I liked this because the idea is good, but I somohow doubt that anyone gets to tell him when he can do something, unless it is while brown-nosing or ass-kissing, both easy because of target size.
Of course it's brown-nosing and/or ass-kissing, but for those shameless opportunists it's always win-win. Even if it's something he might not like (if he gave it more than a few minutes' thought, which he never does anyway) they make sure to spin it to his liking. Once I read that if 2 or more of his advisors tell him contradictory things, he listens to the last one. That makes sense given how he does change his mind, and "chickens out" often. Though one thing that was hard-wired into him by Roy Cohn 50 years ago is to never admit error and never apologize when he does.
I told my wife 45 years ago I would do almost anything for her but carry the hand bag in the mall when she goes to the bathroom. I don't have much pride left but that indeed is a bad look.
Wait, you don't use a man purse? I thought men carried bags and called them things like tactical cargo backpacks. Maybe that's just by me. I couldn't leave the house without a pile of belongings, though. How you all exist without tissues, lip balm, postage stamps, and breath mints in a bag is beyond me.
Years ago I was told by a doctor that keeping my wallet in my back pants pocket was screwing up my spinal alignment when sitting on it all day in the office. So I got a mini hiking pack of sorts that attaches around my waist. It holds my wallet, smart phone and a few pens. It works fine.
I also have no qualms about holding my wife's purse when she is in the restroom. Perhaps I'm too old to care what people think.
I just leave my bag, and its a small one, parked by my husband and politely ask watch that please. He's got a fat wallet. He knows better than to have me watch it. It might get a little lighter.
I was like that before I had kids. I could open a beer bottle with a car key, but perhaps I've overshared. Anyway, once I had kids, some weird ancestral hoarder gene was activated and now I must have paper napkins and a pen on me at all times.
I am willing to carry my wife’s bag anywhere & anytime, unless it clashes with my outfit - which 99.9% of the time is: shorts, T-Shirt & sneakers (living in PHX has some benefits). But still, a man has to have standards. The purse must contain some sugarless gum and real folding money. To quote the J Geils Band : “If the purse is fat, that’s where it’s at”!
News here in Europe is that a bunch of Gulf Nation leaders met with Pakistani representatives in Islamabad and hammered something out last weekend. They said they were working out a peace deal between the US and Iran despite the fact that no Iranian or USian representatives were present. They know very well that The Old Man is a hot mess and non compos mentos. They're straightening out their part of the world on their own. They'll present the plan to Iran and Witkoff and they'll sign. We cannot let Trump claim victory, though. He screwed us all. And he needs to pay for it. I think we should hand him over to the Iranians. What say you?
As much as I'd like to see Trumpty Dumpty deposited into the middle of an Iranian desert, he reminds me of those barges of NYC trash that roamed the oceans in search of a port that would accept the trash, only to be turned away everywhere. No one wants him, and everyone enjoys watching him destroy America in the meantime.
No one is enjoying America's very real destruction by Trump and his cronies. We are all sick watching this dumpster fire. Sick contemplating the likely sexual, physical and psychological abuse of ICE prisoners. Sick watching Ukraine thrown to the curb, sick watching your people lose the pitiful access to health care they had, sick watching the plundering of the national treasury, the debt, the market manipulations, sick seeing the damage done by tariffs and threats, sick listening to the arrogant ramblings of a fool and probable pedophile high on his own supply. Sick. Not enjoying.
I'm not sure other countries want to see the US destroyed, except of course for Russia and maybe China. But maybe not China which has lots of customers in the US. The world order has been dominated by the US for so long that other countries leaders will have to spend considerable time and energy figuring out new alliances and trade deals.
I'm gonna hope for #1 for the sake of the civilians. But god, he disgusts me. I HATE how he always gets away with it. He's been a loser his entire life but someone always cleaned up his mess.
Believe me, I want that too. I want the deaths over, and the world to resume shipping. I live in so much fear over how much starvation will occur due to the disruption of fertilizer shipments.
It IS mass murder. Undeniably, and in a nation utterly dependent on desalination for every drop. Behind the bombing of that structure is the spectre of babies, children, animals, everything dying of thirst. It is not a nice way to go, it is evil to even contemplate doing such a thing, and is an UNDENIABLE WAR CRIME they have openly confessed to.
Good grief. Even Hitler and his Nazi ghouls tried to hide what they were doing...
