US 2024 Presidential Election

[Cicada 5]

FBI disrupts a planned attack on the White House UFC cage-fighting show, court papers say

FBI agents learned about the possible threat on June 10, four days before the mixed martial arts extravaganza on the White House's South Lawn, "and thanks to the rapid action of the FBI, our partners, and the Department of Justice in a multi-state operation, multiple individuals are now in custody and allegedly planned attacks were stopped cold," Director Kash Patel said in a post on X on Tuesday.

Five people were arrested from states including Ohio, Missouri and California, said a law enforcement official familiar with the matter. The official spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss information that was not yet public.


Among those arrested was Tycen Proper, a 19-year-old Ohio man whose mother contacted local law enforcement last week with concerns about his firearms purchases and online communications, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case.

An assistant federal public defender assigned to represent Proper, who's charged with firearms offenses and crimes including attempted murder of an officer or employee of the United States, did not immediately return messages seeking comment. Proper made an initial court appearance Monday in Columbus and faces a detention hearing on Wednesday.

Proper admitted in an interview with law enforcement that he participated in the planning of an attack, according to the affidavit, which says some members of the group began communicating with each other last March through a TikTok group called "Vanguard of the Old."

"The members of the group stated that they wanted to protect the United States, which they believed was headed in the wrong direction," the affidavit says. "Members of the group believed that the United States needed to be torn down so that it could be rebuilt. Some expressed a desire that people who were involved with Jeffrey Epstein should not govern the country."

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

FBI disrupts a planned attack on the White House UFC cage-fighting show, court papers say

Some expressed a desire that people who were involved with Jeffrey Epstein should not govern the country.

How fucking DARE they think that?!

 

[Silvanus]

You will have to forgive me for my lack of sources, I don't have the time at the moment to hunt things down, I'm just on my phone in a momentary pause at work.

The screwworms started pushing north years ago, before DOGE existed.

Pushing north... in South & Central America. Yes, this was a known risk. One of the primary purposes of the organ DOGE cut was monitoring its spread south of the border to prevent its arrival in the US.

The funding and staffing directed towards this issue was increased, not cut.

Will definitely need a source on that, because the gov publicised that it had been cut.

One of the primary drivers of screwworms expansion has seemingly been cattle smuggling across borders.

So?

 

[Thaluikhain]

FBI disrupts a planned attack on the White House UFC cage-fighting show, court papers say

They just want some of that insurrection money.

So?

You know, foreigners doing doing stuff. Invalidates your argument.

 

[tstorm823]

Pushing north... in South & Central America. Yes, this was a known risk. One of the primary purposes of the organ DOGE cut was monitoring its spread south of the border to prevent its arrival in the US.

The only thing cut by DOGE related to screwworms that I've found is a grant from the US government to the UN's FAO, but the FAO does a lot of things and is funded by a lot of countries for amounts an order of magnitude higher than the grant DOGE blocked. The US program to combat screwworms is, and always has been, managed by the USDA, and the program was not cut by DOGE. People make vague accusations that general staffing cuts at the USDA is a cause, but I've seen no specific claims that anti-screwworm staff were effected at any point, and have seen multiple claims from the government that they have aimed more peopel at this particular effort.

I got that from Snopes, who won't even make a real comment on the claim that DOGE cut screw worm programs, as they have nothing but another website's anonymous source. Conveniently enough, that Snopes article includes almost everything I've said in the last post and in this one.

Will definitely need a source on that, because the gov publicised that it had been cut.

At the end of the Biden Administration, the USDA dedicated an extra emergency fund to this issue. Recent comments from the government claim that the team dedicated to screwworms in the USDA went from 10 people to 100 recently. They've been putting together new sterilizing plants in Texas and northern Mexico.

Hard to imagine that somehow between DOGE doing its thing in March and three months later they managed to cripple the infrastructure to cause a surge in screwworms and then turn around and go straight back to exactly the growing budget to combat screw worms that the previous administration started.

So?

The program to wall back screwworm advances using releases of sterilized bugs to prevent reproduction and cause population collapse only works in the places those releases are happening. The idea of the program is that if you make it so the population cannot grow in a bottleneck spot in Panama, there won't be any to spread further north.

