“A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”
— Hillary Clinton, 2016
Donald Trump and the Republican Party he acquired as a wholly owned subsidiary are a catastrophe for the United States. We’ve lost ground on every important metric, becoming less free and prosperous at home and less influential as a force for democracy and innovation abroad.
Trump’s U.S. has discouraged and betrayed allies while emboldening and strengthening foes. Trump Republicans are reversing fragile social progress and exacerbating wealth inequality, setting in motion repercussions that will reverberate for generations.
Given the massive setbacks we’ve experienced under Trump’s malign and chaotic rule, it’s unsurprising that so many opponents credit a foreign influence operation for Trump’s rise. And indeed bad actors like Russia indisputably played a part in producing this endlessly humiliating clown show.
But the major force in all of this is something much more pathetic and less sophisticated than spy vs. spy shit. The core fact is that it’s trivially easy to manipulate a belligerent, vainglorious bully, as Hillary Clinton pointed out almost a decade ago.
Although it’s easy to manipulate a dumb and insecure yet powerful person, it’s dangerous too. We’ve all witnessed the sad parade of “dignity wraiths” who’ve attached themselves to Trump to achieve their own ends, only to be cast aside when they proved inconvenient. Jefferson Beauregard Chifforobe Sessions was possibly the first in that now very long and pathetic line.
But the fact remains that Trump really is easy to manipulate — it’s just that the consequences are unpredictable. Elon Musk appears to be sorting through that fallout now.
Though currently sidelined, it’s possible Musk will emerge victorious if he and fellow billionaire elites succeed in creating and controlling a surveillance state to underpin a techno-feudal form of government in Trump’s wake. But that outcome isn’t preordained.
Right now, thanks to Trump’s fragile ego, whoever is in charge of Fox News programming is in effect running foreign policy. New York Times political coverage is terrible, but one thing access journalism occasionally horks up is insight into how decisions are made, and holy shit:
Mr. Trump had spent the early months of his administration warning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel against a strike on Iran. But by the morning of Friday, June 13, hours after the first Israeli attacks, Mr. Trump had changed his tune.
He marveled to advisers about what he said was a brilliant Israeli military operation, which involved a series of precision strikes that killed key figures in Iran’s military leadership and blasted away strategic weapons sites. Mr. Trump took calls on his cellphone from reporters and began hailing the operation as “excellent” and “very successful” and hinting that he had much more to do with it than people realized.
Later that day, Mr. Trump asked an ally how the Israeli strikes were “playing.” He said that “everyone” was telling him he needed to get more involved, including potentially dropping 30,000-pound GBU-57 bombs on Fordo, the Iranian uranium-enrichment facility buried underneath a mountain south of Tehran.
In a podcast released just before the U.S. attacked Iran, Josh Marshall noted that Trump is very much in favor of blowing shit up, but he fears commitment. Marshall said Trump would find a “one-night stand” type of military engagement irresistible, and that turned out to be true.
The president was closely monitoring Fox News, which was airing wall-to-wall praise of Israel’s military operation and featuring guests urging Mr. Trump to get more involved. Several Trump advisers lamented the fact that Mr. Carlson was no longer on Fox, which meant that Mr. Trump was not hearing much of the other side of the debate.
The very silly statements administration officials have made since the bombing — like J.D. Vance’s absurd claim that the U.S. isn’t at war with Iran but only with Iran’s nuclear program — underscore the point that Trump believes this was a “one-and-done” military action. But in a war, the opponent has agency too.
That’s the unknown here. What is known is that for the foreseeable future, we’re all hostage to one uniquely terrible person’s ego-driven whims and how they are shaped by the media he consumes.
Open thread.
On The Road – Albatrossity – Moving through May
Elizabelle
Just had to see it again.
piratedan
it seems like its foreign policy based on whoever the last person who knows how to manipulate Trump is left in the room. More like a Survivor episode, having to endure close contact with not only mercurial idiocy but strange body odor and the very real chance that his dementia may have caused him to forget who you are.
Jeffro
I’m starting to think there’s a way out of this nightmare: just bribe the powers-that-be at Fox to bring on some guests who are big fans of Hari-kiri . Am I right or what? Genius!
Baud
At least it’s not boring.
Jeffro
We also need that last person to have an active case of Ebola, or measles at the very least.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Indeed we are living the Chinese curse of interesting times thanks to our media and voters who either stayed home or voted R.
Kirk
Some folks I trust are expecting some sort of Iranian action against US interests this week. More direct action, I mean, besides just closing the straits.
lowtechcyclist
@Elizabelle:
I’m not sure why ‘chifforobe’ is a funny word, but it is! I was in my late 30s before I ever heard the term, but courtesy of my wife, we’ve owned one for most of our marriage. It’s still a funny word. (See also ‘credenza.’)
And it somehow fits in perfectly with the rest of Sessions’ ancestor-worshipping name.
Hunter Gathers
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the Iranians were able to transport most of the enriched uranium that they had at Fordo somewhere else.
Trump is Bibi’s Bitch.
lowtechcyclist
@piratedan:
I’ve noticed for a while now that the GOP doesn’t really have a foreign policy to call its own. When Dems are in power, their stance on any foreign policy issue is whatever they can use as an excuse to attack Dems for their foreign policy. (Adding: The rest of the world doesn’t really matter to them, except as a source of opportunities to malign Dems when their policies don’t work out.) And when it comes to foreign policy issues where there is no available excuse of that sort, they have no policy, period.
Given that fundamental reality, it makes total sense that now that they’re in power, their foreign policy, if one can call it that, is whatever Trump can be persuaded to think at a given moment.
YY_Sima Qian
Who would thought we would miss Tucker Carlson on Fox News…
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: “Chifforobe” is hilarious. As is “armoire”. Like, I always picture guns in it. Arms in the armoire.
An old tweet about not joining the military for the signing bonus went viral (again) yesterday. I hope all the Smart Guys who deluded themselves into thinking FFOTUS was anti-war are paying attention!
Scout211
To Kill a Mockingbird was first published in 1960, the most notable reference to that word outside of the Old South.
YY_Sima Qian
Also, MSM’s (especially CNN’s) early coverage of Operation Rising Lion & Operation Midnight Hammer were enthusiastic verging on hagiographic, only now some realism creeping in.
Professor Bigfoot
I saved the latest podcast for today’s workout because it’s the right length and the first two were fascinating.
I didn’t make it through 10 minutes of this one.
I’m looking forward to the next one, though.
Dangerman
I see something about Trump’s desire for regime change. This rather reminds me of that cartoon on the blackboard i.e.:
1. Blow shit up
2. ?
3. Regime change!
YY_Sima Qian
Here is one (presumably reformist) Iranian voice under the current circumstances:
Jeffro
For most of them, it’s “give trumpov whatever he wants, count on the press to never call us out about it (like betraying Ukraine), and hope it doesn’t come back to bite us in the ass”, right?
oh, also: “every foreign policy problem in the world was created by Obama and made worse by Biden”…which (as you note) is not really a policy of their own, but an all-purpose excuse/whine generator
Elizabelle
@YY_Sima Qian: They sound like porn films.
Re Operation Rising Lion and Operation Midnight Hammer.
schrodingers_cat
OT I don’t remember who asked me about Darlymple’s Golden Road but it is not a solid work of scholarship, it tells Indians what they want to hear. I would avoid it. Its something that an erudite bhakt could have written.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
I can live an interesting life. And it’s easier to do so when the larger world is boring. One can make plans knowing that the structure of reality isn’t going to change in ways that undermine those plans.
I can understand that many normies need to have their tedium relieved, but that’s what movies, TV, and sportsball are for, dammit.
Maybe that’s not always enough for them, but I can at least understand that. What burns me is that well-off media types seem to need the world to go to hell in order to relieve their boredom, when they have more than enough money to do exciting things in their spare time. They can go fuck themselves.
Dangerman
@Kirk: A near certainty.
Not directly related, but I’d be getting on the next available flight out of Taiwan. I know we are supposed to be able to fight 2 wars at the same time but …
Betty Cracker
@Professor Bigfoot: Which podcast? Marshall’s or Cole’s? I’ve got the latest from both in queue, along with Rose’s. Tomorrow is a road trip (and long boring medical treatment) day, so I hope to catch up with all!
Leto
Betty: A White Nationalist Wrote a Law School Paper Promoting Racist Views. It Won Him an Award.
The University of Florida student won an academic honor after he argued in a paper that the Constitution applies only to white people. From there, the situation spiraled.
Kid seems to be following the Stephen Miller trajectory, so I expect we’re going to hear more of/about him on his upcoming white grievance tour.
Betty Cracker
@YY_Sima Qian: Wow, that comment is insightful. Thanks for sharing it.
