temporary guest Edmund Burke
2 hours ago edited
I recall, when Bill Clinton was president, I got two calls from pollsters wanting to know if I thought character was an issue in an American president. I answered with a quote that I had heard attributed to Fletcher Christian in the movie, "Mutiny On The Bounty" (I have never seen the movie) ... The quote, Fletcher Christian to Captain Blythe, "Sir, if honor abides not in the captain of the ship, it is not on board".

Another quote, if I remember correctly, from G.S. Weaver, D.D. in his book, "The Lives And Graves Of Our Presidents" published by Elder Publishing Company, Chicago, in 1888: "No nation will ever be stronger than the virtues of it's men".

The fact that so many folks just don't seem to notice, understand or give a rip any more about such things as honor, decency, fidelity, loyalty and personal integrity doesn't change the fundamental realities of life. Character Matters. It always will. The lack of it does not negate that truth; it only demonstrates a weakening rot within men, and their nations.

Department of Government Efficiency
@DOGE
·
Follow
In 2020-2021, SBA granted 5,593 loans for $312M to borrowers whose only listed owner was 11 years old or younger at the time of the loan. While it is possible to have business arrangements where this is legal, that is highly unlikely for these 5,593 loans, as they all also used… Show more
Department of Government Efficiency
@DOGE
In 2020-2021, @SBAgov issued 3,095 loans, including PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) and EIDL (Economic Injury Disaster Loan), for $333M to borrowers over 115 years old who were still marked as alive in the Social Security database.

In one case, a 157 years old individual received $36k in loans.
4:10 AM · Mar 9, 2025. //

While it is possible to have business arrangements where this is legal, that is highly unlikely for these 5,593 loans, as they all also used an SSN with the incorrect name.

@DOGE and @SBAgov are working together to solve this problem this week. //

ShowMeGrl/Maybe Maybe Not Steve351C
4 hours ago
Bingo! I think that's where ActBlue has been getting its illicit funds - that and overseas dark money. I guarantee Soros didn't spend one penny of his own money, the money he's spent came through his bogus foundations which has been funded by USAID. I've also noticed that the rent-a-crowds have disappeared too. //

polyjunkie
5 hours ago
It is almost certain that these fraudulent loans ended up with some funding going to the Democrat party. In any event, the Democrats have overseen the greatest waste of taxpayer funds in the history of the galaxy.

American Christians already live as functional atheists, oblivious to the spiritual realm. //

On August 17, 2009, Barack Obama appointed Francis Collins as the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Lauded as a hero of the faith because he professed belief in God while leading the Human Genome Project some years prior, Collins became a link between Christian institutions and the scientific establishment. As association with Collins meant a pastor couldn’t be accused of being some backward-thinking fundamentalist, Collins’s image became synonymous with a more nuanced, reasonable faith – perhaps even a faith that was academically robust.

A year after taking the helm of NIH, Collins reportedly believed that “it is not possible scientifically to settle precisely when life begins.” In fact, before taking over NIH, Collins had already praised eugenic abortions ( when one prenatally tests the baby to see if they’re “fit” or “unfit” and disposes of them if they aren’t up to scruff) as something people “in our current society… are in a circumstance of being able to take advantage of” and something “we have decided as a society… needs to be defended.” And shortly after his confirmation at NIH, Collins said that establishing a new human embryonic stem cell registry was one of his high priorities. If Collins was indeed Mephistopheles’ vessel, the demon wasted no time in devouring his favorite kind of child: very small ones. After all, there are no embryonic stem cells without dead babies. //

In 2006, three years before his appointment at NIH, Collins published his book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, in which he explains how he found harmony between scientific and spiritual worldviews. However, what many Christians drooling over such a “respectable” and “nuanced” Christianity missed is that he defended research on preborn children, so long as they hadn’t been created expressly for such “research.” However his position on this also made space for pursuing scientific discoveries using “the sacrifice and destruction of ‘leftover’ human embryos from fertility clinics.” //

Humanized rats. Remains of unborn babies, purchased from Planned Parenthood and the like, had their scalps removed and subsequently attached to the heads of lab rats. As head of the NIH, not only did Collins approve this study and thus validate its objectives, but he also provided taxpayer funds to pay for it. //

Russell Moore, Rick Warren, Ed Stetzer, David French, Tim Keller (in his day), and the rest of Big Eva all have one thing in common with the “progressive” revolutionaries of today’s culture: the belief that God’s children are indeed for sale. They only differ on the price tag and form of payment. Like Lot, if provided with the right incentives, our theological betters will not hesitate to toss God’s children into the arms of the mob.