That's the thing Mike, he doesn't even know. It just depends on whatever rando whispered in his miraculously saved ear last. And if he's had a recent diaper change.
One thing for sure, he hates that his poll numbers are in the golden toilet. That's news his fluffers, toadies, and Faux Nooz can't shield him from.
No need to hand him over. All the Pakistani's need to do is say that Iran gave up, he won the prestigious (gold colored) Persian Gulf Peace award and he needs to go to Tehran to accept it.
This is really F'd up that I'm actually posting something like this, right? We actually don't have a POTUS where this would be believable enough to be funny, right?
Yeah. I feel like I'm living beyond the looking glass myself. I mean, I write fiction, and none of the stuff that's happened this year would work in fiction because it's just not believable. A football association gave the president a peace award?!?! No audience would believe it!
Bill: "And if that wasn’t enough of a tell, Trump seemed to all but confirm the reporting this morning when he posted that other countries were going to have to figure out how to get oil through the strait themselves. “[T]he U.S.A won’t be there to help you anymore,” he added."
< Tim starts laughing hysterically >
In 2024, Never Trumpers tried (in vain) to tell the voters that Trump only cared about himself. When you view what Bill describes above through that lens, Trump's behavior shouldn't surprise anyone who understands the man and his psyche. He doesn't give a fuck about the long term consequences of his actions. Someone else can deal with that just as someone else has always had to pick up the pieces for the past 80 years.
god bless you!!!! I have been "mouth agape" for a month now, i just can't believe that no one stopped him!!! this explains everything... absolutely everything!!! thanks
Every Democrat who's on "break" needs to go do something visibly CHARITABLE. Help at a veteran's organization, a soup kitchen, a homeless shelter, hell, even the local animal shelter. JUST DO SOMETHING TO SHOW THE VOTERS THAT YOU'RE NOT AT DISNEY WORLD!
And thank you to the reps and governors who turned out for No Kings instead of Disney. More politicians are showing up. It's good to see. Lots of candidates and state reps also showed up, so many I couldn't begin to list them.
Mary - Dems can actually show their faces around constituents - something none of my Republican senators or Rep do while on their monthly vacations... of course they probably don't come back 'home' to Indiana for those anyway, they're waaay above us mere Hoosiers
As an Iowa resident, I suspect that, here more than elsewhere, Rob Sand's approach to reform from inside the system is a good sell. We're not revolutionaries, we want good governance, and our recent rightward lurch was related to fretting about religious and racial identity more than anything else. I think we can go purple again, given the right middle-of-the-road message here in middle America.
My husband saw a televised ad yesterday for one of the leading contenders in the GOP governor’s primary race: no plans for Iowans were uttered in the ad, just promises to stick with trump all the way. Yeah, stick with that, you GOP moron.
Meanwhile, if anyone has a few coins to throw towards Rob Sands campaign before the latest filing deadline closes tonight at midnight, here’s a link:
Garvin - I think this is correct. There seems to be wide awareness that the national political class lives in a different world where rules that apply to us citizens mean little. Insider trading, largess to 'campaign funds' that enhances their lifestyles, friends with jets & playoff tickets, lovely destinations where a 10-minute appearance provides a weekend stay... "all this and more can be yours if The Price Is Right!" And a congressional seat is that winning ticket. Can't use "drain the swamp" since Trump has poisoned the phrase but the concept can be retooled for candidates in either party, just gotta show how you're differentiated from the elite that's exploiting their position
Thing is, Iran gets a say at the table too, and I don't know if it'll be so easy to walk away from this thing if they continue to bomb our forces in the region with drones and missiles.
Know who else gets a say in this thing? Israel and Saudi Arabia. One of the reasons Marquito is so keen on not naming who in Iran they're negotiating with is because he knows that if Israel finds out who those negotiators are they will immediately move to kill those people. Can't negotiate and end to a conflict if the negotiators keep dying.
Spot on. I really wonder what future generations will say when they see Trump talking about how hard it is to negotiate with Iran because we keep killing the people in charge.
We've become so numb to his bullshix...that it truly doesn't strike us as batshix crazy as it truly is.
Yeah, the *only* way that Trump can "head for the exits" from the Iran war is by closing all the US bases in the Gulf, so that American forces are no longer being targeted by drone & missile strikes.
My prediction is that Bill is wrong about this, and that Trump is only threatening to "head for the exits" as a way of pressuring the UK, France & other NATO members to contribute troops & naval vessels for the Iran war.
