Great headline.

A Novice Defense Secretary Lectures the Brass on What It Takes to Win

Subhead:

Senior officers, summoned from around the world, are entrusted to manage complex military operations. They got a lecture on fitness and grooming standards.

From the tv guy.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has long maintained that the U.S. military badly needed a leader with dust on his boots to shake up a force that has gone soft and “woke.”

On Tuesday, he faced a room of hundreds of generals and admirals, whom he had summoned from across the globe, and made the case that he was that leader.

Because yeah, there’s nothing like a tv talking head for leading experienced military officers into a better tougher more gunly tomorrow.

Much of his address focused on the kinds of issues he would have dealt with as a young platoon leader in the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq or as a company commander in the Guard. He talked about grooming standards. “No more beards, long hair, superficial, individual expression,” he told the brass. “We’re going to cut our hair, shave, shave our beards and adhere to standards.”

He preached the importance of physical fitness. “Frankly, it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops,” he said. “Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon.”

It’s all so simple. Look like a movie soldier and you will be like a movie soldier. Appearance is everything.

To some, Mr. Hegseth’s speech was poorly matched to his audience of senior officers who in most cases are responsible for complex military operations such as the maintenance of nuclear submarines, America’s global alliances or the development of complex air-tasking orders, such as the one needed for the strikes on Iran’s nuclear program earlier this year.

Well yes ok, but still, they have to look the part.

The military officers assembled in the room listened silently. It is likely, though, that at least some of them were seething at his suggestion that their collective failure to enforce basic standards had caused, or even contributed to, the military’s failings in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“I mean, first of all, that’s like an insane insult to his senior officers, who all made their bones fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Elliot Ackerman, who led Marines in the second battle of Falluja and served with a Marine special operations unit in Afghanistan. “Those guys have got a lot more dust on their boots than he does.”

And, I’m guessing, a lot more brains in their skulls than he does.

Mr. Hegseth’s speech mirrored his leadership style over his first eight months in office, during which he has focused less on meeting with his foreign counterparts around the world and more on doing pull-ups and early morning runs with troops that are posted on the Pentagon’s social media feed.

You mean…he’s a lightweight? Well who saw that coming?

So we’re the enemy within now.

Trump defended the use of U.S. troops in American cities and told top U.S. commanders that the military would be used against the “enemy within.”

“This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room, because it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control,” Trump told those gathered for the highly unusual event at Quantico, Va. “It won’t get out of control once you’re involved at all.”

Trump said he told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the U.S. “should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” a reference to the Democratic-run cities that he has long said have high crime rates that make them uninhabitable.

Meaning what? The US military should just open fire on US cities? The ones that don’t vote for Trump, of course.

The nearly 150-year-old Posse Comitatus Act limits the use of federal troops in law enforcement activities on American soil — with some exceptions and loopholes.

Whatever; Trump doesn’t consult the law before doing something.

Trump and Hegseth, who also spoke Tuesday, reiterated to top U.S. military commanders the reason the administration had renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War.

“The name change reflects far more than the shift in branding — it’s really a historic reassertion of our purpose, our identity and our pride,” Trump said.

Which is being the aggressor? Our idenniny and our pride and our purpose are in making war on other countries?

He also wants the military to return to the glory days of bullying and sadism to knock people into shape.

Hegseth also said he’d ordered a full review of the Pentagon’s definition of what it deems “toxic leadership, bullying and hazing to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second guessing.”

In other words he wants “leaders” to feel free to enforce standards via toxic leadership, bullying and hazing. Two, three, many Colonel Jessups.

Trump admitted it’s a tad pricey.

Trump said there was an expense to meet with top admirals and generals in Quantico today when departing the White House this morning.

“There’s a little bit of expense, not much, but there’s a little expense to that. We don’t like to waste it. We’d rather spend it on bullets and rockets, frankly,” Trump said when departing the White House.

No, not a little. Not not much. There’s a lot of expense to “that”. It’s utterly pointless expense, too, since it’s just saying stuff. There are quick cheap easy ways of saying things these days, so there’s no need to drag everyone into the Real Presence.

