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Coffee Break: Moral Imbeciles Lead U.S. to War

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The moral imbeciles ruling the United States cannot even fathom the stakes of the game they are playing and America’s moral collapse is contributing to the strategic disaster that is POTUS Trump’s Ramadan War on Iran.

UPDATED:Jim Webb had some very fitting remarks on The Duran that I added at the end of the post.

What are the stakes exactly?

Shall We Play a Game of Global Thermonuclear War?

Beyond the obvious geo-strategic implications of a hyperpower blundering into a war with a major regional power — combat deaths of soldiers and civilians, potential global economic crisis/collapse, major realignment of the regional and global balance of power — there is even more at stake.

Finnish economic analyst Tuomas Malinen laid it out starkly last fall for the GnS Economics newsletter:

…the fact that attacking Iranian nuclear facilities would, most likely, engulf the region into a darkness, freeze Europe, plunge the world into an economic depression of never-before-seen scale and possibly even set the world ablaze.
…
A judgement failure in the Middle East leading to an eruption of a regional war and to the collapse of the global economy is probably the largest possible Black Swan risk in President Trump’s second term.
…
Iran is a much more formidable adversary than many thought. With Russia backing Tehran, chances of defeating Iran in a war are slim to none.

For those who need to hear from a more trusted name, I’ll quote from Professor Norman Finkelstein’s appearance yesterday on the Robinson Erhardt podcast serve to remind us what’s in the balance:

(MIT Professor Emeritus Ted Postol) said that Prime Minister Netanyahu is a homicidal maniac and he said it’s not true that Iran is far away from a bomb. He said they could within about 10 days construct one. And if Israel uses theirs, Iran will use theirs.

Now, beneath the veneer, the patina of a cool, objective MIT scientist, I inferred, I can’t say for sure, that he’s Jewish and because he mentioned at some point that his friends in Tel Aviv were saying how terrible the situation is. And you could see beneath the cool objective veneer he was concerned that Israel might cease to exist.
…
This is a deadly serious moment. This could be the one. I know as of the time we’re we’re recording it doesn’t feel it as it felt a few days ago when uh the Israelis and Americans attacked the nuclear the nuclear site in Iran and in return Iranians targeted a sites in the vicinity of Dimona and it looked pretty it was pretty scary.

I’m opening with this to draw on the credibility of two elder statesmen in Professors Postol and Finkelstein before invoking the specter of mass death.

The stakes are thus as high as possible and the corrupt, craven, incomprehending moral imbeciles ruling the United States are incapable of even fathoming the forces they are playing with.

Trump’s America as Rogue Power

Stephen Walt has a piece in Foreign Policy that accurately describes the Trump administration as it begins a major war of choice:

the United States is now acting like a predatory hegemon, exploiting positions of leverage built up over decades to exploit allies and adversaries alike. This zero-sum approach to nearly all relations with others includes a deep hostility toward most international institutions and norms, deliberately erratic behavior, and a tendency to treat other foreign leaders with ill-disguised contempt while expecting demeaning acts of submission and fealty from most of them. As the fallout from the war in Iran spreads throughout the region and around the world, it underscores that the administration either didn’t understand how its actions would affect other states or simply didn’t care.

…U.S. foreign policy is now in the hands of a remarkably incompetent set of officials, from the president on down. International influence depends on many things, but one of the key ingredients is other states’ belief that the people they have to deal with are smart, well-informed, and generally know what they are doing. At this point, does anyone in the higher echelons of the Trump administration merit that description? Not that I can see. Conducting foreign policy is a difficult business, and no government gets everything right, but this administration commits own goals on a weekly basis while insisting that it is infallible.

To make matters worse, some of these features are not going to be easy to correct after Trump leaves office, even if he is replaced by someone with very different views.

How corrupt and incompetent are we here in America? So corrupt that the dreaded military industrial complex upon which the empire’s power rest is so choked with grift it can no longer build effective weapons platforms.

$13 Billion and the Toilets Don’t Flush

We’ll let the manifest failure of one such weapons platform serve as our example.

From The New York Post:

It’s been a crappy week for the largest warship ever built.

A raging fire in its laundry facilities and persistently clogged toilets have taken the $13 billion USS Ford aircraft carrier out of the Iran fight — and it could remain out of service for a year.

