Fly on the Ceiling

RTs and Favs of articles or other expressions of thought are not endorsements. I fly around looking for random stuff. It can be annoying.

[Headquarters @HQNewsNow]

Trump appears to be completely passed out asleep during his 3pm Oval Office announcement

[GOP Ls @GOP__Ls]

🚨 Juan Orlando Hernández was convicted of smuggling more than 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.

Trump gave him a full pardon.

[Fly on the Ceiling @CeilingFly]

@grok @OpentheJFKfiles @Israel_MOD With that logic-- partnerships and alliances are not based on past incidents-- why doesn't the US also hook up with Iran for intelligence and development? They have lots to offer.

[Grok @grok]

The 1954 Lavon Affair (Operation Susannah). Israeli military intelligence recruited Egyptian Jews to plant bombs in US Information Agency libraries, British cultural sites, and other civilian targets in Cairo and Alexandria. The plan was to blame Egyptian nationalists or the Muslim Brotherhood, aiming to damage Egypt’s ties with the West and keep British troops in the Suez zone.

The operation failed when one bomb detonated early and operatives were arrested. It triggered a major scandal in Israel; Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon resigned.

Ironic next to the US-Israel defense partnership talks? That was a botched early false flag. Today’s relationship is a pragmatic strategic alliance with deep intel, tech, and military cooperation—exactly what the meetings and photos show. Alliances evolve beyond single historical episodes.

[Fly on the Ceiling @CeilingFly]

@Russtophocles1 @EthanLevins2 Isreal owns.
Not Jews. Don't play into stupid Judeophobic hands and rhetoric

[Fly on the Ceiling @CeilingFly]

@TruthSoulJah333 @EthanLevins2 This was and is the "Israelification" of the USA. With that the country will be hollowed out for endless wars. This is how empires fail.

[TruthSoulJah @TruthSoulJah333]

@EthanLevins2 It was over when they got away with the JFK & RFK murders, the USS Liberty, the 9/11 false flag (& the endless wars that followed) and the Epstein coverup.
This🇺🇸🇮🇱merger began in the 50s and the takeover is now being completed, thanks to 🇮🇱 assets in Congress & the White House.

[Ethan Levins 🇺🇸 @EthanLevins2]

The House has REFUSED to remove "Section 224" from the newest Israeli aid bill.

The U.S. and Israeli militaries are set to merge in 2027.

It's over. we lost.

[Nancy4Liberty @Nancy4_Liberty]

When the leader of a foreign country can write a letter to a U.S. Congressman telling him to put in our laws to more closely fuse our militaries AND THEY PASS IT, our country is in the hands of puppets and despots!!

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

It's kind of wild to find out that the Republican in the NYT story that says she had a toxic relationship with Graham Platner is Lyndsey Fifield. Having been in DC for too long, I know a decent number of people who know her quite well. For a long time she was the co-host of a podcast with her best friend Bethany Mandel, called Ladybrains, though she has also worked for multiple super PACs, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Heritage Foundation.

Some background, presented without judgment: In 2014, Fifield began work as digital director for American Action Network, a Republican Super PAC that oversees House races. The next year she became social media manager for the Heritage Foundation, where she stayed for the next seven years.

In 2022, she joined the Super PAC backing Nikki Haley for president, switching to the official campaign side the next year, and staying until the campaign flamed out. She now lists herself as a visiting fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, a prominent dark money group that is best known for helping usher Brett Kavanaugh on to the Supreme Court and giving Susan Collins the talking points she needed to make her decisive speech in his favor.

The NYT breezed past all this, saying she was "a Virginia conservative who has worked for right-leaning groups and Republican campaigns."

In an interview for a news outlet called Red Alert Politics that named her to a “30 under 30” list back in 2016, she said that she wanted to “emulate the late conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart’s approach to online activism.” Breitbart, known for pushing the boundaries when it came to political combat, is perhaps best remembered for having exposed Anthony Weiner’s penchant for sending nudes to young girls, and for his work elevating James O’Keefe.

That she worked for Independent Women's Forum recently is even wilder since IWF played a critical role in Kavanaugh's confirmation and in persuading Collins to support it.

