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One of the features of the Trump era has been the sense of chaos that seems to surround everything about the man. Whether as a candidate, as president or as the hero in the fight against the villains of Washington, there is always a whirlwind of action around him that makes understanding it difficult. We now see this in his foreign policy which looks more like a game of flipping over tables and smashing things than a coherent strategy to advance national interests.
The most recent example is the caper to regime change Iran in the middle of negotiations to end the half century cold war with them. Despite the mountain of lies, it is clear that the plan was to decapitate the Iranian government, attack the nuclear facilities and then usher in a regime change. Israel went after military leaders, political leaders, and the top nuclear scientists. They also attacked what they thought were their key nodes in their air defense system.
Despite Trump’s denials, it is clear that the Trump admin knew about this scheme from the start and helped make it possible. When it looked like it was successful, Trump posted about how negotiations were just a ruse to get the Iranians into a false sense of security, but he changed gears once it was clear the scheme failed. He also claimed to have vetoed the killing of Ali Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader of Iran, but that is just damage control after the fact.
As an aside, if you want to get a sense of who really runs American foreign policy, look at the parallels between this sneak attack on Iran and the sneak attack on the Russian strategic bombers. Both used pre-programmed drones launched from trucks. Both used negotiations as a ruse. Both served the interests of those who wanted to halt negotiations with the targeted party. In both of these cases, we see the same fingerprints, but who belongs to those fingerprints is not clear.
That aside, the plan failed. After the initial shock, Iran was able to quickly respond to the attacks with what has been a very effective missile campaign. They also got their air defense system back online and now Israel jets have to operate well outside of their range, which limits what Israel can attack inside Iran. Israel, of course, is lobbying Trump to attack Iran, but so far, he has resisted. The rumor at the moment is that Israel is quietly asking for a truce.
To make things more complicated, Chinese aircraft are landing in Iran, presumably with missiles for Iran. These could also be North Korean missiles. China is Iran’s biggest customer for energy products. China is an 80% owner in the South Pars gas field, which is part of the North Dome field, the biggest on earth. Of course, Russia has a security agreement with Iran and is no doubt providing intelligence for Iranian missile strikes on key targets inside Israel.
On the surface, this looks like a disaster. There is no reason for Iran to do a deal with Washington after this betrayal of basic diplomatic norms. There is no reason for Iran to take the deal on officer, if they decided to come back to the table. They have leverage now, so they will demand much more from Trump. The Israel lobby is now in crisis as the options here are terrible. If Trump green lights an attack on Iran’s nuclear bunkers, we probably get a regional war that America cannot afford.
The Israel lobby does not care about the damage done to America or the American people, but they do care about Israel. What the weekend revealed is that the vaunted Israel air defense system is a paper tiger. Iran was able to overload it and is now hitting targets inside Israel at will. A regional war could very well mean the end of Israel or at least turning Tel Aviv into Gaza. Expect to hear the usual big mouths like Lindsay Graham demanding a truce in the air war this week.
Attacking Iran brings other risks. It is clear that Iran can reach out and touch American assets in the region. That includes naval assets. Trump called off the operation against the Houthis due to both the cost and the risk to American assets. Iran is orders of magnitude more powerful than Yemen. Then you have the American bases in Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. There are secret bases that do not appear on any map in Saudi Arabia where the U.S. military operates.
Then there is the elephant in the room. If Trump escalates, the Iranians will probably close the Strait of Hormuz. The Houthis will shut off access to the Red Sea. That means a third of the world’s oil supply stops flowing. What Trump has to ponder, therefore, is whether this is worth gas lines and perhaps rationing. Disrupt the flow of energy and the rest of the world gets involved in this war. The rest of the word does not care about the psychological wellbeing of the Israelis.
Rational people look at this and conclude that Trump will do the rational thing and avoid taking the bait, while working to get a truce. Rational people forget that a rational actor would never have signed off on the sneak attack. Two data points does not make a pattern, but Trump has signed off on two Pearl Harbor style schemes in just the few months he has been in office. This morning brings news that an “armada” of refueling planes left for the Middle East.
Note also that Stealth Bombers have been positioned at Diego Garcia for months, which is from where an attack on Iran’s nuclear bunkers would be launched. These are the planes that can drop the bunker busters that could possibly get to the underground facilities housing Iran’s nuclear program. Trump has been talking about Iran and Israel maybe getting a truce deal done. Given Trumps habit of attacking the people with whom he is negotiating, an attack in Iran is probably imminent.
Regardless of whether Trump throws gasoline on this fire or not, the region is now in chaos and that seems to please Trump. Not only that, but his base of support in the United States is sharply divided. The old people who let Fox News do their thinking are waving the flag and screaming for blood. The younger side takes the phrase “America First” literally, so they oppose another pointless war of choice. Trump is now blasting people like Tucker Carlson over this situation.
That seems to be the goal of the Trump chaos. Another feature of the Trump era is that he never gains anything from the chaos. In this situation, he has the Israel Lobby on their heels, so he could get an Iran deal done that ends this issue for good. There is no reason to think he will take advantage of the opportunity. It is why the way to bet is on an attack this week. It is the one option guaranteed to create more chaos, which seems to be the narcotic of Trump’s choosing.
Perhaps this is just a symptom. Trump as the Mule from the Asimov novel could be what happens at the end of democratic empire. Athens also suffered from a mercurial figure at the end of their empire. Alcibiades, known for his personal ambition, ego and unpredictable behavior, was a key figure in the downfall of Athens. Perhaps that is what we are seeing with Trump. He is the American Alcibiades presiding over the final phase of the American empire.
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Trump is an untrustworthy, unhinged moron. We knew about both of these attacks. He campaigned on stopping these “wars of choice.” Yet here we are. We violated the START treaty by letting our Ukie “friends” blow up a big chunk of the Russians’ strategic bomber force. We allowed and assisted Israel with their unprovoked attack on Iran. It’s so sickening that our foreign policy is run in Tel Aviv. Our diplomatic credibility is shot to hell. So much for his “dealmaking” acumen. I love how our choice at the ballot box in November was a weird, narcissistic blowhard or an… Read more »
Same here. Somehow in the absolute bottom of my gut I knew that Trump would ultimately fail to deliver on much of his heady campaign talk.
