Category: Uncategorized

Kash Patel is leading the FBI with a focus on raising his star profile, according to his agents. The 45-year-old FBI director—who had no prior experience at the agency before bagging the top job—is said to demand a heads-up for any “noteworthy arrests” so he can be on the scene and get screen time.

A source told Axios that, alongside Patel focusing on making it on the news, agents are instructed that if the director does show up—which isn’t a given—they should avoid engaging with him. Patel is rarely spotted out of an FBI windbreaker while on the job, with a source telling Axios that the habit is rubbing staff the wrong way. “You’re the director of the FBI. Wear a f–king suit,” the recently-retired agent said.

The agent’s complaint mirrors a report leaked this month in a dossier compiled by former and current agents that addresses Patel’s leadership failures.

In one incident, the dossier claims that Patel threw a tantrum when he arrived in Provo, Utah, the day after Charlie Kirk was assassinated. While FBI agents were in the midst of a manhunt, Patel allegedly refused to leave his jet until he was provided with a size medium windbreaker. Patel then continued his fit, because the jacket did not have enough patches on the sleeve. He remained on the jet until members of the FBI SWAT team “took patches off their uniforms and ran those patches over to FBI Director Kash Patel at the airport.”

Navy confirms the obvious:

The U.S. Navy has confirmed to TWZ that construction of the first two Trump class “battleships” is not expected to start until the early 2030s. While cost estimates are still being firmed up, the service is moving now to award sole-source contracts to Bath Iron Works, Huntington Ingalls Industries, and Gibbs & Cox for initial design and other work related to these large surface combatants. Readers can first get up to speed on what is already known about the plans for these ships and the glaring questions surrounding them in our initial reporting here.

President Donald Trump officially rolled out the Trump class warship plan at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, last night. With displacements of at least around 35,000 tons, the vessels are set to be armed with an array of nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as electromagnetic railguns, traditional 5-inch naval guns, laser directed energy weapons, and more. Production is supposed to start with two ships, the first of which will be named USS Defiant, out of a planned initial batch of 10 hulls. Trump has said that the total fleet size might eventually grow to 20 to 25 examples.

“Design efforts are underway with start of construction planned for the early 2030s,” a U.S. Navy official told TWZ. “Design studies are ongoing to refine Navy cost estimates. These details will be available in the PB FY27 [President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2027] budget request.”

Another individual familiar with the program also told TWZ that work to build the first Trump class ships is not expected to begin until the early 2030s. They also told us that the new “battleship” plan is supplanting the Navy’s DDG(X) next-generation destroyer effort, and will leverage work already done on that design concept.

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Trump’s “battleships” clearly are not the battleships of WW II.  These look more like the much smaller heavy cruiser, outfitted with several gun and missile systems.  Of course, because Trump has no understanding of anything having to do with the Navy, he thinks anything bigger than a canoe is a “battleship.”

I’d tag 2036 as “optimistic” for the first ship to enter service, assuming any ships ever enter service. If we say 2032 for laying the keel of the first ship, that’s a good six years and at least one additional Presidential administration for things to go wrong… and well before the program is capable of building a foundation of political support among labor and industry that might protect it from budget cutting down the line.

To put things in gambling terms… The chances of 2036 for the commissioning of USS Defiant (the first vessel) are slim — the ship may even be cancelled before “the 2030’s.”

The alleged presence of ISIS in Abuja is a mystery to local residents:

A day after part of a missile fired by the United States hit their village, landing just meters from its only medical facility, the people of Jabo in northwestern Nigeria are in a state of shock and confusion.

Suleiman Kagara, a resident of this quiet and predominantly Muslim farming community in Tambuwal district of Sokoto state, told CNN he heard a loud blast and saw flames as a projectile flew overhead at around 10 p.m. on Thursday.

Soon after, it came crashing down, exploding on impact with the ground and sending the villagers fleeing in fear.

“We couldn’t sleep last night,” Kagara said. “We’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Kagara did not realize it at the time, but what he was witnessing was part of a US strike that President Donald Trump would later refer to as a “Christmas present” for terrorists.

Not long after the impact in Jabo, Trump declared on Thursday that the US had carried out a “powerful and deadly strike” against ISIS militants in the region, who he accused of “targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even centuries!”

According to US Africa Command, the operation neutralized multiple ISIS militants.

But Trump’s explanation has left Kagara and his fellow villagers scratching their heads.