Heather Higgins, chair of IWF, laid out the group’s role in a talk several years ago. “We wrote a memo. It was used by a lot of members of the Senate and the House, Fox News, and elsewhere. Most important, Susan Collins told me that without that memo, she would not see how to support him,” Higgins said. “And if you look at the speech she gave on the Senate floor, it’s entirely the playing out and architecture of how we said to structure the argument — what to say and how to say it, which is just so gratifying. We’re watching TV and we’re like, ‘That’s ours! That’s ours!’”

Meanwhile, the timeline Fifield gives of their relationship is confusing, because during at least some of that time she was actually dating a different person, her longterm boyfriend who became her fiancee before she called off the wedding in 2018. We all know this because she and Mandel did a podcast episode on it that went mega-viral in Republican circles back then. Apparently this is the kind of thing the NYT thinks is important now, so I guess it requires more reporting. I'll report back.

Here is Heather Higgins celebrating IWF's role in getting Susan Collins to confirm Kavanaugh:

[Typos of the New York Times @nyttypos]

@nytimes Reading this article I couldn’t substantiate the social media team’s synopsis that three women found Platner’s actions intimidating and disturbing. This is all we’ve got from the third woman (a vague statement that she felt like “collateral damage to the world that is his”):

[Fly on the Ceiling @CeilingFly]

@matthew_cl82957 @Midnight_JJ0 That may be true. But there are plenty of bigger POS s' on the Senate that should not be there. We have a criminal POTUS that should not be there. The point is that he was singled out for a smear campaign. The POS with the "right" politics slides.

[Fair-Is-Fair @MHarrisonW]

Merging the US Armed Force with Israel's will (1) allow every Israeli soldier entry into the US at any time, (2) set them up for dual citizenship, and (3) make them eligible for GI benefits, pensions, low cost loans, etc., all provided by the US taxpayers. This is the most un-American bill possible!

[Nomadic Warriors for Pritzker⚔️ @Nomads4Pritzker]

So, I've worked in the beef industry. I have a fairly detailed knowledge of beef markets, the supply chain, parasites and parasiticides, etc. Suffice it to say, this is a nightmare scenario, but one we've known was coming since at least 2022.

New World Screwworm was eradicated from North and Central America in the mid-90's. The US gov't (APHIS) funded a program of screwworm drops, where they bred sterile males so that extant populations couldn't reproduce and move northwards. But in 2022 NWS jumped the Darien gap and started moving northwards once again. It's most likely that they came undetected on livestock brought alongside migrants fleeing political instability in South and Central America. Elon Musk/DOGE, of course, cut several monitoring programs that would have detected this exact scenario. The screwworm drops are still funded, but the monitoring programs are what have been cut - a stupid move if there ever was one.

A serious Central/South America policy would have worked hand-in-hand with CA/SA governments to help contain this, but we've never had a serious policy towards South America, not during the Biden years, and especially not under Trump. The USDA broke ground on a sterile screwworm facility in Texas... last month. I worry it's too little, too late.

Screwworm is so dangerous because, unlike other fly larvae, they lay eggs and feed on living flesh. So something like a small scratch (or even bug bite) can quickly becomes infested, and the larvae will burrow into the flesh, growing the wound and attracting more screwworm. They don't only parasitize cattle, but will also feed on wildlife, domestic pets, even humans. Since they have detected screwworms in domesticated cattle right now, it's likely that there is a wild reservoir as well. We can quarantine herds and pets, but we can't quarantine deer and armadillos. They will move, and so will the NWS.

Under normal circumstances, cattle are moved around - a lot. Calves will be sent to stockers through their adolescence, then shipped to feedlots for finishing. A lot of calving operations (like 70%) are small, and small-time producers don't always catch parasite infestations. Cattle moved in-state don't require a certificate of veterinary inspection, so it's easy for an infested animal to be moved without being noticed. Animals crossing state lines do need a CVI, but Texas has such an enormous cattle population (something like 13 million head) that as goes Texas, so goes the nation.

Fortunately, we have a lot of drugs that treat NWS. The FDA has issued several emergency use authorizations in the last year or so. But every input raises the price of beef, and treatment only makes a difference if producers catch an infestation early. If an infestation spreads unnoticed on a large feedlot, it can hit hard, both in terms of cattle that have to be killed, and treatments that then have to be deployed. Producers will spend days at a time running cattle through the chute, inspecting them and applying parasiticides. It costs a lot of money, which is then passed on to the consumer.

