Teachmonkey2fly

This past Thursday, I spent the morning at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. I was there to hear the arguments in my lawsuit against Pete Hegseth for violating my First Amendment rights. I appreciate that the court made this case a priority because it has a significant impact on the First Amendment rights of over 2 million retired servicemembers. This case matters. Let me tell you what also matters. Right now, we have servicemembers putting their lives at risk because this President took our country to war against Iran without a strategic goal or a plan. Because of his reckless decision, parents can’t afford the gas to drive their kids to school, people can’t afford to drive to work and seniors can’t afford to drive to their doctor’s appointments. Millions of Americans can’t afford rent, healthcare, and in many cases food. As this President builds his new gilded ballroom, upgrades his new plane, builds his arch, and works on his next business deal that personally enriches him and his family, the American people continue to suffer. I didn’t vote for Donald Trump but after he was elected I wanted him to succeed and I hoped that as President he would at least try to make some things better. Instead he kicked millions of Americans off of their healthcare and took away free lunches for kids in order to deliver a tax cut to millionaires and billionaires. And recently Donald Trump has asked Congress for $1.5 trillion for next year's defense budget. That is more than double of what it was in my first year in the Senate just 5 years ago. It is nearly the amount that all other countries combined spend on defense. And this is for a department that is being managed by the least qualified secretary of defense in our country’s history. Where will this money go? Some of it will be used to fund the President’s top priorities like Golden Dome, an idea that Donald Trump, a real estate developer, had after seeing the success of Israel’s Iron Dome system, which is essentially a point defense system. That’s very different than what he envisions, which is a shield against all ballistic and hypersonic missiles. I understand the physics of the challenge of intercepting hypersonic missiles in space or in the glide phase and it looks like they will spend hundreds of billions of dollars building a system that will not work. And even worse some of this money will certainly go to companies that Donald Trump’s sons have recently invested in. The corruption in and around this President and his friends and family is almost unimaginable in its scale and scope. We have real problems that are being ignored and others that aren’t being addressed with a reasonable and rational approach. The top 1% of the wealthiest Americans now own more of our collective wealth than the middle class and if you are in the middle class you often can’t afford your life because this President and others in Washington DC have passed laws to give your money to them. It didn’t start with this President, but my hope is that perhaps it ends with him. We have to get this country back on track. We have to pass policies that help hard working Americans so that their hard work pays off for them, not for someone else. We have to address our country’s growing debt and we have to find solutions that will improve people's lives. Whether it is the outrageous cost of health care or the fact that young people can’t afford homes and young families can’t afford childcare — there are solutions to these problems. Corruption, cronyism, and a system designed to help the very few at the expense of the many is a significant challenge but it isn’t an insurmountable one.

Mr. Hartmann writes: "For decades, Democrats suspected what has now been CONFIRMED in plain English by a Trump insider. Ashley St. Clair, former TPUSA brand ambassador, who built a million-follower platform on X...has spent a few weeks blowing the lid 1/ rawstory.com/raw-investigat…

@_MaxQ_ @davill Catbonite heat shield upgrade

@davill noticed some interesting materials on 4 of the 7 engine bells from "No, It's Necessary" this morning, and the other 3 have the more traditional bracing/bracketing that we've seen during NG-1 and NG-2. Curious as to what y'all are testing this time around in this configuration - additional BE-4 upgrades?

The space port that never sleeps starting off the week bright and early this morning! Blue Origin has rolled GS1-3 "No, It's Necessary" out of their factory — it’s now heading to LC-36. This marks the company’s third New Glenn first stage booster built to date, and the next one scheduled to fly. 📸 - @NASASpaceflight

@nexta_tv Nothing to ask forgiveness for. Men were probably bored with watching blurry video of F1 cars zipping past and would have preferred watching a super model instead. I know I would have

📺 During a Formula 1 broadcast, the camera operator got distracted by a passerby He switched the camera from the hosts to a woman. Later he said even the McLaren mechanics were staring at her. Social media identified her as 33-year-old Croatian model Ivana Knoll. Fire or forgive?

