NEW: After The Washington Post reported Monday on the demolition of the "East Wing facade," a new picture obtained by Law Dork that was taken on Tuesday shows that a substantial portion of the entirety of the East Wing has been demolished.
— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner.bsky.social) October 21, 2025 at 9:13 PM
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Tuesday, October 21, 2025
Welp
There Are Still Lines?
A bit surprised.
President Donald Trump’s pick to head the Office of Special Counsel, Paul Ingrassia, appears unable to win Senate confirmation — although he’s still slated for a committee appearance later this week."Offensive" is what we call describing oneself as a Nazi.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a member of the Homeland Security Committee, told Semafor he doesn’t “plan on voting for” Ingrassia after Politico published racist and offensive text messages attributed to the nominee. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., another member of the panel, also said he cannot support Ingrassia and said the nomination should be pulled.
Just Like Their Leader, Donald
A deadbeat cult.
When the New York State Young Republicans Club disbanded Friday amid an uproar over its racist and antisemitic rhetoric in a group chat, the club left behind unpaid bills from extravagant social gatherings.Paywall, but there are a whole series of unpaid bills like this described in the article. A little dine and dash gang.
At two of those events, the club ran up bills of more than $23,000 over a weekend at a Syracuse hotel – spending big on a three-course plated dinner with filet mignon and open bars – but then didn’t pay, according to records obtained by syracuse.com.
Master Race
I don't think this stuff is as easy as some people say, but it’s not hard to train for if you're reasonably fit to begin with.
The article says the run is what is taking most of them down. Lots of guys lift but don't do cardio. Cardio is for pussies.
I couldn't do the pushups. I run, so that would be trivial for me, but it isn't trivial for people who don't run at all. Though, as I said, it's not difficult to train for in a short amount of time for someone who is generally fit.
More than a third [of ICE recruits] have failed so far, four officials told me, impeding the agency’s plan to hire, train, and deploy 10,000 deportation officers by January. To pass, recruits must do 15 push-ups and 32 sit-ups, and run 1.5 miles in 14 minutes.Even if you are fairly fit and active, no particular activity is easy unless you actually do exercises related to that activity. The important implication here is that they are trying to onboard so many people that none of them are told to go away and train for a few weeks.
The article says the run is what is taking most of them down. Lots of guys lift but don't do cardio. Cardio is for pussies.
I couldn't do the pushups. I run, so that would be trivial for me, but it isn't trivial for people who don't run at all. Though, as I said, it's not difficult to train for in a short amount of time for someone who is generally fit.
There's a big difference between what people can do cold and what they can do after a few weeks of effort. A regular cyclist might struggle to do the run cold, but they would probably find it easy after a few runs.
Very Stable Genius
There are a few reasons why propping up the Argentine Peso isn't likely to work (hitting record lows, again). One reason is that the entire point of promising a backstop is that it's a credible, sustained commitment. The value isn't just the money itself, but the promise of the money. Trump going out there and saying he might yank it soon does not provide that!
I'm not sure how "we" are going to buy more beef from Argentina - unsure who the "we" here refers to - but cattle ranchers are going to love this!
I'm not sure how "we" are going to buy more beef from Argentina - unsure who the "we" here refers to - but cattle ranchers are going to love this!
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (AP) — President Donald Trump said the United States could buy Argentine beef in an attempt to bring down prices for American consumers.
“We would buy some beef from Argentina,” the Republican president told reporters aboard Air Force One during a flight from Florida to Washington on Sunday. “If we do that, that will bring our beef prices down.”
And Things Got Out Of Hand
Amazing stuff. Read the whole thing:
While everyone - including me! - is reacting to this as "haha she doesn't know how journalism works," I do think we have to understand that this is, quite often, how political journalism works. The Tim Russert rule - off the record until asserted otherwise.
Lindsey Halligan—the top prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia—was texting me. As it turned out, she was texting me about a criminal case she is pursuing against one of the president’s perceived political enemies: New York Attorney General Letitia James.As a teaser, this is near the end of 15 pages of screenshots:
So began my two-day text correspondence with the woman President Donald Trump had installed, in no small part, to bring the very prosecution she was now discussing with me by text message.
Over the next 33 hours, Halligan texted me again.
Mommy He Hit Me Back
Yes just to spite Trump:
It is remarkable, especially for those of us who grew up in the era of Globollocks and The World Is Flat, that the collective media response to Donald Trump blowing up the world's free trade regime has been a very loud silence.
How China weaponized soybeans to squeeze U.S. farmers — and spite TrumpIt's all about pressure before a meeting. Nothing happened before that?
