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Posted
6 minutes ago, TexasHooch said:

Meanwhile, on the same day the Atlantic story comes out alleging the gross mishandling of war operations, we get this:

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8c255c38-8ad0-4178-94f4-d6b9e70c6af0.thumb.png.e505c8b11206064db1d73d99c3bae685.png

 

too bad Trump already posted about 75% of that “private” information on social media. 

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Posted

I wonder if there is anyone in Dotard's ear saying anything like "Please, please use this opportunity to replace some of these people with actually qualified people". Because then hahahahahahahaha sorry, almost made it through it. 

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Posted
12 minutes ago, Red Five said:

I wonder if there is anyone in Dotard's ear saying anything like "Please, please use this opportunity to replace some of these people with actually qualified people". Because then hahahahahahahaha sorry, almost made it through it. 

That's what is so different this time.  In his 1st term, those people did exist.  Not that they were good people, and they didn't stick around long, but there always seemed to be someone who talked him out of the really stupid shit.  

That doesn't exist now.

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Posted
6 minutes ago, TexasHooch said:

That's what is so different this time.  In his 1st term, those people did exist.  Not that they were good people, and they didn't stick around long, but there always seemed to be someone who talked him out of the really stupid shit.  

That doesn't exist now.

Do you think we could send the simulation a sternly worded letter?

It's really rather *Humpty-Dumpty of the President to assert that state secrets regarding state secrets would somehow be compromised regarding deportations while simultaneously sending messages and/or push notifications to random citizens via toilet texting about military strategy. I mean, what simulation could even come up with that?

 

*The Humpty-Dumpty Theory of Language via Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, aka Charles Ludwig Dotson. See spoiler if you want to read the excerpt:

Spoiler

"I don't know what you mean by 'glory'," Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't- till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'"

"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master-that's all."

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. "They've a temper some of them- particularly verbs: they're the proudest- adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs- however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!"

 

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Posted

The texags thread on this is something… they can’t figure out if fake news, it doesn’t matter, or intentional leak to show the world what the admin thinks of Europe. 

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Posted
2 minutes ago, bluto said:

The texags thread on this is something… they can’t figure out if fake news, it doesn’t matter, or intentional leak to show the world what the admin thinks of Europe. 

 

5D chess 

Posted
1 minute ago, bluto said:

The texags thread on this is something… they can’t figure out if fake news, it doesn’t matter, or intentional leak to show the world what the admin thinks of Europe. 

link plz

Posted

Blaming the reporter; another example of that conservative personal responsibility they love to crow about. Obviously our country has a stupidity problem, but it goes hand in hand with the run away character problem.

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Posted

I'm sure there will be a Congressional investigation to get to the bottom of this. Lock them up! Lock them up!

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Posted
6 hours ago, Mole said:

Blaming the reporter; another example of that conservative personal responsibility they love to crow about. Obviously our country has a stupidity problem, but it goes hand in hand with the run away character problem.

Yeah, you knew when you started reading that thread that it would devolve into "it's the reporter's fault". Completely on brand. Also on brand is Hillary's emails. Then Bill for his relationship with Epstein while ignoring their orange god flying around in Epstein's plane.

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Posted
11 hours ago, Firemans4Horn said:

Six Short Thoughts on the Most Insane Trump Story of All Time

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Trump's "Team of Amateurs" Screwed Up in the Most Hilarious (and Troublesome) Way

This afternoon, just before 1 pm ET, The Atlantic posted what is, hands down, the wildest and most insane story I have ever read about US national security: The White House National Security Advisor added the editor of The Atlanticto a group chat with nation’s most senior leaders — including the vice president, secretary of state, secretary of defense, director of national intelligence, and CIA director — to discuss classified war plans and a weekend military operation targeting the Houthis in Yemen. 

Read the article yourself. 

No, really — if you haven’t — please stop here and just go read the article. I promise you the headline and whatever summary you’ve heard is way less weird, way less troubling, and way less eye-popping than the reality. 

Please go read it and then come back here. 

An actual screenshot from The Atlantic editor’s Jeffrey Goldberg’s accidental group chat 

Now that you’ve read the whole piece (you did, right?), I wanted to share six quick reactions worth thinking about: 

1) Imagine the other foot. I know it’s exhausting to think about the “but her emails!” comparisons, but I’d like you to imagine for a minute what would have happened if Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan had accidentally added Tucker Carlson to a group chat about classified war plans? It’s impossible to imagine Sullivan lasting a single hour in office before resigning — this would be the biggest scandal of the Biden administration full stop. There would be Republican congressional hearings, the ole flurry of subpoenas, and calls across Capitol Hill for multiple officials to resign. And here’s the thing: They would all be right. Here’s a whole thread that Matthew Gertz pulled together of all the same officials from the group chat previously damning the mishandling of classified intel. And yet it seems all but impossible to imagine any of the Trump officials facing any punishment for this egregious violation of multiple federal laws. There is no shame in this administration — and that, in and of itself, should deeply deeply concern us as citizens. A functioning democracy requires public officials capable of shame and embarrassment and accountability. 

