Friday, September 18, 2026
A Mission For Troop Respecter Tapper
If you don't count them, they aren't dead.
More American service members have died in the Middle East during the ongoing Iran war than the Pentagon has disclosed publicly, according to six U.S. officials familiar with the Defense Department’s internal casualty accounting data.Five of the officials said there have been at least 22 military fatalities — four more than what appears in the Pentagon’s public database, known as the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS.
The Bullshit Machine Did Some Bullshit
This is probably how AI destroys humanity.
The intelligence report, circulated across the US military this spring in the midst of the war with Iran, immediately set off alarm bells: A Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program.Likely this how they are choosing to kill people on "drug boats." (It would be dumbasses destroying humanity, of course, not the chatbots)
The US military swung into action with plans to intercept the vessel, according to four sources familiar with the episode. According to two of the sources, armed members of the US military were preparing to board the ship. Military planes were in the air, one of those sources and another source familiar with the incident said.
It was only just before the planned operation that officials dug deeper into the report put together by a special operations command analyst and found it had been generated with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) — and that a chatbot the analyst had used inaccurately identified the material the ship was carrying. CNN was not able to learn what the misidentified cargo was.
The report, according to one of the sources, was “entirely false.” But it also “almost started a war,” the source said. Any US operation against a Chinese vessel could have risked spiraling into an armed conflict between the two nations.
Failure To Catapult The Propaganda
I think it is the first visible "war" that I remember which wasn't accompanied by unified media screeching at anyone who dared to object to it. Ari Fleischer would've made sure all good patriots supported this.
Nearly seven months into the war with Iran, a new Fox News national survey finds views souring as voters feel the Trump administration lacks a clear strategy for ending the war, a growing number think the conflict will make the U.S. less safe and a majority believes the decision to take military action was wrong.
Seven in 10 voters think the Trump administration lacks a clear strategy for ending the conflict, including 95% of Democrats, 83% of independents and 43% of Republicans.
Speaking Of Burning It All Down
Who knows if this is just more bluster, but you know he keeps asking about the big red button.
President Trump told Axios Thursday that he's approaching a critical juncture in the Iran war over whether to restart massive attacks in an effort to bring the conflict to a close."I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them [the Iranian regime] or do I not? It's a big decision. Anything could happen with me."
Loopholes For The Lesser People
This is very funny. You can (do not take my legal advice) get around the Medicaid work requirements by gambling. And you just need to show $580 gross (not net!) winnings every 6 months, which you can get by taking both sides of a bet (minus the inevitable house cut).
Republicans, in their infinite wisdom, left a big gambling loophole in the Medicaid work requirements. I'm no fan of the gambling industry, but if you are on Medicaid and struggling to deal with the work requirements, taking a $580 bet on both sides of an outcome is one way of getting around them.
— James Medlock (@jdcmedlock.bsky.social) September 17, 2026 at 11:52 PM
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He'll Burn It All Down
Trump is an ageing malignant narcissist who cannot fathom the world going on without him. His monuments and desire to put his name on everything are the harmless manifestations of that. His desire to knock down the Kennedy Center could extend to everything.
Cheery Friday thoughts!
Cheery Friday thoughts!
Thursday, September 17, 2026
Bret's Friends In New York
Well ok then.
Bret: Millions of Americans, including me, not only hate the parties but also hate the party for which we typically vote. That means there’s a market of the dissatisfied. I hear this all the time among my friends in New York City: They can’t believe they’re stuck with Zohran Mamdani as mayor, and they felt the same way about Eric Adams and Bill de Blasio before him. But when you ask them if they voted in the primaries, the usual answer is: Uh, no — we were on the Vineyard or in Greece. The point is that it’s on them, or us, and the remedy is some civic entrepreneurship, philanthropically funded, to change this.Shorter Bret: my friends are unrepresntative and too lazy to be in charge, but nonetheless they of course should in charge.
Shithole State
When I am president, I will also travel the country telling people that they live in disgusting hellholes.
