"When she turns eight, they will take her"

Sima* is 18, but has already given birth four times. Her youngest is a newborn, the eldest is four. Sitting with her children in their mud-brick room in Badghis province, Sima says: “After the Taliban entered the country, I had just finished the sixth grade and was supposed to start the seventh. But two months later, my father pressured me immensely to marry my cousin. After being beaten by my father several times, I was forced to accept.”...

Interviews with workers at one public hospital in northern Afghanistan revealed that 42 underage girls gave birth in the first five months of this year. Six were in their second pregnancy. Five had ectopic pregnancies – a leading cause of maternal deaths – and 18 had caesarean sections. Two died, though their babies survived...

They are victims of a growing trend toward child marriage, driven by Taliban policies legalising the practice and forcing girls out of school, combined with a deepening humanitarian crisis in which families are forced to sell their daughters to pay debts or buy food...

Some families falsely believe the younger the mother, the healthier and smarter the child. Mothers who are still children themselves often haven’t completed their physical or psychological growth and face higher risk of severe bleeding, anaemia, miscarriage, obstructed labour and premature birth, along with a greater likelihood of a low-weight or unhealthy infant...

Shabnam says families often resist caesarean section, believing they limit future pregnancies. Two young mothers in her care recently died in childbirth because their husbands refused to permit one...

The other three families interviewed for this report, all in western Afghanistan, say their daughters had been used to settle debts – money paid in advance, the daughters to be handed over later. Three of the girls are still under 10, unaware of the future that has been planned for them...

“When she turns eight, they will take her from us,” says Golnar. “They gave 100,000 afghani upfront, and they will give another 100,000 after they take the girl from me. We gave it directly to the creditors for the debts.” She worries about her granddaughter’s future, remembering girls sold years ago in her neighbourhood: “They have no future. Whether they leave us to burn in a fire or face anything else, we will not know.”

The grim story continues at The Guardian.

Homogeneity, exclusion, and inequity in the Civil Rights Division

11 stars on this eagle

"President Donald Trump has posted what appears to be a doctored image of a large, golden eagle attached to the White House's Truman Balcony on social media—the latest in a series of altered or AI-generated images the president has shared in recent months...

According to CNN, the image has details in its metadata that indicate it was created with Google AI.

The outlet also noted that the image did not appear to be real because of differences between the railings in the picture and the real-life Truman Balcony.

The shield in the image also has 11 stars, whereas the traditional version has 13 to reflect the 13 states at the time the United States was founded."

The original digital artist may have used 11 stars to represent the 11 states in the Confederacy.

What's wrong with people nowadays?

"A space in Mankato that promotes reflection and healing for families who have lost a child has been vandalized, according to the nonprofit in charge of the memorial.

The nonprofit behind the One Bright Star memorial at Victory Drive and E. Main Street said on June 5 that someone in recent days broke off a large landscape rock, damaged a plaque and threw both of them into the memorial’s pond...

One Bright Star was founded in 1998 by four mothers who each experienced the death of a child, and the memorial was completed in 2003. It includes a shallow pond centered by a large star sculpture and a wall with paver bricks in remembrance of children who have died."

"The police in Boston are searching for two boys who they said flashed a handgun at a pair of children running a lemonade stand on Wednesday and stole... cash from a bright pink lockbox...Tiffany Byrne, the aunt of the two children working the lemonade stand, said that about $80 was taken...

Ms. Byrne said her nephew, David, 12, and niece, Juliette, 11, “were pretty shaken up” but otherwise unharmed. She said she believed the robbers were wearing masks and were around middle-school age."

Children in Gaza are being shot in the head - updated

Fahd Abu Haikal shows a photo of his seven-month- old son, Sam, who was killed on Friday when Israeli soldiers fired at their car. Photograph: Mahmoud Illean/AP

The children being shot in the head are not victims of accidental crossfire; they are being individually targeted for assassination.  Most news sources that provide news about Gaza tend to focus on the ongoing genocide, and the mass starvation, without details about the children being intentionally head-shot.  I only learned of this phenomenon from a podcast on This American Life.  Herewith some excerpts from a transcript of their "Solving for Why" segment of the "Chaos Graph" podcast on April 25:

Chana Joffe-Walt: 

"One of the hardest places to see through chaos in the middle of a war-- fog of war, all that. This is especially true for the war in Gaza. There is very limited information moving in and out of Gaza. Israel has banned international press from entering the strip for nearly 18 months, except for a few brief trips, accompanied by and under the control of the Israeli military.  One rare outside group has gotten a view on the ground of Gaza-- medical workers. Since the start of the war, over 100 American doctors and nurses have traveled to Gaza, treated patients there for weeks at a time, and come back out. Producer Ike Sriskandarajah talked to a dozen of them who volunteered there...