An awesome piece of journalism about a Ukrainian soldier's life. A must read. So sad it's the last piece.

@JayinKyiv @sternenko "Just a flesh wound "

@sternenko It's but a flesh wound!

Сьогодні у мене день народження, а мене ніхто не привітав. Ну як день народження. Скорше ще один день, коли вдалося вижити. 1 травня на мене було скоєно 2 напади. Перший у 2018 році, коли найманець Труханова стріляв мені у шию, але мені вдалося його затримати. І рівно рік тому цього дня на замовлення ФСБ у мене стріляла жінка. Допомагав їй співробітник поліції, а в квартирі у неї знайшли ще вибуховий пристрій. Мені пощастило дуже – поранення ноги було легким. Охоронцю пощастило ще більше – куля прошила кофту, але його не зачепила. Хочу подякувати Богові за новий день народження. Та СБУ за порятунок. Спробу мене вбити розцінюю виключно як визнання ворога. Планую пережити росію. Вітайте зі святом на банку!

@sternenko I haven't followed you before but OMG, I am so sorry to hear this. This is typical of Ruzzian genocidal behavior and it is inexcusable. These criminals will be hunted down till end of time. There is no statute of limitations for war crimes. Also, a belated Happy birthday 🎂

У Вашингтоні відбувається одна з найбільших політичних катастроф адміністрації Трампа. І щоб зрозуміти її масштаб, треба порівняти дві цифри. 1,7 мільярда доларів — сума, яку Обама виплатив Ірану в 2016 році. Трамп 10 років називав це «зеленою готівкою», «зрадою», «викупом терористам» і однією з найгірших помилок в історії США. 19 днів тому, 1 квітня 2026-го, він повторив цю риторику у формальному зверненні до нації. 20 мільярдів доларів — сума, яку тепер Трамп готовий розморозити Ірану в рамках переговорів про завершення війни. Майже в 12 разів більше, ніж та сума, яку він називав зрадою. За даними Axios, під угоду підпадають іранські активи в Південній Кореї, Іраку та Європі. Натомість Іран передасть запас збагаченого урану — близько 2000 кг на рівні 60% — у третю країну для переробки або зберігання. При всьому моєму вкрай негативному ставленні до Обами, переговори і виплату 2016 року вели фахові юристи Держдепу — цивільні службовці з обов'язковими фінансовими деклараціями та під правилами щодо конфлікту інтересів. Це було врегулювання міжнародного арбітражу, що тягнувся з 1979 року: США заборгували Ірану за непоставлену за часів шаха зброю, і Казначейство оцінювало, що Америка в будь-якому випадку програє справу з більшими відсотками. А ось ключова фігура в нинішніх переговорах — Джаред Кушнер. Зять Трампа. Людина, чий приватний інвестиційний фонд отримав мільярди від Саудівського Державного Інвестиційного Фонду та від ОАЕ. Тобто угода, яка перекроює економічну архітектуру Близького Сходу, ведеться людиною, чиї приватні інвестори — учасники саме цієї системи. Демократи в Комітеті з питань юстиції Палати представників вже відкрили розслідування щодо конфлікту інтересів. 6 березня 2026 року Трамп заявив публічно: «не буде жодної угоди з Іраном, окрім беззастережної капітуляції». А що зараз на столі? Іран не капітулює. Іран отримує гроші. Збагачений уран не знищується — його перевозять. Збагачувальна програма не демонтується — її тимчасово зупиняють. 20 мільярдів не є «податком переможеної сторони». Це повернення іранських грошей, які США ж і заморозили як важіль. Гроші течуть з Вашингтона в Тегеран. Це не капітуляція Ірану. Це узгоджене припинення вогню з фінансовими умовами на користь Тегерану. У 2016 році найближчі соратники Трампа по Сенату — Ліндсі Грем, Марко Рубіо, Том Коттон, Марк Кірк — рік за роком називали 1,7 млрд доларів «викупом», «умиротворенням», «відкриттям дороги до війни». Всі вони досі в Сенаті. Всі вони завтра мають пояснити, чому 20 мільярдів доларів — це не те саме. Грем вже публічно закликав Конгрес розпочати перевірку переговорів — тими самими методами, яких він вимагав від Обами у 2015 році. Схоже, що Іран веде цю гру значно розумніше, ніж показують у медіа. Президент Ірану Пезешкіан попереджає внутрішньо, що економіка розвалиться за 3-4 тижні без припинення вогню. КСІР хоче зберегти режим і воювати далі. Новий Верховний лідер Моджтаба Хаменеї (син попереднього, вбитого в перші години операції «Епічна лють» 28 лютого) намагається балансувати — він схвалив припинення вогню і одночасно пообіцяв помсту. Обидві заяви досі діють. CNN вже повідомив, що Іран вимагає більше 20 мільярдів. Бо вони відчули головне: Трамп зараз потребує цієї угоди більше, ніж Іран. Отже, ціна піде вгору. Це черговий урок про гарантії США. 19 днів між формальним зверненням до нації, де Трамп назвав 1,7 млрд «зрадою», і пропозицією віддати 20 млрд тій же «державі-терористу». 19 днів. Якщо хтось в Європі ще сподівається, що Америка виконає якусь домовленість по Україні — цей хтось живе у світі, якого вже давно не існує. Нам треба перестати сподіватися на американські гарантії в будь-якому форматі. Наша безпека — це наша армія, наше ОПК, наші дрони і ракети. Операція «Епічна лють», яка мала «знищити цілу цивілізацію за одну ніч», закінчується тим, що США платять 20 мільярдів, Іран зберігає збагачений уран, режим аятол залишається при владі, ядерна програма не демонтована, а Трамп оголосить це перемогою.

