President Trump: Adds 2 Aircraft Carriers to USN Chesapeake Bay Fleet

    July 4, 2021 - President Trump will add two new Gerald Ford Class nuclear aircraft carriers to the Chesapeake Bay Fleet, the premier eastern Navy group which replaced the Atlantic Fleet. CINCLantFleet, the Atlantic Fleet, was mothballed after the demise of NATO in 2019. The Chesapeake Bay fleet, in Navy parlance, CINCPeakeFleet, has 5 nuclear carriers and 165 other warships which patrol the Chesapeake Bay between Virginia and Maryland. Occasional operations in the Atlantic seaboard are carried out in conjunction, and with the approval, of the Russian Navy.  President Putin asked for that gesture, and said he considers use of the CINCPeakeFleet resources beyond 10 miles from the US shore to be a serious and unnecessary provocation. An annual Fleet regatta within that 10 miles occurs off the coast of Florida at the President's resort at Mar-a-Lago every year on June 14, the President's birthday.

    Michael Maiello's picture

    Service Guarantees Citizenship

    In the dystopian Starship Troopers an Earth at war with a race of sentient insects solves its military recruiting problems by tying military service with the right to vote.

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    Michael Maiello's picture

    "They're Not Sending Their Best..."

    Of the many foul things His Fraudulency has said about the asylum seekers who cross our southern border, one of the worst has been that they are "not sending their best" people.  It's an obvious slander and it's also just downright audacious for anybody comfortably in America to deny the obvious courage, skill and perseverance that it takes to journey from Guatemala, through Mexico and then into the United States.

    Ramona's picture

    Trouble at the Red Hen

    I've been thinking a lot about the Red Hen controversy--about whether Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of the restaurant, should have told Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave her establishment. No guesswork for me.  I'm on the side of Stephanie Wilkinson. 

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    jollyroger's picture

    Ya Moqtada! A young gun comes of age.

    Among the several crimes against intelligence that adorn the record of the post invasion imperium in Iraq, the attempt to prosecute frame the son of an Ayatollah (himself martyred by Saddam) for the murder of a collaborating Mullah stands out...

    Moqtada al-Sadr was not only an aspiring Ayatollah in his own right, he was also commander of one of the two or three most powerful militias in Baghdad--they call part of Baghdad Sadr City.

    Michael Maiello's picture

    The Politics of Personal Immunity

    Last night, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and entourage were booted from the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia by a co-owner who just couldn’t bring himself to serve a servant of the Trump Administration and boy was she mad about it and boy are the usual suspects, members of the namby-pamby D.C. press commentariat concerned about civility, too.  This on the heels of Trump adviser Stephen Miller and Department of Homeland Security Head Kirstjen Nielsen being heckled by fellow diners while separately trying to dine out on high end Mexican food.

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    Ramona's picture

    The Children are Lost and Someone Must Pay

    The stories coming out of Texas this week are horrific and heartbreaking. They're far past maddening and into territory where heads explode.

    No other way to put this: our government has been kidnapping refugee children and hiding them all across the country.

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    Richard Day's picture

    AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL

    I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust.

    Ramona's picture

    Why It Means Something When De Niro Says It

    You could spend many wasteful hours going back through at least 30 years of my public utterances--blogs, essays, articles, comments--but you'll never find an F-bomb in any of them. That's not me. It's not my most hated word--that would be the C-word--but it's right up there.

    Ramona's picture

    Democrats, Get Fierce

    (Hi, Daggers, I'm so glad to see my name still up there with those other guys.  I've been hiding for a while, and I've missed you, but I see you're all still in fine fettle. I see, too, that Trump is still president. I guess that means retirement is out of the question?)

    President Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act, on August 14, 1935. Attending were: (L-R) Representative Robert Doughton (D-NC), Senator Robert Wagner (D-NY), Representative John Dingell (D-MI), Representative Joshua Twing Brooks (D-Pennsylvania), Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, Senator Pat Harrison (D-MS), and Representative David Lewis (D-MD). (Library of Congress)

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    Doctor Cleveland's picture

    What Kim Jong-Un Wants

    What does Kim Jong-Un want from this week's summit from President Trump? More than anything else, he wants what he has always wanted, like his father and grandfather before him: to split the U.S. off from its allies South Korea and Japan. The worst part is, he is already getting what he wants.

    jollyroger's picture

    Blundering towards Bethlehem

    As Trump in Singapore bids fair to fulfill the mandate to provide his reality show with an audience pleasing finale, may we friends of humanity argue that no downside lurks in the prospect of a supine Trump, albeit producing a Potemkin peace?