...now I try to be amused
I think of an observation that 19th Century Britain, with its island position and naval supremacy, “could take as much or as little of the war as it chose.” I imagine US presidents think the same thing when they order air strikes.
prostratedragon
@Jeffro: Maybe whip up something evoking the eternal glory of the 47?
MazeDancer
Read that Musk actually believes he is living in a simulation. That many of the techno rich guys do. Because, otherwise, how would they be so lucky.
So, all we simuls, or whatever we be, are here for their benefit.
And it does not matter how they treat the world or its inhabitants.
I’m not so sure about the power of technology as I pray the power grid holds today. Torturous heat will not be less torturous without cooling.
YY_Sima Qian
Bombing targets associated w/ the regime, so regime change it is (but that is not achievable just from the air):
Warblewarble
Windowdressing. The conman in tRUMP knows the MAGA needs constant windowdressing ,to distract from republicans extreme and toxic agenda.
Bupalos
Great post as always BC!
The way in which Trump is almost perfectly manipulable – through his narcissism and permanently shifting dispositional states; through being a truly empty cracked vessel – is the key to how he creates nothing but chaos and dignity wraiths.
It has flip sides for ‘them’ and flip sides for ‘us.’ None of them can resist the svengalian lure, or even calm themselves sufficiently to recognize the inherent trap – there there is nothing that you can manipulate him into that isn’t just as likely to be reversed in short order by the dictates of narcissistic supply. And there you are, holding the bag, forced to destroy yourself by opposing yourself, or to be destroyed by the stampede of new svengalis that has turned around and is running right at you.
The good news here is that achieving chaos is essentially the limit of Trump’s competence. He can’t command a coherent project, not even ones that run more durably through his shifting dispositional states like ‘revenge’ or ‘racism.’ The bad news is that chaos is a destructive force on its own.
Professor Bigfoot
@Betty Cracker: Cole and Mr. Willis, who I do not support.
But now I’m gonna shock you all with my very own loud and angry anti-Democrat rant: after I dumped Personality Crisis (and since I was already on the treadmill and it just popped up) I opened Meidas Touch; and heard Senator Schiff essentially saying “it was right to strike Iran because they’re evil and mean, but he shoulda done it in consultation with Congress.”
MOTHERFUCKER, why the fuck could you not point out that had Trump not blown up the JCPOA (negotiated and signed by a Democratic President, you fucking idiot) that Iran would be on its way to becoming a responsible member of the community of nations; exploiting safe, peaceful nuclear power as should be the right of all peoples. But NOW the bloodthirsty, dumbass Republicans have given them EVERY FUCKING REASON to pursue nuclear weapons with a fucking vengeance! WHY are we still beefing with Iran over shit that happened 45 years ago? Fuck, we made peace with Viet Nam, did we not?
It is an immoral position, but worse, it is a stupid position
Edited to add— I specify Senator Schiff, but *he ain’t the only stupid MF Democrat on this issue.
Belafon
@Suzanne: A Spanish word for closet is armario. There’s a particular mental image I have of closets to help me remember the word.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
I agree with you, but be wary of clips. He might have made that point elsewhere in the interview.
I didn’t see this clip, but I’ve seen enough misleading ones to be wary of them.
Belafon
@Leto: “Thus, the creators of the Constitution didn’t create any method to update it as the country changed.”
tobie
I’ve had to take a break from the news because it’s so damn depressing but I am following politically-related stories at the moment. I came across this interview in the FT with computational linguist Emily Bender who makes a strong case that AI is a lot of hype, in her words “automation in a shiny wrapper.”
https://archive.ph/H4aZY
Given that AI is based on statistical models of language–word patterns it finds in the archive of digitized material–I’ve often wondered whether it would ever be able to produce paradigm shifts, or if it’s one “strength” is too turn us into formulaic users of language or, in Bender’s words, “stochastic parrots.” BJ gives me hope this is not the case.
Geminid
@Kirk: I’ve seen speculation that Iran might use their proxy forces in Iraq to strike US troops in in that country and in Syria. We have 2000 or so soldiers stationed in eastern Syria and western Iraq that have been there since 2013. This anti-Isis operation has kept a low profile.
There is also a military mission of around 500 troops based near Erbil, Iraq, which is the capital of the Kurdish Regional Government. That mission goes back to the First Gulf War.
The various forces have been consolidated to a few bases in recent days and new air defense systems brought in to defend them. They are still the most vulnerable of the 40,000 American service members stationed in the region.
Iraq has armed its proxies with drones and other weapons in anticipation of an attack. They themselves are vulnerable too, and the US is ready to pound them if they strike.
I expect the U.S. told Iran we’ll hold them responsible for their proxies’ acts, and they in fact would be because those folks don’t freelance.
So Iran has a tough choice. The whole point of threatening US forces was to deter a US attack on them. But what do you do when deterrence fails to deter? Their proxies can’t do much damage, but the US can.
YY_Sima Qian
I think the huge US base in Qatar has been emptied, so it makes a good target for Iran to make a symbolic retaliation.
Bupalos
@YY_Sima Qian: From the jump they’ve been degrading regime resources that have nothing to do with the nuclear program or defending the nuclear program, and the very open Israeli chatter – I mean, in every venue – assumes the goal is regime change.
Which, for my money, I think this will be the end of the current regime at least in the sense of massive turnover to an essentially new ruling elite. With no prediction about the nature of that transformation beyond it being practically guaranteed. The regime is largely detested within civil society, and regime competitors will not fail to take advantage of the loss of credibility that being quickly and easily degraded by Israel entails.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Belafon
@YY_Sima Qian: If Iran is smart, they won’t go for it. That’s blowing up the USS Maine type of symbolism.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Raven
@lowtechcyclist: Richard Pryor and Robin Willams To Kill a Mockingbird
https://youtu.be/IuUgS15JGPo?si=D8pWHAhuBiMWRudQ
rikyrah
Just wanted to thank everyone for their condolences. They were much appreciated.🙏🏽
mrmoshpotato
A fat, orange, fascist, Kremlin-humping shitstain who sucks dictator ass shouldn’t be trusted with jack shit.
-mrmoshpotato, 2025
YY_Sima Qian
The US State Dept. published the following global travel advisory, after Operation Midnight Hammer:
Downright Orwellian.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: This weekend the Jerusalem Post had an article by Amichai Stein that’s worth reading. I’ll post excerpts later, but the gist of it was that three Israeli officials said that the Iranian regime was assessed as not losing its grip on the country but in fact was tightening it.
I’m guessing these officials were not in the political echelon, but rather in the security services which tend to leak such information if they think the political echelon is lying more than usual.
Matt McIrvin
@Belafon: Unless they *want* a more devastating war against them, for the same reasons Trump and Netanyahu do. Getting your own people killed is a great way to rally them around the leadership.
gene108
@lowtechcyclist:
Republican foreign policy consists, and this goes back 30 or so years, of a few things.
1. Hatred of multilateral diplomacy. Multinational treaties, like the recent Law of the Sea Treaty cannot get Republican Senate votes, even though we ratified earlier versions, because such multinational treaties are believed to give away U.S. sovereignty to these multilateral organizations or agencies.
As an aside, Sen. Jesse Helms was crying about “getting us out of the U.N.”, in the late 1990’s. A lot of Republican voters embraced this thinking 25 years ago. The Bush, Jr. contempt for the U.N., and its processes came from what was becoming mainstream Republican foreign policy ideology in the 1990’s.
What we see now with Trump is a continuation of this thinking.
2. Might makes right. The U.S. is to first be feared, and then grudgingly respected. Fear of our military will keep the rest of the world in-line. This ties into the hatred of multilateral treaties and organizations. In the absence of thinking multilateral organizations, like the U.N., are legitimate, all that’s left is the projection of force to get our way.
3. Bilateral diplomacy must in outcomes clearly favorable to the U.S., even if the other party is worse off. This didn’t start with Trump. Bush, Jr. & Co. had this attitude towards North Korea, when they came into office. They wanted North Korea to buckle to their demands before engaging even a little bit with diplomacy. They changed after it failed and North Korea got nukes.
Trump is just a more extreme case of what became mainstream Republican foreign policy 25 years ago.
prostratedragon
Multiple choice:
A credenza is
karen gail
Just saw this:
Donald Trump orders Iran to be wiped from face of the Earth if they try to kill him
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: It’s a word I only heard from older Black folks when I was a mear yute… seeing it in Ol’ Massa Jeff’s name, well…😂
I occasionally will throw in a “davenport” reference, because isn’t that the kind of high end couch Sofa King would love?
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: I read Amichai Stein’s X thread on that topic, but have not read the JPost article.
