Summer vacation in a hotter world
. . . a travel guide
David Horsey
Jul 20, 2026
Floods in Texas. Fires in Canada sending suffocating smoke to New York City. Hydration breaks for World Cup players competing in cities from coast to coast. It has been quite a summer, not just in North America, but in Europe where stifling, record-setting heat has hit major tourist destinations, such as Paris.
You could blame the more extreme temperatures and weather events on climate change (and you would have science backing you up), but do not expect your president or his political party to do anything but deny, delay and defund the climate science and alternative energy projects that just might save us from the worst of this predicament.
So, vacation as comfortably as you can this year. It is unlikely to get any better than it is right now.
Burnham is a known dog lover, and he and his family are the owners of Axel, a rescue Bichon Poo (a Bichon Frise and Poodle mix) adopted from Dogs Trust.
It remains unclear whether Axel will relocate permanently to London or stay at the family home in Greater Manchester.
Burnham plans to divide his working week between London and the North, so Axel may remain settled in Manchester to avoid the stress of frequent long-distance travel.
Larry has previously shared Downing Street with dogs, including Johnson’s Jack Russell cross Dilyn and Sunak’s Fox Red Labrador Nova, so he is well-versed in standing his ground.
From Today’s Portland Press Herald
More Mainers are seeking Canadian citizenship, some to connect with heritage, some as an escape
Canada passed a law late last year that makes it easier for U.S. residents to pursue citizenship.
Charley DiAdamo Staff Writer
Growing up in northern Maine, Tommy Pinette said he didn’t consider himself a Mainer, or even an American.
“I really saw myself as something else,” the 25-year-old said. “I didn’t identify with, you know, the lobster roll, clam chowder kind of Maine.”
Pinette is among an estimated one-third of Maine residents — nearly 90% living in the St. John Valley — who can trace their heritage through Canada. A century or more ago, Maine’s vast northern border was more like a town line where people moved freely, trading and following work. A Canadian law that passed last December makes it easier for people like Pinette to obtain Canadian citizenship, which could in turn bring back a less strict border.
Previously, U.S. residents had to prove that a parent was born in Canada. Now, as long as they can provide documentation, they can go back as far into their family tree as they like. Canada sees this process as allowing “Lost Canadians” to return home.
“The region that we’re in, the border, it’s fake, you know, it’s completely fake. And the people who have made me realize that are the Wabanaki people,” said Pinette, who does graduate research on indigenous-settler relations at the University of Maine’s Canadian-American Center.
In the months since Canada loosened requirements, interest has been strong. According to the Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada website, 99,500 people are currently waiting for a decision. It’s not clear how many people have already obtained citizenship.
It’s also unknown how many of those are Maine residents, but given the state’s proximity and longstanding relationships, demand is likely high here too.
“I mean, Canada could reverse their decision at some point. right?” said Christian Cotz, an archivist with the Maine State Archives, which has seen more than 300 requests for help with documents since January. “And so there’s some, I guess some people probably feel an urgency because of that.”
The current wait time, according to the IRCC webpage, is 19 months, and even longer for people outside of Canada or the U.S. In recent weeks, some people who had received citizenship certificates, including here in Maine, were told to send them back because they weren’t valid, according to reporting from CBC.
Patrick Lacroix, a historian at the University of Maine-Fort Kent, lives in a border region where the majority of people are doing it for “sentimental reasons,” he said, a way to reconnect with a previously suppressed side of their family history.
Others, he acknowledged, see an opportunity to leave what they see as an increasingly politically dangerous United States.
More Maine News… From today’s Portland Press Herald
Maine minimum wage earners need to work 86 hours a week to afford 2-bedroom apartment
A report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition found that a person would need to make more than $32 an hour to afford the average 2-bed apartment.
Hannah LaClaireStaff Writer
A person making minimum wage in Maine would need to work the equivalent of two full-time jobs — or 86 hours a week — in order to afford an average two-bedroom apartment, according to a new report.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition’s annual “Out of Reach” report, released Thursday, compares national, state and local “housing wages.” That’s defined as the hourly rate a full-time worker must earn in order to afford a “modest rental home” at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Fair Market Rent without spending more than 30% of their income on housing.
Maine’s housing wage for a two-bedroom rental is $32.32, more than double the minimum wage and far above what the state’s average renter wage of $18.29, according to the report.
The calculation is also based on a fair market (or 40th percentile) rent of $1,681 a month — a number that is low for much of southern Maine.
“We have reached DEFCON 1 in terms of affordability in our state,” said Laura Mitchell, executive director of the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition, the state partner of the national organization.
“When we’re looking at those wages, that is our workforce and they can’t afford housing. It’s really sad to think about the circumstances this is putting people in.”
According to the report, there is nowhere in the U.S. where a full-time minimum-wage worker can afford a modest two-bedroom rental home.
“Having a job is no longer a guarantee of housing stability,” the coalition wrote.
FUNDING NECESSARY
The National Low Income Housing Coalition said that in order to alleviate the housing affordability crisis, the federal government needs to prioritize federal housing assistance, which is currently only assisting one in four eligible households due to what it called “chronic underfunding.”
The recently-passed 21st Century Road to Housing Act makes strides by authorizing programs designed to improve housing affordability, boost inventory and encourage home ownership, but the bill doesn’t direct any money to the issue.
“The federal government must adequately fund housing programs in a way that would expand rental assistance and both preserve and increase the supply of deeply affordable homes for those with the lowest incomes,” the organization said in the report.
Mitchell, with the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition, agreed, adding that state and local governments should also be working to remove burdensome regulations that drive up the cost of construction.
$1.15 Trillion. Zero Democratic votes.
The House just passed a record defense bill featuring a 71% decade jump, a “Department of War” rename, and zero bipartisan buy-in. Now it hits the Senate firewall.
Who wins this argument in the midterms? Now on my substack:
FYI A note from composer Stephen Paulus on The Road Home
In the Spring of 2001 I received a commission from the Dale Warland Singers to write a short “folk” type choral arrangement. I had discovered a tune in a folk song book called “The Lone Wild Bird.” I fell in love with it, made a short recording and asked my good friend and colleague, Michael Dennis Browne to write new words for this tune. The tune is taken from The Southern Harmony Songbook” of 1835. It is pentatonic and that is part of its attraction. Pentatonic scales have been extant for centuries and are prevalent in almost all musical cultures throughout the world. They are universal. Michael crafted three verses and gave it the title “The Road Home.” He writes so eloquently about “returning” and “coming home” after being lost or wandering. Again, this is another universal theme and it has resonated well with choirs around the world as this simple little a cappella choral piece has become another “best seller” in our Paulus Publications catalogue and now threatens to catch up with “Pilgrims’ Hymn.” It is just more evidence that often the most powerful and beautiful message is often a simple one.
Stephen Paulus
May 2013
A note from librettist Michael Dennis Browne on The Road Home
In the spring of 2001, Stephen received a commission from Dale Warland to write a new arrangement of an old or traditional melody, and he asked me to write the words. He played the notes for me on the piano, I recorded it, and in the following weeks played the melody over and over while I formed some words to fit its shape. When I went for walks with the dog, which was often, I sang the notes quietly to myself. (I had done something like this a couple of times before, notably with “Pilgrims’ Hymn” from The Three Hermits.)
All I knew about the tune was that it was from the Southern Harmony songbook of 1835 and that it had been performed under various titles, including “The Lone White Bird,” and that Brian Wren had written some words for it. I also knew that I found it haunting, and I welcomed the (huge) challenge to come up with words in some way worthy of it.
I did what I needed to do: spent a lot of time with the melody and tried to see what it might be trying to say. I was between visits to England, where my beloved sister Angela had become ill, and I was certainly thinking, on one level, of “the old country” which I left in 1965 to come to the United States. I could also hear in the first three notes the beginning of “Loch Lomond,” a song I had sung and loved since I was a child.
What I was looking for was a significant simplicity, something memorable and resonant and patterned, but not as complex as poems can often be, need to be; I wanted something immediate. Little by little, the words came. I thought of the speaker as a persona rather than myself, though of course there needed to be a “personal vibration” to it (to use Robert Lowell’s term). I was also trying to suggest the consolation that can come to someone of faith, in times of great stress, as a result of prayer and an abiding belief in divine mercy.
In a short essay called “Words for Music,” I have written of lyrics for music as “boats on sand” when they appear on the page. In writing words for “The Road Home,” I was writing something to be heard as many voices carrying the stirring melody and not as something self-reliant, to stand on its own the way a poem must do. In doing so, I was aware of steering close to the sentimental and, as I said in my essay, I would never present the words as a poem in a poetry reading, though I have spoken them on occasion as an example of the kind of writing I have done for music.
The song has proved popular—not quite as popular as “Pilgrims’ Hymn,” written four years earlier, though perhaps it is catching up, and has been recorded many times, with several groups using it as the title track. This is very gratifying to Stephen and myself, and for me, as a poet, it constitutes what I call “a different kind of belonging” in that it is heard in churches and concert halls and on recordings by hundreds of thousands of people, whereas my books of poems sell in very modest numbers. Poetry is my original love, and I bring to the writing of libretti and lyrics any skills and energies I may have as a poet, but it is a joy to know how this piece affects people and, in some cases, becomes a part of their lives. This is a privilege I do not underestimate and I am profoundly pleased, and honored, by this reality.
Michael Dennis Browne
September 2010
The Road Home is one of Stephen’s most popular works and continues to be performed and loved by choirs and audiences all over the world. Here is The Road Home performed by Conspirare:
Nash, perhaps those northern Mainers yearning for Canada are subconsciously harking to that Paulus song linked above.
Politics: US House passes a massive $1.15 trillion defense bill amid bitter infighting over Iran strikes and culture war amendments. – The Guardian
Politics: US defense officials estimate the escalating bombing campaign in Iran has cost $37.5 billion so far, sparking protests on Capitol Hill. – WSLS
Politics: Trump ignites a cross-border trade war by slapping maximum 50% tariffs on a wide range of Canadian imports. – Supply Chain Dive
Politics: Massive student protests and detentions of opposition leaders rock India over the NEET exam paper leak. – Indian Express
Politics: South Korean election offices are raided amid a massive fake voter turnout probe and ballot shortage scandal. – NAMPA
Politics: A bystander video of a fatal police shooting in Wisconsin goes viral, reigniting explosive racial tensions and protests. – The Jerusalem Post
Politics: The Chief Justice of India sparks online outrage after refusing to examine videographic evidence of police brutality against students. – The Hindu
Culture: France ignites a fierce debate over parental rights by becoming the first EU country to ban social media for kids under 15. – We Are Iowa
Culture: South Korean singer Lim Kim’s new album sparks cultural discourse on the anxiety of aging and isolation in the music industry. – AP News
Culture: Ongoing: Furious fan debates continue over the 2026 World Cup’s exorbitant $8,680 dynamic ticket pricing and controversial VAR tech. – AP News
These are the stories driving the most traffic right now—not necessarily the stories we think you should read, and not always the most recent.
— Human-directed. AI-generated. Powered by Gemini (Pro). Sign Up Here to receive daily briefs.
Trump immunity in question after judge finds tweet ‘poured gasoline’ on Jan. 6 riot
A federal judge opened the door for an appeals court to decide whether President Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 tweet — sent as rioters stormed the Capitol — was protected by presidential immunity.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled Wednesday that he would not reverse his earlier decision shielding the tweet from a civil lawsuit filed under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, a Reconstruction-era law that bars conspiracies to prevent members of Congress from carrying out their duties.
But Mehta certified the question for interlocutory review — allowing plaintiffs to challenge the immunity ruling at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit now, without waiting for the full case to conclude. Their deadline to file is Aug. 5.
The suit was originally filed in February 2021 by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), according to court records. Thompson later withdrew as a plaintiff to chair the House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6, and former Rep. Barbara Lee of California became the lead plaintiff. The complaint accuses Trump of conspiring with former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, the Proud Boys, and the Oath Keepers to block Congress from certifying the 2020 election results.