Ike Sriskandarajah: 

"Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon from the US-- he's also volunteered as a doctor in the war in Ukraine and with Palestinians in the West Bank. He's closely studied the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though his family is from a small ethnic minority in what is now Pakistan.

Feroze Sidhwa: 

"The nurse that was showing us around didn't really speak English very well, and she just pointed at these two kids, and just pointed at her head, and said, shot, shot. There were four kids in the hospital with gunshot wounds to the head.  I just thought that that was unbelievable. And I just assumed that she was just wrong. I didn't think she was lying, but she was just incorrect. That probably was a shrapnel injury or something like that.  But then, I looked at these kids, and they didn't have any other evidence of an explosive injury. And then we pulled up their CT scans, and sure enough, it did look like they had been shot in the head. And then we went on and found two more kids also shot in the head in the other ICUs.

Ike Sriskandarajah: 

"Feroze works at a hospital near Stockton, California, which has higher rates of violent crime than most of the country.

Feroze Sidhwa: 

"But to see four kids with gunshot wounds to the head already admitted to the hospital when I get there, it certainly struck me as being very unusual...

Feroze Sidhwa:

And what I wrote down is that I was going through the ICU, and I found an eight-year-old girl shot in the head overnight. Her pupils are fixed and dilated. It's a transcranial gunshot wound, definitely non-survivable...

Feroze Sidhwa:

Yeah, the bullet didn't stop. And then, let's see, the next day. So the next day, the eight-year-old girl had died, and in the same bed is a 14-year-old boy shot in the right chest and the head.

The next day, I said, I went through the ICU afterwards. The 14-year-old boy turns out to be 12 when his family arrived. So then, let's see, two days later, he's been replaced by a 13-year-old boy shot in the head. I wrote, he'll also die.

So then on that same day, I wrote, I took care of a two-year-old girl who was brought to the ED after being shot in the head. She arrived with bilateral fixed and dilated pupils, also a non-survivable brain injury. We then had a mass casualty event a few minutes later...

Ike Sriskandarajah:

At the same time that Feroze was starting to document this, Mark, working with his patients-- he was seeing the same thing. He vividly remembered the day he saw two kids brought in who had both been shot in the head and the chest.

Mark Perlmutter:

One of the kids was there with a family member. I ripped up his shirt, and there was a bullet entry wound right over the heart. And then I picked up the dressings on his forehead, and a second bullet went in right in front of his left ear hole, in front of his ear and out of his neck.

Ike Sriskandarajah:

Oh, my god. What was the kid doing when this happened?

Mark Perlmutter:

Walking with their adult to get water.

Ike Sriskandarajah:

Was there a street battle happening?

Mark Perlmutter:

I didn't ask if there was a street battle going on, but it happened twice in the same day.

Ike Sriskandarajah:

Could you say the second time?

Mark Perlmutter:

Yeah, right next to that kid was another kid who got shot in the head and the chest. And that child had no adult with him, so I couldn't get a story. It's hard to see it.

Ike Sriskandarajah:

These weren't kids injured by collapsing buildings. They were kids who'd been shot-- direct gunshot wounds into 12-year-olds, eight-year-olds, even toddlers...

Ike Sriskandarajah:

13 children in 14 days. Even with all the other traumatic injuries and deaths they saw, the kids who were shot really stuck with Mark. It was haunting him.

Mark Perlmutter:

Early on, I thought it was just an isolated jerk carrying out, because every army has jerks. War changes people, and so you can absolutely have rogue people behaving inappropriately...

Adam Hamawy:

When I was in Iraq, there were civilians that were injured. There were children that were injured. And that's called incidental, collateral damage, all the terms that we use to cleanly justify what's happening. But the scale was, I mean, not even-- not even close to this.

I mean, I probably took care of, like, five, six children the whole time I was in Iraq, and I wasn't there for three weeks. I was there for eight months. I mean, it didn't look-- it didn't appear that they were intentional targets. Those you could really say that they were wrong place, wrong time.