For Beijing, halting U.S. soybean imports has been an easy and relatively cost-free way to pile pressure on Trump ahead of a planned meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea later this month.We do get this in the second paragraph:
This year, however, Chinese importers aren’t buying. In retaliation for President Donald Trump’s tariffs, Beijing has cut off Midwestern farmers from their largest and most lucrative overseas customer: China accounted for half — or $12.6 billion — of U.S. soybean exports last year.But otherwise there's little sense that, well, DONALD TRUMP STARTED IT. Half a sentence in the entire piece.
It is remarkable, especially for those of us who grew up in the era of Globollocks and The World Is Flat, that the collective media response to Donald Trump blowing up the world's free trade regime has been a very loud silence.
Monday, October 20, 2025
Sure Why Not
Take a wrecking ball to the whole building.
I hope one side collapses.
Demolition crews have begun tearing down part of the White House to build President Donald Trump’s long-desired ballroom despite his pledge that construction of the $250 million addition wouldn’t “interfere” with the existing building.I'm imagining 2011-era David Brooks losing his shit on the Newshour if Obummer had mildly modified a window or similar.
I hope one side collapses.
Money Talks, Bullshit Walks
As I said when this was happening, it was surprising that there seemed to be mass cancellations happening when there wasn't, as far as I could tell, any organizing force behind it.
Disney saw more than double the typical number of customers cancel their Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions in September — when subscribers threatened to quit because of Jimmy Kimmel's brief suspension.
It appears some of those subscribers followed through on their boycott threat and canceled, according to new subscription data from research firm Antenna.
The data firm said 8% of Disney+ subscribers and 10% of Hulu customers in the US canceled in September. The services usually lose 4% to 5% of their customers a month, in line with the industry average, the data firm said.
That Trick Works Every Time
I am not an expert on Argentinian voters, but I suspect this will not help Milei.
I dropped my monetary economics class in grad school, but I remember enough to know that trying to maintain a currency value with finite and limited dollar supplies wasn't going to work.
Hosting Milei at the White House last week, Trump threatened Argentinian voters with withdrawing aid if his ally was defeated at the ballot box.The election in question is for the legislation, not a re-elect for Milei. Earlier in the article:
“If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina,” Trump said.
Milei, once a global poster boy for budget-slashing libertarian politics, is heading into the polls diminished by his failure to stabilize the ailing peso, despite spending nearly all the Central Bank’s dollar reserves to prop it up.The problem with libertarianism is, quite literally, you eventually run out of your Central Bank's dollar reserves.
Inflation, which Milei had initially managed to stem after taking office in December 2023, has been rising again month-on-month.
I dropped my monetary economics class in grad school, but I remember enough to know that trying to maintain a currency value with finite and limited dollar supplies wasn't going to work.
Maybe Somebody Will Die Or Something
I imagine the endgame hope of Johnson is that somebody dies soon so that he can seat Adelita Grijalva without there being enough signatories on the Epstein discharge petition.
Saying that I hope they have a plan does not, as always, mean that I think there is a magic wand that they are failing to use. I just hope it's a better plan than Obama's Garland plan, which was to nominate him then shrug his shoulders when Mitch did nothing.
I don't have any advice, but I would like to know that the Dems have an actual plan here.Johnson defends his refusal to swear in Grijalva: "I'm following the Pelosi precedent." When Republican "Julia Letlow was elected... Pelosi took 25 days to swear her in." Karl fact-checks him: "that was the date [Letlow] requested ... Pelosi didn't delay that." Johnson admits nothing and moves on.
— Will Saletan (@saletan.bsky.social) October 19, 2025 at 9:33 PM
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Saying that I hope they have a plan does not, as always, mean that I think there is a magic wand that they are failing to use. I just hope it's a better plan than Obama's Garland plan, which was to nominate him then shrug his shoulders when Mitch did nothing.
Protests Are Violent When The Police Get Violent
There are a lot of things journalists pretend not to understand, and this is frequently one of them. Sure there can be actual violent actions by protesters, like when they go to the White House Capitol and try to hang the Vice President, but most of the time the difference between a violent protest and a nonviolent one is whether or not the cops start kettling and bashing.
It is interesting that there weren't reports of violence from the No Kings rallies (that I have seen), but the interesting story isn't the lack of violence from protesters, it's that the cops didn't instigate any.
If you approach a subject with what you know, instead of what you're supposed to know, you can find some interesting stories!
It is interesting that there weren't reports of violence from the No Kings rallies (that I have seen), but the interesting story isn't the lack of violence from protesters, it's that the cops didn't instigate any.
If you approach a subject with what you know, instead of what you're supposed to know, you can find some interesting stories!
Sunday, October 19, 2025
LOL, LMAO EVEN
Amazing.
A 155-millimeter shell fired during a live-fire demonstration for the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton on Saturday prematurely detonated, dropping fragments of the shell on a California Highway Patrol vehicle and motorcycle that were part of Vice President JD Vance’s protective detail, according to a patrol report.
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