Duke of Bullshit: "The" Donald

[billy rubin]

he s putting off a deal with iran because he needs one that he can bring to the congress that doesnt look like a defeat. so far he hasnt figured out how to do it, and the iranians arent particularly interested in helping him out.

its unfortunate, but it took donald trump to actually make a public spectacle of the end of the american century. hes not the ultimate cause, but hes squandered our foreign influence, made our allies skeptical of our alliances, demonstrated that american economic power is secondary to china's, and dismantled the entire edifice of soft power that we had spent 80 years putting together.

trump wanted a name that noone will ever forget, and hes been busy building monuments to himself to make it happen.

he neednt have bothered. the history books will never forget donald trump, but he wont like what theyll have to say.

[Dark Lightning]

he s putting off a deal with iran because he needs one that he can bring to the congress that doesnt look like a defeat. so far he hasnt figured out how to do it, and the iranians arent particularly interested in helping him out.

its unfortunate, but it took donald trump to actually make a public spectacle of the end of the american century. hes not the ultimate cause, but hes squandered our foreign influence, made our allies skeptical of our alliances, demonstrated that american economic power is secondary to china's, and dismantled the entire edifice of soft power that we had spent 80 years putting together.

trump wanted a name that noone will ever forget, and hes been busy building monuments to himself to make it happen.

he neednt have bothered. the history books will never forget donald trump, but he wont like what theyll have to say.

Indeed. And I truly hope that his spawn bear the taint.

[Recusant]

They are taints. In various meanings of the word. 

[Recusant]

I thought this was entertaining and surprisingly good for a Vox article. The future of MAGA is unclear, but it's hard to see unending radicalization as a viable path.

"The MAGA stars freaked out by their own movement" | Vox

In 2017, US Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) offered what remains one of the most insightful explanations of Donald Trump's rise from any elected official. Massie, a Tea Party libertarian in the Rand and Ron Paul mode, was wondering why so many of his supporters could back an un-libertarian candidate like Trump. His conclusion was grim.

"They weren't voting for libertarian ideas — they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race," Massie said. "And Donald Trump won best in class, as we had up until he came along."

Last month, the "craziest son of a bitch" took Massie down. Trump — miffed by Massie's stance on the Epstein files and the Iran war — endorsed his challenger in Kentucky, and the popular libertarian was pushed out of a seat he'd held for nearly 14 years.

Massie conceded. But at no point, during the race or afterward, has he taken the logical next step: reflecting on how his own actions caused the problem. Massie's years of vocal support for Trump, and his boundary-pushing Tea Party politics, had helped turn the GOP into the political chaos agent he once bemoaned.

Massie is the poster child for a particular kind of conservative now emerging in Trump's second term: influential Trump allies who have sounded the alarm about the right's direction, but who steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that their own actions in the Trump era may have had something to do with it.

The examples are mounting. Joe Rogan, who regularly sells his audience on conspiratorial mistrust of official narratives, is now denouncing conspiracy theories about the assassination attempts on Trump. The pundit Ben Shapiro has gone to war against right-wing podcaster Candace Owens, who he now calls an antisemitic crank — while barely acknowledging that he himself played an instrumental role in Owens's rise. You can even see this happening with Trump himself, who has spent his presidency battling rumors about an elite pedophile network run by Jeffrey Epstein that he helped stoke earlier, and which arose from a MAGA movement he trained to see conspiracy at every turn.

It's a real-life version of the famous sketch on Tim Robinson's show I Think You Should Leave, where a hot-dog-shaped car crashes into a storefront and a man in a hot dog suit says, "We're all trying to find the guy who did this."

The "hot dog men" — and yes, they're almost all men — are easy to mock. But their growing ranks point to something serious: that right-wing political machine is spinning out of control in ways that even some of its most aggressive and radical voices recognize as dangerous. And as the right searches for new leadership before Trump himself fades into history, nobody on their side has shown any proven ability to contain or redirect its worst impulses.

[Continues  . . .]

[billy rubin]

im always undecided between viewing the ultra-right trump supporters in my government as craven opportunists who are riding the tiger to power and hoping they can step off safely before the end, or concluding they are just mentally unaware of what they are doing.

i expect its a mixture of both-- its easy to see the first ones. lots of republicans somehow get religion after they are forced out by trump or retire, and spend thier lame duck months repudiating the support they gave him.

butthere are also people in my government who dont seem to have the mental acuity to boil water. theyre the ones who say things so utter clueless you wonder how they got into power, until you look around and realize that we voted them in.

people in government often seem to be the ones least qualified to be there. maybe this is new, but i suspect its always been that way.

[Recusant]

The Trump Department of Energy put out a report on climate science's current findings. They lied, citing a scientist whose papers directly contradict their claims. He called them out on it, in a peer reviewed journal. It's in science news but according to DuckDuckGo not in mainstream news yet, if ever.

It's significant because the the Trump Environmental Protection Agency is citing the bogus Trump Department of Energy report repeatedly as justification for loosening or eliminating regulations. Fuckers.

Whether this gets any play in regular news is another question. I'm not holding my breath.

"Climate scientist who 'proved' humanity is warming Earth says government report got it wrong" | ScienceDaily

A leading climate scientist is pushing back against what he describes as "demonstrably incorrect" claims in a major US government climate report, arguing that it misrepresented his research and understated the role of human activity in global warming.

