Sen Kaine

Tim Kaine has been largely stuck in my craw for a long time. He's the kind of Democrat that has never really delivered for me. I truly appreciate that he's a genuinely decent man, but he's taking forever to show me that he realizes the severity of the threat posed by Republicans and MAGA and Trump.

Under "normal" circumstances, I'm OK with him being Mr Congeniality, but these current circumstances are anything but normal.

It's a brick fight, Democrats

Throw some fuckin' bricks

He finally gets to it with this Colby guy - and I'm glad for that. I just wish now that he'd learn to stop smiling when does get to it.

Flip Flop

Very Interesting

I doubt it, but how sweet would it be?

Keith

And the US military

has obeyed

illegal orders

And Away We Go

We all saw it coming. We knew he'd pull some really bad shit eventually.

But 120 million of us chose to ignore it, and either stayed home, or secretly wanted it, and turned out to vote for it.

We are a nation of shitty stupid people.

Daddy State Awareness Guide, Rule 3

Every prediction of some dire consequence is a veiled threat.

Whatever terrible thing they're "warning" us about is something they intend to make happen (often in an attempt to coerce us into doing something they want), or to signal and motivate their mob.

The More They Stay The Same

This Fuckin' Guy

Here we go again. Shoulda seen this shit coming.

It's not a big stretch to think this will be used as amped-up pretext for DHS to start cracking down on Americans who speak out &/or protest.

And it's pretty weird, because we're already seeing "man-on-the-street" feedback showing Venezuelan immigrants praising Trump's "liberation" of their home country.

So the standard contradiction-packed "policy" seems to be "We're going to keep fucking with Hispanic immigrants even as we do you all a great favor so you'll support the Trump administration."

And, of course, the bonus is that the Epstein files problem will likely be ignored - at least for a while.

President Donald Trump said the United States “will run” Venezuela until a U.S.-approved transfer of power can take place, following his administration’s attack on the country and the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a news conference on at his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago on Saturday. “So we don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in and we have the same situation as we had for the last long period of years.”

Trump had announced earlier on Saturday that the U.S. carried out a “large-scale strike” against Venezuela, capturing Maduro and his wife, who Trump said were then flown out of the South American nation on the USS Iwo Jima.

Trump did not offer details about how the U.S. will be involved in Venezuela. His administration “will be running it with a group,” he told reporters at the news conference, standing alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Dan Caine, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and CIA director John Ratcliffe. Caine said no American lives were lost.

“We’re designating various people and we’re going to let you know who those people are,” Trump continued. “It’s largely going to be, for a period of time, the people standing right behind me.”

Asked whether the U.S. military would retain a presence on the ground in Venezuela, Trump rejoined: “We’re not afraid of boots on the ground…we’re going to make sure that country is run properly. We’re not doing this in vain.”

“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground…we’re going to make sure that country is run properly. We’re not doing this in vain.”

President Donald Trump

Trump said reconstructing Venezuela— a country of 31 million people that has endured decades of political, social and economic turmoil — could take some time.

“For us to just leave, who’s going to take over?” Trump said. “We have to rebuild their whole infrastructure…We’ll run it properly, we’ll run it professionally.”

Asked how the action in Venezuela comports with Trump and his political movement’s “America First” mantra, Trump said: “We want to surround ourselves with good neighbors…we want to surround ourselves with energy…we need that for ourselves, we need that for the world.”

The military operation

Trump made his first statement about the attack in a post to Truth Social at 4:21 a.m. In an interview with Fox News later that morning, Trump said the operation, which he watched from Mar-a-Lago, was “extremely complex” and involved a number of aircraft. The operation was supposed to take place four days ago but was delayed due to the weather, Trump said, adding, “I watched it literally like I was watching a television show.”

“Venezuela rejects, repudiates and denounces before the international community the extremely grave military aggression carried out by the current Government of the United States of America against Venezuelan territory and population,” the Venezuelan foreign minister said in a statement.

Attorney General Pam Bondi posted an unsealed indictment against Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, accusing them of “Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns” and other charges.

“They will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts,” Bondi posted to X.

Two law enforcement sources told MS NOW that agents from the FBI’s hostage rescue team embedded with U.S. military special operators from Delta Force, a counterterrorism unit, for the mission. The FBI took custody of Maduro, the sources said.