Trump has been fixated on seizing Kharg Island since the 1980s, and I predict that he is going to act on this fixation, and the Marines will be landing on the Island within the next few weeks.
It has occurred to me that Trump & Co. and his echo chamber have latched onto this idea that Iran has been at war with us for 47 years because... uh, you know, Trump is.... #47. It seems utterly ridiculous to even type that out, but everything about this regime falls under "You can't make this stuff up".
Serendipitous, yes, but the idea that Iran has been at war with us since 1979 is ludicrous. Unless, of course, you are trying to please the Orange One. In which case, you parrot that Iran has been at war with us for 47 years and obviously, it is divine intervention that #47 is going to solve that problem. 🙄
Every time I hear that and it goes unaddressed I get super annoyed.
“Iran has been killing our soldiers for 47 years”
“We’ve been in conflict with them for 47 years” etc
I keep thinking WTF are they talking about?!?
I either missed every piece of news about Iranians killing soldiers or it is not actually true. Maybe their proxies through sporadic attacks now and then since the 1980s but that’s a big stretch …
Creating a global economic crisis and then walking away from it would be entirely in keeping with Donald Trump's entire adult life, throughout which he has bankrupted businesses and wrecked government institutions and then skated away, taking advantage of the enormous latitude we give to rich white men with unearned confidence.
Between the USAID cuts and the coming starvation when crop yields are hurt by the impacts on fertilizer shipping, Trump will be one of history's biggest mass murderers.
I friggin' HATE that our country is very much appearing like it started and carried out the most poorly conceived "military action" in modern history that has greatly and negatively impacted the entire world and now we are about to slink away leaving a pile of shix for everyone else to figure out!
Are you kidding me? We need to get this MF out of office NOW!!!
Lindsey Graham pretending to be a princess at Disney World while goading on an unnecessary foreign war seems to be a perfect representation of his personality.
“What’s the best word for what Trump is doing here? Retreat? Surrender?”
The only valid descriptor is “insanity”.
Whatever images flit through his brain while he is issuing his commands are divorced from reality. To be called a retreat or surrender, the commander would have to be cognizant of what
/whom is being retreated from or surrendering to. tRumpy Dumpty understands neither.
Yesterday I phoned my 3 GOP stooges in Congress and asked them, “trump is insane; what’s your excuse?”
The aides in Grassley’s and Miller-Meeks’ offices told me they’d get back to me on that.
Last year, Trump closed the Iran desk at the State Dept., and fired most of the experts on the Middle East desk. He put a drunk in charge of the Defense Dept., and that drunk has eviscerated the leadership of the Armed Forces. And that just scratches the surface of the damage done. Psychotic leadership.
It is psychotic for a President to go to war without utilizing well-established, effective pre-war procedures, i.e. consulting every expert and formulating plans for every possible contingency.
The defining characteristic of a petulant mind is not merely an inability to strategize, but the compulsive instinct to overturn the board the moment a conflict/game turns unfavorable. Any attempt to analyze this retreat through the lens of traditional military doctrine grants the executive branch an intellectual coherence it simply lacks. The American electorate willingly entrusted the global order to a leader operating with the emotional and cognitive restraint of a destructive 7 year old. Consequently, witnessing the abrupt abandonment of the Strait of Hormuz should provoke zero surprise; it is the exact, inevitable outcome of an administration fundamentally incapable of enduring adversity.
When a complex geopolitical crisis devolves into an undeniable failure, the reflexive response of such an executive is never to recalibrate, but to unilaterally declare the engagement over and walk away. (flip the board and go home) The rhetorical flailing of cabinet officials attempting to reframe an outright surrender of strategic leverage as a deliberate delegation to allies only highlights the profound absence of serious governance. They are leaving a critical international chokepoint shuttered because they completely lack the aptitude, discipline, and attention span to finish what they recklessly initiated. As supply chains sever and domestic economic burdens violently compound for the average citizen, the public is left exactly where it engineered itself to be, paying the severe, inescapable toll for empowering profound ineptitude.
Remember how upset Trump got when someone predicted this would last a few weeks until Trump got bored? Pretty sure we're almost there.
Why is it that half our country has Trump's conman routine completely figured out and the rest are backfilling every bad Trump decision with predictably egregious post-decision rationalizations and claims of 4-d chess strategy?