I didn't see targeted gunshots to little kids that were five, six years old or 10, 15 years old. In fact, I mean, I'm thinking back. I mean, I don't think I saw a gunshot wound to a kid at all when I was there...

Adam Hamawy:

These are little children that are being shot, and these aren't stray bullets. These are aimed. They're precise. So a stray bullet will explain one or two of them. It's not going to explain the string of precise, targeted shootings that are being done on children since October.

Ike Sriskandarajah:

The medical worker I spoke with who spent the most time in Gaza also saw the most kids shot-- 50. She showed me a picture she took of a scan of a five or six-year-old's skull. There's a bullet in the middle of it. She was told this child was playing with their friends when an armed quadcopter drone came overhead and shot the child...

Ike Sriskandarajah:

Feroze reached out to as many American medical workers as he could-- doctors, nurses, paramedics. He created a survey to send out and compiled all the answers. The results stunned him.

Feroze Sidhwa:

Almost everybody had the exact same experience. Almost universally, they said the same thing, which I really was surprised by.

Ike Sriskandarajah:

Out of the 53 American medical workers surveyed who did emergency care for children in Gaza, 44 said they saw kids shot in the head or chest...

Ike Sriskandarajah"

Feroze published an op ed in the New York Times with the results of the survey. A group of the doctors wrote two letters to then President Biden outlining what they saw. Feroze thought that would mean two things-- they'd get a call from the White House and there'd be an investigation...

Ike Sriskandarajah:

I talked with three people who worked at the US State Department and reviewed allegations like this, including the person who, until recently, was the Ambassador at Large for Global Criminal Justice, a position that used to be called the War Crimes Ambassador. They all agreed the doctors' report sounded credible and significant enough to investigate.

Each of them said the next step should be asking Israel for answers. One, who is involved in vetting US weapons transfers, told me if this had been another country other than Israel, this is what would have happened...

So we asked the Israel Defense Forces how they explained the reports from American medical workers. They declined both my interview requests, but sent a statement, saying, "The IDF does not target minors and takes extensive measures to prevent harm to civilians, including children. The IDF is committed to mitigating civilian harm and operates in full compliance with international legal obligations. For security reasons, we cannot elaborate on operational policies."

What follows the above segment is an interview with an Israeli soldier about the possible whys and hows of the described events.  I've already excerpted too much from This American Life, so I'll offer apologies to them and suggest that the very few readers who will be interested in more details should read the full transcript at this link, or even better listen to the full podcast (I had to stop twice and do other things while listening, because the information is so unsettling).

Here are several observations from medical personnel from the op-ed published in the New York Times.

“One night in the emergency department, over the course of four hours, I saw six children between the ages of 5 and 12, all with single gunshot wounds to the skull.”

“Our team cared for about four or five children, ages 5 to 8 years old, that were all shot with single shots to the head. They all presented to the emergency room at the same time. They all died.”

“One day, while in the E.R., I saw a 3-year-old and 5-year-old, each with a single bullet hole to their head. When asked what happened, their father and brother said they had been told that Israel was backing out of Khan Younis. So they returned to see if anything was left of their house. There was, they said, a sniper waiting who shot both children.”

Other related articles: Mother Jones interviews Sidwha, and a denial by The Times of Israel.  

Most of the press coverage about Gaza is about the ongoing starvation and genocide.  I hope to address that later.  In the meantime I'm sending some additional $$ to the World Central Kitchen.  I fully realize Israel has assassinated WCK workers delivering food to Gaza and have an ongoing blockade of food trucks at the border, but if I do nothing I will have no answer to the question "What did you do during the genocide in Gaza?."  

"Thanks to your support, WCK has offloaded 49 trucks of essential food supplies at the Kerem Shalom crossing after more than 80 days of border closures. This milestone brings us closer to resuming meal production in Gaza, where our operations had been paused after serving over 130 million meals and 26 million loaves of bread. While awaiting approvals for additional deliveries, our field teams remain ready to restart operations, with trucks loaded, fuel secured, and kitchen systems prepped. In the meantime, we’ve distributed over 2 million liters of clean drinking water, reaching 170,000 liters in a single day, bringing hope and dignity to communities in need. Thank you for standing with us to help nourish those facing unimaginable hardship."

