What exactly will those tourists flocking to Lebanon, now that Trump has *directed* our airlines to fly to Beirut see? The massive refugee displacement from war in the South, persistent bombing of Beirut, stories and pictures of the destruction of everything in the South of the country to tours of the battle lines? I am pretty sure an influx of American tourists flocking to Lebanon is not something Bibi has on his bingo card. What could possibly go wrong with this scenario.
Who's lining trump's pocket to make this move? It makes no sense so there has to be money involved unless someone in Lebanon said publicly what a big, smart, handsome boy he was. I can't imagine the airlines were begging him for this.
Regarding AI-generated political ads, most of the ones I have seen are so over the top that they might as well have been produced by the Warner Brothers animation studio during its heyday, complete with falling anvils, exploding cigars, and the rest.
That approach may be effective - people do like being entertained, as Iran's popular Lego shorts proved during the first part of Trump's Middle East war - and it may win a few votes. But I'm not sure it's dangerous.
What I'm dreading are the realistic last-minute ads that generate words that candidates never uttered and that are released too late for anyone to effectively prove that they are fake. That's when we'll know just what our representative democracy is up against, and I hope that wiser people than me are ready for it.
I am not on Facebook, but I sometimes watch over my wife's shoulder. Her feed is 100% AI generated boomer-bait slop, and people love it. The ads will work for the key demo for the MAGA candidates, over 55 white people.
That's the dangerous part. There'll be tons of overblown, obviously-AI slop out there, and then someone will sneak in something that's actually done convincingly, and too late to refute the veracity of it.
"But perhaps telling the truth isn’t a necessary qualification for passing your job interview for attorney general."
Not telling the truth is a necessary qualification for getting the nomination. Not getting crossways with Trump is the political imperative of R Senators. So moral rot wins the day.
He knows that's bullshit -- it's part of the MAGA/GOP strategy to paint Democrats as unpatriotic for having the nerve to question a completely unnecessary and asinine war. The sad thing is a nontrivial portion of our population will fall for that.
It isn't just a matter of questioning the war. Hegseth and others in the reactionary right portray all Democrats - and basically anyone who's "anti-Trump" - as enemies of America's soul. The administration has officially put the label, or at least the suspicion, of "domestic terrorism" on simply promoting disfavored political views.
Details, details. Perhaps the tourists can get militia tours of all the wild wonder of a country that has been in a state of declared and undeclared civil war for the better part of the last 40 years! Maybe they can experience a real live roadblock where militias can demand tolls (like the strait of Hormuz) in order to proceed with their journey. As you noted, perhaps they can visit some real ‘camps’ where refugees from the south of the country, or from Syria, or elsewhere are living in squalor on the edge of starvation while they wait for the situation (s) in their homeland to stabilize. It all sounds great.
Perhaps the checkpoint toll system, particularly those manned by the Maronite Christian militias, will offer a sliding (in which direction, who can say?) scale for those tourists displaying MAGA gear!
The good folks of The West Bank had no compunction about detaining a US Congress member and his aides four hours. Imagine how Lebanon will treat rando MAGA tourists!
Or maybe the "tourists" will be soldiers flying in. No sure that Trump will know the difference, as long as he can say American planes are going to Lebanon.
While Iran is not Ukraine, and the Iranian people are more hostile to their own regime than Ukrainians are to theirs, Trump's strategy of threatening war crimes is a very impulsive and counterproductive endeavor. When Russia shoots missiles into Ukraine, destroys their energy infrastructure in freezing winters, it counterintuitively does not bring him closer to victory, but rather infuriates Ukrainians and stiffens their resolve to basically fight to the death. That whole Patrick Henry thing, "Give me liberty or give me death." That's what targeting civilian infrastructure has wrought.
And if we start bombing Iranian bridges and energy facilities, the Iranian regime will enjoy popular support like it has never before seen in its almost fifty years. This is a strategy for turning a populace hostile to its own regime into zealous supporters, an echo of what General Hertling saw happen in Iraq as Muqtada al-Sadr politicized our military operations. The Iranian regime will loudly crow, with more justification than ever, "See, we always told you these people who brought you blue jeans and rock music were the Great Satan." Trump is in a position where he cannot win no matter what he does, and the Iranians know it, even though Trump never will. The best path forward at this point is to cut and run, but Trump has that swaggering overconfidence and he's convinced he can just walk right out of this quicksand.
