THE TICKER – Pentagon can no longer hide coffins :: Israel lobbyists charged with spying on U.S. :: Military scours online personals to route out gay servicemembers
THE TICKER – Pentagon can no longer hide coffins :: Israel lobbyists charged with spying on U.S. :: Military scours online personals to route out gay servicemembers
Pentagon can no longer hide coffins: In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the Pentagon will now release photos of flag-draped coffins containing the remains of U.S. servicemembers killed in the Iraqi war. The Bush Administration has censored such photos in order to keep public approval of the war from slipping. Too late for all that, anyway.
Israel lobbyists charged with spying on U.S.: Two former employees of the lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) were indicted yesterday on charges that they illegally received and passed on classified information to foreign officials and reporters over a period of five years. A Pentagon security analyst has been charged with feeding the two men secret U.S. information about Iran.
Military scours online personals to route out gay servicemembers: The U.S. military apparently has nothing better to do than surf Gay.com and other websites looking for service personnel who may have profiles online so they can kick out the homos under the “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” rules. Hey, it’s not like there’s a war going on or anything.
Connect:
One thought on “THE TICKER – Pentagon can no longer hide coffins :: Israel lobbyists charged with spying on U.S. :: Military scours online personals to route out gay servicemembers”
Not hiding the coffins will make it a little harder for the Pentagon to fudge the numbers. Puerto Rico said that their are more like 6 or 7 thousand dead and the extra deaths are not reported as combat deaths because the soldiers died in the hospital in Germany. As ;long as they leave Iraq soil breathing, they are supposedly not reported as killed in combat. Now we can verify if this is the case.
It’s the Pope’s funeral, so Trump’s gotta go.
It wouldn’t be like him to miss such a show.
But when he arrives he might squall,
Because of arcane Vatican protocol
Trump might find himself seated in the back row.
“Let’s be honest. This uncertainty, this chaos, is no accident. The president of the United States has chosen. Chosen to destroy the federal government’s ability to help people.”
— Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), quoted by The Hill.
“Yes, Trump and his accomplices are malicious. Yes, they’re corrupt. Yes, they’re dangerous. But they’re also profoundly stupid, and their stupidity is hurting or worrying a lot of people who voted for Trump. … So here’s my pitch: To break Trump’s coalition and reclaim our government, we need to talk not just about the administration’s corruption and its abuse of power, but about its pervasive incompetence.”
“We live in a moment when our freedoms are once again under attack from the highest office in the land. We see things that would be familiar to our revolutionary predecessors: the silencing of critics, the disappearing of people from our streets, demands for unquestioning fealty.”
— Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D), quoted by the Boston Globe.
“Trump intends to send those he hates to foreign prisons beyond the reach of U.S. law. He does not care — he will not even seek to discover — if those he sends into these foreign hells are guilty of what he claims. Because this is not about their guilt — it is about his power. … And if he is capable of that, if he wants that, then what else is he capable of? What else does he want? And if the people who serve him are willing to give him that, to defend his right to do that, what else will they give him? What else will they defend?”
“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the assemblage of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody, there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from the courthouse still hold dear.”
— Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee and conservative icon, in an opinion about the Maryland man wrongly-deported to El Salvador.
“Buyers have poured tens of millions of dollars into President Donald Trump’s meme coin since his team advertised Wednesday that top purchasers could join Trump for an ‘intimate private dinner’ next month,” the Washington Post reports. “Nearly two dozen crypto wallets acquired more than 100,000 $TRUMP meme coins, worth roughly $100 million.”
A new Fox News poll finds President Trump’s overall approval at 44%, down 5 points from 49% approval in March. That’s lower than the approval of Joe Biden (54%), Barack Obama (62%), and George W. Bush (63%) at the 100-day mark in their presidencies. It’s also lower by 1 point compared to Trump’s 45% approval at this point eight years ago.
Wall Street Journal: “The wealthiest have gotten richer, and control a record share of America’s wealth. New data suggest $1 trillion of wealth was created for the 19 richest American households alone in 2024. … That is more than the value of Switzerland’s entire economy.”
The International Monetary Fund yesterday lowered its 2025 growth outlook for the US and the global economy, citing heightened uncertainty and economic disruption caused by President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs. The IMF trimmed the 2025 US growth estimate to 1.8% from 2.7%, the largest reduction among the world’s advanced economies, and cut the global growth forecast to 2.8% from 3.3%. The fund cautioned the trade policy climate and ongoing conflicts between the US and other tariff-hit countries are discouraging investment and spending. US inflation is now predicted to reach 3% this year, one percentage point higher than the IMF’s January projection, while the risk of a US recession has increased to 40%, up from 25% in October.
Not hiding the coffins will make it a little harder for the Pentagon to fudge the numbers. Puerto Rico said that their are more like 6 or 7 thousand dead and the extra deaths are not reported as combat deaths because the soldiers died in the hospital in Germany. As ;long as they leave Iraq soil breathing, they are supposedly not reported as killed in combat. Now we can verify if this is the case.