So that means they must have thought Iran would shoot his plane down. I guess they considered the poor suckers flying on the Air Force One expendable. I wonder if anyone told them about it.

edit: Oh, per the article the answer is No, of course they didn’t:

On this occasion, the journalists who thought they were traveling with Trump on the older Air Force One reported being advised to keep their window shades in the press cabin closed. The Post said aside from ‌reporters, some White House staff also believed the president was on board.

When asked later by reporters why they had to keep their shades shut during the flight, Trump said it was because they were “probably on ​a dangerous flight”. He went onto say: “But if I go, you go. Right?”

They can afford to lose one GOP vote and still get this sleazeball confirmed. (or 2 if Fetterman pulls a Fetterman). Or maybe it’s 2 they can lose, but either way:

Because Collins’ Senate seat is the most in jeopardy, she is the one chosen to be allowed to vote against him. It’s all planned in advance. If they couldn’t afford to lose her vote, she would definitely vote for him.

Murkowski is putting on a show of thinking about voting No (as usual), but you can be sure she’ll vote ultimately yes (as usual).

Likewise the 2 repubs who had been holding him up in committee, Cornyn and Tillis, were always going to vote for him. They just wanted to put on a little show to pretend like maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t. Blanche’s “agreement” not to do the slush fund will only last about 5 minutes after his confirmation.

God I hate all this shit.

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and the poor homey sitting right behind Don Snoreleone can’t believe he just got presidentially crop dusted.

In that linked video, it’s so fitting that just as the guy manages to keep himself from puking, the speaker says, “But he stayed the course.” 😂

Democialist Party

It seems to me from the Democrats’ point of view, that NOT having a special election is better for them, since right now, McConnell can’t vote so Repubs are down a senator and they have less chance of passing partisan legislation without him. The sooner there’s a special election, the sooner Repubs have another vote back for their side (in a special election he would definitely be replaced by a repub).

If the governor (a Dem) could appoint someone (he can’t according to a KY law), then I see how it would make sense for repubs to keep the illusion going that McConnell will return. But as it stands, I don’t see why covering up his condition is doing repubs any good, in terms of the magic Aug. 3rd date or a special election.

So my biggest concern is the possibility that McConnell really is going to recover and return to the Senate. That would be a damn shame. But he’s retiring after this the term anyway, so I dunno-- maybe all this cover-up is just so they can say he finished out his term.

He certainly checks the AntiChrist boxes, including how he’s fooled all the “christians” to believe he was sent by God. I don’t know if he’s specifically denied God but he did say he didn’t need to ask God for forgiveness because he hasn’t made any mistakes.

Re the 4 horsemen with Hegseth as War and Little Bobby Brainworm as Pestilence:

Musk is Famine, he shut down US Aid and millions have died and will die as a result. Not all from hunger and malnutrition, but disease as well (HIV, TB, malaria, etc). But little

I’d put Dump as Death since everything he and the other 3 horses do leads to death. He started the Wars, DOGE cuts, Huge Hideous Bill leading to loss of SNAP and healthcare, his ICE Gestapo and their concentration camps killing people, appointed THREE SCOTUS whose rulings have led to death (loss of reproductive care and deaths of many women) and giving him immunity to do all those things. etc etc etc and he even looks like Death itself.

This fucking piece of slimy stinking shit, will it ever die? 😩

I read somewhere that the Senate wants it to be Standard instead of DST, which I agree would wind up being better for most locations (not all). So they’ll probably fight over it and nothing will happen. We’ll see. At this point I just want to stop having to change the damn clocks.

I used to favor permanent DST because I’m not a morning person, but I realize most people aren’t night-owls like me, and by now there’s been a lot of evidence presented that it’s healthier to be in sync with sunlight and more important to get good sleep, especially for kids. Of course a lot of this also depends on which side of your time zone you live on.