The massive, 1,106-foot-long vessel left the Red Sea last week and has been docked in Crete for repairs since Monday, far from the air and sea attack on Iran it had joined two weeks earlier.

Damage to laundry facilities — essential on a floating city of nearly 4,500 sailors — is severe, lawmakers told The Post.

It got so bad that they were “taking helicopters to move their laundry to other ships so that it could be washed,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.

Lawmakers said the March 12 fire impacted multiple berthing areas, an indication smoke may have coursed through the ship’s massive air circulation system, fouling linens and mattresses, and making areas virtually unusable.

“I’m told that there are 400 sailors that spent many days sleeping on the floor. It’s been at sea now for almost a year, so that is an incredible stress on the whole crew,” added Reed, a retired Army officer.

Fire isn’t the only element at issue — so is water.

The ship’s high-tech sanitation system has had problems since at least 2020, with routine clogs, pricey fixes, and a green design that has caused repeat maintenance problems costing at least $4 million.

We’ll set aside the debates about whether the USS Ford was really this damaged by a laundry fire, if sabotage was involved, or if the Iranians actually hit the ship with a drone swarm as some have (probably mis-)interpreted POTUS Trump’s comments to mean.

The point is this hulk has been taken out of the theater of combat largely because, despite its enormous cost, the thing barely works.

Let’s hear more from Responsible Statecraft explaining the endemic systemic corruption that spent so much for so little combat utility:

In the early 2000s, Navy leaders decided to replace the existing fleet of Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, which have provided reliable service for more than 50 years, with a newly designed ship. Doing so meant the contractor could milk the development process given that the government would reimburse the company for the research and development costs.

The process incentivized the inclusion of nearly two dozen new, unproven technologies. This complicated the development process and delayed delivery by at least three years and increased costs more than 25%, from $10.5 billion to $13.2 billion.

This spending has done little to improve the vessels’ capabilities. But the inclusion of so many new technologies did create economic opportunities all over the country. More than 200 suppliers, spread across the country, build components for the Ford-class program.

Note the sentence I bolded at the end. The scam of distributing the manufacture of these monstrosities is how the gravy is passed around the country via Congress.

William D. Hartung called this “political engineering” —- the strategy where defense contractors purposely spread the manufacturing of a single weapons system (like the F-35) across as many congressional districts as possible to ensure that canceling the program would cost local jobs, effectively forcing Congress to keep funding it regardless of performance — in his classic tome Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.

But more about the ship, because the thing is a literal (family blog) hole:

The Navy’s glitzy new aircraft carrier isn’t very good at launching aircraft, but the crew has even more reason to knock the ship’s delicate plumbing system. The vessel’s designers rejected a traditional sewage system and instead charged taxpayers to develop a vacuum system similar to the kind used in commercial aircraft, but scaled up to accommodate the needs of a 4,000 person crew.

The Government Accountability Office, however, warned in 2020 that the sewage system clogged frequently and required regular acid flushes to clear calcium buildups in the system’s narrow pipes. Each flush costs approximately $400,000.

Not surprisingly then, the Ford’s sewage system has been a constant source of trouble. Sailors report daily breakdowns of the system. NPR reported that during a four-day period in 2025, engineers logged 205 breakdowns. Embarked sailors are frequently told the heads (the nautical term for toilets) are unavailable for a period because technicians are making urgent repairs to the system.

I could pile on with comparable case studies of the F-35 from the U.S. General Accountability Office or the the Littoral Combat Ship class (“A $100,000,000,000 Billion U.S. Navy Mistake“), but the point is made: Team America is focused on grifting the Department on Defense, not building usable weapons.

Or as Will Schryver posted on X: “The US military industrial complex is a modestly scaled high-end fashion boutique. It is not capable of producing the necessary implements for a real war against a peer adversary.”

David Sirota and Jared Jacang Maher have outlined how the U.S. Congress reached this state of total corruption in their book Master Plan: The Hidden Plot To Legalize Corruption In America and I’ve discussed the process in a previous post.

The outcome of 50 years of deliberate effort to corrupt our legislative system is the Congress we know today: a collection of moral imbeciles and narcissists looking for payoffs and having little or no grasp of what they are actually doing.

