Thursday Cartoons: Butt of the Moon
Posted: April 9, 2026 Filed under: just because 3 Comments
Good morning, have you seen this?
Following Pope Leo’s “state of the world” address this past January, the Pentagon invited Holy See ambassador to the U.S. Cardinal Christophe Pierre for a meeting. The move was characterized as “unprecedented” in the report, as “there is no public evidence of any Vatican official ever taking a meeting at the Pentagon.”
There, U.S. officials expressed their disapproval of the Pope’s speech. The report continued:
According to both Vatican and U.S. officials briefed on the meeting, Pentagon brass picked apart the pontiff’s January speech, reading it as a hostile message directed at Trump’s policies. What particularly enraged the Pentagon, one Vatican official said, was the passage in which Leo appeared to challenge the Donroe Doctrine—Trump’s update of the Monroe Doctrine, which asserts unchallenged American dominion over the Western Hemisphere.
In his speech, the Pope declared: “A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force, by either individuals or groups of allies.”
At one point in the meeting, the report said, one U.S. official made mention of the Avignon Papacy of the 14th century. During this time, the French Crown used its military power to influence the papacy.
The pope is refusing to come to Trump’s Fourth of July trailer park bash…
Instead, on July 4, 2026, the American pope will visit Lampedusa, a tiny island in the Mediterranean that serves as a gateway for North African migrants risking everything to reach Europe. No pope has ever been more aware of what that date means, and Leo is too deliberate to have chosen July 4 by accident.
One Vatican official put it bluntly: “The Pope may well never visit the United States under this administration.”
Good.
As it is, Trump is threatening again:
I’ve been dealing with a killer headache so enjoy the cartoons from Cagle:
Be safe out there.
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
I can’t take this shit anymore:
Me either.
Army survivors of deadly attack in Kuwait dispute Pentagon’s account, say unit “was unprepared” to defend itself
Survivors of the deadliest Iranian attack on U.S. forces since the war began have disputed the Pentagon’s description of events and said their unit in Kuwait was left dangerously exposed when six service members were killed and more than 20 wounded.
Speaking publicly for the first time, members of the targeted unit offered CBS News a detailed account of the attack and its harrowing aftermath from the perspective of those on the ground.
The members CBS News spoke to disputed the description of events from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who described the drone as a “squirter” — in that it squirted through the defenses of a fortified unit inside Kuwait.
“Painting a picture that ‘one squeaked through’ is a falsehood,” one of the injured soldiers told CBS News. “I want people to know the unit … was unprepared to provide any defense for itself. It was not a fortified position.”
That service member, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of rigid media restrictions within the military, said that in spite of the carnage that ensued, those inside the charred and splintered compound responded with swiftness, ingenuity and valor that saved lives.
“I don’t think that the security environment or any leadership decision diminishes in any way their sacrifice or their service,” the member of the Army’s 103rd Sustainment Command said in an interview. “Those soldiers put themselves in harm’s way and … I’m immensely proud of them, and their family should be proud of them.”
These first eyewitness accounts, along with photos and videos of the attack’s aftermath obtained exclusively by CBS News, offer the first descriptions of what occurred March 1 at the thinly fortified Kuwaiti port facility on the day of the Iranian drone strike.
for those who want to know: