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"In offices across the military and in the intelligence community, there have been recent quiet discussions about cutting the number of people and facilities typically stationed in the Middle East if the Trump administration succeeds in ending the Iran conflict, six sources say.     "If those cuts happen, it would mark another shift in how the US national security apparatus treats a region that successive presidents have sought to leave behind." "If" is doing all the work in that sentence. I'll bet on a TACO. <a href=" h  https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/08/politics/us-military-intelligence-bases-troops-middle-east " >US to pull troops out of the ME? </a>

Much has been made of the fact that being vaccinated does prevent you from catching COVID. Of course, that was never the claim; the claim was that vaccination would keep you out of the ED and the morgue, a claim that enjoys abundant support. Less well appreciated is that vaccination also protects from Long COVID. “. . . long COVID  may be underdiagnosed . Millions of Americans  are thought to be suffering  but not receiving  appropriate clinical care . Furthermore, even now, well after the acute phase of the COVID pandemic has passed, an estimated  30,000 Americans  are newly diagnosed with long COVID each year. But this is far fewer than expected,  based on 2023 data . Thus, long COVID appears to have become a hidden cause of disease and disability. “When research suggests that as many as  one in six patients  with COVID-19 may develop post-acute sequelae but those statistics are inconsistent with what doctors are reporting, many start to de...

The Ukrainians are defending the legal order established after the Second World War. They have performed the entire NATO mission of absorbing and reversing an attack by Russia with a tiny percentage of NATO military budgets and zero losses from NATO members. Ukrainians are making a war in the Pacific much less likely by demonstrating to China that offensive operations are harder than they seem. They have made nuclear war less likely by demonstrating that nuclear blackmail need not work. Ukraine is also fighting to restore its grain exports to Africa and Asia, where millions of people have been put at risk by Russia’s attack on the Ukrainian economy. Last but not least, Ukrainians are demonstrating that a democracy can defend itself. ~Timothy Snyder

The Trump plans for USPS handling of mail-in ballots will leave millions of ballots in limbo for weeks or years after the elections. “Election experts are examining the new U.S. Postal Service rules for mailed ballots, and finding that under them, getting ballots in the mail could take weeks — or even years — rendering the program unworkable for an actual election.   “If it took one minute to verify each piece in the mailing, it would take about 4.9 years of continuous scanning to verify the whole mailing,” wrote Tammy Patrick, Chief Programs Officer of the National Association of Election Officials and a former elections official for Maricopa County, in   a declaration   as part of one of the legal challenges to the rule.   “If it only took only a second to scan each mailpiece, it would take 30 days,” she continued. “Even if it took only one tenth of a second to scan each mailpiece, it would take a little over 72 hours.”   *snip* “ . . .  a single error — ...

I'm no expert on fascism or Ukraine, but based on everything I've read so far, the claim the Ukraine is a fascist state is pure Putin propaganda.   On the other hand, Prof. Timothy Snyder *is* an expert on fascism and Ukraine. And he is a big supporter of Ukraine in its defense against Russia.   https://snyder.substack.com/p/why-i-like-mark-hamill?r=2133ns&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Next Thursday is the first anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s death. I don’t know that I ever encountered any Charlie Kirk videos. His reputation was so repugnant, I had no more curiosity to see him as I have to read Mein Kampf. “In   one 2023 tweet , Kirk managed to simultaneously defend South Africa’s apartheid regime, the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, and even the internet code for “Heil Hitler.”    “Multiculturalism is un-American,” Kirk wrote in another screed, adding, “If you don’t assimilate you are disgracing this country and you can kindly leave.”   “Another lowlight was this bit of   anti-trans paranoia   that feels like a bigoted fever dream take on the “Ghost In The Shell” anime franchise.     “The Trans Agenda is being used to condition people to eventually merge with machine and abandon their humanity,” Kirk wrote.”   My reaction to Kirk’s death called to mind Clarance Darrow: “I have never killed any one, but I ...