Heck, on Monday alone, we had the Toddler President declare Iran was negotiating peace, then Iran replied no, they weren’t. However I rarely write my posts the day they go live, so here we go. Fortunately these are less current updates than links to deeper insights.
Commenting on the Toddler’s lies about negotiating, Cheryl Rofer says “The best explanation for the words that drop from Trump’s mouth is that he tries things out to see what the marks will pick up. It’s not lying or fantasizing, but there’s not a simple word for it. I know that “bullshit” has been suggested in a specialized meaning, but the normal use interferes. It’s complicated by his need to always win, always humiliate his opponents. There is probably an element of fantasizing, but how he is perceived by others is also an important factor.”
People are betting on the progress of the war. They’ve threatened one journalist for refusing to change a story about a missile hitting Israel.
The Necrotic Toddler running this country has been talking about dead people walking around without legs. We have minesweepers we could use in the Straits; he and SecWar Hegseth didn’t think to put them in position before the war started.
“He told Welker how little he really cares about gas prices. Since this war started, gas has gone from $2.94 a gallon to $3.66. That’s a 72-cent jump in two weeks. People are already feeling it at the pump and growing increasingly concerned about how high it will go and how they will be able to cover the increasing costs. And when Welker asked Trump directly whether rising gas prices could hurt Republicans in the midterms, he said, “I’m not concerned at all.” He added, “There’s so much oil, gas, there’s so much out there, but you know, it’s being clogged up a little bit. It’ll be unclogged very soon.”
Related to the above: “Iranian attacks have knocked out 17% of Qatar’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity, causing an estimated $20 billion in lost annual revenue and threatening supplies to Europe and Asia, QatarEnergy’s CEO and state minister for energy affairs told Reuters on Thursday.” But never mind, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is celebrating the Toddler’s ongoing effort to eliminate alternative energy in this country — “the era of affordable, reliable and secure energy is here to stay.” This is not only a lie, it’s a stupid lie. All their lies are because they have no way to grapple with reality.
“What we are seeing in just the first few days of the US bombing of Iran is no normal fog of war. It is unprecedented I would argue. We have seen arguably the worst friendly fire incident in modern US history, the worst articulations of war aims, the worst economic/industrial preparations for a war, and, tragically, what might very well be amongst the worst war crimes in US history. To have just one of these things in at the start of the war would be a failure, to have all of them….”
“This isn’t a case of oderint dum metuant — let them hate so long as they fear. Instead, the world increasingly holds America in contempt.” As witness Iranian officials declaring “Someone like us will never come to terms with someone like you.”
““It is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat,” — Tulsi Gabbard, US intelligence head, trying to avoid saying anything that would upset the Toddler. Spoiler: yes, it is their responsibility.
Cheryl Rofer, who has some knowledge of nuclear issues, says attempting to recover Iran’s nuclear material would be a bad idea.
We already know Russia has a big influence on Putin’s Poodle. Paul Krugman points out how much influence petrostates such as Saudi Arabia have on policies from embracing fossil fuels to attacking Iran. “Why does Gulf oil money play an outsized role in U.S. corruption? Because petrostates, unlike advanced democracies, combine vast wealth with secrecy and a complete blurring of the lines between public office and private gain. So they’re better placed than anyone else to line U.S. officials’ pockets.”
Ukraine is offering us support with its expertise in drone warfare. Nevertheless Hegseth says we wouldn’t run out of munitions except Biden sent them all to the Ukraine. Hegseth also keeps on blaming the media for not gushing enough.
“For the moment the point is: Trump and Hegseth exult in seeing things blow up, as in a video game, and crowing like teenagers because they’ve “won.” That is not how this story is likely to end.”
“[Trump] also said that “Iran wants to make a deal,” but he has declined “because the terms aren’t good enough yet.” Today Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Tehran had not even asked for negotiations, let alone a ceasefire.”
Anyone who thinks we’re on the side of right in fighting for Iran — well, they’re probably happy we’re also embracing Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban.
“Nine former members of the bureau told Kramer it seems clear the administration did not prepare for a global oil crisis. Trump’s claim that “nobody expected” Iran to hit other countries in the Middle East supports their statement because, as they told Kramer, previous administrations planned for exactly that scenario.”
“Not only was the Bush administration exploiting an actual security threat, always better campaigners than governors they also engaged in an all-hands-on-deck propaganda campaign, having a popular president as the front man. Trump has none of this going for him, and it shows” — Scott Lemieux on how W’s White House built support for the Iraq invasion.
Republicans also seem to think they can punch down at Muslims as freely as the W administration did. And they’re repeating familiar bullshit claims about how they’re saving us from Sharia law.
That said, “The men who want to Make America Great Again are searching for a clean break from the Global War on Terror. That conflict was launched with lofty rhetoric about democracy and freedom but led to years of civil war, chaos, swollen ranks of terror groups, genocide, a refugee crisis and, in Afghanistan, a complete, humiliating failure. What these men don’t seem to realize, or care about, is that their language of brute force represents a fundamental break with American traditions around war going back to the Revolution.
“Boastful talk about slaughter is as old as war itself. “The wheels of my war chariot,” bragged one Assyrian king, “were bespattered with filth and blood. With the bodies of their warriors, I filled the plain, like grass.” But America’s founders asserted universal principles that should make such an attitude unthinkable. If you believe not only that all men are created equal but also that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, then war cannot be justified as a pure display of power and dominance.
In his addresses to the troops, George Washington would bring up the imagery of violence not as a spectacle to be enjoyed but as horrors to be endured — from “mercenary hirelings fighting in the cause of lawless ambition, rapine and devastation” to those who wished to keep revolutionary America in “bondage and misery.” And when news of British atrocities reached him, Washington wrote that “their wanton cruelty injures rather than benefits their cause; that, with our forbearance, justly secures to us the attachment of all good men.”
Given the Toddler and his party have shown themselves incapable of admitting defeat or course correcting, this will not go well, nor end well. Though of course the Toddler may not grasp this because his toadies’ job includes shielding him from reality, for example “briefing” him with a montage of shit blowing up (“the videos are also driving Trump’s increasing frustration with news coverage of the war. Trump has pointed to the success depicted in the daily videos to privately question why his administration can’t better influence the public narrative, asking aides why the news media doesn’t emphasize what he’s seeing, one of the current U.S. officials and the former U.S. official said.”). And we have Alan Dershowitz — friend of Jeffrey Epstein, ardent Toddler toady — declaring that just as the Toddler is saving us from Iran, he would have stopped the Holocaust. No, he wouldn’t.