I mean, I have not seen reports of rioting or demonstrations against theocratic regime, or mass desertion by the military, security services, the IRGC & the civil servants. Given the Pearl Harbor-like nature of Israel’s sudden attack, I think rallying around the flag is the natural instinct for the time being.
karen gail
When I saw that article about Trump and Iran all I could think was how soon before someone one (Bibi) decides that best way to get rid of Iran is to make Trump believe that shot or shots were suppose to kill him not wound him?
Omnes Omnibus
@prostratedragon: A credenza is something that you fax to Cole.
gene108
@schrodingers_cat:
Why do you think it’s not solid scholarship? I have not read it.
There has been increasing evidence of trade between Rome and India for the past several years to decades from excavations in India to other parts of the world.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: Qatar is the closest Iran has to a friend in the region, and that could inhibit an attack there. The reason the Qataris had the US clear out El Udeid airbase was to avoid an Iranian attack on their soil. And Iran might look chicken striking an empty US base when they could hit US forces in nearby Bahrain.
YY_Sima Qian
@Belafon: The Al Udeid vase is largely empty. If Iran dumps a few dozen SRBMs to hit the physical infrastructure as symbolic retaliation, I am not sure Trump will escalate.
Leto
@Belafon: which is why the quoted professors/administrator who continue on about, “setting aside personal feelings/morals for a well reasoned argument” fail in that regard. It’s not a well reasoned, intellectually sound argument. But that’s originalism in a nutshell.
Kirk
@Geminid:
Related to @Dangerman‘s point, I’m watching to see what comes out of China.
Iran does not officially provide LNG or crude to anyone significant. What appears to be happening is a shell game – a minor nation imports then exports the material. Malaysia (for the oil) is easy to track as it produces only a small fraction of what it exports.
So it’s estimated that 10-11% of China’s crude oil imports – or ~6% of total crude oil consumption – comes from Iran. That’s a big cut to manage.
LNG is fuzzier and ends up between 3 and 15% of total LNG consumption. Even at 3% it’s a hard to digest chunk.
So again, while Iran’s in the foreground we should keep a watch on China as well.
Or so I think, fwiw.
rusty
The market it up, of all things, after the bombing. I guess they expect Iran won’t retaliate. Paul Krugman described this as the vibes market, it seems disconnected from reality. Not expecting an Iranian response seems imprudent, but what do I know. Slowing economy, Iranian reaction, tariffs, farms losing workers, universities losing well paying students, you would think reality will eventually reassert itself.
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: As I said in the other thread: the whole media and political system is wired to push politicians to find some way to endorse this particular kind of attack, even if they’re opponents of the administration, even if they quibble about the details.
I got sucked in myself 20 years ago. Not interested in it any more.
...now I try to be amused
@gene108: Yep. Right-wingers overestimate hard power and underestimate soft power.
They Call Me Noni
If only he hadn’t turned his head ever so slightly on July 13, 2024.
Kirk
@prostratedragon:
5. The formal closure of a fiscal lending source.
The Thin Black Duke
@karen gail: Don’t give Bibi any ideas.
Matt McIrvin
@…now I try to be amused: It’s right there in the name. Do you want to be a HARD man or a SOFT man? It’s daddy party time! Watch me hit myself in the head with a hammer!
gene108
@Professor Bigfoot:
1. The hostage crisis was embarrassing.
2. Our
alliancesubservience to Israel and the Israeli lobby demands it.Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: FAIR POINT, and I thank you for it.
I’ve long been the one who’s always saying “be cynical and distrustful of the ‘news’ you consume, because the bastards lie!”
Nonetheless… we are morally and tactically correct, this should never have happened.
ExPatExDem
I saw that Clown Prince of Bethesda, MD, Reza Pahlavi has graciously offered to become the new Shah of Iran.
We really are in the stupidest timeline.
RevRick
@YY_Sima Qian: Iran is in certain, frightening ways what a significant chunk of our populace hope we will become, only the “Evangelical “ fundamentalist version. The theocracy in Iran is very much a rural-based system rooted in tribalism, suspicion and resentment. And it sits atop an alienated urban society that would love to be free of all that, but has every reason to fear spasms of violence rending the Iranian nation. And this urban society definitely does not want a foreign power stepping in, because that invites God knows what? Iran has had a proud, independent identity for 3,000 years, interrupted only occasionally by the machinations of foreign powers. The Arabs may have changed the outward form of their religion from Zoroastrianism to Islam ( and because of Zoroastrian theology it was perhaps inevitable that it would take the Shiite version), but they didn’t obliterate Iranian culture.
An act of war is an act of war, no matter how much JD insists otherwise. And this was not a preemptive attack, which can be somewhat justified in international law. No, it was a preventive war, which can never be justified. And as one of the Founders noted, allowing a President to undertake such military action is a surefire formula for tyranny, because you can always concoct theoreticals of some future threat at some vague time.
Geminid
@Kirk: Another aspect to this situation: Iran needs the money from those oil and gas sales as much as China needs those fuels, maybe even more. And if they try to block the Strait they’ll have a whole new war on their hands when they’re hard-pressed fighting the one they’re already in.
Professor Bigfoot
@Geminid: From YY Sima Qian’s comment above, it might be that the Iranian people have tightened their connection to the regime because of the
potentialprobable horrors of “regime change.”YY_Sima Qian
@Professor Bigfoot: This latest war has divided Dems & MAGAs politicians both. However, majorities of both Dem & Republicans leaning voters were against US involvement in the Israeli-Iranian War, overwhelming majority in the case of Dem voters, at least before Operation Midnight Hammer.
Other than AIPAC & certain rich donors, I honestly don’t know which voter group the Dem pols who pronounced support for the strikes are pandering to, & on this most serious of subjects. Utterly disappointing coming from Adam Schiff.
Also, lest we forget, GWB scuttled the Agreed Framework that Clinton had negotiated w/ North Korea to stall the latter’s nuclear program. Two decades later, the world has to confront the reality of an entrenched nuclear state in North Korea, that is both a rogue on the international stage & highly focused on regime preservation.
Harrison Wesley
@RevRick: Iranians know very well what foreign intervention does. US and Britain gave them the Shah.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@rusty:
Some “expert from our rolodex” on either CNN or MSNBC over the weekend had a different take on this from what’s being blathered far and wide.
He indicated a better Iranian *strategic* response would mirror what both India and Pakistan did when developing their nukes: go quiet. Buy enough time by not escalating (and thus giving Hair Furor more incentive to retaliate other than what he gets from being Bibi’s Bitch) to develop a working weapon, then reveal that.
I’m not doing what the guy said justice in terms of nuance so I’m sure people will say any comparison to India/Pak nuke development is inaccurate. His point was if Iran really is working on this, and is close enough, they see what strategic value having one might have, thus, they simply proverbially “grin and bear it” vis a vis the US air strikes, hope the Israeli’s reach some operational pause in their air campaign and toil away at a working weapon somewhere.
Professor Bigfoot
@YY_Sima Qian: “Those who do not study history, etc etc…”
Layer8Problem
@rikyrah: Let me offer my condolences as well, belatedly.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: And Trump isn’t old.
ExPatExDem
I also saw a Newsweek article that the uranium was almost certainly removed prior to the airstrike.
Satellite photos from June 19 show a fleet of 16 cargo trucks roll up to Fordow and then leave the following day.
Link
So the airstrike was largely Kabuki.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, it’s depressing but true.
And as far as the US goes, it’s Republicans.
karen gail
@The Thin Black Duke: I wouldn’t be surprised if Bibi took Trump’s words as a go ahead to put plan in motion; after he laughed himself silly.
He has been playing on Trump’s fears and gotten him to drop bombs.
Chief Oshkosh
@Hunter Gathers: And I’ll go all the way out to the last tendril of that branch and posit that the reason the Iranians moved all the goods and people away from the targets is that they knew exactly when and where the bombs were going to fall and that they knew this because Trump’s NatSec dolts are still using insecure communications.
YY_Sima Qian
@Kirk:
@Geminid:
Oil is a fungible commodity, taking Iran off line will raise the price for all purchasers of oil on the open market. The PRC takes a financial hit because the it has been purchasing Iranian oil at a steep discount, & w/o Iranian competition the Russian oil will not be so steeply discounted, either. That’s about it, the PRC can always go back to purchasing Venezuelan, Angolan & Sudanese oil.
Furthermore, the PRC has recently inaugurated a rail link to Iran, through Central Asia. That can serve as a limited conduit for Iranian oil. Finally, PRC’s overall oil import has peaked, due to the rapid electrification of transportation, & the PRC does not use oil (& little NG) for power generation.
Iran is not a significant LNG exporter despite sitting on the world’s 2nd largest NG reserves (after Russia), due to lack of LNG infrastructure & expertise, hampered by the decades of sanctions.
