I made the mistake of reading the comments. I suspect many of the blue-check comments dumping on the National Guard are either Russian disinformation, or getting their information from their outlets.

I have enough experience here to comment semi-intelligently. 1/n

https://twitter.com/NCNationalGuard/status/1841976269941952920

First off, I've been a rotary wing aviator on and off since 1999. I'm currently a UH-60L pilot at MEDEVAC US ARNG unit. We just did a major disaster preparedness drill in April.

What's being said about the Guard denigrates some VERY good people. 2/n

So, I opened up my account briefly so people can follow if they like. I watched much of the RNC convention, speeches Trump, Vance, Harris, and Walz, the first night of the DNC. I've watched the polling and worked on my own modeling. A few thoughts. 1/n First off, the polling has shown a swing towards Harris since Biden dropped out. My sources say the decision was made based on inputs from a lot of people close to him (including Jill). Ultimately, he made it because he didn't want Trump to win more than he wanted to stay. 2/n

With dogs in the news, and handling of behavioral issues, I thought I'd talk about our experience with difficult dog breeds. Namely: the Siberian husky.

And not just any huskies: every one of ours are behavioral surrenders. 1/n Loki somebody's Christmas present for their significant other. He, ummm... didn't work out. We got him from the Fairfax County pound in January 2019.

Major behavioral issue: food aggression.

Medical issues: worms, coccidia, giardia, hernia, torn ACL

He's 10k in vet bills. 2/n

There's a new anti-trans book out that's been endorsed by JKR. I took a glance at the excerpts, and at the summaries, and realized it's a rehash of a bunch of anti-trans talking points we see coming from Gays Against Groomers and LGB Alliance. 1/n The basic premise is that transgender people are stealing all the baby gays by forcing them to be transgender. He believes that LGB people are intimidated into supporting trans people. (He blocked me, so....)

The basic premises are not backed up by the facts, however. 2/n

By now, almost everyone has heard that Kristi Noem is a puppy killer (and goat murderer who wasn't particularly good at the job). She killed a 14 month old dog because it wasn't working out as a hunting animal (prey drive too high).

I have thoughts. 1/n
rollingstone.com/politics/polit… So, I'll qualify this by saying I've got a fair bit of understanding with dogs. I wrote about them for DAME. I've had all sort of breeds of dogs in my life: border collies, shit tzu, poodle, labs, Australian Kelpie, huskies, doberman, mutts. 2/n damemagazine.com/2022/06/16/dog…

Here's a fun thread for the day. Have you ever wondered what sort of things you have to know in order to fly a military aircraft? Well buckle up, here's an abbreviated list of just some of the unclassified stuff. 1/n First, there's the Operator's Manual. (NATOPS in Navy parlance, the -10 in Army). This has systems, normal and emergency procedures, limitations, and charts for calculating performance. 1392 pages. 2/n books.google.com/books?id=dsxFD…

I haven't posted in a while about anything Ukraine, but this is sort of bizarre enough in how it touches on pre-WWI naval history that I thought it was worth a post.

TL;DR - Ukraine hit a REALLY old Russian ship with a Neptune ASM. 1/n

https://twitter.com/RFERL/status/1782091569358577828

The Kommuna is definitely a valid target. It is a submarine tender / rescue / salvage ship that was used to recover items from the sunken Moskva, and support Kilo Class diesel-electric subs in the Black Sea Fleet. 2/n

@ijbailey @CathyYoung63 @djsnyder22 You know what can't be dismissed? Statistics and data. The NCAA has allowed trans people to participate if they meet certain medical criteria since 2011. There were approximately 768 athletes in the women's tournament (12*64). Trans people are .6% of the pop. @ijbailey @CathyYoung63 @djsnyder22 If you assume that trans women are equal to cis people, you would expect about 5 trans people to be in the tournament. There were zero. The odds of there being only zero was .9%. (Very low). In fact, for the whole of the NCAA, trans people are only about .035% of athletes.

Here's how it's really going to go down.

Trump is going to propose a 15 week ban as a "compromise".

Except it's not going to be if you've actually read the Project 2025 Mandate for leadership.

It's basically going to be a ban, full stop, without exceptions. I'll explain. 1/n Trump has a long habit of over promising and under delivering (Trump care, The Wall, any of his failed businesses). This won't really satisfy anyone at the outset, but it will quickly become clear what the real deal is. 2/n

politico.com/news/2024/04/0…

I read this article with interest. I know anecdotes are only single data points, but the anecdotes dovetail with the data I do have, and it furthers a case I have made that the US is Balkanizing via self-sorting. 1/n nbcnews.com/politics/econo… Several of the people interviewed considered themselves conservative, but they're not conservative enough for DeSantis. Between neo Nazis swarming their towns and and completely unregulated guns, they're leaving because they don't feel safe. 2/n

Someone sent me this yesterday. The basic premise is that the guardrails of US democracy are so strong that Trump couldn't turn the US into a dictatorship even if he had 2 more terms.

