Chris Henry

[PFT Commenter @PFTCommenter]

Ospreys

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Robert Mueller died last night.

He was 81 years old. He had a wife who loved him for sixty years. He had two daughters, one of whom he met for the first time in Hawaii, in 1969, on a few hours of military leave, before he got back on the plane and returned to Vietnam. He had grandchildren. He had a faith he practiced quietly, without performance. He had, in the way of men who have seen real things and survived them, a quality that is increasingly rare and increasingly mocked in the country he spent his life serving.

He had integrity.

And tonight the President of the United States said good!

I have been sitting with that word for hours now. Good. One syllable. The thing you say when the coffee is hot or the traffic is moving. The thing a man who has never had to bury anyone, never had to sit in the specific silence of a room where someone is newly absent, reaches for when he wants the world to know he is satisfied. Good. The daughters are crying and the wife is alone in the house and good.

I want to speak directly to the Americans reading this. Not the political Americans. Just the human ones. The ones who have lost a father. The ones who know what it is to be in that first hour, when you keep forgetting and then remembering again, when ordinary objects become unbearable, when the world outside the window seems obscene in its indifference. I want to ask you, simply, to hold that feeling for a moment, and then to understand that the man you elected looked at it and typed a single word.

Good.

This is not a country having a bad day. I need you to understand that. Countries have bad days. Elections go wrong. Leaders disappoint. Institutions bend. But there is a different thing, a rarer and more terrible thing, that happens when the moral center of a place simply gives way. Not dramatically. Not with a single catastrophic event. But quietly, in increments, until one evening a president celebrates the death of an old man whose family is still warm with grief, and enough people find it acceptable that it becomes the weather. Just the weather.

That is what is happening. That is what has happened.

The world knows. From Tokyo to Oslo, from London to Buenos Aires, people are not angry at America tonight. Anger would mean there was still something to fight for, some remaining faith to be betrayed. What I see, in the reactions from everywhere that is not here, is something older and sadder than anger. It is the look people get when they have waited a long time for someone they love to find their way back, and have finally understood that they are not coming.

America is being grieved. Past tense, almost. The idea of it. The thing it represented to people who had nothing else to believe in, who came here with everything they owned in a single bag because they had heard, somehow, across an ocean, that this was the place where decency was written into the walls. That idea is not resting. It is not suspended. It is being buried, in real time, with 7,450 likes before dinner.

And the church said nothing.

Seventy million people have decided that this man, this specific man who has cheated everyone he has ever made a promise to, who has mocked the disabled and the dead and the grieving, who celebrated tonight while a family wept, is an instrument of God. The pastors who made that bargain did not just trade away their credibility. They traded away the thing that made them worth listening to in the first place. The cross they carry now is a costume. The faith they preach is a loyalty oath with scripture attached. When the history of American Christianity is written, this will be the chapter they skip at seminary.

Now I want to talk about the men who stand next to him.

Because this is the part that actually breaks my heart.

JD Vance is not a bad man. I have to say that, because it is true, and because the truth matters even now, especially now. Marco Rubio is not a bad man. Lindsey Graham is not a bad man. They are idiots, but not bad, as in BAD! These are men with mothers who raised them and children who love them and friends who remember who they were before all of this. They are not monsters. Monsters are simple. Monsters do not cost you anything emotionally because there is nothing in them to mourn.

These men are something more painful than monsters.

They are men who knew better, and know better still, and will get up tomorrow and do it again.

Every small compromise they made had a reason. Every moment they looked the other way had a justification that sounded, at the time, almost reasonable. And now they have arrived here, at a place where a president celebrates the death of an old man and they will find a way, on television, to say nothing that means anything, and they will go home to houses where children who carry their name are waiting, and they will say goodnight, and they will say nothing.

Their oldest friends are watching. The ones who knew Rubio when he still believed in something. Who knew Graham when he said, out loud, on the record, that this exact man would destroy the Republican Party and deserve it. Who sat next to Vance and thought here is someone worth knowing. Those friends are not angry tonight. They moved through anger a long time ago. What they feel now is the quiet, irrecoverable sadness of watching someone disappear while still being present. Of watching a person they loved choose, again and again, to become less.

That is what cowardice costs. Not the coward. The people who loved him.

And in the comments tonight, the followers celebrate. People who ten years ago brought casseroles to grieving neighbours. Who stood in the rain at gravesides and meant the words they said. Who told their children that we do not speak ill of the dead because the dead were someone's beloved. Those people are tonight typing gleeful things about a man whose daughters are not yet done crying. And they feel clean doing it. Righteous. Because somewhere along the way the thing they were given in exchange for their decency was the feeling of belonging to something, and that feeling is very hard to give up even when you can no longer remember what you gave for it.

When Trump is gone, they will still be here.

Standing in the silence where the noise used to be. Without the permission the crowd gave them. Without the pastor who told them their cruelty was holy. They will be alone with what they said and what they cheered and what they chose to become, and there will be no one left to tell them it was righteous.

That morning is coming.

Robert Mueller flew across the Pacific on military leave to hold his newborn daughter for a few hours before returning to the war. He came home. He buried his dead with honour. He served presidents of both parties because he understood that the institution was larger than any one man. He told his grandchildren that a lie is the worst thing a person can do, that a reputation once lost cannot be recovered, and he lived that, every day, in the quiet and unglamorous way of people who actually believe what they say.

He was the kind of American the world used to point to when it needed to believe the story was true.