Let’s look at a recent egregious example of this process in action, but first let’s set the context with some polling.

There Is Immense Opposition to Trump’s Iran War

Responsible Statecraft has the polling data:

A new poll released Wednesday found that, although 63% of Republicans support airstrikes against Iranian military targets, only 20% are in favor of deploying U.S. troops.

That’s only about 2 in 10 Republicans in favor of boots on the ground. Again, these are Republicans — including MAGA.

Among all Americans, according to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 62% percent oppose deploying U.S. troops on the ground in Iran.

“Trump still has deep support among Republicans,” according to the poll summary, but the results indicate that he “risks frustrating his voters during a midterm election year if the United States gets involved in the kind of prolonged war in the Middle East that he promised to avoid.”

This new survey comes on the heels of several other ones that show Americans drawing a bright line sending ground troops into this war.

A Data for Progress poll from mid-March showed similar results, with 68% of all respondents saying they opposed deploying U.S. troops to Iran. Breaking down by party ID, 48% of Republicans, 85% of Democrats and 71% of independents said they were opposed to boots on the ground.

A Quinnipiac University poll taken between March 6 and 8 found that 74% of voters oppose U.S. ground troops in Iran, with only 20% supporting. In that poll, 52% of Republicans, 95% of Democrats and 75% of independents said they oppose.

So this ought to be a layup for the opposition party, right?

Right?!?

Hakeem Jeffries’ Delays War Powers Vote

According to The New York Times, the Democrats’ hands are tied:

House Democrats could again try to force a vote on a war powers resolution on Iran, after Republicans voted down a similar measure earlier this month. Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, said Tuesday that “when we present something on the floor, it’s our determination to win.” But Republicans in that chamber would be all but certain to block it.

But Ryan Grim and Zeteo point out there was a path to victory:

Those interested can read Jeffries’ excuses at Axios.

But I think Our Revolution boils down the situation pretty accurately:

But I’ve got to keep moving, lots of ground to cover here and it’s not just Congressional Democrats that are moral imbeciles who either don’t understand the stakes or don’t care.

2028 Presidential Hopefuls Waffle on Genocide

Speaking of moral imbeciles, here’s opposition leader Gavin Newsom in action:

Gavin Newsom pulled a classic flip-flop on Israel. The Guardian has the deets:

The California governor, Gavin Newsom, backtracked on earlier remarks likening Israel to an “apartheid state” in a new interview with Politico published on Tuesday.

In the interview, the Democrat, who is widely expected to launch a presidential bid in 2028, said that when he used the term three weeks ago, he meant it to apply to Israel’s future should it continue on its present trajectory.

Asked whether he regrets using the term, Newsom said: “I do in this context. I said it, and I referenced why I used it – a Tom Friedman article – in that same sentence where Tom used it in the context of the direction that Bibi is going.”

Pressed further, he clarified he does not believe the term applies to Israel’s present. He added: “And that is a legitimate concern I have, that I share with Tom – that that direction, if that vision and that direction of the far right that Bibi is indulging, that if they see the full annexation of the West Bank, then that’s not something – that’s a word you may hear others use.”

When asked if he considers himself a Zionist, the governor did not respond directly: “I revere the state of Israel,” he answered. “I’m proud to support the state of Israel. I deeply, deeply oppose Bibi Netanyahu’s leadership, his opposition to the two-state solution and deeply oppose how he is indulging the far right as it relates to what’s going on in the West Bank.”

The original remarks came during a book tour event with Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau. At the time, Newsom said of Netanyahu: “He’s trying to stay out of jail. He’s got an election coming up. He’s potentially on the ropes. He’s got folks on the hardline that want to annex the West Bank. Friedman and others are talking about it appropriately, [as] sort of an apartheid state.”

Kentucky Governor Andy Bashear is providing no alternative:

The Democrats seem determined to recreate the fate of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party — sweep into office on a wave of Conservative Party failures and then utterly fail to provide an alternative or any form of productive leadership.

Check this out.

The Party of IdPol and Woke Goes Full Racist

Never go full racist.

But the Dem establishment just can’t resist. Boxed out of campaigning on popular issues by their loyalty to wealthy donors, they’ve decided it’s a sex and race deal. Per Axios:

Some top Democrats are quietly debating a fraught question: whether the party’s best bet for winning back the presidency in 2028 is to nominate a man — perhaps a straight, white, Christian man.