As far as OpenAI's models autonomously hacking into other companies, for which OpenAI really ought to be subject to legal penalties, this is a problem. It's clear we cannot predict these systems, and what you cannot predict, you cannot control, because you don't know what to protect against. And when it's also smarter than you are, and you cannot control it, you are asking for big trouble.
General Hertling wrote: "Swagger may energize political supporters and produce memorable television clips, but it is not strategy. Strategy begins with a clear understanding of the enemy, realistic assessments of what military force can accomplish, and enough humility to recognize that wars rarely unfold according to plan." But these criminals consider humility to be woke, low-T, and inconsistent with WARriorMAXXing. How many more servicemembers will suffer injuries or death because of them?
Oh, and why did Trump fire that teleporting FEMA guy? He could have been beaming oil out of the Gulf and avoiding the Strait of Hormuz altogether. 🤔
"Blanche would have us believe not only that he didn’t order Maxwell’s transfer; not only that he didn’t sign off on it; not only that he wasn’t even consulted about it; but that he knew nothing about it—until he learned about it as millions of Americans did, through public reporting.
It strains credulity to think any senators actually believe Blanche. But perhaps telling the truth isn’t a necessary qualification for passing your job interview for attorney general."
Answers like "I didn't know" and "I don't recall" should be called out to the interviewee as disqualifying. If you currently cannot manage the role you have and have such a poor memory for critical details and recent events, you surely will not be able to perform the duties of the office you are asking to hold. End of interview.
The forum and the format make these hearings pointless.
The result is preordained, so it's ultimately pointless, so there's that. The cameras mean that Senators just get to bloviate. The time limits rewards the ability to just prattle on until "my time has expired" happens.
The arrogance of Todd Blanche is so reminiscent of Kavanaugh. His dismissiveness of congress and his treating them like a bother because of course he is deserves to be attorney general and of course that is trumps' personal lawyer. In Blanche's estimation congress should do what trump tells them to do, just like he does.
I was a child during Vietnam, and Gen. Hertling was a young man, but I’m sure he’s aware that the “5 o’clock follies” didn’t convince anyone — and backfired after Tet. Hegseth may not want to admit our losses, but beating his chest won’t do any good, either. The Iranians aren’t stupid, and it’s their country.
But back then, Fox News didn't exist. I'm betting, this morning, they're either ignoring the whole thing or, Mike Pence-style, praising Hegseth's "broad-shouldered leadership" or calling out the "Hate America Left" or saying Pete Hegseth is the reincarnation of George Patton or maybe all of those things.
Four of Trump’s cabinet members recently testified before the Senate: Brooke Rollins, of Starvation and Corruption; Pete Hegseth of the Department of Macho Cosplay; Todd Blanche, of the Pedophile Protection Agency, and Jay Clayton, of Secrets and Lies. All of them demonstrated that they are not only unqualified, they are willing to use their office to harm American citizens, use their office to financially benefit themselves and the president, and to undermine democracy.
The Republicans, for the most part, lauded their performances and urged them on to kill more people, both at home and abroad. None of them testified that they had any plan to tell the truth or solve any of the difficult problems they face.
Our job is to survive until the first week of November and get everyone to vote as many MAGA people out of office as possible, even if that means voting for the radicals who think the government should help American citizens stay healthy and afford food and shelter.
"It strains credulity to think any senators actually believe Blanche."
You can bet the national debt that most GOP senators do NOT believe him. But their first obligation is to the cult.
Yes, their jobs depend on believing him.
That's the saddest thing. Blanche could have jumped up on the table in his underwear and sang "All of Me" and these guys would confirm him.
Now you got me hearing Willie Nelson singing that!
What exactly will those tourists flocking to Lebanon, now that Trump has *directed* our airlines to fly to Beirut see? The massive refugee displacement from war in the South, persistent bombing of Beirut, stories and pictures of the destruction of everything in the South of the country to tours of the battle lines? I am pretty sure an influx of American tourists flocking to Lebanon is not something Bibi has on his bingo card. What could possibly go wrong with this scenario.
Who's lining trump's pocket to make this move? It makes no sense so there has to be money involved unless someone in Lebanon said publicly what a big, smart, handsome boy he was. I can't imagine the airlines were begging him for this.
Where ever there is corruption Trump is there.
Maybe MAGA will take their Deer Leader's advice, tho. That way they'll also get to see why we're still bombing Iran!
