Sun Tabs
- Via Axios: Scoop: White House to take charge of briefing-room seating chart. More of the ongoing attempt to shape coverage of the administration by the administration.
- Via NBC News: Trump says he ‘couldn’t care less’ if foreign automakers raise prices due to tariffs.
- Don Moynihan on Hegseth’s purging of libraries: Infantilizing the Military.
- In case you missed it in the comments section, Tom the Dancing Bug on DEI.
- Via The Guardian: Florida college fires Chinese professor under state’s ‘countries of concern’ law.
“I faced political repression from the Chinese Communist Party for criticizing Xi Jinping and the CCP’s domestic and foreign policies, resulting in the loss of my teaching position and my freedom to teach, research, and express myself in China,” Wang told the outlet.
“I never expected to face such a distressing experience after escaping persecution from the CCP in China, only to encounter a somewhat similar situation at New College in the United States,” he added.
Well, the good news is that he didn’t lose his job for political speech. He just lost it because of racial profiling! /s
- There is something monumentally gross about a guy who is putting tens of thousands of people out of work, and otherwise wrecking US state capacity to do important things, to get all upset about one politician saying mean things about Tesla stock.
- Just in case anyone was wondering, Jesse Watters is an asshole.
- Kyle Whitmire provides a field guide to woke zoo animals.
Cute kitty!
To me, Jesse Watters will forever be the guy whose own mother didn’t want him to come home for Thanksgiving.
No no no, he’s the drunken relative who hands his BIL (who’s just out of rehab) a drink and tells him to loosen up .
JFC, this dude gives ignorant inbred mutant assholes a bad name *
*Apologies to his mom. I’m hoping she didn’t raise him to be this kind of ignorant a hole. I’m basing that on the fact that she didn’t want him there for Thanksgiving.
The same kind of guy who enjoys running around the stage at CPAC swinging a chainsaw around?
@just nutha:
It’s sort of like MAGA trashing Zelenskyy for showing up at the White House in soldier’s dress but perfectly accepting of Musk appearing at a cabinet meeting in a t-shirt and ball cap.
@CSK:
My customary attire when I go out. Shirts bought at Target and a 2024 Florida Panther Stanley Cup Champions hat.
@Bill Jempty:
Well, that’s fine, but would you wear them to a cabinet meeting???
@CSK:
Well, no, but even Luddites have some sense of taste, style, and propriety. Unlike wealthy muskrats.
*OTOH, I was known (80’s/90’s) for walking into law firms in a three-piece suit, with a WB or Disney tie, waxed mustache/Van Dyke, and a braided ponytail, and introduce myself as their new Kelly Girl, so I was definitely not the droid they were looking for.
President Doughboy told Welker this morning that he’s not joking when he talks about a 3rd term.
So we have that shit-show to look forward to.
I think while Jesse Watters gives every indication that yes, he is an asshole, what I think matters more than that is that he is dead wrong.
The US did not win World War II by itself. The US did not even beat the Japanese by itself. The US will have a very tough time in the world going alone. This chest-thumping is the sound of insecurity. It sounds like fear. It sounds like paranoia making a good show.
It’s as if Jesse Watters doesn’t know anything about Japan’s occupation, and how it turned Japan into our friend. That wasn’t because they were cowed.
Maybe in his life he has beat people up and had them turn into “friends”? Or maybe he was bullied and turned into a sycophantic “friend” to cut down on the times he got stuffed into a locker?
I got bullied, by people who I thought were friends. I did not think of them as friends afterward.
Which leaves open the question that Watters has no clue about. How did Japan (and Germany and maybe Italy) become our friend?
Again, it’s not that he’s an asshole, which he is, that’s how he makes money. It’s that he’s wrong about everything.
From emptywheel.com
“The whole point about aviation safety is that you have to have the humility to understand that you are imperfect, because everybody screws up. Everybody makes mistakes,” said Lt. John Gadzinski, a retired Navy F-14 pilot who flew combat missions from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. “But ultimately, if you can’t admit when you’re wrong, you’re going to kill somebody because your ego is too big.”