I have three monitors on my desk. The left one shows the order book. The middle one shows Truth Social. The right one shows the investigation queue. On April 21st, the left screen moved first. I am a Senior Surveillance Analyst at a commodities exchange. I have held this position for nineteen years. My job is to monitor trading activity for suspicious patterns and generate compliance reports. I am employee of the quarter. I have a mug. At 19:54 GMT on April 21st, someone placed 4,260 sell orders on Brent crude futures. They did this during post-settlement. The window after the market closes when daily volume is typically in the dozens. Sometimes single digits. Sometimes I watch the screen and nothing happens for forty minutes and I think about whether my daughter is happy. On April 21st, someone placed $430 million in directional bets in 120 seconds during that window. One hundred and twenty seconds. I timed it on my watch because the system clock rounds to the nearest minute and I have found, in nineteen years, that precision matters to no one but me. At 20:10 GMT, the President posted on Truth Social that he was extending the Iran ceasefire. Brent dropped from $100.91 to $96.83. I flagged the trade. I flag a lot of trades. I want to tell you what happens to my flags. My flags go into a system called TRACE. Trade Review and Compliance Evaluation. I did not name it. The system generates a report. The report goes to a committee. The committee has a name I am not allowed to share but I can tell you it meets quarterly and the conference room has a credenza with bottled water that is sparkling because someone once put still water in the room and a managing director sent an email about it that was longer than most of my surveillance reports. The committee reviews my flags. The committee has reviewed all of my flags. Here is the complete record of actions taken on my flags in 2026: Reviewed. That's it. "Reviewed" is a status. In compliance, a status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one. Let me show you my flags. March 9th. Someone bet millions on oil falling at 18:29 GMT. Forty-seven minutes later, a CBS reporter posted that the President said the Iran war was "very complete, pretty much." Oil dropped 25%. Forty-seven minutes. I flagged it. March 23rd. Someone sold 5,100 lots of Brent and WTI crude futures between 10:49 and 10:50 GMT. Fourteen minutes later, the President posted on Truth Social about a "COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION" to hostilities. Oil dropped 11%. Over 13,000 contracts traded in sixty seconds after the post. Fourteen minutes. I flagged it. April 7th. Someone established a $950 million short position in oil futures at 19:45 GMT. Three hours later, the President declared a two-week ceasefire. Nine hundred and fifty million dollars. I flagged it. April 17th. Someone placed $760 million in bearish bets twenty minutes before Iran's foreign minister confirmed the Strait of Hormuz would reopen. Seven hundred and sixty million. I flagged it. April 21st. The $430 million. Fifteen minutes. I flagged it. That is $2.1 billion in directional oil bets in April alone. Every one of them landed on the correct side of a presidential announcement. Every one of them was placed in a window so narrow you could measure it in bathroom breaks. I flagged every single one. The CFTC chair told a Congressional committee that his organization has "zero tolerance" for fraud and insider trading. I wrote that quote on a Post-it note and stuck it to my right monitor. The one that shows the investigation queue. The investigation queue has not moved since March. Zero tolerance. Zero staff. Zero budget. Zero prosecutions under the STOCK Act since it was signed in 2012. Fourteen years. The law has existed for fourteen years and has been enforced zero times. In compliance, we call that a compliance rate of one hundred percent. No cases filed means no cases lost. You cannot fail an audit you never conduct. We call that excellence. Last month the White House sent an internal email to staff. I was not on the distribution list but I have read reporting on it and I need you to sit with what I am about to say. The email instructed White House staff not to use insider information to place bets on prediction markets. The White House had to send a memo telling its own employees not to insider-trade. I want you to read that sentence again. Not because the instruction was unclear. Because the instruction was necessary. Because someone in the building looked at the same pattern I have been flagging for months on my three monitors and decided the appropriate response was an email. The President's son sits on the advisory board of Kalshi. He is an investor in Polymarket. Both are prediction markets. Both saw accounts created days before U.S. military action. One account. I cannot stop thinking about this account. It was called "Burdensome-Mix." It was created in December. On January 2nd, it placed $32,500 on Venezuela's president being removed from power. On January 3rd, Maduro was seized by U.S. special forces. Burdensome-Mix collected $436,000. Then it changed its username. Then it disappeared. One account is a coincidence. But there were six. Six accounts were created on Polymarket in February. All bet on U.S. strikes on Iran by the 28th. When the President confirmed the strikes, the six accounts collected $1.2 million between them. Five of the six never placed another bet. The sixth went on to correctly predict the ceasefire date and made another $163,000. My surveillance system logged all of this. My system logs everything. My system does not have opinions and neither do I. I generate reports. The reports go to committees. The committees meet quarterly. Between meetings, the windows get shorter and the bets get larger. March 9th: 47 minutes. March 23rd: 14 minutes. April 17th: 20 minutes. April 21st: 15 minutes. The window is compressing. In March, you had time to make coffee between the trade and the announcement. By April, you had time to send a text. By summer, at this rate, the trade and the announcement will be the same event. The spokesman said any implication that administration officials are engaged in insider trading is "baseless and irresponsible reporting." Then the White House sent the email again. I have been in compliance for nineteen years. I have seen insider trading run out of strip mall offices by men who could not spell "derivative." I have seen pump-and-dump schemes coordinated over WhatsApp by people who used their real names. I have seen a man try to manipulate soybean futures from a Panera Bread. I have never seen $2.1 billion in perfectly timed trades across five presidential announcements in a single month go uninvestigated. But I have also never seen a compliance system work this beautifully. Every trade flagged. Every report filed. Every committee briefed. Every quarterly meeting attended. Bottled water: sparkling. Minutes: distributed. Zero prosecutions. As long as the flags go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations. I am meeting expectations. The system is meeting expectations. The $2.1 billion is meeting expectations. The fourteen-year-old law with zero prosecutions is meeting expectations. The left screen moves. The middle screen moves. The right screen stays perfectly, immaculately still. In my field, we call this price discovery.