ExPatExDem
@Chief Oshkosh: I had thought of that possibility also, but it could also be just basic deductive reasoning.
Trump spent days telegraphing upcoming US involvement, so Iran decided to act preemptively (no pun intended).
OTOH, I wouldn’t be surprised if all of the plans got stove piped to Moscow and passed on to Tehran.
Bupalos
I think I’ve detected a flaw here.
I’m totally on the side of this being a really bad idea for both Israel and the United States, for democracy, for international law, for a lot of things that still matter. But as we see the “Iran would be peaceful and if you left them alone they would build peaceful nuclear reactors and in time join the community of nations (that no longer meaningfully exists) it’s worth a couple reminders… that unfortunately you’ll be seeing a bunch from the right:
Well not this part: This is a regime that fairly closely resembles our rural vs urban, MAGA vs the world thing we’ve got going- only on crack with exponentially more messianic insanity. They literally run a public doomsday clock counting down to the destruction of Israel. Or did, until Israel bombed it. There’s no need to make fools of ourselves with binaries here. The Nuclear deal Trump ripped up was our best angle to slow weapon development, and was a bet that delay would be sufficient and the regime would transform over time. It wasn’t a “no problem” kind of thing, and one of the reasons Iran has a lot of material that is on the threshold of weaponization is because the JPCOA plays along with the fiction that Iran is just really really interested in heavily investing in future nuclear power, even though that makes absolutely zero sense for them from any perspective. Delay was still likely our best bet, but there are also good reasons to think the kind of belief JPCOA invested in “arc of history” type thinking deserves a little more stink eye these days as we watch things slip-sliding away.
Anyway, imagine an America 20 years in the future where the rurals have fully taken over the government, police the country entirely and only with ICE thugs that Trump pardoned, that run a countdown clock in Times Square to when we’ll destroy our main enemy Gay Europe. As we pour half the GDP into some super satellite plasma ray from Space X that can evaporate cities in 5 seconds but which we really want because it can also… I dunno… charge EV’s quicker?
None of this means Trump did this for any reasons that aren’t very personal to his mental illness. We just shouldn’t fall into the trap of losing reality just because we’re within his distortion field where he makes everyone stupider.
Sure Lurkalot
@YY_Sima Qian:
For certain and none to few persons, it is not safe to be out and about in this here land of the free.
p.a.
I’m sure dropping bombs and making unspecified internet threats are sufficient to get any nation to institute governments sympathetic to the bomb-droppers and threateners…
Operation Mushroom Dick!
🤢
YY_Sima Qian
@ExPatExDem: Reza Pahlavi’s grandfather seized the throne in a coup d’état w/ the help of the British, his father was installed by the British & the Soviets (deposing his grandfather) & seized power via a coup d’état backed by the British & the Americans. The grandson being installed by the US & Israel would be adhering family tradition, & just as likely to end as ignominiously (mostly likely far more fleetingly).
Bupalos
@RevRick: Very well put.
Citizen Dave
@tobie: Excellent post–will read this linked doc later. I’ve been wondering the same thing about AI all along. It dominates the electricity regulation world…
Regarding the grid(s), so far they are performing very well in the heat wave. Current conditions across the continental US: https://www.gridstatus.io/live
Remember the grid operators (and utilities in non-RTO areas) use the last step of rotating blackouts (load shed) to preserve the integrity of the rest of the grid. We never want large regions to go completely out.
Gvg
@rusty: if it’s already priced in, this won’t and shouldn’t change much. Europe saw Trump coming the second time and most countries seem to have made plans for an unstable US. In addition everyone experienced problems from extended overly elaborate supply chains from Covid, and tried to simplify and regain control of essentials. This was companies as much as countries. It wasn’t even, some did it better than others etc. However I think they have done what they could. Also TACO has a short attention span and does tend to chicken out. Iran may try to bore him out of this war.
We need agents embedded in Fox News to slant trumps policy, and slant his viewers too. How could we manipulate them usefully? Blatant antiGOP wouldn’t work.
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: Since the TV talking heads love war video and there’s going to be a full-court press to build support, Schiff probably figures he’s getting ahead of the consensus of next month.
Papa Boyle
Vance claiming that that the U.S. isn’t at war with Iran but only at war with Iran’s nuclear program takes me back to the days when my older sisters claimed they weren’t fighting me but only fighting with the part of the body they were nurpling.
taumaturgo
What else besides AIPAC money is behind the top democratic leadership warmongering and siding with trump and maga?
ExPatExDem
@YY_Sima Qian: The Iranian diaspora shares the same delusion as Cuba’s, that all of the folks back home are pining for them to come back and run the place.
Matt McIrvin
@Papa Boyle: sounds like he’s not talking to Trump.
Professor Bigfoot
@Chief Oshkosh:
Is it irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to!
chris
@Raven: How on god’s green earth have I never seen that???..LOL Woooo boy…
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: So we are bombing political prisoners in Iran. That is so typically Trumpian.
YY_Sima Qian
@Bupalos: If the theocratic regime in Iran really wanted nukes, they would have gotten nukes by now (see North Korea). Instead, it flirts w/ being a threshold state & tries to gain leverage from that ambiguous status. It does not want the isolation of North Korea or Saddam era Iraq. The main factions of the regime: the theocrats, the IRGC & the technocrats, most of them are not millenarians intent on committing murder-suicide against Israel, & thus bringing the end of the Persian civilization, as well.
It has employed Hezbollah, Hamas & Shi’ite militias in Iraq to exert influence in the region & to serve as deterrence bulwark vis-à-vis Israel, in the absence of nukes that Israel has, all for naught as it turned out. Iran has not employed the “Axis of Resistance” to threaten the viability of the State of Israel, which it is incapable of doing unilaterally given that Israel is an undeclared nuclear state enjoying massive economic/technological/military superiority, & whose survival is guaranteed by the US & the European powers.
Lyrebird
@YY_Sima Qian: The amount of ignorance being shown by ANY US (or other) govt ofiical who can propose any sort of “regime change” about Iran is blinding. Sickening.
I often differ in opinion with you, so I want to triple underline my “YES! THIS!” here.
Thanks also for posting the reformist in ths @YY_Sima Qian:
ETA: and thanks @Geminid: for as ever bringing useful facts and perspectives.
prostratedragon
@Omnes Omnibus, @Kirk:
Well, I’d say we’re certainly getting that word under control!
Btw, it’s seven singers.
ExPatExDem
Has anyone else contemplated that if a boots on the ground invasion of Iran happens, the draft will almost certainly follow.
Iran is more than double the size of Iraq and has about 3.5 times the 2003 population of Iraq. At its peak, there were a bit more than 200,000 boots on the ground in Iraq (170,000 US + 30,000 other nations). Iran would be a 500,000+ operation.
The US Army has about 449,000 TOTAL active duty personnel at present.
Soprano2
@YY_Sima Qian: They always do that with any kind of military operation. I think they’re easily impressed by bombs dropping; it’s only later that they total up the cost and then decide whether they think it was worth it.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: Inexcusable given the topic & the moment in US history. I have generally liked Adam Schiff.
Steve LaBonne
@YY_Sima Qian: And we just taught them that they really need to go ahead and actually produce bombs as quickly as possible. Another US foreign policy triumph! Also we taught a lot of other countries that their sovereignty is a delusion unless they get their own nukes.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: Iran’s utilization of its natuaral gas reserves has also been hampered by diversion of its oil revenues into building its “Axis of Resistance,” a large offensive ballistic missile capabilty, and a nuclear weapons program it never really needed to begin.
I remember when President Raisi’s helicopter crashed last year, and Iran’s supporters cried poor about the sanctions that keep Iran from buying spare parts. But when I look at one of those advanced centrifuges they like show off, I see the skill and resources to fabricate plenty of spare helicopter parts. They probably do that already. What’s Bell Helicopters gonna do about it? Sue them?
But my scepticism about that government’s choices doesn’t really matter. It’s the appraisal by Iran’s citizens that will. They see the results of one bad choice already: instead of investing resources in air defense, the regime invested them in an offensive missile capability that was intended as a deterrent but failed to deter. Now they’ve got Israeli jets and drones flying overhead with impunity.
They already saw the vaunted Axis of Resistance collapse last year. That was a real blow to the regime’s prestige. And it’s a well-known fact that a lot of their money that was spent on these projects ended up in the pockets of regime leaders and their famililies.
Professor Bigfoot
@Soprano2: I’m reminded of my coworkers enthusiasm for the Iraq war… they were not going to listen to any kind of reason or logic, they really did want to an excuse to go bomb some brown people.
