America has officially become an authoritarian state as far as I'm concerned. Given my views, I'm at risk of being detained and deported if I go there.
I’m hearing that if you fly to ‘Murikkka from a foreign airport where you pre-clear US customs, then you should use pre-clear because if they deny you entry, at least you’re not detained in ‘Murikkka and dealing with that subsequent nightmare or wasting your time in a crappy airline seat.
If you’re travelling overseas on a US passport, be prepared for retaliatory treatment, depending.
America has officially become an authoritarian state as far as I'm concerned. Given my views, I'm at risk of being detained and deported if I go there.
yep. wife and I agreed we shall not cross that border while that fascist is in power.
"Oh Canada...you're beautiful when you're drunk" -EV 8/14/93
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,936
America has officially become an authoritarian state as far as I'm concerned. Given my views, I'm at risk of being detained and deported if I go there.
It absolutely is. And those who voted for that don't even have one single clue.
I don not blame any you, my Canadian friends, for not coming to this country. I surely would not recommend doing that. And I am sad to say all this. Very sad.
All these people screaming at town halls. Those who voted for Trump have no right saying anything. They’re getting what they voted for.
They are getting what they voted for. Some of them (the ones not screaming at town halls; which I'd guess is most) love it. Others bought the absolute nonsense they hear from Twitter, OAN, Charlie Kirk, or whatever fearmongering misinformation source convinced them they were saving America.
In any case, I don't want to absolve them of their responsibility, but aside from their first amendment right to say something (which I realize is not what you likely meant by "right") I'd argue that the more regret the better. I'm not particularly hopeful that this too shall pass, but without messages of regret and anger from his voters, the slim chance of getting out of this gets even slimmer.
You’re 100% correct. I figured everyone knew what I meant but I didn’t even think of the discord and how them screaming could help.
I think it’s too late to go back. The plan is and was in place and they’re moving so quickly on all of it and no one is one step ahead of the atrocities yet to come. It’s difficult to imagine how diabolical these government officials have become if you’ve always held compassion and empathy as your moral standard.
I was watching American History X last night. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it. I had to cover my eyes and ears through many parts. I guess I didn’t quite remember how upsetting it was. I started to wonder if this is where we are headed again. It feels like it. And it’s sad and extremely disturbing.
I was watching American History X last night. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it. I had to cover my eyes and ears through many parts. I guess I didn’t quite remember how upsetting it was. I started to wonder if this is where we are headed again. It feels like it. And it’s sad and extremely disturbing.
Well that never went anywhere. White nationalism in America has been alive and well since that movie was made. Certainly now they are able to grow and strengthen in a way nobody could back when American History X came out. Now they have more money, more methods to collaborate, and much more government tolerance than they did back then.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
A behind-the-scenes effort to call a convention to amend the Constitution is focused on the national debt but could open the door to other changes — including making it legal for Trump to run for a third term.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
A behind-the-scenes effort to call a convention to amend the Constitution is focused on the national debt but could open the door to other changes — including making it legal for Trump to run for a third term.
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,936
Heather's letter today hugely illustrates how dysfunctions thing have gotten. In case you missed, here it is (and I mean, seriously, this is worth your five minutes):
Today the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic,
Jeffrey Goldberg, dropped the story that senior members of the Trump
administration planned the March 15 U.S. attack on the Houthis in Yemen
over Signal, a widely available encrypted app that is most decidedly not
part of the United States national security system. The decision to
steer around government systems was possibly an attempt to hide
conversations, since the app was set to erase some messages after a week
and others after four weeks. By law, government communications must be
archived.
According
to Goldberg, the use of Signal may also have violated the Espionage
Act, which establishes how officials must handle information about the
national defense. The app is not approved for national security use, and
officials are supposed either to discuss military activity in a
sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, or to use
approved government equipment.
The
use of Signal to plan a military attack on Yemen was itself an
astonishingly dangerous breach, but what comes next is simply
mind-boggling: the reason Goldberg could report on the conversation is
that the person setting it up included Goldberg—a reporter without
security clearance—in it.
Goldberg
reports that on March 11 he received a connection request from someone
named Michael Waltz, although he did not believe the actual Michael
Waltz, who is Trump’s national security advisor, would be writing to
him. He thought it was likely someone trying to entrap him, although he
thought perhaps it could be the real Waltz with some information. Two
days later, he was included in the “Houthi PC small group,” along with a
message that the chat would be for “a principles [sic] group for
coordination on Houthis.”
