I don’t like writing posts about my disagreements with Trump. This is neither because I feel muzzled, or am afraid of my commenters, or idolize the man.
In fact, far from idolizing him, what I like best about Trump is that I’m fairly sure he can handle the country without tilting us into a ditch and so I don’t feel I have to keep an eye on him 24/7. I do a round of my usual sites early morning, in the same spirit I used to read the newspaper, often just skimming headlines, and then I’m free to run off and play with fiction or clean the house, or clean the house then play with fiction. All fine by me. Note the “fairly sure”. The TDS afflicted will say I think he’s a god, but their inability to understand simple English is legendary. It just means I don’t think he has an active animus against the country. Which from the other presidents in the last 20 years, is getting to be a rare quality.
No, the reason I don’t like to protest something he’s doing on this blog, is that he has a way to outflank me in mere hours or days after I complain about something. Note, not saying he plays 3-D chess either. I’m saying that he has access to information I don’t have (DUH) and his decisions are hard to predict. Also that what I think is going on based on even the best reporting I can find, is often so wrong as not to be in the same universe. So it has lead me to adopt a policy of “let the man cook”.
I’m about to break that policy. And what’s more, I don’t even have any constructive solutions. But I have to get this off my chest. The last time I did this was with his enabling (even if he didn’t do it himself) the Covidiocy. I had a feeling he was listening to the wrong people. The feeling is back.
First I want to make clear I don’t oppose the war in Iran. Like most people my generation, “I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my whole life, oh, Lord.” Or close enough. I’ve wanted us to go beat the mad mullahs into a prayer rug since the “hostage crisis”. Because, seriously, who takes diplomatic personnel hostage? And gets away with it? We should have gone in guns blazing THEN. Or right after they were released. We didn’t make it clear “don’t touch our diplomats” and then Benghazi happened, and this is going to keep getting worse till we teach savages the lesson that you don’t touch our diplomats.
When I was an exchange student in Ohio in 80, my comparative political systems teacher, a Marine, hung the Ayatollah in effigy every morning before starting class. I loved that man. I fully agreed with him.
So, no, I’m not upset we finally went in and bombed the living daylights out of the Mullahs. Because you know, it had to be done.
It particularly had to be done since, after Obama had pelted them with pallets of cash, they’d gotten froggy. Not just with financing/helping the neolithic barbarity unleashed on Israel in 10/7, but with their nukes. They’d gotten ambitious.
And the problem of them getting ambitious is not that they’d have a nuke. The USSR (allegedly) had nukes for decades and we’re still here. It’s that they’re crazy-cakes religious fanatics with a nuke. Their religion explicitly enjoins them to bring about the end of the world. And boy, oh, boy, would they love to.
So I cheered the bombing. But then–
Why did we stop? And why are we trying to make a deal with people whose main drive is to BRING ABOUT THE END OF THE WORLD?
Yeah, yeah, I do get it. Trump is notoriously averse to putting American military lives at risk. Frankly it’s refreshing. Yeah, maybe he avoided the draft, but so did Clinton and that never stopped Clinton spending American lives like water, particularly when there was no real benefit to America from doing it. He was perverse that way.
But–
There is a but there, ain’t it? But– Mr. President, sometimes it’s necessary. And yeah, I do understand the imperatives pinning you: the midterms are breathing down all our necks, and we can’t let the precious little LIVs (Low Information Voters) saddle us with outright communists and jihadists, because we’re trying to clean out Iran. Yeah, yeah, you don’t want to bomb their oil infrastructure to kingdom come because you don’t want to hamper the possibility of world development, and a civilized world runs on energy. Yeah, yeah, you’re taking on heavy winds from the loyal opposition in your own party.
All that is a given. However: if you’d sent boots in two months ago to clean out the IRG, it would be done and gone, and now we could settle back into taking care of other things.
So why didn’t we? My guess is polling and public opinion not allowing it.
The problem with all that? We’re not going to be able to fix the problem of Iran and are going to have to keep doing pretend peace talks until after the midterms.
And the problem with that is that a) Trump is sounding like Obama “This is my line, and if you don’t like it, I’ll draw another one.” b) Iran apparently was and is much closer to a nuke than we thought.
Given that it’s an old technique in the US for the president to allow or incite an attack on us as a chance to turn the public opinion to a war like footing (we’re notoriously reluctant to go to full America on someone. And when we got full America we’re fully deadly.) yet what are we willing to lose to an Iranian nuke to do that?
Look, it would be one thing if we were sure they’d hit Seattle, but even so, I have friends there, and some people who read here are there. Same for NYC. Same for the ivy leagues, same for Los Angeles and San Francisco. Because even hives of scum and villainy have decent Americans in them.
