Week 41
By 
The Interior Decorator in Chief shared some of his triumphs with us this week: a marblized bathroom for the Lincoln Bedroom and improvements to the Kennedy Center, which has been losing ticket sales for its “populist” offerings.
Vladimir Putin’s claims of successful testing of the Burevestnik nuclear-powered missile were credulously accepted by the media and some who should have known better. No video, not even a photo. No indication that anyone outside Putin’s charmed circles had seen any evidence of that long-range run around – what? The seven seas? Many large circles around the Novaya Zemlya test site?
Another great and undocumented success was revealed two days later with the Poseidon nuclear-powered uncrewed submarine, ready to cause a tsunami all up and down the east coast of the United States. This was received with a bit less fanfare. Perhaps some found the coincidence of these successes just a little bit suspect.
The Dotard in Chief’s response was also met with great chin-stroking. Folks, nuclear explosive testing isn’t going to happen in the US! We’ve lost the expertise, which would have to be updated for the advances in equipment over the last 30 years. The expense, measured in large fractions of a trillion dollars, would eat into ICE’s budget. And it’s absolutely, positively not going to happen at the Nevada test site. The NNSA has built an enormous underground laboratory for other types of testing nuclear weapons with things like lasers and particle accelerators that aren’t going to react well to major ground shaking.
It’s seemed to me that the rest of the discourse, even by people I think well of, is deteriorating. That’s not surprising, when we have so much ignorance sprayed over us all the time. And when it isn’t ignorance, it’s brutality. It becomes ever clearer that Stephen Miller’s hobby of killing fishermen off the coast of South America is a prelude to Marco Rubio’s war against Venezuela and/or Colombia.
Border Patrol is taking over from ICE in US cities, apparently because ICE wasn’t brutal enough.
Anyway, I am thoroughly bummed out and deleted several of my posts at Bluesky this morning because of the quality of comment they were attracting.
Follow the court-watchers for the details of the lawsuits. Chris Geidner (LawDork, Bluesky), Roger Parloff (Lawfare, Bluesky), and the Just Security tracker.
As usual, keep it to things that have actually happened, not hypotheticals. What is actually happening is bad enough.
Caring for yourself and loved ones is resistance too. Post your pets.
167 more weeks to go. What are you doing?
Previous weeks: Week 10, Week 20, Week 30, Week 40