As
Goldberg reports, a “principals committee generally refers to a group
of the senior-most national-security officials, including the
secretaries of defense, state, and the treasury, as well as the director
of the CIA. It should go without saying—but I’ll say it anyway—that I
have never been invited to a White House principals-committee meeting,
and that, in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I
had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app.”
The
other names on the app were those of Secretary of State Marco Rubio,
Vice President J.D. Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi
Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of Defense Pete
Hegseth, Brian McCormack from the National Security Council, Central
Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe, Trump’s Middle East and Ukraine
negotiator Steve Witkoff, White House chief of staff Suzy Wiles, perhaps
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and Trump’s nominee
for head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent.
Goldberg
assumed the chat was fake, some sort of disinformation campaign,
although he was concerned when Ratcliffe provided the full name of a CIA
operative in this unsecure channel. But on March 14, as Vance, for
example, took a strong stand against Europe—“I just hate bailing Europe
out again”—and as Hegseth emphasized that their messaging must be that
“Biden failed,” Goldberg started to think the chat might be real. Those
in the chat talked of finding a way to make Europe pay the costs for the
U.S. attack, and of “minimiz[ing] risk to Saudi oil facilities.”
And
then, on March 15, the messages told of the forthcoming attack. “I will
not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts,”
Goldberg writes. “The information contained in them, if they had been
read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been
used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly
in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility.
What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of
this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational
details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about
targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”
On
the chat, reactions to the military strikes were emojis of a fist, an
American flag, fire, praying hands, a flexed bicep, and “Good Job Pete
and your team!!,” “Kudos to all…. Really great. God Bless,” and “Great
work and effects!”
In
the messages, with a reporter on the line, Hegseth promised his
colleagues he would “do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC,” or operations
security. In a message to the team outlining the forthcoming attack,
Hegseth wrote: “We are currently clean on OPSEC.”
Two
hours after Goldberg wrote to the officials on the chat and alerted
them to his presence on it by asking questions about it, National
Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes responded: “The thread is a
demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between
senior officials.”
When asked about the breach, Trump responded: “I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic.
To me, it's a magazine that's going out of business. I think it’s not
much of a magazine. But I know nothing about it. You're saying that they
had what?” There is nothing that the administration could say to make
the situation better, but this made it worse. As national security
specialist Tom Nichols noted: “If the President is telling the truth and
no one’s briefed him about this yet, that’s another story in itself. In
any other administration, [the chief of staff] would have been in the
Oval [Office] within nanoseconds of learning about something like this.”
Defense
Secretary Pete Hegseth is evidently going to try to bully his way out
of this disaster. When asked about it, he began to yell at a reporter
that Goldberg is a “deceitful and highly discredited so-called
journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time
again.” Hegseth looked directly at the camera and said: “Nobody was
texting war plans.” But Goldberg has receipts. The chat had “the
specific time of a future attack. Specific targets, including human
targets…weapons systems…precise detail…a long section on sequencing…. He
can say that it wasn’t a war plan, but it was a minute-by-minute
accounting of what was about to happen.”
Zachary
B. Wolf of CNN noted that “Trump intentionally hired amateurs for top
jobs. This is their most dramatic blunder.” Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA)
told Brian Tyler Cohen: “My first reaction... was 'what absolute
clowns.' Total amateur hour, reckless, dangerous…. [T]his is what
happens when you have basically Fox News personalities cosplaying as
government officials.” Foreign policy scholar Timothy Snyder posted:
“These guys inherited one of the most functional state apparatus in the
history of the world and they are inhabiting it like a crack house.”
Many
observers have noted that all of these national security officials knew
that using Signal in this way was against the law, and their comfort
with jumping onto the commercial app to plan a military strike suggests
they are using Signal more generally. “How many Signal chats with
sensitive information about military operations are ongoing within the
Pentagon right now?” Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) posted. “Where else are
war plans being shared with such abject disregard for our national
security? We need answers. Right now.”
National
security journalists and officials are aghast. Former commanding
general of United States Army Europe and the Seventh Army Mark Hertling
called the story “staggering.” Former CIA officer Matt Castelli posted:
“This is more than ‘loose lips sink ships’, this is a criminally
negligent breach of classified information and war planning involving
VP, SecDef, D[irector of the] CIA, National Security Advisor—all putting
troops at risk. America is not safe.” Former transportation secretary
Pete Buttigieg, who spent seven years as an intelligence officer in the
Navy Reserve, posted: “From an operational security perspective, this is
the highest level of f**kup imaginable. These people cannot keep
America safe.”