I believe that’s MOST American white dudes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
YY_Sima Qian
@ExPatExDem: The US is not planning to occupy Iran. At least Colin Powell believed that “you break it, you’ve bought it”. The MAGA gang believes they can just “break it”, & thinks the blow back will never reach the shores of the US.
Gvg
@Leto: you are behind. We discussed that, I think a few days ago. He wrote that awhile ago and has now been “trespassed” from UF for 3 years which means he can’t set foot on campus. It has to do with threats to Jews and specifically a Jewish faculty member. He escalated after writing that paper. The professor that awarded it was a new one with connections to white nationalists also. From the timeline I think it was when the GOP Senator was UF’s President and DeSantis was running for President and controls UF’s board of regents. The reasons for the trespass order have not been revealed officially but the threats were public. The extreme republicans long term control of the board of regents for all the state schools and the funding cuts they are implementing even for quiet schools and punishment cuts for smart schools is the problem.
Legally I don’t see a way out until the voters want one because I think this group of politicians thinks their voters won’t care if the best schools in the state loose accreditation, so they really might fire whole administrations and replace them with crooked incompetent yes men. Florida really does have that much control of the state schools. They never used the control this way before because they wanted good schools. Voters did too.
ExPatExDem
@YY_Sima Qian: I think Trump fancies himself a “great man of history” and if he decides he wants to invade Iran, the gelded GOP will follow without a squeak of opposition.
YY_Sima Qian
@Lyrebird: Huh, I don’t recall that we’ve ever argued in these comment sections. I supposed they are opinions related to Biden & the elected Dems?
zhena gogolia
Great. 100 degrees and our power just went out.
Professor Bigfoot
@ExPatExDem: I completely agree except for one thing- those bastards aren’t gelded, they’re un-inidicted co-conspirators.
Every last one of them.
Geminid
@ExPatExDem: I’ve contemplated the challenges of invading a nation almost four times the size of California, with a decent industrial base and an educated populace.
My conclusion: no one is gonna invade Iran. If there is a war it will be an air war.
ExPatExDem
@Professor Bigfoot: We’re in the final stage of fascism.
Criminalization of opposition at home/violent expansionism abroad.
karen gail
@ExPatExDem: Just ask Trump; he is greatest, the most intelligent, the best looking President and leader of the world. He admitted that he didn’t believe the intelligence experts but went with his feelings.
For years Bibi has been using Trump’s fears and insecurities to get what Bibi wants even if it isn’t good for the people who are innocents being bombed. Bibi also played Biden to the point US has continued to supply weaponry to destroy Gaza and the Palestinian peoples.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Stay safe.
Marc
@Bupalos: I’ll suggest that from a diplomatic point of view, we now live in a reality where the leadership of Iran is more trustworthy than those of the US and Israel.
Steve LaBonne
@zhena gogolia: Please do whatever you need to to stay safe.
Professor Bigfoot
@zhena gogolia: good luck! Hopefully you’ve got a little shade and a little breeze somewhere; and of course lots of water/gatorade/pedialyte (and maybe some lemonade in there, too)
So far so good here… but I wouldn’t be surprised to lose power either.
Good luck to all of us.
ExPatExDem
@Geminid: I would agree if we were dealing with rational actors.
I think the Pentagon would desperately try to talk him out of it, but whether he followed their advice is another matter.
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: As someone with desert experience….. can I recommend you head to a local shopping mall? Enjoy the AC, get a nice cold smoothie, walk around.
Those midsummer power outages are no joke!
Betty Cracker
@Gvg: Avoiding escalation in hopes that Trump gets bored and wanders off to the next potential ego-stroke is probably the Iranian regime’s best bet. Of course, Netanyahu will have the opposite goal, and while he’s as evil as Trump, he doesn’t seem half as obtuse or unfocused. So he’ll do what he can to stoke the fire and drag us into the conflagration. I wouldn’t put anything past him or the evangelical Christian Zionists dispersed across the administration and party, like Huckabee.
Steve LaBonne
@ExPatExDem: They probably don’t have any contingency plans for an invasion because it’s so obviously insane and hopeless. Which might buy them some time to drag their feet.
Professor Bigfoot
@Geminid: Just pure geography is daunting, if you wanna invade Persia.
It would be almost as stupid as someone invading CONUS. Maybe stupider.
Which of course means that stupid guy would order it; and gods help us, it would be a legal order.
trollhattan
Runner Girl preparing to fly home from Japan. She left a nation not at war and returns to one with the war switch flipped to ON. I presume customs will be no big deal but if they grab her phone and look at her socials, “Suspect as hell” will probably pop right up. Last time our French “daughter” came they pulled her aside for questioning on account of her passport having a bunch of stamps for Tunisia, where her grandparents happen to live. You know those suspicious French teen Islamists and their crafty ways.
IDK if she leaves yesterday or tomorrow or what. Mom’s picking her up and should be able to figure out the right day.
Professor Bigfoot
@ExPatExDem: Not yet.
The final stage of fascism involves ethnic cleansing and mass murder.
catclub
US voters and non-voters.
trollhattan
Memo to New York: settle the fuck down. You do NOT need this mess and especially do not do any Donny Big Ideas. Talk about a fucking boat anchor.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
ExPatExDem
@Professor Bigfoot: Yes, you’re right.
I don’t imagine the red hats would be bothered at all by marching “illegals” to a gas chamber.
ICE has already become the American Gestapo.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
The Pentagon probably has contingency plans for every scenario. But probably nothing newly drawn up.
catclub
@Gvg:
Nonetheless, for _their_ survival in control of Iran they have to be seen to respond. Not necessarily immediately.
tam1MI
@karen gail: Bibi has a sterling track record of getting what he wants from US administrations regardless of who is in charge and has been doing it since long before Biden or Trump.
Let us also not forget how he played the Gaza protestors into utter uselessness.
Shalimar
@Elizabelle: Jeff Sessions is my step-dad’s 1st cousin. My mom also wrote Alabama governor Fob James’ autobiography. When I was in high school, because she knew I was very knowledgeable about history and the Civil War, mom asked me to write short biographies of the generals Forrest Hood James was named after so she could show it to him. After reading what I thought of the two of them, she never even asked me to do Jefferson Beauregard Sessions.
ExPatExDem
@Baud: Franco didn’t lose badly.
catclub
@trollhattan: I have seen lots of things claiming a new nuclear age is coming. A lot of it says thorium, another large part is … fusion!
I am not convinced any of it can be done more economically than wind and solar.
Baud
@ExPatExDem:
He’s still dead.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: May God/the Universe/the Force/FSM send it. ✊🏾
Baud
Some good news
Geminid
@Geminid: That should have read, “…an educated populace of *90 million*.”
ExPatExDem
@Steve LaBonne: The largest war game simulation of an Iran invasion was in 2002 and projected at least 20,000 U.S. forces KIA if the real thing took place.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: I don’t disagree, but the Israeli & US attacks have merely served to suppress & sideline any such domestic discontent for a while.
I drew the parallel to late Qing Empire before. I can also draw a parallel to pre-WW II Republic of China. The KMT regime under Chiang Kai-Shek that ruled the ROC was harshly authoritarian, corrupt, incompetent, relatively weak, & did not have de facto control over much of the de jure ROC territory, hence powerful regional warlords & the mounting Communist insurgency. However, when Imperial Japan massively escalated the invasion of China in 1937, the disparate forces in China drew together to fight against the foreign invaders, & Chiang’s regime gained a great deal of legitimacy & support from across the political spectrum (from leftists to liberals to conservatives to de facto fascists). It even secured a temporary alliance w/ the Chinese Communists.
China still suffered from a lack of cohesion, & the KMT-CCP alliance quickly fell apart over control of territories, but there was no civil war or rebellion as long as Imperial Japan occupied Chinese lands. The KMT regime did not become more pluralistic, less corrupt, more competent, or stronger, during the war years. Nonetheless, Chiang’s position as the legitimate ruler of the ROC lasted until the end of WW II, & the Chinese Civil War did not resume until after that.
If anyone wants to see the Iranian people overthrow the theocratic regime, foreign military attack/intervention under whatever guise is the last thing that should happen.
Renie
The orange blob doesn’t realize or probably not care he has created a new generation of terrorists who can attack us on American soil.
ExPatExDem
@Baud: After a 36 year reign of terror and dying peacefully at La Paz hospital.
Geminid
@tam1MI: I thought those Gaza protesters played themselves into uselessness.
Professor Bigfoot
@ExPatExDem: “The moral is to the physical as three is to one.”
How profoundly motivated will be every single Iranian citizen on being invaded by the Great Satan?
THEN add in Iran’s geography— mountains and deserts— and it gets real shitty real quick.