It is the defining question of our era, is it not? My theory on this phenomenon lacks elegance, yet its accuracy has been proven so consistently that it can no longer be denied: There is something dumb about people.
It sounds profane, but I’m telling you the number of times it’s the correct answer is profound.
What's puzzling to me is the people who have clearly demonstrated a kind of intelligence - they got into top schools, achieved measurable success, throw around obscure literary references, take pride in being deeply educated, etc. - but chose to paint Trump's ignorant impulsiveness as a special brand of genius, which is more mystifying than the choice to airbrush his sociopathic amorality.
You know who comes to mind? Mr. and Mrs. Scalia. Remember her texting to Mark Meadows about the election being stolen and the Scalia household hanging their flag upside down?
What kind of conversations are these "intelligent" people having behind closed doors? Crazy.
Perhaps they believed they were so secure, so sophisticated in their success that they could avoid adverse personal impacts and that the people who don't have the things they have aren't important and/or can be bought off with some baubles like no income tax on tips.
I can do what I want
What's a war crime to me
I'll do what I say
And then all will see
When I yell out "Jump"
My Army will go
Unless I revert to
Donald J. Taco
John Lithgow had a special "Trumpty Dumpty" poem in honor of No Kings Day this past weekend: https://substack.com/@wethepeopleactnow/note/c-234917505
It s right there with his poem saluting Colbert's last days and his depiction of Rudy Giuliani!
Thanks. 🍻
Loved it! Thank you.
I'm seeing this picture of The Cat in the Hat from Dr. Suess spouting those lines.
Dave, I like your "like" and the literary analogy; not sure about the comparison of the speaker to the writer, though...😉
Lithgow's poem is the best! For some reason The cat in the hat came To my mind . Don't know why. It must be my peculiar way of looking at things!
I agree that I can not hold a candle to that one, and am grateful for the link that let me find it.
Same here! I didn't know he wrote a whole of poems about DJT.
It's written in the same style as Cat in the Hat stories. And very similar delivery to other Cat in the Hat recitations.
No reverting. He's TACO 24/7. His protectors decide if and when he gets to exercise the CO part.
I liked this because the idea is good, but I somohow doubt that anyone gets to tell him when he can do something, unless it is while brown-nosing or ass-kissing, both easy because of target size.
Of course it's brown-nosing and/or ass-kissing, but for those shameless opportunists it's always win-win. Even if it's something he might not like (if he gave it more than a few minutes' thought, which he never does anyway) they make sure to spin it to his liking. Once I read that if 2 or more of his advisors tell him contradictory things, he listens to the last one. That makes sense given how he does change his mind, and "chickens out" often. Though one thing that was hard-wired into him by Roy Cohn 50 years ago is to never admit error and never apologize when he does.
You do recall the difference between a-k and b-n, right?
I'm not sure that Lindsey holding the bubble wand for a "little girl" is a great look...
I told my wife 45 years ago I would do almost anything for her but carry the hand bag in the mall when she goes to the bathroom. I don't have much pride left but that indeed is a bad look.
Wait, you don't use a man purse? I thought men carried bags and called them things like tactical cargo backpacks. Maybe that's just by me. I couldn't leave the house without a pile of belongings, though. How you all exist without tissues, lip balm, postage stamps, and breath mints in a bag is beyond me.
Years ago I was told by a doctor that keeping my wallet in my back pants pocket was screwing up my spinal alignment when sitting on it all day in the office. So I got a mini hiking pack of sorts that attaches around my waist. It holds my wallet, smart phone and a few pens. It works fine.
I also have no qualms about holding my wife's purse when she is in the restroom. Perhaps I'm too old to care what people think.
I have no issue with holding my wife's purse while she's in the restroom. However, I take issue with the other women in there bitching at me to leave.
LOL how rude!
Kinda like George Castanza's wallet - full of everything, including hard candies?
As Seinfeld said, "It's not a purse, it's European!" To the cop, "the black leather thing with a strap".
Right?
I just leave my bag, and its a small one, parked by my husband and politely ask watch that please. He's got a fat wallet. He knows better than to have me watch it. It might get a little lighter.
JK!!!
I call mine "adaptive equipment"
They just ask you.
Oh lordy, you and my wife are twins. I just jump in the car and what will be will be ! 🙄
I was like that before I had kids. I could open a beer bottle with a car key, but perhaps I've overshared. Anyway, once I had kids, some weird ancestral hoarder gene was activated and now I must have paper napkins and a pen on me at all times.