Ozymandias, or, An Ode To Donald Trump

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Ozymandias, King of Kings

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

— Percy Shelley, “Ozymandias”, 1819 edition

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The prominent theme of Shelley’s poem is the inevitable decline of rulers and their hubris. In the poem, despite Ozymandias’ grandiose ambitions, the power turns out to be ephemeral.

“. . . power turns out to be ephemeral.”  Which is exactly what will remain of Trump after we have had a chance to clean up the sewage, the rot, the trash that he has erected.

To remind Trump:

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The papers the federal government holds relating to Jeffrey Epstein are trickling out, reluctantly and incompetently, as the Trump administration executes so many duties relating to justice and the Justice Department. They are a morass.

For one thing, there are simply so many of them, from so many legal actions, from (perhaps) intelligence surveillance, from his interactions with presidents and other governmental figures. Then there is the vetting process. They are coming out as individual documents, not at all as files of documents related by time or investigation. Not much can be gleaned from them until they are put into chronological and logical order.

We get a bit here and a piece there. The letter to gymnast pedophile Larry Nassar may or may not be genuine, nobody knows. Photos of smiling and happy Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in congenial surroundings. Legal documents and emails that, because of the too-generous redactions, are difficult to fit into any sort of order. Pages and pages blacked out, some of which may yield information after digital manipulation.

What do we hope to learn from these documents? The women who were abused and who have pressed for justice hope to learn who abused them and bring them to prosecution or at least societal disapproval, if prosecution fails. They would also like to understand why their reports to law enforcement went unacted upon. One of those claims has been found in the mountain of documents. It is a long way to justice.

A portion of Trump supporters and other Republicans seem to have particular expectations, that Trump will be shown to be innocent or even protective of the abused girls, or that some apocalyptic scheme will come together. The mass and incoherence of the material will allow them to construct narratives useful to their purposes.

What is in it for the rest of us? Standard reporting has shown a great deal, particularly recently. The New York Times has been doing a creditable job of exposing how Epstein made his fortune. We have long known of his industrial-scale pimping of children and courting of the wealthy and famous. We have long known that Trump was a good friend of Epstein’s and spent significant time with him. We have long known that Trump felt free to sexually assault women and that he has shown inappropriate affection for his daughter.

We know that institutions protect the wealthy and connected. We know that the wealthy and connected protect each other.

Will it matter if some of the released documents show Trump as a full patron of Epstein’s services? Will that compete with the narratives his followers will derive from their reading of the documents?

I’m not arguing against releasing the documents. We’ve followed that path, and their release can be helpful to the women who were abused, so let’s continue. It is likely to take a long time before anything definitive emerges.

 

Meanwhile, there’s this from Attorney General Pam Bondi:

When Trump is — finally — dead, I guess the MAGAts will remember Trump struggling against the Secret Service agents in Butler, PA, who raced to protect him from “whatever happened that day.”

And, of course, he monetized it immediately into “Fight Fight Fight” cologne for men and perfume for women, and a $150 “Fight Fight Fight” coffee table book that he sold for $150.

A short rewind to September 10, 2025.

Outside of the MAGAt cult…in terms of liberals and independents, not just “conservatives,” Charlie Kirk was a minor figure. And within moments of his death, conservatives were demanding Charlie Kirk shrines at universities, a “Charlie Kirk day of remembrance,” and we Democrats were wondering: “Say, what’s for lunch today?”

Because while we called out the act of murder and don’t condone it under ANY circumstances, Kirk’s death did not represent a “loss” for us. Every time someone is murdered, HUMANITY AT LARGE is diminished. But there hasn’t been a day since Sept 10 when I woke up and thought “I MISS CHARLIE” as I wiped a tear from my radical leftist cheek.

Trump seems to take GREAT DELIGHT in unleashing his bile, his seething hatred, his rage, on HOLIDAYS that average Americans are trying to enjoy, without an Adderall-addled old man calling them scum.

WHEN THE NEWS BREAKS THAT TRUMP IS DEAD, whatever reaction we…the people who are not red-hat wearing cult members…will have, will most likely NOT BE THE SAME as the reactions of the MAGAts. We won’t see the raised fist and the teensy weensy paper cut on his ear and “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT.”

We’ll see a bitter old man at his country club, on Christmas Eve, wishing his Slovenian trophy wife would just come in his room and “touch it,” but she’s in her own room with the door locked or in New York with her son, telling him what a precious boo boo he is and how much mommy loves him, while sad old rapist felon Trump rage-tweets to the world that they are “scum.”