Una cittadina russa di Tuapse implora la fine della guerra. Ma non si rivolge a Putin, né al Cremlino, ma agli ucraini 😂😂😂 "Per favore, smettetela di bombardarci", dice, "è disumano". Ma tu guarda, come cambiano le cose eh.... E sotto continua: "Non ce lo meritiamo. Mi siedo, guardo i bombardamenti e penso: [russi e ucraini] siamo simili. Tu sei come me, io sono come te. Non avevo pianificato che andasse così, nessuno l'aveva pianificato. Siamo solo persone normali, pedine che soffrono. Proprio come voi". Eh no, voi siete pecore, passivi, deboli e schiavi, mentre gli ucraini no, sono eroi e uomini liberi. E lo dimostrano le foto di febbraio 2022, quando subito dopo l'invasione sfilavate con le bandiere russe per festeggiare. All'epoca non vi lamentavate eh? E ora vi meritate le bombe. #SlavaUkraïni

@strykoza_ua Here's my response to the orcs and vatniks in Ruzzia:

Isn’t it almost absurd how Russians suddenly started disliking the war once Ukraine began striking back hard and reclaiming territory? While Ukrainian civilian homes were being burned, entire cities reduced to ashes, grain fields set on fire, while people were raped regardless of age or gender, children kidnapped, and drones used to hunt civilians for entertainment, "ordinary Russians" ware perfectly fine with it, even entertained, waiting for victory. The russian population is like a pathetic school bully who runs to complain to the teacher the moment the victim fights back. Let them get used to fear, pain, poverty, contempt, and defeat. Impunity can last a long time, but it never lasts forever.

@JayinKyiv Say "bye-bye" to Al Dhafra

Three weeks after signing a defense agreement with Ukraine, the UAE says they no longer need the US.

I cannot unsee this. I've been watching Trump answer questions for years. The confidence. The certainty. The way he shuts down a room. I genuinely thought he was one of the sharpest communicators alive. Then one day I caught myself finishing his sentence before he said it. Not guessing. Knowing. Word for word. Before he said it. So I pulled the transcripts. Press conferences. Interviews. Sprays. Egg prices. Greenland. January 6th. Military strikes. Different years. Different reporters. Completely different topics. Same thing every time. Every single time Trump is asked a question — any question — he runs the exact same 7 steps. In the exact same order. Without exception. This is not personality. This is not confidence. This is not charisma. This is a deliberate repeatable formula. And I can prove it. His actual words. Public record. Verify every single one yourself. 📷 STEP 1 — KILL THE QUESTION (First thing every time — make the question itself the problem.) 📷 "That's a stupid question." / "Fake news." 📷 STEP 2 — KILL WHO ASKED IT (Destroy the source so the question has nowhere to stand.) 📷 "Your ratings are terrible. Nobody watches your network." 📷 STEP 3 — INSERT HIMSELF (Every topic. Every time. Without fail. It always lands here.) 📷 "Nobody has ever done what I've done." 📷 STEP 4 — SCALE IT TO THE BIGGEST CLAIM POSSIBLE (Not good. Not great. The greatest. Ever. In history. Every single time.) 📷 "More than any administration — by far." / "Nobody has ever had crowds like I've had — in history, for any country." 📷 STEP 5 — UNNAMED PEOPLE AGREE (Faceless. Countless. Unverifiable. Always there.) 📷 "Smart people are saying it. Great people. A lot of people." 📷 STEP 6 — VAGUE THREAT (Something bad will happen. Never specified. Always implied.) 📷 "All hell will break out." / "They know it. Believe me." 📷 STEP 7 — LOOP BACK TO HIMSELF (Different words. Same destination. Formula complete.) 📷 "It's been an amazing period of time. Page after page of accomplishments." The question was never answered. The formula just ran. Go back and watch any clip. Any year. Any topic. Any reporter. Count the steps. I'll wait. This is the part nobody wants to sit with: Real conviction engages with the actual question. It sometimes stumbles. Sometimes says I don't know. It changes shape based on what's in front of it. A formula runs the same 7 steps whether the topic is war or egg prices. Which means the response was never built for the question. It was built for you. To feel powerful. To feel certain. To stop you from noticing that nothing was actually answered. And it worked. For years it worked. Pull any transcript. Public record. Count the steps yourself. This isn't about politics. This is about what you were never supposed to notice. I've found the same deliberate pattern running in another major figure in this administration. Different slots. Same principle. Same effect. Next post I break it down. Follow or miss it. VIA~~ Jamie Hoo