People wonder how American voters could have been so foolish to elect W. Wilson and FDR because “they promised to keep us out of wars!”.
All of American politics is a Lucy yanking the ball away from Charlie Brown moments.
This time it will be different!
It’s like that insurance commercial with the guy with the fishing line and a dollar attached. As Zman says, the solutions are easy, but so many entrenched, wealthy interests won’t allow them.
Woodrow Wilson’s 1916 re-election campaign slogan was “He kept us out of war.”
FDR’s 1940 campaign slogan was “Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”
And don’t forget LBJ’s infamous “Daisy” political ad in 64 that painted Goldwater as the warmonger when in fact…. well, we all know what happened next.
Yes, thank you Boris the Spider — good add.
As the level of discourse sinks into the mud, propaganda goes down with it. At this point I am just waiting for the ‘Iranians spear infants on bayonets’ or ‘tip over incubators’ or the grandest of them all, something, something ‘rape’.
What you said. In spades.
Click to “un-mute”, so that you can hear the audio: https://tinyurl.com/2xmf6mzk
It’s anuddah shoah!!!
When Trump pushed for $300B increase in defense spending two weeks back (after all DOGE song and dance), did he know about the Russian and Iranian operations and potential expansion of the wars?
I understand that such questions are less intellectually challenging for Zman than Rand Paul bashing.
Trump negotiates with his voters while sneak attacking all the issues they care about.
We now know that DOGE was a publicity stunt, not a serious program. That is why Musk got his nose out of joint when he realized the actual score.
Not only that, but it is abundantly clear that Trump fully intends to force us into a cashless-economy-total-surveillance police state. But he intends to do it via Palantir and the private sector rather than precipitate a Constitutional crisis by trying to do it via a CBDC.
Ah, shades of the liberal trope, ‘weeeeel Faceberg is a PRIVATE company they can do what they want’ … no 1st Amendment issue there….
I’m feeling that too. USAID was loud but it was brief and has not been followed up. Where are the domestic fronts? The arrests?
I’m willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt that he was giving Jewish interests enough rope to hang themselves. (For now, that is.) I’m also keeping an open mind to what you are saying. If what you are saying is true, it’s a little disturbing that he is using the same tactics of the same people in the establishment he has been so critical of.
The rest of your post was spot on.
But the alternative was an alcoholic whore with a low IQ who speaks in gibberish…in which case we’d already be at war….An autopen war….
Agreed. There was no choice in this election. Kamala was likely less corpus mentis than Biden and would’ve signed anything put in front of her, ala Ron Burgundy.
Don’t forget THE most important issue: She would be dumping third worlders into this country at the same rate Zero did.
Chances are high he didn’t even know about them beforehand. I’m just as mad about the Iran situation as anyone else and his after the fact comments were indeed moronic, but I am not convinced he even knew about either attack.
He is one guy up against a million plus bureaucrats.
But why talk about assisting the Israelis and bragging about how the Iranians should’ve made a deal? It sounds like foreknowledge to me.
I agree that he should not have supported it after the fact. But I don’t think he knew. The whole gov is loaded with liars and traitors.
But what can we expect? As Z has noted many times, our politicians are just actors hired to play a part. What makes Trump seemingly unpredictable and creates so much chaos is he is an actor who likes to improvise rather than sticking to the script.
Trump desperately wants to be an alpha dog but learned from his first goround that he will end up in jail is he displeases his masters.
We are at the End of Empire stage. Any president in these circumstances would be flailing around. Trump just makes it more dramatic. Even if the American public supported all this foreign-policy chicanery, which it doesn’t, it’s not clear Trump could enforce his will in Ukraine or Iran. Meanwhile, we ‘ve taught our friends and “enemies” to 1) absolutely get nuclear weapons or suffer regime change 2) wait us out, because we cannot sustain a long-term policy requiring discipline and are self-destructing anyway and 3) never negotiate with us because we’re incapable of honoring any agreement or even the diplomatic… Read more »
Amen. Couldn’t agree with you more. Best is to not deal with the USA if you can avoid it — you’ll just be short-changed and suffer trauma.
Yes. Completely agree. The read out from Putin’s call to Trump after the Israeli attacks seemed to me that Putin is letting Trump know that no more deals are possible. Putin seems to have also referred to Trump and Bibi as engaging in war crimes. This in polite diplomatic terms as Putin is known for.
The Minsk accords put paid to any serious future negotiations with the West already. This was just the head shot to stop the twitching.
It is hard to work up even shame at this point to carry a U.S. passport.
I have no idea what is going to happen, but I noticed that the JIDF on X and the conservative media were triumphant the night Israel kicked it off but eerily quiet the next day after Iran responded. The NY Post pushed it off the main page and focused on the assassination of that Minnesota lawmaker. That tells me it didn’t go the way they wanted. I hate to be a doomer, but Trump’s response to the attacks not only highlighted all his worst elements, but probably killed his 2nd term. As Z wisely points out, everyone can see the… Read more »
In Trump 2.0, we thought we were getting “eye-of-the-tiger” Rocky but we ended up getting end-of-career Ali. Holmes (MIC/Blob) is jabbing him relentlessly into retirement while Angelo Dundee gets ready to throw in the towel and Bundini Brown weeps silently in the corner.
I bet a T-Shirt that has Trump’s face along with “Bibi’s Bitch” would be a huge seller.
What about a scene with bibi sitting in the oval office playing the part of Bill Clinton, and trump playing the part of Monica Lewinksy?
There has been a meme floating around with Trump bent over and Bibi standing right behind him, both with their shirts off.
A few months ago I posted a meme that is basically that, a a MAGA grandpa got very cross with me about it
You’re wearing that in public, have some decency!
