The final triumph of fantasy over reality. In reality Vietnam, Trump hid and trembled in fear while Daddy made it go away. But we no longer live in reality, so that is no longer important.
Again, he left out the 20-year war in Afghanistan in his diatribe on the timelines of previous US wars. He was President for four of those years we were in Afghanistan - how come he didn't win that war? Instead, he made an agreement with the Taliban that contributed directly to the eventual fall of the Afghan government. In truth, all four Presidents (Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden) bear responsibility for our failure there.
Our media will not be pointing out how Trump handled war in his first term. We're supposed to memory hole Afghanistan, other than to bitch about Biden. Trump? Afghanistan? Doesn't ring a bell.
He didn't get to run as a Peace President by the media being honest about his first term.
You are right Kate, which is why I have given up on the Legacy Media. We "Bulwarkers" are fortunate to have folks like LTG Hertling (Ret) and Cathy Young (among so many others) providing us with information and analysis that is hard to find anywhere else.
He could have tilted the war in the US's favor had he only answered the call of his draft notice. He would have killed so many VC single-handedly that they would have had no choice but to surrender I'm sure.
Thousands of big, strong Viet Cong would have come up to him with tears in their eyes and said, "Sir! Sir, we have never faced a more powerful adversary than you! Please accept our unconditional surrender!"
Ah, yes! I can see it clearly. One Trump would have equalled the power of one Army division. The North Vietnamese would have swooped in terror at that incredible concentration of power! Damn, I just woke up from my dream.
Sorry, Travis, but I must disagree. As a Nam vet, a combat medic, I would expect him to have left Vietnam several months early, somewhere around the middle third of his tour, in a body bag...as a result of what was generally called "fragging," regardless of the actual cause of his curtailed tour of duty.
And like his tariffs, he lies abt what happened back then. Yet, he now can put soldiers in harms way. What a disordered man. He undoubtedly broke the law. Those who fled to Canada had to be pardoned en masse to return. Don't remember such a pardon for fake bonespurs, the dodge of the rich kids, being issued.
JB Priztker . George Soros . Melinda Frech Gates . McKenzie Scott . Jane Adams . Bill Gates . Warren Buffett . May may have started foul , but it's hard to argue with the work of the Gates Foundation . Probably he dodged taxes for years making the work more necessary but there is progress in malrai , other tropical diseases and HIV .
Oh man, I saw a promo for a PBS Gilded Age documentary the other day that said something like, "See what happens when the energy that created personal wealth bumps up against what having immense wealth does to people. Watch all their fortunes disappear in smoke." Now, that's a promo!
Saw a recent clip of All In Pod in which one of the tech bro’s was advocating for UBI- as the way to keep them and their assets safe from peasants with pitchforks.
Of course his own personal Vietnam was HIV. If I could take away one of his wins it would have been that. I never wish bad things like disease on anyone, but in this case I’ll make an exception. Think what the world could have been spared if he had disappeared in the 1980’s. Also I’m pretty sure he would have taken horrible homophobic + actions if he had power to do so at the time. I admit I still feel bitter about the many tragedies of that time and how little help was offered.
He was planning to use his bone spurs like a weapon. Sort of like the way roosters do it. Only less gracefully. But the Army nixed that and so he is left fantasizing that he would have "won" Vietnam.
Should someone remind the clearly forgetful Felon that he, due to Daddy buying doctors, did not go to Vietnam due to bone spurs that were clearly serious enough to keep him from serving his country, because he had to serve on the tennis courts instead?
"Some folks were born silver spoon in hand. Lord don't they help themselves, Lord....It ain't me. It ain't me. I ain't no fortunate son"! *John Fogerty
Thank you for your service. And be aware: The HUFFPOST UK cited a WSJ story from this past weekend in which Trump reportedly is considering the Congressional Medal of Honor be awarded to him. I believe -- if Google AI is accurate -- only Theodore Roosevelt received the highest military award. Not Dwight D. Eisenhower nor Ulysses S. Grant nor George Washington. This is from the HuffPost UK: "In February, he said he wanted a medal for his 2018 trip to Iraq during his previous term in office.“I flew to Iraq. I was extremely brave. So brave I wanted to give myself the Congressional Medal of Honor,” he said, adding that he asked his “people” if he was allowed to do so. “Someday I’m gonna try. I’m gonna test the law.”
Eisenhower was a great military leader on so many levels. One of the reasons that I admire him so much is because of what he did after the success of Operation Torch during WWII. This is from his bio page on the National Museum of the US Army website:
"President Roosevelt wanted to award the Medal of Honor to Eisenhower for his planning efforts. Eisenhower refused, insisting that the medal was for heroism displayed during combat and that he was unworthy of such an honor."
Contrast that with MacArthur, who accepted a Medal of Honor after presiding over one of the biggest military defeats in US history (in the Philippines). As for Trump, I hope that he does try to put himself in for a Medal of Honor, which I believe would provoke almost universal outage within the military and among veterans.
Thanks for bringing that up Mike! My comment was getting too long as it was, so I didn't include that incident. It is another reason why I admire Eisenhower so much. He didn't even tell anyone about his note to make himself look good afterwards - there was nothing "performative" about it. We desperately need leaders of that quality today, people willing to rise to the occasion and do what is best for our Nation (as Zelensky has in the Ukraine).
It's decades of reporting about how liberals and the liberal media sold out our troops in Vietnam, fantasy movies such as Rambo and Chuck Norris about how we really could have defeated those little yellow people, a out Americans being unable to handle the fact that we lost.