A source familiar with operation told MS NOW that the CIA placed a small team on the ground in Venezuela in August that was able to provide detailed insight into Maduro’s pattern of life that made capturing him “seamless.” Miller, Rubio, Hegseth and Ratcliffe worked on the operation for months, the source said.

Caine said that the operation — which involved more than 150 aircraft across the Western region — infiltrated Maduro’s compound at 1:01 a.m. Eastern time, adding that Maduro and his wife surrendered.

Rubio stated that Maduro had several chances to prevent this result, but “acted like a wild man” and ensured this result.

Congressional reaction

The U.S. has built up significant military force in the region surrounding Venezuela, but Trump does not appear to have sought permission from or informed Congress of Saturday’s military action.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, a Trump ally, acknowledged there had been no congressional approval of — or authorization for the use of military force for — prior to the U.S. action.

Lee said he spoke with Rubio, a harsh critic of the Maduro regime, who told him that Maduro had been arrested “by U.S. personnel to stand trial on criminal charges in the United States” and that the military action “was deployed to protect and defend those executing the arrest warrant.” Lee said such action would fall under the president’s “inherent authority” under Article II of the U.S constitution to protect American personnel

Rubio “anticipates no further action in Venezuela now that Maduro is in U.S. custody,” Lee said of Rubio.

Vice President JD Vance also defended the administration’s actions, saying Trump offered “multiple off ramps, but was very clear throughout this process: the drug trafficking must stop, and the stolen oil must be returned to the United States.”

He also suggested the operation was not illegal, pointing to federal narcoterrorism charges against the Venezuelan leader.

“Maduro has multiple indictments in the United States for narcoterrorism,” Vance wrote on X. “You don’t get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas.”

And some Republican lawmakers cheered the action.

“Today’s decisive action is this hemisphere’s equivalent to the Fall of the Berlin Wall,” said GOP Rep. Carlos Gimenez, who was born in Cuba and represents a heavily Hispanic district in southern Florida. “It’s a big day in Florida, where the majority of Venezuelan, Cuban, & Nicaraguan exiles reside. This is the community I represent & we are overwhelmed with emotion and hope.”

Nonetheless, the operation had already sparked backlash in its early hours as questions swirl about the legal justification for the actions targeting Venezuela.

“No matter the outcome, we are in the wrong for starting this war in Venezuela,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., an Iraq war veteran, on X.

“Secretaries Rubio and Hegseth looked every Senator in the eye a few weeks ago and said this wasn’t about regime change. I didn’t trust them then and we see now that they blatantly lied to Congress,” posted Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J. “Trump rejected our Constitutionally required approval process for armed conflict because the Administration knows the American people overwhelmingly reject risks pulling our nation into another war.”

Sen. Jim Himes, D-Conn., Ranking Member on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement that he has seen “no evidence” that Maduro’s presidency “poses a threat that would justify military action without Congressional authorization, nor have I heard a strategy for the day after and how we will prevent Venezuela from descending into chaos.”

Himes added, “Secretary Rubio repeatedly denied to Congress that the Administration intended to force regime change in Venezuela. The Administration must immediately brief Congress on its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.”

The United States has for months been building up military forces off the coast of Venezuela, and has targeted dozens of boats in the region in what the White House says is a war against illegal narco-trafficking. It has also intercepted oil tankers in the region in a bid to cut off the country’s largest economic asset.

Trump had previously warned of ground operations in Venezuela, and the CIA recently struck a dockyard in the country.

Earlier this month, the House narrowly rejected a war powers resolution that would have directed “the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Venezuela that have not been authorized by Congress.” In response to the CIA’s drone strike on the Venezuelan dockyard, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., the bill’s sponsor, described the actions as “illegal hostilities” and reiterated his view that the “American People don’t want another endless war over oil.”

Similar resolutions have stalled in the Senate, where the 60-vote threshold means even steeper climb.

“The illegality of Trump’s insane war in Venezuela is out of control,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, posted on X on Dec. 30. “Remember, this has NOTHING to do with stopping drugs from entering America. Venezuela produces cocaine bound for Europe. This is war mongering distraction.”

- and -

The madness of going to war with Venezuela

Trump's saber-rattling on Venezuela is reaching disturbing new highs, and any action could cause chaos in the region.

President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is escalating to disturbing new levels, and the prospect of a military intervention is looking more possible than ever. Such an intervention would not only be an unacceptable act of aggression against a nation that poses no threat to the U.S., it could also destabilize the region while undermining Trump’s own foreign policy and political agendas.