Rhode
Island senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services
Committee, said: "If true, this story represents one of the most
egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever
seen. The carelessness shown by President Trump's cabinet is stunning
and dangerous. I will be seeking answers from the Administration
immediately." Armed Services Committee member Don Bacon (R-NE), a former
Air Force brigadier general, told Axios that
“sending this info over non-secure networks” was “unconscionable.”
“Russia and China are surely monitoring his unclassified phone.”
That
the most senior members of Trump’s administration were sharing national
security secrets on unsecure channels is especially galling since the
people on the call have used alleged breaches of national security to
hammer Democrats. Sarah Longwell and J.V. Last of The Bulwark
compiled a series of video clips of Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller, Tulsi
Gabbard, John Ratcliffe, and especially Pete Hegseth talking about the
seriousness of handling secret information and the need for
accountability for those who mishandle it. When they were accusing
then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton of such a breach, they called
for firings, accountability, and perhaps criminal charges. Indeed, Trump
rose to power in 2016 with the charge that Clinton should be sent to
prison for using a private email server. “Lock her up!” became the chant
at his rallies.
Today, for her part, Clinton posted a link to the story along with an eyes emoji and wrote: “You have got to be kidding me.”
I suppose the left is overreacting to this story? lol
That's because we're "radicals".
Weird how the language changes. Once upon a time destroying property such as a Tesla was called "sabotage". Now it's called "terrorism". Once upon a time, attacking Capitol police would have been called "terrorism". Now its called "patriotism". It's all noise and nonsense. But intelligent people still understand what terms like "radical", "sabotage", and "terrorism" really mean. I suppose part of the problem is that these days it's not cool to be too intelligent. Today, "intelligent" means being "elitist". :rollmyfuckineyes:
I suppose the left is overreacting to this story? lol
They aren't even open to the opinions of these who don't. It's their way or the highway.
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Comments
If you’re travelling overseas on a US passport, be prepared for retaliatory treatment, depending.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
-EV 8/14/93
UK and Germany warn travelers heading to the US
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
2024 Napa, Wrigley, Wrigley
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Read more: https://propub.li/4bUTGn6
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Today the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, dropped the story that senior members of the Trump administration planned the March 15 U.S. attack on the Houthis in Yemen over Signal, a widely available encrypted app that is most decidedly not part of the United States national security system. The decision to steer around government systems was possibly an attempt to hide conversations, since the app was set to erase some messages after a week and others after four weeks. By law, government communications must be archived.
According to Goldberg, the use of Signal may also have violated the Espionage Act, which establishes how officials must handle information about the national defense. The app is not approved for national security use, and officials are supposed either to discuss military activity in a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, or to use approved government equipment.
The use of Signal to plan a military attack on Yemen was itself an astonishingly dangerous breach, but what comes next is simply mind-boggling: the reason Goldberg could report on the conversation is that the person setting it up included Goldberg—a reporter without security clearance—in it.
Goldberg reports that on March 11 he received a connection request from someone named Michael Waltz, although he did not believe the actual Michael Waltz, who is Trump’s national security advisor, would be writing to him. He thought it was likely someone trying to entrap him, although he thought perhaps it could be the real Waltz with some information. Two days later, he was included in the “Houthi PC small group,” along with a message that the chat would be for “a principles [sic] group for coordination on Houthis.”
As Goldberg reports, a “principals committee generally refers to a group of the senior-most national-security officials, including the secretaries of defense, state, and the treasury, as well as the director of the CIA. It should go without saying—but I’ll say it anyway—that I have never been invited to a White House principals-committee meeting, and that, in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app.”
The other names on the app were those of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President J.D. Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Brian McCormack from the National Security Council, Central Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe, Trump’s Middle East and Ukraine negotiator Steve Witkoff, White House chief of staff Suzy Wiles, perhaps White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and Trump’s nominee for head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent.
Goldberg assumed the chat was fake, some sort of disinformation campaign, although he was concerned when Ratcliffe provided the full name of a CIA operative in this unsecure channel. But on March 14, as Vance, for example, took a strong stand against Europe—“I just hate bailing Europe out again”—and as Hegseth emphasized that their messaging must be that “Biden failed,” Goldberg started to think the chat might be real. Those in the chat talked of finding a way to make Europe pay the costs for the U.S. attack, and of “minimiz[ing] risk to Saudi oil facilities.”
And then, on March 15, the messages told of the forthcoming attack. “I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts,” Goldberg writes. “The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”
On the chat, reactions to the military strikes were emojis of a fist, an American flag, fire, praying hands, a flexed bicep, and “Good Job Pete and your team!!,” “Kudos to all…. Really great. God Bless,” and “Great work and effects!”
