Interesting for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that Dreher admits that Orban and Trump are corrupt.
Dreher has apparently moved back to the US (and looks like a hippie). Frankly, he should have just stayed in Hungary. You shouldn't get to abandon your country for a place descending into fascism and then return to your native land, as it descends into fascism, because the other country woke up.
The Aerodrome: Boeing VC-25B Bridge. A shameful flying monument.: This blog was never intended to be political, but in the age of Donald Trump, which will go down as the most corrupt political era in U.S. h...
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
Congress has so suspended its duties that getting anyone to enforce this clause seems like a lost cause right now, but maybe in a future presidency somebody will dust the document off, walk down to Congress, dope slap the whole body until the current deadwood leaves (John Barrasso, looking at you) and people who actually will do their job reappear. Should that occur, this airplane should not leave the Air Force inventory. But what to do with it is another question. $400,000,000 have been spent on it.
There are already two new Air Force One's being built. Those ones will be properly equipped. The existing Air Force Ones already are. Hopefully not another dime is spent on this one.
But that, frankly, puts it in the domestic hauler category. I suppose it could be used for that, save for the fact that it's a national embarrassment.
Given that, my prediction is that it will be junked. I don't think it'll ever go to a Trump presidential library, assuming one is every built Trump's already 80 years old and every morning when he wakes up the Grim Reaper is there asking how he's feeling. It won't be used by a future President, and it's not going to be used by the Air Force for anything.
It's just a waste.
Trump fired the last three members of the Election Assistance Commission, the independent, federal commission that assists election administration officials.
Donald Trump does not want to go to jail.
When the Democrats resume Congressional power in January, 2027, Trump's effectiveness as a President will be over. Frankly, he's not terribly effective right now. He is terribly disruptive.
But the chances of his going to prison will climb enormously. He stands a serious risk of being impeached and tossed out, to be followed by being sent to prison.
Bare minimum, his endless vanity projects will be done for, as will most of his power.
Trump will do whatever is necessary to avoid the outcome of the 2027 election. It's going to be severely bad.
And I'll give him about a 60% chances of pulling it off, aided by people like John Barrasso, Harriet Hageman, and Chuck Gray.
Last edition:
Lex Anteinternet: Tuesday, July 6, 1976. First women at Anapolis.: The first women to do so entered the United States Naval Academy. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II began a "Bicentennial tour" of se...
We ran this a few days ago.
And now we see this article:
It's no secret that Pete Hegseth is hostile to women in combat (one of the very few things I agree with Pete about), but that's not the same thing as not noting this milestone, which is pretty darned close to saying that women don't have a place in the Navy.
Well, actually, it's exactly the same thing as saying women don't have a place in the Navy.
Women have been in the Navy since March 21, 1917, as we noted on the anniversary of that occurrence:
Incorporating women into the Navy has been sort of a peculiar problem in some ways, and those ways are heavily biological, although honesty compels us to note that it's not as problematic now as it once was, or would be suspected as being.
Approximately 75% of all sailors are assigned to sea-intensive ratings rather than shore duty ones. Only about 19% to 20% of the active fleet is deployed or underway at any one time, however. About 20% of the Navy's manpower if female, with that figure applying to both the enlisted and officers. There are instances you can find of ships that end up with a problematic number of female sailors pregnant, but on average only 0.7% to 1.5% of a female crew find that to be the case.
Not that there are not problems.* Having young men and young women in that level of close proximity is going to cause problems. Again, I'm not in favor of women in combat and while I don't think of the Navy all that much, about any ship at sea can be a combat vessel in some fashion.
The Navy changed its billeting policy in 2024 in order to allow pregnant female sailors to find land billets more easily than it had previously, so the Navy, in pre Hegseth Department of Defense it was moving towards being more accomodating.
So what's going on here?
I don't know, but it's part of a sub silentio drift in the DoD. If the Hegseth run DoD just wants women out, or out of some roles, it can move in that directly openly. Instead, it's been sort of just being hostile to them, of which this is one example.
And its not just female sailors, or servicemembers. It's being silently hostile to minorities as well. People who normally would have been promoted to senior positions are not being if they're women, or black, etc. A portrait of a legendary senior black Air Force officer was removed from display without explanation.
Without explanation, it has the appearance of a harassment campaign to quietly discourage women and blacks from joining the service.
And I have to wonder, to some degree, if the DoD is trying to make it through November before it takes a formal step of eliminating women from all combat roles. It can't eliminate blacks from the service, of course, but it's also allowing Evangelical Protestant campaigning in the service, which is hostile to various religions, including various Christian religions. At some point that has the effect of telling Catholic Hispanics and African Methodist blacks maybe they aren't welcome, or at least that they don't want to hang around with a bunch of troops who look and act like Confederate Partisan Rangers.
Or maybe it's not that extreme. Be that as it may, the treatment of women in this fashion is hard to ignore.