There’s a reason why Rick Warren is invited to Davos by the World Economic Forum every year but Pastor Jack Hibbs is not. There’s a reason why Russell Moore is CNN’s and MSNBC’s “phone a Christian” thinker and Voddie Baucham is not. There’s a reason why David French has a weekly op-ed in the New York Times and Eric Metaxas does not. There’s a reason why the New York Times would ask Tim Keller to submit articles, but not ask Pastor Douglas Wilson. Because the former are hirelings and the latter can’t be bought. //

Peskemom7:20p, 7/8/24
Hugh Hewitt- National radio talk show host in early Covid was respectful and deferential to both Fauci and Collins in his several interviews. Then Hugh realized the whole thing was a scam. I listened when he
Graciously but firmly confronted both of them in interviews and heard their shock- annoyance- refusal to consider they were wrong on anything. That hubris and pride alone was so revealing. I realized from then on Collins - whatever "Mr. Rogers/ Captain Kangaroo" demeanor he presents is a very evil man. And hiding behind a Christian facade is demonic. Your analysis is correct. //

Dr Bruce1:31p, 7/9/24

"If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, then I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages, the loyalty of the soldier is proved; it is for the soldier to be steady on this particular battlefield. It is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one crucial point." (E.R. Charles)

https://virtueonline.org/two-litmus-tests-christian-orthodoxy-moral-realm-culture-wars. //

Sweet Foot Slim7:38a, 7/17/24
In reply to Doc Chai
I believe you are totally wrong but what I believe doesn't matter. I do agree that I cannot condemn this (evil) person's immortal soul. That is way above my pay grade.

What I CAN and WILL condemn are his EVIL ACTS. The act of harvesting organs from a living baby, or in my opinion, a baby killed for the specific purpose of harvesting organs is PURE EVIL. Again, to put it into simple terms even a scientist(sic) can fathom, the ACT is evil. Whether I believe the man's soul will be damned is not my call nor not really my concern. If the Lord has mercy on my soul and I get to heaven and find him or Mengele or Hitler hanging with God I will not question my Lord. I don't believe it will happen but it is not my call. I will love my God.

But I WILL condemn with every ounce of my being the EVIL ACTS and the EVIL coverup. If this (who I believe to be evil) person is pure and Godly and full of the Holy Spirit let him shout from the rooftops about his projects of murdering babies and harvesting their organs. A clear indication this just might be pure evil is hiding from the light of truth.

And, yes, I am a knower of science, a trained physicist/mathematician. God gave us the gift of reason to do good for His children, not to murder babies.

I think there is a common thread running through these selections. They are not creatures of the system, but they are familiar with it and how it is broken. Their loyalty is to Trump and Hegseth, not to defense contractors or congressional powerbrokers. They have a genuine desire to rebuild the military.

Putting Parlatore in the Navy JAG slot will give Phelan and Cao a strong partner in cleaning up the cultural morass that has created a Navy that appears to be absolutely broken to the outside observer.

WireGuard is an open-source modern VPN (Virtual Private Network) solution that utilizes cryptography protocols to create secure network connections between devices. It's efficient and offers improved reliability than traditional VPN protocols like IPSec. This guide explains how to install WireGuard VPN on a FreeBSD 14.0 and securely configure network tunnels on the server.

Intuitive Machines announced on Friday morning that its Athena mission to the surface of the Moon, which landed on its side, has ended.

"With the direction of the Sun, the orientation of the solar panels, and extreme cold temperatures in the crater, Intuitive Machines does not expect Athena to recharge," the company said in a statement. "The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission."

Athena, a commercially developed lander, touched down on the lunar surface on Thursday at 11:28 am local time in Houston (17:28 UTC). The probe landed within 250 meters of its targeted landing site in the Mons Mouton region of the Moon. This is the southernmost location that any probe has landed on the Moon, within a few degrees of the lunar south pole. //

NASA has accepted that these commercial lunar missions are high-risk, high-reward. (Firefly's successful landing last weekend offers an example of high rewards). It is paying the companies, on average, $100 million or less per flight. This is a fraction of what NASA would pay through a traditional procurement program. The hope is that, after surviving initial failures, companies like Intuitive Machines will learn from their mistakes and open a low-cost, reliable pathway to the lunar surface. //

Fortunately, this is unlikely to be the end for the company. NASA has committed to a third and fourth mission on Intuitive Machines' lander, the next of which could come during the first quarter of 2026. NASA has also contracted with the company to build a small network of satellites around the Moon for communications and positioning services. So although the company's fortunes look dark today, they are not permanently shadowed like the craters on the Moon that NASA hopes to soon explore.