2) Our allies are watching. It’s worth also considering how our allies will read this story too. The first Trump administration had plenty of its own problems protecting valuable national security information — remember Trump telling the Russian foreign minister about a classified Israeli operation? — and Trump out of office famously kept all manner of classified intel in the bathroom at Mar-a-Lago. Now add to that troubled record the worrisome appointment of Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. Now add to that the recent Trump rhetoric raising concerns about US reliability as an ally or defense partner. Now add to all of that two new stories from just the last 100 hours: The idea that Elon Musk was going to be briefed on secret China war plans and now, the very next business day, a stunning example of the Trump principals mishandling sensitive operational war plans. Put all of that together and ask yourself: Is this a government and group of people you’d want to share your own sensitive intelligence with? Is this a government and group of people you’d be willing to share intelligence that put lives of your operatives or agents at risk? The CIA director posted an active undercover intelligence officer’s name in the group chat for pete’s sake. There are already moves to isolate the US from international intelligence sharing — and surely this story will only accelerate those conversations, to our detriment and our allies’ detriment. 

3) The White House just doesn’t believe the rules apply to it (Part 1). 18 U.S.C. § 793(f) makes it a federal crime for people entrusted with information related to the national defense to, “through gross negligence permit [classified intelligence] to be … delivered to anyone in violation of [that] trust.” 

If the test for a criminal investigation is “gross negligence,” I guess it would be slightly more grossly negligent to add Dmitry Peskov or Vladimir Putin himself to a principals’ committee Signal chat about classified war plans, but only barely. In fact, there are two separate but important parts of this mishandling that would be worthy of follow-up investigation: Waltz’s original action adding Jeffrey Goldberg to the group chat, but then, after Goldberg left the chat, no one bothered to see who “JG” was in the chat group in the first place. It doesn’t appear that the Trump administration even realized Goldberg had been in the chat until he went to the National Security Council for comment. Did anyone realize that Goldberg was in the chat? If so, that’s a separate violation of 18 U.S.C. § 793(f), which requires anyone “having knowledge that [classified intelligence] has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust … fails to make prompt report of such loss.” If no one is monitoring who is leaving these group chats nor paying attention to who is added and who is in one conversation vs. another, that’s a recipe for even more counterintelligence failures going forward. 

4) The White House just doesn’t believe the rules apply to it (Part 2). All sorts of corners of the US government use encrypted Signal chats in ways both it should and shouldn’t. But the fact that Mike Waltz “set some of the messages in the Signal group to disappear after one week, and some after four” should raise all sorts of alarms for us as citizens and particularly for us journalists and historians. This is clearly not a Signal thread that anyone had any intention of preserving — as they are legally required to do! — under federal records law. So: How many other Signal group chats are underway right now where people in the Trump White House are ignoring federal law? What decisions are being made right now with no records or future accountability? To be clear, this is itself a violation of federal law — and not only did no one on the group chat object (“Hey, maybe we shouldn’t be having policy discussions on a group chat!”) but they all participated casually and deeply enough to make clear that this is routine SOP in the Trump administration today. 

5) This is not a smoothly functioning government (Part 543,651,690). Lost amid the headline-grabbing insanity of the classified details is what the principals were discussing on the group chat. It doesn’t take reading too deeply between the lines to see that the principals weren’t entirely clear on what Trump had ordered — someone, apparently Stephen Miller, says, “as I heard it, the president was clear: green light” — which raises some troubling questions about how much White House staff and Cabinet leaders are interpreting or reading the tea leaves on vague presidential directives or desires. When the president of the United States commits US military forces to operations overseas there shouldn’t be any “as I heard it” ambiguity. Moreover, the principals here were having notably pointed policy discussions in the group chat — which, under a normal functioning government, would be handled at the interagency level by staff and sorted out long before it got a point where the vice president and defense secretary are texting back and forth. The idea that the highest-ranking officials of the US government are just texting each other in the same group chat you use with your college roommates from a decade ago should raise dizzying questions about how policy is being thoughtfully decided and road-tested inside the federal government right now. This is what happens when you fill a government with all of the most unqualified people ever to hold their roles — the most unqualified vice president, the most unqualified secretary of defense, the most unqualified director of national intelligence, the most unqualified FBI director, and on and on and on. This will surely not be the last time we see Trump’s “Team of Amateurs” stumble into messes. 