But you know, I know, and even my cat Havey who doesn’t remember his own name or that he’s a cat knows that the most likely target is Israel. Are we going to lose our most reliable ally in the Middle East to this? Well… And the second most likely target is DC. Which, yes, where do we send the thank you note, but guys? Right now the most likely result of a decapitation strike like that is that our cold civil war goes hot at a speed.
So– are we really going to risk this?
Mind you, if we sent boots in, my idea would be, go in, break everything, come home and tell them not to make us come out again. The era of “nation building” should be not only dead, but buried so deep that it will be forgotten. BUT–
But if we’re going to shy away from it because elections, and votes and–
Is the risk we’re running acceptable? And who is the president listening to? Because whoever it is, they don’t have the world’s best interests at heart.
I don’t like criticizing the president, because he usually proves me deep at sea within days of a post doing that.
I can’t tell you how desperately I hope that’s the case now.
According To Hoyt 
I hope so too.
it’s interesting to see people like Erick Erickson fully on the, “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran,” side. Not quite, “Nuke it till it glows then shoot it in the dark,” but very close.
He may be getting bad advice. Rumor is Vance is, “No more foreign wars.” But he just made a guy named Pultne DNI and he sounds like he may be bad news on burnt toast.
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Of course, he’s still finding Fifth Column everywhere he looks. Some people owe Pam Bondi a big apology.
https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2026/05/31/ny-times-fearmongers-over-exodus-of-lawyers-trump-has-the-last-laugh-n2202907
If they had been carrying out President Trump’s policies, how many would even still be lawyers? Yeah.
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Trump is only human (and he reminds us if we forget it). [Crazy Grin]
Of course, he has the correct sort of enemies. [Twisted Grin]
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I don’t mind admitting that this whole thing is nervous-making in multiple directions, and it doesn’t look to me like Trump really knows what to do with it. What’s making me more nervous than anything else is how unusual this is. President Trump isn’t a guy who hems and haws and waffles about with things that have no purpose or definable outcome. So what the heck is happening with this? I wish I knew.
Also, 197% on board with kicking the crap out of the mad mullahs and the IRGC. Make them dead. Turn them into a cautionary tale that the world will tell for generations. It NEEDS to be done. Should’ve been done long ago, and I hope we haven’t already passed up the best chance we were likely to get.
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The existing government and leaders of their military running a parallel government need to go. Period. They need to enact a secular government that is going to put the boot to the mullahs.
Not going that far is going to simply turn this into version 9.0 of same old same old and we deal with it again in a handful of years. Right now all the or at least most of the rest of the middle east is on the same side as us. Put the boot to Iran’s government.
I don’t see this ending well and haven’t since it started. Truly hope I’m wrong and trump is playing 3D chess that I just don’t have the information to appreciate. I get that this was aimed at Iran for reasons of china, terrorist government, straight of Hormuz. All three are pretty good geopolitical reasons. However the damage done regardless how it turns out is going to damage world and our economy for another few years because of existing as of today damage to oil and gas infrastructure not only in Iran but in surrounding country’s.
Even though we are energy independent we are not decoupled from world markets and our fuel has risen because producers here are making bank selling to rest of world and that is driving up our prices because part of our supply is no longer available at our local pump. It’s good for our GDP but not good for you or me.
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–
I think this is the key. Before there were limitations with the other muslim countries. Now they are pissed at Iran. They are there, onsite. They need to go in, root out the Iranian rot, and make Iran go away as a country. They nation build, rather carve up and enforce their brand of culture on their section.
(Not that I have anyway to know, so pure speculation.) Other than Israel (who would if allowed go in and stomp) I wonder if Trump isn’t waiting to see if the countries under siege from Iran won’t take the lead, gang up on, and take care of business. Trump can point and state “I kicked their gears into rolling Iran up.” He’d be correct too.
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The public statements about the Recent nonrenewal of U.S. strikes, called off at the request of the House of Saud who are notably no friends to any Persian ever, are a major plot point here.
The only question I have is why, after we tried several subsequent loops through negotiating with people who are not even in charge, which fruitless negotiations were terminated by the other side’s real power, the IRGC mafioso, we did not then say to Crown Prince bin Salman “Sorry dude, we tried it your way, please put on your eye and ear protection.”
All indications are that the fleet and ground bases have rearmed. We should resume where we left off, working down the chain of command until we get some E-4 as the last remaining most senior guy in that chain, along with the most senior local building code enforcement clerk for the civilian side, who can jointly sign the surrender.
I have mixed feelings about sandy boots. I say let’s bomb them more while we ponder that topic.
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Trump approaches everything from the standpoint of, “Let’s make a deal.”
In this case, there is no deal worth making. This is like 1945. Unconditional surrender, or keep dying.
I’m not sure anyone in the administration really gets that.
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Oh, I think they get it. They also get that the pre-requisite for unconditional surrender is an unconditional beat down, and webcam footage of the Tokyo Fire Raids or Dresden, coupled with the presence of an unaddressed Fifth Column and an American people unprepared for harsh reality, would probably have gotten Roosevelt removed.