DVDs, if taken care of properly, should last for 30 to up to 100 years. It turned out that the problems that Bumbray had weren't due to a DVD player or poor DVD maintenance. In a statement to JoBlo shared on Tuesday, WBD confirmed widespread complaints about DVDs manufactured between 2006 and 2008. The statement said:

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is aware of potential issues affecting select DVD titles manufactured between 2006 – 2008, and the company has been actively working with consumers to replace defective discs.

Where possible, the defective discs have been replaced with the same title. However, as some of the affected titles are no longer in print or the rights have expired, consumers have been offered an exchange for a title of like-value. //

Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader noted that owners of WB DVDs can check to see if their discs were manufactured by the maligned plant by looking at the inner ring codes on the DVDs' undersides. //

evanTO Ars Scholae Palatinae
7y
839
DRM makes it difficult, and in some cases impossible, for people to make legitimate backups of their own media. Not being able to legally do this, particularly as examples like this article abound, is just one more example of how US Copyright Law is broken.

But David Seubert, who manages sound collections at the University of California, Santa Barbara library, told Ars that he frequently used the project as an archive and not just to listen to the recordings.

For Seubert, the videos that IA records of the 78 RPM albums capture more than audio of a certain era. Researchers like him want to look at the label, check out the copyright information, and note the catalogue numbers, he said.

"It has all this information there," Seubert said. "I don't even necessarily need to hear it," he continued, adding, "just seeing the physicality of it, it's like, 'Okay, now I know more about this record.'". //

Some sound recording archivists and historians also continue to defend the Great 78 Project as a critical digitization effort at a time when quality of physical 78 RPM records is degrading and the records themselves are becoming obsolete, with very few libraries even maintaining equipment to play back the limited collections that are available in physical archives.

They push back on labels' claims that commercially available Spotify streams are comparable to the Great 78 Project's digitized recordings, insisting that sound history can be lost when obscure recordings are controlled by rights holders who don't make them commercially available. //

Music publishers suing IA argue that all the songs included in their dispute—and likely many more, since the Great 78 Project spans 400,000 recordings—"are already available for streaming or downloading from numerous services."

"These recordings face no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed," their filing claimed.

But Nathan Georgitis, the executive director of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC), told Ars that you just don't see 78 RPM records out in the world anymore. Even in record stores selling used vinyl, these recordings will be hidden "in a few boxes under the table behind the tablecloth," Georgitis suggested. And in "many" cases, "the problem for libraries and archives is that those recordings aren't necessarily commercially available for re-release." //

That "means that those recordings, those artists, the repertoire, the recorded sound history in itself—meaning the labels, the producers, the printings—all of that history kind of gets obscured from view," Georgitis said.

Currently, libraries trying to preserve this history must control access to audio collections, Georgitis said. He sees IA's work with the Great 78 Project as a legitimate archive in that, unlike a streaming service, where content may be inconsistently available, IA's "mission is to preserve and provide access to content over time."

"That 'over time' part is really the key function, I think, that distinguishes an archive from maybe a streaming service in a way," Georgitis said.

An ARSC member and IA supporter, Seubert agreed with IA that any music fan wanting to listen to songs "for entertainment purposes" would go to Spotify or Apple Music, rather than IA, which is more for "people who for whatever reason need to take a deep dive into some obscure corner of recorded sound history."

To Seubert and IA fans, there seems to be little evidence that the Great 78 Project is meaningfully diverting streams from labels' preferred platforms. Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" is perhaps the most heavily streamed song in the case, with nearly 550 million streams on Spotify compared to about 15,000 views on the Great 78 Project.

These judges aren’t applying law; they’re rewriting it.

Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh in dissent, saw through this charade. His words cut to the core of the issue: “Does a single district court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned.” //

The separation of powers doctrine enshrined in the Constitution assigns distinct roles to each branch of government. The executive, led by the president, has broad authority over foreign affairs and the execution of federal funds, especially when Congress has not explicitly mandated their disbursement. Trump’s foreign aid pause, enacted on his first day back in office, was a legitimate exercise of that authority, aimed at reevaluating programs he deemed wasteful.

