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Super Bowl: I’ll be watching the game and ads only

No interest in the so-called “entertainment” pre-game and halftime. Mostly garbage, save for Trombone Shorty.

FU NFL for this unappealing lineup.

The Army’s Special Treatment of Capt. Rebecca Lobach

Favoritism Inevitably Draws Scrutiny: The Army’s Special Treatment of Capt. Rebecca Lobach Fuels Speculation and Dishonors all Who Perished in the Recent DC Air Collision.​


On Saturday the U.S. Army released the name of the second pilot—reported to have been pilot in command—of the Blackhawk helicopter that collided with American Airlines flight 5342 over the Potomac River, killing 67 people. This was a marked departure from Army policy that states “Names, city, and state of deceased will be withheld until 24 hours after next of kin notification.” This was the standard process used to identify the other two members of the Army’s flight crew, Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Eaves, and Staff Sgt. Ryan O'Hara. It is the same process used to identify soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan—a process I followed as a military public affairs officer for over 20 years. Army public affairs officials followed the same procedures to publicly identify soldiers who died in not-too-distant helicopter crashes in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alaska. Yet, in an unusual deviation, the Army selectively withheld Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach’s identity for an additional two days. When her name was finally released over the weekend, the Army included a family statement of eulogy that praised Lobach and requested privacy. Army officials claim that violating its own rules was done to respect Lobach’s family’s wishes, but that decision casts an unnecessary shadow over her service and memory.

Working a casualty release is a difficult task. I remember each one that had to be done when deployed to Afghanistan as public affairs director for the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division. Each time while combing through a fallen soldier’s deployment photo and service record, there was a painful awareness that I was handling information that would soon devastate this fellow paratrooper’s loved ones back home in the U.S. The entire brigade would be placed under an internet blackout to ensure the news did not leak out before the family was notified in person. This practice is taken seriously, and rightly so. Much of its dignity comes from its predictability and equal application. No matter the rank or position of a deceased soldier, the notification process is supposed to be the same for all—and was until now.

The crash over the Potomac is a very unusual tragedy for many reasons that are being unraveled by investigators. The Army’s special treatment of Capt. Lobach adds to that complexity. The information shared by the Army and Lobach’s friends indicate that she was a stellar soldier. However, stellar soldiers do not ask for special consideration—they demand equal treatment to prove that they are one among a team. Yet we now see a movement to essentially canonize Lobach as a hero while civilian remains are still being recovered from the submerged and fragmented passenger jet that her aircraft knocked from the sky. Army officials rushed to defend a single pilot among a flight crew of three and 64 dead civilians. This treatment echoes a 2015 Army study warning that male soldiers are driven instinctively to protect female colleagues over mission completion. In this instance, we see that tendency strangely playing out in a way that reflects allegiance to intersectional theories and bandwagon effect as much as complementarian instinct.

Over the weekend, several Army public affairs officers and Pentagon reporters expressed heartbreak over Lobach’s passing, implying she was uniquely victimized above the 66 others killed. In contrast, they were largely silent when the identities of the other soldiers and jet passengers were released. Some narratives even suggested that the president was to blame for the Army’s deviation from standard protocol. Army officials surely knew the risk of this event becoming politicized and encouraged it through their unprecedented actions.

Beyond violating military regulations, the Army strategically released Lobach’s identification on a Saturday—a classic public relations tactic used to bury news. Meanwhile, it appears her social media history was erased, despite the insistence that she was an admirable public servant. The inclusion of a family eulogy in the Army’s announcement further signaled that her passing was somehow more profound than the rest. Why? The Army’s actions invite speculation. The best way to honor Capt. Lobach as a soldier would have been to treat her like any other. Instead, by attempting to craft a heroic top gun narrative around her, Army officials took a path that increased concerns about the circumstances of the crash. This is a textbook example of the "celebration parallax"—as if the Army intends to prove that women receive no special treatment by giving one woman special treatment.

Early evidence suggests that cockpit mistakes contributed to the collision. Yet, in no prior case have I seen an airline or government agency publicly promote a downed pilot as a hero within 96 hours of an accident. Something is very different about this case.

The point of this essay is not to ascribe blame. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board will get to the bottom of what is likely a complex set of factors that passed 67 lives into eternity. Rather than rushing to offer one pilot as above question in that investigative process, Army officials should focus on following their own regulations, addressing systemic safety issues in Army aviation, and prioritizing public service over institutional image protection. Now is the time for introspection and hard questions—not attempting a flags of our fathers public relations play.

