About Last Week...
Chatty Cathy
Texting while bombing seems to be, politically that is, as dangerous and stupid as texting while driving.
The first question that should be asked is why were the Houthi attack planners texting in the first place?
I mean just out of politeness to reflect the gravity of the situation, it seems inappropriate to text message a bombing raid. It’s like faxing your girlfriend to break up with her – very déclassé.
And they all have taxpayer funded cars and drivers, so they can’t blame traffic and they all have actually really secure phones so they could actually talk with one another – you know, like humans – if they couldn’t all get in the same room.
So the leak of the battle plans to a guy from The Atlantic – he hit the stupid lottery on that one – was not only bad and incompetent it was very icky.
Was it a massive security breach? No, not really. Jefffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic didn’t forward the plans with an FYI to the Houthi, but he did something almost as damaging: he gave them to the rest of the press.
Would Goldberg have splashed the issue publicly four months ago during the Biden administration? Absolutely not, but that’s comparing rotten apples to orange man bads and ultimately meaningless.
Was it as bad as what occurred during said Biden administration, i.e. the intentional information/influence peddling for money that went on? No, of course not.
But it does reinforce – or allows to be reinforced – a certain perception that the Trump team is a combination of amateurs and lunatics.
Everyone has accidentally hit “send all” at one time or another in their life or sent an email to the wrong Jeff or accidentally added someone to a group chat – usually, the person you add is someone you owe money so that gets really awkward.
Therefore, the public will have a bit of understanding about the matter – not enough to ignore it but enough that the story will not have significant “legs.”
But it was an unforced error that actually gave the press something real and actually damaging to the administration to harp on for a bit and that’s never good.
Speaking of bad, I think I have come up with a way to solve the dangerous illegal alien deportation kerfuffle. Don’t send them to El Salvador, but ask Vladimir Putin if he wants them for Ukraine cannon fodder.
Have them all enlist while in custody and the deportations become willing departures, Putin gets a little help – WHICH WE ALL KNOW IS THE ONLY REASON TRUMP IS PRESIDENT, TO HELP PUTIN, or at least that’s what the New York Times says – and the courts have nothing left to adjudicate.
As for the deportees, they may have a shot at a longer life in Ukraine than in that prison in El Salvador, so it could be publicly sold as a humanitarian gesture.
This week’s epigram requires some context.
It’s a joke line from Rifftrax’s skewering of the very very bad movie “Samurai Cop:”
“Remember folks, it’s not racist if it’s incoherent.”
For the full context, here is the line – it’s at the 37-minute mark but if you have time do watch the whole thing. Assassins hide in hampers, drug lords have grandma curtains, and no one – absolutely no one – knows how to swear like a human being.
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