The brass is aware of this.

The president added that the meeting is “a good thing; a thing like this has never been done before, because they came from all over the world.”

Some context: CNN previously reported that several sources expressed concerns about the cost of getting hundreds of generals and admirals and their aides to Virginia on such short notice. The cost of plane tickets alone will likely be in the millions of dollars, the sources said. They were even more baffled about why they needed to be there in person when they learned on Sunday that the remarks would be livestreamed.

Hahahahahachoke. Sir couldn’t we have just watched the livestream sir?

President Donald Trump bashed his former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley and former Defense Secretaries James Mattis and Mark Esper ahead of his speech to the military and threatened to fire generals he doesn’t like.

“We had some real bad ones last time. I rebuilt the military, the entire military, but I had unbelievable people to do that,” Trump said when departing the White House. “But I also had some bad ones at the top, like Milley, Mattis and Esper.”

Trump said some former officials from his first administration were recommended by Republicans but he was still unhappy with them, specifically calling Esper, “horrible.”

“They were recommended by RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) and others, and they’re not good. What we have now is the best,” Trump said.

The president also emphasized that if there is a general or admiral he does not like, he will fire them immediately.

“I’m going to be meeting with generals and with admirals and with leaders, and if I don’t like somebody, I’m gonna fire them right on the spot,” Trump said.

That’s the important point here. Trump can do whatever he wants. Is that clear? IS THAT CLEAR?

He thinks Colonel Jessup was the good guy.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told top military officers that he no longer wants to see “fat generals and admirals” or overweight troops in combat formations as he emphasized the need to stick to strict fitness standards for US service members around the world.

“It’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon leading commands around the country, in the world, it’s a bad look,” Hegseth said during an unusual gathering of officers at a military base in Quantico, Virginia. “It is bad, and it’s not who we are.”

Sir yes sir! And who we are is fit and trim and photogenic enough to be on Fox News. That’s the important thing. Appearance is all. Don’t talk to me about technology; war is all about men punching each other face to face until the tallest trimmest handsomest Fox Newsiest man wins.

Hegseth pointed to his own participation in physical fitness exercises as an example of the standard he expects all US troops to follow.

“It all starts with physical fitness and appearance,” he said. “If the Secretary of War can do regular, hard PT [physical training], so can every member of our joint force,” he said.

“Today at my direction, every member of the joint force, at every rank, is required … [to] meet height and weight requirements twice a year every year,” Hegseth added.

War is about who is the most telegenic, and don’t you forget it.

Suzanne Moore wipes the Telegraph floor with Emma Watson.

Without JK Rowling, I doubt any of us would have heard of Emma Watson. If Rowling and her franchise hadn’t been such a behemoth, it would be also tough to care about the confused views of a 30-something former child star.

Without JK Rowling, Emma Watson, who played Hermione Grainger in the Harry Potter film series, would not be worth an estimated $85 million (£63 million) or still be considered worth interviewing, even though she has not acted since 2019.

It’s all but certain that without JKR Watson would be nowhere. Would she have landed a part in some other movie that made as much money and had as many passionate fans as the Harry Potter series? No, because there is no such other movie from the past quarter century.

Watson and her fellow Harry Potter actor, Daniel Radcliffe, both sheltered stars who speak out on matters beyond their intelligence, decided to turn on the woman who had made them.

Without digesting or comprehending a single sentence of Rowling’s deeply researched objections to the child mutilation of reassignment surgery, the harms of self-identification, the closing down of free speech or the dangers of housing vulnerable women with biological men, they decided not to think for themselves, but to follow the herd with their public pro-trans responses.

It was probably a matter not so much of deciding not to think for themselves as deciding they didn’t want to deal with endless yammering and bullying from people who wanted them to denounce JKR. I don’t know for a fact that there were such people yammering and bullying, but my long and nauseating experience of trans “activists” tells me there almost certainly were. They don’t let anyone even slightly famous get away with even the tiniest dissent from the ideology. It could well be that Watson and Radcliffe had to choose between Rowling and a pack of noisy bullies and they chose the noisy bullies. They chose to avoid the yammering and bullying by passing it on to Rowling, who had made them rich and famous. How sharper than a serpent’s tooth.

