-It was never a a war it was an “excursion” despite our “Department of War” putting together bombing videos daily.
-It wasn’t us it was Israel said Marco but then we are the ones actually who really started the war Trump said and then we assert control by negotiating a “ceasefire” with Pakistan through China
-The ceasefire doesn’t cease fire actually the regional war can go on.
-The Strait wasn’t a big deal we won the war but at the same time Europe and Japan needs to take over and grab the Strait.
-But now the Strait is open you just have to pay millions of dollars to Iran to get through the international free waterway.
-But we did have regime change right since the new Ayatollah is there has a different name I mean different view I mean different outfit?
As many have said before I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. So I guess I’ll just stay enraged that Americans signed up for this … again!
They can't look at that David. That would be like looking into their mirror and facing the fact that they've been conned. I have siblings that are die hard trump fans. I don't engage with them on the politics because they use a lot of whataboutisms and say we suffer from some kind of derangement syndrome.
I honestly believe it would shake them to their core to face that fact the hero was a naked emperor. They can't do it.
The caveat to that should be is when gas prices get better it’s not the president’s doing. When they fluctuate worse that’s not the presidents fault. When they raise by $1.00+ in a month because a President unilaterally starts a ridiculous war, only then we can attribute fault … to Rosie O’Donnell
Jeri. I agree with this whole heartedly. For the debased to realize they’ve been debased is simply too much. It’s why this will get worse before it gets better.
Guess what! if you hate. disparage, and blame every American who voted for Trump, that just makes them more likely to vote for him again. Non-College educated Americans have voted for Trump primarily because the Democrats did not solve their economic problems.
Nobody's voting for him again. He's extremely unlikely to physically last another 3 years, in addition to everything else.
People believed a con man because the legitimate politicians, left and right, sold out labor to capital, leaving labor with nobody to turn to and nowhere to go.
I certainly don’t hate those Americans. I have as many Trump voting friends as non-voting friends. I’m enraged that collectively the country voted for him. I think that’s very different.
Blame is fair but they actually are to blame by definition. Certainly the largest part of the blame pie chart.
Democrats not solving economic problems didn’t cause their vote. Trump destroyed them economically in the first term and they still voted for them. The simple reality is 75+ million would vote for him even if they had gotten perfect economic circumstances from the Dem president.
Guess what? There is a straight line from their votes to the current shit show. And many of them voted for Trump because they are fucking racists. And those that voted for him because they thought they would have a lower tax bill or that an imbecile could “fix the economy,” did so in spite of overt racism and xenophobia—hatred that was clearly on display during that stupid escalator ride 11 years ago.
Sadly for me, my emotions run so high with all the T's blathering bull shit on Conquest that my mind cannot process. You, Will Saletan, Andrew and Bill have provided a bit of welcome de-scrambling, with even a wee laugh here and there. Gracias.
Because I love to "yes and," here's another noodle-scratcher: Around the same time Trump was insisting the "new" regime was headed by extremely reasonable people the US could work with, Hegseth responded to question (albeit, a leading one) at a separate press conference by confirming the US still wanted the Iranian people to rise up and take down the regime.
But with respect to the repeated "excursion" references, let's give Trump a little grace for using cruise ship lingo. Bottom line: he's an elder boomer based in West Palm Beach. Can we really be surprised he views anything that involves getting off a ship to engage in activities as an "excursion"?
I have to admit yesterday brought to mind an old SNL skit that Mike Myers did. ‘I feel vklempt. The ceasefire is neither a cease nor a fire. Talk amongst yourselves.’
As Sec. Hegseth previously stated, the Strait of Hormuz has always been open. The only thing preventing ships from passing through the strait are Iranian mines, missiles, and drones.
Just got a new map yesterday...and all I can find near the Persian Gulf is the Strait of Trump and it shows a toll bridge symbol across the narrowest part.
No biggie, right? I'm sure if you ask Pete how much it would be to insure a container ship passing through the strait, he could rattle off a rough order of magnitude estimate. Right?
So let me get this straight (no pun intended, BTW).
Trump built this "great military", but he does not take any responsibility for failing to align said great military's operations with a coherent, achievable strategic goal. This is the thinking of a spoiled, disordered child.