And when we don’t take a knee for DEAD Donnie, we’ll be labeled as creatures of hate, even though our REASON FOR NOT TAKING A KNEE is that we don’t tend to do that when it involves hate-filled vicious people.

Merry Christmas, folks.

He is a sick, tired, frustrated, lost old man who is in WAAAAY over his head.

A year into his second term, Donald Trump has undergone a major change in “tactics” as he deflects questions about his policies — and it’s an indication that he is now “just running on fumes,” an analyst wrote Monday.

Salon’s Amanda Marcotte pointed out that the president has developed an over-reliance on deflecting questions while claiming he is not up to speed on the topic or person he is being asked about, and that often begins with, “I don’t know…”

That is a change from his previous deflections, where he promised everything would sort itself out in “two weeks.”

According to the columnist, Trump’s ignorance act could be just that, but she wrote that it is surprising for a man who has always boasted that he is an expert on everything.

“The president’s willingness to play the stupidest man alive is telling, because he is also a narcissist who has spent his entire adult life demanding that people believe he is the smartest, most handsome, most perfect person who has ever walked the face of the planet,” she wrote. “He’s dubbed himself a ‘super genius’ who understands every topic under the sun — including money, trade, history, international relations, travel, the military, ISIS and spycraft — better than anyone else.”

Noting that now the president, “just says ‘I don’t know’ until people stop asking,” she suggested, “The purpose of this gambit is to deflect accountability for his growing pile of failures, corruption and scandals. But the cumulative effect is to paint a picture of a man who is profoundly, almost impossibly, dim-witted.”

While admitting his latest way of deflecting questions is frustrating, she added there is a “silver lining” attached to it.

“Even Trump himself seems to be getting tired of his own tactics. He can’t manage to work up the energy for a more convincing deflection. He’s bored and tired, his polls are falling and, with three years left, his second term already feels like it’s running on fumes,” she wrote before conceding, “It’s a small thing, but one of the many green shoots suggesting that, while this is not the end of MAGA, it may very well be the end’s beginning.”

This is the CBS 60 Minutes segment exposing the vile El Salvadoran prison to which Trump deported American citizens and legal immigrants.  This was to have been aired on Dec 22, 2025, but was pulled after Trump complained to Bari Weiss, the dimwitted new CEO of CBS who wants more than anything to kiss Trump’s ass.

https://archive.org/details/60minutes-cecotsegment

 

CBS Broadcast System should change their name to BS Broadcast System.

 

 

 

 

 

When the US started deporting immigrants earlier this year, the first groups where hauled to El Salvador where they  were turned over to the El Salvadoran government who placed them in the  CECOT  prison, which is well-known as one of the absolute worst of prisons in the world.

CBS 60 Minutes prepared a segment on the prison and the torture inflicted on men who had been deported from the US on flimsy or no evidence.  A few hours before the segment was to air, Ms. Bari Weiss, the new CEO of CBS, ordered the report pulled off the air because Trump opposed it.

This is what happened:

On Friday morning, CBS sent out a press release promoting the upcoming segment. “Inside CECOT,” it was called. The network described it as a look at “one of El Salvador’s harshest prisons,” featuring interviews with recently released deportees who would describe “the brutal and torturous conditions they endured.” CBS ran promotional clips on the air and on social media. The 60 Minutes website had a page up for the segment.

 On Friday night, Donald Trump held a rally in North Carolina. He complained about 60 Minutes, saying the program had “treated me worse under the new ownership” and that if the Ellisons, who now control CBS’s parent company, “are friends, I’d hate to see my enemies!”

 On Saturday morning, Weiss weighed in with concerns about the segment. According to CNN’s reporting, she took issue with the lack of an on-camera response from the Trump administration. She suggested the segment needed an interview with Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, and provided his contact information to 60 Minutes staff.

 By Sunday afternoon, the story was dead. CBS posted on social media that the segment would “air in a future broadcast.” The promotional page was taken down. The clips were removed from YouTube. A CBS spokesperson told reporters the segment “needed additional reporting.”

Here is a link that should take you to the original 60 Minutes segment.  It may have been taken down by now.

https://archive.org/details/3mam75w3oec2n

CBS needs to change their name from CBS Broadcasting Company to BS Broadcasting Company – or just to Trump Broadcasting Company.