On Saturday, the U.S. military conducted its 21st known strike on an alleged drug-trafficking boat, in the eastern Pacific. The next day, the State Department designated Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization and declared that Maduro was its head — a move that Trump suggested would allow him to strike Maduro’s assets and infrastructure within Venezuela. On the same day, the USS Gerald R. Ford, the largest aircraft carrier in the world, arrived in the Caribbean.

Maduro is “a convenient villain” for Rubio’s crusade against left-wing authoritarian leaders in Latin America and for Trump’s quixotic war on drugs.

All of this comes after the U.S. government doubled its reward for the arrest of Maduro to $50 million and Trump admitted that he recently authorized the CIA to take covert action in Venezuela. The president now says he is open to talking directly to Maduro but hasn’t ruled out deploying troops on the ground in Venezuela.

This evidence suggests that the Trump administration is pursuing regime change in Venezuela. The New York Times even reported in October that U.S. officials “have been clear, privately, that the end goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from power.” This could take several forms; Trump appears to be creating possibilities for multiple approaches, perhaps in an attempt to apply maximum pressure on Maduro to seek a negotiated exit from power. But military action is a nontrivial possibility: Trump has deployed major U.S. assets to the Caribbean — there are now about 15,000 troops in the region, including special operations forces. A Marine expeditionary unit is conducting nighttime training this week in Trinidad and Tobago, just 7 miles from Venezuela. Right-wing commentators are already champing at the bit for military action.

Much of this saber-rattling reflects Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s growing influence over Trump’s foreign policy in the Americas. Rubio is an ultrahawk with a track record of supporting regime change via war, including in Latin America. In 2019, he encouraged Trump to back Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó’s unsuccessful efforts to oust Maduro from power. As George Washington University’s Alexander Downes and Boston College’s Lindsey O’Rourke point out, Rubio appears to have won a monthslong internal debate within the Trump administration about how to approach Venezuela. Key to Rubio’s victory was finding a way to reconcile military intervention-backed regime change with Trump’s right-wing nationalism.

Rubio achieved this by rendering Venezuela a threat to U.S. sovereignty by blaming it for the U.S.’s drug problems. This is both a deceptive and an absurd pretext for war. It’s deceptive because Venezuela has virtually no role in the fentanyl trade, and Drug Enforcement Administration data suggests that only about 8% of U.S.-bound cocaine gets to the country through a “Caribbean corridor” (most of that passing through Venezuela). And it’s absurd because there is no evidence in the U.S.’s decadeslong failed war on drugs that a militarized response to drug trafficking reduces demand or the flow of drugs. “Drug supply-reduction efforts, including those that deploy military assets and use of force, have no lasting impact when they leave in place the ungoverned territory and unpunished corruption that allow organized crime to thrive, fueled by the massive profits of supplying demand for prohibited substances,” wrote the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights organization, in a recent report.

International law does not permit a state to go to war with another state because of drug trade flows from that state. A military strike on Venezuela would be a reprehensible act of aggression, and yet more proof that the “peace president” narrative was always a farce. Downes and O’Rourke, who are experts on regime change, explain that airpower alone would be unlikely to dislodge Maduro, and that the level of manpower needed for a ground deployment to achieve regime change would be huge and undermine Trump’s promises to avoid protracted foreign conflicts.

And even if U.S. military action led Maduro to step down, Downes and O’Rourke point out that “regime change instead often begets further violence — for example, it dramatically increases the likelihood of civil war in target countries.” If Trump wants to reduce the flow of Venezuelan migrants into the U.S., regime change achieved by military force could easily achieve the opposite effect.

Covert actions by the CIA — such as assisting armed dissidents, pursuing efforts to assassinate Maduro or attempting to instigate a coup against him through efforts like encouraging military defections — could also exacerbate Venezuela’s considerable problems and increase the likelihood of civil conflict. If they were to fail — all the more likely given that Trump has openly discussed them — they could also trigger new levels of repression within the country.

Maduro is a brutal and incompetent authoritarian who has ruined a once affluent and lively democracy, but that doesn’t mean ousting him by violent, nondemocratic means is prudent or just. As Francisco Rodríguez, a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told me in an interview in October, Maduro is “a convenient villain” for Rubio’s crusade against left-wing authoritarian leaders in Latin America and for Trump’s quixotic war on drugs. But the outcome of their efforts would likely do nothing to advance Trump’s stated policy agenda on drugs and migration while ushering in a new era of war and instability in the Western Hemisphere.