He almost always deserves a rather nasty follow up question, but never seems to get them... or address them if they ARE asked before the person that asked gets insulted and thrown out of the room.
With that being said, one side has completely shamelessly weaponised the tactic. So far, the other side "going high" has just shown the Gerrymander folks that they can act with impunity.
The only way Gerrymandering stops is when Republicans stop seeing an advantage in it. The reason Democrats should Gerrymander as aggressively as possible is to show the Republicans that Democrats fight, too.
You don't stop a bully by giving away more of your lunch money and setting a good example. You stop the bully by punching back.
Thank you for saying this much better than I could have. I'm stunned that Andrew is wavering. Dems have been criticized relentlessly on TB for not standing up to MAGA. I'm a rule-follower to a fault, but we're in break-glass times. That Andrew would compare doing temporary gerrymandering in order to save our democracy to Rs embracing T is shocking and hugely disappointing. Has he forgotten the four years that the Biden administration did NOT do everything possible to prevent the situation we're in now?
Andrew is right. Gerrymandering needs to stop. However, only one side has weaponised the tactic. Make Republicans dislike Gerrymandering then it will stop.
Unilaterally disarming won't stop it.
It's like Galadriel with the Ring of Power. Frightening, but the Ring has to be destroyed, not left to one side.
yeah it'd be nice also if we get some reforms out of it. Magyar in Hungary is able to possibly change things because of gerrymandering in Hungary. They only got a bit more than 50% of the vote, but 2/3 majority in the parliament using the tools they had at hand
Structural reforms need to be Priority #1. Gerrymandering needs to stop, we need more seats in the House to reduce rural areas' outsized influence, more Supreme Court Justices, etc. If I'm really dreaming, the Electoral College can die an awful (metaphorical) death.
Gerrymandering has been present in US politics since its naming in 1812. Today, it is driven by software. Software that uses demographic inputs from various sources, but notably in the past and current situation, "the US census". Now imagine the Palantir and googles of the data collection business dropping that same framework into AI coordinated modeling. Not imagine. It is being done today. By all sides. Totally weaponized. How this manipulation of the election system continues to be allowed is beyond me. I am not neutral on the issue, if one side is taking advantage, that should not be allowed, and appropriate steps taken to equalize the playing field. Is de-escalation an option?
IMO. The small steps of planned scheduled non-partisan commission based district redrawing is fine, but ineffective. There needs to be concerted state and federal legislative efforts to rein in the use of these supercharged tools and live in a "Kansas-mode" of squares and rectangles.
You got it correct with the words "federal legislative effort." Anti-gerrymandering needs to be put into law for the next president to sign - because Trump would veto anything that would make voting more fair.
Re: the Virginia ballot initiative. As a Virginian a few points:
1. Yes, I'm voting for it. I don't want to but I'm just holding my nose and doing so - and I'm sure everyone else that is voting YES is doing the same.
2. Neither side is covering themselves in glory here - the ads from the NO side are crazy and pulling out all the fear tropes. I think the more effective NO ads are the ones that have been crowded out where they're just showing Obama and Spanberger's previous statements. The ads from the YES side are very wishy-washy and good government-ish, which are kind of blah.
3. My old boss Max is the "Max" in one of them where he says "It all started with Trump" - its amusing.
4. Last night during the Nats broadcast quite literally every ad for three innings was either pro/against this thing. Are swing voters in Virginia all Nats fans?
5. I think people underestimate the loathing there is for Trump in Northern Virginia. I'll bet this passes in Fairfax 80-20.
6. I'm just going to be happy tomorrow when this is over.
Right! What no one seems to remember is that CA voted for bipartisan commissions in 2008 to redraw our maps and it was well done. CA didn’t want to do this any more than Virginia does! But when one side cheats over and over again, do we really sit by and let it happen as we watch FEMA funds withheld for the Palisades/Altadena fires, ICE still rounding up nannies and gardeners and US citizens, and with holding of funds for healthcare and anything else Trump can use to damage CA?
Do you ever think - CA is going to leave the union eventually! I fear Californians are going to get that mad. The existing unfairness of unequal representation in Congress on top of the amount of federal dollars CA gives and gets back (here’s looking at you southern welfare states!). Then Trump trying to crush us…
I'm definitely ready to sign a CA secession petition. Think of it - CA, OR, WA, HI form a new country, with maybe a military pact with Canada. In my dreams.
Too many of us have that same dream! Can you imagine the Repubs letting us go? The 5th largest economy in the world? What would Kentucky, West Virginia, Mississippi and Alabama do without us (welfare queens - all of them haha)
As I say here often, I identify as Californian. When Commander-in-Orange bloviates about America, that’s *his* America- NOT mine. I feel like my national identity is being held hostage.
This past weekend I watched Ossoff, Buttigieg, and Obama + Mamdani. That’s *MY* America.
When I traveled abroad recently I was too ashamed to say I was from the US so I told anyone who asked I was from California. This was before the Iran war and I was traveling in a country with a large Muslim population, I don’t even know what I would say now.
Depending on the team, I think MLB.TV has 3 ads, and airs them constantly. My wife watches the Cleveland Guardians and if we see that Google stats ad again, I’m throwing my Baseball Encyclopedia at the screen.
That's funny, because when I reupped I had to make sure I could tolerate another season of the same ads repeated every inning all season. Good luck to the Guardians....but being a Tiger fan, I probably don't mean it.
It took years to get the original redistricting amendment past bipartisan opposition in the legislature, and then Governor Sweater-Vest tried to kneecap it with the commission, and eventually a panel of judges had to do the redistricting.