Their fear, divulged with dismay in group chats, at cocktail parties and increasingly in public, is that parts of the electorate are too biased to support a woman or other diverse candidate for president.

Former first lady Michelle Obama fueled such talk recently, saying the U.S. is “not ready for a woman.” Democratic strategists have put it bluntly, with several saying a version of “It has to be a white guy.”

I’ll let Nikhil Pal Singh handle the rebuttal:

This is the same Democrat establishment that thinks it is an urgent priority to distance the party from massively popular podcaster Hasan Piker (does no one remember the quest for a “Democratic Joe Rogan”?)

Per Politico:

After POLITICO reported that Piker, the far left political streamer with millions of followers, will stump in Michigan with Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed next month, his history of divisive comments launched an avalanche of criticism from Republicans and Democrats.

Two of El-Sayed’s opponents, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Rep. Haley Stevens, lambasted El-Sayed, with Stevens telling Jewish Insider “someone who’s campaigning with someone like that is not going to win in Michigan” and McMorrow saying Piker “says extremely offensive things in order to generate clicks and views and followers, which is not entirely different from somebody like Nick Fuentes,” comparing him to the antisemite nationalist influencer.

Zeteo blames centrist think tank Third Way:

prominent Democrats – ranging from elected members of Congress, to 2026 Senate candidates, to likely 2028 presidential hopefuls – are spending their time condemning Hasan Piker, the left-wing streamer and influencer, as part of a cancellation campaign spearheaded by Third way, the centrist think tank.

Third Way, which is funded by billionaires and corporate interests, has been quite open about its broader goal and ongoing campaign to marginalize the left. “We will be the chief opponent of the left in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary,” the organization’s president, Jon Cowan, recently pledged. Asked to define the kind of lefty candidates Third Way doesn’t like, he pinpointed pols who “are for Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, abolishing ICE, open borders.”

Cowan told the New York Times that Third Way will “probably spend $30 million to $50 million” toward this campaign over the next few years.

Again the polling data shows that the moral imbeciles leading the Democrats are choosing their big money donors over the popular will:

Speaking of Moral Imbeciles: Here’s Cory Booker

I gotta close with this off the chain example of obtuseness from zionist Senator Cory Booker:

Ok, ok, I’ll end on a more hopeful note with this from Democratic Maine candidate for US Senate Graham Platner:

Just as with the opposition to Trump’s ICE invasion of blue cities last year, citizens against the war will have to lead the fight without relying on the misleadership class of either party.

UPDATE: Jim Webb (not the former US Senator but the 30-something military analyst) appeared on The Duran today and when asked “Why does the US no longer do diplomacy?” he included this bit in his answer:

Jim Webb: What really poisoned (American diplomacy) was the global war on terrorism and the rise of neocons within the conservative and liberal ranks of both parties.

It’s a bunch of people who did not cut their teeth on any kind of battlefield.

If you look at the people who populated uh different administrations from the 60s, the 70s and the 80s, these were people who if they did not serve in World War II, they at least understood the toll of what a large conflict was and were motivated to have diplomatic solutions to problems before they got to a point where you had to commit large amounts of your youth into (war).

Flash forward to the people who brought us the Iraq war in 2003 followed by Yemen, Somalia, I mean the whole round around North Africa, Ukraine and they have become fixated on this notion that we can force change one way or the other. Even our diplomacy is coercive.

It is now sanctions based. We will cut you off economically. We have weaponized the dollar which is very much as you know making the rest of the world consider dropping it. That would be an unbelievable catastrophe for catastrophe for the United States.

We’ve had a very capable military for a very long time going back to the ’90s. We were the superpower. So it was an easy button to push and if you never really see the ramifications of what happens on the back end of that by comparison to other conflicts such as Vietnam, Korea, World War II, your casualty counts are pretty low.

You are inclined to do that over and over and over again. And it’s become, I can say from my experience in DC, it is a very popular notion to discuss in the salons and the brunch tables, that it’s not a big deal if we dump our guys in there to take out a regime.

What is a few dozen casualties?