Trump: "In the meantime, our great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest. AMERICA IS BACK!"
Translation: Trump knows deep down that he fucked up Iran and will be looking for a smaller target to bully to soothe himself, like a baby with a pacifier. Maybe his next target is Cuba. Or maybe Greenland is in his sights.
Damn him. Damn his enablers. And damn the 77 million people who voted for this.
"That, Leavitt suggested, was probably just because we’d bombed Iran’s military communications infrastructure too well: parts of Iran’s military maybe just hadn’t heard about the ceasefire yet." I actually chuckled when I read that. What are we, back in the days of the Civil War, when news about the end of the war spread slowly? "Strains credulity" is an understatement where Leavitt's nonsense is concerned.
““Hell yes,” this person said when asked if executives were contacting the White House to protest a toll on Hormuz. ”We didn’t have to do that before—and I thought we won the war. Any place you have access to the administration, you ask, what are you guys thinking?”
It is absolutely stunning that the people out there trading oil and running oil companies and doing all the other things with fossil fuels are so fucking stupid that they believe this administrations nonsense about *winning* at anything.
I guess. You’d think after watching this happen over and over and over again that they’d be tired of so much winning and might open their eyes a little wider to see what the geopolitical situation actually is right now. You know, critical thinking. That thing they’re trying to breed out of our children to make them more compliant. So they never tire of all the winning because they lack the capability to see it’s all a ruse.
That’s what most Germans did, isn’t it? We do what we have to in order to avoid taking action that might be dangerous or, worse, expose us to ridicule. My view of WWII has changed in the last 15 months.
We have entered the flailing blindly phase of Trump 2.0. We should recognize it from the Trump reaction to Covid during the last year of Trump 1.0. It appears that Trump is hastily trying to satisfy all of Putin’s requirements before he is incapacitated by a new Congress or his own rapid physical and mental collapse.
The question in my mind, assuming the Democrats win big in November is: What will Trump & Co. do between November and January, when the new Reps and Senators are due to take their seats? Besides doing everything he can to invalidate the election results, what will he do? I think we're going to see things that are so much worse than anything else he has done. I sure hope I am wrong.
The only "strait" open is the jacket that should be around orange snake, and wannabe "alpha"male Miller, and wired/wasted/bizarro Pete, dead worm RFKjr, emasculated Marco, ass-kissing Mikey, among others. Every one of them should wrapped in tight, white jackets and tossed into padded rooms. When Alex Jones, ball-tanning Tucker and MGT suddenly talk sense, we've gone way past bizzarro-world.
Dave, the Greatest Poker Player of All Time ("Greatest" anything that follows in his mind), knows what that is: A straight you show to your opponents ("open") before you bet so they can see your weaknesses, and automatically then think those are your strengths or you wouldn't be showing them to them.
These paragraphs from Kristol are worth reading again:
‘But the penultimate sentence is also striking. “In the meantime our great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest.”
It’s unusual for an American president to proclaim “Conquest” as his goal. In his June 6, 1944 D-Day prayer, President Roosevelt said that American soldiers “fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate.”’
Trumps statements are anathema to the American idea. This language by Trump is offensive. It’s disgusting. It threatens our troops. Reckless language like this makes every American less safe. He is working to diminish America and advance our traditional adversaries. He needs to be removed.
Spot on...and I'm really angry at my former GOP'ers who still are endorsing Trump even though he's making a mockery of everything that we used to believe made America great.
I saw written by another Substacker (sorry, I can't remember who) that we are like victims of domestic violence. Where our partner held a gun to our heads, yet didn't pull the trigger. He lowered the gun. But now there is fear and anxiety every waking minute because he could do it again.
When is Congress coming back to take this seriously? They'll always get another vacation - they get too many in my lowly opinion. When is enough enough?
No other President would be deranged or immoral enough to be credibly thought capable of even attempting to erase an entire culture. So shameful that what used to be a beacon to the world should elect such a person. Twice.
It’s hard to take any of this seriously when there isn’t an opposition party. We’re just along for the ride. The obvious answer to me (I’m a veteran) is to have an immediate draft with no exceptions or referrals for any military operation lasting more than 24 hours. No excuses, no disability too severe. Children of members of Congress, and anyone working in the executive branch come first. Especially people like Carolyn Levitt, who are of military age.