Now, dual pix of the meetings where Trump is holding Bibi’s chair for him like a servant…
He didn’t do that for any other world leader, did he?
On the back, have all the pix of Presidents kissing the Wall.
(My Hard Boomer friend insists, insists, that doesn’t mean poor, benighted Israel has any power. Keep those Blessings comin’!)
Yes. At the Resolute Desk. Perfect.
Well we do have the following A.I. BTW, it’s been about 2025 – 1998 = 27 years since Miss Jewinsky went all cigar humidor. At this point, anyone with a strong adult memory of Miss Jewinsky would just about have to be a grandparent. And peeps with a living memory of Marilyn Monroe, or Mary Pinchot Meyer, would be furiously battling Alzheimer’s in a nursing home. BTW, if you go to the Wikipedia page for Monica Jewinsky, and find the “Scandal” section… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica_Lewinsky#Scandal …and if you then scroll your mouse pointer over the words “oral sex“, you’ll get a rather… Read more »
I still think that Trump sincerely wanted to make a deal, and was very skeptical of Netanyahu (recall he got rid of Waltz after Waltz was caught huddling with Netanyahu on war plans) but as I said, he isn’t running his own operation. What is pathetic is his after-the-fact attempt to make it sound like he is in charge and was running some big kayfabe operation with Israel – something they immediately started backing away from when it became clear that the attack wasn’t the total unbridled success that the media was pretending it was. I know this is a… Read more »
The United States president largely is powerless outside of a very narrowly prescribed range. All Western leaders are at best puppets at this point. There is no question Trump is not in charge in the foreign policy sphere. Americans increasingly treat their system as the late-stage East Bloc folks did–with jaundiced and bemused contempt, and that is far too generous. I hope they are not as restrained with their oppressors when it all collapses.
if Trump got out there and said “we had nothing to do with it, we don’t support it, this causes a lot of problems for us and we are cutting assistance to Israel until they cease these attacks, they’re on their own”
You’re right, of course, but that would only move the Israelis to use the Samson Option. And they *will* do it if their backs are against the wall–and that day appears to be fast approaching.
Somebody DO something!
Trump has now said “We might get involved.” ( As if we are not involved already.) So it does not sound like he is anywhere close to cutting his loses with Israel.
I’m not defending Trump, he has turned out to yet again be a disappointment, but to play devil’s advocate, what is the play here in terms of our best little friends? He comes out and says we’re done with your BS, you don’t think he’s going to get JFK’d by lunchtime? Is that psychopath Netanyahu not just going to do whatever the hell he can to start WWIII anyway?
Well, this is the core problem isn’t it. We don’t have leaders running this country. It’s possible, likely even, that JFK didn’t know what he was up against and what they were willing to do. Is Trump so blind? I doubt it. He just chose to play ball. He doesn’t have the spine to stand up to these people, and he just got pantsed in front of the entire world. Obviously the situations were different, but Putin stopped the same group of people from treating his people like disposable objects when he got into office. The option to lead always… Read more »
Trump has to know they’ll take him out, I mean they’ve already tried at least twice. Rumor of our best little friends being involved with JFK might also be known by Trump, thus giving him pause to cross them. I wish he would rise to the challenge, he does seem to sense he could be a transformational president, but as you say he just doesn’t have the stones to rise to the occasion. It’s disappointing but was completely predictable. At best maybe he’ll be the one to begin the collapse that’s needed.
There is a certain appropriate symmetry to all this: Tel Aviv is starting to resemble Gaza.
I was promised Trump Resorts, but every single beach town is going to shit!
As a child in school I was taught that the Pearl Harbor attack was especially dastardly and pernicious because the Japanese ambassador was actively involved in diplomatic negotiations when the attack was underway.
Supposedly due to a timing issue from Tokyo that they didn’t give a formal note. Oopsie.
Now the US is patting itself on the back for being so very clever.
(How did that work out for the Japanese, anyway? I forget)
Pearl Harbor is the exact example that came to my mind as it was happening. We literally participated in a scene for scene reenactment.
Trump’s “peacemaker” President act is over. Nobody will ever take him seriously again after he bragged about Iranian negotiators being killed. Try explaining that one to Lavrov.
“Vlad, I promise this time I am serious and not pretending to make a deal while the CIA helps Ukraine commit a terrorist attack”
Yea it’s over.
It’s doable, but not possible. For instance if he went to Iran and noted that we had nothing to do with the attacks and unilaterally lifted all sanctions with nothing in return from the Persians except for their understanding it would go a long way towards patching things up, but, yeah, not happening.
Again I repeat that “our” country has spent 40 years with wide-open borders and then does this. When do the sleeper cells get busy? As soon as Trump resumes the now-fictitious “mass deportations” except–of course–for [long list]?
“Supposedly due to a timing issue from Tokyo that they didn’t give a formal note. Oopsie.”
What happened was that the Japanese diplomats were waiting at the State Dept., note in hand, while Secretary Cordell Hull was at home having Sunday dinner and didn’t get in to his office until the attack was already in progress.
The US and Japan were already fighting each other in China. With Vinegar Joe Stillwell and the Flying Tigers. What the US Navy failed to comprehend was the ability of the Japanese Navy to stage an attack that far east in the Pacific and at that scale. They viewed the spread out attacks in China as the model, and predicted what Japan was most likely to do, not the maximum it could do. This was a mistake made also during Tsavo Straights. When the Japanese Navy sailed at night to attack the US fleet of Guadalcanal, sinking much of the… Read more »
We are also doing so in the Atlantic as well. It was an American ship, a Coast Guard cutter, that tipped off the British the location of the battleship Bismarck. With Lend Lease, we were already combatants. The funny thing about the American Volunteer Group is the stupid arrogance of the U.S. commanders, who didn’t even read the excellent intelligence reports from Claire Lee Chenault, the AVG commander, about the Japanese fighter aircraft. He told them about their incredible maneuverability and range obtained at the expense of survivability, but they were likely round-filed and our pilots had to learn things… Read more »
It would honestly be pretty funny if they got the Iranian regime change they’ve been asking for: “The old regime was too weak and allowed us to be ambushed by the Satanic forces of Israel! This new regime will not be so easily fooled!”