Yet the Supreme Court’s decision allows the judiciary to override this discretion, effectively seizing control of the purse strings — a power reserved for Congress and the executive. In joining the leftist justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett have tipped the scales toward judicial supremacy, blurring the lines between the branches and weakening the presidency.

President Trump should seriously consider defying this order. History offers precedent: Andrew Jackson famously ignored the Supreme Court’s 1832 ruling in Worcester v. Georgia, declaring, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” Jackson’s stance was controversial, but it underscored a truth: the Supreme Court has no army, no purse, no means to enforce its will beyond the executive’s cooperation.

If Trump refuses to pay, he’d be asserting the executive’s constitutional primacy over foreign policy and federal spending, forcing a reckoning on the judiciary’s overreach. The risks — legal challenges, political backlash, Democrats later making the same play — are real, but so is the cost of compliance: a precedent that emboldens activist judges to micromanage the executive at every turn.

Critics will cry “rule of law,” but what law demands $2 billion be paid “posthaste” without due process or legislative clarity? The Administrative Procedure Act cited by Judge Ali doesn’t grant judges carte blanche to issue billion-dollar edicts. Aid groups argue the freeze caused harm, but their remedy lies with Congress, not the courts. The Supreme Court’s failure to check this abuse sets a dangerous stage for future administrations — Republican or Democrat — to be hamstrung by unelected judges wielding unchecked power.

The $2 billion order isn’t just about foreign aid; it’s about who governs. The judiciary has crossed a line, and the executive must push back. Trump should stand firm, not out of defiance, but to defend the Constitution. As Alito warned, the Supreme Court’s misstep “imposes a $2 billion penalty on American taxpayers” and rewards “an act of judicial hubris.” It’s time to reject that hubris and restore the balance of power. //

Curtis Hill is the former attorney general of Indiana.

By the time adversaries detect the Raptor, it has often already fired missiles and maneuvered to a superior position. On the other hand, the F-15 might outrun its targets but retains a larger radar cross-section and can be tracked and engaged by many more enemies.

The Eagle relies on its high thrust-to-weight ratio and robust radar suite for air intercept, whereas the Raptor leverages stealth and sensor fusion to stalk its prey.

Each philosophy that is imbued in the two designs reflects the doctrine from the eras of their development. The 1970s favored dominance through speed and heavy weapons, while modern tactics focus on evading detection and maximizing electronic warfare (EW) techniques.

The Danish postal service has said it will deliver its last letter at the end of this year, instead focusing on packages to respond to changing forms of communication.

PostNord said on Thursday it would cut 1,500 jobs in Denmark and remove 1,500 red postboxes, citing the “increasing digitalisation” of society.

The company, formed in 2009 in a merger of the Swedish and Danish postal services, is owned by the Danish and Swedish states in a respective 40:60 split. Letter distribution in Sweden would not be affected, it said.

The Danish postal service has been responsible for delivering letters in the country since 1624, but since 2000 the number of letters has declined by more than 90%, it said.

PostNord Denmark will deliver its last letter on 30 December.

The U.K. government appears to have quietly scrubbed encryption advice from government web pages, just weeks after demanding backdoor access to encrypted data stored on Apple’s cloud storage service, iCloud.

According to a report by TechSpot, Western Digital will now focus solely on its native hard disk technology, with the SSD division being spun off into SanDisk. This means that lineups like WD_BLACK will now be manufactured by SanDisk instead of WD themselves, and this will ultimately mean that Western Digital branding won't be there anymore. //

lostinblue Newbie
12 hours ago
Does the person who wrote the article know anything? Western Digital didn't quit SSD's because they weren't the future and hdds will grow as it's being implied and would be nuts, WD CEO David V. Goeckeler decided to spun the company but resign and become Sandisk CEO, Irving Tan is just a guy appointed to keep at it. Goeckeler is one of the most disliked CEOs in the industry (voted the worst actually), and is chasing his quarterly growth and profits as always because that means prize money for him. He tries to do this every year, inflate the growth to maximize how much money he gets and bet the company in the process. Funny that a ceo with no vision and no morals can fool a tech website this big though. I advise to cover it as it is, not a copy pasting the press release they do about it. PR Speak being PR Speak, it's worth nothing. //

lostinblue Newbie
Kendall
12 hours ago
It's about profits. WD CEO became Sandisk CEO and he is shedding WD skin. This is made in order to maximize and fake growth so he gets his prize money. He's very impopular and more than once took risky decisions like trying mergers just to hit his personal objectives. It should be reported as it is, a company being managed by people taking money out of it. The board is cahoots with him.

