yes, I used AI to help with the title.  
 

And whats really weird?  I took some suggestions they offered and merged it and I felt the need to reply back and sort or apologize. As if it’s waiting for me to reply or that it cares. Jesus, it’s not a person.  
 

a friend of mine is a wordsmith and often pastes a co workers writings into it to see why he finds it so annoying.  This is what it says:

—————

“This is a 39-word sentence where:

    •    the subject is muddy,

    •    the contrast is lopsided,

    •    and “causality in complex systems” hits like a wet sandbag.

It’s not wrong, but it’s unpleasant — like chewing uncooked rice.”
————-

that is so amazing to me. It’s not just gathering info. It’s making judgement calls and offering analogies.  sarcasm. Wit. 

Anyway, here goes  

Quote

7 JANUARY 1775, LONDON: The convoluted negotiations continue between Benjamin Franklin and intermediaries of the imperial government: Caroline Howe sends word to Franklin that she has a letter to show him from her brother, Lord Howe; Franklin pays a call on Caroline immediately.

https://bsky.app/profile/revwar250.bsky.social

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-21-02-0238

Quote

Franklin, in reply to Mrs. Howe’s request in the preceding document, called upon her immediately. She showed him a letter from her brother that asked for the American’s answers to two questions. First, would his constituents approve his agreeing to pay for the tea, on condition that they were promised redress of their grievances when their assembly petitioned for it? Second, did he still hold to the position he had taken in his “Hints” on aids or requisitions? He answered the questions then and there, in reverse order, and she copied and forwarded his reply that evening.8

No 9

[January 7?,9 1775]

The proposition in the former Paper relating to Aids; is still in Contemplation of the Author, and, as he thinks, is included in the last Article of the present Paper.1

The People of America conceiving that Parliament has no Right to tax them, and that there fore all that has been extorted from them by the Operation of the Duty Acts, with the Assistance of an armed Force, preceding the Destruction of the Tea, is so much Injury, which ought in order of time to be first repair’d, before a Demand on the Tea Account can be justly made of them; are not, he thinks likely to approve of the Measure proposed, and pay in the first place the Value demanded, especially as 20 times as much Injury has since been done them by blocking up their Port, and their Castle also seiz’d before by the Crown has not been restor’d, nor any Satisfaction offered them for the same.2

One ballot in, and Mike Johnson fails to secure the gavel.

Washington Post reporter being all liberal biased

If only we could do something, anything, to stop it.

These are the people involved

Quote

Project 2025's advisory board consists of "a broad coalition of over 80 conservative organizations"—mainly conservative think tanks, as well as several universities and the magazine The American Conservative.^[22] As of February 2024, the project has over 100 partner organizations.^[23]

Notable authors of the project's Mandate for Leadership include many officials and advisors from the Trump administration, including Jonathan Berry, Ben Carson, Ken Cuccinelli, Rick Dearborn, Thomas Gilman, Mandy Gunasekara, Gene Hamilton, Christopher Miller, Bernard McNamee, Stephen Moore, Mora Namdar, Peter Navarro, William Perry Pendley, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Kiron Skinner, Roger Severino, Hans von Spakovsky, Brooks Tucker, Russell Vought, and Paul Winfree.^[24]

Right there are the people who need to answer for all this. 

Why place the thread in the political forum? Because I suspect that when certain maps get posted, a political discussion/debate/fight might ensue, so better to segregate the map thread from the genteel parts of the forum now than have to move it later. But maps are, almost by definition, political anyway, so might as well just acknowledge the potential for such spirited discourse upfront.

Here we go again. No fatalities, but the shooter is still on the loose. 

Really, just a perfect con.

AZ Republic newspaper asked for $1K sanctions a day for not turning over docs; judge said no, make it $50K a day, starting tomorrow.

Ninja attorney wants out as he has not been paid, judge said nope.

Board of Election released 90 page doc showing these idiots did not know their ass from their elbow.

Quote

The security guard in the lobby of Champlain Towers hurriedly dialed 911 to report the initial failure. An alarm may have sounded at that point in a limited part of the building, though it was clearly inaudible to many of those who still slept.

