs in the administration; I don't hate it for them.
The fact that they can’t even say, “sir it was the wrong size, but I love the shoes so I ordered some. Thank you for thinking.” of me is wild. The capitulation is something to behold. And these are supposed to be the people speaking TRUTH to the president. His advisors are too scared to even swap out their shoes for fear that the dimensia president will notice.
He could have deliberately gotten them ill-fitting shoes, so that if they had ones that fit, that would demonstrate their insufficient loyalty. If Marco suddenly showed up in shoes he didn’t swim in, it would be obvious.
RE: "They gave me, like, 20 names. And I’m like, falling asleep. Then I see Epic Fury..."
It’s a ridiculous and embarrassing name, you say?
Au contraire, my dear Bill.
*Epic Fury* is absolutely the perfect name for a fit thrown by a cranky toddler when he wakes up on the wrong side of the public's opinion of him.
I like how folks have taken to calling it Operation Epstein Fury.
I'm partial to "Operation Eternal Dumbass" myself
or Epic Fury is an anagram to Epstein Files
I see 'Epic Fury' and I think 'McDonald's meets Depends'.
Don't you wonder what a nightmare toddler he was for his mother? Certainly explains her mental health issues...now I have them.
it explains why he was sent to a boarding school. It didn't help much.
I doubt if even waterboarding would've helped.
Esp when he was an 18-year-old toddler. Tho I'm sure it was nannies that had to take the brunt of his diaper-throwing tantrums.
I doubt he ever saw his mother. Im sure he was delegated to a nanny.
Operation Thoughtless Imbeciles
Trump may just be Trumping with the name from his distracted perspective, but step back, take a longer view and it is indeed a perfectly accurate name. Epics are long like the Illiad you say? I'm 72 and bloody Mideast wars have been going on as long as I can remember. And what is that blood but a sign of fury? If Trump doesn't present as epic or furious... well it isn't really his war now is it. Bibi's been spoiling for war with Iran since the last millennium, a pretty epic time span. And if you want a domestic face of 'epic fury', how about Bill's old neo-con bud John Bolton?
On the one hand this version of the war may indeed be over before April Fool's Day, but methinks the war itself will go on, and on, and on.
Jimmy Kimmel said that Epic Fury is an anagram for Forget Epstein.
How about "Epic Furry"? ;)
Epic Hairy?
SNL characterized it as tattoos on Hegseth's knuckles, but he had the words in the wrong order with fury on the right hand and epic on the left.
I was gonna' crack wise that maybe he's dyslexic, but that would continue to promote a long-standing myth and be so patently unfair to countless people disadvantaged by something not of their own making, but who can still differentiate right from wrong backwards and forwards all day long.
Unlike Hegseth, whose moral compass may somehow have been accidentally placed aboard that Tomahawk missile from that now-infamous Iranian girl's school strike.
Notably, Achilles' fury in The Illiad was over not getting to rape some young women captured during the fighting. Sounds about right.
That was a heartbreaker.
When you say young women, are you referring to young women or women on the younger side (erstwhile, usually just called girls)? You see, semantics matter. ☺️
Well, Chrysis was unmarried and Briseis was married to Mynes, a son of the King of Lyrnessus who was killed by Achilles. History does not tell us their actual ages.
Young women and women "on the younger side" are not girls. Girls are not women. Girls are children.
You didn't seem to get the memo. I attempted a poor joke about Trump's description of Epstein. 😔
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ll1ZUjAB7lo.
I am fascinated by the descriptions we get of these young women. By all accounts Briseis seems to have had a unibrow which may or may not say anything about Achilles taste in women. And then poor Polyxana sacrificed at Achilles grave whose feet are described as small or perfect. She was used as a human sacrifice and people remember her feet!
Not that this has anything to do with ancient Greece, but 16th century Turkish and Persia women drew in a unibrow with kohl because it was the preferred cosmetic arrangement. =)
All the better to arch those eyebrows, my dear!
This is a different angle on the "What is the definition of a woman?" gotcha question.
Well for Trump any women under 50 would be a much younger women.
Andrew has a secret comedian hiding behind that serious facade. The shoes on Marco had me cracking up.
Try the veal!
Hahahaha
Even funnier to me is that Florsheim shoes haven't been made in the US in a long time. They may be an "American brand", but you can guess where they are actually made now. They used to be wonderful, durable shoes that looked great for a long time. Now they are a sad shadow of what the brand once was.
Figures Trump would only start liking them after they dropped in quality.
Maybe they are now the Trump product brand now. (awful in quality)
I bet MAGA starts buying Florsheim shoes now.
And DJT will trademark it, and grift there as well.
Oh I remember the Florsheim shoe stores! Now they're just cheap Chinese knockoffs.
Florsheim were my go-to when I was starting out. I'm more of a Skechers loafers (with the super cushy soles) now. 😀
I'm old now, so I can enjoy the Skecher slip ins with the super cushy soles, it's about all I wear these days!
Side note: the Florsheim company (who made the shoes) is suing the government to get back its tariff money.
Who isn't?!
Honestly, that was so, so good, Andrew.