Maybe DJT and Kushner have designs on Lebanon in rebuilding it into hotels and resorts just like their dreams of Gaza.
Mark Hertling is a gem
He would make an excellent Sec of Defense for the next democratic President!
Regarding AI-generated political ads, most of the ones I have seen are so over the top that they might as well have been produced by the Warner Brothers animation studio during its heyday, complete with falling anvils, exploding cigars, and the rest.
That approach may be effective - people do like being entertained, as Iran's popular Lego shorts proved during the first part of Trump's Middle East war - and it may win a few votes. But I'm not sure it's dangerous.
What I'm dreading are the realistic last-minute ads that generate words that candidates never uttered and that are released too late for anyone to effectively prove that they are fake. That's when we'll know just what our representative democracy is up against, and I hope that wiser people than me are ready for it.
I am not on Facebook, but I sometimes watch over my wife's shoulder. Her feed is 100% AI generated boomer-bait slop, and people love it. The ads will work for the key demo for the MAGA candidates, over 55 white people.
That's the dangerous part. There'll be tons of overblown, obviously-AI slop out there, and then someone will sneak in something that's actually done convincingly, and too late to refute the veracity of it.
"But perhaps telling the truth isn’t a necessary qualification for passing your job interview for attorney general."
Not telling the truth is a necessary qualification for getting the nomination. Not getting crossways with Trump is the political imperative of R Senators. So moral rot wins the day.
Hegseth is convinced Democrats are a bigger threat to the US than Iran
He knows that's bullshit -- it's part of the MAGA/GOP strategy to paint Democrats as unpatriotic for having the nerve to question a completely unnecessary and asinine war. The sad thing is a nontrivial portion of our population will fall for that.
It isn't just a matter of questioning the war. Hegseth and others in the reactionary right portray all Democrats - and basically anyone who's "anti-Trump" - as enemies of America's soul. The administration has officially put the label, or at least the suspicion, of "domestic terrorism" on simply promoting disfavored political views.
Has the State Department cleared Lebanon as safe to travel to?
I just looked, and posted, and there is a travel advisory (do not travel warning) from the State Dept re Lebanon.
Uh oh, Rubio messed up! Or maybe the American planes that can fly into Lebanon will carry soldiers.
That'll change when/if Trump finds out about it. Lebanon is 100% safe now, bkz Deer Leader says so, so maybe MAGA will go there for fall vacay!
Details, details. Perhaps the tourists can get militia tours of all the wild wonder of a country that has been in a state of declared and undeclared civil war for the better part of the last 40 years! Maybe they can experience a real live roadblock where militias can demand tolls (like the strait of Hormuz) in order to proceed with their journey. As you noted, perhaps they can visit some real ‘camps’ where refugees from the south of the country, or from Syria, or elsewhere are living in squalor on the edge of starvation while they wait for the situation (s) in their homeland to stabilize. It all sounds great.
It'll be fine, just show them your US passport that has the pic of Trump in it. The Lebanese will treat you like gods and liberators!
Perhaps the checkpoint toll system, particularly those manned by the Maronite Christian militias, will offer a sliding (in which direction, who can say?) scale for those tourists displaying MAGA gear!
The good folks of The West Bank had no compunction about detaining a US Congress member and his aides four hours. Imagine how Lebanon will treat rando MAGA tourists!
Travel suggestion to Lebanon tourists: ‘make sure to pack plenty of “Trumpcoin” on any excursion beyond your hotel accommodations’.
Or maybe the "tourists" will be soldiers flying in. No sure that Trump will know the difference, as long as he can say American planes are going to Lebanon.
If I may paraphrase JVL, ‘Who can say?’…
While Iran is not Ukraine, and the Iranian people are more hostile to their own regime than Ukrainians are to theirs, Trump's strategy of threatening war crimes is a very impulsive and counterproductive endeavor. When Russia shoots missiles into Ukraine, destroys their energy infrastructure in freezing winters, it counterintuitively does not bring him closer to victory, but rather infuriates Ukrainians and stiffens their resolve to basically fight to the death. That whole Patrick Henry thing, "Give me liberty or give me death." That's what targeting civilian infrastructure has wrought.