This is hopelessly naïve. Let's break it down. 1/n politico.com/news/magazine/… First, a history lesson. The Weimar Republic lasted precisely 51 days between moustache-guy being named Chancellor and the Enabling Acts. Masha Gessen warned in 2016 in "Rules for Surviving Autocracy" "Your institutions will not save you." 2/n nybooks.com/online/2016/11…

I was listening to a video about how Germany's completely dysfunctional leadership produced equally dysfunctional (and expensive) equipment. It struck me that this is very much a preview of what a Trump admin will look like if it succeeds. Follow along 1/n One of the assumptions pro-autocracy MAGA people have is that a dictatorship is efficient and effective because if The Leader says "do the thing" everyone salutes and makes the thing happen quickly and efficiently.

Yeah. And communism works in theory as well. 2/n

Good piece posted by @gregolear. The Dictator Doom Loop is real. Trump will come in extremely unpopular, and get more unpopular by the day as he implements a host of unpopular policies. 1/n gregolear.substack.com/p/the-maga-doo… The complete gutting of most senior federal positions (and filling them with unqualified ideologues) means that important functions of government stop (i.e. EPA enforcement), or are actively used to implement Christian Nationalism (only Christians have civil rights). 2/n

The polls keep telling the same story.

We are in deep trouble. There are few undecideds out there. The results are already baked in. Campaign spending will have little effect.

The US is on the verge of voting to end itself as a democracy, and usher in an age of horror

https://twitter.com/umichvoter/status/1764303856647774656

And the people saying don't trust the polls, I would remind you that in the past two elections, they underestimated Trump's support.

And for those picking at individual polls methodologies, it's tough to dismiss all of them in the aggregate.

I need to bring up some wargaming around the election that I've been doing. It amounts to a fairly simple decision tree, but I'll take you through the major branches. But, there's a bit of required reading first. 1/n hartmannreport.com/p/the-new-over… Harmann's sources say this is the plan. So do mine. Basically, if Biden wins, Johnson is going to throw the election. His plan is to refuse to seat democrats, and then vote not to confirm the election results. This throws election to the House where, Surprise! Trump wins. 2/n

SCOTUS may literally be signing warrants for their own heads, or at least for the end of democracy in the US, because here's how it's potentially going to play out for them if Trump ends up back in office: 1/n Trump is going to purge military leadership, the DoJ, and the FBI, and every other one, and fill them with loyalists. Once that happens, SCOTUS has zero capacity to enforce any of its decisions, and you can bet your ass Trump's band of Christian Nationalists won't. 2/n

The thing that dismays me the most is that of all the guys for the right to fall in love with, worship, and declare their savior, they picked Trump.

CoS John Kelly called him "the most flawed man I've ever known."

I'd call him the most irredeemable. He has no good qualities 1/n It's not as if any of these qualities are in doubt or are hidden. These are all things that are facts we know, and not speculation. Every aspect of this man is a trash fire.

And yet, they worship him because he promises vengeance. 2/n yahoo.com/news/cpac-2024…

I've been DM'ing and playing on and off for the last 35 years. Here's my list of top player traits that make me question my life choices even more than usual. The Player Who Over-Describes Everything: This player takes five minutes describing how they set a snare, or cook a meal, or skin a rabbit, etc... while everyone else at the table listens to them drone on. It's ok to say what you do, but be considerate, please.

Thomas Zimmer's article is a "must-read". He gets that what we are seeing within the GOP is a theocratic-fascist movement that has all but erased any vestige of Reagan-sim (other than supply side economics). But, I'd like to add to this a bit. 1/n thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/project-2025… Zimmer correctly points out that this is a religious reactionary movement, and that people like us sounding the alarm are derided as irrational, screaming lefties & everyone opposed to Trumpism is a Communist. 2/n

I'm going to go a step further, and say that the ruling in the IVF case in Alabama is even worse than @mjs_DC lays out in this article (which you should definitely read). This is a catastrophic ruling if left to stand, for so many reasons. 1/n slate.com/news-and-polit… First and foremost, this ruling is unabashed in it's use of a particular brand of Christianity as the reasoning behind it. It establishes that a particular reading of the Bible is the basis for law.

You know, the Bible that also endorses slavery. And death by stoning. 2/n

I like Zach. And he's right at a surface level: yes, it's a good message.

The purpose of the ads is not to make Christians better, or make people convert, it's to re-brand the religious foundation behind American fascism.

It's meant as an immune suppressant. 1/n

https://twitter.com/ZachWLambert/status/1757025456665051218

In the words of the people behind these ads (which includes Hobby Lobby and ADF), “How did the world’s greatest love story in Jesus become known as a hate group?” The ads are effectively, "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" 2/n

au.org/the-servant-fo…