But Trump said North Carolina was one of the worst. “Nobody use to think of North Carolina as a dangerous state,” Trump said. “It was like North Carolina, it was beautiful, it was apple pie. Right? And now it’s the worst in the whole nation, and it all started with Cooper and you have a lousy governor right now too.”
And he contradicted what his attorney general, Todd Blanche, said before he took the stage.
“North Carolina is ground zero for exactly what is working,” Blanche said. “Communities are safer, families are stronger, and side by side with your local county sheriffs, police officers and state partners, people are able to go to bed at night and feel safer than they did just two years ago.”
Good Democrats
Sometimes the centrist-coded ones surprise.
With no news release and little ceremony, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s administration has killed an anti-transgender regulatory effort launched during the waning months of former Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s term.
The proposal would have used the Virginia Board of Health to bar transgender women and girls from women’s-only athletic teams and competitions, bathrooms, locker rooms, and other spaces where people may be undressed. The state’s regulatory docket records the outcome in bureaucratic language: “Withdrawn.” The action was terminated July 30, after its public comment period had ended and 321 comments had been submitted. No preliminary regulation was ever drafted.
Innovations In Economics
Forget the Peace Prize, the man deserves the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
Trump: "If we lose $50 billion a year with a country, and we say 'we're not going to trade with you anymore,' we don't lose $50 billion a year. It's very simple. Right?"
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) September 17, 2026 at 12:03 AM
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I agree with you, Mr. Trump, just stop trade! It's very simple!
To be fair, this isn't any nuttier than "expansionary austerity" and plenty of other nutty economics ideas which are accepted as unquestionable fact.
Snorts and Giggles Until Real Americans Take It Seriously
Not that long ago, skepticism about AI, opposition to data centers, and concerns about the Flock surveillance system were dismissed as absurd lefty (ONLINE LEFTY, even WORSE) issues, equivalent with being concerned about 5G cell towers.
The people hanging on out Elon's Nazi CSAM site were convinced these were BLUESKY issues, which is their code for "too stupid to even consider."
Now that they are heartland (real American) issues, suddenly they are real, though the centrist discourse factory is so corrupted with tech money that they are slow to catch up.
What do you think Abundance is/was? Just the "left" conduit for tech VC money/influence.
Speaking of 5G cell towers, never forget this Naomi Wolf banger.
The people hanging on out Elon's Nazi CSAM site were convinced these were BLUESKY issues, which is their code for "too stupid to even consider."
Now that they are heartland (real American) issues, suddenly they are real, though the centrist discourse factory is so corrupted with tech money that they are slow to catch up.
What do you think Abundance is/was? Just the "left" conduit for tech VC money/influence.
Speaking of 5G cell towers, never forget this Naomi Wolf banger.
Monuments To The Trump Presidency
I'm not going to say it will be good if, as seems likely, Trump turns the Kennedy Center into a giant crater, but it would be a fitting monument to the era.
I'm placing my bets on them trashing the place inside so that it will have to be demolished, leaving that task to someone else.
Future administrations could arrest everyone involved, of course.
Could.
People don't need to fear actual prison. They need to fear a Justice Department dedicated to making them suffer and draining their savings for attorney fees.
I don't think anyone fears that.
They should.
Also, the bulldozers should travel the inauguration parade route to the Supreme Court building in 2029.
I'm placing my bets on them trashing the place inside so that it will have to be demolished, leaving that task to someone else.
Future administrations could arrest everyone involved, of course.
Could.
People don't need to fear actual prison. They need to fear a Justice Department dedicated to making them suffer and draining their savings for attorney fees.
I don't think anyone fears that.
They should.
Also, the bulldozers should travel the inauguration parade route to the Supreme Court building in 2029.
Wednesday, September 16, 2026
Run Away
I, too, am going to go away for 2 months. Later, suckers.
The House is going home again—this time to avoid a vote on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s impeachment.One for the THERE'S NOTHING THE DEMS CAN DO crowd (Massie did this).
House GOP leadership announced Wednesday morning that they will end their current slate of votes early and head home until the midterms, a nearly two-month break.
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