Watson’s latest “apology” – in an interview on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast, Watson said she still “loves” and “treasures” Rowling – isn’t an apology.

It is neither fish nor fowl, with some psychobabble about holding space for Rowling in her heart. It is cognitive dissonance dissolved into meaningless platitudes. Watson’s expensive education clearly did not cover emotional intelligence.

Or avoidance of meaningless platitudes. That’s actually a really important thing to learn, because the more entangled in meaningless platitudes you are, the worse your thinking is and the less likely you are to treat other people decently. I should declare this a rule and name it after myself.

There really are two sides here, as Rowling once again demonstrates: one of kindness, imagination and principle, and one of faddishness, dogma and betrayal. One creates. One destroys. Watson stupidly chose the wrong one. Her spell is in tatters.

And the spell was never really hers to begin with. It was a loan from That Woman.

JKR lets rip.

I’m seeing quite a bit of comment about this, so I want to make a couple of points.

I’m not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created. The idea is as ludicrous as me checking with the boss I had when I was twenty-one for what opinions I should hold these days.

Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology. Such beliefs are legally protected, and I wouldn’t want to see any of them threatened with loss of work, or violence, or death, because of them.

However, Emma and Dan in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right – nay, obligation – to critique me and my views in public. Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created.

When you’ve known people since they were ten years old it’s hard to shake a certain protectiveness. Until quite recently, I hadn’t managed to throw off the memory of children who needed to be gently coaxed through their dialogue in a big scary film studio. For the past few years, I’ve repeatedly declined invitations from journalists to comment on Emma specifically, most notably on the Witch Trials of JK Rowling. Ironically, I told the producers that I didn’t want her to be hounded as the result of anything I said.

Whereas Emma was fine with JKR being hounded, including because of things she Emma said. She has to have been fine with it, because otherwise she would have refrained.

The television presenter in the attached clip highlights Emma’s ‘all witches’ speech, and in truth, that was a turning point for me, but it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself. Emma asked someone to pass on a handwritten note from her to me, which contained the single sentence ‘I’m so sorry for what you’re going through’ (she has my phone number). This was back when the death, rape and torture threats against me were at their peak, at a time when my personal security measures had had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family’s safety. Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames, yet thought a one line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness.

A one line expression of concern from her in private, having backstabbed JKR in public. Yeah sure kid: trash your benefactor when the cameras are on, and then later brazenly slap your benefactor on the back and hoot “Love ya, mean it.” That’ll work.

Like other people who’ve never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she’s ignorant of how ignorant she is. She’ll never need a homeless shelter. She’s never going to be placed on a mixed sex public hospital ward. I’d be astounded if she’s been in a high street changing room since childhood.

Unlike Rowling. JKR made Watson rich very early, and Watson appears to have conveniently forgotten.

Has she had to strip off in a newly mixed-sex changing room at a council-run swimming pool? Is she ever likely to need a state-run rape crisis centre that refuses to guarantee an all-female service? To find herself sharing a prison cell with a male rapist who’s identified into the women’s prison? I wasn’t a multimillionaire at fourteen. I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous. I therefore understand from my own life experience what the trashing of women’s rights in which Emma has so enthusiastically participated means to women and girls without her privileges.

Rich people can swim in their own pools. Rich people can get luxury support rather than having to rely on state-run facilities. Rich people are unlikely to be locked up with violent criminals. The rich are different from you and me, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said.

The greatest irony here is that, had Emma not decided in her most recent interview to declare that she loves and treasures me – a change of tack I suspect she’s adopted because she’s noticed full-throated condemnation of me is no longer quite as fashionable as it was – I might never have been this honest. Adults can’t expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend’s assassination, then assert their right to the former friend’s love, as though the friend was in fact their mother. Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public – but I have the same right, and I’ve finally decided to exercise it.

And here’s the thing: JKR wields a wickedly effective pen, and the callow movie star wields banal woke-speak.