A few last things:

1. I can imagine the MAGA rubes being led to believe they're in for another Trump Dividend Check - The Venezuelan Oil Check - to go with the $1776 check, and the DOGE Check, and the Trump Tariff Check, and the What-The-Fuck-Is-Wrong-With-You-Idiots Check.
2. We've told the world that we are (again) totally down with whatever any country thinks they can get away with. Anything goes - knock yourself out - have an orgy.
3. If you think there won't be pressure to put American boots on the ground, I've got a pair of breeding mules to sell you.

War

Choose

There are no good wars.

The Peace POTUS

News Flash: Trump lies. A lot.

Jerks Of A Feather

"The good news" is that Bibi Netan-fuckin'-yahu is making it harder for American politicians to stay cozy with AIPAC, the same as Trump is making it impossible for American politicians to stay cozy with the GOP.

Everything else is nothing but fucked up and bad.

I can call the Israeli government assholes without being anti-semitic, just as I can call my own government fascistic without being anti-American.

In fact, by criticizing governments for doing shitty things "in the name of the people", I'm telling them they're acting against the best interests of those people, and they need to get back to looking after their citizens instead of bolstering their own power and lining their pockets.

Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, leading scholars’ association says

Israel’s foreign ministry called the resolution “disgraceful,” but it added to a growing chorus from rights groups concluding that Israel is committing genocide.

Israel’s nearly two-year military campaign in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of people and left swaths of the enclave in rubble, meets “the legal definition of genocide,” the oldest and largest association of genocide scholars said in a resolution passed by the group’s members Sunday.

The resolution, by the International Association of Genocide Scholars, added to a growing chorus from human rights organizations and academics concluding that Israel is committing genocide, a crime outlined in a 1948 convention and defined by acts intended to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”

An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, in a message posted on X, called the resolution “disgraceful,” and said it was based on an unverified “campaign of lies” by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Israel’s government has reacted angrily to any suggestion its military campaign amounts to genocide, a crime defined in the aftermath of the Nazis’ systematic murder campaign against Jews during the Holocaust.

The resolution states that the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas against Israel that killed more than 1,200 people and prompted the Israeli military campaign in Gaza “constitutes international crimes.” But it also concludes that Israel’s response violates all five conditions set out in the 1948 convention, including “killing members of the group” and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” according to Emily Sample, a member of the association’s executive board.

Any one of the conditions would be sufficient for a finding of genocide.

The association has roughly 500 members. A large majority — 86 percent — of members who voted on the resolution approved it, Sample said. “We were very surprised at the level of consensus there was,” she said, adding that the board had refrained from issuing statements on the question of whether Israel’s conduct amounted to genocide, as it has in other conflicts, given the fraught debate over the issue.

The resolution accused Israel of carrying out “indiscriminate and deliberate” attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza, deliberately attacking medical and aid workers as well as journalists, forcibly displacing the enclave’s entire population multiple times and killing or injuring more than 50,000 children.

“This destruction of a substantial part of a group constitutes genocide,” the association concluded, of the attacks on Gaza’s children.

More than 63,000 people in Gaza have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Israel has repeatedly said it does not intentionally target uninvolved civilians and accuses Hamas of fighting from populated areas. Throughout the war, Israel has barred independent human rights groups and journalists from traveling to Gaza. Palestinian journalists in the enclave have been killed in numbers unprecedented for media workers in a modern conflict — the vast majority in Israeli air or drone attacks, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The resolution nodded to the growing number of organizations finding Israel is committing genocide, among them Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, along with United Nations experts. The International Court of Justice is hearing a case brought by South Africa alleging that Israel is violating international law by committing and failing to prevent genocidal acts.

Sample said the timing of the association’s resolution — long after the war started, on the eve of the second anniversary of the conflict — may have owed to a fear of “personal and professional consequences.” Members of the association had lost jobs in the United States and been denied visas to travel there for speaking out, she said.

For scholars, “coming out against a genocide like this was difficult to weigh personally,” she said.

In Israel, where there has been broad support for the military offensive, but splits among academics regarding the nature of the war, the small number of Israeli experts who specialize in genocide studies nearly all agree that Israel’s actions amount to genocide, said Shmuel Lederman, an Israeli genocide scholar and political theorist at the Open University and University of Haifa.