I used to use the latch on my car door, worked fine but I am a little hard core and only have a wife and cats to worry about . 😁
And I would do anything for love!
Oh I would do anything for love!
Oh I would do anything for love!
But I won't do that!
No I won't do that!
I would do anything for love
Anything you've been dreaming of
But I just won't do that...
(Meat Loaf)
I am willing to carry my wife’s bag anywhere & anytime, unless it clashes with my outfit - which 99.9% of the time is: shorts, T-Shirt & sneakers (living in PHX has some benefits). But still, a man has to have standards. The purse must contain some sugarless gum and real folding money. To quote the J Geils Band : “If the purse is fat, that’s where it’s at”!
I'm such an epic grime ball that no one would take me for being light footed. 😁
I'm the same age as you bro, I held my wife's handbag and if anyone wanted to eff with me it would have been a mistake !
T Miller did NOT say it, but I did, he went there to stare at young children, maybe the
boys AND the girls. trumpy , also, will soon be taking credit for Artemis and soon to
come rescuing Cuba, ahem
Exactly because otherwise LG at Disney? So what! Don’t we have bigger problems to worry about?
Who's 'little girl'?
I was wondering that as well. If it was the child of one of his relatives on the trip, why not just say so?
"Let it go. Let it go. Let it go. Let it go"!
News here in Europe is that a bunch of Gulf Nation leaders met with Pakistani representatives in Islamabad and hammered something out last weekend. They said they were working out a peace deal between the US and Iran despite the fact that no Iranian or USian representatives were present. They know very well that The Old Man is a hot mess and non compos mentos. They're straightening out their part of the world on their own. They'll present the plan to Iran and Witkoff and they'll sign. We cannot let Trump claim victory, though. He screwed us all. And he needs to pay for it. I think we should hand him over to the Iranians. What say you?
As much as I'd like to see Trumpty Dumpty deposited into the middle of an Iranian desert, he reminds me of those barges of NYC trash that roamed the oceans in search of a port that would accept the trash, only to be turned away everywhere. No one wants him, and everyone enjoys watching him destroy America in the meantime.
No one is enjoying America's very real destruction by Trump and his cronies. We are all sick watching this dumpster fire. Sick contemplating the likely sexual, physical and psychological abuse of ICE prisoners. Sick watching Ukraine thrown to the curb, sick watching your people lose the pitiful access to health care they had, sick watching the plundering of the national treasury, the debt, the market manipulations, sick seeing the damage done by tariffs and threats, sick listening to the arrogant ramblings of a fool and probable pedophile high on his own supply. Sick. Not enjoying.
I'm not sure other countries want to see the US destroyed, except of course for Russia and maybe China. But maybe not China which has lots of customers in the US. The world order has been dominated by the US for so long that other countries leaders will have to spend considerable time and energy figuring out new alliances and trade deals.
I say that this effort can only have two outcomes.
1. It works and the World's Greatest Deal Maker (tm) claims full credit and crows even louder about the Nobel Peace Prize.
2. The World's Greatest Deal Maker (tm) feels sligated and immediately starts bombing more civilians. "It was a bad deal "
I'm gonna hope for #1 for the sake of the civilians. But god, he disgusts me. I HATE how he always gets away with it. He's been a loser his entire life but someone always cleaned up his mess.
Believe me, I want that too. I want the deaths over, and the world to resume shipping. I live in so much fear over how much starvation will occur due to the disruption of fertilizer shipments.
And the loss of desalination plants. That was criminal.
Akin to mass murder.
It IS mass murder. Undeniably, and in a nation utterly dependent on desalination for every drop. Behind the bombing of that structure is the spectre of babies, children, animals, everything dying of thirst. It is not a nice way to go, it is evil to even contemplate doing such a thing, and is an UNDENIABLE WAR CRIME they have openly confessed to.
Good grief. Even Hitler and his Nazi ghouls tried to hide what they were doing...
The Global South screwed again. Those poor people.
Let's hand the guy who started it over to the Revolutionary Guard. I'm certain that will fix everything.
It'd make me feel better.
Same.
Him and his boyfriend Roy Cohn really understood how to manipulate our system.
That's the thing Mike, he doesn't even know. It just depends on whatever rando whispered in his miraculously saved ear last. And if he's had a recent diaper change.
One thing for sure, he hates that his poll numbers are in the golden toilet. That's news his fluffers, toadies, and Faux Nooz can't shield him from.