If you fill a boat with screw worms in South America and drop it off far enough north in Mexico that it is outside the range of the sterilization program, the population of screw worm can grow there unhindered, the existing prevention program does nothing to stop it. Hence, the need for expanded operations further north, and why they stopped the Panama operation in May of 2024.

You know, foreigners doing doing stuff. Invalidates your argument.

I think in the discussion of international spread of animals, it's not about "foreigners" to discuss the international transportation of animals.

 

[Cicada 5]

Trump Lost the Iran War

Trump has virtually agreed to end to the war with Iran that he and Israel launched on the last day of February, asserting that he has negotiated some kind of historic victory even as American negotiators admit they have mostly just agreed to keep discussing a peace deal that isn’t complete yet, and Israel is reportedly “alarmed” by it. JD Vance is on TV claiming that the “Iranian nuclear program has been completely destroyed” and saying this Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is an upgrade on Iran’s previous deal with President Obama. Like every syllable ever uttered by these gelatinous cretins, this is all transparent horseshit. You can tell this is transparent horseshit just by the numbered bullet points in the leaked MOU. All the stuff up front is about unfucking the thing Trump fucked, the Strait of Hormuz.

“Immediately upon the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding, the United States Lift the naval blockade and prevent any interference or obstruction against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and restore traffic within a maximum of 30 days to its full capacity;” writes the MOU in bullet point number four. “The traffic of ships shall be proportional to the pre-war volume of traffic on the part of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States also undertakes to withdraw its forces from the surrounding areas within 30 days after the final agreement.”


The first three agreements are diplomatic throat clearing about ending the war, respecting sovereignty and a truly hilarious and meaningless Trumpian sentence that says they will “undertake to negotiate and reach a final agreement within a maximum period of 60 days, extendable by mutual consent,” so four stands out as the first concrete U.S. ask and thus looks like Trump’s highest priority. Five is also about how Iran can go back to making lots of money on the Strait, while six promises $300 billion to Iran from Gulf states to meet their demand for war reparations that JD Vance says will be used as a carrot to try to get Iran to agree to their nuclear demands. Sounds like they’ve got everything figured out! I’ll now take a big sip of Iran war hawk coffee and see what else Iran gets out of the deal.

“The United States commits to ending, on a schedule to be agreed upon as part of the final agreement, all types of sanctions currently facing the Islamic Republic of Iran,” writes bullet point number seven, sending chills down Dick Cheney’s spine amidst the raging heat of the tenth circle of hell. Let’s check in with the living Iran hawks to see what they think of complete and total sanctions relief for the boogeyman in their closets, all in return for letting the boogeyman do what they were doing on February 27th.


This is a big fat L. Full-blown capitulation. This is Trump saying uncle and proving to the entire world that Iran doesn’t need a nuclear weapon, they already have something better and far cheaper that no country can take from them without a successful full-scale ground invasion. All they have to do is mine a 19-mile-wide stretch of the sea, lob some drones, missiles and armed speedboats in there, and blamo: worldwide shipping costs have fundamentally shifted for the rest of our lives, and the president of the United States is giving you full-scale sanctions relief up front and calling you daddy. The Strait of Hormuz is such a powerful economic superweapon and Trump and his team of real estate fraudsters are such dismal negotiators that the only concrete thing the United States was able to get out of Iran in this MOU is going back to February 27th when it was open.


Except Iran still reportedly gets to toll the strait, but don’t worry, we’re not calling them tolls anymore, they’re fees now. Also, they pinky promise to “never produce nuclear weapons” for now, and number eight of the MOU states that “the fate of all other mutually agreed nuclear-related issues, including Iran’s nuclear needs, will be adequately addressed in a final agreement.” This is an absolute joke, proof that Trump’s vaunted negotiation strategy can get dog walked by Iran’s third and fourth-stringers, and the only reason this MOU exists is because Trump has reached the maximum economic pain that he’s willing to withstand, and everything else is clearly a secondary consideration to making that stop.

Obama’s Iran deal, the JCPOA, has long been derided as weak by Republicans and other assorted Iran war hawks who preferred we do Trump and Israel’s war with Iran over painstaking diplomacy, but if you gave them the choice between Trump’s MOU or the JCPOA, there’s no question which option they’d take.