As OJ Simpson said: Those are some ugly ass shoes.
Marco told Trump he had size 11.5 feet, and now he's got clown shoes.
I can't help but observe that "sko" is the Danish word for shoes.
Operation Epstein Fury, more likely
Yeah, I don't buy the Iran war is a distraction from Epstein. If you do a distraction from something unpopular and hurts you politically, you do not pick something that is even more unpopular and hurts you even more politically. There are a lot of things Trump could have picked if he wanted a distraction. He could have picked a long prolonged fight with the women's hockey team. Bottom line, Trump is not that smart nor is he clever. Just keep that in mind.
And yet Democrats lost to him and the Republicans in 2024. Kind of pathetic now that I think about it. Still hard to believe.
Not me. Trump was a star of a TV game show for 12 years. Uninformed voters know him. Wide spread name recognition is powerful.
But even after the disaster of his first term and January 6? Not buying that. Maybe an excuse for 2016, but not 2024.
I still have a hard time believing that.
Trump is not teachable. He doesn't learn, he doesn't listen. No one can tell him anything. If you recall, in his first term, he stated that he knew more than the generals.
If his current military leaders suggested that Iran was not a good idea, because they knew how Iranians thought and functioned as a theocracy, he ignored them.
Trump is a waste of oxygen.
I just want to know when his MAGA base will realize that the doesn't give a rat's ass about them and their problems.
Not teachable, no. But he is manipulable. You can talk him out of or into almost anything if you frame it in terms of his vanity and fears and keep going back so you are the last person he talked to and the person he talked to most. The problem is access, knowing how to package specifically for him, and being able to stomach the whole process.
Yea, Bibi led him by the nose into this one, probably with some level of encouragement from Putin.
Time will confirm: bibi flattered frump into this mess!
War in Iran>>>> Epstein files>>>>> grift scandals>>>>>> epic stupid statements>>>>> "round and round we go in the circle game".
It's the Mother of All Epstein Distractions
As Steve Schmidt says: This is what shit looks like.
Andrew: "Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth banning press photographers from the Pentagon briefing room for releasing pictures of him he considers insufficiently hot."
Exactly the type of person you want running a complex, multi-billion dollar operation during a time of war, right, MAGA?
Has anyone told Petey that greasy hair and a heavy spray tan is the opposite of hot?
The man is in arrested development. He never matured past 14 years old.
You know he still slatheres himself in Drakkar Noir
That is so fuckin' 80s.
How about 60's?
That I believe
Too much credit, that.
You may be right. My sister-in-law's foster son is six years old, and he's smarter and more in control of himself than Pete is.
And he probably has a better haircut, too. :-)
Who Doesn't?
He's about a Gob-level intellect.
Next you'll say that an extra heavy spraying of Axe isn't attractive. 😀
Pete probably thinks it doesn't matter so long as the object of his desire is unconscious.
Hegseth had an assistant make a run to the local Walmart to buy out the petroleum based hair and skin products he prefers before they disappear from the epic fury shelves.
Don’t forget the mewing!
Smarmy.
The wet head is not dead.
Give him a break Tim, he did figure out how to bulk order lobster and fruit baskets.
Paging RFK Jr. Is that healthy?
The only Homer with which Trump is familiar is Homer Simpson.
Doh?
Poetry
HMMMMMMM, Beer!
Beat me to it.
I am sorry. I could not resist.
A Tale of Two Trumps, S29 The Simpsons.
(3:11 minutes total)
https://youtu.be/uq4FCuEaclA?si=t4m0n23W49YK-W2i
Yeah, after all those guest appearances Trump made as Mr. Burns, he probably did get to know Homer a little bit better than we might suspect...
To quote that illustrious show, this man was elected to lead, not read.
He can read?
And mistakenly concluded that Homer is the role model to be emulated.
Trump officials in clown shoes. At least they're dressing the part.
Until this administration, that term wasn't literal.
If the clown shoe fits...
Amidst such strange but depressingly banal footery, I shall give thanks for the wonderful strangeness of The Shaggs.
https://youtu.be/yxG7HdTRaa4?si=HLxINe-ZV6KlxTSG
I'm genuinely curious if the consequences of this war come back to American shores, will the people connect the dots? Or will they once again rally around a "strong" president and retrench in the us vs them mentality? If the latter, it seems like we're doomed to repeat this cycle every 15 years ad infinitum.
I'd never rule out rally around big tough Republican daddy. However, the vibes are different now. I don't think political support for Republican daddy is 100% anymore.
I also think the level of trust with the government is so low right now, I can't imagine ever returning to the ~80% post 9/11 support for any government. In some respects, that's probably a good thing.
I think definitely some of both, but I really hope a lot would connect the dots, while hoping we don't actually have to find out the answer.
Our friend Trump might be well advised to consider the fate of Agamemnon on his triumphal return from Troy.
What would we pay to watch the president say Agamemnon. '-)
OK LOL
Reread the Iliad? As if trump ever read it in the first place!, unless it was the Cliff Notes version.
More like the Classic Comics version.
A bridge too far.