After 2030 maybe we can spend a couple decades trying to get ranked choice balloting through...
I visited my parents in Virginia Beach about a couple of weeks ago and was subjected to those ads. They were as bad as you say. I think the gist of one of the ads was that Democrats want to gerrymander so that they can give your tax dollars to free healthcare for illegal immigrants.
This is really inside baseball for VA politics now, but I'm not sure Spanberger is enthusiastic about having this fight vs the Dems in the legislature... idk it just feels kind of disjointed. Of course I just got back from voting 'Yes,' we've gotta do what we gotta do.
I am curious about how you feel about your current map. I looked up the statistics from the last election. In Virginia elections for US House members, 51% voted for Democrats, and 48% voted for Republicans. There is an opportunity in such a balanced state to have a lot of competitive races. But that is not what you have.
Only 3 of the 11 districts had a race that was within 5%. If you lived in one of the other 8 districts, your vote didn't matter much at all. Only one of these races was as close as 12%, and most of them were 30%+ blowouts. The largest win by a Democrat was 47%, and the largest win by a Republican was 45%.
This is a different kind of gerrymander. The two parties have collaborated to produce a map where each party has their own collection of safe seats. A candidate doesn't have to do much at all to win in one of these districts. This may be very comfortable for the party leaders, but is it really good for democracy? This is why members of Congress can grow old into their drooling years, becoming increasingly out of touch with their constituents. They can do whatever the hell they want, including accepting bribes from donors, and never have to worry about losing an election.
Around the country, only a tiny fraction of House seats are at all competitive. Not even a 51/48 state can manage to hold competitive elections. This is not good. If you want national politicians to pay attention to your state, it also seems counterproductive. Hardly any of your districts are in play. But suppose you had a map where all 11 districts were within 5%? Virginia might go 10/1 for Democrats in one election. But if they screw up the country and make everyone mad, it could swing 10/1 to Republicans in the next. Control of the House would run through Virginia. Isn't holding politicians accountable the whole point of elections?
I live a long way from Virginia and haven't seen any of the ads, so I have no idea who Max is.
Perhaps proportional representation is a good and fair way to end gerrymandering. There would be no districts to redraw. However I suspect neither party would like losing control.
Oh really, jackhole? It took less than a month for the Iranians to grab the global economy by the short hairs and drive up prices in our country, something that you and your idiotic, inebriated SecDef didn't anticipate. And now that that has happened, you're left with posting empty, pathetic threats on your dimestore social media platform. You wouldn't have won shit back then.
I wonder how close to retirement Gen. Caine is? Does he hit himself in the head every time kegsbreath peacocks around the stage, puffing his chest, and reading from the good Book of Tarantino?
Is he like mel trump, looking for the first available exit?
I feel little pity for him. Sad to see your hard earned respect flushed down the golden toilet.
I would have won Vietnam very quickly. - the you should have gotten your big, fat privileged white ass over there instead of having the fake bone spurs you LOSER!!
Andrew, you’d damn well better vote yes. We have to fight back, and when one side plays by the rules and the other doesn’t, the one that doesn’t, loses, simple as that. Standing on principle, at this moment, is a luxury that we can’t afford. Maybe things change back, and maybe they won’t, but if we don’t win back the House (and the Senate), we are screwed. The stakes could not be higher. Signed, “the older lady with the frog sign” whom you interviewed in Old Town awhile back.
Yep. This. I hate thst we need to do things that are fundamentally wrong to ultimately do what is right. I have never been the ends justify the means kind of girl. But I see what time it is. All of us on pro-democracy side need to see this.
Dems are right to be gerrymandering VA. Unilateral disarmament is not the path to victory against a political party who has gone full authoritarian and has been doing hard gerrymanders since the 2010 REDMAP program launched. If you ask me it's about time they started doing this.
And I bet that if Jerome Powell were a woman that Trump would have tried to fire her by now.
He should also fire the people who confirmed this Cabinet and the person who picked them as nominees. But he won't, so I guess that's our job in elections to come.
Seeing the pattern of Cabinet dismissals, I hope any ladies who voted for Trump can understand what's going on. If you are a woman, with a job, you are a DEI hire, otherwise you wouldn't have that job. And men who get jobs, particularly those of a certain complexion, are the embodiment of American meritocracy. Noem was replaced with Markwayne. Bondi will likely be replaced with Blanche. You think pussy grabber is going to replace Chavez-DeRemer with a woman? I wonder what the Polymarket odds are on that.
As far as the Virginia gerrymander, I'm in favor of it, but I see the reticence to do it. Nevertheless, this is the world the GOP has created. This is why having one party lose all scruples in a two party system is not sustainable; either the unscrupulous party dismantles all guardrails to gain absolute control, or there is an escalatory arms race between the two parties to dismantle the guardrails in the name of preventing the other party gaining absolute control. You cannot sustain only one party backing down; both parties have to back down, and it's up to the GOP how this turns out.
That's the spirit! It's all we can do. We should be grateful to VA and Cali that they're giving voters the opportunity to throw some haymakers of our own.
The gerrymandering fights are going to get continually worse as the population rises. The more people a Representative represents, the more opportunities there are for them to pick their own constituency. I just don’t see how we solve this without increasing the size of the House of Representatives. Here in New Hampshire we have an enormous House, and while there are logistical problems to be sure, it’s broadly much better to have finer-grained representation.
To fundamentally misogynist male bigots such as the orange narcissist-felon, women are disposable objects undeserving of respect, emotional toilet paper to be used and discarded, whence the departing female cabinet-member sycophants (note my use of the lower-case 'c,' for the 'cabinet' of fools, since capitalizing it would convey dignity it does not deserve).