We would never get into another meat grinder like this again.
But we hear nothing from Schumer or Jefferies, except clumsily worded platitudes. No leadership, no plans, no strategy, nonsensical communications.
And can we please stop genuflecting in front of the military and our “intelligence community“. They blew up a girls school, which wasn’t used by the Iranian military for 10 years, they have no defense for drones, which blew up a dozen aircraft on the ground, four THAAD radars and several fixed radar installations. The damage was so bad that the fifth fleet had to move its headquarters back to Virginia Beach from Bahrain. Billions and billions of dollars thrown down the toilet, 160 school girls torn to pieces. Thousands of non-combatants dead.
But but we were able to rescue a full bird Colonel, who, for some inexplicable reason was in the backseat of an F 15. Normally, Colonels don’t fly. They’re too old. The rescue cost several aircraft and endangered the lives of hundreds of people. Glad he’s safe, but this was stupid. Stupid.
Of course, but this was all part of the plan. First, fire all the generals who know that war is terrible. Then fire the head Chaplain who cares about morals and ethics. Then fire anyone who questions the illegal bombings.
As Dave Pell said, many world leaders are playing checkers while Trump is playing Minecraft.
Agreed. Sounds like the Colonel wanted to "earn" a medal or 3 so he can enter the General Sweepstakes. When I was in the Air Force, the only full birds who I saw fly did so just to keep their flight status/pay. They didn't regularly take part in training sorties. They definitely wouldn't have gone out on a combat sortie! Maybe he believed trump's and Kegsbreath's bullshit and thought it'd be a walk in the park. Now I'm wondering if his lack of skill as a WSO made them vulnerable to being shot down.
Let's not forget that these are the same people who considered "8647" written in seashells to be a credible assassination threat against the President, but threatening genocide against Iran is just lolz.
For my 8 years of duking it out online with Fox News readers...I would often use a version of this analogy...
Trump supporters will jump over the dead body with the knife in its back laying under Trump's bloody hands in order to chase a lead that some suspicious Dem DNA was found in a house a couple of blocks over.
So let me get this straight (Strait?):
-It was never a a war it was an “excursion” despite our “Department of War” putting together bombing videos daily.
-It wasn’t us it was Israel said Marco but then we are the ones actually who really started the war Trump said and then we assert control by negotiating a “ceasefire” with Pakistan through China
-The ceasefire doesn’t cease fire actually the regional war can go on.
-The Strait wasn’t a big deal we won the war but at the same time Europe and Japan needs to take over and grab the Strait.
-But now the Strait is open you just have to pay millions of dollars to Iran to get through the international free waterway.
-But we did have regime change right since the new Ayatollah is there has a different name I mean different view I mean different outfit?
As many have said before I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. So I guess I’ll just stay enraged that Americans signed up for this … again!
And, apparently, many of those numbskulls like what he is doing (as long as they are not clever enough to connect pump price to Trump Tantrums).
They can't look at that David. That would be like looking into their mirror and facing the fact that they've been conned. I have siblings that are die hard trump fans. I don't engage with them on the politics because they use a lot of whataboutisms and say we suffer from some kind of derangement syndrome.
I honestly believe it would shake them to their core to face that fact the hero was a naked emperor. They can't do it.
"What happened to the President has no impact on gas prices? Huh? TDS much?"
I have no use for hearing their booitlicking nonsense.
The caveat to that should be is when gas prices get better it’s not the president’s doing. When they fluctuate worse that’s not the presidents fault. When they raise by $1.00+ in a month because a President unilaterally starts a ridiculous war, only then we can attribute fault … to Rosie O’Donnell
When prices go up it’s Biden's fault. When they go down Trump gets the credit.
Except, what bank would give that bankruptcy artist credit?😏
You understand!
Jeri. I agree with this whole heartedly. For the debased to realize they’ve been debased is simply too much. It’s why this will get worse before it gets better.
Same for me, Jeri. They will go down with the ship, ah, so to speak.
I feel for you Jeri. But so many in your State will not accept the truth.