Those people no longer have a connection to the military. They don’t have any friends who serve. They really don’t have family who serve. They don’t understand the cost. It becomes a very cold and borderline evil type of way to go about business.

Moral imbecility explained in under three minutes.

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40 comments

  1. DJG, Reality Czar

    Former first lady Michelle Obama fueled such talk recently, saying the U.S. is “not ready for a woman.”

    Plus

    Asked to define the kind of lefty candidates Third Way doesn’t like, he pinpointed pols who “are for Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, abolishing ICE, open borders.

    Recall that Michelle Obama said that in answer to the question if she would run for president. This is sniveling from someone who has never run for public office, answering someone who thinks celebrity is a qualification for office.

    I note that Third Way’s positions, in italian terms, put them in the right wing of Fratelli d’ Italia. Cioè, fascistoid.

    And to use the august Duncan Black’s political category, all of them are a bunch of whiny-ass titty babies.

    1. Carolinian

      Plus she gave Dubya a hug cause he was a fellow “presidential.”

      It’s the shallow twits versus the short fingered vulgarian.

  2. Carolinian

    The Dems gave us Trump. Why would they try to stop him now?

    Biden and friends also have likely caused a million or more deaths in Ukraine. By that standard the Ramadan War is just getting started.

    It’s all so seemingly hopeless one feels the urge to tune it all out. However come November I will vote for the first time in years.

  3. 4paul

    Michelle Obama fueled such talk recently, saying the U.S. is “not ready for a woman.”

    Is Elizabeth Warren gonna apologize to Bernie Sanders ??????

    what about Madeline Albright ??????

    “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”

    who was it, maybe Ryan Grimm? said Ds want the Ramadan War to be a bigger disaster so they want to “let ‘er rip!” …….. so they have an opportunity to replace every politician with a rich white male ???????

    gah. This is The Stupidest Timeline, and it keeps running up the score ………….

    1. Pat

      One of the many “press” failures regarding Madeline Albright, and quite honestly not the most egregious one, was not immediately questioning if gender was the defining characteristic for political support why she hadn’t campaigned for McCain so that Sarah Palin could be one step away from the Presidency and even if that race had a more important identity reason for support, where was she when Elizabeth Dole was running in the Republican presidential primary against a whole sea of white men.
      As a naive young thing I tried to kid myself that women had a higher standard. Margaret Thatcher taught me that a uterus didn’t come with wisdom or a greater moral character. And for the record, it wasn’t her gender that led me to distrust and reject Hillary Clinton, it was the fact that she was a gutless piece of garbage who put on a lot of airs regarding women’s rights, constitutional protections, and even morality about use of the military but sold it all out because her polling thought taking a principled stand on any of it might hinder her further political ambitions.

  4. Redolent

    good stuff NWT…to wit:
    outing New-some: his sword too big to fall on?
    moral imbeciles: no grasp of their (largely)…newly-held office…..WD Hartung: ‘political engineering’…of defense contractors

    1. Jackman

      Newsom is a constant source of Democratic 2028 political distraction with his ‘resistance’ theatrics, so it’s actually edifying to watch him grovel to the AIPAC crowd so he can lose the entire under-40 crowd–and many above it–in one spectacular gesture. He’s finished–even though he’s doesn’t know it yet.

      1. JohnnyGL

        I get JEB! 2016 redux vibes from him. The political environment looks similar. He waffles a lot, is out of touch. Base is fired up and angry and looking to spank their party leaders.

  5. Tom Stone

    I suspect that Covid induced anosognosia plays a role, and not just in the political sphere
    Most of the Western “Leadership” are elderly, none of them wear masks and they all need to shmooze, lots of exposure is part of the job.
    Narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths are all well represented in politics, there’s a a much higher percentage of these in politics than in the general population.

    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      Yes, Neutrality Studies had a psychiatrist on over the weekend who made a good argument that western electoral systems function as narcissist discovery systems. I toyed with including that but was too many words.

      1. enon

        It appears to me that Republican politicians tend to be overt narcissists while Democratic politicians lean towards covert narcissism.

        1. Ben Joseph

          I used to think Eisenhower was the last decent president. I’ve worked my way back to Quincy Adams and fear upon further inspection he will also disappoint.