None of those cabinet members was chosen for experience, knowledge, wisdom, competence. They were picked for unswerving loyalty to the orange narcissist-felon, to go along to get along, to obey, never to show the slightest sign of thought beyond pleasing 'dear leader.'
What is even more troubling is not just the army of mindless followers either supporting (the 'congress') or trudging not just to their eventual doom, but the huge, (mostly) innocent global populations in many nations being harmed hourly by the 'decisions' of the orange narcissist-felon.
Trump never has any idea how many people's lives have been destroyed because of his vanity. Every cabinet member has pushed policies that have directly or indirectly made people all over the world suffer or die. Ending USAID has caused the death of hundreds of thousands of children, HHS has pushed dangerous medical ideas, anti-vaccinations, and stopped research on life-saving medicines. The DOD has dropped bombs on innocent people at sea and on almost every continent.
The war against Iran has caused economic hardships and starvation all over the world. Yet, it goes on because Trump has never learned that causes have effects, even if he says they don't.
Lori C-R is form Oregon . She was elected as a republican in a more rural area (OR is now , as it usually is 5D: 1 R with 2 D Senators ) . She was chosen , I think for the same reason. I( as a Dem would choose a Roy Cooper or a Mark Kelly - Dem winning in a red or purple area .
"They want it to be over immediately, and I just looked at a little chart: WWI, four years, three months. WWII, six years. Korean War, three years. Vietnam, nineteen years. Iraq, eight years. I’m five months. Five months. I would have won Vietnam very quickly.”
OMG- he is just the stupidest person on earth. He needs to go NOW.
Well it is getting mighty close to the Bush line. American Research group has DJT approval 32%, disapproval at 63. VeraSight has Trump at 35 % approval, 61 disapprove. And the downward trend continues.
“Just think of all the good we’ll be able to do with that power if we get it and all the harm THEY’LL do if we don’t! “ - it’s not that. It’s - if we really are on the verge of entirely losing our democracy to a fascist - don’t we have to do everything we can to stop that? I don’t buy the comparison to Hilary because she was just a normal politician who would have done a lot of conservative things and some liberal leaning vs a would be dictator. These comparisons do us no good, this is not apples to oranges.
I make this very point in the piece--that the comparison is apples to oranges in many ways. My point is simply that we must remember certain habits of mind can easily become both habitual and dangerous.
It’s a great piece - you are so much conservative than I am and I love your writing - see what a nice big tent we Dems have? Mostly our habits have been - we go high when they go low and look where that got us. Dems have been incredibly short sighted on every issue while the Repubs were figuring out how to cheat. In the past I would have agreed with you 100% we need to avoid what Repubs have been so willing to give up (decency, moral codes, norms) but now I am pretty hysterical - we have to win to save what we are losing. It’s terrible but I think true.
Trump is now mentioning those past long-term wars to signal that everybody may as well get used to this one being around a long time, too (He’s probably as surprised as Putin was with Ukraine that it wasn’t a 3-day win).
"I would have won Vietnam very quickly."
Those who fought the V.C. while Trump was fighting V.D. would like a word . . . .
The final triumph of fantasy over reality. In reality Vietnam, Trump hid and trembled in fear while Daddy made it go away. But we no longer live in reality, so that is no longer important.
Again, he left out the 20-year war in Afghanistan in his diatribe on the timelines of previous US wars. He was President for four of those years we were in Afghanistan - how come he didn't win that war? Instead, he made an agreement with the Taliban that contributed directly to the eventual fall of the Afghan government. In truth, all four Presidents (Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden) bear responsibility for our failure there.
Our media will not be pointing out how Trump handled war in his first term. We're supposed to memory hole Afghanistan, other than to bitch about Biden. Trump? Afghanistan? Doesn't ring a bell.
He didn't get to run as a Peace President by the media being honest about his first term.
You are right Kate, which is why I have given up on the Legacy Media. We "Bulwarkers" are fortunate to have folks like LTG Hertling (Ret) and Cathy Young (among so many others) providing us with information and analysis that is hard to find anywhere else.
Biden got us out (tho the execution left something to be desired) of Afghanistan. Nobody ever mentions that.
He could have tilted the war in the US's favor had he only answered the call of his draft notice. He would have killed so many VC single-handedly that they would have had no choice but to surrender I'm sure.
Thousands of big, strong Viet Cong would have come up to him with tears in their eyes and said, "Sir! Sir, we have never faced a more powerful adversary than you! Please accept our unconditional surrender!"
Ah, yes! I can see it clearly. One Trump would have equalled the power of one Army division. The North Vietnamese would have swooped in terror at that incredible concentration of power! Damn, I just woke up from my dream.
Then detonated their tire sandals and blown the orange thing to kingdom come .
We could have had paradise if only it weren't for those bone spurs.
I should have bought the Rambo/Trump trading card. It would be worth so much more now.
And the VC would have surrendered with tears in their eyes, saying" Please sir, please sir, can i surrender?"
Rambo Trump
Sorry, Travis, but I must disagree. As a Nam vet, a combat medic, I would expect him to have left Vietnam several months early, somewhere around the middle third of his tour, in a body bag...as a result of what was generally called "fragging," regardless of the actual cause of his curtailed tour of duty.
Nothing like a dose of reality to break up our frivolity.
Of course he fought his own "personal Vietnam."