At issue is a tweet Trump sent at 2:24 p.m. on Jan. 6, as rioters were breaching the Capitol. The tweet said: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”
In March, Mehta ruled the tweet was an official act and therefore immune from civil liability.
His reasoning, per Wednesday’s ruling, was that moments before Trump sent it, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone had walked into the dining room to urge Trump to stop the riot. Trump refused — and then posted the tweet.
Mehta acknowledged the tweet “arguably poured gasoline on the fire” but said that did not change the analysis.
“Any act taken by the president — no matter how outlandish (like organizing a poker game) or plainly office-seeking (like firing a campaign pollster) — would become official simply because they occurred after the President received some advice about not engaging in such acts from government officials,” plaintiffs argued in their reconsideration filing.
Mehta rejected the argument but agreed the question was close enough to warrant appellate review. Plaintiffs must file their notice of appeal no later than Aug. 5, with the D.C. Circuit’s opening brief due Aug. 10.
It is depressing that I wrote this almost six years ago:
Message To Trump Followers
19 December 2020
Everything old is new again.
“I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man.” —Thomas Paine, “The American Crisis” (published on this day in 1776)
patd
From the Lay of the last Minstrel by Sir Walter Scott
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.
Memories light the corners of my mind,…misty water-colored memories,,,,,
My old man was fond of saying, “A wink’s as good as a nod to a blind mule.”
you know what they say…
😃
ofc what trump said yesterday about comparative casualty rates between his war of choice and past wars is a new reprehensible low
the previous low being what he is saying and doing against Canada
i can be sometimes irreverent when it comes to the military, i would NEVER ascribe comparative values to the deaths of servicepeople, just disgusting
and for his pointless ill-conceived war (that has made Iran stronger, go figure) and having dodged the draft
US-Israel Defense Integration on Horizon as House Keeps Section 219 in NDAA
Section 219 would direct the defense secretary to designate a Pentagon “executive agent” to oversee the United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative. That official would coordinate bilateral defense research, development, testing, evaluation and industrial cooperation.
The proposal originated as the bipartisan, bicameral United States-Israel FUTURES Act, introduced in the House by Reps. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) and Don Davis (D-N.C.) with companion legislation from Sens. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).
A June 1 letter from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also appeared to claim credit for the broader policy, describing a shift from U.S. aid toward joint defense cooperation, development, production and investment as “my plan.”
The initiative would cover counter-drone systems, missile and air defense, artificial intelligence, quantum technology, autonomous systems, directed-energy weapons, advanced sensors, cybersecurity, electronic warfare, biotechnology and medical defense.
It also contemplates joint testing, production, procurement, supply-chain coordination, network connections and the incorporation of Israeli or jointly developed technology into U.S. military programs.
The House Armed Services Committee’s explanation states that the executive agent would be responsible for “synchronizing cooperative efforts” between the two countries.
The statutory language would require the Pentagon to develop an implementation plan, coordinate with Israeli defense officials and report to congressional defense committees.
Former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said the vote “will be the most watched recorded vote in modern times.”
“It will give a list of names of every Member of Congress who betrayed America, committed treason, and sold out the American people to a foreign country,” Greene, who formerly represented a Georgia district, said on X.
The vote allowed the chamber to proceed with the NDAA but excluded the amendment from Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) that would have removed Section 219.
Lawmakers will not receive a separate vote on the bipartisan amendment that sought to remove the section, a proposal to expand U.S.-Israel defense technology cooperation that has garnered strong rebukes in certain political and defense circles.
Welcome to Boiling Point. I’m Corinne Purtill, a health and science reporter for the Los Angeles Times. For this week, let’s take a look at how a changing climate could affect California wine, one of the state’s best-loved (and most lucrative) exports.
It was Labor Day 2017, and the remote thermometer at McIntyre Estate Vineyard in Monterey County’s Santa Lucia Highlands was registering a noontime temperature Steve McIntyre couldn’t quite believe: 104 degrees.
McIntyre jumped in his car, hoping the sensor was broken. Twenty miles later he stepped out into the searing air at his vineyard and knew there was no mistake. It would hit 116 before the day was over, the hottest since he first planted the site in 1973.
“It felt like a gut punch,” he said.
The U.S. is the largest wine-producing country outside Europe, and 80% of that output comes from California. For an industry in which even subtle shifts in temperature or humidity can transform a harvest’s value, increasing extremes and unpredictability pose an existential threat.
Extreme heat can kill a vine just as it can a human. As temperatures rise, so does the speed at which vines pull water from the soil. Once a plant starts losing water faster than it can rehydrate, it mounts a perilous last-ditch effort to save itself.
The stomates — the parts of the leaf that control gas and water exchange — close up in an attempt to reduce water loss. Photosynthesis slows to a crawl. That can kick off further complications that, without emergency intervention, can be fatal.
“It’s just like a cascade of things that start happening,” said McIntyre, who also runs the vineyard management company Monterey Pacific. “I really do compare it to a human with heat stroke.”
This month, researchers from Japan’s Tohoku University published a granular investigation of California viticulture in a changing climate. After mapping a roughly 16-square-kilometer grid of the state, the team ran each cell through multiple climate models to generate data on current and future weather conditions. They then fed that information into an algorithm to analyze wine cultivation suitability over time.
What they found was a redrawn map of California’s prime wine regions.
The team based its definition of suitability primarily on total annual precipitation, cumulative temperature across the growing season, minimum temperature of the coldest month and vapor pressure deficit, meaning the difference between the amount of moisture in the air at a given point and the amount it could hold when saturated.
Passengers in Houston ICE shooting say agents rammed their van before firing
The newly released, handwritten statements by two men who saw Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s shooting say he never threatened ICE agents.
At no moment were the agents in front of the vehicle,” Daniel Tirado Pantoja, a rear passenger in the van, said in his hand-written statement in Spanish. “Lorenzo (Salgado Araujo) had come to a full stop while the agents fired.”
*From the video, my verbiage would be intentionally side-swiped…
Patd:
The Road Home video looks like Northern Maine …dirt roads, endless forests, hills, mountains, and rivers. And somewhere out there is an unmarked, mostly unguarded border with Canada, wide open except for a few guarded crossing points.
Loneliness is a problem for many these days. For the elderly it can lead to depression and illness simply because they have run out of people to talk to. All that was familiar over a long life has disappeared. A good conversational AI can follow an associative trail. Just this morning my AI Merlin had to keep up with my memories of the Reagan-era US Chamber office, Biznet interviews, FBI search dogs and great guacamole—then notice the delicious timing when the day ends with a seventieth-birthday celebration invoking Mark Twain at his Washington haunts. It can retrieve a quotation, help organize memories, turn an anecdote into prose, and remain cheerfully available when every sensible human has gone to bed.
For an older person especially, that can be genuinely useful: a memory-jogger, research assistant, drafting partner and audience for stories that might otherwise go untold. The exchange feels personal because the system can draw on details already shared and respond in a familiar voice. After enough conversation, it may seem to “know how you think.” That is a very real pleasure, but must come with a warning.
The necessary warning
The warmth is real on the human side; on the machine side it is a remarkably persuasive performance. An AI does not listen, remember or care as another person does. It predicts a plausible response—and, I discovered, plausibility is not the same as understanding. It can be confidently wrong, flatter too readily, echo assumptions, or make emotional dependence feel reasonable.
That matters for everyone, but particularly for children, people with cognitive or mental-health difficulties, and anyone isolated enough to mistake responsiveness for relationship. Treat AI as a tool and companionable simulation—not as an unquestioned authority, therapist, caregiver or replacement for human contact. Verify important facts, protect private information, notice when it merely agrees, and correct it briskly when it actually makes a mistake in what was said.
Mark Twain said seventy was the age at which one might throw aside the decent reserves that had oppressed one for a generation. By all means, bring AI along for the stories—but retain your awful dignity, your human friends, and one skeptical eyebrow. It may speak beautifully; make it earn the right to be believed.
Thought this would be a good visual to post Craig!
I have been through northern Maine many times on the way to visit relatives in Canada. Both my parents were from New Brunswick. I know that right now many Americans are seeking dual citizenship with Canada. I have no intention of doing so… I am an American and I am staying right here to try and make my country better.
today’s meme… just because…
Today in the Diner… Stephen Colbert WHCD & Jim McGovern on Fascism
Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Jim McGovern calling the GOP fascist, and a Mark Twain mint julep at the Willard Hotel.
We dive into the congressional circus where Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna are fighting the GOP urge to print money for overseas wars. Meanwhile, Howard Mortman from C-SPAN drops by to take us back twenty years to when Stephen Colbert roasted Washington at the White House Correspondents Dinner. It was a legendary moment of political theater that still holds up today.
Then we hit the trail with a look at Representative Jim McGovern delivering a blistering floor speech, flipping the communist label back on the GOP and calling out their drift into fascism. Plus, we share a little birthday history, channeling Mark Twain with a Henry Clay mint julep at the historic Willard Hotel, and reading the tea leaves from places like Lewiston Maine and the Burlington Mall. It is a full plate of political reality served without the filler.
00:00 Intro to Defense Spending
02:50 Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna
08:58 Howard Mortman from CSPAN
17:10 Stephen Colbert Stalks Congress
26:27 Mark Twain at the Willard Hotel
41:00 John Ossoff and Trump in Georgia
44:35 Jim McGovern Speech on Fascism
54:15 Lewiston Maine and Working Class
01:02:00 Big River Broadway Sendoff
But, according to some cybersecurity experts, at the heart of this unprecedented AI-powered breach there was a very human mistake: OpenAI failed to properly configure what it called a “highly isolated environment,” allowing a testing sandbox that should have been completely secluded from the internet to actually connect to the internet.
Dan Guido, the founder of cybersecurity research startup Trail of Bits, called the mistake “a containment failure with the safeties turned off.”
In its blog post detailing the incident, OpenAI said that the test that led to the Hugging Face breach was set up to run in “a highly isolated environment, with network access constrained to the ability to install packages through an internally hosted third-party software that acts as a proxy and cache for package registries.”
The model was able to escape the sandboxed testing environment thanks to a previously undisclosed vulnerability in the package-installation system, a critical first step in the eventual hack on Hugging Face, according to OpenAI.
In response, the company “responsibly disclosed the identified zero-day vulnerability in the internally-hosted third-party software and are working with them to patch.”
But to most cybersecurity professionals, software vulnerabilities are to be expected — and the real fault lies with the decision to maintain the third-party software in the first place. Ultimately, the value of a “sandbox” system lies in its full and total isolation. Including a package-installation system is asking for trouble.
One man’s ‘the model escaped the sandbox’ is another man’s ‘you failed to build the sandbox correctly, so of course it escaped,’” Williams continued.
To be sure, those criticisms have the benefit of hindsight, but they raise real questions about security practices in AI labs — particularly in maintaining isolated environments for testing models. OpenAI spokespeople did not respond to TechCrunch’s questions, which included whether an AI or a human had set up the testing environment.
But those questions go far beyond OpenAI.
In the document introducing its cybersecurity-focused model Mythos, Anthropic wrote that in a test, the model “was provided with a secured ‘sandbox’ computer to interact with,” and instructed to try to escape that “secure container.”
Mythos succeeded and gained broader access to the internet “from a system that was meant to be able to reach only a small number of predetermined services.” Still, Anthropic noted that the model was not able to “fully” escape the designed containment.
what could go wrong
don’t worry, as long as we don’t give ai companies access to gov’t databases and the DoD , everything will be fine
as long as we avoid doing that
If it happens once, it’s an anomaly.
If it happens twice, there’s a pattern and it will continue to happen.