Exactly. As our host keeps saying, “no second-order thinking” is happening. Things can always get worse.
The present Ayatollahs had a lot more muscle under those Islamic robes than Israel bargained for.
I, for one, would love it. Turn about is fair play.
No, there would be a radically different Iranian regime. The Mullahs regime is based morally on overthrowing the Sunni monarchies and “protecting” the Shia in the Arabian peninsula, destroying the Little Satan, and destroying the Great Satan. The Iranian National Anthem literally has “Death to America” as part of the lyrics. This is the moral foundation of the Regime back to the Revolution and for the most part Iran’s populace rejects it. The regime exists only by force. The mechanics of the Regime is a familial, clan based system encompassing the Mullahs at the top, next IRGC commanders, who are… Read more »
That’s what my TV told me, too, but I no longer believe what my TV tells me.
They’ve been telling me for more than 45 years that the population rejects the rulers. I’m sure there are some who do, but i no longer am certain those internationalist Iranians represent the people.
They told us the people of Afghanistan loved their new Western government, educating women and George Floyd murals. But they couldn’t put the Taliban back in power fast enough.
Either that or a Libyan-type situation where the whole Persian state becomes a series of warlord-led fiefdoms lobbing ballistic missiles at everyone while the country’s oil infrastructure burns and the Straits of Hormuz are closed to shipping traffic.
Lots of black pilling going on lately. Admittedly, Trump does bounce around from issue to issue more than is probably necessary along with often off the cuff remarks that can be irritating. But I think much, if not most of the chaos generated is from the blob and its fellow TDS sufferers. They simply are unable to help themselves no matter what Trump does or says. That said, if the jews can’t somehow be reined in, they could be the death of us all.
Admittedly the following is a long shot but why not? Imagine the war escalates. US apologizes that due to unforeseen circumstances it cannot provide further support to Israel.
“But I think much, if not most of the chaos generated is from the blob and its fellow TDS sufferers.”
Probably true, but Trump should summon some MArines ad instruct them to arrest the malefactors’ and stop pussy-footing around. The stakes could hardly be higher.
i think trump backtracking on deporting illegals in selected industries was his “read my lips, no new taxes” moment. the GOP is going to get wiped out in the midterms, and i wouldn’t be surprised if Trump resigns soon thereafter. either he is massively compromised, or suffering from cognitive decline, and it is causing this destructive behavior.
The GOP would love that. They would rather lose than do the things their base wants. If losing means they can get rid of Trump, it’s a deal they will take 100 times out of 100. They love illegal immigrant labor and hate their voters even more than the Dems do.
I suggested to my wife this morning that Trump might simply resign and turn things over to Vance. You will recall that Vance was one of the lone voices warning against an attack on Iran. I don’t see how Trump wiggles out of this. Tragically, he will be attacked from all sides in a manner reminiscent of the first George Bush admin.
I don’t see anything remotely tragic about that. He has lied to everybody about everything, betrayed his voters, and brought it 100% on himself.
“Tragically, he will be attacked from all sides in a manner reminiscent of the first George Bush admin”
Nothing tragic about that. I couldn’t think of a more fitting end for the blowhard showman after he betrayed his supporters like this.
His Big, Beautiful Door was his “Kiss my ass, I’m going to drown you in diversity”-moment.
Ann Coulter’s theory about Trump’s first term was that the idiocy was the fault of Jared and Ivanka but he has new advisors so…
Doesn’t he get tired of stepping on rakes?
Jared and Ivanka were especially good at exploiting Trump’s weaknesses to get what they want, but that doesn’t mean that other people haven’t learned how to do so over the years.
e.g., Bibi?
Just because Jarvanka publicly is out of sight this term, we cannot assume their influence has fallen. Perhaps it has increased, we dunno.
I mean, she’s still his princess, right? The one he thought was hot when younger? etc.
How can we be so sure he is still not taking their advice? It sure looks like it.
As Larry Schweikert pointed out, he could just be prioritizing deportation for other categories. Or it could be that his own hotels are suffering.
.
Oh, Don….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Committee
“Launched in September 1940…”
Charles Lindbergh was MAGA before Trump was a gleam in his Daddy’s eye.
Don’t know much about history
Don’t know much biology
Don’t know much about a science book
Don’t know much about the French I took
Our political system may well disintegrate if Trump allows a full US shock and awe attack on Iran. The energy of the American electorate over the past decade has been upon itself and the destruction of the middle class way of life in the US, now nearly complete. Millions of people in their 20s and 30s can now see that their lives will spent in a decaying, dying state, with few hopes for a decent, quiet life that they know only through old news broadcasts and family photographs. Full-scale war with Iran will be the final psychological domino as they… Read more »
All of those “I Voted!” stickers got us…this. This is ultra cope from people desperately trying to recapture their sense of agency in order to manage their profound internal anxieties. Voting makes no difference so youre dumb if you vote AND also none of this would have happened if people didnt vote, although it makes no difference if you do vote, which you shouldn’t because it ruined everything. If it didnt make any difference then it didnt make any difference and all the smart boys imagining they like, see through it all, man… are, and always WERE in exactly the… Read more »
You seem to think I voted and like the “I Voted!” stickers, when a decent education would’ve alerted you to the fact that I was being ironic (the actual type, not the kind you’re almost certainly thinking of).
I didn’t bother reading most of your rant. Your grammar and punctuation are atrocious. Life is too short to waste.
Bush II split the Republican Party over the Iraq War. After he bumbled into a rack, I noticed Democrat Party campaign signs in wealthy suburbs around here that were solidly Republican until then. I don’t know if it was because they were overtly against war or because they had gotten fed up with Republicans by that point. They have become more and more Democrat over the years. Trump is going to split MAGA in the same way if he doesn’t watch this warmonger stuff. But I’m also a realist. If warmongering and looting other countries is a protection racket that… Read more »
China, in one generation, went from a bicycle economy to orbiting the Moon.