In recent months, particularly after Israel announced a near-total blockade of humanitarian aid in March, more of Israel’s academics, particularly international law experts, began to consider the genocide label, Lederman said. After famine was declared in parts of Gaza last month by the global authority on hunger, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked assertions that Israel’s role in the famine bolstered the case for genocide.

“If we wanted to commit genocide, it would have taken exactly one afternoon,” he told Israeli reporters in August.

“What we’ve been seeing is since late March, because of the starvation, the declaration of ethnic cleansing as an official aim, it’s not just genocide scholars — there seems to be a broader and broader agreement with legal scholars that we are seeing [genocide],” said Lederman, who recalled that he personally reached a similar conclusion in the spring of 2024.

“The bottom line is, there is a reason why so many people in this field of study agree. It’s very hard to be a genocide scholar and not say it’s a genocide,” he said.

Ukraine

60,000 Dead In Gaza

18,500 were children.

This is one of the wars Trump said he'd stop with a phone call the first day.

He's 190 days behind schedule now.

Some were killed in their beds. Others while playing. Many were buried before they learned to walk.

Gaza is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Palestinian children have been killed at a rate of more than one child per hour during the war. “Consider that for a moment. A whole classroom of children killed, every day for nearly two years,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell told the U.N. Security Council this month.

When asked about the death toll among children, the Israel Defense Forces said it “does not target children or other uninvolved civilians. The IDF takes extensive precautionary measures to prevent harm to civilians. The IDF operates in compliance with international law.”

Israel says its aim is to eliminate Hamas after the militant group attacked the country on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages. Thirty-eight children were killed and about three dozen were taken hostage. Hamas continues to hold about 22 hostages and the bodies of 27 others.

To assemble its list of fatalities, the Gaza Health Ministry uses hospital and morgue records, as well as vetted reports from victims’ families and reliable media. Tracking and identifying the dead has become increasingly difficult amid the breakdown of the enclave’s medical system.

Though it is impossible to capture every death, Gaza’s Health Ministry is doing “unusually high-quality real-time casualty recording,” said Michael Spagat, an economics professor at the University of London and chair of Every Casualty Counts, an international charity focused on documenting the casualties of armed conflict.

“They are trying to be really careful and rigorous and are constantly trying to improve the list,” he said.

A peer-reviewed study published January in the Lancet said an analysis of different casualty records suggests that the official death toll could be a significant undercount.

The Washington Post analyzed the ministry’s list released on July 15 and sorted the names by age.

Before 1st birthday  953
1 year old           943
2 years old          972
3 years old          899
4 years old          868
5 years old          985

6 years old          924

7 years old          967

8 years old          895

9 years old          921

10 years old         907

11 years old         976

12 years old       1,001

13 years old       1,084

14 years old       1,132

15 years old       1,064

16 years old       1,212

17 years old       1,218

Moween Shuheiber, 6, dreamed of being a pediatrician for children injured in war. Other days he wanted to be a businessman with a luxury car. Loved ones saw him as mature and thoughtful. He was killed in a November 2023 strike on an apartment building that killed more than 30 people, his cousin Adham Shuheiber said.

“I think he breathed his last while covering his ears,” said his cousin Malak Shuheiber. “Because that’s what he did every time he heard the sounds of planes.”

Tens of thousands more children have suffered life-altering injuries.

Samer Attar, an American surgeon who has volunteered in Gaza on several medical missions, says he has seen young bodies charred beyond recognition. Others had missing limbs or massive head trauma — wounds he described as “physically disabling and emotionally scarring.”

In early April, at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, Attar recalled dozens of patients on the floor after an attack. The hospital had long since run out of beds. He described seeing a 10-year-old patient take her last gasp as blood poured from her mouth and nostrils. A young boy had his skull and abdomen partly ripped open. Two of his brothers were there next to him, begging doctors to help.

“I grabbed one brother’s hand and gave him the child’s hand. I took his other brother’s hand and put it on his heart, and just said, ‘I’m sorry he’s going to die. Just wait here until he passes,’” Attar remembered telling them before moving on to the next patient.

As Israel hits Gaza with airstrikes, it has also restricted — and at times completely blocked — the United Nations and other aid organizations from delivering food, water and medical supplies. Hunger is soaring. More than 147 people, including 88 children, have died of malnutrition across Gaza, the Health Ministry said.