@TVai83 @francescoproia

@francescoproia Burn baby burn.. Che giornalista ignorante che sei.. Dovresti vergognarti, ma siete talmente ignorantoni che non la conoscete neanche la vergogna.. Pietosi e imbarazzanti... #LaRussiaNonEMiaNemica #ZelenskySì

Ragazzi reggetevi forte, perché questa è davvero incredibile: la Russia chiede alla Turchia protezione contro gli ucraini. Durante i colloqui con la Turchia, dove Putin ha rifiutato di nuovo di partecipare, la Russia ha richiesto l'aiuto turco per fermare i continui attacchi ucraini contro le infrastrutture russe del gas naturale. Il viceministro degli Esteri della Moscovia, Alexander Grushko, ha dichiarato: "Considerati i continui attacchi terroristici del regime di Kiev contro le infrastrutture di trasporto del gas, abbiamo ripetutamente chiesto ai nostri partner turchi di inviare segnali chiari e decisi alla parte ucraina su questa questione e di esigere la cessazione di tali atti di aggressione". Ecco come si presentavano ieri sera la raffineria e il porto di Tuapse, in Russia, sul Mar Nero, dopo che centinaia di vigili del fuoco avevano già domato i vasti incendi.... Burn baby burn 🔥🔥🔥

🔴 Le WSJ révèle ce qui se passe vraiment derrière les fanfaronnades de Trump sur la guerre en Iran. C'est plus inquiétant que tout ce que l'on imaginait. Un matin de Pâques, Donald Trump poste depuis ses appartements de la Maison Blanche : "Open the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell" (Ouvrez ce p*** de détroit, bande de bâtards, ou vous connaîtrez les enfers) accompagné d'une prière islamique. Le monde entier est sidéré. Les marchés tremblent. Les alliés appellent. Les sénateurs républicains et les leaders chrétiens interrogent la Maison Blanche : pourquoi le F-word ? Pourquoi "Praise be to Allah", le matin de Pâques ? Quand un conseiller lui pose la question plus tard, Trump dit qu'il a eu l'idée tout seul. Il voulait sembler aussi instable et insultant que possible pour forcer les Iraniens à négocier. Puis il se retourne vers ses conseillers et pose la question qui révèle tout : "How's it playing ?" (Est-ce que ça fonctionne ?) Et ce n'est pas fini. Voilà ce que nous apprend ou nous confirme l'article que le Wall Street Journal vient de publier. Il est tenu à l'écart de sa propre salle de crise. Quand deux aviateurs américains sont abattus en Iran et qu'une opération de sauvetage à haut risque est lancée, ses aides excluent le Président des États-Unis de la salle de crise. Ils lui téléphonent aux "moments significatifs." La raison invoquée : "son impatience ne serait pas utile." Le commandant en chef d'une guerre est géré comme un enfant imprévisible qu'on tient à l'écart pendant les moments critiques. Ses déclarations les plus explosives ne font partie d'aucun plan. Le tweet de Pâques improvisé, la menace de "tuer une civilisation entière" en 12 heures est improvisée aussi et ne faisait en aucun cas partie d'un plan de sécurité nationale. Dans les deux