America, in one generation, is going to an e-bike economy.
Why would you think this? Iran is the closest thing to an eternal enemy of the US and has been since 1979. As long as there is not too much inconvenience and there is no draft and mass casualties, no one will care that much. The ugly truth about material consumerism is that is an acid eating away at society, to the point where no one cares about much of anything. In that matter Nietzsche was correct about the Last Man. No one really cared that much about the Gulf War, or Iraq War, or Afghan War (which went on… Read more »
Buddy, the US has had about five “mortal enemies” in my lifetime, and I’m not that old. Every five years there’s been a new Hitler.
I remember the Iranian Revolution and how American adults were behaving at the time. You must have been one of them. Absolutely bonkers. It’s on the other side of the world. Perhaps if we hadn’t overthrown their government in 1953 and installed our puppet the Shah, none of this would’ve ever occurred — in fact, it wouldn’t have.
Allen Dulles and the Rockefellers are smiling, from Hell.
“the final phase of the American empire.” And the end of that monstrosity can’t come too soon.
The country has gone bi-polar. I’ve noted for awhile that each successive administration has been gyrating in increasing arcs between policy extremes, resulting in wild swings in governance. It’s the oscillating bridge phenomenon, and inevitably leads to collapse. In a sort of cosmic irony Trump represents two links in this causality, his current self is a more radical version of his prior self. We should hope for a collapse sooner rather than later, as the next administration will probably go full Mao. Don’t want to be around for that.
Feminization.
OMG. The Cat Lady Nation.
By our next period we’ll be doing crystals and aromatherapy.
Mandatory yoga. Shirkers don’t eat.
U.S. foreign policy is like two drunks fighting over the wheel as the car swerves down the road from Right to Left, running over countries on the side of the road as they go.
That is brilliant. Don’t mind me as I borrow it.
The Nimitz, scheduled for retirement, is sailing for the Persian Gulf right now. Will the Israelis sink it or the Iranians. Ready for our “remember the Maine” moment.
A couple of Substackers have already called false flag on the Nimitz. It’s hard to disagree. I hope that if a carrier goes down, it causes such a sense of revulsion in the country that we force the Zionists out and start the trials and executions. And we don’t forget the generals and the heads of the MIC.
More like USS Liberty, redux.
My guess is that Iran got spooked when they saw the awesome power of the US Military on display during the parade last weekend. Most likely they are quietly in communication with Trump trying to deescalate. Expect a peace deal and the dismantling of their nuclear program within the week.
Is this a joke? Your theory is wildly optimistic. I hope you’re right, nevertheless.
(I gave you an upvote, for good humor.)
Sarcasm get lost in the mix…?
“squeak squeak” someone forgot to lube the treads when they took the tank out of storage?
Tanks are noisy.
Interesting to see the Rangers sauntering along like school boys instead of soldiers (in military terms, they were doing a route step, not the usual choice for parades). Lots of people had fun posting videos of Chinese, Russian, and Indian military parades to contrast them with the Sad Sack Washington parade.
Who do I cheer for? Both sides hate me and the country I used to celebrate on 7/4.
You know it’s a bad sign when you see your government do something and say, “North Korea does it better.” But hey we got to see all the wonderful diversity of our modern military on display, I am sure that Beijing and Moscow called emergency meetings immediately after.
When they hear the Girl Scouts are coming along behind, they’ll run for the hills.
“We now see this in his foreign policy which looks more like a game of flipping over tables and smashing things than a coherent strategy to advance national interests.” I don’t know which cabal or loose coalition of interests is running affairs but it’s probably not Trump. I don’t see a coherent foreign policy nor do I see a coherent economic policy. If you”re talking about Trump the man, he wouldn’t recognize strategy if it kicked him in the teeth. For him it’s all about noise, motion, sensation. “There is no reason for Iran to do a deal with Washington… Read more »
True but consider this: Trump was the best candidate of the bunch. That’s how far we have fallen.
I don’t deny it. I voted for him, after all. Not much choice was there?
People want to believe that the cost of America entering the war with Iran is too high and Trump will chicken out. The war is even more obviously insane than before, so no chance. The opposite is true. There are no psychological off ramps here because no one has the needed virtue. Zion Don can be callous and conniving against the Persians, but he will not abandon the Israelis after they painted a target on their backs a la “October 7th”. The favored bet is that Trump’s reluctance to enter the war is a show like the nuclear negotiations were… Read more »
Trump blew a massive opportunity by finking on his base and calling for an end to deportations from farms and hospitals. It’s insane because Trump had all the momentum after the LA riots, people were behind him, yet he backed down. It doesn’t make any sense until you realize that a bunch of big shots from Tyson and Hilton likely called him up, flattered him a little, and he can’t help himself. But now, that momentum is gone and he lost a huge chunk of his base. But, he is who he is. We knew all this going in. As… Read more »
TACO.
TACO??
Umm…conquered by leaf-blowers?
The Two-stroke Armada?
Trump Always Chickens Out.
He didn’t back down, he was never going to do it to begin with.
Hard disagree, Trump’s political instincts are right and he knows what needs to get done. He just wants to be liked, is very weak to getting buttered up and flattered, and doesn’t like hearing bad news. He thinks that getting rid of illegals is a good thing (he’s right), then the Tyson CEO calls him up and says it’s a bad thing (he’s right, it is bad… for Tyson and only Tyson), then Trump changes tack. it’s just the way he is. For a little while it seemed like he didn’t give a fig about any of that anymore, but… Read more »
Trump is just like a woman, both are not responsible or accountable for their own behavior and everyone’s always making excuses for them …remarkable.
Yep. His heart was never in the expulsion thing. Remember his swooning about “The Dreamers?”
Good point!