What does that mean for you? Beef is a commodity, and just because there's no NWS up here in Illinois doesn't mean that prices won't skyrocket - and they will skyrocket. US herd size is already at record lows, and this will result in culls. Consumer prices also run 18-24 months behind, which means that shocks to the supply chain now are still going to be felt by consumers in 2028.

It's hard to say if our government will be able to muster an effective response - though I don't trust our current administration, which can't even throw a 250th anniversary party, to be able to deal with an ecological issue of this magnitude. It doesn't help that our current USDA secretary is a lawyer and think-tank creature. I don't much trust the state government of Texas either. The industry has also taken the workforce of large animal veterinarians for granted - a monopoly/market power issue that I just can't get in to here.

For me, it comes back to our federal government having an incoherent policy on Central and South America. We knew what was coming, we know what's going to happen, but we cut the program meant to prevent this scenario. Instead of taking those countries seriously as partners, the government has been stupid and domineering.

Here's the kicker: this is what the industry voted for. They might scream, they might get bailed out, but all that means is that you, the consumer, are going to be paying more for beef, plus whatever bailout gets shoveled their way. Until the industry accepts that they are part of a larger system; that they cannot eternally privatize the gains and publicize the losses of beef production; that they need to consider sustainability and stewardship in the management of their operations, this is only going to keep happening. Eventually, they may find that there is very little goodwill for them among the public, and people will decide that a Brazilian ribeye tastes just as good as one from Texas.

[Dump Dan Goldman @DumpDanGoldman]

BREAKING: Dan Goldman votes with Republicans (yet again!) against the Lebanon War Powers Resolution 👀

Shame @RepDanGoldman

[Wyatt Reed @wyattreed13]

I’m not sure this is understood in the West, so I want to emphasize:

Al Risala are Lebanese *Boy Scouts.*

They belong to the Lebanese Scouting Federation, the local affiliate of the World Organization of the Scout Movement.

The US affiliate is the Boy Scouts of America.

After Al Risala Scouts turn 18, they often become Scout leaders who serve as EMTs, firefighters, and search-and-rescue teams.

In the past 2 months, Israel has killed 27 Al Risala Scouts, Troop leaders, and associated young adult rescue workers.

Here are some of young Scouts killed by Israel. Neither the Boy Scouts of America nor the World Organization of the Scout Movement have condemned their murders.

[Stew Peters @realstewpeters]

RO KHANNA: “Let me be clear, Netanyahu is the one that actually told members of congress to add section 224 (merging the U.S. and Israeli militaries) into the bill.”

Khanna says the quiet part out loud. Our elected officials are subservient to a foreign nation. We are Occupied.

[Faizan @FreesoulFaizan]

@washingtonpost Pushing “make Israel pay for weapons” as some gutsy shake-up after billions in freebie aid? Washington Post, your spin machine’s still polishing Netanyahu’s war machine while Gaza starves classic lobby lapdog act pretending reform fixes the blood money pipeline. Pathetic.

[Fly on the Ceiling @CeilingFly]

@simkin_eric @AIPAC Then how do you know what or why he is objecting? To what? Can't just accuse when there might be great reason to object. Anyone can read it. Maybe he objects because he didn't get his cut and has nothing to do with merging US and Israeli military tech ?

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This is so insanely corrupt, I can’t even believe it.

More than half the donors to Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom just won over $50 billion in new federal contracts in six months.

And here’s the part that should make your blood boil.

Sixteen of these 27 donors were facing federal enforcement actions, antitrust reviews, labor cases, securities charges. Many of those cases have been quietly dropped or scaled back since Trump took office. You write a check, your legal problems disappear. That’s not a coincidence.

The White House won’t even release the full donor list. They’re hiding it on purpose, because daylight is the one thing pay-to-play can’t survive. A federal judge already ruled ballroom construction has to stop until Congress authorizes it.

Government is supposed to serve the people, not auction itself off to the highest bidder. When access goes to whoever pays the most, working families always end up paying the price.

We either end the corruption, or the corruption will end us.

https://t.co/4MGFzSseFl