This is in reference the SecDef’s refusal to admit he made any mistake with the Signal Chat group, the transcript of which appeared to demonstrate weaknesses in the chain of command ordering a strike on a civilian target.
US military power projection relies heavily on our friends and allies. The US has hundreds of bases and installations around the world, bases where our ships can refuel, bases our planes can fly out of, bases for intelligence gathering, bases for missile defense, and stockpiles of weapons we can access. We have troops based in countries that allow that basing because they trust us not to use our forces against our hosts. Hosts like Greenland.
Absent our Asian allies we cannot hit China with anything but ICBMs, long-range strategic bombers and carrier planes that have to stand well out to sea to avoid Chinese missiles. It’s 1700 miles from Guam to Taipei, twice the distance from Japan’s south island, more than three times the distance from Luzon. Distance = fewer sorties and more downtime for jets. Where are the air refueling planes flying out of? Where are the nearest radars? Where do we evacuate wounded soldiers to?
Given Trump’s unreliability our Asian friends and potential friends like Vietnam, will have powerful reasons to make a deal with China. Philippines, to pick one example, has pushed back hard against Chinese navy encroachment on their territorial waters and exclusive economic zone. But that is on the assumption that the US has their back. Australia has taken serious economic hits from pushing China away, but that assumes a friendship with the US that is now meaningless. Trump has no one’s back and he is no one’s friend.
Japan and South Korea need to get busy fast on building nukes, or else kowtow to Beijing.
In my world, fathers stand up for their children. They take care of them, they protect them. Elon Musk is a complete failure as a father. He won’t even acknowledge some of his spawn and disowns others.
But that doesn’t bother him. Trashing Tesla’s stock price does.
@Jay L Gischer: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (But that was said by a guy who belonged to some sort of a mind-control organization or something, so forget I mentioned it. It’s probably not important.)
I am shocked, shocked, that a bully can dish it out but not take it.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
Sounds somewhat like me in a military style overcoat, three-piece, black paisley tie, pointy beard, and shaved head, and grinning at the lawyers.
As someone I knew said: “Dress to intimidate.”
lol
It can be amusing.
@Michael Reynolds:
The Aussies are obviously seriously worried, if you follow their serious debate.
Their problem is, the UK would like to have their back.
But if the US leaves Europe in the lurch, UK must perforce focus on continental defence.
So AUKUS has to be sidelined, dammit.
And if the US effectively ends NATO, that will mean the US air/naval basing in Europe and the Med ends also.
Wave bye-bye to Ramstein, and to the RAF flying top cover out of Cyprus in support of the US Navy and Israel.
Alliances have costs, and they have benefits.
MAGA seems to assume the benefits are ordained by nature, and the costs just a cheat.
Fits perfectly with Trump’s sub-zero-sum approach to business dealings.
“All the money belong to me!”
@Jay L Gischer:
In the words of Linda Thompson:
Huh. I thought Trump was the world’s thinnest skinned toddler, but maybe it’s actual Musk?
The DEI purges of conservative radio are fun to watch. Daily Wire is going bankrupt now that their billionaire fracking backers are pulling out.
28k views in 5 days is now average for both Shapiro and Crowder… by way of comparison, Kyle Kulinski averages 200k in 5 days and good ol’ Sam Seder gets 500k in 2 days.
In a shocking twist, it’s the conservatives that can’t cut it on the battlefield of ideas.
@just nutha:
Yes. Musk says empathy is a fundamental weakness.
Nevertheless Musk’s whine for pity (now) begs for scoring. If you start Musk’s whine right when the music starts this happens to match-up fairly well.
@JohnSF:
My gig in those days was to speak very quietly while smiling at/through people.* While frequently dressed better than my “betters.”
Amusing indeed.
*You know, that “servicing all the targets in the room is just a job” look.
@dazedandconfused:
I spent years locked up with dudes who espoused that attitude. Mostly they were failed sadists/bullies, wannabe sociopaths & chest-thumpers.