If the Army wanted to lessen the grief suffered by Capt. Lobach’s family, it used the worst tactics possible. Those who deliberately hid, and are hiding, information from public view activated the Streisand Effect, drawing further attention to what they want to hide. Unfortunately, such malpractice is characteristic of the Army’s public affairs apparatus at top levels. This is the same field that resisted recent guidance from the acting Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs (ATSD) to implement a social media pause. It is the same group that failed to address false rumors about the paternity of Master Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger’s daughter after his tragic suicide in front of Trump Tower on January 1st. It is the same military career field that ignored an admonition from then Secretary of the Army Mark Esper that the Army is the slowest branch to respond to press inquiries. The Army’s public affairs code of "Maximum Disclosure, Minimum Delay" is often cited but never enforced. This is a well-known problem that refuses to self-correct. It will demand attention from the Pentagon’s new leadership to force a solution.

Regulations lose legitimacy when selectively enforced. Lobach’s family is not the first to request privacy, but they are the first to receive such overt preferential treatment in recent military history. This sets a precedent that will make the jobs of commanders, public affairs officers, and casualty notification officers more difficult going forward.

I feel tremendous sympathy for the family of each soul on both aircraft and cannot begin to imagine the pain each one feels. That pain was not lightened for any of them by the Army’s agenda-based actions since. I call on top public affairs officials across the Army to remember your oaths, and put them into practice.

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The Americans

How many have ever watched this show?

Years ago, during Vietnam, my dad said many of the MIA’s were in Russia. They lived in designed communities to grow Russian spies, teaching the kids how to be American.

I listened. I wondered as I got older, that the reason he told me those things was that no one would believe them anyway. (Honestly I don’t know how the intelligence community viewed it at the time, but now I think they felt it was okay, for the reason I stated. They wanted the younger generation to be aware of possibilities).

Just like the military brass felt we should study about National Liberation Fronts. It was so we would be able to recognize it when we were confronted with it.

The sad thing today, and evidence of how far we have shifted to the Hitler and Mussolini forms of facism, shows me why they wanted us to learn about these things, so history would not be repeated.

Yet, here we are today. There is no SDS, no far left wing party doing the things they did in the ‘60’s. No Green Peace blowing up stuff.

Instead we have Christian fascists, following blindly people that would destroy everything this country was founded on. Lemmings that do what the red hats tell them to do.

People that barely know the history of this country. People that don’t understand why we have Episcopal churches instead of Anglican churches. People that disrespect certain churches because they’re inclusive.

This is not what the country was founded on. It’s true, getting destroyed from the inside. It’s a known political ploy by Putin, the way to destroy the US is from the inside.

All are witnessing as we speak. But some seem to really think it’s cool because they can get their white man power back.

That’s all for now.

Protecting children from chemical and surgical mutilation

Trump put an end to chemical and surgical transgender treatment for children. I have been pushing this for quite some time. I believe we will find that the suicide rate does not increase for this population even though their transgender treatment is taken away. I guess time will tell whether transgender care actually does decrease suicidality or whether I am right that it was an activist driven scam.

I can't wait to see the research that results from this executive order.

Jodi Huisentruit went missing in 1995. Friend hopes a $25K reward uncovers her remains

Nearly 28 years after Jodi Huisentruit's disappearance, a $25,000 reward is being offered for information that leads to the recovery of the remains of the former Mason City morning television news anchor, according to a news release.

Huisentruit disappeared early on the morning of June 27, 1995, on her way to work at KIMT-TV in Mason City. Though the case has remained in the public eye, no arrests or charges have been made in connection to the case.

Jodi Huisentruit


Licensed private investigator Steve Ridge offered the reward as a private citizen. Ridge says the reward offer has the blessing of Huisentruit’s sister, JoAnn Nathe.

“I speak with JoAnn on a regular basis, and we have decided the timing is right to seek information on where Jodi’s body was discarded,” Ridge said. “This reward does not require an arrest or conviction — but simply the recovery of Jodi’s remains,” Ridge added.

More:Today marks 27 years in the Jodi Huisentruit case. Here's what to know about her 1995 disappearance

Ridge believes that someone out there knows what happened to Jodi. It could easily be someone who bears no guilt or involvement but has knowledge they've been reluctant to share before, he said. He hopes that this reward would encourage someone to come forward.

“I am now extremely confident that multiple people know what happened to Jodi. Eventually, someone may decide to talk,” Ridge said in a news release. “We hope to encourage that possibility."

Trump's "Napolean moment" . . .