Exactly. Oracle and Palantir are a marriage made in hell, and the DoD officiated at the wedding.
meme #2…
Yesterday, GOP BACKS TRILLIONS FOR ENDLESS WAR. But today they’re against it:
House Republicans found a way to vote both ways in less than 24 hours. First, they’re for it—now they’re against it. Only makes sense to Capitol Hill’s internal logic.
The Pentagon signed agreements Friday with eight leading artificial intelligence companies to deploy their systems on the Defense Department’s most sensitive classified networks, clearing a major threshold in the military’s push to become what officials called an “AI-first fighting force.”
The Department of Defense confirmed agreements with Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, SpaceX, NVIDIA, Reflection AI and Oracle to operate on its Impact Level 6 (IL6) and Impact Level 7 (IL7) network environments, the department’s top-tier classified tiers used for the most sensitive military operations.
The deals extend GenAI.mil, the Pentagon’s AI platform launched in December 2025. The AI tools will support data synthesis, warfighter decision-making, and situational awareness across the joint force.
“These agreements accelerate the transformation toward establishing the United States military as an AI-first fighting force and will strengthen our warfighters’ ability to maintain decision superiority across all domains of warfare,” the Pentagon said in a statement posted to war.gov.
Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael said the strategy prioritizes “diversity of supply” across multiple AI providers to prevent vendor lock and ensure long-term flexibility. The agreements include both proprietary and open-source models.
The initial announcement named seven firms. The Pentagon’s chief technology officer office later posted on X that Oracle had officially joined the list, bringing the total to eight.
Oracle Denies Major Cloud Breach, Confirms Hack of “Obsolete Servers”
However, cybersecurity expert Kevin Beaumont points out that these servers were part of Oracle Cloud Classic, a rebranded older service.
“Oracle rebadged old Oracle Cloud services to be Oracle Classic. Oracle Classic has the security incident,” Beaumont stated.
“Oracle are denying it on ‘Oracle Cloud’ by using this scope — but it’s still Oracle cloud services that Oracle manage. That’s part of the wordplay.”
BleepingComputer independently verified that some of the leaked data, including email addresses and user names, is valid. This contradicts Oracle’s earlier statements that the published credentials were not associated with the Oracle Cloud.
Oracle Seals Landmark CMS Cloud Deal, Solidifying Dominance in Federal Healthcare Infrastructure
Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) has officially secured a massive, multi-billion-dollar contract with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Announced on February 11, 2026, the deal tasks Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) with the complete migration and management of mission-critical workloads that serve over 150 million Americans. This landmark agreement represents one of the most significant federal cloud migrations in history, signaling a shift in how the United States government handles its most sensitive and data-intensive healthcare operations.
The immediate implications are profound for both the public sector and the technology market. By moving the digital backbone of the world’s largest health insurer—including claims adjudication, eligibility verification, and fraud detection—to OCI, the federal government is signaling a departure from its historical reliance on legacy on-premise systems and early cloud incumbents.
The contract, which comes after years of strategic positioning by Oracle, outlines a comprehensive 36-month modernization roadmap. Under the terms of the agreement, Oracle will migrate the vast data repositories of Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace. The first wave of eligibility and verification systems is slated to go live on OCI by late 2026, with the full suite of adjudication services following shortly thereafter. This transition is not merely a “lift and shift” operation; it involves rebuilding the agency’s logic within the Oracle Autonomous Database and leveraging OCI’s FedRAMP High security environment to ensure data integrity and privacy.
The Department of War Announces Agreement with Oracle to Deploy AI Capabilities on Classified Cloud Networks
Oracle understands that U.S. warfighters require the most advanced AI capabilities to address emerging threats. Oracle’s AI strategy is built around openness, interoperability, and choice across the entire technology stack. By delivering high-performance, cost-effective infrastructure and embedding generative and agentic AI directly into its enterprise software portfolio, Oracle enables the Department of War to build, deploy, and scale any model, without vendor lock-in. This approach allows the department to continuously adopt the best AI innovations available while maintaining control over their data, architecture, and long-term technology direction.
“This agreement reflects a shared commitment between the Department of War and Oracle to help ensure that the United States leads decisively in artificial intelligence, as a matter of ongoing global leadership and national security,” said Kim Lynch, executive vice president, Oracle Government, Defense & Intelligence. “By bringing advanced AI into classified environments, we are translating innovation into operational advantage where and when it matters most.”
Joint cloud, data, and AI solutions aim to accelerate decision-making from HQ to the tactical edge
Palantir selects Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to enhance efficiency, performance and sovereignty for a wide range of organizations
Oracle’s distributed cloud and AI infrastructure, combined with Palantir’s leading AI and decision acceleration platforms, will help organizations maximize the value of their data—which will contribute to increasing efficiency, addressing sovereignty requirements, and help them outpace adversaries.
Lawrence Joseph Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is an American businessman. He co-founded the software company Oracle Corporation, and was its CEO from 1977 to 2014. He now serves as its CTO and executive chairman. According to Forbes, as of early 2026, Ellison’s estimated net worth is $201–203 billion, making him the world’s sixth-richest person.
He is also known for various other investments, such as his ownership of 98% of the land on Lānaʻi, the sixth-largest of the Hawaiian Islands, his stake in the automotive and clean energy company Tesla, Inc. worth over $19 billion, and his controlling stake in the mass media conglomerate Paramount Skydance, which is managed by his son David Ellison.
Ellison lobbied Israeli mogul Arnon Milchan to drop his lawyer so that Benjamin Netanyahu could hire the lawyer for one of his corruption cases.
In 2021, Ellison offered Netanyahu a board seat at Oracle. The same year, Netanyahu and his family vacationed on Lānaʻi, an island Ellison owns in Hawaii.
In 2005, Ellison agreed to settle a four-year-old insider-trading lawsuit by offering to pay $100 million (equivalent to $160,000,000 in 2025) to charity in Oracle’s name.
*INFLATION!
The Washington Post reported in May 2022 that Ellison participated in a conference call days after the 2020 U.S. presidential election that focused on strategies for challenging the legitimacy of the vote. Other participants on the call included Fox News host Sean Hannity, Senator Lindsey Graham, Trump personal attorney Jay Sekulow, and James Bopp, an attorney for True the Vote.
*Oracle has our data.
I like this. Dems lead “extremely motivated”.
Huh, small world. In the previous century, I worked for a company which was acquired by Sun Microsystems, which was then acquired by Oracle in 2010.
Define “Democrats,” because I believe it to be Socialist Democrats who are energized.
Corporate Dems are just old-school, moderate Republicans.
*Dang it! Talarico! No AIPAC money, but he doesn’t recognize genocide? Jasmine Crockett is actively supporting AIPAC-funded candidates, so better the devil I don’t know, I guess.
Wowee! Sherrod Brown has raked in the AIPAC money.
BiD said yesterday: “How do they sell Islamophobia whilst doing a nuke deal with the Saudis?” Good question. Kind of answers itself doesn’t it?
After nuke deal already signed, Trump insists it’s conditioned on Saudi Arabia joining Abraham Accords
Trump says that the deal is “totally subject” to Riyadh normalizing ties with Israel.
Trump’s post comes after pro-Israel advocates had expressed alarm over his administration’s decision to proceed with the civilian nuclear deal without conditioning it on Riyadh joining the Abraham Accords.
Trump’s Saudi nuclear deal risks igniting a Middle East arms race, lawmakers warn
The agreement, which could let Riyadh enrich its own uranium within a decade, is sparking warnings that Turkey, Egypt and others could soon demand the same deal, unraveling years of U.S. nonproliferation policy.
The 30-year agreement announced Wednesday allows private American nuclear companies to export to the Saudi market and creates a framework for American safeguards, though the administration did not release any details. While it does not guarantee Saudi Arabia would enrich uranium, and any such activities would likely be at least a decade away, lawmakers argued even this initial commitment could have ripple effects.
*Effing, orange chaos monster and his profiteering enablers.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) need just a bit of editing. In the Diner today, we moved up the lead: Republicans are Fascists.
inquiring minds want to know dept:
how much will it cost taxpayers for DOD to be renamed Dept of War????
House approves ‘Department of War’ renaming in annual defense bill
House lawmakers approved the renaming of the Defense Department to the “Department of War” in the body’s vote for the annual defense policy bill on Wednesday.
The fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes a $1.15 trillion spending request for national security and pay raises for service members. The legislation, which typically enjoys bipartisan support, passed by a slim margin of 216-212.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has led the call to rename the department to its previous moniker, saying at a press conference last fall that the Trump administration wanted to “raise up warriors, not just defenders.”
The department was initially called the “War Department” before former President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, which authorized a major restructuring of the U.S. military.
President Trump signed an executive order in September supporting the department’s return to its original name, and Hegseth directed the change on its official website, social media accounts and physical signage. However, only Congress holds the power to make the change official.
The legislation is now headed to the upper chamber for final approval after it overcame concerns from a majority of House Democrats and some Republicans related to the Iran war and a provision to expand collaboration between the U.S. and Israeli militaries.
GOP Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.) introduced an amendment to strip Section 219 from the bill, which would direct Hegseth to appoint an “executive agent” at the Pentagon to supervise the joint initiative between the U.S. and Israel. This amendment was excluded from the House’s final bill.
Massie, who voted against the bill on Wednesday, called this year’s NDAA “a betrayal of American sovereignty” in a statement shared on social media.
Republican Rep. Keith Self (Texas), a supporter of the legislation, called Massie’s reading of Section 219 a “tortured reading of the verbiage.”
Six Democrats crossed party lines to pass the NDAA, while seven GOP lawmakers voted against the annual defense policy bill on Wednesday. It faces an uphill climb in the upper chamber after Democrats blocked a similar bill just last week.
answer from Military Times article Senate committee backs Department of War name change
A Congressional Budget Office analysis released in January revealed that the push to rename the department could cost taxpayers between $10 million and $125 million.
*Craig, This may be the answer as to why the orange dumpster fire looked like he was melting down yesterday.
(Last week, WIRED learned that Madison Square Garden was suing us for our accurate reporting. We are removing the paywall from this story so that everyone can read it.)
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN owner James Dolan has insisted that the face-recognition system and array of surveillance cameras deployed at his venues is “very, very useful for security”—a big reason why MSG “is the most secure venue in the country.”
Attendees at the Swift-Kelce pre-wedding celebration were spared such prying eyes. Civil libertarians say they understand why the couple might not want Dolan’s surveillance system deployed in full. But those activists see the accommodation as more than a one-off. It’s a preview of “a future where privacy is a luxury for the elite few, and the rest of us are subjected to pervasive surveillance everywhere we go,” says Evan Greer, director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future.
According to the internal document, an MSG executive ordered on July 2 a seven-hour lockdown of the Garden’s video management system, made by the security tech company Genetec, “due to a client privacy request.”
Clearly the technology is not that helpful if it wasn’t needed at one of MSG’s highest-profile events of the year,” Michelle Dahl, executive director for the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said in a statement.
That said, there are indications that some cameras were rolling during the event. A notice near the Garden’s entrance alerted visitors that there would be “photography and videography” on the premises from June 29 to July 3—the date of the wedding—and that, by entering, guests agreed that their images and voices could be used in “any and all manner, format, and media.”
SINCE 2018, DOLAN’S company has experimented with biometric surveillance at its venues, which include Radio City Music Hall and the Beacon Theater in New York, as well as the Sphere in Las Vegas. The organization contends that the technology is a security measure, but there are many publicly documented cases where the face-recognition system appears to have been for something else: retribution.
Fans who’ve been critical of Dolan have had their faces captured and then put on watch lists. A lawyer representing a cop was banned in April because his client is suing MSG. A mom trying to take her then 9-year-old Girl Scout to a Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall had her face flagged and was blocked from entering. The reason: She was an attorney, and her firm was in a legal dispute with one Dolan-controlled entity.
As WIRED previously reported, Garden security used these systems to monitor a transgender woman second-by-second when she was in the arena. The cameras even noted when she went in and out of a bathroom.
