PatJoe

[PatJoe @_pat_mcdonough]

@A_DavidLogan Math is hard

[PatJoe @_pat_mcdonough]

Ended up MOTM on ForMob, fwiw!

[SuperiorUSMNT @EinSchwarzwelt]

Freeman already beat twice by Diomande so far... the highest levels of Europe humble you fast. Although Freeman hasnt necessarily been bad so far either.

[Nathan J Robinson @NathanJRobinson]

if you think the International Criminal Court is a threat to you... you might just be a war criminal

[PatJoe @_pat_mcdonough]

@joedaroo This is a useful postmortem that took courage to write. Probably points out a fundamental misalignment of org incentives: the security team should never be put in a position to be “surprised” to such an extent that damage like this can be caused (reputational or otherwise).

[ชาเย้นหวาน ○% 𑁊^. .^𑁊 🌈✨️ @NunaxMx]

พัฒนาการความสำเร้จของเด้ก 7 ขวบที่จับกีตาร์เพื่อเล่นดนตรีหาทุนการศึกษาตามตลาดนัด สู่นักร้องที่อายุน้อยที่สุดบนเวทีระดับโลก น้องแพรว #NeneRoyal #AGT

[PatJoe @_pat_mcdonough]

@RahmEmanuel Kind of unfathomable that y’all think this angle is going to get you elected in the future.

[Tucker Carlson @TuckerCarlson]

According to an informed federal official, in the coming months the Trump administration plans to send a total of 40,000 Mark 84 and Blu-117 bombs to the government of Israel. Each bomb weighs 2,000 pounds. This appears to be the largest transfer of conventional explosive ordnance from the United States in modern history.

How big is this shipment? It amounts to 40,000 tons of bombs. For perspective, the largest American air raid of World War Two was the Eighth Air Force’s attack on Berlin in March of 1945. Combined, the 2,023 Allied aircraft involved dropped about 3,000 tons of bombs. That’s 7.5 percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. That same month, March of 1945, the US Army Air Forces began the single most destructive bombing raid in human history, Operation Meetinghouse over Tokyo. More than 100,000 Japanese civilians were killed. By the end of that operation, the US had dropped 1,600 tons of bombs. That’s four percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. World War Two ended five months later, when the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The shipment Trump is sending to Israel amounts to more than three times the destructive power of that nuclear explosion. There is no precedent for what the Trump administration is doing.

Nor is there a justification. The government of Israel is not fighting World War Two, or even a war. It is engaged in periodic skirmishes with a guerrilla force in Lebanon, and it is working to exterminate an unarmed civilian population in Gaza. Neither front requires modern 2,000-pound bombs.

An American-made Mark 84 has a destruction radius of half a mile. It releases a thermal wave the temperature of the surface of the sun. Within 100 feet of the explosion, rock melts and human flesh turns to vapor. The bomb collapses apartment buildings and leaves craters thirty-five feet deep. Until the war with Iran, the US military generally avoided using the Mark 84 in urban areas. It kills too many civilians.

For the Netanyahu government, that’s been the upside. In the weeks after October 7, the IDF dropped nearly six hundred 2,000-pound bombs on densely populated areas in Gaza, including on more than 100 officially designated civilian evacuation zones. The slaughter was so grotesque and embarrassing that for a moment the Biden administration paused a shipment of Mark 84s. Those shipments quickly resumed under Trump. Now they’ve accelerated.

It’s hard to overstate the scale of the crime the Israeli government is committing in Gaza. Over the last three years, more than a quarter-million Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces there. The majority of them have been noncombatants: women, the elderly and tens of thousands of children. Many thousands more remain missing, presumably entombed under the rubble of 200,000 collapsed buildings. So far the Israelis have destroyed 92 percent of all homes in Gaza, and 34 of the 36 hospitals. By comparison, the 1945 Allied bombings of Dresden, now acknowledged as a war crime, destroyed about half of the city’s inhabited buildings.

By any definition, what the Netanyahu government has done in Gaza is genocide. The 40,000 new bombs the Trump administration is sending will be used to do the same in Lebanon, and likely in other countries in the region. If you wanted to extend the Iran war into the indefinite future, this is exactly what you’d do.

So far none of this has received public scrutiny. At some point, inevitably, it will be described in media accounts as an “arms sale.” It is not an arms sale. It is a gift, funded by American taxpayers through the Foreign Military Financing program, an arrangement designed to disguise welfare as capitalism: Congress appropriates money to the executive branch, which transfers the cash to Israel to “buy” American-made weapons, in this case from General Dynamics. Politicians claim this is a win for America. Most voters have no idea they paid for it. The bill in this case is about $3 billion. Add that to the $352 billion the US Treasury has transferred to Israel since 1951.

How did this happen? The request for 40,000 new high-explosive civilian-killing bombs originated at the US Embassy in Jerusalem, which is run by Christian Zionist Ambassador Mike Huckabee and his aide David Milstein, who is the stepson of Fox News host Mark Levin. From there it moved to the State Department, where Marco Rubio enthusiastically approved it.