And like his tariffs, he lies abt what happened back then. Yet, he now can put soldiers in harms way. What a disordered man. He undoubtedly broke the law. Those who fled to Canada had to be pardoned en masse to return. Don't remember such a pardon for fake bonespurs, the dodge of the rich kids, being issued.
A few decent people aside, there is nothing much more foul than a wealthy person.
JB Priztker . George Soros . Melinda Frech Gates . McKenzie Scott . Jane Adams . Bill Gates . Warren Buffett . May may have started foul , but it's hard to argue with the work of the Gates Foundation . Probably he dodged taxes for years making the work more necessary but there is progress in malrai , other tropical diseases and HIV .
Money like power corrupts.
Oh man, I saw a promo for a PBS Gilded Age documentary the other day that said something like, "See what happens when the energy that created personal wealth bumps up against what having immense wealth does to people. Watch all their fortunes disappear in smoke." Now, that's a promo!
Saw a recent clip of All In Pod in which one of the tech bro’s was advocating for UBI- as the way to keep them and their assets safe from peasants with pitchforks.
They are completely interwoven.
Very few.
Unfortunately
53 college deferments spanning the war years. 🙄
Of course his own personal Vietnam was HIV. If I could take away one of his wins it would have been that. I never wish bad things like disease on anyone, but in this case I’ll make an exception. Think what the world could have been spared if he had disappeared in the 1980’s. Also I’m pretty sure he would have taken horrible homophobic + actions if he had power to do so at the time. I admit I still feel bitter about the many tragedies of that time and how little help was offered.
DJT fought VD instead of the VC.
Has his own “Private Idaho” too.
He was planning to use his bone spurs like a weapon. Sort of like the way roosters do it. Only less gracefully. But the Army nixed that and so he is left fantasizing that he would have "won" Vietnam.
I suggest asking AI to draw that image up. Don't forget the stove-pipe socks.
Should someone remind the clearly forgetful Felon that he, due to Daddy buying doctors, did not go to Vietnam due to bone spurs that were clearly serious enough to keep him from serving his country, because he had to serve on the tennis courts instead?
"Some folks were born silver spoon in hand. Lord don't they help themselves, Lord....It ain't me. It ain't me. I ain't no fortunate son"! *John Fogerty
Thank you for your service. And be aware: The HUFFPOST UK cited a WSJ story from this past weekend in which Trump reportedly is considering the Congressional Medal of Honor be awarded to him. I believe -- if Google AI is accurate -- only Theodore Roosevelt received the highest military award. Not Dwight D. Eisenhower nor Ulysses S. Grant nor George Washington. This is from the HuffPost UK: "In February, he said he wanted a medal for his 2018 trip to Iraq during his previous term in office.“I flew to Iraq. I was extremely brave. So brave I wanted to give myself the Congressional Medal of Honor,” he said, adding that he asked his “people” if he was allowed to do so. “Someday I’m gonna try. I’m gonna test the law.”
Eisenhower was a great military leader on so many levels. One of the reasons that I admire him so much is because of what he did after the success of Operation Torch during WWII. This is from his bio page on the National Museum of the US Army website:
"President Roosevelt wanted to award the Medal of Honor to Eisenhower for his planning efforts. Eisenhower refused, insisting that the medal was for heroism displayed during combat and that he was unworthy of such an honor."
https://www.thenmusa.org/biographies/dwight-david-eisenhower/
Contrast that with MacArthur, who accepted a Medal of Honor after presiding over one of the biggest military defeats in US history (in the Philippines). As for Trump, I hope that he does try to put himself in for a Medal of Honor, which I believe would provoke almost universal outage within the military and among veterans.
Ike's contingency letter for the failure of D-Day is the Platonic Ideal of good leadership.
remember when the Eisenhower museum would not give one of Eisenhower's swords to t***p to give to King Charles , the director was fired
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/arts/design/trump-eisenhower-king-charles-sword.html
Stolen valor indeed
Thanks for bringing that up Mike! My comment was getting too long as it was, so I didn't include that incident. It is another reason why I admire Eisenhower so much. He didn't even tell anyone about his note to make himself look good afterwards - there was nothing "performative" about it. We desperately need leaders of that quality today, people willing to rise to the occasion and do what is best for our Nation (as Zelensky has in the Ukraine).
Prizes for all. If he were to get the medal than every American who ever set foot in Iraq ought to as well. And the the medal is worthless..
Good. Let's rip the bandaid off. Maybe this will show his pro-military supporters what his character really is like.
If they don't know by now ... I have to keep reminding myself that there are millions of 18 and 19 year olds out there, and this is all news to them.
I think Trump's supporters are a lost cause.
It's decades of reporting about how liberals and the liberal media sold out our troops in Vietnam, fantasy movies such as Rambo and Chuck Norris about how we really could have defeated those little yellow people, a out Americans being unable to handle the fact that we lost.
Heck, Jane Fonda's nonsense was almost 60 years ago and they're still mad about it.
Jane F was absolutely in the wrong, but it's not even relevant.
Hoo boy that sure did deserve a follow-up question.
He almost always deserves a rather nasty follow up question, but never seems to get them... or address them if they ARE asked before the person that asked gets insulted and thrown out of the room.
That is one war he found a way out of.
True, but only for himself, as is par for the course with the Felon.
Trump was and is a total coward.
He would have been for Hitler and fascists until U.S. entered war and it would look bad
The absurdity of this ignoramus is awe inspiring . 🤯
Gerrymandering is wrong. No one should do it.
With that being said, one side has completely shamelessly weaponised the tactic. So far, the other side "going high" has just shown the Gerrymander folks that they can act with impunity.