Excellent post! But I don’t see how the financial powers in the City of London and its hangers-on in NYC and Paris can afford to lose their Israeli attack dog. The State of Israel was established precisely to be their “colonial” outpost in the ME as a platform to project the power of whatever nation-state they wanted to use at a given time to do their bidding. So unless they are prepared to throw in the towel they *must* keep the state of Israel intact, so they are going to have to figure a way to stop what is happening… Read more »
Wow. And what a masterful reading it is. Excellent.
Apparently the Iranians tagged, for lack of a better term, the Dimona NPP. I presume to let the Israelis know they can hit it with something more substantial if they choose to.
The rumor that really needs confirmation is the strike that supposedly hit the oil refinery in Haifa.
That facility supposedly provides 60% of Israel’s fuel needs. Maybe excess shrieking about dragging the US in will be a clue.
Yep. Shortly after that refinery was hit over 20 aerial tankers took off from bases all around the US at about the same time and headed east across the Atlantic. I doubt that was a coincidence.
Holy effing Moly. Jeebus is a’comin’ for sure.
Yes. We are involved in the war already we are just trying to keep our involvement covert for the time being. The longer the war goes on the harder it will be to hide our involvement.
Prediction, and I will take bets: If this ends up a clusterfuck and the Iranian regime survives, which seems more than possible, Israel will segue and step up and finalize the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Now, I don’t care about any of the Bronze Age savages in the region, starting with the barbarians we call Our Greatest Ally, but the emotionally drenched American women and men who laughably still identify as men generally do. So, in effect, the end result will be every segment of the generally retarded United States population will end up furious over another grand adventure in… Read more »
…on the other news, “The American sports betting industry posted a record $13.71 billion in 2024 revenue, up from 2023’s record of $11.04 billion.”
Why do I have the feeling that majority of that activity (not sport! – betting on it!) is performed by that fat soymeatsicle called ‘American white male’?
Maybe that variety of bipedals ought to be replaced?
Watching “sports” on TV is boring, time-consuming, and unhealthy. Betting money on sports makes it even worse. Instead, one should spend one’s hard-earned money on something interesting and worthwhile.
Eh. Sports dads are more involved with their kids, sports guys are socializing with their friends, sports is a universal language for jocular jousting amongst strangers, and a fun occasion for crowds.
I still feel a bit stupid because I never learned how to read a game, a team, or a stat- I just worked, even as a kid. Understanding strategy, politics, numbers- it all starts with the adult version of playing with our army men.
When I grew up sports was a sorting mechanism to teach teamwork, but also to identify war-worthy young men. There was still a lot of masculine energy in the nation then.
Despite overt sportsmanship, be certain that the local dads viewed local competition as such, and took great pride in the athletic accomplishments of their boys.
That’s what they’d talk about around town, at the golf course, and at the barbershop on Saturday morning.
You know why God gave Sportsball men two arms? So they could hold their Modelo (‘ain’t drinkin’ none of that Byud Lite, no sir-ee’) while they jerk off at the sight of their sports heroes.
Israel in an island with limited infrastructure. Iran has precision ballistic missiles that cannot be stopped. In a sane world, Iran would destroy Israel’s refineries and electrical generation stations (they have very few of these) thereby cutting off their energy supply. Hit key equipment and the lead time for repair or replacement is measured in years. This would result in a mass exodus and stop all offensive actions by the IDF. And there would be nothing Trump could do to reverse that.
On the surface, this is a proposal we should cheer. Trouble is, most of those 8 million Jews end up here. Do you want Jews going from one and a half percent of the population to 4%?
Probably Iran is playing kid gloves with Israel just like Russia does with Ukraine. I think everyone suspects if Israel is subjected to total war by a peer or better the lobby will bring out the real epstein/diddy/franklin files and call in all the favors billions in donations buy in a corrupt town PLUS total media control… and get big brother to launch a general war and then it’s probably doomsday or at least WW3. I’d personally love to see a hypersonic hit the knesset and Ben Mielekowski’s house the first five minutes of a war, but the Js know… Read more »
We thought we were going to get the Palestinians, instead we get the Israelis
They think they can regime change Iran without putting boots on the ground. You’d think they’d have learned something from their efforts to regime change Russia without putting boots on the ground (at least not American ones), but evidently what they learned was that if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again. Maybe they have an Azerbaijani proxy army lined up, for all I know. They just had a practice run in Armenia.
No doubt we’ll dangle the bait in front of the Kurds again, as well. Kurdistan is currently situated in the northern regions of Syria and Iraq, but Kurds are originally from northern Iran. Turkiye would love to get rid of them, and Armenia/Georgia might welcome the help. “Next year in Tabriz”, perhaps?
Another- the Baluchi in the southeast are acting up again, they even have their own flag. Azerbaijani hold the north, Arabs have the southwest, Persians hold the center. Is Iran about to get partitioned up, the next Yugoslavia or Pakistan?
‘Trump posted about how negotiations were just a ruse to get the Iranians into a false sense of security, but he changed gears once it was clear the scheme failed’ Mixing up tactics and the urge to brag on social media is unnecessary and unwise. It also is unwise to leave the domestic agenda — assuming there is one — for distractions on the other side of the planet. Foreign nations are not going to respect America until it crushes the globohomo and feminist forces, and allied internal enemies of Legacy Americans. And stops sucking from the China Teat and… Read more »
…soft, feminine, and deluded….and armed to the teeth, and psychotic, and…
More to be said about being on social media at all. Candidate Trump? Yeah, maybe. President Trump shouldn’t be trying to score troll points on the Internet.
— My guess is that Netanyahu told Trump a eighteen months ago, “We’ll let you get elected if you give us everything that we want, otherwise, you’ll die in jail”. — I have never felt as negatively towards Trump as I do right now — My sense from what I’ve read is that MI6 had more to do with the Russian bomber drone strikes than Americans did — Israel seems to be taking serious and significant damage, but my guess is that Iran is taking it worse (I’m not aware of any Israeli leaders dead so far, for example). Shia… Read more »
Mr. Market is up today so they are betting on a positive outcome in the Middle East. I don’t know.