      2. Mikel

        I listened to that and became frustrated. Not because of any major disagreement, but because so much reminded me of perceptions about character and morality that have been studied, discussed, tested, etc. It’s like continuing to learn the lessons that should already be known.

        Is it a matter of belief? Or is it a matter of experiencing the benefits?

        1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

          reminds me of the old joke about history professors. If you don’t learn history, you’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes. If you do learn history, you’re doomed to watch everyone else repeat the same mistakes.

      3. Andrew

        When you essentially self-nominate and have the requirement of nothing more than sufficient access to funds in order to run, you’re going to get narcissists.

        The *system* is broken and to think that you’re somehow going to fix things by finding the right candidate is misguided.

        2. david

          selection of candidates or members of political houses by sortition would seem to be the only solution I can think of

      4. AG

        Thanks for the hint. I usually turn rather coy when I read “psychiatrist” as guest for a political podcast.

  6. flora

    Thanks, Nat. Both parties like things just the way they are. Witness their shoulder-to-shoulder effort to make sure no independent candidate or 3rd party candidate makes in onto the ballot.

    See the goings on in the Calif. primary this year. Jimmy Dore with Elaine Culotti. utube, ~27+ minutes.

    Establishment CAUGHT RIGGING California Governor’s Race! w/ Elaine Culotti

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVahcx83URo

  7. AG

    re: Finkelstein

    A general little quibble, Finkelstein is not a military expert. Just like Mouin Rabbani is not (in his case I would distinguish between the armies mostly discussed: Iran, Hezbollah, IDF, Hamas, US, GCC.) Nobody knows everything. But their views in this area I would always handle with some reserve. The same is then true with their verdict on those who are genuine military men/women.

    The larger issue is of course conspicuously the one of the Israeli nation-state in its current constitutional outline, a problem which I addressed 2 days ago reminding of Craig Mokhiber – who in essence demanded what Iran might intend to achieve in the long run: End the status quo of Israel, as in Medinat Israel.

    Both however – the lawyer and the power which might soon have nukes (I am still not sure Iranian decision-makers unanimously endorse that, China especially is no fan of proliferation) – both suggest what by mere doctrine of Israel would justify use of Israeli nukes.

    I guess they call that a Catch-22.

    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      I didn’t intend to imply that Finkelstein is a military expert of any kind. What I was hoping to invoke was his moral authority. The man he’s citing, Ted Postol, is a military expert. In fact he’s THE American expert on ballistic missiles.

      1. AG

        Yes, I am aware. The article makes that clear.

        Since I heard Rabbani (who is a close associate of Finkelstein´s) just the day before the text was posted and since I listened to a lot of Finkelstein in the past 2 years and military affairs were often a topic and since Finkelstein is indeed a moral authority – I felt it necessary to point at some potential analytic weakness in his/their commentary – ( not yours!) – in this regard, although it is really a side issue in Finkelstein´s research as such.

        Therefore my apology for being so imprecise.

        If Finkelstein is probably right about 99% re: Palestine that doesn´t automatically apply to his verdicts on military affairs, whether he only quotes others, or not. He doesn´t have expertise (as he says himself).

        As to Postol: I won´t question neither his mathematics nor him.
        (I talked to him once and he is indeed extraordinary as a scientist and a human being. I have met enough physicists in my life to confirm this.)

        However after that very unfortunate fallout with Andrei Martyanov – where I was initially defending Postol, on this site too – it became apparent that he lacked classified data and might have had outdated conceptions of Russia.

        That makes assessments and predictions difficult, sometimes impossible.

        While the Martyanov “affair” was over Russian systems, the situation now re: Israel is different because it may be easier for him to get hold of some sensitive intel.

        But as God is in the detail, these tiny things matter and we need to apply scrutiny whoever is the source.
        In missile physics or nuclear sciences of today, this often can be above one´s pay grade.
        Certainly mine. All I can do is question whoever and whatever, regardless of allegiances.

        Lets say, Postol is THE expert who is on public record.
        The others who are out there potentially still alive, remain silent.