The only way Gerrymandering stops is when Republicans stop seeing an advantage in it. The reason Democrats should Gerrymander as aggressively as possible is to show the Republicans that Democrats fight, too.
You don't stop a bully by giving away more of your lunch money and setting a good example. You stop the bully by punching back.
Thank you for saying this much better than I could have. I'm stunned that Andrew is wavering. Dems have been criticized relentlessly on TB for not standing up to MAGA. I'm a rule-follower to a fault, but we're in break-glass times. That Andrew would compare doing temporary gerrymandering in order to save our democracy to Rs embracing T is shocking and hugely disappointing. Has he forgotten the four years that the Biden administration did NOT do everything possible to prevent the situation we're in now?
Andrew is right. Gerrymandering needs to stop. However, only one side has weaponised the tactic. Make Republicans dislike Gerrymandering then it will stop.
Unilaterally disarming won't stop it.
It's like Galadriel with the Ring of Power. Frightening, but the Ring has to be destroyed, not left to one side.
"I will go into the west and remain Galadriel"
Yeah, there is what is right, and there is realpolitik.
Morally, we should not gerrymander.
Realpolitik demands that we gerrymander, moral scruples notwithstanding.
To me, it's what stops Gerrymandering? The power-at-all-costs side getting an advantage? Both sides realizing it stinks?
yeah it'd be nice also if we get some reforms out of it. Magyar in Hungary is able to possibly change things because of gerrymandering in Hungary. They only got a bit more than 50% of the vote, but 2/3 majority in the parliament using the tools they had at hand
Structural reforms need to be Priority #1. Gerrymandering needs to stop, we need more seats in the House to reduce rural areas' outsized influence, more Supreme Court Justices, etc. If I'm really dreaming, the Electoral College can die an awful (metaphorical) death.
Gerrymandering has been present in US politics since its naming in 1812. Today, it is driven by software. Software that uses demographic inputs from various sources, but notably in the past and current situation, "the US census". Now imagine the Palantir and googles of the data collection business dropping that same framework into AI coordinated modeling. Not imagine. It is being done today. By all sides. Totally weaponized. How this manipulation of the election system continues to be allowed is beyond me. I am not neutral on the issue, if one side is taking advantage, that should not be allowed, and appropriate steps taken to equalize the playing field. Is de-escalation an option?
IMO. The small steps of planned scheduled non-partisan commission based district redrawing is fine, but ineffective. There needs to be concerted state and federal legislative efforts to rein in the use of these supercharged tools and live in a "Kansas-mode" of squares and rectangles.
You got it correct with the words "federal legislative effort." Anti-gerrymandering needs to be put into law for the next president to sign - because Trump would veto anything that would make voting more fair.
Amen. Andrew, stop clutching your pearls.
Re: the Virginia ballot initiative. As a Virginian a few points:
1. Yes, I'm voting for it. I don't want to but I'm just holding my nose and doing so - and I'm sure everyone else that is voting YES is doing the same.
2. Neither side is covering themselves in glory here - the ads from the NO side are crazy and pulling out all the fear tropes. I think the more effective NO ads are the ones that have been crowded out where they're just showing Obama and Spanberger's previous statements. The ads from the YES side are very wishy-washy and good government-ish, which are kind of blah.
3. My old boss Max is the "Max" in one of them where he says "It all started with Trump" - its amusing.
4. Last night during the Nats broadcast quite literally every ad for three innings was either pro/against this thing. Are swing voters in Virginia all Nats fans?
5. I think people underestimate the loathing there is for Trump in Northern Virginia. I'll bet this passes in Fairfax 80-20.
6. I'm just going to be happy tomorrow when this is over.
We did it in California. It is necessary, unfortunately.
Right! What no one seems to remember is that CA voted for bipartisan commissions in 2008 to redraw our maps and it was well done. CA didn’t want to do this any more than Virginia does! But when one side cheats over and over again, do we really sit by and let it happen as we watch FEMA funds withheld for the Palisades/Altadena fires, ICE still rounding up nannies and gardeners and US citizens, and with holding of funds for healthcare and anything else Trump can use to damage CA?
Right! Why I am paying taxes to a federal government that won’t help our State?
Do you ever think - CA is going to leave the union eventually! I fear Californians are going to get that mad. The existing unfairness of unequal representation in Congress on top of the amount of federal dollars CA gives and gets back (here’s looking at you southern welfare states!). Then Trump trying to crush us…
I'm definitely ready to sign a CA secession petition. Think of it - CA, OR, WA, HI form a new country, with maybe a military pact with Canada. In my dreams.
Too many of us have that same dream! Can you imagine the Repubs letting us go? The 5th largest economy in the world? What would Kentucky, West Virginia, Mississippi and Alabama do without us (welfare queens - all of them haha)
Juts let us in the PNW and maybe Hawaii, if they are in , join you- it will save on defense expenditures and make water policy easier
We can build an alliance with New England and cut the whole darn Confederacy off . They wanted independence - go for it , baby .
Absolutely! You know CA isn’t leaving without you! Besides, I think Canada will want to take us all in, much less messy ; )
As I say here often, I identify as Californian. When Commander-in-Orange bloviates about America, that’s *his* America- NOT mine. I feel like my national identity is being held hostage.
This past weekend I watched Ossoff, Buttigieg, and Obama + Mamdani. That’s *MY* America.
When I traveled abroad recently I was too ashamed to say I was from the US so I told anyone who asked I was from California. This was before the Iran war and I was traveling in a country with a large Muslim population, I don’t even know what I would say now.