cas : aucune concertation avec l'équipe de sécurité nationale ou qui que ce soit. Juste Trump, seul, avec son téléphone, en train de remodeler l'ordre mondial à coups de posts sur Truth Social. Il est hanté par Jimmy Carter. Depuis le début du conflit, le spectre de 1979 le hante. La crise des otages. Les hélicoptères échoués dans le désert. La présidence détruite. Il en parle en boucle à ses conseillers, aux législateurs républicains. "Si vous regardez ce qui s'est passé avec Jimmy Carter... avec les hélicoptères et les otages, ça leur a coûté l'élection." Il a refusé une opération militaire clé par peur des pertes. Ses généraux lui ont proposé de prendre l'île de Kharg, point de départ de 90% des exportations pétrolières iraniennes. Il n'a pas voulu en entendre parler. Par contre, il s'occupe de son "ballroom" pendant les crises. Pendant que le monde attend son ultimatum de "détruire la civilisation iranienne", Trump sort les plans de son ballroom en construction sur les pelouses de la Maison Blanche. Il a des réunions plusieurs fois par semaine sur le sujet. Il se considère comme le "maître d'œuvre général." Le soir où il menace de détruire une nation de 90 millions d'habitants, il montre à des donateurs les dessins du trou qu'on va creuser sous la Maison Blanche. Il se montre émerveillé par tout ce qu'on pourrait construire en dessous. Il envisage de se décerner lui-même la Medal of Honor. La plus haute distinction militaire américaine, décernée pour bravoure et sacrifice au péril de sa vie. Devant des donateurs et des membres du staff, Trump évoque publiquement le fait qu'il la mérite. Sa justification ? Lors d'un vol en Irak pendant son premier mandat, l'avion a atterri dans le noir sur une piste non éclairée. Il a eu très peur. Les pilotes l'ont rassuré et ils ont atterri. Son conseiller juridique présent dans la pièce dit que la règle ne le permettrait pas. Karoline Leavitt assure qu'il plaisantait. Ses propres aides lui filtrent la réalité. Susie Wiles, sa chef de cabinet, a dû exhorter ses collègues à être "plus francs avec le patron" parce qu'ils lui donnaient systématiquement une vision trop rose de la situation pour ne pas le contrarier. Dans Le Pantin de la Maison Blanche, j'analyse comment le pouvoir réel dans cette administration est exercé non pas par le Président mais par les conseillers qui le gèrent, le filtrent et corrigent ses improvisations. Cet article du WSJ en est la démonstration la plus clinique à ce jour : un dirigeant exclu de sa propre salle de crise, dont les déclarations de guerre sont des improvisations solitaires, qui mesure ses décisions géopolitiques à leur popularité personnelle, et qui, au cœur de la crise la plus grave de son mandat, demande à voir les plans de son ballroom. Ce n'est pas la description d'un commandant en chef. C'est la description d'un pantin. L'article du @wsj_com : wsj.com/politics/natio… 📖 Le Pantin de la Maison Blanche → amazon.fr/dp/B0GPCCMS68/