Footnotes
*In recent years the bigger problem has been with the Department of the Navy's female Marines, who had to be expressly told to wear shirts while doing PT overseas. Their omission of shirts clearly wasn't because it was just hot where they were.
And now it's a helipad
King Donald has spent a lot of his time this term of office remaking Washington D.C. itself. He's already vandalized the Rose Garden, the East Wing, and the Reflecting Pool. Messing with buildings is something he is familiar with, and which he fancies himself good at, even though the evidence from D.C. is that he has the taste of a 19th Century bordello owner.
Now it's a helipad. It'll be granite and on the White House grounds, and have the Presidential Seal on it.
The supposed reason is that the new Marine Corps 1 choppers are bigger, or more powerful, than their predecessors and therefore weren't working out well on the White House lawn.
The new helicopters are Sikorsky VH-92 Patriots. They are big.
Trump claims that Sikorsky will pay for the pads. Lockheed Marine, which now owns Sikorsky, has more or less confirmed that.
I'll credit some of this story as credible. These giant helicopters are really heavy, no doubt, and Washington D.C. is a swamp. It may indeed have surpassed the dent in the lawn level.
Still, there's reason for concern. Not one of Trump's major DC endeavors has worked out well. The East Wing desecration is way over the original price estimate and is likely to be torn down as soon as the illegitimate claimant to the office is out. The Rhino Lining on the reflecting pool has been a disaster and has lead to a false criminal charge against an innocent former Olympian. Just on sheer experience, there should be concern that the price here will be off, the taxpayer will foot the bill (which maybe in this instance they should) and that it'll go badly.
Moreover, the helicopters maker footing the bill is disturbing, relationship wise.
Marine Corps 1 itself is one of those things that has turned the Presidency from being representative of the people into a type of king. Eisenhower introduced it in 1957 as he wanted a quick way to get to his summer home in Pennsylvania. There's no reason that the taxpayer should have been stuffed with that. Now we've been stuck with a Presidential helicopter ever since.
Different countries, it might be noted, approach this differently. Lots of countries do use government aircraft for chief executives, but some really restrain it. Finland is one example. It has aircraft for the chief executive, but if that person is traveling long distance, they do so commercially A relatively recent Mexican president intentionally did that.
There's probably no way around this at this point, but frankly it is a bit much.
Last edition:
Giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea, I think the president, unfortunately, is receiving bad advice on this deal.
These fools, who think I haven’t been tough enough on Iran, when the Stock Market Just Hit A RECORD HIGH, and Oil prices are ‘tumbling’ down, are either jealous, bad people, or stupid. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!! President DJT”
I'm doing a great job on the Reflecting Lake. I got so into it. I've upgraded it like you wouldn't believe... It's going to be beautiful. It's going to be waterproof. It's going to be reflecting again.
She’s probably happy I talked to her. I didn’t have to talk to her. She begged me to take a photo with her. She wanted a photo with me so much. I wouldn’t have even done it, but I felt sorry for her.
Donald Trump's statements are completely made up. I am frankly astonished. I don't know why the president of the United States behaves like this towards his allies, after all, it's not the first time it's happened.I can only say it is disappointing that he does not show the same determination with the enemies of the West and of the United States, whose leaders he instead treats with far greater indulgence. There is one thing he should remember: neither I nor Italy ever beg.
The serious and offensive words of President Trump towards Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni offend all of Italy. For this reason, I have decided to cancel my visit to the United States scheduled for the next 21 and 22 June.
Protest by non observance, that's what I intend to do.
Or it's what I intended to do.
My attitude, which is quite pronounced on this, is already getting me in some trouble around the house, but I won't be "that guy" who has to answer why they didn't do anything at all when a tyrant was on the rise.
Everyone always imagines themselves on the side of right. "If I'd lived in Nazi Germany, I wouldn't have gone along. . ." Well, bull. If recent history has shown us anything, it's that people will continue to travel along a path well after its obvious that they're being lead by a disaster. People stampeded into voting for the NSDAP in 1932 were still supporting them in 1936, and if disquieted by September 1939, they went along still.
That's exactly what's going on now. Trump's administration is authoritarian to the core and has people in it who hold shockingly racist views. Just this past week there were cries to sterilize foreigners if they entered the US.
"Oh, they don't really mean that. . .they won't execute the Jews".