MLB.TV was the same, first three innings were all VA referendum ads and I was not watching the Nat game.
Depending on the team, I think MLB.TV has 3 ads, and airs them constantly. My wife watches the Cleveland Guardians and if we see that Google stats ad again, I’m throwing my Baseball Encyclopedia at the screen.
That's funny, because when I reupped I had to make sure I could tolerate another season of the same ads repeated every inning all season. Good luck to the Guardians....but being a Tiger fan, I probably don't mean it.
We need a moment of Baseball Zen. (Though those are also annoying now.)
There's no Zen for Phillies fans at the moment. 😀
Giants fan surrounded by Dodger fans. No Zen for me either.
Could be worse Mike, you could be a Mets fan. I found the Zen ads novel at first, but not at a hundredth.
It took years to get the original redistricting amendment past bipartisan opposition in the legislature, and then Governor Sweater-Vest tried to kneecap it with the commission, and eventually a panel of judges had to do the redistricting.
After 2030 maybe we can spend a couple decades trying to get ranked choice balloting through...
I visited my parents in Virginia Beach about a couple of weeks ago and was subjected to those ads. They were as bad as you say. I think the gist of one of the ads was that Democrats want to gerrymander so that they can give your tax dollars to free healthcare for illegal immigrants.
This is really inside baseball for VA politics now, but I'm not sure Spanberger is enthusiastic about having this fight vs the Dems in the legislature... idk it just feels kind of disjointed. Of course I just got back from voting 'Yes,' we've gotta do what we gotta do.
Dear Mr. Donut,
I am curious about how you feel about your current map. I looked up the statistics from the last election. In Virginia elections for US House members, 51% voted for Democrats, and 48% voted for Republicans. There is an opportunity in such a balanced state to have a lot of competitive races. But that is not what you have.
Only 3 of the 11 districts had a race that was within 5%. If you lived in one of the other 8 districts, your vote didn't matter much at all. Only one of these races was as close as 12%, and most of them were 30%+ blowouts. The largest win by a Democrat was 47%, and the largest win by a Republican was 45%.
This is a different kind of gerrymander. The two parties have collaborated to produce a map where each party has their own collection of safe seats. A candidate doesn't have to do much at all to win in one of these districts. This may be very comfortable for the party leaders, but is it really good for democracy? This is why members of Congress can grow old into their drooling years, becoming increasingly out of touch with their constituents. They can do whatever the hell they want, including accepting bribes from donors, and never have to worry about losing an election.
Around the country, only a tiny fraction of House seats are at all competitive. Not even a 51/48 state can manage to hold competitive elections. This is not good. If you want national politicians to pay attention to your state, it also seems counterproductive. Hardly any of your districts are in play. But suppose you had a map where all 11 districts were within 5%? Virginia might go 10/1 for Democrats in one election. But if they screw up the country and make everyone mad, it could swing 10/1 to Republicans in the next. Control of the House would run through Virginia. Isn't holding politicians accountable the whole point of elections?
I live a long way from Virginia and haven't seen any of the ads, so I have no idea who Max is.
Perhaps proportional representation is a good and fair way to end gerrymandering. There would be no districts to redraw. However I suspect neither party would like losing control.
Trump: "I would have won Vietnam very quickly."
< Tim rolls his eyes >
Oh really, jackhole? It took less than a month for the Iranians to grab the global economy by the short hairs and drive up prices in our country, something that you and your idiotic, inebriated SecDef didn't anticipate. And now that that has happened, you're left with posting empty, pathetic threats on your dimestore social media platform. You wouldn't have won shit back then.
The thing is, the Joint Chiefs TOLD them this was a likely outcome. Trump always thinks he knows better and Hegseth is a posturing little bitch.
I wonder how close to retirement Gen. Caine is? Does he hit himself in the head every time kegsbreath peacocks around the stage, puffing his chest, and reading from the good Book of Tarantino?
Is he like mel trump, looking for the first available exit?
I feel little pity for him. Sad to see your hard earned respect flushed down the golden toilet.
Well, the President does know more than "his generals." 😀
"short hairs" = "cojones." Si.
Thank you Tim - for always hitting us over the head with the blunt truth! I wish the legacy media would take a page from your book.
Andrew Egger: Lutheran wrestling with his conscience. Perhaps today is the day to adapt just war theory to gerrymandering.
I would have won Vietnam very quickly. - the you should have gotten your big, fat privileged white ass over there instead of having the fake bone spurs you LOSER!!
Biggest news story of the day: JVL has won his Webby. It's official.
Thank God! Now I look forward to seeing JVL make that championship belt, wear it, brag it and then seeing Sarah roll her eyes. I'd pay to see that!
Hope JVL didn't spill champaign all over the Godzilla machine...
We DO pay to see that . Not much , but we should all be paying members if at all possible .
Woohoo!!!
Andrew, you’d damn well better vote yes. We have to fight back, and when one side plays by the rules and the other doesn’t, the one that doesn’t, loses, simple as that. Standing on principle, at this moment, is a luxury that we can’t afford. Maybe things change back, and maybe they won’t, but if we don’t win back the House (and the Senate), we are screwed. The stakes could not be higher. Signed, “the older lady with the frog sign” whom you interviewed in Old Town awhile back.
I remember you! Hope you're doing well.
I wish we could post images in our responses but this was my most recent illustrated sign….“JUST🎲ALREADY”.
Yep. This. I hate thst we need to do things that are fundamentally wrong to ultimately do what is right. I have never been the ends justify the means kind of girl. But I see what time it is. All of us on pro-democracy side need to see this.