Under the terms of the JCPOA, Iran dismantled over 13,000 centrifuges and placed them in monitored storage, then shipped 98% of its low-enriched uranium stockpile out of the country. It agreed to cap uranium enrichment for 15 years well below the 90% level required to build nuclear weapons, and for 15 years, it confined all uranium enrichment to the Natanz site, the one Trump bombed in 2025 when he said he got rid of their nuclear program before he launched a war in 2026, saying he was trying to rid Iran of their nuclear program. And sanctions relief was backloaded in the JCPOA, not frontloaded like the “schedule” wording suggests in Trump’s deal, meaning that Iran had to hit JCPOA targets before the U.S. Treasury lifted sanctions. That, plus an open and untolled Strait of Hormuz, was the pre-war status quo that Trump and Israel blew up because they are world-historic idiots who think they are invincible and that hubris doesn’t exist.


Trump lost the Iran War because Iran used the Strait of Hormuz to prove that he is weak and full of bluster. This is pretty unprecedented, and all of Trump’s allies in both the United States and Israel are having a very hard time concealing their contempt for what they have long wanted and enthusiastically signed up for. I’m just sorry that John McCain wasn’t alive to finally see his dream come true. We just have to hope that his good buddy Lindsey Graham is equally enthralled with finally getting what he wants. Trump’s standing in Israel has even been cratering as he has tried to restrict their bloodthirsty bombing campaign in Lebanon over the last few weeks to meet Iran’s demands, according to an Israel Hayom/Kantar poll.

 

[Thaluikhain]

The US (and others) lost the Iran War. Trump won Operation Epstein Distraction, and doesn't likely care that much about the former.

 

[Silvanus]

The only thing cut by DOGE related to screwworms that I've found is a grant from the US government to the UN's FAO, but the FAO does a lot of things and is funded by a lot of countries for amounts an order of magnitude higher than the grant DOGE blocked. [...]

I got that from Snopes, who won't even make a real comment on the claim that DOGE cut screw worm programs, as they have nothing but another website's anonymous source.

Righto, so it comes down to whether we trust the first link i posted, Agri-pulse, citing an anonymous FAO source.

Suppose they could be making stuff up. They seem to be regarded as reliable by most other outlets, and keeping an internal source anonymous is standard practice. They reported this before any outbreak occurred. And its very much in line with DOGE's pattern of behaviour: sweeping, careless cuts to programmes they don't understand.

At the end of the Biden Administration, the USDA dedicated an extra emergency fund to this issue. Recent comments from the government claim that the team dedicated to screwworms in the USDA went from 10 people to 100 recently. They've been putting together new sterilizing plants in Texas and northern Mexico.

Cool, but funding the USDA doesn't replace funding for the FAO. International problems require international action.

Hard to imagine that somehow between DOGE doing its thing in March and three months later they managed to cripple the infrastructure to cause a surge in screwworms and then turn around and go straight back to exactly the growing budget to combat screw worms that the previous administration started.

Hard to imagine because that's a strawman series of events.

What's also hard to imagine is that last year an internal source claims a screwworm monitoring programme has been gutted, and then the following year there's an outbreak for the first time in 50 years, and that's purely a coincidence.

 

[Chimpzy]

So I think we're already up to 48 wars ended. 49?

 

[tstorm823]

They reported this before any outbreak occurred.

The outbreak has been moving northward for like 4 years.

 

[Hades]

The US (and others) lost the Iran War. Trump won Operation Epstein Distraction, and doesn't likely care that much about the former.

I am not sure. He does not care about the damage it did to the US or to the livelihood of citizens. In that sense he has nothing to feel bad about.

But Trump will likely not enjoy the personal humiliation. He was defeated , completely defeated by a weak country , and one of primarily brown people to boot. And the deal those weak brown people forced him into is in all metrics worse than the previous one he hated because his predecessor was black.

Trump being exposed as weak might also hinder rather than help his attempts of escaping the Epstein scandal.

 

[Thaluikhain]

But Trump will likely not enjoy the personal humiliation.