Wrong bridge, but a good likeness of the trainwreck of Trump's ever even attempting to read the Iliad...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpl4wkWMJtE
He's only interested in reading about the Sirens in the Odyssey.
His older sister read it for him. After all, she was the one who took his test.
If only Melania could get the same immunity deal that SCOTUS provided her husband.
Malaria Clytemnestra has a nice ring to it.
Re AI: just a few minutes ago, I was in Word, letting the Editor (its own kind of AI) check my spelling and grammar. It flagged a reference to “48 hours” and suggested I go with “about four days.”
I think even 12-year-old humans wouldn’t make THAT error.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry about that.
Laugh, he didn't listen
I've been casually compiling a list of AI audio-to-caption errors I've seen:
Pasteis de Nata -- pest destinations
Crathie Kirk – Crappy Kirk
She’s an ingenue – She’s an engineer
goat cheese gateau – goat cheese ghetto
The Baths of Caracalla were ancient Rome’s second largest public baths – The bats of Pedagon, Lower ancient Rome’s second largest ....
(On the "sailing stones" of Death Valley): -- Some are upwards of £500 and still travel more than 15 feet a minute. ….. some weighed up to £700 …
Kristie Gnome
Etc.
yeah my word grammar checker suggested "it be good" for it was good
Hegseth's Department of WAR stands for "Weak-Ass Responses" to hard questions and, now apparently, unflattering photographic images.
Clavicular has them terrified of a "very recessed side-profile."
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tX7RDn5zuIU
Regarding “Who killed those girls,” every single person who voted for Trump killed them. So did all the CEO’s who didn’t stand up to him.
My mind also thinks that there are people who literally loaded that particular missile and did the targeting and crewed the vessel that launched it. I don't know where the chain of traceability ends for a strike like that, but I'm sure the people who carried out their mission did so with confidence and trust that is now lessened by the fact that the missile fell on a school. I know I have a problem with that, and it would feel much closer if I was on the ship or armed the ordnance ect...
That's why in my opinion you don't follow illegal orders. Maybe that leads to discipline or discharge or whatever, but you also don't have the blood of hundreds of elementary school children on your hands/conscience.
The fact that the military keeps following these clearly extralegal orders and killings (like the Caribbean boat strikes) makes me very uneasy.
My guess is that in a case like this no one directly involved realized that the targeted location was a school. Whether someone in the chain should have realized or if risk of civilian casualties should have been better mitigated are different valid questions. None of that makes the actual situation better if it's true, but it is a different kind of bad.
The point of military training is group cohesion. Very much needed...most of the time. To break from that is very hard to do, as we keep seeing with My Lai and Abu Graib.
https://citizen99.substack.com/p/children-of-the-sacred-tree-a-song?r=2sauq&utm_medium=ios
Regarding the strike on the girl's school that is often being left out of the reporting: "The U.S. Built a Blueprint to Avoid Civilian War Casualties. Trump Officials Scrapped It."
Hegseth cut the personnell that mitigate civilian harm and help review targets by 90%. IOW this was an active choice by Hegseth to increase these kind of mistakes because he thinks preventing excess civilian casualties is "woke".
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-defense-department-iran-hegseth-civilian-casualties
Mitigating collateral damage is just so PC.
Woke and wimpy. This is WAR or EXCURSION!
WHO KILLED THOSE GIRLS?
Answer: The United States of American killed those girls. All else is a waste of electrons.
I mean, no. There are other important things to say about it.
Um, why don't they just buy themselves a pair of identical Florsheim shoes in the correct size? At $145, those things cost less than my sneakers. Expecting Trump to tell the difference is insane, unless he had Tulsi bug the shoes.
Oh, now that I think of it, I bet he did have Tulsi bug the shoes. Or he at least wants his subordinates to think the shoes are bugged.
There's a risk in this approach; it implies that you think the Big Guy bought you the wrong size shoes. He might not like that, so it's better to just perambulate in the ill-fitting ones. It really is a perfect real-world demonstration of the state of affairs in the administration; I don't hate it for them.
The fact that they can’t even say, “sir it was the wrong size, but I love the shoes so I ordered some. Thank you for thinking.” of me is wild. The capitulation is something to behold. And these are supposed to be the people speaking TRUTH to the president. His advisors are too scared to even swap out their shoes for fear that the dimensia president will notice.
Yeah, and if they approached him with tears in their eyes when they said, "Sir", he might mention them in his next rally ramble. 😀
Maybe he did it to give them growing room.
Room to grow more infantile in their subservience maybe.
No, it's another dominance display.
He could have deliberately gotten them ill-fitting shoes, so that if they had ones that fit, that would demonstrate their insufficient loyalty. If Marco suddenly showed up in shoes he didn’t swim in, it would be obvious.
Or the bigger sizes were on sale and Trump got this side benefit.
He asked their shoe sizes, and got them 2 sizes too big - tho Marco, at least, obviously overstated his "size", nudge nudge.
Are we sure those photos of too big shoes (or too little feet?) are not just some manipulated photos?
Operation Cheeto Dessication.