In the messages, with a reporter on the line, Hegseth promised his colleagues he would “do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC,” or operations security. In a message to the team outlining the forthcoming attack, Hegseth wrote: “We are currently clean on OPSEC.”
Two hours after Goldberg wrote to the officials on the chat and alerted them to his presence on it by asking questions about it, National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes responded: “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials.”
When asked about the breach, Trump responded: “I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic. To me, it's a magazine that's going out of business. I think it’s not much of a magazine. But I know nothing about it. You're saying that they had what?” There is nothing that the administration could say to make the situation better, but this made it worse. As national security specialist Tom Nichols noted: “If the President is telling the truth and no one’s briefed him about this yet, that’s another story in itself. In any other administration, [the chief of staff] would have been in the Oval [Office] within nanoseconds of learning about something like this.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is evidently going to try to bully his way out of this disaster. When asked about it, he began to yell at a reporter that Goldberg is a “deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again.” Hegseth looked directly at the camera and said: “Nobody was texting war plans.” But Goldberg has receipts. The chat had “the specific time of a future attack. Specific targets, including human targets…weapons systems…precise detail…a long section on sequencing…. He can say that it wasn’t a war plan, but it was a minute-by-minute accounting of what was about to happen.”
Zachary B. Wolf of CNN noted that “Trump intentionally hired amateurs for top jobs. This is their most dramatic blunder.” Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) told Brian Tyler Cohen: “My first reaction... was 'what absolute clowns.' Total amateur hour, reckless, dangerous…. [T]his is what happens when you have basically Fox News personalities cosplaying as government officials.” Foreign policy scholar Timothy Snyder posted: “These guys inherited one of the most functional state apparatus in the history of the world and they are inhabiting it like a crack house.”
Many observers have noted that all of these national security officials knew that using Signal in this way was against the law, and their comfort with jumping onto the commercial app to plan a military strike suggests they are using Signal more generally. “How many Signal chats with sensitive information about military operations are ongoing within the Pentagon right now?” Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) posted. “Where else are war plans being shared with such abject disregard for our national security? We need answers. Right now.”
National security journalists and officials are aghast. Former commanding general of United States Army Europe and the Seventh Army Mark Hertling called the story “staggering.” Former CIA officer Matt Castelli posted: “This is more than ‘loose lips sink ships’, this is a criminally negligent breach of classified information and war planning involving VP, SecDef, D[irector of the] CIA, National Security Advisor—all putting troops at risk. America is not safe.” Former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, who spent seven years as an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve, posted: “From an operational security perspective, this is the highest level of f**kup imaginable. These people cannot keep America safe.”
Rhode Island senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said: "If true, this story represents one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen. The carelessness shown by President Trump's cabinet is stunning and dangerous. I will be seeking answers from the Administration immediately." Armed Services Committee member Don Bacon (R-NE), a former Air Force brigadier general, told Axios that “sending this info over non-secure networks” was “unconscionable.” “Russia and China are surely monitoring his unclassified phone.”
That the most senior members of Trump’s administration were sharing national security secrets on unsecure channels is especially galling since the people on the call have used alleged breaches of national security to hammer Democrats. Sarah Longwell and J.V. Last of The Bulwark compiled a series of video clips of Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller, Tulsi Gabbard, John Ratcliffe, and especially Pete Hegseth talking about the seriousness of handling secret information and the need for accountability for those who mishandle it. When they were accusing then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton of such a breach, they called for firings, accountability, and perhaps criminal charges. Indeed, Trump rose to power in 2016 with the charge that Clinton should be sent to prison for using a private email server. “Lock her up!” became the chant at his rallies.
Today, for her part, Clinton posted a link to the story along with an eyes emoji and wrote: “You have got to be kidding me.”
-EV 8/14/93
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Once upon a time destroying property such as a Tesla was called "sabotage". Now it's called "terrorism".
Once upon a time, attacking Capitol police would have been called "terrorism". Now its called "patriotism".
It's all noise and nonsense. But intelligent people still understand what terms like "radical", "sabotage", and "terrorism" really mean.
I suppose part of the problem is that these days it's not cool to be too intelligent. Today, "intelligent" means being "elitist".
:rollmyfuckineyes:
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
2024 Napa, Wrigley, Wrigley
-EV 8/14/93
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFxJ8Y9JabU/?igsh=Y2I5OGtqMmcyM3hp
-EV 8/14/93
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
-EV 8/14/93