Mike - I learn new stuff on these Comment boards every day so yes, I admit I googled 'sligated' 😁
Google is correct when you look up that word. 😀
Sorry for the crumby typing.
No problem...I don't believe any of us feel sligated in the least...
Are you guys smiting me ?
No need to hand him over. All the Pakistani's need to do is say that Iran gave up, he won the prestigious (gold colored) Persian Gulf Peace award and he needs to go to Tehran to accept it.
This is really F'd up that I'm actually posting something like this, right? We actually don't have a POTUS where this would be believable enough to be funny, right?
Ingenious idea, Jeff! Just brilliant.
Yeah. I feel like I'm living beyond the looking glass myself. I mean, I write fiction, and none of the stuff that's happened this year would work in fiction because it's just not believable. A football association gave the president a peace award?!?! No audience would believe it!
Bill: "And if that wasn’t enough of a tell, Trump seemed to all but confirm the reporting this morning when he posted that other countries were going to have to figure out how to get oil through the strait themselves. “[T]he U.S.A won’t be there to help you anymore,” he added."
< Tim starts laughing hysterically >
In 2024, Never Trumpers tried (in vain) to tell the voters that Trump only cared about himself. When you view what Bill describes above through that lens, Trump's behavior shouldn't surprise anyone who understands the man and his psyche. He doesn't give a fuck about the long term consequences of his actions. Someone else can deal with that just as someone else has always had to pick up the pieces for the past 80 years.
For your amusement.
https://x.com/fan_fintwit/status/2038359107107967232
Not sure if that was awesome satire or actual footage from Mar-a-lago.
Nah, Trump was way too self aware and intelligent, it must be a parody!
Not enough gold geegaws to be M-a-L
That curtained off situation room in the compound is sort of bunker like, just not underground.
Possibly not as secure as the top secret file box storage/water closet 😆
Who can say.
Both
Speaking of amusement, I just saw this article. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/android-users-calling-white-house-saw-epstein-island-google-said-someone-edited-the-map-listing/ar-AA1ZFNpZ
This makes my heart glad.
god bless you!!!! I have been "mouth agape" for a month now, i just can't believe that no one stopped him!!! this explains everything... absolutely everything!!! thanks
Perfecto video.
That was great!
That was brilliant.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, what's best for trump is best for all.
Thank you Tim!
This past month has been one bad news day after another. We need a hearty laugh break.
I live to serve.
That video clearly calls into question the scope of the validity of Godwin's Law.
"What’s the best word for what Trump is doing here? Retreat? Surrender? Discuss in the comments."
All I know is that calling the president of the United States "The Leader of the Free World" won't pass the laugh test anymore.
How about Trumpitulation?
We need Dan Savage to work his magic with "Trumpitulation" just as he did with "Santorum"!!!
...adding to Trumpflation, Trump Slump, Trumpocalypse...
Trumponomics
YES... with its sub-reddit application to stock picking and oil futures trading: the Trump'n'Dump
Love that!
Trumpitation? But what foreign power would be silly enough to do that and end this Clown Car on Fire Fiasco?
They are all eating popcorn
Brilliant!
Leader of the ret**ded world
or the sniff test
Every Democrat who's on "break" needs to go do something visibly CHARITABLE. Help at a veteran's organization, a soup kitchen, a homeless shelter, hell, even the local animal shelter. JUST DO SOMETHING TO SHOW THE VOTERS THAT YOU'RE NOT AT DISNEY WORLD!
And thank you to the reps and governors who turned out for No Kings instead of Disney. More politicians are showing up. It's good to see. Lots of candidates and state reps also showed up, so many I couldn't begin to list them.
Mary - Dems can actually show their faces around constituents - something none of my Republican senators or Rep do while on their monthly vacations... of course they probably don't come back 'home' to Indiana for those anyway, they're waaay above us mere Hoosiers
As an Iowa resident, I suspect that, here more than elsewhere, Rob Sand's approach to reform from inside the system is a good sell. We're not revolutionaries, we want good governance, and our recent rightward lurch was related to fretting about religious and racial identity more than anything else. I think we can go purple again, given the right middle-of-the-road message here in middle America.
My husband saw a televised ad yesterday for one of the leading contenders in the GOP governor’s primary race: no plans for Iowans were uttered in the ad, just promises to stick with trump all the way. Yeah, stick with that, you GOP moron.