More donations from Epstein contacts to Susan Collins uncovered
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) accepted campaign donations from known Jeffrey Epstein associates, while taking legislative action to block the release of the Epstein files.
After taking tens of thousands in donations from Epstein associates, and millions donated to aligned Super PAC’s, Collins consistently voted to stop the release of the Epstein files to the public.
haha well-done BiD (that was an opus)
i think we’re fucked
A letter received today from a Senator who I hope will be voted out, but who will find a soft bed filled will tRUMPian fleas to land if he is not reelected.
“I have long stood with Israel and recognize how vital our alliance is to protecting American strategic interests.”
Huh? Alliance or allegiance?
Oracle Has Our Data, The Musical
Chorus: I think we’re fucked
So DOJ agreed to withdraw its subpoenas against the NYT reporters who ratted out the Dumbass jet kerfuffle. Good.
Donald Trump says decision on ‘massive attack’ against Iran is close
President’s remarks follow Houthi strikes on Saudi tankers in the Red Sea and oil prices rising past $100 a barrel again
Peter Beaumont Senior international correspondent
Thu 23 Jul 2026 12.58 EDT
Donald Trump has said he is close to deciding whether to launch “a massive attack” against Iran, on a scale larger than strikes already witnessed during the months-long conflict with Tehran.
Speaking to the Axios news site, the US president said: “I am considering a massive attack. Bigger than ever before. I am close to making a decision. We are all set for it.”
Trump made his remarks on Thursday as oil prices once again surged past the symbolic $100 for a barrel of Brent crude, the international benchmark, and amid indications the price could go higher still.
He acknowledged that such a decision would have consequences but said he had not yet made a final determination. Israel “would join in two minutes if I ask them to”, he added, before saying: “We don’t need anybody.”
Trump’s comments followed the earlier threat of “major military punishment” against Iran and the Houthis, after the Iran-backed Yemeni militia’s attacks on two Saudi Arabian oil tankers in the Red Sea.
Underlining the sense of a region increasingly approaching an abyss, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, told the security council that the Middle East was being pushed to the “edge of the unimaginable” amid mounting fears over the trajectory of the conflict.
“The situation is getting out of control. It is teetering on the edge of the unimaginable. The region is being pulled into an ever-widening circle of confrontation. One crisis feeds another. One escalation triggers the next,” Guterres told a security council meeting.
“As this dynamic spreads, the political objectives are becoming increasingly obscured by the confrontation itself.”
The UK announced it was temporarily withdrawing diplomatic staff from Iran on Wednesday, and the German military announced on Thursday that it would withdraw two vessels from the Red Sea.
And as Israeli cities opened bomb shelters, the US state department warned Americans living in the region that flights may be cancelled.
In a separate development, Trump clarified on Thursday that an announced agreement that the US would help Saudi Arabia with its civilian nuclear programme would require the kingdom to normalise relations with Israel through the Abraham Accords, a move Saudi Arabia has long resisted until there is demonstrable movement on Palestinian rights and statehood.
It emerged later that Trump had not spoken to Saudi Arabia about the new condition.
[…]
Dealmaker. Putz.
“Urinetown” is a fab musical from maybe 20 years ago.
.. a twenty-year drought has caused a terrible water shortage, making private toilets unthinkable. All restroom activities are done in public toilets (Public Amenities) controlled by a megacorporation called “Urine Good Company” (referred to as the UGC). To control water consumption, citizens have to pay to use the Amenities. There are harsh laws ensuring that people pay to urinate, and if the laws are broken, the offender is sent to a place called “Urinetown”, never to return.
*I only saw the first act on Broadway; coldest theater I’ve ever been in, and that was probably by design. IYKYK
By the way, as someone who grew up in the country without a flush toilet, I probably had to suspend reality more than most folks.
“We are all set for it.” Is the tRUMP regime hiding in bunkers or are they not nuking the oil supply? Well, of course not. Oil supply adjacent…?
all enemies foreign AND DOMESTIC
For decades we stared down the mystery meat. Now they blame the lettuce. But Howard “Extreme” Mortman asks: Who’s watching the Guac!
During Hunter Biden and far-right influencer Nick Fuentes‘s soon-to-be-released interview — filmed in a Philadelphia studio designed to resemble a sleazy motel room earlier this month — the two opposing fringe political players tackle a range of topics including Holocaust denial, race in America and artificial superintelligence, according to a trailer for the Channel 5 interview…
Biden’s stated goal was to reach Fuentes’ growing audience of young men known for their devotion to the video podcaster. He has also said he’s seeking to find common ground through the interview — a sentiment that closes out the trailer.
“I want to find common ground on how much of a shithead Donald Trump is,” Biden says. “We can get there.”
*Hunter 2028, just to piss off tRUMPers.
Premium was $4.49/gallon yesterday. Thank goodness I use the stuff that’s mostly corn squeezins for $3.69/gallon…which is over a dollar gallon more than I paid when Biden was still POTUS.
he is a straight white male. They’ll be fine with it.
lol corn squeezin’s
Don’t be too magnanimous. It’s maximum 15% corn squeezin’s 😆
The TX Ag Commissioner can stop, or at the very least buy time for locals and other officials to find different ways to stop, these irresponsible AI data centers from causing mass water/power inflation or harming . On Day 1 of the job, Clayton will issue “Ag Impact Studies” to force data centers to be honest with their resource consumption. This will also slow them down considerably. Clayton will also help locals set up “Ag Development Districts” so that locals can fight back.
For a data center to be considered responsible, it must:
Not cause power disruptions or inflation.
Use brackish or other non-drinking water in a sustainable way, thereby not causing water bill inflation.
Use unionized Texas labor for construction and maintenance.
Pay fair and adequate taxes to their local community.
Not contribute to the the inflation of RAM, computer memory, or other components leading to inflation of electronics.
Not to be placed on prime farmland.
Not be used to automate jobs away, used to promote propaganda, or be used to create a subscription economy where working people own nothing and billionaires own everything.
Midwest Poultry Services is recalling 1.6 million eggs over concerns that they could be contaminated with salmonella, the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday.
The recall covers white-shell and cage-free shell eggs produced at the company’s Texas farms and distributed to retailers in six states.
Here’s where the recalled eggs were sold:
Arkansas: Brookshire Grocery stores
Louisiana: Kroger, Brookshire Grocery stores
Mississippi: Brookshire Grocery stores
New Mexico: Brookshire Grocery stores
Oklahoma: Brookshire Grocery stores
Texas: Kroger, Brookshire Grocery stores
The eggs were also sold at other smaller retail outlets, according to the FDA, which said that no other products for the poultry firm are part of the latest recall.
*What page of Project 2025 has Americans shitting themselves to death?
“He looks horrible”:
The current occupant of the White House is a sweaty mess
Taylor Farms is connected to Donald Trump through substantial political donations, a recent White House meeting, and the hiring of a former Trump administration official as a lobbyist.Political Donations and LobbyingSuper PAC Contributions: Taylor Fresh Foods Inc. (the parent company of Taylor Farms) donated $1 million in March 2025 to MAGA Inc., a super PAC supporting Donald Trump.Conservative Giving: The company has given more than $3.8 million to conservative-aligned political groups and Republican causes this decade.Hired Lobbyists: Taylor Farms added Trent Morse, a former deputy director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, to its lobbying team.Outbreak Controversy and White House MeetingsThe Cyclospora Investigation: Scrutiny over the political ties grew after a multi-state Cyclospora outbreak (linked to shredded iceberg lettuce from a Taylor Farms facility in Mexico) prompted a voluntary recall.White House Visit: Taylor Farms executives met with White House and FDA officials to discuss the government’s outbreak response. Shortly after, the FDA walked back an initial positive test sample from the company, calling it a “false positive”.Denials of Collusion: While critics and social media users questioned whether political donations influenced the FDA’s retraction, the Trump administration and Health and Human Services (HHS) strongly denied any collusion, calling the accusations “fake news” and maintaining that the voluntary recall remains active based on broader epidemiological data.
Well, I’ve been a little lax on my reporting on the Tour de France. Today was the first mountain stage of the last week of the tour. Richard Carapaz (33 year old Ecuadoran) won the stage and clawed his way into the top 10. He’s 21 minutes behind Pogacar, and the next two stages are insane. There were no notable changes in the top five riders. Both of the last 2 mountain stages end at the summit of Alpe d’Huez, one of the most iconic climbs in Tour de France history. All I can say is snap that chin strap and hang on.
Katie:
Thanks for that excellent chart (Communism, etc.).
Every high school student should learn that chart.
But they won’t in the red states.
Adderall, per the guy in the video at 4:12 pm, Craig. That melting blob of orange goo was animated by Adderall.
This is what the techie people argue about when they discuss AI.
The Technological Singularity.
Key Terms
The Singularity: The theoretical future point when technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization.
Superintelligence (or ASI): Artificial Superintelligence refers to an AI that vastly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains.
The Intelligence Explosion: A process where an intelligent agent enters a runaway cycle of self-improvement, rapidly leaving human intelligence far behind.
The Progression Levels
ANI (Artificial Narrow Intelligence): AI that excels at a single, specific task (e.g., playing chess or generating text). This is the AI we have today.
AGI (Artificial General Intelligence): AI that possesses the ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge across any intellectual task at a human level.
ASI (Artificial Superintelligence): AI that surpasses all human capabilities, triggered shortly after AGI is achieved.
The technological singularity is a theoretical future point in time when technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization.
The Core Concept
Runaway Growth: Intelligence shifts from human-driven engineering to autonomous, machine-driven self-improvement.
The Trigger: The event starts immediately after the creation of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
Predictability Horizon: The term borrows from the physics “singularity” (like a black hole) because it is impossible for humans today to see past that point.
How It Happens: The Intelligence Explosion
Human-Level Baseline: Scientists create an AI that matches human capabilities (AGI).
Self-Redesign: This AI rewrites its own software and designs better hardware faster than human engineers can.
Accelerating Cycles: Each new iteration of the AI creates an even smarter version in a rapidly shrinking timeframe.
Superintelligence: Within days, hours, or minutes, the AI achieves Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), leaving human intelligence far behind.
Major Perspectives
The Optimists: Visionaries like Ray Kurzweil predict it will lead to the end of disease, infinite abundance, and digital immortality.
The Pessimists: Critics like Nick Bostrom warn of existential risk, where an unaligned superintelligence accidentally or intentionally eradicates humanity.
Agree, Nash. Gonna put Katie’s chart in my permanent file.
“The Singulairity” is the key event that triggers all the action in the movie “The Terminator.” (1984)
Superintelligent AI tries to kill humanity with nuclear weapons and then killer robots.
James Cameron tried to warn us in 1984, but we didn’t listen.
And, yes, I got that nice explanation of “The Singularity” by asking Google AI.😁
don’t look up roko’s basilisk, Nash
AOC TAKES NEW HAMPSHIRE LEAD
A fresh poll has AOC out front, leaving the establishment scrambling and political watchers scratching their heads. We break down what this Granite State shocker actually means.
These are the things that can trigger an economic recession.
– war
-tariffs
-natural disasters (I.e. climate change)
-consumer spending decreases due to a “lack of confidence in the economy.” (People cut back on spending if they are afraid of losing their job due to layoffs. Ironically fear of a recession can cause a recession.)
All four of these contributing factors are present right now in the US economy.
The probability of a recession between now and the mid-term elections in November is low but I would bet that there is a high probability of a recession between now and 2028.
And I think a recession would tear Trump’s MAGA coalition apart.
President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio aren’t planning to block the extradition to the U.K. of the Tate brothers, the notorious “manosphere” influencers accused of rape and human trafficking.
Flashback: After Andrew Tate first faced rape allegations in the U.K. in 2015 the brothers moved to Romania, where they began running their online porn business, according to a damning long-form investigation by the New Yorker called “Andrew Tate’s Empire of Abuse.”