Reposted from 2025 to add the photo embed at the top and this documentation that the process is still going on in 2026 !!

Israeli troops killed a seven-month-old Palestinian baby in the occupied West Bank and injured one of the child’s parents after opening fire on the family’s car, despite it having complied with an order to stop.

Soldiers opened fire on Friday on a car carrying the infant and his parents in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron. The seven-month-old, Sam Fahd Abu Haikal, was critically injured, evacuated in critical condition to a hospital, where he later died. His parents were also injured...

He said it was still daylight and that the soldier who opened fire could clearly see the occupants were a family. “The soldier signalled me to stop. I brought the car to a complete halt and raised my hands on the steering wheel. Immediately afterwards, they opened fire on the vehicle,” he told Haaretz...

“The soldier was about 10 metres away from me. He saw me, he saw my wife and the children,” he told Haaretz. ‘‘The windows were not tinted, it was broad daylight and everything was clear. You can’t say he didn’t see that it was a family.

“I stopped as I was instructed to, and then they simply shot at the car,” he added. “There was no clear checkpoint, just soldiers standing in the street. I stopped when I was asked to, and then the shooting started,” he said.

This latest victim was not "targeted" as such, but the end result is the same.  And this is happening during a so-called "ceasefire."

Addendum June 24:

"A UN inquiry published on 23 June 2026 has found that Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children as part of an ongoing genocide in Gaza, along with crimes against humanity and war crimes in both Gaza and the West Bank. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry, which first concluded last year that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, has now documented the systematic nature of that targeting in extensive detail, drawing on medical evidence, witness testimony, and forensic analysis. Commission Chair Srinivasan Muralidhar stated that even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with Israel showing continued disregard for its obligations under international law. 

The report details a wide pattern of harm against Palestinian children, including mass displacement, starvation caused by Israel's ongoing blockade, the destruction of hospitals, orphanages and schools, sexual violence, and the detention and torture of minors in Israeli facilities with no information provided to families on their whereabouts. The Commission found that attacks on maternity and neonatal care centres have directly impacted Palestinian reproductive futures, contributing to rises in miscarriages and birth defects. It concluded that by systematically targeting children, Israel is eroding the demographic and social foundations of Palestinian society, undermining the Palestinian people's capacity to exercise their right to self-determination. The Commission has called on Israel to immediately cease all violations against Palestinian children and has urged the international community to enforce accountability."

Erasing Gaza

A series of before-and-after satellite photos document the physical destruction going on in Gaza.  At the link are a set of photos with sliders that allow direct comparison of the baseline with the current condition.  What is shown is not collateral destruction from errant munitions, but a deliberate process to physically erase any evidence of Palestinian history and culture - including the cemeteries...

The Sheikh Mohammed cemetery in the Maan area of Khan Younis has been wiped from the map, and replaced by the tents and armoured vehicles of an Israeli military outpost, according to recently updated satellite imagery added to Google Earth...

The high-resolution pictures, captured on February 25, 2026, expose a landscape where entire neighbourhoods have been reduced to ash, and the surviving population is squeezed into suffocating encampments that spill onto the beaches of the Mediterranean Sea...

For Palestinians, the updated maps provide a devastating, wide-angle view of an ongoing genocide that has killed nearly 73,000 people.

According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israeli forces have fully or partially destroyed 94 percent of Gaza’s cemeteries, transforming places of memory into military barracks...

US President Joe Biden initially drew a ‘red line’ over the invasion of Rafah in early 2024, but Israel went ahead with its brutal operation. Israel faced no consequences for its actions in Rafah, which has largely been flattened...

The methodical destruction extends to the territory’s educational foundation. UNICEF says more than 97 percent of schools have been damaged or destroyed, leaving 658,000 children without formal learning for more than two years. Universities have either been blown up or transformed into displacement shelters...

The Islamic University of Gaza (IUG), which catered to over 20,000 students, and Al-Azhar University, which enrolled more than 16,000 students, have been razed. Both major campuses, along with Al-Israa University in the south, were completely levelled through controlled military detonations...

In the Shakoush area, Israeli bulldozers have razed greenhouses and confiscated the topsoil, directly exacerbating the man-made starvation of the population...