Guess what! if you hate. disparage, and blame every American who voted for Trump, that just makes them more likely to vote for him again. Non-College educated Americans have voted for Trump primarily because the Democrats did not solve their economic problems.
Nobody's voting for him again. He's extremely unlikely to physically last another 3 years, in addition to everything else.
People believed a con man because the legitimate politicians, left and right, sold out labor to capital, leaving labor with nobody to turn to and nowhere to go.
I certainly don’t hate those Americans. I have as many Trump voting friends as non-voting friends. I’m enraged that collectively the country voted for him. I think that’s very different.
Blame is fair but they actually are to blame by definition. Certainly the largest part of the blame pie chart.
Democrats not solving economic problems didn’t cause their vote. Trump destroyed them economically in the first term and they still voted for them. The simple reality is 75+ million would vote for him even if they had gotten perfect economic circumstances from the Dem president.
And they think he is? I did not know that an absence of a college education also made you blind.
Guess what? There is a straight line from their votes to the current shit show. And many of them voted for Trump because they are fucking racists. And those that voted for him because they thought they would have a lower tax bill or that an imbecile could “fix the economy,” did so in spite of overt racism and xenophobia—hatred that was clearly on display during that stupid escalator ride 11 years ago.
Sadly for me, my emotions run so high with all the T's blathering bull shit on Conquest that my mind cannot process. You, Will Saletan, Andrew and Bill have provided a bit of welcome de-scrambling, with even a wee laugh here and there. Gracias.
Don’t forget, we traded in an octogenarian ayatollah for one who’s in his prime.
The owner of my liquor store goes to my parish. I wonder if she’d give me a discount for the next 2 1/2 years?
Because I love to "yes and," here's another noodle-scratcher: Around the same time Trump was insisting the "new" regime was headed by extremely reasonable people the US could work with, Hegseth responded to question (albeit, a leading one) at a separate press conference by confirming the US still wanted the Iranian people to rise up and take down the regime.
But with respect to the repeated "excursion" references, let's give Trump a little grace for using cruise ship lingo. Bottom line: he's an elder boomer based in West Palm Beach. Can we really be surprised he views anything that involves getting off a ship to engage in activities as an "excursion"?
Rajeev look at the bright side, uh...
Celtics are looking good. Tatum’s back so there’s that maybe another title in June.
New season of From is coming out next Sunday also.
So basically outside of Trump, our political system and the world being on fire I’m super happy.
Good:-) Maybe the above average half of the electorate will vote next time.
Neemias Quata is the biggest surprise. Should be Most Improved Player. Trump doesn't like basketball; too many Black people.
Same here.
I have to admit yesterday brought to mind an old SNL skit that Mike Myers did. ‘I feel vklempt. The ceasefire is neither a cease nor a fire. Talk amongst yourselves.’
As Sec. Hegseth previously stated, the Strait of Hormuz has always been open. The only thing preventing ships from passing through the strait are Iranian mines, missiles, and drones.
Lol! It's like me saying I've always been rich, except I have no money.
These folks are ridiculous.
Hey if you look at it on a map it looks open!
Indeed, the water is moving freely, showing no sign of geological obstruction.
Just got a new map yesterday...and all I can find near the Persian Gulf is the Strait of Trump and it shows a toll bridge symbol across the narrowest part.
Jeff, we must think alike as I was wondering if DJT was thinking of naming it The Strait of Trump as part of the deal!
No biggie, right? I'm sure if you ask Pete how much it would be to insure a container ship passing through the strait, he could rattle off a rough order of magnitude estimate. Right?
...right?...
Too bad there's no award for dumbest thing a politician could say with a straight face. This would be a serious contender.
Mines, missiles and drones...oh MY!
And money!
Trump: "I built this great military."
So let me get this straight (no pun intended, BTW).
Trump built this "great military", but he does not take any responsibility for failing to align said great military's operations with a coherent, achievable strategic goal. This is the thinking of a spoiled, disordered child.
Trump: "In the meantime, our great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest. AMERICA IS BACK!"
Translation: Trump knows deep down that he fucked up Iran and will be looking for a smaller target to bully to soothe himself, like a baby with a pacifier. Maybe his next target is Cuba. Or maybe Greenland is in his sights.