Anyway, this board i talk about they all left Western Digital with him. //

lostinblue Newbie
PANOS MESSIOS
12 hours ago
It's just a PR stunt. WD board of directors resigned and all were appointed to the same positions with Sandisk.

I'll let you guess where these CEO's thought there would be growth.

Jailbreak it, or even gut it and turn its screen into a low-power portable display with a Modos e-ink controller. //

Alternatively, WinterBreak appeared at the start of the year and supports jailbreaking even recent models of Kindle on the latest firmware.

Once the device is jailbroken, you can install your own reading or browsing software such as KOReader, allowing the Kindle to be used to read files in other formats. We did like one Hacker News commenter's single-word summary of why to do it, though: "Folders."

GBenton Indylawyer
4 hours ago
Obama and Biden tried to fundamentally transform America so we could never recover or undo their damage. and Biden was Obama's third term, so the agenda was the same.

Trump is not only doing what he promised, he is tearing out what the dems have built over the past 100 years. If he succeeds, he won't just set them back an election cycle, he'll make it nearly impossible for them to rebuild because he's also changing the culture and the public is getting red pilled on how the Dems have deceived and abused us.

So I can see why Walz and Kamala are the lingering faces of the party - no one with a brain will want to step into this meat grinder.

With ActBlue imploding and Soros in the crosshairs, the Dems may find 2026 and 2028 to be excruciating, especially if we secure the elections with voter ID and paper ballots.

No fraud, no Dem victories, IMO.

All the presidents after Reagan except Trump LIED about what they would do or just failed. Obama wasn't hope and change, he was hate and divide. Biden wasn't a return to normalcy, nor did he build back better, he was a braindead fascist who destroyed everything in his wake.

And Bush's "compassionate conservatism" was total horseshit big government neocon warmongering insanity.

Which is why Trump is blowing minds because he just says what he thinks and then does it. Like him or not, he's not lying.

He does use misdirection and surprise and some deception to keep the enemy on their toes, but he's fundamentally restoring America from the ground up and if the GOP stays the course after 2028 and keeps promises, the Dems are in really, really deep shit.

They can't counter populism with populism lite because no one believes them and Trump occupies that lane and "me too" brands don't tend to work.

Just wait until the crimes and corruption is revealed - the Democrat brand will be radioactive for a generation and Socialism, woke, big government and Communism will be deeply unpopular with the majority of voters. Biden innoculated GenZ from wanting to vote for Dem wokist tyranny.

stripmallgrackle Indylawyer
5 hours ago
We all know that's why the DC establishment pulled out every stop trying to turn him into a national disgrace. They knew he he meant it when he campaigned on the bread and butter promises that every candidate for office has been peddling for decades.

They also know Trump is smart, despite the daily bilge they feed to the media. Worse, the real change Trump is bringing will expose the elites for the lying, self serving scoundrels they are. He's giving voters a real difference in leadership that they can judge future candidates against.

But try telling that to the die hard democrat next door.

What could be happening that would cause most of the executives and all but one of the lawyers to flee a sweet gig? Former RedState colleague Bill Shipley has some insights.

I have no information on this subject but ....

In my experience, this kind of thing starts to happen a large businesses with shady operating practices when law enforcement starts to make contact with senior officials about want to ask them some questions.

That leads to lawyers getting involved.

That leads to lawyers telling their clients that it would be in their interest to part ways with the enterprise.

During the 2024 campaign, we began to see a lot of suspicious activity that indicated federal election campaign violations on a Biblical scale. //

Experts working for the committee used AI to analyze more than 200 million FEC records spanning the last 14 years and identified suspicious trends, including hundreds of $2.50 donations from the same individual, donations in amounts far greater than the donor could afford, and unusually frequent donations from elderly people or first-time contributors.

Further investigation revealed that ActBlue accepted donations from prepaid credit cards and foreign credit cards. They even accepted contributions from countries under sanctions. //

Nineteen Republican attorneys general launched an investigation into ActBlue's fundraising practices. //

ActBlue probably will not survive this. The flight of its senior staff and legal department indicates potential felony indictments on the horizon. A lot of hostile eyeballs will be watching ActBlue's donations very carefully using sophisticated data analysis tools. ActBlue's brand will be associated with fraud and lawbreaking far beyond what we associate with the usual Democrat-run organization. I'm sure WinRed, the less effective Republican clone of ActBlue, will be found to have similar problems. All of this is sure to lead to increased monitoring of online fundraising by the FEC and the Department of Justice. And in November 2026, we'll see just how many real people donate to Democrats. //

houdini1984
2 hours ago
The good news is that this turmoil has absolutely nothing to do with the new focus on identifying and eliminating government fraud and waste. It's just a coincidence that leftist protests have slowed down and the donations have started to dry up. After all, these organizations and movements have always been entirely organic in nature, never relied on misdirected government funds, and the people involved in them are just taking some time off to get outside and touch some grass.