"Confiscating the topsoil" FFS.  This is ongoing genocide, and no Western countries are doing anything about it.  The destruction of homes and olive groves is what Rachel Corrie died protesting in 2003, when she was run over by a bulldozer while wearing a high-visibility orange vest.  And the U.S. continues to fund the criminal activities of Netanyahu, including his use of white phosphorus in Lebanon.  And here is the New York Times documentation of the use of white phosphorus in Lebanon.

Addendum: A longread detailed article about the repeated violations of the Gaza "ceasefire" is here.

Israel violated the ceasefire agreement at least 3,005 times from October 10, 2025 to May 27, 2026, through the continuation of attacks by air, artillery and direct shootings, the Government Media Office in Gaza reports...From October 10, 2025 to April 14, 2026, the office said Israel shot at civilians 921 times, raided residential areas beyond the “yellow line” 97 times, bombed and shelled Gaza 1109 times, and demolished people’s properties on 273 occasions...

According to an analysis by Al Jazeera, Israel has attacked Gaza on 211 out of the past 235 days of the ceasefire, meaning there were only 24 days during which no violent attacks, deaths or injuries were reported.

Despite continuing attacks, the US insists that the “ceasefire” is still holding.

When the endgame is defeat - updated

Excerpts from an article in The Atlantic last week:

... Trump’s repeated threats to resume attacks since then have proved to be bluffs. The leaders in Tehran have been calculating for two months that Trump would not launch another attack, and for this reason they have made no concessions despite the damage they suffered from 37 days of relentless strikes. On the contrary, their terms for a settlement are those of a victor: They demand war reparations, no limits on uranium enrichment, recognized control of the strait, and an end to sanctions...

In 30 days, moreover, the new Iranian strait regime may already be firmly in place. As the Institute for the Study of War reports, Iran has been using the cease-fire period to “normalize” its control over the strait by “compelling oil-importing countries” to establish transit agreements with Tehran and charging fees on vessels from nations without such deals. According to Iranian officials, the new strait regime will give Iran’s strategic partners, such as Russia and China, priority and allow nations friendly to Iran, such as India and Pakistan, to negotiate their own transit agreements. Vessels associated with nations that Iran regards as an adversary will be denied access to the strait entirely...

Several nations, including South Korea, Turkey, and Iraq, are reportedly already negotiating at least temporary transit agreements.. Those nations currently allied with the United States and friendly to Israel will feel pressure to distance themselves and make their peace with Iran. The international sanctions against Iran will collapse, and even more money will pour into the country’s accounts as its newly central role in the global economy becomes normalized. By the end of 30 days, most of the world will have a stake in the new arrangement and will oppose any resumption of hostilities, even in the unlikely event that Trump wanted to go back to war.

Trump no doubt hopes that he can slip away without Americans noticing the magnitude of this defeat. The financial markets may stabilize if it is clear that oil will eventually start flowing again through a reopened strait, even if under the new Iran-controlled system. A major strategic setback for the United States need not affect Wall Street. The president may also hope that he can change the subject by launching another military operation, this time against the government in Cuba. And the news media have indeed begun writing more about Cuba than about the unfolding disaster in Iran.

Will Israel go gentle into this good night? That is the wild card that may disrupt the financial markets’ dreams of a new stability in the Gulf. A stronger, richer, more influential Iran will mean new life for Hamas and Hezbollah. It will mean the end of the Abraham Accords, as the Gulf States will have to make their own peace with Tehran so that their economies can survive. Trump says that Netanyahu “will do whatever I want him to do.” But can Israel stand by while Iran replaces the United States as the arbiter of power in the region?

Netanyahu is clearly the wild card, in every sense of the word, because the current memorandum of understanding that I have seen indicates that one of the conditions for opening the Strait is that Israel cease its attacks on Lebanon.

Addendum:  This morning I saw Trump's latest pronoucement re the "deal" he's offering...

Strait opened with no tolls plus magical "destruction" of "Nuclear Dust" by methods that have not yet been invented.  So, let me plug that reply into the Magic 8 Ball and ask what Iran's reply will be...

Well, the Magic 8 Ball skipped its 20 standard answers and instead replied "no fucking way, Jose."

So, what's the next step?  Hostilities resumed (the U.S. has been bombing Iranian missile sites during the cease-fire), or kicking the can down the road ("resume negotiations")???  If someone could check Trump's management of his investments before the market closes this afternoon, that might give the answer...