Most of the living have been corralled into the south of the Gaza Strip, where aid is now mostly distributed by American contractors inside military zones. Israeli soldiers positioned nearby have repeatedly opened fire on desperate families seeking aid, witnesses have told The Post. The IDF has said it fired “warning shots” to prevent “suspects from approaching.” It added that after reports of harm to civilians at aid points, the Israeli military issued instructions “following lessons learned” to forces in the field.

More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while trying to get food, the U.N. human rights office said on July 22.

On July 13, an Israeli airstrike hit a crowd lining up to fill water containers in central Gaza. Ten people, most of them children, were killed.

The Israeli military called it a “technical error” with a munition that caused it to fall “dozens of meters from the target.”

Thirsty children “returned to their homes as lifeless corpses,” said Ramadan Nassar, who lives in the area and witnessed the aftermath.

WaPo goes on to list all the names of kids who've been killed in Israel's "war against Hamas", which has turned into an attempted genocide.

The List

(it's pretty gruesome)

About Last Night

We should call the failed ceasefire Operation Desert Stormy.

It was extremely brief, Trump's package was inadequate for the task, and he's trying to keep people from talking about it.

Paraphrasing Papa

no matter how necessary

we believe it to be

no matter how we justify it

or rationalize it

war is always a crime

Cooler Heads?

There's nothing that says Iran provoked the US directly. Yes, they're duking it out with our good buddy Israel, but Bibi's not exactly teetering, unless there's big pushback domestically (which I don't know about, and I haven't spent much time looking into).

What I'm pretty sure about is that there's been plenty of pressure from Tel Aviv, and from Mike Huckabee at our embassy in Jerusalem.

And most of the regular people in the world would agree that we need to prevent Iran from getting the bomb.

But the deal was in place for Iran to forego their nuclear ambitions - or at least to postpone or redirect their program - and that's what Trump scuttled in his first term.

So now we have Trump making us look like asshole bullies, giving Tehran the chance to look smarter and cooler by going proportional.

Everything Trump touches turns to shit.

Iran says missile attack matched number of US bombs, signaling likely desire to de-escalate

Iran said its missile attack on Al Udeid air base in Qatar matched the number of bombs dropped by the United States on Iranian nuclear sites this weekend, signaling Iran’s likely desire to deescalate, AP reports.

Iran made the announcement on Monday night in a statement from its Supreme National Security Council after the attack, which Qatar said caused no injuries.

Iran also said it targeted the base because it was outside of populated areas.

Iran gave advanced warning of attack to Qatar - reports

Iran coordinated its strikes on US bases in Qatar with Qatari officials in advance in a bid to minimize casualties, the New York Times is reporting, citing three Iranian officials.

Reuters is also reporting that Iran gave advanced warning to Qatar, prompting air space closure earlier, citing a source familiar with the matter.

In his statement in my last post, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al Ansari confirmed there had been no casualties and said: “The base had been evacuated earlier, following established security and precautionary measures, given the tensions in the region.”

Qatar condemns Iranian attack on US base and says no casualties reported

Here’s more on that Qatari response.

Qatar has condemned Iran’s attack on the Al Udeid air base and said that “Qatar reserves the right to respond directly in a manner equivalent with the nature and scale of this brazen aggression, in line with international law”.

In a post on X the Qatari foreign affairs ministry spokesperson Majed Al Ansari added that “Qatar’s air defenses successfully thwarted the attack and intercepted the Iranian missiles” and there had been no casualties.

He said Qatar had warned of the dangers of Israeli escalation in the region and called for “the immediate cessation of all military actions and for a serious return to the negotiating table and dialogue”.

Here's a novel idea:

Everybody stop fucking

with each other

Let's just try that for a while - see how it goes.

Overheard

Sending out thoughts and prayers

to all the AlphaBros

who woke up this morning

with sudden-onset bones spurs.

Iran

These fuckin' idiots are talking like it's all over, and everything's just peachy.

"We knocked the shit out of 'em, and that's it - piece of cake - call the writers and let's get on to the next episode."

You think the Iranians won't be looking for a little get-back? Every American everywhere is a target again. And it's not unreasonable to think they won't have plenty of sympathizers - even among countries that have always been on our side.

The US has been a very good and helpful ally. But with Trump constantly rattling sabers and shit-talking everybody, I'm not going to be surprised if we find out somewhere down the road that some of our best good buddies have already decided to walk away.