6) Democrats are still not up for this moment. Criticizing the Trump administration for this spectacular foul-up should be one of the easiest calls for Dems on Capitol Hill. And while there were plenty of snide social mediacomments from Democratic members of Congress, notably missing was, you know, the actual outrage. Senators went with memes: 

Where were the calls for a special prosecutor? Where were the calls for resignations? Where were the calls for impeachments? If Democrats can’t muster the energy to be outraged about this — the world’s easiest outrage! — how are they possible up to this political moment? Every Dem should be hanging this albatross about the Trump administration and forcing every GOP member of Congress to defend or condemn this clown show of amateurs. 

Really, if you’ve made it this far and not read the underlying article, I beg you: Go read it. 

As I said to a friend this afternoon — here’s the crazy part: This would be an epochal career-ending scandal in any other modern presidential administration. It broke at 1 pm on a Monday, though, and so I’m not even sure it’ll be the biggest Trump scandal of today or this week….

 

Thank you and rep for the supplementary article on The Atlantic story. I've been a supporter of the Ledge for a long time, but I like how succinctly the writer summed it all up and it has less to do with the absolutely contemptible and horrific racism, misogyny, hate, and  faux piety and more about the dawning realization (for those who weren't already Ledge denizens) that this Administration, led by one of the crassest, tackiest, inept, and yes honestly deplorable "leaders" of our lifetime is going to lead this country to bankruptcy. Thorton Melon (Rodney Dangerfield) had real money and a sincere heart (and a helluva lotta luck) in Back To School (1986), but Trump's education both in the halls of academia and the real world has been a con game and a salve for his wounded narcissistic ego for his entire life. Such a deal.

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Posted
13 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

Yeah, you knew when you started reading that thread that it would devolve into "it's the reporter's fault". Completely on brand. Also on brand is Hillary's emails. Then Bill for his relationship with Epstein while ignoring their orange god flying around in Epstein's plane.

Sure.

When you shift blame to the reporter and label them a traitor, it furthers your goal towards eliminating dissenting voices and provides an opportunity to begin the process of deploying the Khashoggi tactics used by your personal friends.

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Posted

While I agree that Goldberg might have disclosed a bit too much of the actual military plans, I absolutely do not blame him for going public with such a huge security gaffe.  But Hillary.

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Posted
18 minutes ago, Firemans4Horn said:

Some of this is old news. But the wanton cruelty/incompetence would bring down just about any other administration besides trump. 
 

 

The last quote by Dudek where he should've added, "I am a petty petty man."

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Posted
That's what is so different this time.  In his 1st term, those people did exist.  Not that they were good people, and they didn't stick around long, but there always seemed to be someone who talked him out of the really stupid shit.  
That doesn't exist now.

Which we were all saying was going to happen.

Yet, ‘murka.
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Posted
16 hours ago, Satchel said:

These people are monsters:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/dhs-sec-noem-says-move-193625920.html

Noem, whose department oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), has previously vowed to “get rid of FEMA the way it exists today”; Trump has said he would close the agency entirely, but that would require an act of Congress.

Yes. I'm sure the Roman Senate will depose Augustus Caesar any day now.

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Posted

I just want to go on the record at state that I an shocked, SHOCKED I SAY, that the same president that discussed classified documents, and kept boxes of considered documents in unlocked closets and bathrooms, that his cabinet members and advisors are using a public messaging app to discuss war planning in a group chat that accidentally includes a member of the media. 

SHOCKING also is their outrage at others, I'm going to go calm down now to deal with all the shock

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Posted

That is a great point about the communications. I think I was alive at time when some of the public would care and the major news outlets would pursue the story.

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Posted
3 hours ago, bluto said:

The texags thread on this is something… they can’t figure out if fake news, it doesn’t matter, or intentional leak to show the world what the admin thinks of Europe. 

My Aggie brother managed to make this about Biden today. 

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Posted
9 minutes ago, Da Fino said:

My Aggie brother managed to make this about Biden today. 

Watch out.  Sounds like the kinda brother who might get some ideas from this week's episode of White Lotus.

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Posted
2 hours ago, cactusflinthead said:

Screenshot_20250325-080940.png

Jokes on them.  The vast majority of Greenlanders live on the other side of the island.  Given the level of intelligence (or sobriety) of the people involved, I refuse to completely rule out the validity of this document.

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Posted
2 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

That is a great point about the communications. I think I was alive at time when some of the public would care and the major news outlets would pursue the story.

I, too, was alive in 2016. 

Posted
6 minutes ago, Firemans4Horn said:

Tulsi Gabbard is dumber than a bag of hammers. 

That's the great thing about this timeline: with most of these people, it's genuinely impossible to discern where the dumb stops and the evil starts, or vice-versa.  Every one of them is just a pot of dumb and evil all mixed together, like when you piss into your own diarrhea.

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