This will either be a great triumph or an utter disaster for the US. Such a foolish risk for Trump.
The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange is also at all time highs. Rigged, rigged, rigged, rigged, rigged. Did I mention rigged?
Stake a position in some oil commodity options, if you have any loose change.
There is a trillion dollar bill at Trump’s feet right now. He does a deal with Iran in exchange for a truce and a new security architecture in the region. that would be a huge win for him.
So much winning. It’ll be yuge.
Will Iran do a deal with Trump after the sneak attack in the middle of negotiations? Would any other country?
Russia already did not, several times.
If it’s unilateral, and Trump says “we’re sick of Bibi’s antics and I need to look out for my own nation’s interests so sanctions are scrapped and relations are normalized”
It’s also not going to happen.
Bingo! The situation now prevailing can NOT be allowed to run to its logical conclusion–the loss of the Israeli attack dog. Nor do Russia and China any longer have the luxury of staying out of it. And Trump and his handlers can NOT allow a toe-to-toe confrontation with them. They have GOT to stop things SOON.
“They also got their air defense system back online and now Israel jets have to operate well outside of their range, which limits what Israel can attack inside Iran.” Outside of an obviously AI generated image, crashed F-35 with its afterburners hilariously still glowing, I haven’t seen any reliable evidence of this. The Iranians, of course, claim to have shot down 7 F-35s, but that seems more like, ghost of Kiev, wishful thinking. Does Israel have air superiority over Iran? I suspect so, but I’ll withhold judgment given that both sides of the media are completely unreliable.
I heard one of the F35s was taken down by a grandmother who threw a jar of olives at it.
“Does Israel have air superiority over Iran? I suspect so, but I’ll withhold judgment … .”
Russia and China cannot afford to let the Israelis or anybody else have their way with Iran. Their own prestige and power are at stake. And they know full well that if Israel/USA prevail, they will be next.
My prediction is that both Iran and Israel will hit each other really, really hard. But that Iran is more fragile and will face serious revolts on its ability to keep its IRGC payroll intact and enforcers out on the street. Iran will try and blockade the Straits of Hormuz like 1988, and like 1988 will see its navy and much of its oil / military platforms (same thing) destroyed, only at greater cost to the US Navy. Israel probably has greater cohesion, they’ve been attacked by Iran via Hamas on Oct 7 (Iran trained Hamas for this in Iran,… Read more »
Trump enabled this situation from the get-go by loading his administration with Zionists. MAGA and MIGA are incompatible. Alcibiades was a genius, Trump not so much.
Imagine a younger Romney who rouses the nation to a new war, against India, through power of charisma and speech alone. Then he leave on ship to head the armies conquering India. But then come rumors that Mitt ran a Black Mass Satanist dinner in New York. Also, people awaken one day and find that someone defaced the Holocaust Museum and the Lincoln Memorial… rumors spread that it is Mitt Romney in preparation to overthrow the government. So he is recalled from his command to stand trial. Instead of returning, Mitt runs to Russia where he becomes a major advisor… Read more »
I would watch that movie.
I expected cucking and daily mentions of the black unemployment tier shit from Trump, I did not think he would turn into a warmonger.
I voted for deportations, including farm “workers,” not another ME war. Netanyahu’s lunatic attack on Iran is not justifiable and if international law actually means anything, a war crime.
I agree with Col. MacGregor…Iran has already won, and of course Bibi has come running for help from Trump…https://x.com/DougAMacgregor/status/1934083238630154312 Even heavy bunker busters will not reach Iranian nuclear facilities many hundreds of feet underneath mountains, so it’s checkmate for Israel unless it wants to go nuclear….in which case Russia or China will wipe it off the map… Iran is more than ten times the size of Israel, even more so in terms of military personnel, and it has hypersonic missiles which have made a laughingstock of Israel’s Dome….It’s not a fair fight, and never was.. Only if Trump goes mad… Read more »
*stops reading*
“Trump posted about how negotiations were just a ruse”
oh, JFC
we are building trust again
I haven’t seen this tweet (or “truth”). Not signed up for either site. And searching for an archive of trump tweets is harder than it should be.
The rumor on Iranian air defense is that AINO staged a cyber attack that was supposed to cripple Iranian AD for a week. Supposedly the Iranian techs had the AD back online in only 10 hours. Not surprising when one realizes these are a people who still have airworthy F-14s with zero manufacturer support. Judging by the sudden lack of strike footage from Tehran, it appears Our Greatest Ally may already be low on munitions. That is another reason to bet on the US jumping in, as is the imminent arrival of a second Nimitz carrier group from the western… Read more »
The biggest tell for me were the breathless (and false) reports that the Iranian leaders had fled and then…silence. Now there is very little up-to-date information other than carrier groups lumbering from the Western Pacific to the Persian Gulf after a flood of generally positive information from the Israeli standpoint. If it weren’t for X we would know nothing about the direct hits on Tel Aviv over the last few days.
This easily could become American’s Suez Crisis.
“Not surprising when one realizes these are a people who still have airworthy F-14s with zero manufacturer support.”
Iran graduates more people with engineering degrees each year than the US does
“Judging by the sudden lack of strike footage from Tehran”
??? I’m seeing a lot of bomb-explosion-y videos on Twitter than claim to have just happened from Tehran
Where are you seeing those? I’d like to know–or get some lame idea at least–what is happening inside Iran, but my understanding is that the gov’t has asked Iranians not to post such stuff.
On Twitter – @sentdefender and @angeloinchina , some from @thetimapping and @megatron_ron
Lot of it seems to be footage from Israeli observation drones
I’ve always thought that Trump isn’t in fact the commander in chief and doesn’t make any military (or proxy military) decisions. “America” does what it wants, and he flails to match whatever he thinks it’s doing, to appear to be in charge. He’s completely out of the loop. He finds out what’s happened on the news, which is full of bullshit and bluster, and changes his “orders” to fit that. When nothing is in the news, he says the kinds of things we prefer, which are his actual positions. But then “we” do some evil shit, and he rushes after… Read more »
I have a very hard time believing either Trump or Biden has ever been in control of the nukes. Begging the question of who was the last president who did. JFK? Maybe not even him.