Dems are right to be gerrymandering VA. Unilateral disarmament is not the path to victory against a political party who has gone full authoritarian and has been doing hard gerrymanders since the 2010 REDMAP program launched. If you ask me it's about time they started doing this.
And I bet that if Jerome Powell were a woman that Trump would have tried to fire her by now.
He did threaten to fire him , and "fired" Lisa Cook. Ibet all regular readers know this , but felt compelled to be annoying
"Trump Should Fire More of His Cabinet"
He should also fire the people who confirmed this Cabinet and the person who picked them as nominees. But he won't, so I guess that's our job in elections to come.
Seeing the pattern of Cabinet dismissals, I hope any ladies who voted for Trump can understand what's going on. If you are a woman, with a job, you are a DEI hire, otherwise you wouldn't have that job. And men who get jobs, particularly those of a certain complexion, are the embodiment of American meritocracy. Noem was replaced with Markwayne. Bondi will likely be replaced with Blanche. You think pussy grabber is going to replace Chavez-DeRemer with a woman? I wonder what the Polymarket odds are on that.
As far as the Virginia gerrymander, I'm in favor of it, but I see the reticence to do it. Nevertheless, this is the world the GOP has created. This is why having one party lose all scruples in a two party system is not sustainable; either the unscrupulous party dismantles all guardrails to gain absolute control, or there is an escalatory arms race between the two parties to dismantle the guardrails in the name of preventing the other party gaining absolute control. You cannot sustain only one party backing down; both parties have to back down, and it's up to the GOP how this turns out.
I voted early and I voted hard in the Cali (sorry haters) redistricting election. Without reticence or regret. Fire with fire.
That's the spirit! It's all we can do. We should be grateful to VA and Cali that they're giving voters the opportunity to throw some haymakers of our own.
The gerrymandering fights are going to get continually worse as the population rises. The more people a Representative represents, the more opportunities there are for them to pick their own constituency. I just don’t see how we solve this without increasing the size of the House of Representatives. Here in New Hampshire we have an enormous House, and while there are logistical problems to be sure, it’s broadly much better to have finer-grained representation.
Also: Donald Trump must resign.
To fundamentally misogynist male bigots such as the orange narcissist-felon, women are disposable objects undeserving of respect, emotional toilet paper to be used and discarded, whence the departing female cabinet-member sycophants (note my use of the lower-case 'c,' for the 'cabinet' of fools, since capitalizing it would convey dignity it does not deserve).
None of those cabinet members was chosen for experience, knowledge, wisdom, competence. They were picked for unswerving loyalty to the orange narcissist-felon, to go along to get along, to obey, never to show the slightest sign of thought beyond pleasing 'dear leader.'
What is even more troubling is not just the army of mindless followers either supporting (the 'congress') or trudging not just to their eventual doom, but the huge, (mostly) innocent global populations in many nations being harmed hourly by the 'decisions' of the orange narcissist-felon.
Trump never has any idea how many people's lives have been destroyed because of his vanity. Every cabinet member has pushed policies that have directly or indirectly made people all over the world suffer or die. Ending USAID has caused the death of hundreds of thousands of children, HHS has pushed dangerous medical ideas, anti-vaccinations, and stopped research on life-saving medicines. The DOD has dropped bombs on innocent people at sea and on almost every continent.
The war against Iran has caused economic hardships and starvation all over the world. Yet, it goes on because Trump has never learned that causes have effects, even if he says they don't.
All 100% true, and tragic.
Lori C-R is form Oregon . She was elected as a republican in a more rural area (OR is now , as it usually is 5D: 1 R with 2 D Senators ) . She was chosen , I think for the same reason. I( as a Dem would choose a Roy Cooper or a Mark Kelly - Dem winning in a red or purple area .
I could barely get through that first paragraph
"They want it to be over immediately, and I just looked at a little chart: WWI, four years, three months. WWII, six years. Korean War, three years. Vietnam, nineteen years. Iraq, eight years. I’m five months. Five months. I would have won Vietnam very quickly.”
OMG- he is just the stupidest person on earth. He needs to go NOW.
Okay... I feel a little better.
Well it is getting mighty close to the Bush line. American Research group has DJT approval 32%, disapproval at 63. VeraSight has Trump at 35 % approval, 61 disapprove. And the downward trend continues.
“Just think of all the good we’ll be able to do with that power if we get it and all the harm THEY’LL do if we don’t! “ - it’s not that. It’s - if we really are on the verge of entirely losing our democracy to a fascist - don’t we have to do everything we can to stop that? I don’t buy the comparison to Hilary because she was just a normal politician who would have done a lot of conservative things and some liberal leaning vs a would be dictator. These comparisons do us no good, this is not apples to oranges.
I make this very point in the piece--that the comparison is apples to oranges in many ways. My point is simply that we must remember certain habits of mind can easily become both habitual and dangerous.
It’s a great piece - you are so much conservative than I am and I love your writing - see what a nice big tent we Dems have? Mostly our habits have been - we go high when they go low and look where that got us. Dems have been incredibly short sighted on every issue while the Repubs were figuring out how to cheat. In the past I would have agreed with you 100% we need to avoid what Repubs have been so willing to give up (decency, moral codes, norms) but now I am pretty hysterical - we have to win to save what we are losing. It’s terrible but I think true.
Trump is now mentioning those past long-term wars to signal that everybody may as well get used to this one being around a long time, too (He’s probably as surprised as Putin was with Ukraine that it wasn’t a 3-day win).
A ship named “My Ship”?