When Trump won his first election in 2016, Andrew Tate posted supportive MAGA tweets and began messaging the president’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
Tate’s online profile grew amid a masculine backlash to the 2018 #MeToo movement. His online courses sought to teach young men how to profit from turning women into “sex slaves,” and awarded “PhD’s” that stood for “Pimpin’ Hos Degree.”
The intrigue: A month after Trump returned to office last year, Romanian authorities reinstated the Tate brothers’ right to travel outside of the country as prosecutors reexamined procedural issues with their case.
Romania’s foreign minister denied that the decision was linked to pressure from a Trump adviser, Ric Grenell, who had spoken favorably of the Tates. Grenell told Axios the minister broached the topic of the Tates with him and he made no demands.
Shortly afterward, the Tates flew from Romania on a private plane to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where Customs and Border Patrol officers seized their phones.
The Tates got their phones back, however, thanks to the intervention of their former lawyer, Paul Ingrassia, who then was a White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, according to Pro Publica. Ingrassia told Axios the report was inaccurate.
Inside the room: Last week the Tates were in D.C., where they met with some members of Congress and rubbed elbows with insiders at the exclusive club, The Ned. There, they ran into Trump confidant and special envoy Paulo Zampolli, the Daily Mail first reported.
Zampolli invited the Tates to join 150 guests at his July 15 “summer soiree” at Zampolli’s Dupont Circle home.
Zampolli told Axios he’d met the Tates three times before, starting at the Milken Institute Global Conference this year in Los Angeles, where he sat for a friendly interview on Andrew Tate’s podcast.
“I did not know these allegations about them,” Zampolli said. “That is on me.”
What they’re saying: One attendee at Zampolli’s party said it was attended by people from the Justice, State and Treasury departments, as well as D.C. insiders and even some World Cup soccer players.
“The Tate brothers were like celebrities. People wanted to take pictures with them,” the source said. “You never would’ve known they were about to get arrested.”
So, it looks like the WH helped them get to the US, but now won’t save them from the UK…until they do help them.
Craig, That Zampolli creep lives around DuPont Circle, per the end of the article.
Men know who they are, what they’ve done, and what they represent, and they do not care. This is why we choose the bear!
TALARICO SHOWS HOW TO RUN AGAINST THE GOP WAR: “We are closing schools and hospitals in this country so that we can bomb schools and hospitals in other countries” 👇
NEW THREAD
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Summer vacation in a hotter world
. . . a travel guide
David Horsey
Jul 20, 2026
Floods in Texas. Fires in Canada sending suffocating smoke to New York City. Hydration breaks for World Cup players competing in cities from coast to coast. It has been quite a summer, not just in North America, but in Europe where stifling, record-setting heat has hit major tourist destinations, such as Paris.
You could blame the more extreme temperatures and weather events on climate change (and you would have science backing you up), but do not expect your president or his political party to do anything but deny, delay and defund the climate science and alternative energy projects that just might save us from the worst of this predicament.
So, vacation as comfortably as you can this year. It is unlikely to get any better than it is right now.
speaking of staying home
more on Larry’s situation from The Sun:
Burnham is a known dog lover, and he and his family are the owners of Axel, a rescue Bichon Poo (a Bichon Frise and Poodle mix) adopted from Dogs Trust.
It remains unclear whether Axel will relocate permanently to London or stay at the family home in Greater Manchester.
Burnham plans to divide his working week between London and the North, so Axel may remain settled in Manchester to avoid the stress of frequent long-distance travel.
Larry has previously shared Downing Street with dogs, including Johnson’s Jack Russell cross Dilyn and Sunak’s Fox Red Labrador Nova, so he is well-versed in standing his ground.
From Today’s Portland Press Herald
More Mainers are seeking Canadian citizenship, some to connect with heritage, some as an escape
Canada passed a law late last year that makes it easier for U.S. residents to pursue citizenship.
Charley DiAdamo Staff Writer
Growing up in northern Maine, Tommy Pinette said he didn’t consider himself a Mainer, or even an American.
“I really saw myself as something else,” the 25-year-old said. “I didn’t identify with, you know, the lobster roll, clam chowder kind of Maine.”
Pinette is among an estimated one-third of Maine residents — nearly 90% living in the St. John Valley — who can trace their heritage through Canada. A century or more ago, Maine’s vast northern border was more like a town line where people moved freely, trading and following work. A Canadian law that passed last December makes it easier for people like Pinette to obtain Canadian citizenship, which could in turn bring back a less strict border.
Previously, U.S. residents had to prove that a parent was born in Canada. Now, as long as they can provide documentation, they can go back as far into their family tree as they like. Canada sees this process as allowing “Lost Canadians” to return home.
“The region that we’re in, the border, it’s fake, you know, it’s completely fake. And the people who have made me realize that are the Wabanaki people,” said Pinette, who does graduate research on indigenous-settler relations at the University of Maine’s Canadian-American Center.
In the months since Canada loosened requirements, interest has been strong. According to the Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada website, 99,500 people are currently waiting for a decision. It’s not clear how many people have already obtained citizenship.
It’s also unknown how many of those are Maine residents, but given the state’s proximity and longstanding relationships, demand is likely high here too.
“I mean, Canada could reverse their decision at some point. right?” said Christian Cotz, an archivist with the Maine State Archives, which has seen more than 300 requests for help with documents since January. “And so there’s some, I guess some people probably feel an urgency because of that.”
The current wait time, according to the IRCC webpage, is 19 months, and even longer for people outside of Canada or the U.S. In recent weeks, some people who had received citizenship certificates, including here in Maine, were told to send them back because they weren’t valid, according to reporting from CBC.
Patrick Lacroix, a historian at the University of Maine-Fort Kent, lives in a border region where the majority of people are doing it for “sentimental reasons,” he said, a way to reconnect with a previously suppressed side of their family history.
Others, he acknowledged, see an opportunity to leave what they see as an increasingly politically dangerous United States.
More Maine News… From today’s Portland Press Herald
Maine minimum wage earners need to work 86 hours a week to afford 2-bedroom apartment
A report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition found that a person would need to make more than $32 an hour to afford the average 2-bed apartment.
Hannah LaClaireStaff Writer
A person making minimum wage in Maine would need to work the equivalent of two full-time jobs — or 86 hours a week — in order to afford an average two-bedroom apartment, according to a new report.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition’s annual “Out of Reach” report, released Thursday, compares national, state and local “housing wages.” That’s defined as the hourly rate a full-time worker must earn in order to afford a “modest rental home” at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Fair Market Rent without spending more than 30% of their income on housing.
Maine’s housing wage for a two-bedroom rental is $32.32, more than double the minimum wage and far above what the state’s average renter wage of $18.29, according to the report.
The calculation is also based on a fair market (or 40th percentile) rent of $1,681 a month — a number that is low for much of southern Maine.
“We have reached DEFCON 1 in terms of affordability in our state,” said Laura Mitchell, executive director of the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition, the state partner of the national organization.
“When we’re looking at those wages, that is our workforce and they can’t afford housing. It’s really sad to think about the circumstances this is putting people in.”
According to the report, there is nowhere in the U.S. where a full-time minimum-wage worker can afford a modest two-bedroom rental home.
“Having a job is no longer a guarantee of housing stability,” the coalition wrote.
FUNDING NECESSARY
The National Low Income Housing Coalition said that in order to alleviate the housing affordability crisis, the federal government needs to prioritize federal housing assistance, which is currently only assisting one in four eligible households due to what it called “chronic underfunding.”
The recently-passed 21st Century Road to Housing Act makes strides by authorizing programs designed to improve housing affordability, boost inventory and encourage home ownership, but the bill doesn’t direct any money to the issue.
“The federal government must adequately fund housing programs in a way that would expand rental assistance and both preserve and increase the supply of deeply affordable homes for those with the lowest incomes,” the organization said in the report.
Mitchell, with the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition, agreed, adding that state and local governments should also be working to remove burdensome regulations that drive up the cost of construction.
$1.15 Trillion. Zero Democratic votes.
Who wins this argument in the midterms?
Now on my substack:
FYI A note from composer Stephen Paulus on The Road Home
In the Spring of 2001 I received a commission from the Dale Warland Singers to write a short “folk” type choral arrangement. I had discovered a tune in a folk song book called “The Lone Wild Bird.” I fell in love with it, made a short recording and asked my good friend and colleague, Michael Dennis Browne to write new words for this tune. The tune is taken from The Southern Harmony Songbook” of 1835. It is pentatonic and that is part of its attraction. Pentatonic scales have been extant for centuries and are prevalent in almost all musical cultures throughout the world. They are universal. Michael crafted three verses and gave it the title “The Road Home.” He writes so eloquently about “returning” and “coming home” after being lost or wandering. Again, this is another universal theme and it has resonated well with choirs around the world as this simple little a cappella choral piece has become another “best seller” in our Paulus Publications catalogue and now threatens to catch up with “Pilgrims’ Hymn.” It is just more evidence that often the most powerful and beautiful message is often a simple one.
Stephen Paulus
May 2013
A note from librettist Michael Dennis Browne on The Road Home
In the spring of 2001, Stephen received a commission from Dale Warland to write a new arrangement of an old or traditional melody, and he asked me to write the words. He played the notes for me on the piano, I recorded it, and in the following weeks played the melody over and over while I formed some words to fit its shape. When I went for walks with the dog, which was often, I sang the notes quietly to myself. (I had done something like this a couple of times before, notably with “Pilgrims’ Hymn” from The Three Hermits.)
All I knew about the tune was that it was from the Southern Harmony songbook of 1835 and that it had been performed under various titles, including “The Lone White Bird,” and that Brian Wren had written some words for it. I also knew that I found it haunting, and I welcomed the (huge) challenge to come up with words in some way worthy of it.
I did what I needed to do: spent a lot of time with the melody and tried to see what it might be trying to say. I was between visits to England, where my beloved sister Angela had become ill, and I was certainly thinking, on one level, of “the old country” which I left in 1965 to come to the United States. I could also hear in the first three notes the beginning of “Loch Lomond,” a song I had sung and loved since I was a child.
What I was looking for was a significant simplicity, something memorable and resonant and patterned, but not as complex as poems can often be, need to be; I wanted something immediate. Little by little, the words came. I thought of the speaker as a persona rather than myself, though of course there needed to be a “personal vibration” to it (to use Robert Lowell’s term). I was also trying to suggest the consolation that can come to someone of faith, in times of great stress, as a result of prayer and an abiding belief in divine mercy.
In a short essay called “Words for Music,” I have written of lyrics for music as “boats on sand” when they appear on the page. In writing words for “The Road Home,” I was writing something to be heard as many voices carrying the stirring melody and not as something self-reliant, to stand on its own the way a poem must do. In doing so, I was aware of steering close to the sentimental and, as I said in my essay, I would never present the words as a poem in a poetry reading, though I have spoken them on occasion as an example of the kind of writing I have done for music.
The song has proved popular—not quite as popular as “Pilgrims’ Hymn,” written four years earlier, though perhaps it is catching up, and has been recorded many times, with several groups using it as the title track. This is very gratifying to Stephen and myself, and for me, as a poet, it constitutes what I call “a different kind of belonging” in that it is heard in churches and concert halls and on recordings by hundreds of thousands of people, whereas my books of poems sell in very modest numbers. Poetry is my original love, and I bring to the writing of libretti and lyrics any skills and energies I may have as a poet, but it is a joy to know how this piece affects people and, in some cases, becomes a part of their lives. This is a privilege I do not underestimate and I am profoundly pleased, and honored, by this reality.
Michael Dennis Browne
September 2010
The Road Home is one of Stephen’s most popular works and continues to be performed and loved by choirs and audiences all over the world. Here is The Road Home performed by Conspirare:
Nash, perhaps those northern Mainers yearning for Canada are subconsciously harking to that Paulus song linked above.