There's that, but then everything he does is a disaster that he has to spin into something else, Iran is a big one yeah, but not that outlandish. Not saying you're wrong, just that I'm not certain.

 

[Silvanus]

The outbreak has been moving northward for like 4 years.

Outside of the US. Meaning a US-based outlet has no particular reason to fabricate a whistleblower.

 

[tstorm823]

Outside of the US. Meaning a US-based outlet has no particular reason to fabricate a whistleblower.

That does not follow. They were reallocating resources for this already under Biden, the threat to US livestock was known and imminent. If the goal of the "whistleblower" is to disparage DOGE, this is low hanging fruit, pick a problem that is already inevitable and blame your opponents for it.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

How fucking DARE they think that?!

TRUE patriots stopped thinking about the Epstein files the instant it became clear they were more than an easy way to throw Bill Clinton in jail.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Trump has totally forced Iran into a deal that's way better for the US than Obama's stinky non-white-person deal! He even says....

...wait, let me check my notes....

He says it's "a little bit unfair" for Iran to not have ballistic missiles.

Live updates: Trump threatens to “resume dropping bombs” on Iran if he dislikes preliminary deal

The memorandum of understanding, read to reporters by a U.S. official, requires Iran not procure or build nuclear weapons and that all military operations cease, including in Lebanon.

www.ms.now

"I’m saying that if other countries have them, it’s a little bit unfair for them not to have some,” Trump said when asked by a reporter to clarify a statement he made on the topic during his earlier G7 summit press conference earlier. “A ballistic missile is not the same thing as what we’re talking about when we talk nuclear, but if Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and they all have some, I would say in relative proportion, I think it’s okay.”

Man, I bet everyone else in the region is thrilled to hear that.

 

[meiam]

So this 300 billions fund is really weird, apparently the US won't have to pay into it, but other country can... which is something that they could always have done, so I'm not sure why they need the deal to do that? And I see no reason why they would do that too...

It sounds almost like a joke thrown in to make Trump look like an idiot.

What do Iran and the US stand to gain from their deal? Here's what to know

The interim deal reached by the United States and Iran to end their war will reopen the Strait of Hormuz and bring the two adversaries back to the negotiating table over Tehran’s nuclear program.

apnews.com

 

[Silvanus]

That does not follow. They were reallocating resources for this already under Biden, the threat to US livestock was known and imminent. If the goal of the "whistleblower" is to disparage DOGE, this is low hanging fruit, pick a problem that is already inevitable and blame your opponents for it.

"Already inevitable"? Do you say this because you actually have authoritative sources from before the US outbreak stating it would happen, or is this just a convenient retrospective assumption to exonerate the gov?

 

[Silvanus]

So this 300 billions fund is really weird, apparently the US won't have to pay into it, but other country can... which is something that they could always have done, so I'm not sure why they need the deal to do that? And I see no reason why they would do that too...

It sounds almost like a joke thrown in to make Trump look like an idiot.

What do Iran and the US stand to gain from their deal? Here's what to know

The interim deal reached by the United States and Iran to end their war will reopen the Strait of Hormuz and bring the two adversaries back to the negotiating table over Tehran’s nuclear program.

apnews.com

Iran "downblending" (i.e. un-enriching) its uranium stockpile is the only thing in the MOU that practically addresses Iran's nuclear programme.

Iran had already agreed to downblend its stockpile several days before America and Israel launched the war. Hmm.

I assume Republicans will be just as furious about unfreezing frozen Iranian assets now as they were when Obama unfroze that $1bn in 2018, right?

 

[Chimpzy]

Trump has totally forced Iran into a deal that's way better for the US than Obama's stinky non-white-person deal! He even says....

...wait, let me check my notes....

He says it's "a little bit unfair" for Iran to not have ballistic missiles.

Live updates: Trump threatens to “resume dropping bombs” on Iran if he dislikes preliminary deal

The memorandum of understanding, read to reporters by a U.S. official, requires Iran not procure or build nuclear weapons and that all military operations cease, including in Lebanon.

www.ms.now

Man, I bet everyone else in the region is thrilled to hear that.

It really wants the Strait open, innit? Who knows, a little glazing might help.