Fortress Washington, drone-proofed and with friendly snipers

Holly Baxter of The Independent reported today that in the midst of all the chaos—including his war on Iran and rising fuel and food prices—Trump called a sudden, urgent press conference today as Blanche was testifying. But what was on his mind was not Iran, or prices, or his corrupt agreement with the Department of Justice. He wanted to talk about his ballroom.

Trump’s comments in that press conference have invited commentary suggesting he is turning the White House into a fortress. Describing the ballroom, he said: “Between the drone-proofing, the missile-proofing, we have ah, and the drone capacity upstairs, we can have all sorts of military—I hate to use the word snipers—but we have great sniper capacity. It’s built for our snipers, not enemy’s snipers, our snipers. And because of the height we get a very clear view of everything all over Washington.”

Via Letters from an American, May 19.  This is the report in The Independent.  I know some readers think this is normal behavior, not mental illness, but really... WTF?

Details regarding the "Trump phone"

Lots of outrage expressed in various media stating that Trump sold phones to his supporters, failed to deliver them, and pocketed the $ without refunds.  The details are more complex, as summarized in the cartoon above and expressed by Heather Cox Richardson below:

As Judd Legum of Popular Information explains, on June 16, 2025, Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric announced the launch of a new, gold plated, Trump smartphone, “proudly designed and built in the United States.” It would be available in August 2025 for $499. Its website urged customers to “pre-order” the phone by depositing $100 toward it. Don Jr. said the phone would be “American hardware, built in America, without the potential of…[a] backdoor into the hardware that some of our adversaries have installed in there.”

And yet a disclaimer on the website said the Trumps and the Trump Organization were involved only in the branding of the phone; they had nothing to do with the design, development, manufacture, distribution, or sales of the item. As Legum notes, the idea of a superior U.S.-made phone was always a fantasy, and within two weeks the phone’s description changed from “MADE IN THE USA” to “designed with American values in mind.”

The phone never shipped, and on April 6, Trump Mobile updated its terms to say the $100 deposit was not actually a deposit for a pre-order, but rather “a conditional opportunity if Trump Mobile later elects, in its sole discretion, to offer the Device for sale.” It went on to say the deposit “does not lock in pricing, promotions, service plans, taxes, fees, shipping costs, or other commercial terms” and that “[e]stimated ship dates, launch timelines, or anticipated production schedule are non-binding estimates only.”

A new phone has recently gotten clearance from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and Trump Mobile executives say they are waiting for approval from T-Mobile, the company whose network Trump Mobile wants to use. Legum points out that T-Mobile relies on the federal government for approval for business activities, creating an enormous conflict of interest.

A glimpse of the future of AI-produced movies

Absolutely amazing.  Imagine being a human actor viewing this and wondering what your future holds re 

employment.  Imagine what fake celebrity porn must look like now.  Imagine how unsophisticated viewers can now be duped into believing false realities re their political leaders.  Imagine being able to create one of your own using generative AI...

Addendum:  I'm now seeing a "Video Unavailable" message in place of the video.  I'll see if I can find a workaround for the embed.  In the meantime, you can view it at this Reddit thread.  And if that disappears, try Googling "The AI movie Pi Hard shows Neil deGrasse Tyson teaming up with Sam Bankman-Fried to stop an evil Stephen Hawking from destroying the multiverse by dividing by zero. Bill Gates is a robot and Elon Musk is panicking."

Just found this on YouTube.  Don't know if it will stay up...  I gotta go do yard and garden chores.

The art of the deal...

"Make a fortune" may be the"truth" after all...

That from Trump.  This from the American public (via Facebook):

Trump really said this. Out loud. In public.

I found confirmation at The New Republic:

Donald Trump doesn’t think the federal government should fund child care, Medicare, or Medicaid.

At an Easter Lunch reception at the White House Wednesday, the president told guests what exactly he thought about what the U.S. should be prioritizing, and it doesn’t bode well for the government’s most widely used and popular social programs.

“I said to [Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought], ‘Don’t send any money for daycare because the United States can’t take care of daycare.’ That has to be up to a state. We can’t take care of daycare. We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people,” Trump said. “We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You got to let a state take care of daycare and they should pay for it, too. They should pay. They’ll have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up.”

“It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country. But all these little things, all these little scams that have taken place, all you have to you have to let states take care of them,” Trump continued.