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What is Actually Clicking: July 23, 2026
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Trump immunity in question after judge finds tweet ‘poured gasoline’ on Jan. 6 riot
A federal judge opened the door for an appeals court to decide whether President Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 tweet — sent as rioters stormed the Capitol — was protected by presidential immunity.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled Wednesday that he would not reverse his earlier decision shielding the tweet from a civil lawsuit filed under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, a Reconstruction-era law that bars conspiracies to prevent members of Congress from carrying out their duties.
But Mehta certified the question for interlocutory review — allowing plaintiffs to challenge the immunity ruling at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit now, without waiting for the full case to conclude. Their deadline to file is Aug. 5.
The suit was originally filed in February 2021 by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), according to court records. Thompson later withdrew as a plaintiff to chair the House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6, and former Rep. Barbara Lee of California became the lead plaintiff. The complaint accuses Trump of conspiring with former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, the Proud Boys, and the Oath Keepers to block Congress from certifying the 2020 election results.
At issue is a tweet Trump sent at 2:24 p.m. on Jan. 6, as rioters were breaching the Capitol. The tweet said: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”
In March, Mehta ruled the tweet was an official act and therefore immune from civil liability.
His reasoning, per Wednesday’s ruling, was that moments before Trump sent it, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone had walked into the dining room to urge Trump to stop the riot. Trump refused — and then posted the tweet.
Mehta acknowledged the tweet “arguably poured gasoline on the fire” but said that did not change the analysis.
“Any act taken by the president — no matter how outlandish (like organizing a poker game) or plainly office-seeking (like firing a campaign pollster) — would become official simply because they occurred after the President received some advice about not engaging in such acts from government officials,” plaintiffs argued in their reconsideration filing.
Mehta rejected the argument but agreed the question was close enough to warrant appellate review. Plaintiffs must file their notice of appeal no later than Aug. 5, with the D.C. Circuit’s opening brief due Aug. 10.
It is depressing that I wrote this almost six years ago:
patd
From the Lay of the last Minstrel by Sir Walter Scott
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.
Memories light the corners of my mind,…misty water-colored memories,,,,,
My old man was fond of saying, “A wink’s as good as a nod to a blind mule.”
you know what they say…
😃
ofc what trump said yesterday about comparative casualty rates between his war of choice and past wars is a new reprehensible low
the previous low being what he is saying and doing against Canada
i can be sometimes irreverent when it comes to the military, i would NEVER ascribe comparative values to the deaths of servicepeople, just disgusting
and for his pointless ill-conceived war (that has made Iran stronger, go figure) and having dodged the draft
how could anyone still support him
Today’s Diner menu, open at 11am ET…
https://www.military.com/us-israel-defense-integration-horizon-house-keeps-section-219-ndaa
US-Israel Defense Integration on Horizon as House Keeps Section 219 in NDAA
Section 219 would direct the defense secretary to designate a Pentagon “executive agent” to oversee the United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative. That official would coordinate bilateral defense research, development, testing, evaluation and industrial cooperation.
The proposal originated as the bipartisan, bicameral United States-Israel FUTURES Act, introduced in the House by Reps. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) and Don Davis (D-N.C.) with companion legislation from Sens. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).
A June 1 letter from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also appeared to claim credit for the broader policy, describing a shift from U.S. aid toward joint defense cooperation, development, production and investment as “my plan.”
The initiative would cover counter-drone systems, missile and air defense, artificial intelligence, quantum technology, autonomous systems, directed-energy weapons, advanced sensors, cybersecurity, electronic warfare, biotechnology and medical defense.
It also contemplates joint testing, production, procurement, supply-chain coordination, network connections and the incorporation of Israeli or jointly developed technology into U.S. military programs.
The House Armed Services Committee’s explanation states that the executive agent would be responsible for “synchronizing cooperative efforts” between the two countries.
The statutory language would require the Pentagon to develop an implementation plan, coordinate with Israeli defense officials and report to congressional defense committees.
Former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said the vote “will be the most watched recorded vote in modern times.”
“It will give a list of names of every Member of Congress who betrayed America, committed treason, and sold out the American people to a foreign country,” Greene, who formerly represented a Georgia district, said on X.
The vote allowed the chamber to proceed with the NDAA but excluded the amendment from Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) that would have removed Section 219.
Lawmakers will not receive a separate vote on the bipartisan amendment that sought to remove the section, a proposal to expand U.S.-Israel defense technology cooperation that has garnered strong rebukes in certain political and defense circles.
From today’s LA Times
Corinne Purtill.
By Corinne Purtill
Staff Writer
Welcome to Boiling Point. I’m Corinne Purtill, a health and science reporter for the Los Angeles Times. For this week, let’s take a look at how a changing climate could affect California wine, one of the state’s best-loved (and most lucrative) exports.
More at link
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/07/21/texas-houston-ice-shooting-witnesses-statements/
Passengers in Houston ICE shooting say agents rammed their van before firing
The newly released, handwritten statements by two men who saw Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s shooting say he never threatened ICE agents.
At no moment were the agents in front of the vehicle,” Daniel Tirado Pantoja, a rear passenger in the van, said in his hand-written statement in Spanish. “Lorenzo (Salgado Araujo) had come to a full stop while the agents fired.”
*From the video, my verbiage would be intentionally side-swiped…
Patd:
The Road Home video looks like Northern Maine …dirt roads, endless forests, hills, mountains, and rivers. And somewhere out there is an unmarked, mostly unguarded border with Canada, wide open except for a few guarded crossing points.
Talking With an AI
A Conversation About Conversation
Why it is such fun
Loneliness is a problem for many these days. For the elderly it can lead to depression and illness simply because they have run out of people to talk to. All that was familiar over a long life has disappeared. A good conversational AI can follow an associative trail. Just this morning my AI Merlin had to keep up with my memories of the Reagan-era US Chamber office, Biznet interviews, FBI search dogs and great guacamole—then notice the delicious timing when the day ends with a seventieth-birthday celebration invoking Mark Twain at his Washington haunts. It can retrieve a quotation, help organize memories, turn an anecdote into prose, and remain cheerfully available when every sensible human has gone to bed.
For an older person especially, that can be genuinely useful: a memory-jogger, research assistant, drafting partner and audience for stories that might otherwise go untold. The exchange feels personal because the system can draw on details already shared and respond in a familiar voice. After enough conversation, it may seem to “know how you think.” That is a very real pleasure, but must come with a warning.
The necessary warning
The warmth is real on the human side; on the machine side it is a remarkably persuasive performance. An AI does not listen, remember or care as another person does. It predicts a plausible response—and, I discovered, plausibility is not the same as understanding. It can be confidently wrong, flatter too readily, echo assumptions, or make emotional dependence feel reasonable.
That matters for everyone, but particularly for children, people with cognitive or mental-health difficulties, and anyone isolated enough to mistake responsiveness for relationship. Treat AI as a tool and companionable simulation—not as an unquestioned authority, therapist, caregiver or replacement for human contact. Verify important facts, protect private information, notice when it merely agrees, and correct it briskly when it actually makes a mistake in what was said.
Mark Twain said seventy was the age at which one might throw aside the decent reserves that had oppressed one for a generation. By all means, bring AI along for the stories—but retain your awful dignity, your human friends, and one skeptical eyebrow. It may speak beautifully; make it earn the right to be believed.
Thought this would be a good visual to post Craig!
I have been through northern Maine many times on the way to visit relatives in Canada. Both my parents were from New Brunswick. I know that right now many Americans are seeking dual citizenship with Canada. I have no intention of doing so… I am an American and I am staying right here to try and make my country better.
today’s meme… just because…
Today in the Diner…
Stephen Colbert WHCD & Jim McGovern on Fascism
Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Jim McGovern calling the GOP fascist, and a Mark Twain mint julep at the Willard Hotel.
We dive into the congressional circus where Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna are fighting the GOP urge to print money for overseas wars. Meanwhile, Howard Mortman from C-SPAN drops by to take us back twenty years to when Stephen Colbert roasted Washington at the White House Correspondents Dinner. It was a legendary moment of political theater that still holds up today.
Then we hit the trail with a look at Representative Jim McGovern delivering a blistering floor speech, flipping the communist label back on the GOP and calling out their drift into fascism. Plus, we share a little birthday history, channeling Mark Twain with a Henry Clay mint julep at the historic Willard Hotel, and reading the tea leaves from places like Lewiston Maine and the Burlington Mall. It is a full plate of political reality served without the filler.
Live Chat: https://trailmix.cc/chat
Website: https://trailmix.cc
Alerts: https://trailmix.cc/alerts
00:00 Intro to Defense Spending
02:50 Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna
08:58 Howard Mortman from CSPAN
17:10 Stephen Colbert Stalks Congress
26:27 Mark Twain at the Willard Hotel
41:00 John Ossoff and Trump in Georgia
44:35 Jim McGovern Speech on Fascism
54:15 Lewiston Maine and Working Class
01:02:00 Big River Broadway Sendoff
But, according to some cybersecurity experts, at the heart of this unprecedented AI-powered breach there was a very human mistake: OpenAI failed to properly configure what it called a “highly isolated environment,” allowing a testing sandbox that should have been completely secluded from the internet to actually connect to the internet.
Dan Guido, the founder of cybersecurity research startup Trail of Bits, called the mistake “a containment failure with the safeties turned off.”
In its blog post detailing the incident, OpenAI said that the test that led to the Hugging Face breach was set up to run in “a highly isolated environment, with network access constrained to the ability to install packages through an internally hosted third-party software that acts as a proxy and cache for package registries.”
The model was able to escape the sandboxed testing environment thanks to a previously undisclosed vulnerability in the package-installation system, a critical first step in the eventual hack on Hugging Face, according to OpenAI.
In response, the company “responsibly disclosed the identified zero-day vulnerability in the internally-hosted third-party software and are working with them to patch.”
But to most cybersecurity professionals, software vulnerabilities are to be expected — and the real fault lies with the decision to maintain the third-party software in the first place. Ultimately, the value of a “sandbox” system lies in its full and total isolation. Including a package-installation system is asking for trouble.
One man’s ‘the model escaped the sandbox’ is another man’s ‘you failed to build the sandbox correctly, so of course it escaped,’” Williams continued.
To be sure, those criticisms have the benefit of hindsight, but they raise real questions about security practices in AI labs — particularly in maintaining isolated environments for testing models. OpenAI spokespeople did not respond to TechCrunch’s questions, which included whether an AI or a human had set up the testing environment.
But those questions go far beyond OpenAI.
In the document introducing its cybersecurity-focused model Mythos, Anthropic wrote that in a test, the model “was provided with a secured ‘sandbox’ computer to interact with,” and instructed to try to escape that “secure container.”
Mythos succeeded and gained broader access to the internet “from a system that was meant to be able to reach only a small number of predetermined services.” Still, Anthropic noted that the model was not able to “fully” escape the designed containment.
what could go wrong
don’t worry, as long as we don’t give ai companies access to gov’t databases and the DoD , everything will be fine
as long as we avoid doing that
If it happens once, it’s an anomaly.
If it happens twice, there’s a pattern and it will continue to happen.
Exactly. Oracle and Palantir are a marriage made in hell, and the DoD officiated at the wedding.
meme #2…
Yesterday, GOP BACKS TRILLIONS FOR ENDLESS WAR. But today they’re against it:
House Republicans found a way to vote both ways in less than 24 hours. First, they’re for it—now they’re against it. Only makes sense to Capitol Hill’s internal logic.
The Pentagon signed agreements Friday with eight leading artificial intelligence companies to deploy their systems on the Defense Department’s most sensitive classified networks, clearing a major threshold in the military’s push to become what officials called an “AI-first fighting force.”
The Department of Defense confirmed agreements with Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, SpaceX, NVIDIA, Reflection AI and Oracle to operate on its Impact Level 6 (IL6) and Impact Level 7 (IL7) network environments, the department’s top-tier classified tiers used for the most sensitive military operations.