He’d better idennify as a trans woman pretty fast.

Retired US financier Howard Rubin was arrested Friday on sex-trafficking charges for allegedly trafficking dozens of women, including former Playboy models, to be sexually and physically assaulted during encounters in his New York City penthouse in a soundproofed room described in court papers as “The Dungeon”.

Authorities announced the arrest of Rubin and his former personal assistant, Jennifer Powers, on charges in an indictment unsealed in Brooklyn federal court.

…

Prosecutors said Rubin and Powers abused the women between 2009 and 2019 after recruiting them to fly to New York to engage in sex acts with Rubin in exchange for money.

They said Rubin and Powers targeted women who were desperate, including women who had previously been sexually abused, along with women who were financially desperate or who suffered from addiction. Once they were in New York, the women were encouraged to use drugs or alcohol to prepare for their sexual encounters, and they sometimes engaged in conduct beyond the scope of their consent, prosecutors said.

During the encounters, women suffered significant pain, including bruises and psychological trauma, and sometimes required medical treatment, according to court papers.

So it’s not sex trafficking so much as sadism trafficking.

Prior to 2011, the commercial acts usually occurred at luxury hotels in Manhattan, but from 2011 to 2017, the encounters usually occurred in a two-bedroom penthouse near Central Park, the letter said.

The penthouse contained “The Dungeon”, a soundproofed room painted red that had a lock on the door and was outfitted with bondage and discipline instruments, prosecutors said.

Much safer than a luxury hotel, where people might hear the screams.

Trump has declared war on Portland; the invasion begins tomorrow.

Oregon’s Attorney General Dan Rayfield announced Sunday that the state has filed a lawsuit to block President Donald Trump from deploying the National Guard to Portland, a day after Trump authorized federal troops to protect what he dubbed “War ravaged Portland.”

He received notice from the governor’s office at 9:32 a.m. Sunday that the U.S. Department of Defense had sent an email revealing that Trump had invoked a section of federal law to call 200 members of the Oregon National Guard into federal service in the city for 60 days, under the U.S. Northern Command.

Rayfield, appearing with Kotek and Portland Mayor Keith Wilson during a virtual news conference, decried any attempt to send military troops to an Oregon city, calling it an infringement of state and local sovereignty and a violation of federal law as the suit was filed.

“The facts cannot justify this overreach,” says the 41-page suit filed by the State of Oregon and City of Portland against Trump.

It notes that protests outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland have been small in recent weeks, typically drawing [fewer] than 30 people.

And the facility is small and not central. It’s like declaring war because a suburban drugstore ran out of bandaids.

Trump has moved to federalize National Guard troops under federal law, known as Title 10, Section 12406. That says the president can call up the National Guard in federal service when the president is unable with regular forces to “execute the laws of the United States,” repel an invasion by a foreign nation, or suppress a rebellion or the danger of a rebellion against the authority of the U.S. government.

Are any or all of those happening in Portland? No. Trump is brazenly flouting the law.

Rayfield’s office moved to file the suit as soon as possible and will be filing a temporary restraining order within the next 24 hours to try to block an arrival of troops. He said he hopes to get a hearing before a judge later this week.

“In America, we don’t use our United States military on our own citizens, except in extreme circumstances,” Rayfield said.

The only extreme circumstance here is Trump’s determination to be a dictator.

The new William the Conqueror.

Because we need it – something nice for a change.

Of course he has.

Trump has decided he’s going to the last-minute global gathering of the nation’s top generals in Quantico, Virginia, that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered last week.

It’s getting all this press attention, so of course he’s not going to let Hegseth hog the camera.

Trump’s appearance not only upstages Hegseth’s plans but adds new security concerns to the massive and nearly unprecedented military event.

But it’s the upstaging that’s the funniest.

Notice went out to offices around the Pentagon that the decision will “significantly change the security posture” of the speech, set for Tuesday morning.

Yeh, all that brass and the Secretary of Defense are expendable but the prezzy has to have all the bells and whistles.

H/t What a Maroon

David Lammy continues to ignore women.