The building also had a sophisticated audio warning system designed to broadcast an alert into the bedrooms of every unit. But it was never triggered, newly available deposition testimony and interviews show, because the security guard had never been trained about the system and the single button needed to activate it.

“If I had known about it, I would have pressed it,” the security guard, Shamoka Furman, said in an interview.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/23/us/surfside-condo-collapse-alarm.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/12/opinion/israel-hamas-isis-gaza.html

Quote

The instant I understood the scale of Hamas’s attack on Israel, I understood the probable response. As I read reports of Hamas terrorists murdering entire families, raping Israeli women beside the bodies of their dead friends and dragging Israeli hostages into Gaza, it was apparent that Hamas had chosen to behave like ISIS, and if it behaved like ISIS, then the Israel Defense Forces were justified in treating Hamas in Gaza the same way the United States and its allies treated ISIS in Iraq.

The comparison is not lost on Israel. After the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Hamas is ISIS. And just as the forces of civilization united to defeat ISIS, the forces of civilization must support Israel in defeating Hamas.”

This means Israel’s goal is not to punish Hamas but to defeat it — to remove it from power in Gaza the way the Iraqi military, the United States and their allies removed ISIS from Mosul, Falluja, Ramadi and every other city ISIS controlled in Iraq. That can’t be accomplished by air power alone. If removing Hamas from power is the goal, then that almost certainly means soldiers and tanks fighting in Gazan cities, block by block, house to house in an area of roughly two million people.

.......

Put all this together, and you can immediately perceive Israel’s asymmetric challenge. Hamas scorns the law of war. The reports of its intentional mass killing, mutilation, rape and civilian hostage taking are evidence enough of that fact. Israel legally and morally obligates the Israel Defense Forces to comply with the law. As a result, civilians become one of Hamas’s principal military assets. The presence of civilians gives Hamas the ability to punch first in any given street fight. The presence of civilians raises the bar for approving airstrikes or any other use of long-range weapons. And when civilians die, Hamas uses their deaths to inflame the international community and to help run out the clock on international patience for Israeli military operations.

Even worse, Hamas is helped by an enormous amount of public ignorance combined with outright misinformation. The average journalist — much less the average citizen — doesn’t know much, if anything, about the laws of war. Let’s take, for example, two key legal concepts that will be relevant every single day of the fighting in Gaza: proportionality and distinction.

As the war continues and as the destruction mounts, you will hear a number of voices condemn Israel for a disproportionate response, but many of these critics fundamentally misunderstand what proportionality means in the law of war. The U.S. Army’s “Law of Land Warfare” field manual — which is deeply grounded in the international law of armed conflict and governed our urban operations in Iraq and Afghanistan — defines the legal obligation of proportionality as requiring “commanders to refrain from attacks in which the expected loss or injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects incidental to such attacks would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage expected to be gained.” It also requires that commanders “take feasible precautions to reduce the risk of harm to civilians, other protected persons and civilian objects.”

Proportionality does not require the Israel Defense Forces to respond with the same degree of force or take the same proportion of casualties as Hamas. In addition, as the manual states, “the proportionality standard does not require that no incidental harm results from attacks.” If you’re a soldier on patrol and someone fires at you with a rifle, you don’t have to respond with a rifle. You can use a tank round or a missile in response, unless you have reason to believe the tank round or missile will cause extraordinary collateral damage. But if you’re taking fire from a single house, proportionality prohibits you from destroying the entire block. Throughout the war on terrorism, American forces used powerful, longer-range weapons to attack individual targets. That does not violate the laws of war.

In reality, inflicting disproportionate casualties can be one of the goals of a fighting force. Ukraine appears to have inflicted substantially greater casualties on Russia than the Russian Army has inflicted on Ukraine. That doesn’t mean Ukraine’s response was disproportionate under the law of armed conflict. In every fight, the goal is to inflict as many losses as possible on your opponent while taking as few losses as possible.

There is a similar public ignorance problem with the concept of distinction, which “The Law of Land Warfare” defines as requiring combatants to distinguish “between combatants and military objectives on the one hand and civilians and civilian objects on the other in offense and defense.” Distinction requires soldiers to separate themselves from civilians by wearing uniforms, for example, or by fighting from marked military vehicles. It prohibits militaries from fighting from places like hospitals, schools and mosques.

