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They All Still Received Their T Shots

Food isn't necessary.

The USS Abraham Lincoln wasn’t able to be resupplied because the U.S. Navy’s main resupply base in the Gulf of Oman was destroyed by Iranian strikes—a fact that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth chose not to make public, David Rhode, MS NOW’s senior national security reporter, said on Tuesday.

From late February until June, Iran launched extensive missile and drone strikes on Naval Support Activity Bahrain, causing devastating damage that was not acknowledged by the Pentagon.

Dems Drive The News Cycle Precisely Once

And, predictably, the usual suspects start lecturing them.

Let my friend Karl explain how to do politics without being nasty.

Bored Now

The man has MOVED ON and he thanks you for your attention to this matter.

For weeks, President Donald Trump has tried willing positive developments with Iran into existence, without much success.

On Tuesday, he seemed to adopt a new approach. Trump told top administration envoys to halt their conversations with Iran, according to a US official. Additionally, White House officials have recently communicated to political allies that they are shifting their strategy — going from “hammer Iran ASAP” to “strangle them” over time, according to a source familiar with the matter.

We ran out of hammers and it isn't clear we can strangle them. 

Travels With Natalie

Funny how journalists have suddenly discovered this person who barely existed before.

It was October 2023, and Donald Trump was due at a New York City courthouse to fight his latest set of legal troubles. But as the motorcade idled outside his Trump Tower residence, staffers confronted a more immediate problem: There wasn’t room for Harp, the hyper-loyal aide whose devotion to Trump had quickly entrenched her within his orbit.

A screaming match in the lobby ensued, with Harp insisting that Trump had personally asked her to attend the court appearance, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Denied a seat but determined not to be left behind, Harp jumped into an SUV trunk, according to the two sources and confirmed by a photo obtained by CNN.

Also most people know nothing about his regular late night insane posting marathons because, for some reason, journalists decided to pretend they don't exist.

A former right-wing television host, who began working for Trump after crediting him with saving her life, Harp has become a main conduit between the president and the outside world, passing along messages from allies and setting up meetings, tapping out Truth Social posts and toting printouts of laudatory articles, all while staying in close physical proximity at all hours of the day.

Someone who is always by his side yet oddly invisible. Strange! 

Morning

 Watermelon Wednesday

Tuesday Evening

Enjoy

99.8% Accuracy

A big problem with "computer say no" technology is that nobody understands the implications of false positive rates.

Sainsbury’s has paused the use of AI face scanning in one of its stores after a customer was wrongly identified as a shoplifter and ejected from the shop.

... 

A Sainsbury’s spokesperson said: “We have contacted Mr Arnold to apologise for his experience at our Dulwich superstore. The incident was caused by human error, not the facial recognition technology. Customers can be reassured that the Facewatch system has a 99.98% accuracy rate, and every match is reviewed by a trained manager.”

It isn't even clear what "99.98% accuracy rate" means here. I suspect it is a very made up number, so I am not going to use some ADVANCED MATH, which I might if I had any idea what it was supposed to mean. 

I will interpret it in the most generous (to them) way possible: 9998 times out of 10000 when it identifies a match with a "known shoplifter" it is correct.  This means 2 times out of every 10000 the alarm goes off for a wrong person.

According to their website, this (fake) number includes "human expertise" which presumably means the "trained manager."

99.98% accuracy, thanks to our combination of distinct specialised algorithms and human expertise

So 9998 times out every 10000 sounds pretty good, right! This is a major supermarket chain. It has 1500 stores (I don't know if facewatch is in all of them, but let's assume it is).  Of  the system dings just once per week per store, you're going to harass a wrong person about every 6 weeks.

But if the system only dings once per week per store, it's hard to imagine any calculation such that it's worth it.  If, instead, it dings once per day per store (on average), you're going to harass a wrong person once per week. That's potentially 4 bad news stories per month.

This is leaving aside just how people get on the "known shoplifter" list in the first place.

Is It Because You Suck, Seth

I have long been confused about why he thought he could win against Markey from the right in a Massachusetts Dem primary.

Primary numbers: We're just two weeks away from the Massachusetts primary, and a new poll released this morning by WCVB and the University of Massachusetts Amherst shows incumbent Sen. Ed Markey with a big lead over Rep. Seth Moulton among likely voters in the Democratic race for Senate. Among 445 registered voters interviewed for the poll, 60% of respondents said they would vote for Markey if the primary was being held that day, compared to just 32% for Moulton.

WHOCOULDANODE

Not faulting the whistleblower, of course, but our media largely played along with bullshit they knew was bullshit because they liked it.

The Trump administration’s findings that three Ivy League schools violated civil rights law by tolerating antisemitism were predetermined by political priorities that blew past the evidence and cast aside standard investigative procedures, according to a whistleblower account provided to Congress.

The disclosure, by Haley Van Erem, a veteran Justice Department civil rights attorney, involves investigations into whether Harvard, Brown and Columbia universities broke the law by allowing antisemitism to flourish on their campuses.

Good Cop/Bad Cop

[oops not sure how this post got pushed down for a bit..back up top!] 

We do love this comedy routine, with Ben-Gvir playing Bad Cop to Netanyahu's Good Cop.

Israel's far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, in a podcast published over the weekend, called for "30 to 40" people to be killed per night in targeted assassinations in the Gaza Strip. 

...

"Not just those who pose an immediate threat," added the Israeli cabinet member. "There are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn't live. They're not even people."

The AJC's response is even too much for Baby Bird Barak!

 

Is That A Big Number

 Whiskey Pete forgot to ask how many missiles there were.

President Trump won’t even be straight with the country about how he’s running out of weapons – when his war has depleted well upwards of 90% of certain crucial munitions, as Zeteo has learned. When reporters have dug in on this topic, he’s huffily accused them of “treason,” and pledged that those responsible for leaking the information “are being hunted down” aggressively.

Paywalled (like everything) but you get the idea. Generally there has not been enough reporting on the damage - self- and Iran-inflicted - done in this "war." 

Thank You For Your Attention To This Matter

I guess they'll do just that.

Speaking on Fox News on Monday, Trump said that Iran should “put up the white flag of surrender” in the five-month-long US-Israel war, confirming that his administration had opened a direct backchannel with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Morning

Tireless Tuesday.

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So Much For ZIRP

 30 year Treasury going up up up...

Rabid Lambs

I occasionally think about how many column-inches were filled over the years lamenting how the Online Left was rude and filthy and undignified. Real Americans would be repelled and never vote Dummycrat again!

Defying The Priests

I'm pretty sure that Official Washington would be much more upset about Trump disobeying the Supreme Court - in a clear, unambiguous fashion  - than just about any other sort of NORM (law) breaking.

It is, of course, the least democratic (small 'd') and least accountable of the branches, so you understand why it appeals to them.

Gotta Pay

Mr. Trump, Sir, there are very nasty people on the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court on Monday turned away President Donald Trump’s longshot effort to deny a $5.6 million payment he was ordered to make three years after a jury found he sexually abused and defamed the former magazine writer E. Jean Carroll.

Travels With Natalie

When he first ran and lost, Ossoff wasn't this guy.

Ossoff: While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. So he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on… pic.twitter.com/6KqephHAd3

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 16, 2026

Natalie is Natalie Harp, someone the press weirdly doesn't say much about (you can guess why - it starts with 'A' and ends with 'ccess'). Maybe they'll have to!