David Lammy has been accused of ignoring women’s rights as he comes under pressure to remove transgender prisoners from a female jail.

The newly appointed Justice Secretary – an outspoken supporter of trans rights whose recent comments to concerned voters can be revealed today – has been urged to shut down a special unit inside HMP Downview in light of the Supreme Court ruling on biological sex.

He has been told by the local MP that E Wing, which currently houses five biological males who have legally changed sex, represents a ‘clear breach’ of the provisions for single-sex spaces in the Equality Act.

What the Daily Mail for some reason fails to make clear is that Downview is a women’s prison. It’s because it’s a women’s prison that the five males shouldn’t be there.

It comes after inspectors found that there is no longer one-to-one supervision of the trans inmates when they mix with female prisoners for education, religious services or social visits in the Surrey prison.

Good grief, what a waste of resources to assign handlers to male inmates so that they can “mix with” female inmates.

Rebecca Paul, Conservative MP for Reigate, told the Mail: ‘I welcome David Lammy to his new role as Justice Secretary, and I implore him to do the lawful and responsible thing and remove all biological males from women’s prisons. We are a heartbeat away from a terrible tragedy.

Why does she welcome him to his role when he’s allowing men to threaten women in women’s prisons? He’s doing a bad job, so why welcome him? I know, diplomacy, etiquette, conventions, yadda yadda, but that’s part of why we get stuck in this endless god damn loop. We mustn’t be rude to the poor dear man in a dress, so women just have to put up with him, it’s the polite thing to do.

This newspaper can also reveal that when asked recently if he accepted the Supreme Court judgment on single-sex spaces – which ruled that the definition of a woman is based on biological sex – Mr Lammy replied instead: ‘I strongly believe that trans people’s safety and wellbeing must be protected.’

Which is to say he strongly believes that men should be pampered at the expense of women.

Helen Joyce of women’s rights charity Sex Matters said: ‘David Lammy’s response to his constituents on the Supreme Court ruling demonstrates a serious blind spot on women’s sex-based rights.

‘It is deeply concerning that the new Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary, who is responsible for prisons, repeatedly emphasises support for trans-identifying people without any acknowledgement that the trans lobby’s demand for gender self-identification means the destruction of women’s rights.’

Also he apparently never says the same thing about women – never bothers to emphasize support for women. He seems to view and treat women as the enemy – the privileged domineering powerful enemy.

Dirty dirty dirty.

The FBI has fired agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in Washington that followed the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, three people familiar with the matter said Friday.

The bureau last spring had reassigned the agents but has since fired them, said the people, who insisted on anonymity to discuss personnel matters with The Associated Press.

The number of FBI employees terminated was not immediately clear, but two people said it was roughly 20.

So FBI agents should not object to the use of excessive force in arrests? They should support lethal violence from law enforcement? Is that really a good idea in the long run?

The photographs at issue showed a group of agents taking the knee during one of the demonstrations following the May 2020 killing of Floyd, a death that led to a national reckoning over policing and racial injustice and sparked widespread anger after millions of people saw video of the arrest. The kneeling had angered some in the FBI but was also understood as a possible de-escalation tactic during a period of protests.

And/or a possible disavowal of excessive force in policing. Are they supposed to approve of excessive force?

The FBI Agents Association confirmed in a statement late Friday that more than a dozen agents had been fired, including military veterans with additional statutory protections, and condemned the move as unlawful. It called on Congress to investigate and said the firings were another indication of FBI Director Kash Patel’s disregard for the legal rights of bureau employees.

…

The firings come amid a broader personnel purge at the bureau as Patel works to reshape the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency. Five agents and top-level executives were known to have been summarily fired last month in a wave of ousters that current and former officials say has contributed to declining morale.

One of those, Steve Jensen, helped oversee investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Another, Brian Driscoll, served as acting FBI director in the early days of the Trump administration and resisted Justice Department demands to supply the names of agents who investigated Jan. 6.

A third, Chris Meyer, was incorrectly rumored on social media to have participated in the investigation into President Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. A fourth, Walter Giardina, participated in high-profile investigations like the one into Trump adviser Peter Navarro.