    What I mean is this: Granting that Trump, by definition, understands nothing, what's the worst that could happen?

    The fear seems to be that Trump will "give away" too much in his zeal for a chance to sample the golden shower culture of Oslo. That is obviously bullshit.

    Ted Kennedy's Eulogy for his brother Bobby

    Fifty years ago today, Ted Kennedy delivered a eulogy for his brother Bobby considered by some to be the most profound speech of his career.  Katie Mettler at WaPo today offered an excellent writeup of that moment.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/06/08/those-he-to...

    Doctor Cleveland's picture

    Zero-Sum Trump and the Chumps

    I used to be close to a pair of senior citizens who'd retired from long, prosperous careers as bookies. And after a while I began to realize that, although they were both still extremely sharp, they were not especially good with money. They weren't catastrophes. They didn't go broke with bad investments. They just never did as well as they should have, almost never got the full value from a deal. They had both done very well in an illegal business, but they seemed weirdly unable to make an honest buck.

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    Last Dreamer Dies, Dream of Legalization Unrealized

    July 4, 2115 - Geraldine Lopez, the last known so-called Dreamer, died of natural causes at age 108 in Virginia. She was the last of the so-called Dreamers, who signed up in a program set up by Barack Obama, President from 2009-2016. The program was intended to create a path to citizenship for children brought to the United States illegally by their parents, and who grew up in the US knowing no other country. Over the decades it has remained in effect due to a mutiplicity of court cases, decisions, edicts and appeals, but just for those who were in up to 2018. Republicans have used the issue over and over in campaigns, to motivate their dwindling, mostly white rural, base to show up at the polls. Over many, many campaigns, Republicans have cast the aging, and over recent decades diminishing in numbers, Dreamers as everything from dangerous terrorists to lazy moochers.  Most notably, Republicans cast Dreamers, who were never eligible for federal programs, as "abusing freeloaders", and the reason the Republicans, who controlled Congress and the Presidency those years, claimed they "had no choice" but to "reluctantly" end Medicaid and Medicare in 2038, and Social Security in 2040. 

    Reflections--Somewhat Belated--on Israel's 70th Anniversary

    The debate about the events in Israel/Palestine in 1948 will be going on at least until there is an Arab-Israeli peace, and maybe longer than that.  But I think humane, reasonable people who know the history will agree that what Jews did to Arabs in 1948 was very bad indeed. There were about a dozen massacres, many expulsions, and 700,000 people exiled and dispossessed.(If you need sources, check Benny Morris' The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem and Walid Khalidi's All That Remains).

    What WSJ knew & when: Avenatti dumps

    To:               Michael Cohen[mcohen©trumporg corn]
    From:          Keith Davidson
    Sent:           Thur 11/3/2016 7:31:38 Al

    Subject: Fwd. WSJ

    FYI

    Sent from my mobile device Begin forwarded message

    From: Keith Davidson <[email protected]>
    Date: November 2, 2016 at 3:43 :32 PM PDT
    To: "Palazzolo, Joseph" <[email protected]>, "[email protected]" <KElTil@kmdassociates_com>
    Subject: RE,: WSJ

    Joe,

    We spoke last week. At that time, I told you that I had never represented Donald Trump nor anyone adverse to him.

    Yet you persist to call anyone and everyone under the sun, (including my current clients with whom I have contractual relationships), and whom I am currently representing in litigation matters.

    I understand that you are attempting to report that I am representing "women from Donald Trump's past" and that I am "presumably seeking settlements_"

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    Gun Massacres: Why the Republican Party Doesn't Act

    Nicholas Kristof yesterday had a roughly 3000 word essay with loads of data titled "How to Reduce Shootings". The word "Republican" does not appear at all in it. "NRA" - uh, no mention of it.  "Liberal" appears twice, as in "Frankly, liberal opposition to guns has often been ineffective, and sometimes counterproductive. The 10-year ban on assault weapons accomplished little...." Nick, the careful sincere liberal, being very politically correct, gives reams of data, never mentions Republicans, so as not to upset Republicans, as he just gives them..the GOP....the cold hard facts...!! Don't laugh, please.  There are eight dead students, and two teachers, whose lives have just been ended, and survivors, some gravely wounded, facing years of pain. Kristof means well, but as has been abundantly clear on many issues, facts do not matter to the Republican Party.

    Richard Day's picture

    THE NADIR

    I have reached the nadir.

    How much more can I fall?

    And yet, according to Wiki, even the nadir is relative at best.

    We have a potus who lies.

    He lies about his height.

    He lies about his weight.

    He lies about his net assets.

    He lies about his previous statements.

    He lies about his current statements.

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