Frankly, I think this is an overly optimistic view from Michael Ian Black, but it is very well-written and funny anyway:

Trump Is Already Headed For His Napoleon Moment, and Not in a Good Way​

PARDON MY FRENCH

Napoleon Bonaparte? More like Napoleon Bona-spurs.​

Michael Ian Black
Updated Feb. 5 2025

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Just down the road from the petite Airbnb in which I’m currently staying on the outskirts of Paris is the home of Alexander Dumas, who wrote The Count of Monte Cristo. That novel takes place during Napoleon’s escape from exile and his return to power, a comeback which lasted a scant 115 days before a Prussian/British coalition defeated him for good at Waterloo.

In 2025, our own little tyrant has re-emerged from his own exile. The early returns have not been promising.
I am not going to honor Donald Trump by drawing a direct line between him and France’s “Little Corporal.” Napoleon, after all, was brave. A war hero. And a brilliant tactician.

Trump stared directly at a solar eclipse.

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There are, however, comparisons to be made. Like Napoleon, Trump found himself marooned after his first term in office—though for Trump, it was in the swamps of South Florida rather than on an island off the coast of Italy. Napoleon ruled Elba the same way Trump rules Mar-a-Lago, though Napoleon granted himself the title of Emperor while Trump’s modesty has only allowed to declare himself our second greatest president, telling a crowd in 2017, “With the exception of the late, great Abraham Lincoln, I can be more presidential than any president that’s ever held this office.”

One more quick comparison between the two men: A funny quote from a 1954 TIME magazine article. Napoleon, the article says, had a mind which “never doubted that it was wise enough to teach law to lawyers, science to scientists, and religion to Popes.”
My own exile of the last few weeks was of the self-imposed variety, a vacation planned well in advance of the presidential election. When my wife and I left, we were thrilled to be fleeing the nation during Inauguration Week. Now, days from our return, I’m feeling guilty about having been absent during these first fretful weeks of the new Trump administration. The nation is in tumult and I am consuming patisserie.

On the other hand, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about staying. France is lovely. The cheese is excellent. The healthcare system doesn’t try to bankrupt its customers. And on top of everything else, everybody gets free berets! (Not true.)

More seriously, as our daily constitutional crisis unspools, I think millions of American liberals like me are weighing their options during their own time of political exile. What is the best course of action? Does one take to the streets? Move to a blue state? Leave the country?

My family emigrated from Ukraine at the turn of the last century when the czar’s May Laws made life for Russian Jews impossible. A few decades later, Hitler did the same for the rest of Europe.

Growing up in the 80’s, that history always felt close at hand. I’ve talked to other Jews who grew up in that time, and we all experienced the same feeling that the rug could be pulled out from under us. It wasn’t that the U.S. was unwelcoming; it was that very recent history had taught us that every person’s open heart could shutter given the right circumstances. Consequently, I’ve always kept a mental go-bag at the ready. Now, for the first time in my life, I’m contemplating using it.

How could I not when things appear to be spiraling out of control?

In D.C., Elon Musk and his band of college-aged flunkies are downloading Americans’ personal data onto their laptops while Trump rattles his flaccid saber at Canada, Mexico, Denmark, Panama, China and the European Union.

Does such hubris call to mind any other very stable geniuses?

Trump’s own czar of the border, Tom Homan, is gleefully predicting domestic unrest, telling Fox News this week that, “You’re gonna see violence on the Southern border. It’s unfortunate, but we know it’s coming.”

Why does he think so? And what happens when it does? Homan may be anticipating violence because violence is what they seek. It’s the authoritarian playbook, after all.

But what will be clear to people five years from now is, at best, hazy in the present. Everybody living under an authoritarian understands that things are likely to get worse before they improve; the only question is how much worse?

When Napoleon appeared before the French Parliament in November 1799 after staging the first part of his coup d’etat, he attempted to convince the assembled deputies to pass a new constitution formalizing his rule. Over heated objections, Napoleon roared, “Remember that I walk with the God of War and the God of Fortune!”

Not quite as pithy as “I alone can fix it,” but pretty good.

And now that the fix is, indeed, in, what are we going to do? I return to the U.S. in a few days but part of me wishes I were not. Part of me wishes that I could tear up my return ticket, smoke Gauloises by the carton and wear my jaunty free beret (again, there are no free berets).

But I cannot. The fight is at home and so home is where I will go. May the second reign of Burger King be as short as that of the Little Corporal—but if it is not, I will be there to battle against it every day until it ends. Vive la révolution!

And eat some pastry.

