... Republican Senators Losing Confidence in Hegseth ...

What took them so long?

Sec Hegseth managed, say, less than 100 people in his military career.

How many people does he need to manage as the Sec of Defense?

I remember an occasion back in the day when I was a director of a company, and I (and others from the company) participated in a ~gathering~ of military folk.

The military liaison asked me, quite directly, how many people do I manage? Based upon what I told him, he said that I should ~mingle~ with the Majors in the room.

imo, that conversation was most apropos.

And I now use it to look at Sec of Defense Hegseth, who seems to be totally over his head, and drowning, in his job.

imo, of course.

@#1 ... Discovery for this one should be quite interesting. ...

Perhaps, or not.

I'll wait to see the extent to which the Trump admin might go to continue the apparent cover-up..

... Republicans Push for More Farm Aid ...

OK, if I understand this situation correctly ...

The Republicans are supporting Pres Trump in all that he does and has done, without question or even a murmur of disagreement.

Now, Republicans want to give taxpayer money to those who suffer from the very policies they have been championing?

Am I the only person who sees a fault in that Republican math?

So, where was the yacht relative to the blockade line on the map?

Found this map ...

@#17

... and if neither of those work, blame regulations put into place to protect Americans.

More from th article ...

... A federal judge on Tuesday advanced former Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey's lawsuit against the Trump administration, in which she claims she was fired only because her father is outspoken Trump critic and former FBI Director James Comey.

The Trump administration sought to dismiss Comey's complaint, asserting the dispute should be handled through administrative proceedings by the Merit Systems Protection Board, an executive branch agency created by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978.

However, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman ruled Tuesday that Comey's suit was properly filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

"The court concludes that Comey's case does not fall within the purview of the CSRA's scheme because she was fired pursuant to Article II of the Constitution, not pursuant to the CSRA itself," he wrote in a 27-page opinion, referring to the president's executive power vested under Article II of the U.S. Constitution.

"Defendants' sole reliance on the Constitution -- rather than the removal provisions of the CSRA -- places Comey's case outside the universe of cases that Congress intended the MSPB to resolve," the judge wrote.

In a footnote to the ruling, Furman opined that whether the U.S. government could properly rely on the Constitution to fire Comey "is the merits question at the heart of this case -- and thus a question for another day." ...

@#19 ... Exposing everyone's sexual proclivities would not be in America's best interest. ...

That looks like [an intentional?] a mischaracterization at worst, or a lame deflection attempt at best..

If someone breaks the law, that person should face justice.

Also, mentioned in the OpEd ...

The purpose of a bunker at the White House is not to provide an extended, let's say, visit. But more to provide to provide short-term protection until the President can be moved to some other nebulous location.

Stated differently, as the OpEd excellently (ya have to read the whole thing...) explains, why place the President in a location that is known by our enemies to be where he is?

More from the article ...

... Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Monday met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, with the Russian president telling the Iranian diplomat that he hoped for peace soon.

Moscow, an ally of Iran, has so far resisted being drawn into the Middle East conflict as it continues with its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

But Putin on Monday offered support to Iran, saying that he was hoping for peace soon and that Iran would navigate this "difficult period" of war, according to Russia's state news agency.

"For our part, we will do everything that serves your interests, the interests of all the people of the region, so that peace can be achieved as soon as possible," the RIA news agency quoted Putin as saying during his meeting with Araghchi. ...

At this point, I am more interested in the ~message~ the Democrats will be using.

It is too soon to start looking at candidates.

imo, choose the message first, then choose the candidate to rally around that message.

@#3 ... Because you're listening to music ...

Yeah, that's where I see a weakness in this study.

Another place I see a weakness occurs when cameras record ~things~ occurring that are not readily explainable.

Back in the late 70's my college friend and I were renting a house. Our bedrooms allowed us to look into the hallway.

One morning morning when we woke up for breakfast, we both were unusually quiet. After a while he asked me... did you see anything last night?

I told him, yes. I saw three or four white figures walking down the hallway outside my bedroom. He replied, that he saw the same thing.

As it happened, the neighbors told me that construction workers died while building the house.

There were no infrasonic tones involved during that occurrence.

@#5 ... Of course, that may beg the question, will FIFA schedule future events in the US? ...

Especially if the DHS is using those events to track down and deport people with a skin color they do not like.

OK, when I listen to Saint Saens Symphony #3 (Organ Symphony) and ~experience~ via my speakers the 16Hz organ notes, I don't see "hidden phenomenon" in my house.

What am I missing?

More from the article ...