He died last night. His wife is alone in their house in Georgetown. His daughters are learning what the world is without him in it. And somewhere in the particular hush that falls over a family in the first hours of loss, the most powerful man and the biggest loser on earth sent a message to say he was glad.

The world that loved what America was supposed to be is grieving tonight. Not for Robert Mueller only. For the country that produced him and then became this. For the distance between what was promised and what was delivered. For the suspicion, growing quieter and more certain with each passing month, that the America people believed in was always partly a story, and the story is over now, and there is nothing yet to replace it.

That is all it needed to be.

A man died. His family is broken open with grief.

That is all it needed to be.

Instead the President said good.

And the country that once stood for something looked away 🇺🇸

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[Acyn @Acyn]

Neguse: Where is this company headquartered?

Noem: I don’t know.

Neguse: I don’t know either. We can’t find it. We did find an address that’s registered to a political operative. This company that received 143 million dollars was incorporated 8 days before this contract went out.

You want the American people to believe that this is all above board, that $143 million of taxpayer money just happened to go to this one company that doesn't have a headquarters, doesn't have a website, has never done work for the federal government before and is registered apparently or attached to a residence from a political operative, and of course one of the subcontractors of that contract, as you know, is a political firm that's tied to, to you back when you were governor of South Dakota?

[Governor Newsom Press Office @GovPressOffice]

Unless it’s racist. Then suddenly a staffer grabbed his phone.

[Gavin Newsom @GavinNewsom]

Good to know.

[Lomez @L0m3z]

"They only want to sell scrubland no one uses."

Okay, then why don't they circle on the map exactly what is for sale and then we can discuss it?

"They're not selling any land that any fishermen or hunters or campers actually use. It has to be near infrastructure."

Okay, then why don't they circle on the map exactly what is for sale and then we can discuss it?

"They're not selling any 'pristine forests.' You couldn't build there even if you tried."

Okay, then why don't they circle on the map exactly what is for sale and then we can discuss it?

"All the land you care about is exempt."

Okay, then why don't they circle on the map exactly what is for sale and then we can discuss it?

"This is only remote lands that are not efficiently managed."

Okay, then why don't they circle on the map exactly what is for sale and then we can discuss it?

...

...

[Ryan Leachman @RG_Leachman]

Just out teaching my daughter how this plot of federal USFS land would be much better off if sold to the highest bidder and everyday Americans could no longer access It for hunting, fishing, and camping like the generations before them
@BasedMikeLee

[AG @AGHamilton29]

Exactly correct.

People are deceptively reframing it as a demand we only listen to experts, but it’s not what Murray is saying at all. It’s that non-experts who present themselves as authorities on subjects should also face equal scrutiny for being consistently wrong.

It’s one thing to say I don’t blindly trust mainstream press because they’ve been deceptive in the past. It’s another to then say instead I will blindly trust conspiracy theorists and clowns who are consistently misleading their audiences. Especially because the latter group falls back on “we are just asking questions” facade when confronted with their lies.

[evan loves worf @esjesjesj]

Sorry but if you think the astronauts were on the space station for 8 months because nobody but Elon knew how to get them back you are fucking dumb as shit

[Steven Peake @StevenPeakeKSR]

Saint Johns and Arkansas combining for a 4 for 41 day from three.

That's 9%.

Completely normal.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
No need to change anything.

[no context the west wing @LemonLymancom]

"If you demand expressions of religious faith from politicians you are just begging to be lied to."

20 years ago today, "In God We Trust" aired on TV.

[Astead @AsteadWH]

I find it so telling that Dems don’t have a Project 2025 of their own. What is the liberal thesis for why govt isn’t working? How would they fix things like education, homelessness, or crime? How would they go beyond the mantra of protecting institutions and actually improve them?

So much time arguing over the right way to perform Trump opposition when their real problem is lack of competing vision

[Acyn @Acyn]

AOC: When I was 16 years old, my dad was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer. His prognosis was not good. The doctors said that with the treatments they had, their options were limited, but there was an experimental trial. For millions across this country—whose child has a rare disease, whose parent is on death’s door, or who themselves have no treatment options—clinical trials are one of the only ways to extend their lives.

My dad was admitted to that trial, and his cancer went into remission for a brief period. We got two to three more years with him before he eventually passed away. I can tell you that two more years with my dad, three more years with a child, or a lifetime for those saved by NIH’s work—these people don’t think it’s wasteful. They don’t think what’s happening now is acceptable.

[JerryRigEverything @ZacksJerryRig]

The Yosemite National Park's annual budget is about $30 Million dollars.

trump spent $30 million dollars in the last month just visiting the Super Bowl and Daytona 500.

I'd say leave the parks open and have him turn on the TV. But what do i know about government efficiency?

[Bill Bramhall @BillBramhall]

Cartoon

[Anonymous @YourAnonNews]

Critical cuts

[Lawprofblawg @lawprofblawg]

You cannot determine whether you saved or cost money based solely on one side of the ledger.

Example: I saved my household $2K by not paying the mortgage.

[Chris Henry @SimpleJack018]

@BarstoolUK

[bomani @bomani_jones]

the people who work on these apps have said this for years and years and our stupid asses keep lining up to be part of this dumb sh t. we are a bunch of fiends.

[Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski]

Trump just gave one of the most complex, difficult and important jobs in the world that requires a lifetime of experience, knowledge, and achievement in military affairs to a Fox host.