And if we start bombing Iranian bridges and energy facilities, the Iranian regime will enjoy popular support like it has never before seen in its almost fifty years. This is a strategy for turning a populace hostile to its own regime into zealous supporters, an echo of what General Hertling saw happen in Iraq as Muqtada al-Sadr politicized our military operations. The Iranian regime will loudly crow, with more justification than ever, "See, we always told you these people who brought you blue jeans and rock music were the Great Satan." Trump is in a position where he cannot win no matter what he does, and the Iranians know it, even though Trump never will. The best path forward at this point is to cut and run, but Trump has that swaggering overconfidence and he's convinced he can just walk right out of this quicksand.
As far as OpenAI's models autonomously hacking into other companies, for which OpenAI really ought to be subject to legal penalties, this is a problem. It's clear we cannot predict these systems, and what you cannot predict, you cannot control, because you don't know what to protect against. And when it's also smarter than you are, and you cannot control it, you are asking for big trouble.
Instagram is on fire with OPPOSITION & its unreel…WOW Its obvious that the Heg is not being well received. End this con . Full court press
General Hertling wrote: "Swagger may energize political supporters and produce memorable television clips, but it is not strategy. Strategy begins with a clear understanding of the enemy, realistic assessments of what military force can accomplish, and enough humility to recognize that wars rarely unfold according to plan." But these criminals consider humility to be woke, low-T, and inconsistent with WARriorMAXXing. How many more servicemembers will suffer injuries or death because of them?
Oh, and why did Trump fire that teleporting FEMA guy? He could have been beaming oil out of the Gulf and avoiding the Strait of Hormuz altogether. 🤔
"Blanche would have us believe not only that he didn’t order Maxwell’s transfer; not only that he didn’t sign off on it; not only that he wasn’t even consulted about it; but that he knew nothing about it—until he learned about it as millions of Americans did, through public reporting.
It strains credulity to think any senators actually believe Blanche. But perhaps telling the truth isn’t a necessary qualification for passing your job interview for attorney general."
Answers like "I didn't know" and "I don't recall" should be called out to the interviewee as disqualifying. If you currently cannot manage the role you have and have such a poor memory for critical details and recent events, you surely will not be able to perform the duties of the office you are asking to hold. End of interview.
The forum and the format make these hearings pointless.
The result is preordained, so it's ultimately pointless, so there's that. The cameras mean that Senators just get to bloviate. The time limits rewards the ability to just prattle on until "my time has expired" happens.
Bring back the smoke-filled rooms...
Not surprisingly, the State Dept has issued a travel advisory on Lebanon, warning US travelers not to go there.
Left hand? Meet right hand?
And while it's now routine, the idea that Truth Social posts are official govt policy ("hereby") is nauseating.
I still remain astonished that a nation the won its revolution by mostly losing keeps forgetting that victory is not a simple battlefield win.
We learned that in Vietnam. And we should be able to see that now.
We will need to let Iran take its pound of flesh.
The arrogance of Todd Blanche is so reminiscent of Kavanaugh. His dismissiveness of congress and his treating them like a bother because of course he is deserves to be attorney general and of course that is trumps' personal lawyer. In Blanche's estimation congress should do what trump tells them to do, just like he does.
I was a child during Vietnam, and Gen. Hertling was a young man, but I’m sure he’s aware that the “5 o’clock follies” didn’t convince anyone — and backfired after Tet. Hegseth may not want to admit our losses, but beating his chest won’t do any good, either. The Iranians aren’t stupid, and it’s their country.
But back then, Fox News didn't exist. I'm betting, this morning, they're either ignoring the whole thing or, Mike Pence-style, praising Hegseth's "broad-shouldered leadership" or calling out the "Hate America Left" or saying Pete Hegseth is the reincarnation of George Patton or maybe all of those things.
Four of Trump’s cabinet members recently testified before the Senate: Brooke Rollins, of Starvation and Corruption; Pete Hegseth of the Department of Macho Cosplay; Todd Blanche, of the Pedophile Protection Agency, and Jay Clayton, of Secrets and Lies. All of them demonstrated that they are not only unqualified, they are willing to use their office to harm American citizens, use their office to financially benefit themselves and the president, and to undermine democracy.
The Republicans, for the most part, lauded their performances and urged them on to kill more people, both at home and abroad. None of them testified that they had any plan to tell the truth or solve any of the difficult problems they face.
Our job is to survive until the first week of November and get everyone to vote as many MAGA people out of office as possible, even if that means voting for the radicals who think the government should help American citizens stay healthy and afford food and shelter.