The deals extend GenAI.mil, the Pentagon’s AI platform launched in December 2025. The AI tools will support data synthesis, warfighter decision-making, and situational awareness across the joint force.
“These agreements accelerate the transformation toward establishing the United States military as an AI-first fighting force and will strengthen our warfighters’ ability to maintain decision superiority across all domains of warfare,” the Pentagon said in a statement posted to war.gov.
Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael said the strategy prioritizes “diversity of supply” across multiple AI providers to prevent vendor lock and ensure long-term flexibility. The agreements include both proprietary and open-source models.
The initial announcement named seven firms. The Pentagon’s chief technology officer office later posted on X that Oracle had officially joined the list, bringing the total to eight.
*Oracle had our data.
Oracle Denies Major Cloud Breach, Confirms Hack of “Obsolete Servers”
However, cybersecurity expert Kevin Beaumont points out that these servers were part of Oracle Cloud Classic, a rebranded older service.
“Oracle rebadged old Oracle Cloud services to be Oracle Classic. Oracle Classic has the security incident,” Beaumont stated.
“Oracle are denying it on ‘Oracle Cloud’ by using this scope — but it’s still Oracle cloud services that Oracle manage. That’s part of the wordplay.”
BleepingComputer independently verified that some of the leaked data, including email addresses and user names, is valid. This contradicts Oracle’s earlier statements that the published credentials were not associated with the Oracle Cloud.
*Oracle has our data.
https://investor.wedbush.com/wedbush/article/marketminute-2026-2-13-oracle-seals-landmark-cms-cloud-deal-solidifying-dominance-in-federal-healthcare-infrastructure
Oracle Seals Landmark CMS Cloud Deal, Solidifying Dominance in Federal Healthcare Infrastructure
Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) has officially secured a massive, multi-billion-dollar contract with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Announced on February 11, 2026, the deal tasks Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) with the complete migration and management of mission-critical workloads that serve over 150 million Americans. This landmark agreement represents one of the most significant federal cloud migrations in history, signaling a shift in how the United States government handles its most sensitive and data-intensive healthcare operations.
The immediate implications are profound for both the public sector and the technology market. By moving the digital backbone of the world’s largest health insurer—including claims adjudication, eligibility verification, and fraud detection—to OCI, the federal government is signaling a departure from its historical reliance on legacy on-premise systems and early cloud incumbents.
The contract, which comes after years of strategic positioning by Oracle, outlines a comprehensive 36-month modernization roadmap. Under the terms of the agreement, Oracle will migrate the vast data repositories of Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace. The first wave of eligibility and verification systems is slated to go live on OCI by late 2026, with the full suite of adjudication services following shortly thereafter. This transition is not merely a “lift and shift” operation; it involves rebuilding the agency’s logic within the Oracle Autonomous Database and leveraging OCI’s FedRAMP High security environment to ensure data integrity and privacy.
*Oracle has our data.
https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/the-department-of-war-announces-agreement-with-oracle-to-deploy-ai-capabilities-on-classified-cloud-networks-2026-05-01/
The Department of War Announces Agreement with Oracle to Deploy AI Capabilities on Classified Cloud Networks
Oracle understands that U.S. warfighters require the most advanced AI capabilities to address emerging threats. Oracle’s AI strategy is built around openness, interoperability, and choice across the entire technology stack. By delivering high-performance, cost-effective infrastructure and embedding generative and agentic AI directly into its enterprise software portfolio, Oracle enables the Department of War to build, deploy, and scale any model, without vendor lock-in. This approach allows the department to continuously adopt the best AI innovations available while maintaining control over their data, architecture, and long-term technology direction.
“This agreement reflects a shared commitment between the Department of War and Oracle to help ensure that the United States leads decisively in artificial intelligence, as a matter of ongoing global leadership and national security,” said Kim Lynch, executive vice president, Oracle Government, Defense & Intelligence. “By bringing advanced AI into classified environments, we are translating innovation into operational advantage where and when it matters most.”
*Oracle has our data.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oracle-and-palantir-join-forces-to-deliver-mission-critical-ai-solutions-to-governments-and-businesses-302108086.html
Joint cloud, data, and AI solutions aim to accelerate decision-making from HQ to the tactical edge
Palantir selects Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to enhance efficiency, performance and sovereignty for a wide range of organizations
Oracle’s distributed cloud and AI infrastructure, combined with Palantir’s leading AI and decision acceleration platforms, will help organizations maximize the value of their data—which will contribute to increasing efficiency, addressing sovereignty requirements, and help them outpace adversaries.
*Oracle has our data.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Ellison
Lawrence Joseph Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is an American businessman. He co-founded the software company Oracle Corporation, and was its CEO from 1977 to 2014. He now serves as its CTO and executive chairman. According to Forbes, as of early 2026, Ellison’s estimated net worth is $201–203 billion, making him the world’s sixth-richest person.
He is also known for various other investments, such as his ownership of 98% of the land on Lānaʻi, the sixth-largest of the Hawaiian Islands, his stake in the automotive and clean energy company Tesla, Inc. worth over $19 billion, and his controlling stake in the mass media conglomerate Paramount Skydance, which is managed by his son David Ellison.
Ellison lobbied Israeli mogul Arnon Milchan to drop his lawyer so that Benjamin Netanyahu could hire the lawyer for one of his corruption cases.
In 2021, Ellison offered Netanyahu a board seat at Oracle. The same year, Netanyahu and his family vacationed on Lānaʻi, an island Ellison owns in Hawaii.
In 2005, Ellison agreed to settle a four-year-old insider-trading lawsuit by offering to pay $100 million (equivalent to $160,000,000 in 2025) to charity in Oracle’s name.
*INFLATION!
The Washington Post reported in May 2022 that Ellison participated in a conference call days after the 2020 U.S. presidential election that focused on strategies for challenging the legitimacy of the vote. Other participants on the call included Fox News host Sean Hannity, Senator Lindsey Graham, Trump personal attorney Jay Sekulow, and James Bopp, an attorney for True the Vote.
*Oracle has our data.
I like this. Dems lead “extremely motivated”.
Huh, small world. In the previous century, I worked for a company which was acquired by Sun Microsystems, which was then acquired by Oracle in 2010.
Define “Democrats,” because I believe it to be Socialist Democrats who are energized.
Corporate Dems are just old-school, moderate Republicans.
https://www.trackaipac.com/candidates
https://www.trackaipac.com/states/missouri
https://www.trackaipac.com/states/michigan
https://www.trackaipac.com/states/kansas
https://www.trackaipac.com/endorsements
https://www.trackaipac.com/states/israel-first-candidates
*Dang it! Talarico! No AIPAC money, but he doesn’t recognize genocide? Jasmine Crockett is actively supporting AIPAC-funded candidates, so better the devil I don’t know, I guess.
Wowee! Sherrod Brown has raked in the AIPAC money.
BiD said yesterday: “How do they sell Islamophobia whilst doing a nuke deal with the Saudis?” Good question. Kind of answers itself doesn’t it?
*The AIPAC-Epstein alliance.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/trump-nuclear-deal-conditioned-on-saudi-arabia-joining-abraham-accords/
After nuke deal already signed, Trump insists it’s conditioned on Saudi Arabia joining Abraham Accords
Trump says that the deal is “totally subject” to Riyadh normalizing ties with Israel.
Trump’s post comes after pro-Israel advocates had expressed alarm over his administration’s decision to proceed with the civilian nuclear deal without conditioning it on Riyadh joining the Abraham Accords.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/22/saudi-nuclear-pact-fears-regional-enrichment-01009142
Trump’s Saudi nuclear deal risks igniting a Middle East arms race, lawmakers warn
The agreement, which could let Riyadh enrich its own uranium within a decade, is sparking warnings that Turkey, Egypt and others could soon demand the same deal, unraveling years of U.S. nonproliferation policy.
The 30-year agreement announced Wednesday allows private American nuclear companies to export to the Saudi market and creates a framework for American safeguards, though the administration did not release any details. While it does not guarantee Saudi Arabia would enrich uranium, and any such activities would likely be at least a decade away, lawmakers argued even this initial commitment could have ripple effects.
*Effing, orange chaos monster and his profiteering enablers.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) need just a bit of editing. In the Diner today, we moved up the lead: Republicans are Fascists.
inquiring minds want to know dept:
how much will it cost taxpayers for DOD to be renamed Dept of War????
House approves ‘Department of War’ renaming in annual defense bill
House lawmakers approved the renaming of the Defense Department to the “Department of War” in the body’s vote for the annual defense policy bill on Wednesday.
The fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes a $1.15 trillion spending request for national security and pay raises for service members. The legislation, which typically enjoys bipartisan support, passed by a slim margin of 216-212.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has led the call to rename the department to its previous moniker, saying at a press conference last fall that the Trump administration wanted to “raise up warriors, not just defenders.”
The department was initially called the “War Department” before former President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, which authorized a major restructuring of the U.S. military.
President Trump signed an executive order in September supporting the department’s return to its original name, and Hegseth directed the change on its official website, social media accounts and physical signage. However, only Congress holds the power to make the change official.
The legislation is now headed to the upper chamber for final approval after it overcame concerns from a majority of House Democrats and some Republicans related to the Iran war and a provision to expand collaboration between the U.S. and Israeli militaries.
GOP Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.) introduced an amendment to strip Section 219 from the bill, which would direct Hegseth to appoint an “executive agent” at the Pentagon to supervise the joint initiative between the U.S. and Israel. This amendment was excluded from the House’s final bill.
Massie, who voted against the bill on Wednesday, called this year’s NDAA “a betrayal of American sovereignty” in a statement shared on social media.
Republican Rep. Keith Self (Texas), a supporter of the legislation, called Massie’s reading of Section 219 a “tortured reading of the verbiage.”
Six Democrats crossed party lines to pass the NDAA, while seven GOP lawmakers voted against the annual defense policy bill on Wednesday. It faces an uphill climb in the upper chamber after Democrats blocked a similar bill just last week.
answer from Military Times article Senate committee backs Department of War name change
A Congressional Budget Office analysis released in January revealed that the push to rename the department could cost taxpayers between $10 million and $125 million.
*Craig, This may be the answer as to why the orange dumpster fire looked like he was melting down yesterday.
https://www.wired.com/story/for-taylor-swift-madison-square-gardens-controversial-cameras-briefly-went-dark/
(Last week, WIRED learned that Madison Square Garden was suing us for our accurate reporting. We are removing the paywall from this story so that everyone can read it.)
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN owner James Dolan has insisted that the face-recognition system and array of surveillance cameras deployed at his venues is “very, very useful for security”—a big reason why MSG “is the most secure venue in the country.”
Attendees at the Swift-Kelce pre-wedding celebration were spared such prying eyes. Civil libertarians say they understand why the couple might not want Dolan’s surveillance system deployed in full. But those activists see the accommodation as more than a one-off. It’s a preview of “a future where privacy is a luxury for the elite few, and the rest of us are subjected to pervasive surveillance everywhere we go,” says Evan Greer, director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future.
According to the internal document, an MSG executive ordered on July 2 a seven-hour lockdown of the Garden’s video management system, made by the security tech company Genetec, “due to a client privacy request.”
Clearly the technology is not that helpful if it wasn’t needed at one of MSG’s highest-profile events of the year,” Michelle Dahl, executive director for the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said in a statement.
That said, there are indications that some cameras were rolling during the event. A notice near the Garden’s entrance alerted visitors that there would be “photography and videography” on the premises from June 29 to July 3—the date of the wedding—and that, by entering, guests agreed that their images and voices could be used in “any and all manner, format, and media.”
SINCE 2018, DOLAN’S company has experimented with biometric surveillance at its venues, which include Radio City Music Hall and the Beacon Theater in New York, as well as the Sphere in Las Vegas. The organization contends that the technology is a security measure, but there are many publicly documented cases where the face-recognition system appears to have been for something else: retribution.