Prof Benjamin Santer, an Honorary Professor at the University of East Anglia (UEA), was one of the first researchers to identify a distinct human "fingerprint" in Earth's climate system. His work helped shape the landmark 1995 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which concluded for the first time that there was enough evidence to support a "discernible human influence" on the global climate.

In July 2025, however, a report issued by the US Department of Energy (DOE) cited Santer's research while arguing the opposite conclusion. The report was released the same day the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed overturning the 2009 'endangerment finding' -- the ruling that gives the agency legal authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, power plants, and other industrial sources.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration moved forward with revoking the finding. The decision raised concerns about potential effects on public health and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Critics also warned it could weaken other environmental protections in the United States.

In a new paper published this week in AGU Advances, Prof Santer joined fellow climate scientists Prof Susan Solomon of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Prof David Thompson of UEA and Colorado State University, and Prof Qiang Fu of the University of Washington to reaffirm the evidence that human activity is driving global warming.

The researchers also argue that the DOE report should not be used to support legal decisions involving climate regulations such as the endangerment finding.

[. . .]

The authors note that additional scientific concerns have been raised about other parts of the DOE report, including its treatment of climate change detection and attribution. They also point out that the report was cited 16 times in last year's EPA proposal.

After a lawsuit alleged that the DOE failed to follow required Federal Advisory Committee procedures, the team that authored the report was dissolved in early September.

However, the report itself has neither been withdrawn nor corrected.

Prof Santer said: "The report is still available on the DOE website and is still being publicly referenced by DOE Secretary Wright as a credible source of information on climate science. It is not."

[Link to full article.]

The paper is open access. The title just thunders its accusation. 

"Modeled and Observed Stratospheric Temperature Changes: Implications for Fingerprint Studies" | AGU Advances

Abstract:

Changes in the vertical structure of atmospheric temperature are an important "fingerprint" of human effects on global climate. These changes are mainly driven by human-caused increases in atmospheric levels of CO₂ and other well-mixed greenhouse gases.

Key features of this fingerprint are warming of the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere, and cooling of the stratosphere, the layer above the troposphere. Cooling in the lower stratosphere (from roughly 15–20 km above Earth's surface) also arises from human-caused depletion of stratospheric ozone. While lower stratospheric cooling diminished in the 21st century, largely due to the emerging "healing" of stratospheric ozone levels after the Montreal Protocol, strong cooling of the mid- to upper stratosphere continued unabated.

Satellite observations of this distinctive fingerprint are in accord with current state-of-the-art climate model estimates of human-caused temperature changes. The claim to the contrary made in the recent US Department of Energy review of climate science is factually incorrect.

[Recusant]

Got sucked in by the pop science site there. I know that they sometimes recycle stories, so should be more careful. The instance above is from February of this year. Seems like it never did make it to the mainstream news.

[Recusant]

Hegseth embodying his sardonically bestowed title of Secretary of War Crimes.

"Hegseth Gloats Over Illegal US Assault on Iranian Infrastructure" | Common Dreams

US Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth late Thursday gloatingly posted a photo of an Iranian tower collapsing due to the Trump administration's massive, illegal assault on the Middle East country's infrastructure, including bridges, railways, and power facilities.

The photo Hegseth posted to social media appeared to show the surveillance tower at Iran's Chabahar Port enveloped in smoke and crumbling to the ground amid US forces' aggressive bombing campaign. Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), called Hegseth's post "disgusting online revelry in the bombardment of Iran and its infrastructure."

The Associated Press reported that US strikes on bridges and other infrastructure in southern Iran overnight into Friday killed at least eight people.

"The highway and railway bridge strikes appeared aimed at cutting off Bandar Abbas, Iran's main port, from roads leading into the Islamic Republic's central region onward to Tehran, the capital," AP noted.

US strikes, authorized by President Donald Trump, also targeted Iranian power infrastructure amid extreme heat.

The latest wave of US attacks came days after Trump threatened to "knock out all of [Iran's] power plants" and bridges "unless they get to the table and negotiate."

Deliberately attacking civilian infrastructure is a war crime. Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said Friday that while "there may be some nominal military use of the bridges," the US attacks "potentially disrupt the movement of goods needed for Iran's 90 million people."

"Trump doesn't care, but military commanders, who could face prosecution, should," Roth added.

[Continues . . .]

[billy rubin]

the geneva conventions forbidding destruction of civilian infrastructure only came into effect in 1949.

it appears my country wants to revert to the earlier definitions, which were essentially that nothing was a war crime.

[Dark Lightning]

The chump has a get out of jail free card issued by a majority of the current Supreme Court. But the remainder of the people committing these crimes are not off the hook.

[Recusant]

To me it looks like the convict president is gearing up to declare a national emergency for election security. I mean, wouldn't you do the same if you'd been cheated of a victory and treated very unfairly by the courts? That's all the evidence anybody should need. 

I think, as he sees it, in a national emergency the safeguards of the US Constitution become negotiable if not dispensable entirely. Of course that isn't the case but we know he's not a man who balks at blatantly illegal acts. Could be interesting. 

[billy rubin]

i would prefer not to live in interesting times.

[Dark Lightning]

Me either.

[Icarus]

Rachel Maddow labeled Trumps illness, "emotional incontinence".  That is a cleverly descriptive diagnosis, I suspect.

[Dark Lightning]

I call it "Fucked Up in the Head", but I'm in the minority. People used to be put in a home, instead of being put in the most powerful position on the planet when they acted this way.