Another reason why I wouldn’t put it past that marigold MF.
catclub
@Geminid: I wish the US had an educated populace of 90 Million.
Sure Lurkalot
You’ll never believe who published this:
Poor Pitchbot, parodying a parody.
lowtechcyclist
@gene108:
What you list are tools that they will or won’t use in service to a foreign policy. They still don’t have a foreign policy in any meaningful sense.
Professor Bigfoot
@YY_Sima Qian:
QFT.
And another reason why I wouldn’t put it past this moronic regime to do exactly that.
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus:
I still enjoy the music of Credenza Clearwater Revival.
Deputinize America
I’m gonna have some stickers printed to slap onto the $7 per gallon gas pumps, astronomically priced meat counters and various grocery shelves saying “Israel Tax – Trump did that”.
Tie them together like conjoined twins.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: Yes, there will be no popular uprising so long as Iran is under attack. The danger point for the regime will come in the months following the end of this war.
And the Islamic Republic still has a substantial base of support, so its leaders are not going to give up easily. A successful revolt will probably require defections from among the security forces.
YY_Sima Qian
@sab: Speaking of which (link to the Guardian article below):
Deputinize America
@Renie:
Shit, at this point, we not only deserve it, we need it.
Deputinize America
@tam1MI:
I blame the Israeli voting population. They’ve enabled him and can claim innocence and opposition all they want, but as far as I’m concerned, they’re feckless assholes. Netanyahu has been costing us diplomacy and money for 30 years – in the universe of James Bond, Bond would have taken him out by now as a threat to world stability and peace.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Doctors describe his condition as “stable.”
tam1MI
@Geminid: I thought those Gaza protesters played themselves into uselessness.
Six of one, half a dozen of another. Either way they were the most useful idiots Bibi ever had.
ExPatExDem
@Professor Bigfoot: And as someone pointed out previously, for the ones who aren’t religiously motivated, they can see that every MENA nation “liberated” by the US descends into chaos, civil war, or more authoritarian rule shortly thereafter.
rusty
@RevRick: I would add that the majority of Iranians see themselves as Persian, not Arab (which is some of the tension with other mid-east nations, not only different forms of Islam but also cultural differences). At the time of the second Iraq war I had an Islamic Arab colleague. After the fall of Iraq there was talk of Iran next. My colleague’s view was that the Iranians would be much tougher because they saw themselves as Persian and were more culturally together. I have zero expertise on any of this, but I would like the US to avoid the stupidity of the Afghan and Iraq wars where we didn’t even understand the differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Sadly this administration is even more resistant to expertise, so we are likely to make even more errors of not understanding the other side.
YY_Sima Qian
Whatever the PRC’s current exposure to ME oil/gas, it does not intend to stay that way:
PatD
@Bupalos: I think the most likely replacement for the ruling clergy (there a lot of ayatollahs, some higher ranking than others) is likely a military junta. They are the ones with guns and Israel is not capable of putting troops on the ground. Regime change isn’t quite as simple as they make it sound.
YY_Sima Qian
@rusty: Cultural, religious & historical: various Persian Empires ruled vast swathes of Arab lands, & the Abbasid Empire conquered all of Persia. Then there is the Iran-Iraq War more recently (where all of the Sunni Arab states, most of the West, & the USSR all supported Saddam, & only the PRC was selling weapons to both sides), & the Iranian support for Shi’ite or Shi’ite adjacent groups in Sunni majority countries.
Deputinize America
@YY_Sima Qian:
The future – the second half of the 21st century – will be driven by decisions made in Beijing…
Professor Bigfoot
@Deputinize America: Americans* are too stupid and short sighted to connect those dots.
Always have been; may the day come when they aren’t.
Elizabelle
@Shalimar: Great story. Wow.
YY_Sima Qian
@PatD: Israel will be just fine w/ a military junta in Iran. It had decent relations w/ the Pahlavi regime in Iran, the various military juntas in Türkiye, & the military junta in Egypt (post-Camp David Accords). Israel does not care about democracy or human rights in the region, Israel is out to safeguard the “Jewish Homeland” (to the exclusion of the Palestinians under its occupation), & now asserting a regional hegemony.
Professor Bigfoot
@Deputinize America: Just like I blame the American* voting population.
Deputinize America
@PatD:
I had to laugh when the halfwit son of Pahlavi stuck his head out of the hole.
Deputinize America
@Professor Bigfoot: We deserve it.
Professor Bigfoot
@ExPatExDem: The devil they know versus the ones they’ve seen unleashed on their neighbors.
They are only rational to expect the worst from any kind of “regime change.”
Given time I believe there would have been “regime change,” peacefully and entirely from within— but that’s been put off by decades, now.
Edited for clarity
trollhattan
@lowtechcyclist:
There’s a bathroom on the right.
Soprano2
@Professor Bigfoot: I listened to the podcast. What makes me crazy is that it seems to me that there’s an easy explanation for why elected Democrats behave the way they do and say the things they say – they’re desperate to get back the votes of white men, who they STILL regard as the “average, regular” voter. They want the votes and approval of white men, so they change their message and language in an effort to appeal to that demographic. I think that’s about 90% of it. They aren’t “captured by the machine” unless you’re talking about the press machine that still tells us the only votes that truly matter are those of white men.
PatD
@YY_Sima Qian: yes, but you can’t discount that Shia clerics will continue to have influence. It’s a theocratic regime. It’s not like Egypt’s military which has encouraged hostility and oppression towards political Islam for decades. You don’t become secular overnight.
YY_Sima Qian
@Deputinize America: Nah, DC, Brussels, New Dehli, even Moscow Brasilia, Jakarta will still carry a lot of weight (assuming the US, the EU & the Russian Federation don’t just fall apart, prospects we can no longe take for granted). Tokyo, Seoul, Hanoi, Kuala Lumpur, Islamabad, Tehran, Ankara, Riyadh, Cairo, Abuja, Addis Ababa, & Pretoria will all have their say, too.
I can’t foresee another unipolar moment.
O. Felix Culpa
@Soprano2:
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!
PatD
@Deputinize America: Yeah, that was especially pathetic.
Professor Bigfoot
@Soprano2: YOU SEE IT.
Belafon
@Deputinize America: When I post things Trump or Republicans are trying to do to Facebook, like cut Medicare, I make sure to point them out. When ICE deports people, or we bomb Iran, I say “We”.
Betty
Getting here late, but I want to say this post is deserving of publication in the NYT and newspapers everywhere. It lays out the reality clearly and ought to serve as notice to the apolitical that they better wake up.
oldgold
It looks like Iran is going after our military base in Qatar.
oldgold
Reports that missiles are in the air.
Geminid
@Deputinize America: The November, 2022 election that put Netanyahu back in power was basically 50-50 pro- to anti-Netanyahu. Two opposition parties failed to clear the 3.25% threshold for Knesset representation, and that opened to door for Netanyahu’s return.
So I’d say those Israeli opposition members you sneer at are are as much feckless assholes as you, me and the people here who voted for Hilary Clinton and Kamala Harris.
artem1s
@karen gail:
Only Donnie Dollhands has to worry about what the US military response would be if another country assassinates. Even with an EO, I’m betting in this instance the majority of the military (and all non-MAGAts) would be sending ‘thank you’ gifts.
tobie
@YY_Sima Qian: Would you make any distinction between Israelis and their government? You have no problem separating Gazans from Hamas. If you paid any attention to Israeli political dynamics, rather than treating them as a bloodthirsty monolith, you might realize that Netanyahu launched this war because it looked like some of the religious parties were going to bolt from his coalition, forcing new elections. No one feels more betrayed by Netanyahu than many members of the Israeli public.
The Iranian reformist you quoted talked about the trap that I hear from many Israelis, secular and religious alike. They’re threatened from without and from within.
YY_Sima Qian
@oldgold: 6 – 10 missiles at the largely empty Al Udeid, unknown number at US bases in Iraq. Could be more on the performative end of Iranian retaliations. We can only hope.
Captain C
@prostratedragon: A long solo/lead passage, often at least partially improvised, in a Baroque music piece. eg. “That oboist really nailed the credenza of that concerto. Much better than last week’s violinist, who was all over the place.”
Omnes Omnibus
@lowtechcyclist: Seriously, no one remembers the balloon boy thread? I know things are rough right now, but still…
trollhattan
Cool science is cool. The Ruben Observatory is on line.
https://rubinobservatory.org/
History’s largest camera will survey space to the highest detail yet over the next decade.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
No one got that Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead. The fascists have won.
Baud
@YY_Sima Qian:
Why can’t performative displays involve some type of dance off?