Trump systematically kneecapping everyone who might stop him.

Trump is firing people for upholding the law.

Donald Trump fired a top federal prosecutor in Sacramento just hours after she warned immigration agents they could not indiscriminately detain people in her district, according to documents reviewed by the New York Times.

Because, of course, Trump wants to detain people indiscriminately.

Beckwith had received a phone call from Gregory Bovino, who leads the Border Patrol’s unit in El Centro, a border city 600 miles south of Sacramento. Bovino was planning an immigration raid in Sacramento and asked Beckwith who in her office to contact if his officers were assaulted, the Times reported, citing Beckwith.

600 miles is a lot of miles. One has to wonder why a Border Patrol unit on the actual border is planning a raid 600 miles from said border. Maybe that’s what they do, I don’t know, but Beckwith apparently didn’t think so.

She informed Bovino that agents were not allowed to indiscriminately stop people in her district, north of Bakersfield, per a federal court order issued in April that prevents the agency from detaining people without reasonable suspicion. The US supreme court overturned a similar court order issued in Los Angeles earlier this month.

The Supreme Court is totally down with detaining people at will. There will be fewer but better Trumpier Californians.

In a 10.57am email on 15 July, Beckwith repeated her message, telling Bovino she expected “compliance with court orders and the constitution”. Less than six hours later, her work computer and cellphone no longer functioning, she received a letter to her personal email account notifying her that she had been terminated.

Two days later, Bovino proceeded with his immigration raid at a Sacramento Home Depot.

The dragon is out of the cage and coming for all of us, slowly but surely. It’s immigrants now and it will be his critics in a few months or weeks. It will be all of us who don’t kiss the ring.

Originally a comment by Pliny on Trump’s impression.

DATELINE PORTLAND

(Your man in the streets Pliny)

Large numbers of people out in the streets – and parks, and by the river, and on the river. Lots of families apparently using children as human shields.

Smoke rising from many backyard barbeques.

Coffee shops fomenting with – patrons

Biggest thing about ICE is the video showing them pepper spraying peaceful protestors who were not interfering w operations.

Many Portlanders fear that military will not bring enough trash bags like in DC. Some areas could use their help.

Also having troops in town has raised fears that it’s just what we need – more people living in tents…

From War-torn Portland

In Portlandia the streets are not running with blood.

A visit to downtown Portland, Oregon, on Saturday, hours after Donald Trump falsely declared the city “war ravaged” to justify the deployment of federal troops, made it plain the US president’s impression of the city, apparently shaped by misleading conservative media reports, is entirely divorced from reality.

There were just four protesters outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in an outlying residential neighborhood that the president had claimed was “under siege” by antifascists and “other domestic terrorists”. Jack Dickinson, 26, wore a chicken costume draped in an American flag and held a sign that read “Portland Will Outlive Him”. Passing motorists honked in appreciation.

Well…um…he could be wearing a chicken costume in order to smuggle in pamphlets on human rights. It’s possible.

“There’s no justification, no reason for the national guard or military to be using ‘full force’ on people,” Dickinson said, “but they have this narrative about Portland that’s been helped by selectively edited videos to set themselves up for a crackdown.”

The Ice field office, which the city of Portland recently accused of illegally using for detentions, is also attractive to protesters because it sits directly next to a Tesla dealership. Another protester held up a sign that read “Tesla Funds Fascism/Stop Buying Teslas”.

There’s your terrorism right there. Telling people not to buy something is the worst crime on the books.

Jeez I go offline for a few hours and all hell breaks loose.

President Donald Trump has ordered the deployment of US troops to Portland, Oregon, authorising use of “full force” if needed, to suppress protests targeting immigration detention centres.

But we’re allowed to protest. It’s called a right.

Trump said he was “directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland”.

Mushbrain draft-dodger pretends protesters are great big scary sojers and he alone can stop them.

And Hegseth is Secretary of Defense. His job is not to help Trump unleash the military on protesters.