Meanwhile, if anyone has a few coins to throw towards Rob Sands campaign before the latest filing deadline closes tonight at midnight, here’s a link:
https://robsand.com/
Garvin - I think this is correct. There seems to be wide awareness that the national political class lives in a different world where rules that apply to us citizens mean little. Insider trading, largess to 'campaign funds' that enhances their lifestyles, friends with jets & playoff tickets, lovely destinations where a 10-minute appearance provides a weekend stay... "all this and more can be yours if The Price Is Right!" And a congressional seat is that winning ticket. Can't use "drain the swamp" since Trump has poisoned the phrase but the concept can be retooled for candidates in either party, just gotta show how you're differentiated from the elite that's exploiting their position
Lindsay Graham, you have just been dog walked by Bibi Netanyahu into destroying the world’s economy. What are you going to do next?
Graham: I’m going to Disney World!!!
Thing is, Iran gets a say at the table too, and I don't know if it'll be so easy to walk away from this thing if they continue to bomb our forces in the region with drones and missiles.
Know who else gets a say in this thing? Israel and Saudi Arabia. One of the reasons Marquito is so keen on not naming who in Iran they're negotiating with is because he knows that if Israel finds out who those negotiators are they will immediately move to kill those people. Can't negotiate and end to a conflict if the negotiators keep dying.
Spot on. I really wonder what future generations will say when they see Trump talking about how hard it is to negotiate with Iran because we keep killing the people in charge.
We've become so numb to his bullshix...that it truly doesn't strike us as batshix crazy as it truly is.
Yeah, the *only* way that Trump can "head for the exits" from the Iran war is by closing all the US bases in the Gulf, so that American forces are no longer being targeted by drone & missile strikes.
My prediction is that Bill is wrong about this, and that Trump is only threatening to "head for the exits" as a way of pressuring the UK, France & other NATO members to contribute troops & naval vessels for the Iran war.
Trump has been fixated on seizing Kharg Island since the 1980s, and I predict that he is going to act on this fixation, and the Marines will be landing on the Island within the next few weeks.
They're not going after just US bases, they're going for the jugular (tech companies):
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5809104-iran-irgc-apple-microsoft-google-hp-meta-tesla/
But did it happen?
They haven't done it at scale yet, but they have shown that they can do it:
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/amazons-cloud-business-bahrain-damaged-iran-strike-ft-reports-2026-04-01/
It has occurred to me that Trump & Co. and his echo chamber have latched onto this idea that Iran has been at war with us for 47 years because... uh, you know, Trump is.... #47. It seems utterly ridiculous to even type that out, but everything about this regime falls under "You can't make this stuff up".
Serendipitous I think. The taking of the hostages was in 1979...47 years ago. Until then most Americans couldn't tell you where Iran was.
Serendipitous, yes, but the idea that Iran has been at war with us since 1979 is ludicrous. Unless, of course, you are trying to please the Orange One. In which case, you parrot that Iran has been at war with us for 47 years and obviously, it is divine intervention that #47 is going to solve that problem. 🙄
Every time I hear that and it goes unaddressed I get super annoyed.
“Iran has been killing our soldiers for 47 years”
“We’ve been in conflict with them for 47 years” etc
I keep thinking WTF are they talking about?!?
I either missed every piece of news about Iranians killing soldiers or it is not actually true. Maybe their proxies through sporadic attacks now and then since the 1980s but that’s a big stretch …
Creating a global economic crisis and then walking away from it would be entirely in keeping with Donald Trump's entire adult life, throughout which he has bankrupted businesses and wrecked government institutions and then skated away, taking advantage of the enormous latitude we give to rich white men with unearned confidence.
Between the USAID cuts and the coming starvation when crop yields are hurt by the impacts on fertilizer shipping, Trump will be one of history's biggest mass murderers.
Already is based on the unreal mismanagement of Covid
I friggin' HATE that our country is very much appearing like it started and carried out the most poorly conceived "military action" in modern history that has greatly and negatively impacted the entire world and now we are about to slink away leaving a pile of shix for everyone else to figure out!
Are you kidding me? We need to get this MF out of office NOW!!!
Sorry...but I'm out of F's to give this morning.
I think everyone's F jar is empty these days.
Lindsey Graham pretending to be a princess at Disney World while goading on an unnecessary foreign war seems to be a perfect representation of his personality.
We need Will Saletan to do a sequel to "The Corruption of Lindsey Graham" or at the very least an afterward.