Between the two positions, for a long time I favored permanent half-DST, which is setting clocks halfway between so the offset isn’t that bad for health and both sides of the standard vs DST debate could live with it. There was even a bill proposed to do that, but I recently read an article listing a few drawbacks to being on the half-hour compared to most other countries–mostly that it would be “confusing” which isn’t that strong of an argument IMO. I still think this would be a good solution if a bunch of other countries also did it. A few countries already are offset a half-hour from us and no one complains because they’re not major economic forces.

Yes, they should have stuck with standard time instead of DST. OTOH, the thing everyone complained about was their kids having to walk to and from school in the dark. Now no one walks to school any more, so that doesn’t apply (yes believe it or not most kids used to walk or ride their bike to and from school back then, unless it was too far and they rode the bus).

We need a picture of him with eyes open (without tape) and holding up the current day’s NYT and WaPo papers.

This whole thing just shows us what exactly what will happen if/when trump keels over. It will be covered up as long as possible. Just like Iran’s new Ayatollah, who has never been seen, even to show up for his father’s funeral.

You know we’ve gone full 1984 dystopia when the fucking Senate Majority Leader stands there with a straight face and claims he had a conversation with McConnell about national security of all things (as if you’d really expect them to discuss that), and all the reporters just parrot what he said as unquestioned fact. And no one will bat an eye or ever mention his blatant lying, when it comes out that McConnell was dead the whole time.

I’d say the downfall first started around the time 24-hour cable news came along (starting in 1980 but it didn’t happen right away) along with things like the abolishing of the fairness doctrine (1987). That and the need to fill 24 hours with “news” led to the shift to more op-ed content than news. More and more of these opinion news cable channels followed.

Then the deterioration really began to snowball with the internet and proliferation of “news” outlets tailored for specific audiences, culminating with the rise of social media (I mean, what hasn’t been negatively affected by the rise of social media/oligarch-owned web 2.0) and the purchasing of all media outlets, including newspapers, by corporations and later by the rising oligarchs.

All this meant the “news” became just another type of profit-driven enterprise, with a need to compete for ratings, that shifted it from hard news to entertainment and nothing more than parroting of press releases with no independent investigation. Ultimately leading to the demise of the last bastion of independence, print journalism.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t still some journalists doing good investigative work, just that they are pretty much on their own now. I don’t know much about Meidas Touch, but if they’re actually out there asking questions and reporting, instead of just sitting around spouting opinions and outrage like most political podcasts, that’s a good thing.

If we had a free independent press any more, all reputable news outlets would be writing about this every single day to apply pressure for proof of consciousness, so they can’t drag this out until the deadline.

They would demand that his office, which released a statement saying "The Senator continues to improve, and is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters while the Senate is out of session”, prove that they weren’t outright LYING.

They would go around asking his spokespeople to answer questions on camera and hound them, “is McConnell conscious?”, “Will you release a photo of him with his eyes open?”, “Why did his wife go to Beijing?” etc etc.

But they won’t. Because we don’t have a free independent press any more. A few journalists will speculate. None will keep demanding answers until they get them. Just the talking heads speculating.

On Thursday, McConnell’s office told Newsweek via email, “Senator McConnell appreciates the outpouring of support he’s receiving while he continues his recovery in the hospital. The Senator continues to improve, and is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters while the Senate is out of session.”

Translation:

On Thursday, McConnell’s office told Newsweek via email, “[We believe that] Senator McConnell [would, if he were conscious and aware,] appreciate the outpouring of support he’s receiving while he continues his recovery in the hospital. The Senator continues to improve [not be dead, technically], and is working closely with his [ICU medical] staff on Kentucky and Senate [respiration] matters while the Senate [brain] is out of session.”

I was really impressed by how Pritzker handled trump’s ice goon invasion of Chicago, he stood up and got trump to back off.

edit: OTOH, let’s keep watching and see what he will do about this: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/eff-gov-pritzker-veto-illinois-hb-5511

It would be much more effective if he “took over” Israel instead of Iran, since the “agreement” stipulates that it is dependent on Israel stopping its attacks on Lebanon.

“He’s not even a Democrat”

As they used to say when I was a kid: “Takes one to know one!”