Nobody Wants Gaz-a-Lago

The president proposes a terrible solution to a very real problem.
By Yair Rosenberg

Move over, Greenland. Donald Trump has his eyes on a new prize: Gaza. At a news conference with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, the president declared that “the U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip,” “level it out,” and “create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.” These people would not all be Gazans, whom Trump suggested should be resettled elsewhere, at least temporarily. The president also expressed openness to deploying U.S. troops in order to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Trump’s Gaz-a-Lago plan has just one minor defect: It is a nonstarter with pretty much all of the parties required to make it work. Fresh off failed forays into Iraq and Afghanistan, many Americans will balk at inserting themselves into one of the Middle East’s most intractable conflicts. “I think most South Carolinians would probably not be excited about sending Americans to take over Gaza,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the most hawkish lawmakers in Congress, told reporters. Trump named Jordan and Egypt as two Arab countries that could take in displaced Gazans during the territory’s reconstruction, but both regimes would rather swallow broken glass than grant citizenship or even a foothold to large numbers of Palestinians, whose cause they celebrate but whose people they routinely denigrate.

Trump’s scheme also conflicts with an essential component of the Israeli ethos. The country prides itself on “defending itself by itself,” as home to a formerly persecuted people no longer reliant on foreign powers for its security. This pose is something of a polite fiction—Israel very much relies on American weapons and diplomatic support—but it’s true to the extent that the country has always fought its own wars with its own fighters. Trump’s proposal would upend that doctrine and risk turning Israel into a liability for the United States, rather than a strategic asset. As for the Palestinians, many Gazans would readily seek a new life elsewhere if offered the opportunity to escape their horrific circumstances, but many others would not. If done at the point of a gun, such a transfer would constitute ethnic cleansing—a far-right Israeli dream into which Trump just breathed new life, whatever his intentions.

Read: Trump’s wild plan for Gaza

But as flawed as Trump’s proposed solution is, it does identify a real problem. The U.S., Arab states, the European Union, the United Nations, and countless human-rights organizations all claim to care about Gaza. In the decades since Israel withdrew its troops and settlements from the territory, however, the international community has participated in a perverse cycle: It shovels money and aid into Gaza; watches that money get appropriated by Hamas to bankroll its messianic war against Israel’s existence; relegates the military response to Hamas to ever more hawkish Israeli governments, elected by voters pushed to the right by rocket attacks; rebuilds Gaza with more soon-to-be-compromised aid after yet another ruinous conflict between Israel and Hamas; then proclaims itself shocked and appalled when the cycle repeats.

The latest war has been catastrophic for the Palestinian people, and that is the culmination of years of bankrupt international policy. “The Gaza thing has not worked; it’s never worked,” Trump told reporters yesterday. “It’s a pure demolition site. If we could find the right piece of land or numerous pieces of land and build them some really nice places … I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza, which has had just decades and decades of death.” As is often the case, Trump accurately diagnosed a fundamental failure of the reigning policy elites, but offered a half-baked solution to the problem.

With significant revisions, this proposal could contain a semblance of something workable. Temporarily housing Gazans in dignified conditions elsewhere while the devastated territory is rebuilt under the watchful eyes of America and its allies would provide the Gazan people with much-deserved relief while depriving Hamas of its source of power and income. The civilians would no longer be shields for Hamas to place between itself and Israel, and Hamas would no longer be able to skim funds from the population’s aid. Ultimately, the Gazan people could then return to a home no longer hostage to either Hamas or Israeli blockade. Should Trump’s Arab allies talk him into something like this, it would certainly be better than rerunning the old playbook and expecting a different result.

Trump’s proposal could be a negotiating tactic—a grandiose plan intended to be bargained down to something practical. It could be a flight of fancy that won’t survive contact with the regional players, or a vision he intends to push through with American might. No one honestly knows. More immediate questions also remain unanswered: Does Trump intend to ensure that the current Israel-Hamas cease-fire holds through its second phase, which is scheduled to begin in March, or will the war reignite? If the president is unable to strike a new accord with Iran, Hamas’s weakened patron, will he back Israeli strikes on its nuclear sites? Trump also dropped another surprise toward the end of his press conference, when he said that his administration would announce its policy on potential Israeli annexation of the West Bank—territory that Palestinians claim for their future state—in the next four weeks.

Whether Trump will follow through on any of the ideas he tossed like grenades into the discourse yesterday is anyone’s guess. What’s certain is this: The old rules of the Middle East no longer apply, and no one knows what the new ones are.

Hawk fans

6:00 start vs Purdue tomorrow.

Please do your best to attend. This team needs our support.

Now more than ever. For fans to let go of the rope after the team's best player gets hurt could be really tough for the morale of the young men on this team.

Show up, be loud, and let this team know that the Hawkeyes will continue to be supported through tough times.

Give these guys a boost of energy to help them compete the rest of the season. And remind them how special of a place this is. Make it hard for anyone to ever want to leave.

You think the women would have just beat USC with 3,000 people in the stands? Not a chance.

OUR SUPPORT DOES MATTER
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