Bupalos
@Professor Bigfoot: This is a standard kind of dynamic, but I think a lot of folks misunderestimate the degree to which there is simply no way to truly reattach the urban core to the fundamentalist regime. I mean, try to imagine yourself finding nationalist unity with Trump. After he had your wife beaten for attending a pro-choice march and murdered a couple of your cousins.
That clip that YY brings is an eloquent description of the situation the bulk of Iranians find themselves in. They aren’t going to take any kind of risk to defend the regime, but they also aren’t necessarily going to take any kind of risk whereby they inherit the wind.
Captain C
@gene108: Also, we had chances in 2001 and 2003 when Khatami offered us basically everything we wanted except regime change and Bush the Lesser and his crew of greedy incompetents said, basically, “nah, we’ll get rid of you when we do you after Iraq.”
Still one of the greatest missed diplomatic opportunities since the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Sure Lurkalot: That’s why when I left the US after my convalescence had progressed enough to allow me to, I referred to leaving the US and returning to the Free World.
trollhattan
@YY_Sima Qian: They did that one-off thing during Trump 1.0 after he did the assassination. Bunch of our guys at the targeted base got concussions but no fatalities and no further strikes.
Guess we’ll know soon enough if it’s the same response level. Iran has severely attrited offensive capability now after lobbing so many at Israel and at the same time having so many systems destroyed.
YY_Sima Qian
@tobie: Of course I do. However, Netanyahu leads the internationally recognized legitimate government of Israel, & the entire national security apparatus of the State of Israel is waging war on Iran & Gaza. So I will use “Israel” just as I use “Iran”, “the US”, “the PRC”, “the EU”, etc.
Yes, there are a lot of domestic opposition to Bibi, but until the Israeli voters overthrow the Bibi & the reactionary regime it leads, Bibi’s policies represents Israeli policies on the international stage, just as Trump policies represents US policies. Furthermore, on the topics of oppressing Palestinian rights, seizing Palestinian lands, asserting regional military hegemony for “absolute security”, that has far greater support in Israel than just Bibi’s followers. Not all Israelis surely, but mainstream Israeli politicians? I’d say yes based on the pronouncement from Bibi’s political enemies (such as Yoav Gallant & Neftali Bennet) & even the so called moderates (such as Yair Lapid).
Danielx
What she says.
Baud
Sigh.
Captain C
@YY_Sima Qian: If they actually managed to install a new Pahlavi Shah, I suspect it would turn out like it did for Emperor Maximillian of Mexico, possibly quicker.
Bupalos
@Soprano2: I’ll agree with this a bit, though from a different angle. Just as Trump’s growth market turned out to be the groups Republicans had the most problem with before he initiated a realignment (in order – less educated, poor, hispanic, and black voters) white men (without a college degree) are really the only identity growth market Dems have available. People here will moralize this. It’s just regular tactical politics. You need more votes, you have to go get the people not voting for you. It’s that simple. Trump did it.
Geminid
@rusty: I was a little surprised when I learned that only 60% of Iranians are Persian. About 25% are Azeri, 10% are Kurdish, and there are a few smaller minorities including the Baluchis in the Southeast. There are more Azeris in Iran than there are in Azerbaijan.
Azeris are well represented in the Islamic Republic’s leadership. In fact, Sureme Leader Khameini and President Pezeshkian are Azeri.
For all the ethnic diversity, Iran has been a cohesive nation for most of the last 2500 years. It’s borders are relatively secure with large stretches of mountains and seacoast. So I think no matter what government controls the state, the current borders will remain intact.
Captain C
@Baud: Nice to see they name their operations as unsubtly as we do.
I miss the days where we would have a major, well-thought out attack plan, and it would be something innocuous like “Operation Cornfield” or “Operation Waffle” or suchlike.
(Though it would be better not to do any of that in the first place, naturally.)
Danielx
@Hunter Gathers:
And Putin’s, and…
YY_Sima Qian
@trollhattan: Iran has been using MRBMs against Israel, for the Gulf States & Iraq it can dip into its even more extensive SRBM inventory. IIRC, many of Iran’s MRBMs are liquid fueled, requiring > 1 hr to fuel before launch, during which the TELs are vulnerable to detection & destruction. I think most of Iran’s SRBMs are solid field that takes only minutes to launch, so can shoot & scoot. Iran also has a lot more drones that can reach across the Persian Gulf & into Iraq, far more than it can launch at Israel.
Lyrebird
@YY_Sima Qian: Probably as you say.
and ETA: all of what @tobie: said.
ETA: We have extended relatives in China, not super close but we care and can’t always be in touch with them. So, FWIW you also probably won’t recall bc I didn’t want to repeat myself, but I thank you many times over for the efforts you went to posting pandemic data from over that big pond.
Professor Bigfoot
@Geminid: The enemy quite literally gets a feckin’ vote, don’t they?
Bupalos
@PatD: I think regime change is highly likely and “easy” in the sense that something likely to happen on it’s own at this point is easy.
Now regime change that serves any particular interest, or even brings in a durable regime of any type….. That’s a whole other kettle of fish.
Paul in KY
@YY_Sima Qian: Strange times they are…
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@They Call Me Noni: The young man didn’t factor in the effect of wind.
Paul in KY
@YY_Sima Qian: Someone should tell that guy that we were lying about all that stuff we said.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Sad!
Captain C
@YY_Sima Qian: Forgetting all other considerations, in order to successfully occupy Iran, assuming a successful ‘pacification’, one would need several million troops, all of whom took and passed with high grades at least a year of intensive cultural sensitivity training and were able and ready to be gentle and unobtrusive with the civilian population (and I still wouldn’t be optimistic). This would not happen under an ideal administration, let alone this greedy kakistocracy that we have in the USA now.
Steve LaBonne
@Captain C: Trump should declare Operation Mushroom Dick Energy.
catclub
@Deputinize America: Yes. If anywhere NEAR to a majority of Israelis wanted him gone, he would be gone. The fact that he is not gone tells us something.
I only disagree with feckless. They want him.
...now I try to be amused
@Captain C: The British are adamant that a codename be nothing you can read into. That said, my favorite codename is American: Operation Toenails, the invasion of the New Georgia archipelago in 1943.
catclub
@gene108:
Not just Republicans!
One reason for the Cuban missile crisis was that the US had missiles in Turkey. My understanding is that they were removed in order to settle the crisis. The US public was generally not informed about that.
NotMax
Somewhat dated from only days ago as events sprint forward but a valuable watch,
What’s Going on With Middle East Tankers | Oil Freight & War Risk Rates Jump | Iran Empties Out Oil
Lots to digest. What stood out to this watcher was the mention that the oil exports are there but some tanker owners have decided to have their ships sit empty and refuse to be booked for loading.
Bill Arnold
@Bupalos:
There are two falsehoods in this sentence. I’ll let you work out what they are.
Paul in KY
@prostratedragon: 4?
evodevo
@Chief Oshkosh: yep…and remember Russia is an Iranian ally…and who would have more insight into OUR intelligence/battle plans than them?
Captain C
@Geminid:
My rough, pulled-out-my-nethers estimate would be that you would need every country that borders it on board enough to base the, let’s say 5 million well-equipped troops you will need, or if not involved than at least benevolently neutral; all the major powers of the world also not going to interfere; and you’d probably want to get the Azeris, Kurds, and Balochis on board as well, perhaps with promises of either independence or greater autonomy. I don’t see this happening…ever.
That’s even before you get to the problems of physical geography.
trollhattan
@Captain C: Iraq will tell you everything you need to know about a set piece land war with Iraq.
...now I try to be amused
@catclub:
As I understand it, the US missiles in Turkey were the reason the Soviet Union put missiles in Cuba. That’s why I call it the Cuban-Turkish Missile Crisis. I don’t know why Khrushchev didn’t make a public stink about the missiles in Turkey; instead he accepted the public humiliation of backing down when the reality was a quid pro quo. He got what he wanted in the end anyway.
YY_Sima Qian
So, performative then. Which is good! All things considered:
Paul in KY
@karen gail: I think TACO dropped the bombs cause he thinks (at time that he made that decision) it is/was best for him. That’s it. Bibi should know that if TACO ever thought it would be good for him to bomb Tel Aviv, he’d do it in a heartbeat.
Captain C
@YY_Sima Qian:
And Ronnie Raygun and his crew, for awhile.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@lowtechcyclist: It always reminds me of the trial testimony of the white girl in To Kill a Mockingbird.
YY_Sima Qian
@Captain C: Damn! How could I forget Iran Contra?!
karen gail
@Paul in KY: I agree, for Trump is convinced that he is center of the universe and god-like.
Steve LaBonne
@YY_Sima Qian: The question is whether Trump is capable of grasping that. Can’t say I’m optimistic.
Bill Arnold
@trollhattan:
Somewhere upstate, location TBD.