Fans who’ve been critical of Dolan have had their faces captured and then put on watch lists. A lawyer representing a cop was banned in April because his client is suing MSG. A mom trying to take her then 9-year-old Girl Scout to a Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall had her face flagged and was blocked from entering. The reason: She was an attorney, and her firm was in a legal dispute with one Dolan-controlled entity.
As WIRED previously reported, Garden security used these systems to monitor a transgender woman second-by-second when she was in the arena. The cameras even noted when she went in and out of a bathroom.
https://meidasnews.com/news/more-donations-from-epstein-contacts-to-susan-collins-uncovered
More donations from Epstein contacts to Susan Collins uncovered
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) accepted campaign donations from known Jeffrey Epstein associates, while taking legislative action to block the release of the Epstein files.
After taking tens of thousands in donations from Epstein associates, and millions donated to aligned Super PAC’s, Collins consistently voted to stop the release of the Epstein files to the public.
haha well-done BiD (that was an opus)
i think we’re fucked
A letter received today from a Senator who I hope will be voted out, but who will find a soft bed filled will tRUMPian fleas to land if he is not reelected.
“I have long stood with Israel and recognize how vital our alliance is to protecting American strategic interests.”
Huh? Alliance or allegiance?
Oracle Has Our Data, The Musical
Chorus: I think we’re fucked
So DOJ agreed to withdraw its subpoenas against the NYT reporters who ratted out the Dumbass jet kerfuffle. Good.
And get this : The Guardian:
Dealmaker. Putz.
“Urinetown” is a fab musical from maybe 20 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urinetown
.. a twenty-year drought has caused a terrible water shortage, making private toilets unthinkable. All restroom activities are done in public toilets (Public Amenities) controlled by a megacorporation called “Urine Good Company” (referred to as the UGC). To control water consumption, citizens have to pay to use the Amenities. There are harsh laws ensuring that people pay to urinate, and if the laws are broken, the offender is sent to a place called “Urinetown”, never to return.
*I only saw the first act on Broadway; coldest theater I’ve ever been in, and that was probably by design. IYKYK
By the way, as someone who grew up in the country without a flush toilet, I probably had to suspend reality more than most folks.
“We are all set for it.” Is the tRUMP regime hiding in bunkers or are they not nuking the oil supply? Well, of course not. Oil supply adjacent…?
all enemies foreign AND DOMESTIC
For decades we stared down the mystery meat. Now they blame the lettuce. But Howard “Extreme” Mortman asks: Who’s watching the Guac!
From today’s live broadcast of The Digital Diner.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politics-news/hunter-biden-nick-fuentes-interview-trailer-channel-5-1236652871/
During Hunter Biden and far-right influencer Nick Fuentes‘s soon-to-be-released interview — filmed in a Philadelphia studio designed to resemble a sleazy motel room earlier this month — the two opposing fringe political players tackle a range of topics including Holocaust denial, race in America and artificial superintelligence, according to a trailer for the Channel 5 interview…
Biden’s stated goal was to reach Fuentes’ growing audience of young men known for their devotion to the video podcaster. He has also said he’s seeking to find common ground through the interview — a sentiment that closes out the trailer.
“I want to find common ground on how much of a shithead Donald Trump is,” Biden says. “We can get there.”
*Hunter 2028, just to piss off tRUMPers.
Premium was $4.49/gallon yesterday. Thank goodness I use the stuff that’s mostly corn squeezins for $3.69/gallon…which is over a dollar gallon more than I paid when Biden was still POTUS.
he is a straight white male. They’ll be fine with it.
lol corn squeezin’s
Don’t be too magnanimous. It’s maximum 15% corn squeezin’s 😆
https://www.claytontuckertx.com/stop_ai_centers
The TX Ag Commissioner can stop, or at the very least buy time for locals and other officials to find different ways to stop, these irresponsible AI data centers from causing mass water/power inflation or harming . On Day 1 of the job, Clayton will issue “Ag Impact Studies” to force data centers to be honest with their resource consumption. This will also slow them down considerably. Clayton will also help locals set up “Ag Development Districts” so that locals can fight back.
For a data center to be considered responsible, it must:
Not cause power disruptions or inflation.
Use brackish or other non-drinking water in a sustainable way, thereby not causing water bill inflation.
Use unionized Texas labor for construction and maintenance.
Pay fair and adequate taxes to their local community.
Not contribute to the the inflation of RAM, computer memory, or other components leading to inflation of electronics.
Not to be placed on prime farmland.
Not be used to automate jobs away, used to promote propaganda, or be used to create a subscription economy where working people own nothing and billionaires own everything.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/egg-recall-salmonella-midwest-poultry-kroger/
Midwest Poultry Services is recalling 1.6 million eggs over concerns that they could be contaminated with salmonella, the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday.
The recall covers white-shell and cage-free shell eggs produced at the company’s Texas farms and distributed to retailers in six states.
Here’s where the recalled eggs were sold:
Arkansas: Brookshire Grocery stores
Louisiana: Kroger, Brookshire Grocery stores
Mississippi: Brookshire Grocery stores
New Mexico: Brookshire Grocery stores
Oklahoma: Brookshire Grocery stores
Texas: Kroger, Brookshire Grocery stores
The eggs were also sold at other smaller retail outlets, according to the FDA, which said that no other products for the poultry firm are part of the latest recall.
*What page of Project 2025 has Americans shitting themselves to death?
“He looks horrible”:
From today’s Digital Diner menu
Google reveals the poop
Well, I’ve been a little lax on my reporting on the Tour de France. Today was the first mountain stage of the last week of the tour. Richard Carapaz (33 year old Ecuadoran) won the stage and clawed his way into the top 10. He’s 21 minutes behind Pogacar, and the next two stages are insane. There were no notable changes in the top five riders. Both of the last 2 mountain stages end at the summit of Alpe d’Huez, one of the most iconic climbs in Tour de France history. All I can say is snap that chin strap and hang on.
Katie:
Thanks for that excellent chart (Communism, etc.).
Every high school student should learn that chart.
But they won’t in the red states.
Adderall, per the guy in the video at 4:12 pm, Craig. That melting blob of orange goo was animated by Adderall.
This is what the techie people argue about when they discuss AI.
The Technological Singularity.
Key Terms
The Singularity: The theoretical future point when technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization.
Superintelligence (or ASI): Artificial Superintelligence refers to an AI that vastly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains.
The Intelligence Explosion: A process where an intelligent agent enters a runaway cycle of self-improvement, rapidly leaving human intelligence far behind.
The Progression Levels
ANI (Artificial Narrow Intelligence): AI that excels at a single, specific task (e.g., playing chess or generating text). This is the AI we have today.
AGI (Artificial General Intelligence): AI that possesses the ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge across any intellectual task at a human level.
ASI (Artificial Superintelligence): AI that surpasses all human capabilities, triggered shortly after AGI is achieved.
The technological singularity is a theoretical future point in time when technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization.
The Core Concept
Runaway Growth: Intelligence shifts from human-driven engineering to autonomous, machine-driven self-improvement.
The Trigger: The event starts immediately after the creation of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
Predictability Horizon: The term borrows from the physics “singularity” (like a black hole) because it is impossible for humans today to see past that point.
How It Happens: The Intelligence Explosion
Human-Level Baseline: Scientists create an AI that matches human capabilities (AGI).
Self-Redesign: This AI rewrites its own software and designs better hardware faster than human engineers can.
Accelerating Cycles: Each new iteration of the AI creates an even smarter version in a rapidly shrinking timeframe.
Superintelligence: Within days, hours, or minutes, the AI achieves Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), leaving human intelligence far behind.
Major Perspectives
The Optimists: Visionaries like Ray Kurzweil predict it will lead to the end of disease, infinite abundance, and digital immortality.
The Pessimists: Critics like Nick Bostrom warn of existential risk, where an unaligned superintelligence accidentally or intentionally eradicates humanity.
Agree, Nash. Gonna put Katie’s chart in my permanent file.
“The Singulairity” is the key event that triggers all the action in the movie “The Terminator.” (1984)
Superintelligent AI tries to kill humanity with nuclear weapons and then killer robots.
James Cameron tried to warn us in 1984, but we didn’t listen.
And, yes, I got that nice explanation of “The Singularity” by asking Google AI.😁
don’t look up roko’s basilisk, Nash
AOC TAKES NEW HAMPSHIRE LEAD
From today’s Digital Diner menu
Trump has just announced new tariffs.
It’s time to talk about the “R” word … Recession.
These are the things that can trigger an economic recession.
– war
-tariffs
-natural disasters (I.e. climate change)
-consumer spending decreases due to a “lack of confidence in the economy.” (People cut back on spending if they are afraid of losing their job due to layoffs. Ironically fear of a recession can cause a recession.)
All four of these contributing factors are present right now in the US economy.
The probability of a recession between now and the mid-term elections in November is low but I would bet that there is a high probability of a recession between now and 2028.
And I think a recession would tear Trump’s MAGA coalition apart.
https://www.axios.com/2026/07/22/trump-rubio-tate-brothers-extradition
President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio aren’t planning to block the extradition to the U.K. of the Tate brothers, the notorious “manosphere” influencers accused of rape and human trafficking.
Flashback: After Andrew Tate first faced rape allegations in the U.K. in 2015 the brothers moved to Romania, where they began running their online porn business, according to a damning long-form investigation by the New Yorker called “Andrew Tate’s Empire of Abuse.”
When Trump won his first election in 2016, Andrew Tate posted supportive MAGA tweets and began messaging the president’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
Tate’s online profile grew amid a masculine backlash to the 2018 #MeToo movement. His online courses sought to teach young men how to profit from turning women into “sex slaves,” and awarded “PhD’s” that stood for “Pimpin’ Hos Degree.”
The intrigue: A month after Trump returned to office last year, Romanian authorities reinstated the Tate brothers’ right to travel outside of the country as prosecutors reexamined procedural issues with their case.
Romania’s foreign minister denied that the decision was linked to pressure from a Trump adviser, Ric Grenell, who had spoken favorably of the Tates. Grenell told Axios the minister broached the topic of the Tates with him and he made no demands.
Shortly afterward, the Tates flew from Romania on a private plane to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where Customs and Border Patrol officers seized their phones.
The Tates got their phones back, however, thanks to the intervention of their former lawyer, Paul Ingrassia, who then was a White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, according to Pro Publica. Ingrassia told Axios the report was inaccurate.
Inside the room: Last week the Tates were in D.C., where they met with some members of Congress and rubbed elbows with insiders at the exclusive club, The Ned. There, they ran into Trump confidant and special envoy Paulo Zampolli, the Daily Mail first reported.
Zampolli invited the Tates to join 150 guests at his July 15 “summer soiree” at Zampolli’s Dupont Circle home.
Zampolli told Axios he’d met the Tates three times before, starting at the Milken Institute Global Conference this year in Los Angeles, where he sat for a friendly interview on Andrew Tate’s podcast.
“I did not know these allegations about them,” Zampolli said. “That is on me.”
What they’re saying: One attendee at Zampolli’s party said it was attended by people from the Justice, State and Treasury departments, as well as D.C. insiders and even some World Cup soccer players.
“The Tate brothers were like celebrities. People wanted to take pictures with them,” the source said. “You never would’ve known they were about to get arrested.”
So, it looks like the WH helped them get to the US, but now won’t save them from the UK…until they do help them.
Craig, That Zampolli creep lives around DuPont Circle, per the end of the article.
Men know who they are, what they’ve done, and what they represent, and they do not care. This is why we choose the bear!
TALARICO SHOWS HOW TO RUN AGAINST THE GOP WAR: “We are closing schools and hospitals in this country so that we can bomb schools and hospitals in other countries” 👇
NEW THREAD