Is anybody not picking up some really strong late Roman Empire vibes here?



Following strikes on Iran, these U.S. bases could become targets

A number of U.S. military sites in the Middle East could face reprisals.

Iran vowed swift retaliation Saturday following the U.S. military’s strikes on the Iranian nuclear program. “Every American citizen or military personnel in the region is now a target,” a commentator on Iranian state media said.

In the days and weeks leading up to the attack, Iranian leaders had repeatedly warned of reprisal were a strike to occur. “All U.S. bases are within our reach and we will boldly target them,” Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh said on June 11.

Here are some of the U.S. bases and troop deployments in the region that could come under attack.

Tens of thousands of U.S. troops are stationed in the Middle East.

Al-Asad Air Base, an Iraqi installation 150 miles west of Baghdad that is operated jointly by the Iraqi and U.S. air forces, houses thousands of American troops, the largest U.S. deployment in the country. Iran and its proxies have in recent years attacked it repeatedly.

After the U.S. assassinated top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, Tehran fired 16 missiles at bases hosting U.S. forces in Iraq. Eleven landed at al-Asad, wounding dozens of U.S. troops and gouging deep craters in an attack that authorities said was intended to kill. Iran also launched missiles at a military base in Irbil, in the semiautonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, during that attack.

The Trump administration said this month that it was reducing the U.S. military presence in Syria from eight bases to one: Tanf, located strategically in southern Syria near the Iraqi and Jordanian borders. Details on the timing are vague.

A January 2024 drone strike on Tower 22, a U.S. outpost in Jordan 12 miles south of Tanf, killed three American soldiers and injured dozens more, the worst attack on the U.S. military since the 2021 fall of Kabul.

Major U.S. military deployments in the Persian Gulf include Naval Support Activity Bahrain, headquarters of the U.S. 5th Fleet and home to some 8,300 American sailors, and the Qatari-owned al-Udeid Air Base, which boasts the largest U.S. contingent in the Middle East. Al-Udeid, 20 miles southwest of Doha, is a forward command post for U.S. Central Command and can house more than 10,000 troops.

Other Persian Gulf installations housing U.S. troops include Camp Buehring and Ali al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait, and al-Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, home to the Air Force’s 380th Air Expeditionary Wing.

Iranian officials warned the Qataris this week — before the U.S. strike — that American bases in the gulf would be legitimate targets in retaliation for an American attack, according to a European official briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive communications.

U.S. embassies and diplomatic compounds in the region could similarly become targets. The U.S. has evacuated some personnel and family members from missions in Iraq and Israel.

Militants funded by Tehran could also threaten U.S. personnel and interests in the region.

“Operational plans have been established for that purpose,” Abu Ali al-Askari, a security official with the Iranian-backed, Iraqi-based Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah, warned Thursday. “Undoubtedly, American bases throughout the region will become akin to duck-hunting grounds … not to mention the unforeseen surprises that may await its aircraft in the skies.”

Asked about preparations to head off potential Iranian reprisals, the Pentagon press office on Thursday directed The Washington Post to a Monday statement from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announcing the “deployment of additional capabilities” to the Middle East. “Protecting U.S. forces is our top priority and these deployments are intended to enhance our defensive posture in the region,” Hegseth wrote on X.

“American Forces are maintaining their defensive posture & that has not changed,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement Monday, which the Pentagon press office also pointed to.

Air France and KLM canceled flights in and out of Dubai International Airport late Wednesday. The Air France press office cited “the security situation in the region.” It did not indicate when flights would resume.

Could Iran strike the United States?

While Iran possesses a diverse array of ballistic and cruise missiles, none of its arsenal, including missiles in development, could come close to reaching the United States, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies missile defense project. Iran’s air force does not have the range to reach the United States. That’s why reprisals on forces deployed in the region would be the primary U.S. concern.

81 Years Ago

"...all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable..."

-- The American Declaration Of Independence - Thomas Jefferson

In the face of threats and dangers that are meant to intimidate and conquer, the seemingly tiny, insignificant, individual people who decide to stand up and stand together have proven over and over that a certain invincibility is possible - it's just not something you get from yourself alone.

I'm just one guy - one voice - one vote. And besides, what's in it for me?

06JUN44

Today's Today

Pod Save America

On Trump's fucked up flip-floppy trade "policies".

Auctioning access

Polling

DOGE

etc