When the United States declared independence 250 years ago, it claimed, amongst its justifications, the following:
ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE LEO XIVACCEPTANCE OF THE LIBERTY MEDAL OFTHE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION CENTER (USA)Friday, 3 July 2026Dear friends,I am honored to accept the Liberty Medal of the National Constitution Center in this year that marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America with the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. On the eve of this momentous occasion, I offer a warm greeting to all those assembled at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. As a son of this great country, founded by courageous men and women who dreamed of liberty and of a better life for themselves and for their children, I join you in asking God’s blessings upon America’s future, that the lofty ideals enshrined at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence may continue to guide the flourishing of the nation in unity, justice and peace.From our youth, most of us have admired the eloquence of those words, with their resounding appeal to the law of nature and to nature’s God as the basis of their assertion that all men and women are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, including the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. While couched in the language of the Enlightenment, that claim is ultimately grounded in an understanding of the human person inspired by the great biblical vision of man and woman being created in the divine image. It is indeed here that we discover the basis of human dignity; dignity which precedes the establishment of any State, and whose custody constitutes its very purpose.In these past two-hundred and fifty years, for so many peoples throughout the world, it was the firm resolve to achieve the noble vision of the nation’s founders that made America a byword for freedom, as the country opened its doors to successive waves of immigrants, enabling them and their children to play their part in shaping the future of the nation. It was this same love of freedom that inspired the United States, in the darkest hours of the last century, at the time of the two world wars, to look beyond itself and, at great sacrifice, to champion the cause of freedom beyond its own borders.As every American knows, however, the path to building a society that would embody those high ideals of liberty and justice for all was not always easy and, in many respects, is still a work in progress. Indeed, the effort to realize this vision is one that must be taken up anew in each generation and in the face of ever new challenges. Today, as we look to the future, this historic anniversary presents us with the opportunity to reflect once again on the nation’s founding principles in the hope that America will remain ever true to the dream that has earned it the title of land of the free and home of the brave.The first right enshrined by the nation’s founders was the right to life, for no one who is deprived of life can enjoy liberty or pursue happiness. A country’s vitality is deeply tied to the value it affords to human life in every form and condition, acknowledging the dignity endowed upon every human person by virtue of their very existence. The inherent worth of every human life has led the noble hearts of generations to praise the marvelous works of the Creator (cf. Ps 139:14) and stand in reverence before so precious a gift. Indeed, it is precisely this reverence that we must continue to cultivate — one that sways the hearts of individuals and inspires laws that recognize and safeguard the gift from the moment of conception to natural death. Reverence, too, will aid us in discovering that we are guardians and stewards of those entrusted to our care. In this regard, the moral greatness of a nation is manifested, above all, in its capacity to support, protect and cherish the lives of all, especially the most vulnerable and those whose worth is questioned.Following the right to life, liberty was and is preeminent among the principles revered by the men and women who have sought within this nation’s borders a new beginning, often equating it with previously undreamed-of hope. Though frequently understood as the ability to act as one would like, authentic freedom runs much deeper. It is founded upon the human person’s capacity to know the truth and adhere to what is good, even at great cost — a sacrifice well known to many who have labored to shape this country. The desire for truth and freedom, as well as the very pursuit of happiness, continues to inspire people of all generations to ask fundamental questions regarding the meaning of life, our ultimate purpose, and indeed about God, and it is proper for magnanimous hearts to endeavor to answer these questions with sincerity. These answers inevitably determine the direction which we seek to give to our lives, and America has long championed the religious freedom necessary to follow responsibly the dictates of conscience in this regard, free from fear and coercion, as enshrined in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.It is this freedom that holds sacred the inner sphere of the person where convictions are formed and where conscience can guide the decisions made in the intimacy of the human heart. This same freedom also ensures the right of every person to worship according to one’s own belief, and of individuals, communities and associations to give public expression to their faith. In fact, religious freedom gave rise to the American tradition of allowing for interfaith dialogue and interreligious cooperation in promoting the public good and enriching the debates on the great moral and ethical issues that have faced the nation and shaped the course of its history. It is my hope that this tradition will continue to bear fruit in a public discourse marked by moderation, respect for the views of others and an ongoing effort to find common ground in promoting the cause of peace and reconciliation, at home and abroad.The forbearers of this country, men and women of diverse backgrounds, religions and languages, were able to find that common ground and the strength necessary to pursue a better future. The principles that inspired America’s founders, rooted as they are in the truth of the human person, brought them together in a single cause, a common dream. Unity lent strength to that dream, giving rise, under God, to the United States of America. E pluribus unum — out of many, one. In order for a nation to flourish, it must be truly united; united not by goals bound to momentary endeavors, but by ideals that do not fade with the passing of time. May the principles we have reflected upon today — a shared human dignity, equality and the rights laid out in the Declaration of Independence — ever be a source of such unity and a guiding light for the present moment and for the years to come.In accepting this award, I therefore pray that this, the 250th anniversary of the founding of this great nation, may be the occasion of a solemn recommitment to these ideals that have made America a country that values peace and prosperity, a country characterized by generosity and nobility of heart. I commend all of you, as well as the future of the Nation, to the One who is himself the source of true freedom and lasting peace, the One whose very name is Peace.May God bless America! Thank you!
This is, I'd note, copyrighted, but I'm claiming the fair use exception here.
Pope Leo has really been a shining light for Americans who are horrified by Donald Trump. He's particularly a shining light for people like me, who are conservatives horrified by Donald Trump. He's proof to the world that not all Americans are some sort of strange Dixiecrat vandals.