This post reminded me of being in the USSR in 1967.
For the first 4 days of the 6 Days War the Soviet press, radio and TV claimed that the armies of several Arab countries are on the way to great victory over Israel.
WSJ today: “Iran sends urgent messages seeking an end to hostilities and resumption of talks”.
In this messages words like “Zionist entity” are not used anymore. “Israel” is used instead.
Natanyahu today: Not interested in ceasefire with Iran.
He is the American Alcibiades presiding over the final phase of the American empire.
How the tone changes here at the blog over a few months. MAGA?
circumstances changed
Weird thing to post, given that my tone on Trump has not changed in a decade.
I have believed ever since 2016 that it is not possible to “make American great again,” and if it were, Trump would hardly be the person to do it.
That being said I did vote for him three times. No matter how bad Trump is, he has the right enemies and remains preferable to Hillary or Kamala.
A bull in a china shop can be a good thing if the china shop is corrupt and rotten to the core.
Same here. Voted for him thrice. No-one else around.
Moi, aussi:
Perot, Perot, Nader, Nader, McCain (OUCH! – but I had a BAD feeling about Obama..), Gary Johnson, Trump, Trump, Trump….
Trump’s career in high politics thus far has (1) moved the Overton Window, (2) exposed the blob, (3) discredited the legacy media, and (4) driven millions of NPCs batshit insane. By my count that gives Trump more accomplishments than any other GOP president in my lifetime.
We shouldn’t hang our heads because we voted repeatedly for this guy. I mean look at what has been on offer over the decades since Reagan… Bush I, Dole, Bush II, McCain, Romney, Yeb, Nikki Haley, Chris Chistie. From “our team”. And then contemplate, in a kind of awe, the loserporn the Dems have been subjecting us to in the same period: Dukakis, Clinton, Gore were bad enough, but then – Kerry, Soetero, the drunken murderess whose name I forget, Brandon, and finally, the piece de resistance of repulsiveness, Veep Throat. OK, so maybe we should have all gotten on… Read more »
I am more cautiously optimistic. The US can supply Ukraine or Israel, but not both. Already Zelensky is panicking, saying that Russia is the real threat to Israel or somesuch. The best path for peace is Russia solving Ukraine militarily — advancing to Lvov, deposing Zelensky, deporting the remnant Ukrainians to Poland (to destabilize that nation), and sponsoring/encouraging a series of Islamist coups NOW in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden etc. Thus the no-trust “deal” would be the US and Russia divying up Europe just like before. Diverting US support from Ukraine to Israel is thus the better… Read more »
Iran will not attack any Arab state in the Gulf region, nor will it attack their energy infrastructure, and it will not close the Hormuz Strait to oil and gas shipments. The Gulf states are by and large friendly with Iran, and some are co-members of BRICS. Attacking their interests does not advance Iran’s interests, and would actually impair Iran’s interests.. However, Iran might block US/NATO naval vessels from transiting the Strait, and it might target US bases in the Gulf region. Likewise, the Houthis, Iranian allies, will not close the Red Sea to Gulf state oil and gas shipments,… Read more »
What matters is what Russia thinks: Iran is not only their “fence”, their in-depth land defense of Russia’s southern border, but more importantly it is Russia’s main corridor from the Caspian Sea to the Arabian Sea/Indian Ocean and access to the markets of the Global South. Due to sanctions, Indians broker that Russian oil – and China needs it as well. Netty, I believe, is trying to regime change Iran so he can get a footprint on the Hormuz Strait, as well as a lock on the Red Sea and Gaza-Cyprus offshore gas. Israel’s economic power would stand in for… Read more »
I was fooled by Witkoff. He’s like the rest after all.
“There is no reason to think he will take advantage of the opportunity. It is why the way to bet is on an attack this week.” Although the Democratic PArty is clearly going the way of the old Whig Party, if Trump is stupid enough or Zionist enough to attack Iran openly, the Dems will take control of the whole Congress next year, impeach Trump again, remove him from office, and throw him into prison–maybe even with members of his family. Clearly he has betrayed his voters–first in the Ukraine and now in the Middle East–so he need not look… Read more »
An attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is a repeat of what Zelenskyy tried in Zaporozhiye: Bibi is trying to cause a Chernobyl, all while claiming Iran will nuke Gaza (west Jerusalem) to save Gaza. We may have a case of two religious zealots in competiton: Smotrich, when he’s not selling sex toys, trying to bring the Mosiach (not Jesus!), and Khameini, when he’s not schtupping little boys, trying to bring the Mahdi (also not Jesus.) Somebody noted the primary colors oft used in Muslim nations’ flags are Red, White, Black, and Green- the colors of the Four Horsemen, the first… Read more »
Off topic but been on my mind–Is religion actually just a form of OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder)? If a Jew eats a bacon cheeseburger for lunch, will the sun really fall out of the sky? If a Muslim fails to kneel towards Mecca 5 times a day will his family be stoned and denied their 72 virgins? If a person willingly injects themselves and their family members with poison several times a year will it keep the demons at bay? To me, religious fervor is like having to flip the porch light on and off exactly 4 times before leaving… Read more »
So how are you finding high school?
touché…
(College frosh, maybe?)
This isn’t reddit, are you lost?
Or, if a 70-year-old leftist doesn’t make sure to put his “Harris/Walz” sticker on the back of his Tesla, does he really get his car torched?
The response from Iran has been pathetically muted so far. There is a real possibility that a decapitating strike did – or will – work. Which would be great if it does. Iran’s regime is no friend of America, or American people. Or even of the Persian people. That regime did waste a lot of the country’s resources stirring up shit around the middle east. They are a regional caricature of the GAE. So good riddance if they are gone. The real threat here is hubris leading the GAE to believe it can occupy and nation build Iran. Hopefully Trump… Read more »