... "Consider visiting a supposedly haunted building. Your mood shifts, you feel agitated, but you can't see or hear anything unusual," says the study's senior author Rodney Schmaltz, a psychologist at MacEwan University in Canada.

"In an old building, there is a good chance that infrasound is present, particularly in basements where aging pipes and ventilation systems produce low-frequency vibrations," Schmaltz continues.

"If you were told the building was haunted, you might attribute that agitation to something supernatural. In reality, you may simply have been exposed to infrasound."

Any sounds below the threshold at which humans can consciously perceive them -- around 20 hertz or lower -- are considered infrasound. These sounds have a remarkable ability to travel past obstacles without dissipating, so their influence is wide.

They can be generated by old pipes and machinery -- hence the haunted building link -- but also emanate from natural sources like storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, and aurorae. Some animals even incorporate infrasound into their communication and navigation. ...

So what, then, is the purpose of a Presidential bunker?

And does Pres Trump's grand plan for his ballroom meet that purpose?

More from the OpEd ...

... The White House bunker has never been intended to be a place a president would actually run a crisis from long-term. ...

In other remarks to the press aboard Air Force One, Trump called the ballroom a "shed" for the new bunker: "The military is building a massive complex under the ballroom, and that's under construction, and we're doing very well," Mr. Trump said. "We have secure telecommunications and communications all over. We have bomb shelters that we're building. We have a hospital and very major medical facilities that we're building. We have all of these things."

Understanding that it's often impossible to know as Donald Trump talks what's real, what's not, and what's mere hyperbole, the scale of what he's mentioned would represent a sharp departure from the traditional purpose of the presidential bunker. ...

Sieg Heil to Herr Führer.

@#4

To be honest, I am more concerned about the apparent deterioration of Pres Trump's mental acuity that I have been seeing in his second term.

Because I am in NYC local media, I have known [citizen] Trump since the late-80's, early 90's.

@#1 ... You, what do you think? ...

From the photo I saw, there looks to be something there.

What that something might be, I have no a clue.

More from the OpEd ...

... There were four pieces I wanted to highlight, both good and bad:

There was, for instance, a breathless Washington Post piece that seemed to imply some level of scandal or "laxness" in the security based on how the dinner wasn't designated a "National Security Special Event," but then (a) failed to mention whether that was a change from any prior WHCA dinner and (b) in its own subsequent reporting explained how the dinner failed to meet the standard for an NSSE, thereby undercutting the whole premise of the "scandal."

At the other end of the thoughtful-and-informed spectrum, one piece worth reading that brings some important nuance was this MS NOW one by Carol Leonnig, just about the only journalist who has written meaningfully about the long-term challenges of the Secret Service. She points out how the Secret Service has narrowly averted tragedy three times in two years when faced with "a low-tech lone wolf."

It's also astounding -- and worrisome -- how quickly and widespread how what one might call the "median online perspective" has coalesced around the incident being staged or a false-flag operation, citing a mix of evidence. It surely wasn't, but it's a troubling sign of how corrupted the public backdrop of trust is and how compromised our information environments are these days. As one person joked yesterday, the strongest evidence it wasn't staged was that no one tried to insider-trade on Kalshi or Polymarket.)

Lastly, I want to highlight Brian Stelter's very smart -- and heartfelt -- essay about how America's elite merely got a taste Saturday night of what it's like to now be a schoolchild in the US: "We need to say out loud that it was actually all too ordinary. In America this is all too common -- a shots-fired moment, a chaotic lockdown, a spasm of violence interrupting a peaceful gathering. Thousands of media and political elites have now gone through what countless millions of other Americans have experienced in their schools, offices, malls and churches. And on most of those occasions, there were no Secret Service agents." I did an entire podcast season about how America lost its mind and sense when it comes to guns, and it's sad that one time after another, we miss the opportunities to change our country's trajectory on gun violence. ...

... As oil prices surge and supply dwindles globally ...

As I wrote a few days ago, the oil tankers that were able to leave the Middle East before Pres trump caused the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz have mostly (if not completely) reached their destination ports.

Now, there are few tankers on the open seas going towards oil-hungry destination ports.

If the oil shipments through Hormuz were to start tomorrow, it would be weeks to a month or two before any tankers would reach their destination ports.

And then there is the damage inflicted upon the oil processing infrastructure of the various Middle East countries. How long will it take for that damage to be repaired.

While I am not yet in the camp of a "catastrophic rice shock" ... I am of the opinion that it will likely take months to recover once things return the the situation that was in place before Pres Trump caused this turmoil in the energy production and transport markets.