A parasite that has been eating people for 3,500 years is about to be wiped off the planet. It infected 3.5 million people in 1986. Last year, it infected 10. And I have not seen it make a single front page. It is called Guinea worm. You drink contaminated water from a pond in a poor village. A year later, a worm up to three feet long starts coming out of your leg through a burning blister. There is no pill that stops it and no surgery that works. You wrap the worm around a stick and pull it out slowly, over days or weeks, inch by inch. If you rush, the worm breaks inside you and causes a fresh infection. Guinea worm is ancient. Preserved worms have been pulled out of Egyptian mummies from around 1000 BCE. The Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian medical scroll from 1550 BCE, describes pulling the worm out with a stick. For three and a half thousand years, that was the best humans could do. Then in 1986, public health workers decided to kill the parasite off. They had no vaccine and no drug. What they had was cheap cloth water filters and a small army of volunteers willing to walk from village to village for decades. The plan was simple. Give everyone who drinks from a pond a cloth filter to strain out the tiny water fleas that spread the parasite. Then send volunteers walking house to house, year after year, teaching people how to use the filters and keeping anyone with an emerging worm out of the water. It worked. From 3.5 million cases a year to 10. Four were in Chad, four in Ethiopia, two in South Sudan. The other four countries where the worm used to be common, Angola, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and Mali, had zero human cases for the second year in a row. The World Health Organization has already certified 200 countries as Guinea worm free. Six are left. The last hurdle is dogs. Cameroon had 445 infected animals last year and Chad had 147, so a lot of the remaining work is on animals, not humans. Strays get leashed, and crews treat ponds to kill any remaining worms. The campaign keeps watching until the number hits zero. When Guinea worm hits zero, it becomes the second human disease ever erased from the planet. The first was smallpox. It will also be the first parasite humans have ever wiped out, and the first disease ever ended without a single dose of medicine. Volunteers walked village to village with cloth filters for 40 years. Now a plague from the age of the pharaohs is about to be gone.

@Den_Of_Dreams @EuromaidanPress Ukraine made the SS-18 ICBM. Smaller missiles will be a piece of cake. And this is only the beginning. If Putin doesn't end this war, Sapsans, Flamingos and FP-9s will rain down on Muscuvites.