The announcement drew pushback from Democratic lawmakers, who said there was no need for federal troops to be deployed to the city.

O reason not the need – our basest beggars are in the poorest things superfluous. Trump needs to deploy federal troops to a city full of lefties because he’s a flabby lazy makeup-slathered couch potato who wants to feel all steely-man-like.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Portland has been targeted by protesters since early June, sometimes leading to violent clashes.

As of 8 September, the US Attorney’s Office had brought federal charges against 26 people for crimes including arson, assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that demonstrators had “repeatedly attacked and laid siege to an ICE processing centre” in Portland.

In a post on the social media platform X, the department stated that several individuals had been arrested and charged with federal offences. “Rose City Antifa, a recently designated domestic terrorist organization, illegally doxed ICE officers. They published their home address online and on public flyers. Individuals associated with Antifa also sent death threats to DHS personnel,” DHS wrote on X.

Yes well that’s no good, but it’s still not an actual war.

Earlier this week, Trump signed an order formally designating antifa as a domestic terrorist organisation. Antifa, short for “anti-fascist”, is a loosely organised movement of primarily far-left activists.

Legal experts have pointed out that there is no legal mechanism in the US that would formally establish any group as a domestic terror organisation. Such efforts, they said, could face constitutional challenges under the First Amendment, which protects free speech and assembly.

Yes but Trump doesn’t care and he’ll just do whatever he wants.

It turns out Hegseth is summoning the top brass from all over the planet to his office because he’s making a moooovie.

New details are leaking about why Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called top military officials from around the world for an in-person meeting in Virginia next week.

The former Fox News personality, now a top Trump official, reportedly wants to make a video of his brief speech. Hegseth will be addressing military standards and the “warrior ethos,” multiple people familiar with the planned event told The Washington Post.

One has to wonder why he couldn’t have done the usual online meeting type of thing, rather than spending millions (to say nothing of the risks) to make the brass watch him perform for the cameras.

A White House official separately told CNN that the meeting is meant to be a show of force, demonstrating what the military looks like under Trump.

In the speech, Hegseth will reportedly discuss the Trump administration’s reinvention of the Defense Department as the “Department of War” and address new readiness, fitness, and grooming standards.

Grooming standards. Yes that’s a very sufficient reason to summon the top brass from all over the planet. Teach them how to look like Fox News talking heads.

As it was put to CNN, the “guys with the stars on their shoulders make for a better audience from an optics standpoint.”

An even more sensible adult reason.

The gathering, which is scheduled to take place Tuesday, was described as a “pep rally.” But bringing hundreds of generals to Quantico, including those stationed abroad, could prove extremely expensive.

So what! It’s not his money!

Hegseth has remained largely tight-lipped about the upcoming meeting, but appeared to address some concerns about it on Friday morning with a sarcastic post on X.

The defense secretary wrote “Cool story, General” in response to a tweet from retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges about Adolf Hitler gathering Nazi generals in 1935 and them being “required to swear a personal oath to the Führer.”

When no reason was given as to why Hegseth was ordering top generals to gather, multiple retired military officials raised questions.

The not-retired ones of course can’t.

A man of wisdom.

Trump said Saturday that he was directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “provide all necessary Troops” to Portland, Oregon.

In a post on Truth Social, the president wrote that the troops would “protect War ravaged Portland” and protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities that he claimed are “under siege from attack by Antifa and other domestic terrorists.”

Yes, it’s World War 4 out here on the left coast.

The president has repeatedly spoken negatively about [trashed] Portland, including saying on Thursday that “anarchy” is taking place in the West Coast city.

Yeah there are no laws here, we just run over each other with our tanks.

“You go out to Portland, people die out there. Many people have died over the years in Portland. Portland is, I don’t know how anybody lives there. It’s amazing, but it’s, it’s anarchy out there. That’s what they want. They want anarchy,” Trump said during remarks in the Oval Office on Thursday.

It’s shocking, isn’t it. Many people have died in Portland. Compare that to your Los Angeles or San Diego, where nobody dies.

