Phil Landmeier @shuttersparks@social.cleverlibre.org

Donald Trump presided over not 1, not 2, but THREE Chinese spy balloons, none of which he shot down and all of which he hid from the public.

The 3 #ChineseSpyBalloons exposes the emptiness of #Trump’s tough talk.

Thank you President #Biden for walking the walk.

Rocket Powered Apes

The Galactic Council of Advanced Races regarded the humans from planet Earth with a mix of fear and bemused detachment.

Unlike every other intelligent race in the galaxy, these sentient monkeys had somehow missed discovering the antigraviton. As a result, their technology relied on explosions. Their noisy cars left trails of filth across their planet, and their fledgling space program could barely progress beyond their own moon, using massive, dangerous rockets.

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Republicans, including Trump, slammed Biden for concealing a Chinese surveillance balloon and not shooting it down. Well, Biden didn't conceal it and did shoot it down. Now we learn that three such balloons spied on the US when Trump was president, and he totally concealed it and did not shoot them down.

Two things are simultaneously true, and we'd do well to stay aware of both:

1) The Former Guy absolutely must be charged and convicted for staging a coup, defrauding the public, stealing classified documents, and about half a dozen other extraordinary crimes.

2) Completing Step 1 won't save democracy in the US.

A seldom discussed aspect of Hitler's leadership of Nazi Germany is that he was... to put it mildly... quite terrible at it. He was an absolutely rubbish military strategist. He did not understand how to inspire loyalty, only how to enforce it. He was egotistical to a fault, and seldom entertained ideas he didn't at least marginally believe were his own. For most of World War II, there were various plots against his life in various stages of conceptualization and execution. Lots of Nazis wanted him gone, but it was dangerous to say that aloud.

There were several attempts that might have been successful. Most people have heard of the bomb that went off, but fewer know that he was also delivered booby trapped alcohol, but the mechanism malfunctioned. There was also an aborted attempt at a suicide bombing. Hitler could easily have died as World War II raged.

Here's the thing. Almost everything the Nazis did was *NOT HITLER'S IDEA." Hitler, like The Former Guy, was not the originator of the Third Reich. He was the useful executor. Almost everything they did, from wolfpacks to death camps, were schemed up by other more competent Nazis.

There's a strong argument that if Hitler had been killed, Germany might have done substantially better, for longer, and many, many more people would have died.

If The Former Guy is removed from play by disqualification or incarceration, DeSantis is waiting in the wings. If he doesn't do it, Margorie Taylor Green will give it a try. If she doesn't do it, someone else will.

While they have power, they are always an imminent threat. Convicting The Former Guy is the minimum for us to be able to say we're still a nation of laws. That's all. We live to fight another day if we win this battle. But somebody else will take charge of the Nazis, and there's a real danger they'll be more capable than TFG.

Stay frosty.

Something something limited government

Ok, so now that I’ve had a moment to breathe, let me take a few minutes to dive into the study I just published about Russian involvement in the 2022 truck convoy in Canada. The study can be read in full here: https://journals.lib.sfu.ca/index.php/jicw/article/view/5101

If I were an ambitious reporter with investigative skills and good FL contacts or roots, I'd be taking a leaf out of David Fahrenthold's book and start digging now into the web of connections between DeSantis and his major financial backers.

Corruption in state capitals often gets undercovered, certainly at the nat'l level. Anyone who gets a jump on this story can start thinking about Pulitzer nominations.

The economy is roaring, jobs are soaring, inflation is boring, recession is fading, covid is contained, and insurrectionists are going to jail. Yet the global conservative media entertainment complex wants to know "Why won't Biden lead?"

#LiberalMediaMyAss