No need to follow the money...

But if you happen to have a cloud-based Linux server running anyway, building a WireGuard VPN can be a simple and free way to add some serious, compromise-free security and privacy to your life.

If you plan to limit the VPN to just devices owned by you and a few friends, you'll probably never even notice any extra resource load on your server. Even if you had to fire up and pay for a dedicated AWS EC2 t2.micro reserved instance, the annual costs should still come out significantly cheaper than most commercial VPNs. And, as a bonus, you'll get complete control over your data.

Right now I'm going to show you how all that would work using the open source WireGuard software on an Ubuntu Linux server.

Why WireGuard? Because it's really easy to use, is designed to be particularly attack resistant, and it's so good at what it does that it was recently incorporated into the Linux kernel itself.

The actual work to make this happen really will take only five minutes - or less. Having said that, planning things out, troubleshooting for unexpected problems and, if necessary, launching a new server might add significant time to the project.

The TSA has no legal right to organize, but negotiations were opened with the AFGE to represent TSA screeners in June 2021. The agreement was signed in March 2024.

As an aside, on social media, you routinely read comments to the effect that federal employee unions were created in 1962 by John F. Kennedy's Executive Order 10988, and all that is needed to abolish them is to repeal that order. That is utter nonsense. While the Kennedy executive order did open the door, the right of federal employees was codified by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (P.L. 95-454), which you can find at 5 USC 71.

This is undoubtedly headed for court because AFGE can't afford to cede this ground without a fight. Because the TSA union does not have Title 5 recognition, the administration will prevail in the end, but we can count on leftist judges to slow things down along the way.

The doctors wheeled Trump out of his room to get a CT scan for a possible concussion. The test came back clean, and Trump wanted the records.

“Can you give me a copy of these?” Trump asked a nurse. “Because I want to make sure I can show reporters that my cognitive function is 100 percent. You can’t say the same about Joe Biden.”

“We can put it on a CD for you,” the nurse said.

“OK,” he said. “We'll release that at a later date.”

I know some people with no sense of humor may read that and think Trump lacked seriousness in the moment, but come on. That's legitimately hilarious, and I figure the rule should be that if you get shot, you can react however you want. Certainly, no one can accuse the president of not keeping his eye on the ball. After all, even though he had been shot, there was still an election to win, and if anything, the stakes had only been raised. //

Biden was about to address the nation about the shooting. Trump was back in his hospital room, and there was no TV. Cheung pulled up a feed from CNN on his phone and they watched. After the president was done, Trump asked to see some of the pictures that had been taken during the attack. One, from the New York Times’s Doug Mills, showed a bullet whizzing by Trump’s head. Another, by the Associated Press’s Evan Vucci, depicted a bloodied Trump defiantly raising his fist, with the American flag behind him.

“Wow, that's iconic,” Trump said. “That's the most American picture I've ever seen.” //

Mike Ford
15 hours ago edited
I know some people with no sense of humor may read that and think Trump lacked seriousness in the moment, but come on. That's legitimately hilarious, and I figure the rule should be that if you get shot, you can react however you want.

It's much, much more than that. Being a leader means being able to be in control in harrowing circumstances. Put another way; the definition of bravery, is being the only one in your vicinity that knows, you are scared shitless.

Leaders owe it to their troops to NOT pass on their own fears and thus make things worse for the people they are supposed to be leading, the people they are responsible for.

One of the NASA astronauts trapped on the International Space Station said he believes Elon Musk’s claim that the Biden administration rejected the SpaceX CEO’s offer to help bring the team home.

Barry “Butch” Wilmore made the comment Tuesday during an in-orbit press conference with fellow castaway Sunita Williams nine months after their Boeing Starliner capsule malfunctioned and left the pair stuck on the ISS.

One questioner asked about Musk’s recent claim that former President Joe Biden had intentionally stalled their rescue for “political reasons.”

In an earlier question, Wilmore denied that politics had anything to do with the team’s delayed departure, but he seemed to shift his stance when answering the later question.

“I can only say that Mr. Musk, what he says, is absolutely factual … I believe him,” he said.