Tra la.
“What’s the best word for what Trump is doing here? Retreat? Surrender?”
The only valid descriptor is “insanity”.
Whatever images flit through his brain while he is issuing his commands are divorced from reality. To be called a retreat or surrender, the commander would have to be cognizant of what
/whom is being retreated from or surrendering to. tRumpy Dumpty understands neither.
Yesterday I phoned my 3 GOP stooges in Congress and asked them, “trump is insane; what’s your excuse?”
The aides in Grassley’s and Miller-Meeks’ offices told me they’d get back to me on that.
I think "psychotic" is the word.
Last year, Trump closed the Iran desk at the State Dept., and fired most of the experts on the Middle East desk. He put a drunk in charge of the Defense Dept., and that drunk has eviscerated the leadership of the Armed Forces. And that just scratches the surface of the damage done. Psychotic leadership.
It is psychotic for a President to go to war without utilizing well-established, effective pre-war procedures, i.e. consulting every expert and formulating plans for every possible contingency.
Psychotic.
he is a CHILD
That's unkind to children.
The defining characteristic of a petulant mind is not merely an inability to strategize, but the compulsive instinct to overturn the board the moment a conflict/game turns unfavorable. Any attempt to analyze this retreat through the lens of traditional military doctrine grants the executive branch an intellectual coherence it simply lacks. The American electorate willingly entrusted the global order to a leader operating with the emotional and cognitive restraint of a destructive 7 year old. Consequently, witnessing the abrupt abandonment of the Strait of Hormuz should provoke zero surprise; it is the exact, inevitable outcome of an administration fundamentally incapable of enduring adversity.
When a complex geopolitical crisis devolves into an undeniable failure, the reflexive response of such an executive is never to recalibrate, but to unilaterally declare the engagement over and walk away. (flip the board and go home) The rhetorical flailing of cabinet officials attempting to reframe an outright surrender of strategic leverage as a deliberate delegation to allies only highlights the profound absence of serious governance. They are leaving a critical international chokepoint shuttered because they completely lack the aptitude, discipline, and attention span to finish what they recklessly initiated. As supply chains sever and domestic economic burdens violently compound for the average citizen, the public is left exactly where it engineered itself to be, paying the severe, inescapable toll for empowering profound ineptitude.
Remember how upset Trump got when someone predicted this would last a few weeks until Trump got bored? Pretty sure we're almost there.
Why is it that half our country has Trump's conman routine completely figured out and the rest are backfilling every bad Trump decision with predictably egregious post-decision rationalizations and claims of 4-d chess strategy?
It is the defining question of our era, is it not? My theory on this phenomenon lacks elegance, yet its accuracy has been proven so consistently that it can no longer be denied: There is something dumb about people.
It sounds profane, but I’m telling you the number of times it’s the correct answer is profound.
What's puzzling to me is the people who have clearly demonstrated a kind of intelligence - they got into top schools, achieved measurable success, throw around obscure literary references, take pride in being deeply educated, etc. - but chose to paint Trump's ignorant impulsiveness as a special brand of genius, which is more mystifying than the choice to airbrush his sociopathic amorality.
These people committed an act of philosophical suicide. They executed their inner witness, killed off their faculty, killed anything that inquires, or tells the truth. This was a voluntary uncoupling from reason, a throttling of conscience so they can live here. https://complexsimplicity.substack.com/p/the-philosophical-suicide-of-the?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
You know who comes to mind? Mr. and Mrs. Scalia. Remember her texting to Mark Meadows about the election being stolen and the Scalia household hanging their flag upside down?
What kind of conversations are these "intelligent" people having behind closed doors? Crazy.
I thought that was the Alitos? Didn't they hang the flag upside down?
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/18/upside-down-flag-at-justice-alitos-home-another-blow-for-supreme-court-under-fire-00158772
Ugh...yep...you're right. I knew it didn't sound quite right. I'll leave the post "as is" and give you your "fact checking" prowess it's just due.
Thanks.
Perhaps they believed they were so secure, so sophisticated in their success that they could avoid adverse personal impacts and that the people who don't have the things they have aren't important and/or can be bought off with some baubles like no income tax on tips.
They're economically smart but morally illiterate. Many such cases.
cult
If only we had a reliable, non-partisan pollster in Iowa a la Ann Selzer.
Ouch.
Too soon?
I suspect Ann was right all along. But the rigging...