  8. Quintian and Lucius

    Oh lord, not a Cory Booker sighting…hadn’t thought of him (mercifully) since that performative filibuster spree he was on a…couple years ago..? Remember when the blueniverse thought he was a legitimate presidential candidate? I guess he’s been a little bit sidelined these days. Not for the naked dishonesty, poor character, and vacuum of charisma or intellect (these are requirements actually), but because the DNC has decided the only way to compete in 2026 America is to be more racist than thou. Sterling stuff.

  9. JMH

    The democrats hope to shelter in place and be handed victory in November.What will they do with that victory? Crickets. I hear crickets. Oh, Trump will be impeached by the House. Whoopee. Will any democrat have bothered to count votes in the Senate? The last two times Trump was impeached it was purely performative. Golly gee guys, you made your point and can feel righteous. What you really accomplished was to fuel a vengeful man who never forgets or forgives and does not care if his vengeance damages everyone and everything. Good job. On another subject: And now, all of you … and the republicans as well … are forbidden by your Israeli minders to call the slaughter in Gaza genocide, and the real laugher, you dodge questions about the possession by Israel of nuclear weapons. I know. I know. Taboo subject. You have to check with your staff. You have to check with your staff about common knowledge? Golly congress critter why is that? The congressional democratic party? A vast wasteland. Are their actual “public servants” among them? I cannot think of any.

    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      Their plan is Keir Starmer but actively leading a genocide and CiC for WW3.

    2. Cato

      This time they’ll get enough R votes to convict. Then it’s off to the races to jail the Trump clan.

  10. hk

    NB: The young Jim Webb (III–Senator Webb was James Webb, Jr. He’s slightly older than he looks–he’s in his mid 40s) is the son of former Senator Webb. Like his father, he served in the Marines (besides having the same name), in Afghanistan, and worked in the Senate (although as a staffer) so it gets a bit confusing. Of course, his family history (he said something like 6 generations of Marines?) provides context for what he said to the Alexes.

    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation. I have researched this Jim Webb previously but either forgot or failed to find the family connection. d’oh!

      1. hk

        It took some effort to find the link: the III does not seem very eager to look like a legacy hire, so to speak.

  11. Pekka Oksa

    “Finnish economic analyst Tuomas Malinen laid it out starkly …”

    Stopped clocks and all that but Malinen is a rightwing loon.

    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      He’s been more right about the Ukraine War than any centrist in Finland. The European right is somehow the last vestige of sanity on the continent — although I wouldn’t consider them sane by any measure pre-crisis.

      It’s sort of like the number of American anti-Semites who’ve proven to at least have the moral compass to oppose genocide.

    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      The detail I found amusing was that Hegseth’s attempt at insider trading is already down 13%. Poor Pete the DUI hire can’t get anything right.

  13. Patrick Lynch

    As a native Kentuckian, my disappointment with Andy Beshear is now complete. It seemed during the pandemic as though he was probably one of our best governors because he made an effort to take care of the vulnerable with regards to health care by opening up Medicaid and unemployment to people who normally would not have qualified and made sure people didn’t lose their homes. Some people thought he’d make a great president.

    The first torpedo slamming into Andy’s political ship for me was when Geoff Young won his primary and Beshear and the entire Kentucky Democratic party freaked out that an actual leftist won by a sizeable margin. Beshear’s choosing party over the expressed wishes of the people reminded me that once in a rare while I still have the capacity to be surprised.

    The second torpedo was when it became apparent his views on American foreign policy are absolutely no different than all of the other mainstream Democrats, his coy dancing around whether or not he’s running after saying in the past he wasn’t and then hobnobbing with the scurvy crew at Davos saying he’s doing it for Kentucky looked to me like Beshear set course for the dark side.

    The final torpedo was his weaseling over the Gaza genocide. Everything he said about Israel and Gaza was disgusting and incredibly wrong. It’s clear that the Andy Beshear people loved a few years ago is gone and has been replaced with another DemBot. The Andy who went to bat for Kentuckians during the pandemic I would like to think would have been horrified by this position, but I am wrong daily about all kinds of things so it’s just another Tuesday….

  14. Glen

    Thanks Nat!

    Here’s to hoping America gets Graham Platner into the Senate.

    This non-functional Congress is killing our country. The legacy of those people elected all the way back in the 80’s and 90’s is that they were given a world power to run, and they ran it into the ground. The McConnell and Pelosi types and all the younger ones of the same mold need to get voted out.

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