Hamas disregards the principle of distinction. Its fighters take aim from civilian buildings while wearing civilian clothes and using civilian vehicles. This presents an attacking military with serious targeting problems. It is easy to identify, say, an armored personnel carrier as a military vehicle. But what if there are four Toyota Tacomas in the street and only one is full of Hamas fighters?

But here’s the key point: When Hamas abandons the principle of distinction, then Hamas is responsible for the civilian damage that results. If Hamas fights from a hospital — or stores munitions in a hospital — damage to that hospital is Hamas’s responsibility. If Hamas fighters shoot at Israel Defense Forces from a home that contains a Palestinian family, then Hamas is responsible for the civilian casualties if that family is harmed in the resulting exchange of fire.

.......

Given these realities, you can see the dynamic that will unfold. Bound by the laws of war, Israel has every incentive to decrease civilian casualties. The Israel Defense Forces are already providing detailed evacuation instructions for civilians to remove them from the zones of expected conflict. Netanyahu has urged residents to leave Gaza. Disregarding the law of war, Hamas has concrete tactical and strategic reasons to keep civilians in harm’s way and capitalize on their deaths.

.....

Every violation of the law should carry a consequence, but the law of war does not prevent Israel from destroying a terrorist army embedded in a civilian population. It can be done. It has been done. And as Israel embarks on perhaps its most difficult military operation since its war for independence, public clarity about the law of war will be indispensable for depriving Hamas of one of its chief propaganda weapons, and continued enforcement of the law of war can prevent atrocities that could fuel this conflict for generations to come.

I will lead with this one table I see, indicating how competitive districts are considered to be by the Cook Political Report. This table is not an indication of how the 2026 election is specifically likely to go based on polling, but rather, how Cook rates the basic competitiveness of the districts based on their description below.

https://www.cookpolitical.com/ratings/house-race-ratings

Trump Threatens ABC's Karl On 'Hate Speech' Crackdown

Quote

When Karl asked about criticism of the crackdown, Trump launched into a rant threatening to go after Karl, and referencing the lawsuit he settled with ABC this year:

JONATHAN KARL: And what do you make Pam Bondi saying she’s going to go after hate speech? Is that, I mean, a lot of people, a lot of your allies say hate speech is free speech.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: She’d probably go after people like you! Because you treat me so unfairly! It’s hate! You have a lot of hate in your heart!

JONATHAN KARL: Would that be appropriate?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Maybe they’ll come after ABC. Well, ABC paid me 16 million dollars recently for a form of hate speech, right? Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech, so maybe they’ll have to go after you.

Look, we want everything to be fair. It hasn’t been fair. And the radical left has done tremendous damage to the country, but we’re fixing it.

We have right now the hottest country anywhere in the world. And remember, one year ago, our country was dead. And now Washington D.C. Is fixed, and I fix it.

The mayor was fine. The mayor, the mayor was just fine, okay? The mayor had the sick city for many years. She’s been mayor for many years.

The one that fixed it was me and my people, and it is so safe. You should take your beautiful wife tonight and have dinner down there.

You won’t be shot, you won’t get accosted, you won’t even be looked at incorrectly by anybody.

Washington, D.C. Is safe, now we’re going to Memphis where it’s pretty rough, to put it mildly. And then we’re gonna have to go. A friend of mine who is a big railroader.

Trump rambled about railroads and Chicago for a full two minutes more.

I was inspired to this by my elderly father and his very small group of church friends writing hard copy letters to their GOP representative out in west Michigan.  

So, not all of us have his credentials of Korean War veteran/GOP for life until 2015 but we can do a lot.  Organizing and protesting in the ways we can while we still have speech.

Really, it’s about something bigger, meaning the bigger picture. It’s about pushing back on the whole thing. The rhetoric, the ideas, the philosophy—that whole movement.

It’s about resistance.

So maybe that’s what we need a thread about, as a catch-all for the things that come up that aren’t about just positioning one side or the other to win elections in even-numbered years. That’s politics. This is something bigger.

This is the Resistance Thread. Yes, I know it seems one-sided, but the other side is certainly free to start a “We ❤️ Trump!” thread if they want. And besides, they can also use this thread if the Democratic Party survives and ever takes power in Washington again.