At this point, only four more people need to sign off before the bombs ship to Israel: Senators Jim Risch and Jeanne Shaheen, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and Congressmen Brian Mast and Gregory Meeks, the top two members of the equivalent House committee. All four are committed neocons. Collectively they’ve taken millions from the Israel lobby. In 2015, Brian Mast traveled to Israel to volunteer for the Israeli military. In 2023, Mast showed up in the House of Representatives wearing an IDF uniform.

It’s hard to imagine any of them hesitating before sending more free bombs to Israel. Only public outrage can stop this.

[PatJoe @_pat_mcdonough]

@Saltybrodog @mehdirhasan Can you elaborate on what those outrageous statements were supporting terrorists or attacking those countries?

[Affordability Crisis @trackingcosts]

Funny how 5 of the 10 richest counties in America happen to be the suburbs of Washington, DC. A city that manufactures nothing, exports nothing, and somehow gets richer every year. Wonder where all that money comes from.

[Omar Elayat @oelayat]

Remember when Gottheimer said all Muslims were all guilty for 10/7? When Gillibrand said Mamdani supported "global jihad"? When Cuomo agreed Mamdani would cheer a second 9/11? When Nessel spent weeks lying that Tlaib was attacking her over her faith? When Crockett dropped her "slave mentality" comments? Or the hundred bigoted things Fetterman has said about Mamdani and AES? It would be great for establishment Dems to universally condemn bigotry in their own party. But it isn't a sincere principle to them, it's a cudgel to be used against ideological opponents

[PatJoe @_pat_mcdonough]

@ManagerTactical Just me or did that keeper not react?

[Rakesh Kumar @Rakeshhkumaar]

Brown University, one of America’s prestigious Ivy League research universities: The US Killed 4.5–4.7 Million People Since 2001.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

.@elonmusk flagging this to help your platform get better. X is my favorite. Eyal is an op.

[PatJoe @_pat_mcdonough]

@neeratanden Are you drunk tweeting again Neera?

[𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦 @OopsGuess]

So China’s basic response is:

If the United States were still confident in its own competitiveness, it would not need to turn every Chinese civilian project into a national security emergency.

A port becomes a threat.
A railway becomes a threat.
A telecom network becomes a threat.
Even an undersea cable becomes a weapon.

China builds infrastructure.
Washington builds panic around it.

America no longer asks whether a Chinese project works.
It asks how quickly it can be killed before the world notices it works better.

When an empire can no longer lead, it tries to cripple those who can.

[PatJoe @_pat_mcdonough]

@mellowjnr_ 7. I like the aisle, prefer not to socialize much, don’t worship celebrities, and know they just want to be left alone.

[PatJoe @_pat_mcdonough]

@ProspectsUsmnt I wonder if they’re afraid to learn another language

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

I left Alabama. I am in Georgia now.

At 3 a.m. I saw a yellow sign glowing beside the highway.

Waffle House.

I went in. The parking lot was full. At 3 a.m.

I asked the waitress when they close.

She looked at me the way you look at a child who has asked when gravity ends.

She said, "We don't close, baby."

Two things happened in that sentence.

One: I learned Waffle House has never closed. Not at night. Not on Christmas. Not during hurricanes.

Two: she called me "baby."

I am a grown man. I have a mortgage. It repaired something in me I did not know was broken.

I ordered hash browns.

She said, "Scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, diced, peppered, capped, or topped?"

I did not understand a single word in that sentence.

I said, "Yes."

She nodded and wrote it down. Apparently that was a correct answer.

Then I learned something, and I need you to know I did not invent this.

The United States government measures the strength of hurricanes by whether the Waffle House is open.

Open: the storm is fine.

Limited menu: the storm is serious.

Closed: evacuate. It is over.

This is called the Waffle House Index. FEMA uses it. FEMA. The disaster agency.

Japan built earthquake satellites. America watches a diner.

Both systems work.

At 3 a.m., the Waffle House contained: two truck drivers. A nurse still in scrubs. Four teenagers in prom clothes. One man who had clearly made several mistakes that evening. And one Japanese man with a notebook.

Nobody asked anybody why they were there.

At Waffle House, being there is the answer.

Then a man at the counter noticed my Alabama shirt. It was a gift. Long story.

He did not speak. He pointed at the shirt and shook his head slowly, the way you correct someone in church.

Then he said, quietly: "Go Dawgs."

I panicked and used the only word I own.

"Roll Tide."

Every fork in the building stopped.

The cook looked up from the eggs.

The waitress said, "Baby, no."

I understand now. Every state here has its own word. My word is from one state ago.

The man bought my waffle anyway.

He said, and I am quoting him exactly: "You didn't know. Bless your heart."

I have been told that phrase has two meanings.

I believe I received the gentle one.

I believe.

[PatJoe @_pat_mcdonough]

@thedreydossier @SocialSecurity Are you talking about out the picture on an ID card when you talk about “biometric data” or something else?

[PatJoe @_pat_mcdonough]

@Keegan59992745 Well done sir