Last week, in separate comments in the Oval Office, the president said people in Portland are “out of control.”

“Have you seen Portland at all? If you take a look what’s happening in Portland. It’s, it has been going on for years. Just people out of control, crazy. We’re going to stop that very soon,” Trump said.

Can you be just a little more precise Mister P? Out of control how? Crazy how? Stop what?

The president has long been outspoken about his negative views toward Portland, a city that he declared in his first term to be an “anarchist jurisdiction.”

Hey you know what? I resent that! What about Seattle?! We’re every bit as anarchist and out of control and crazy as Portland, and we have huge bodies of water on two sides, and we have mountains on those two sides, and we have Mount Rainier.

Portland. Honestly. We’re much cooler.

Gender news from Texas:

LUBBOCK — In a first for Texas higher education, the Texas Tech University System has ordered faculty across its five universities to limit classroom discussion of transgender and nonbinary identities, but gave little guidance on how academic endeavors or instruction should proceed.

What guidance is needed? Trans and nonbinareee idenninies are not academic endeavors or instruction. They’re political/ideological as opposed to epistemic or academic, so banishing them makes room for academic endeavors as opposed to hindering them. If students were insisting on talking about football or ballet in physics classes and faculty were cheering them on rather than teaching physics, the bosses would be within their rights to say stick to physics in physics classes. It doesn’t take any particular guidance to figure out how academic endeavors or instruction should proceed in that scenario. The usual way is how they should proceed.

The vague directive rattled Texas Tech students and professors, many of whom expressed fear that they will face academic or professional repercussions for pushing back. Free speech groups quickly characterized the unclear limits as unconstitutional censorship. 

Really? It’s an attack on free speech for universities to teach the advertised subject matter? I’m assuming that the order to limit classroom discussion of transgender and nonbinary identities applies to classes in subjects other than trans ideology. If the class is a trans ideology class it’s a different story, but it seems unlikely that all or most Texas Tech classes are trans ideology classes. The Tech part must get in somewhere.

And LGBTQ+ advocates said the move will only further marginalize already-vulnerable trans and nonbinary students and faculty.

No it won’t. It doesn’t “marginalize” people to talk about other things. It doesn’t “marginalize” people for tertiary education to focus on specific subject matter instead of chatting about personal idenninies. It doesn’t “marginalize” people to stop talking about themselves for the length of a college class.

“Everyone is terrified,” said a professor at the flagship Tech campus in Lubbock, who asked not to be named over fear of losing their job.

Terrified of what? Being told to limit discussion of irrelevant subjects is not a death threat.

Texas Tech Chancellor Tedd Mitchell late Thursday said that when faculty are acting as employees and instructors, they must follow President Donald Trump’s executive order recognizing only male and female genders as assigned at birth, Gov. Greg Abbott’s letter directing state agencies to “reject woke gender ideologies” and House Bill 229 requiring a strict binary definition of gender for the collection of vital statistics.

Oh honestly. I don’t see how Trump’s EO has anything to do with it at all. Surely teaching the advertised subject matter is a basic expectation. The liberal arts are more squishy that way, because they can be said to apply to almost anything, but a tech school?

“This is an egregious attack on academic freedom,” said Chloe Kempf, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Texas. “The bottom line is that the Constitution requires — and Texans deserve — free and open learning environments in institutes of higher education.”

So students at a tech school can sign up for tech classes only to find that they all use class time to chat about social issues instead of their purported subject? Because that’s their civil liberty?

Cringecringecringe

Donald Trump’s trip to Windsor last week was a history lesson, albeit one from which the president drew worrying conclusions. He has been raving about all of the things he learnt while in the castle, but one name stood out in particular. “William the Conqueror… that’s the coolest name I ever heard,” the commander-in-chief ominously told the American Cornerstone Institute. “He was known for winning wars,” Trump added, proving that there are no flies on him, but he also said he’d asked the current King “Why don’t we call you Charles the Conqueror?” The sovereign and sometime biscuit-maker told Trump that this wasn’t really his style.

He was unfamiliar with the name William the Conqueror. CRIIIIIIIIINGE