@EuromaidanPress Ukraine can't make hand grenade, not at this time. It's obvious EU and her cohorts have ignored the warnings of Moscow not to activateky participate in this war by manufacturing bombs for Kyiv. I hope they won't call it "Unprovoked" when Putin runs out of patience.

For 50 months, Ukraine has watched Russia's Kinzhal missiles slip past its best air defenses. They fly at six times the speed of sound. Even US-made Patriots struggle to intercept it. Now Fire Point is building Ukraine's answer. The FP-9 ranges 850 km with an 800-kg warhead—ground-launched first, air-launched later. An air-launched variant would put Ukraine among a very small group of countries with this capability—Russia and Israel among them. Testing starts this summer. euromaidanpress.com/2026/04/17/fp-…

@ZachariakRoman @EuromaidanPress This airframe will also be used to replace missiles used by the S-300 (different guidance and seeker). A-G missiles use inertial guidance air defense needs telemetry/radar for interception.Ukraine will eventually not need expensive Patriots to defeat Ruzzian ballistic missiles

@EuromaidanPress I don’t understand. Is this meant to be Ukraine’s replica of an attacking Kinzhal or an interceptor of Kinzhals? It is the latter that we need urgently to protect our civilians. Our drone technology is totally adequate to destroy ruzzian military infrastructure! 🙏🏻🇺🇦

Dear friends: I don’t know any Catholic in the United States, from the most traditional to the most progressive, who does not have strong feelings about the comments from President Trump and Vice President Vance about Pope Leo XIV. These include not only President Trump’s initial disrespectful Truth Social post about the Holy Father, but also Vice President Vance’s similarly disrespectful comments about Pope Leo having to be “careful” when he speaks about theology. Let me share some of my own feelings. First of all, it is shocking that a President and Vice President would treat such a good, holy and learned man with such disdain. Imagine telling a man with the Holy Father’s learning and experience (and authority) that he doesn’t understand theology sufficiently. What’s more, imagine attacking him as, ridiculously, “weak on crime” or somehow not understanding foreign policy. Second, I’m edified by Pope Leo’s charitable and courageous response to all this. Charitable because he has not responded in any way other than with charity and respect. As some of you may know, I know the Holy Father slightly, thanks to our being seated together at the Synod for two weeks, and know him to be a kind, reserved, discerning and highly intelligent person. In a word, holy. But courageous too: as we have seen during his time in Algeria and Cameroon, Pope Leo has not shied away from continuing to preach the Gospel, and speaking out in favor of peace (and yes, he understands St. Augustine’s concept of the “just war”) and against, as he said today, tyrants and those who would use God’s name to support violence of bloodshed. So, where will this all end? It’s hard to say. But I would imagine that now that the taboo has been broken, politicians will continue to denigrate him and thus try to persuade people, without saying it explicitly, to think that the Pope’s words do not need to be listened to. But this will be in vain for two reasons. First, Pope Leo is clearly fearless. A few hours after he was elected as pope, I spoke with a fellow Augustinian priest who had known “Bob” for decades. “He’s a great listener, very kind and much loved.” Then he paused. “But he’s no pushover.” But the main reason that the Pope’s words will be heard is less about Robert Prevost’s own many virtues but something else: the Vicar of Christ will be heard because he is preaching the Gospel. As Jesus told his disciples, “Heaven and earth may pass away, but my words will never pass away.” So, in these strange times, fear not.

The disrespect that so many Catholics here are showing Pope Leo is disgusting. Yea, yea, yea you all will give me the litany of the reasons you have for your disrespect. You will pummel me with questions like, “but Father, what about this, this, and this…” Well I have a question for you! Who do you all think you are? You are the holy ones? The prayerful ones? So filled with the Holy Spirit? Who are you to scrutinize and judge every single word and action of Christ’s authority on earth? The pharisaical nature of American Catholics is truly coming out. And then, so many denigrating the Pope at every turn at the same time minimize and rationalize every action and diatribe of our President? Here is a reflection for us all…Proverbs 9:10.