Christian Nationalism in the armed forces command structure? Or not...?

The embed shows allegations I've seen in several posts on Facebook.  I don't trust Facebook material to be accurate.  Have any readers seen evidence to support/refute this claim in the mainstream fact-checked media?

Here is the link for the cited reference to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

Addendum:  Before you get too excited, read this link from Friendly Atheist, submitted by one of the readers here.  It expresses severe skepticism regarding the validity of the claims made in the embed.

Sometimes The Onion says it best

Offered without comment

This is real

Found on Facebook, but it's not one of the innumerable parodies.  The content has been confirmed by all the major news services, who point out that Greenland has free medical care for all its residents, and six hospitals for a population of 60,000 people.  If Trump wants to send a hospital ship - fine.  Send it to Gaza.  Send it to Sudan.  

This man is certifiably clinically insane and out of touch with reality.  If he were running a corporation it would go bankrupt.  The United States has become the laughing stock of the world, with a figurehead preseident who is opening mocked, parodied, and hated.  The American people are viewed as stupid and weak for permitting him to ruin the country while the billionaires reap the profits.

Parents are refusing Vitamin K for newborns

"For most of his 10 years as a neonatologist, Dr. Timmy Ho encountered one or two parents per week who didn’t want their newborns to receive a vitamin K injection, a standard step to prevent bleeding.  Recently, in just one week, he saw three or four per day — numbers, he said, that were becoming more common.

One of the babies suffered a type of bleeding in the brain that vitamin K could have prevented, said Dr. Ho, who practices in Boston. He had never seen that before.

Vitamin K plays a crucial role in blood clotting but doesn’t pass to the baby through the placenta effectively, and there isn’t much of it in breast milk. Infants are deficient in it until they can eat solid foods. This can lead to bleeding, from minor oozing from the umbilical cord to potentially life-threatening gastrointestinal or brain hemorrhages.

One injection immediately after birth is very effective at fixing the deficiency, and it has been routinely administered in the United States for more than 60 years.

Now, the shot appears to have been swept up in broader anti-vaccine sentiment, even though it isn’t a vaccine..."

The story continues at The New York Times.

"Daddy, what does 'petulant' mean?"

Perhaps we can illustrate the concept with an example.  The message above expresses a new domestic economic policy presented to the world via social media.  Newsweek looked into this matter:

Newsweek has contacted the White House and Transport Canada, which is responsible for Canadian certification, for comment via email. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) declined to comment, referring questions to the White House.  It is the responsibility of the FAA to certify planes in the United States. The FAA can revoke aircraft certification if it is no longer in an airworthy condition, according to its website, but it remains unclear if it can do so for economic reasons...

John Gradek, who teaches aviation management at McGill University, told Newsweek that it is unprecedented for a government to cancel the certification of an aircraft for trade reasons.

He said: "Such action is typically used to ground aircraft that have been deemed unsafe to operate by the regulatory bodies. This action by President Trump is purely for commercial reasons, that Gulfstream would like to reduce competition for its Gulfstream- series general aviation aircraft by eliminating Bombardier Global Express aircraft from sales in the U.S. In his zeal to further protect the U.S. aircraft market, his stated intention to decertify all Canadian-built aircraft will have a significant impact on the domestic U.S. air travel market. There are over 1,000 Canadian-built commercial passenger aircraft in operation on any given day, a not insignificant number that would severely curtail services to/from regional airports throughout the U.S."

The CBC reports that that this new "policy" is already being walked back: "A White House official told Reuters that Trump was not suggesting decertifying Canadian-built planes currently ⁠in operation."

I hope that example illustrates the word for you, sweetheart.  You can get more information from the Wiktionary, which defines 'petulant' as "childishly irritable" with synonyms bad-tempered, crabby, grouchy, huffy.   All of those would be relevant.   

The video taken by The Lady in the Pink Coat

Video from the Lady in the Pink Coat
byu/tommyknockerman8 inLeakednews

You have probably seen her on the "back" side (sidewalk side) of the action in the videos filmed from the street.  Immediately after the shooting there was open concern online as to whether the Lady in the Pink Coat was safe and whether her cellphone footage was safe and would be released.  Here it is.

More comments (lots more) from me later.  And hopefully a better copy of the video.  Just embedding this here for now.