Damn him. Damn his enablers. And damn the 77 million people who voted for this.
Don't be too hard on the 77M as it looks like he magicked up the numbers to be elected. Wonder what the real totals were? We will find out one day.
Cuba is next. Maybe on or before the 250 th birthday. Little Marco must be gleeful.
And when even more Cubans flee on rafts as a result of our invasion of that island, Hegseth will order the military to shoot them all.
'Murica! Fuck yeah!
"“In the meantime,” he added, “our great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest. AMERICA IS BACK!”
The last two words need context: "AMERICA IS on the BACK foot". The "ALL THANKS TO ME" is to be assumed.
"That, Leavitt suggested, was probably just because we’d bombed Iran’s military communications infrastructure too well: parts of Iran’s military maybe just hadn’t heard about the ceasefire yet." I actually chuckled when I read that. What are we, back in the days of the Civil War, when news about the end of the war spread slowly? "Strains credulity" is an understatement where Leavitt's nonsense is concerned.
If we really disrupted Iran's COMMS, wouldn't Hegseth and Caine brief the press about that achievement?
Thru SignalChat
Somewhere Baghdad Bob is blushing.
““Hell yes,” this person said when asked if executives were contacting the White House to protest a toll on Hormuz. ”We didn’t have to do that before—and I thought we won the war. Any place you have access to the administration, you ask, what are you guys thinking?”
It is absolutely stunning that the people out there trading oil and running oil companies and doing all the other things with fossil fuels are so fucking stupid that they believe this administrations nonsense about *winning* at anything.
Not stunning at all. Avoiding reality to live in make believe has always been a skill for a large part of the human race.
I guess. You’d think after watching this happen over and over and over again that they’d be tired of so much winning and might open their eyes a little wider to see what the geopolitical situation actually is right now. You know, critical thinking. That thing they’re trying to breed out of our children to make them more compliant. So they never tire of all the winning because they lack the capability to see it’s all a ruse.
That’s what most Germans did, isn’t it? We do what we have to in order to avoid taking action that might be dangerous or, worse, expose us to ridicule. My view of WWII has changed in the last 15 months.
When is someone going to tell the #DirtyOldMan that he doesn't have the cards?
Don't think that Zelenskyi is due at the White House soon enough....
We have entered the flailing blindly phase of Trump 2.0. We should recognize it from the Trump reaction to Covid during the last year of Trump 1.0. It appears that Trump is hastily trying to satisfy all of Putin’s requirements before he is incapacitated by a new Congress or his own rapid physical and mental collapse.
The question in my mind, assuming the Democrats win big in November is: What will Trump & Co. do between November and January, when the new Reps and Senators are due to take their seats? Besides doing everything he can to invalidate the election results, what will he do? I think we're going to see things that are so much worse than anything else he has done. I sure hope I am wrong.
What is the open strait? I guess your definition open depends on "is open".
The only "strait" open is the jacket that should be around orange snake, and wannabe "alpha"male Miller, and wired/wasted/bizarro Pete, dead worm RFKjr, emasculated Marco, ass-kissing Mikey, among others. Every one of them should wrapped in tight, white jackets and tossed into padded rooms. When Alex Jones, ball-tanning Tucker and MGT suddenly talk sense, we've gone way past bizzarro-world.
I think Stephen Miller might creepily enjoy that.
Hopefully a straight jacket
I prefer a real "strait" jacket for them. Doesn't the Navy keelhaul traitors? (If you don't know what that really means, look it up. Not pretty.)
I know a concrete guy in NJ. Just sayin'...
I love that we are back to defining the word “is.”
Ugh.
Next? Deciding what constitutes "torture."
I mean, if we're doing from-frying-pan-into-fire stuff, that's high on the list.
Dave, the Greatest Poker Player of All Time ("Greatest" anything that follows in his mind), knows what that is: A straight you show to your opponents ("open") before you bet so they can see your weaknesses, and automatically then think those are your strengths or you wouldn't be showing them to them.
You can open a lot of doors with $2,000,000 no matter what business you're in. So, yep the straights are open if you've got the money.
There is no wall across it, therefore the strait is open.