Upstate NY is already mostly not-fossil-carbon electric power, between hydro, wind, and existing nuclear plants. (some solar too.) Whatever; a new plant will take a while but if it works, fine with me.
Closing of the Indian Point NPP and replacement of the power with natural gas power was a major environmental downgrade, that will end up killing a lot of people globally through contribution to global heating. (Another under-appreciated RFK Jr murder spree.)
Captain C
@Steve LaBonne: So, the military equivalent of bored and sad, with some malicious compliance thrown in.
Paul in KY
@ExPatExDem: I think if that guy was teleported into Teheran, once they figured out who he was, it wouldn’t be long before he was strung up on a lamppost.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: Calm down, Chevy. We still love you.
[eyeroll]
Soprano2
@Geminid: I dated an Iranian student when I was a freshman in college. I only made the mistake of calling him “Arab” once. LOL
Soprano2
@Bupalos: This is true as far as it goes. I think Democrats would have to throw pretty much all of their coalition under the bus to get non-college educated white men to vote for them. They would have to try to become like Republicans; who would vote for that party when they could vote for the real thing? My belief is that it’s more about feeling “legitimate” than it is about procuring actual votes. Part of them (especially the white male Democrats) doesn’t feel legitimate because a majority of white men don’t vote for them.
Soprano2
@Bupalos: They always assume that a new regime would be friendly toward us. They never seem to contemplate the idea that a new regime could be worse!
evodevo
@catclub: Yeah…you are talking billions and billions that would be spent and even then no plant yet. Where is that kind of moola coming from? Wind and solar are already well on the way and a lot cheaper to set up. Sounds like a giant scam to me…
Paul in KY
@YY_Sima Qian: Well, IMO, they made a mistake.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: I’m not going to argue about that…
Captain C
@trollhattan: The main lesson being “don’t do it!”
Captain C
@YY_Sima Qian: Perhaps partly because Trump’s first-term cover up artist Bill Barr arranged pardons for everyone involved to protect the Bush family (and the Republican Party in general).
tobie
@YY_Sima Qian: None of these conflicts is an abstraction for Israelis. They have been living with a war that Iran has waged against them through proxies in Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria. I wouldn’t expect a population that has been attacked and counterattacked and attacked and counterattacked and so and so forth ad nauseum to be blasé about its security. The same is true for Palestinians.
Israelis can’t get rid of the Netanyahu admin before the next scheduled election in October 2026 unless there’s a vote of no confidence. Opponents of the Netanyahu admin have turned out as much as 10% of population to protest, which makes the 2.5% that turned out for “No Kings” seem like small fry. If we can make distinctions between the govt and the admin in the US, we can do so elsewhere, particularly when the ruling party came to power with a razor-thin majority made possible because small parties that didn’t meet the 5% vote threshold were excluded from parliament.
Layer8Problem
@trollhattan: I find this hard to believe, living there and all. Perhaps the Wall Street Journal knows better.
Paul in KY
@Shalimar: I would sorta be OK with going back to Hood and Bragg military installations cause those 2 guys sure killed alot of traitor confederates.
Paul in KY
@YY_Sima Qian: Good point.
Paul in KY
@YY_Sima Qian: Interesting what history might have been had the Abbasid ruler at time not brutally murdered the 2 envoys Ghenghis Khan sent.
Baud
@Paul in KY:
Definitely an ooposie moment.
Paul in KY
@Captain C: Ha ha ha. That’s so funny!
BarcaChicago
@tobie: Thank you for bringing these facts to this thread.
catclub
@Omnes Omnibus: I am right there for you on remembering that thread.
also, I believe the helicopters are not joking about it.
catclub
@Baud:
Probably disagreements over preferred time signature.
chemiclord
@Professor Bigfoot:
There are a LOT of liberals with whom the ancestral guilt from the Holocaust is going to get a lot more people killed.
Bupalos
@Bill Arnold: There are “things you disagree with.”
Bupalos
@YY_Sima Qian: I agree with this. The Iranian regime is essentially derives the functional legitimacy and support it is granted on the idea of cataclysmic conflict with Israel. That’s largely its organizing principle. Which should be distinguished from having the goal of creating actual cataclysmic conflict with Israel. Which should also be distinguished from the how promoting the idea ultimately interacts with reality.
Bupalos
@YY_Sima Qian: Agreed, and I’m a little conflicted about opposition here that kind of relies on inflating this into a giant boots-on-the-ground quagmire to see it as disastrous.
The most disastrous thing about this is that it simply further erodes the international system and accelerates democratic decline. There is essentially zero chance that Trump will escalate in the ways that people are fantasizing about, an he doesn’t have to for this to be a disaster for the United States, Iran, and Israel. And Ukraine, for that matter.
Bill Arnold
@Bupalos:
I am not interested in arguing with you.
Consider reading the JCPOA and thinking about it, and about Trump’s exit from it, and about the consequences of that particular stupid act.
Bupalos
@Bill Arnold: I think you want to read in a position that I don’t hold and announce your opposition to it. I don’t really know and obviously it doesn’t look productive.
JCPOA was likely the best approach we could take, and this one is immediately disastrous and will have longer term risks to it as well.
Also,
JCPOA did essentially play along with the fiction that Iran’s nuclear program was intended for energy production, and was a kind of balance being struck between trying to delay development of a weapon against the hope that the regime would moderate or fall, and/or didn’t actually want a weapon but only the negotiable threat that they might get one. That kind of balance is how we got where we are…. which also isn’t to say the worst place we could be. The most likely place without it is preemptive Israeli war, sooner.
I think as with other moves in this kind of diplomatic conflict space made by preceeding admins (especially Obama’s more or less acceptance of the invasion of Ukraine) it was bound up with an idea that stalling and not making waves means leaving time for the inevitable forces of history and rationality to work in our favor and bring enlightenment and democracy through the arc of history. I think that deserves more skepticism these days.
YY_Sima Qian
@tobie: So, where have I failed to make that distinction between the Israeli government & Israeli people?
Where I do get less sympathetic is when there is not nearly as much push back against the transparent war crimes & crimes against humanity in Gaza for 20+ months, at such large scale that it can be credibly characterized as a genocide. There have been massive protests against Bibi’s deliberate failure to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza, but more to get the surviving hostages home than outrage at IDF conduct in Gaza. There is very little push back against the longstanding slow motion ethnic cleansing in the WB.
Yes, there are Jewish Israeli peace activities & human rights advocates who have endeavored create a peaceful environment for Israel, for decades, but now they seem marginalized. Instead, a racist contempt & hatred against Palestinians appear pervasive. You described why so many Jewish Israelis may have developed such sentiments, those explanations from the psychological & anthropological perspectives, not excuses. Removing Bibi & his far right reactionary government is a necessary, but far from sufficient, in turning Israel toward a better place. I do not hold individual Israelis accountable for the actions of Israeli government, unless they enthusiastically support the said government, &/or they are completely silent on the atrocities committed by the said government in their name.
Why does it seem that I, & others, focus more on Israel (& the U.S.)? Because Israel & the size are by far the more powerful actors, & they have been the ones embracing enormous risk & driving the escalation cycle since 10/7/23. The one major Iranian escalation was acquiescing to Hezbollah launching rockets to drive tens of thousands of Israeli from the north in the aftermath of 10/7/23, which helped to reinforce the siege mentality in Israel. However, there were alternative pathways to addressing such threats w/o resorting to overwhelming violence w/ little regard for collateral damage. Israel negotiated ceasefires, & then launched massive strikes on thin pretexts. Very effective in the short term, brilliantly executed operationally. Yet, Israel has been executing some version of this strategy since the ‘82 invasion of Southern Lebanon, to much regional suffering. Has Israel become more secure since?
Sally
@YY_Sima Qian: This is very interesting, and very eloquent. It is similar to what I was hearing over twenty years ago from Iraqis. They could survive Hussein but not chaos and collapse. They have a long history and were prepared to look at events through a longer lens than we were. As the Iranians. I said last week that this will set back progress for Iranians by possible more than one generation. The leaders being assassinated by the Israelis are more pragmatic, I don’t dare say moderate, than the extremists who are/will step up to replace them. For a variety of reasons, replacements are usually worse, they have to cement their new authority. If pragmatists fail, the extremists can say they are justified. This perfectly suits Bibi’s game plan (to keep himself in power, hang the repercussions). Like supporting Hamas and these new extremists in Gaza to fight Hamas. Who cares if it comes back to bite you in five years time, or even two weeks. Bibi is serving day by day. This is so sad.
Sally
@Captain C: It made me weep!
Lauryn11
Editorial Template for Every Time the United States Goes To War
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/editorial-template-for-every-time-the-united-states-goes-to-war