These paragraphs from Kristol are worth reading again:
‘But the penultimate sentence is also striking. “In the meantime our great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest.”
It’s unusual for an American president to proclaim “Conquest” as his goal. In his June 6, 1944 D-Day prayer, President Roosevelt said that American soldiers “fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate.”’
Trumps statements are anathema to the American idea. This language by Trump is offensive. It’s disgusting. It threatens our troops. Reckless language like this makes every American less safe. He is working to diminish America and advance our traditional adversaries. He needs to be removed.
Spot on...and I'm really angry at my former GOP'ers who still are endorsing Trump even though he's making a mockery of everything that we used to believe made America great.
We came, we saw, we made everything worse, we left.
Tom and Daisy to the bitter end!
So now it's only the people who live in the United States who really, really fear Trump and his Administration? Perfect.
I saw written by another Substacker (sorry, I can't remember who) that we are like victims of domestic violence. Where our partner held a gun to our heads, yet didn't pull the trigger. He lowered the gun. But now there is fear and anxiety every waking minute because he could do it again.
When is Congress coming back to take this seriously? They'll always get another vacation - they get too many in my lowly opinion. When is enough enough?
It is literally domestic abuse. As long as the GOP is in power we won't see a damned thing being done about this violent, criminal government.
No other President would be deranged or immoral enough to be credibly thought capable of even attempting to erase an entire culture. So shameful that what used to be a beacon to the world should elect such a person. Twice.
Well, the price of eggs, and Hillary's emails, and Hunter's laptop. QED.
It’s hard to take any of this seriously when there isn’t an opposition party. We’re just along for the ride. The obvious answer to me (I’m a veteran) is to have an immediate draft with no exceptions or referrals for any military operation lasting more than 24 hours. No excuses, no disability too severe. Children of members of Congress, and anyone working in the executive branch come first. Especially people like Carolyn Levitt, who are of military age.
We would never get into another meat grinder like this again.
But we hear nothing from Schumer or Jefferies, except clumsily worded platitudes. No leadership, no plans, no strategy, nonsensical communications.
And can we please stop genuflecting in front of the military and our “intelligence community“. They blew up a girls school, which wasn’t used by the Iranian military for 10 years, they have no defense for drones, which blew up a dozen aircraft on the ground, four THAAD radars and several fixed radar installations. The damage was so bad that the fifth fleet had to move its headquarters back to Virginia Beach from Bahrain. Billions and billions of dollars thrown down the toilet, 160 school girls torn to pieces. Thousands of non-combatants dead.
But but we were able to rescue a full bird Colonel, who, for some inexplicable reason was in the backseat of an F 15. Normally, Colonels don’t fly. They’re too old. The rescue cost several aircraft and endangered the lives of hundreds of people. Glad he’s safe, but this was stupid. Stupid.
Of course, but this was all part of the plan. First, fire all the generals who know that war is terrible. Then fire the head Chaplain who cares about morals and ethics. Then fire anyone who questions the illegal bombings.
As Dave Pell said, many world leaders are playing checkers while Trump is playing Minecraft.
Agreed. Sounds like the Colonel wanted to "earn" a medal or 3 so he can enter the General Sweepstakes. When I was in the Air Force, the only full birds who I saw fly did so just to keep their flight status/pay. They didn't regularly take part in training sorties. They definitely wouldn't have gone out on a combat sortie! Maybe he believed trump's and Kegsbreath's bullshit and thought it'd be a walk in the park. Now I'm wondering if his lack of skill as a WSO made them vulnerable to being shot down.
Let's not forget that these are the same people who considered "8647" written in seashells to be a credible assassination threat against the President, but threatening genocide against Iran is just lolz.
For my 8 years of duking it out online with Fox News readers...I would often use a version of this analogy...
Trump supporters will jump over the dead body with the knife in its back laying under Trump's bloody hands in order to chase a lead that some suspicious Dem DNA was found in a house a couple of blocks over.
"All the belligerents, besides us, are still shooting."
Isn't this the definition of surrender?
Of course not, it is the super clever, round the back side, tick-tack-toe playing plan to save your "Xs" while they use up all theirs.
Wait! Has Iran pulled the rug out from under US?
a Persian rug, no less
Sent US flying!