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Well I would have removed FDR a long time before that, but okay.
Americans really need to grow up and be adults. Yeah, I’m not holding my breath, either.
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Trump might be hoping that the Iranian people can take care of the IRGC for him. This, imo, would be the best option from a pragmatic standpoint. It would limit US casualties, and probably give the replacement government more international credibility than one that arose after a US ground invasion.
Whether it will happen, I don’t know. There’s enough information leaking out to indicate that the IRGC is getting attacked by angry locals. I don’t know how often, or how widespread it is, due to the government’s blocking of the internet. But attacks from inside the country are taking place. It’s possible that Trump has inside sources suggesting that the IRGC is on shaky ground, and local partisans can finish the job. If so, then his current approach is probably the best one.
But, again, it’s guesswork on my part based on incomplete information.
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I can see a number of possibilities.
1) I’m given to understand he’s not getting good advice on ship building. I could see the same interests who don’t want US ship building to also want the Straits of Hormuz reopened.
2) He’s giving the mullas the rope to hang themselves / really just trying to degrade their nuclear capabilities. From what I can tell, his core requirement is the enriched uranium. And that’s what the mullas keep backtracking on.
3) It’s really about China, and letting it drag helps there. As I recall, they got a lot of their oil and materials through Hormuz and from the Iranians, so the longer the Straits are more or less closed the harder it is for them to build up to take Taiwan.
4) He could be intentionally trying to degrade Iran infrastructure without directly bombing it. From what I gather, the oil storage tanks are hitting their limits, and Iran will have to start shutting down wells soon. Stopping and restarting wells is very hard.
5) He may be working towards the middle east nations doing the land war part. The more Iran tries to death blossom on everyone within striking distance, the more likely it will be for their neighbors to StA they’ve had enough and provide the ground forces for removing them.
I have no idea of any of these are actually irons in the fire, but I could see any or all of them being factors. And I could also see this being a strategic mistake. And I could also see this being an entire non-issue too. I kind of don’t hear anyone talking about it anymore; we’re losing hardware, and the periodic dem says the US is out of ammo, but that’s kind of it.
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There’s also the midterm elections looming. I have no idea what the (R) leadership is pleading for in order to avoid the (D)s screaming election slogans about “another quagmire! We ended the Afghanistan War, we ended Vietnam, we’ll end this quagmire and drop gas prices too if you vote for us!”
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They “ended” Vietnam by surrendering to evil.
They “ended” Afghanistan by surrendering to evil.
They wanna surrender to evil again?
How about “NO!” ?
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THIS. Also Moo
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With the current (R) leadership, they’re probably the ones leading the calls, too.
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I think it is a reasonable assumption that R leadership prefers losing in the midterms for two reasons:
#1 makes them craven and #2 makes them foolish but that explains most if not all of their behavior.
So they’ll advise whatever makes things worse.
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Recall also that he tried to arm the populace and the Kurds screwed us over. Unsurprising to most with a lick of sense, but there it is. The Persian populace really, really have a hard on for the Mullahs but no hardware. They’ve been getting culled (literally dragged out of their homes and shot, hanged, tortured, “disappeared,” and all) for decades now. So there is a will there, along with the inevitable crazies. But no means.
On the oil storage tanks, last I hear they were dumping it into the sea. Bad idea, yeah for anyone with a lick of sense, but these are apocalypse zealots so sense is not answering the courtesy phone. It does keep the pumps running and that keeps them operable without “severe complications” as it was put.
From my armchair quarterbacking and utterly ignorant position, I’d still say this has most of that in there. China, oil prices, not putting our boys in harms way, Netanyahu, the works. The current state of the feckless ‘tards in their filthy pajamas suits our Big Bad Orange Man. The only thing hurting us here is gas prices, and that’s less a problem for us (even though it IS a problem) than for pretty much the rest of the world.
The rest of the world has shit on America for most of their lives. This is a relatively mild flex. Hey guys, remember all those things you called us when we were keeping your asses safe? We do. By the way, that deaf to America chant? Not cool bro.
So not just China, but the rest of the world is getting a bit antsy. They can’t predict the Orangeman. I rather like this state of affairs. This is what I voted for.
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If what I’ve been reading is true, that can also result in a permanent reduction in output. Iran was already selling all the oil it could pump, to countries who apparently pinned their entire economies on the availability of Iranian oil. Probably copying Harvard MBAs, who seem to always optimize for “single-source suppliers are the most cost-effective.” Until they aren’t…
Those Iranian customers will have to make up the difference from *somewhere*. And that gives Trump a lever, not just on Iran, but a bunch of other countries. Most of them are technically American allies… but as has been graphically detailed in recent events, they seem to view the alliances as only in their favor.
The song is over, now it’s time to pay the piper.
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ya
i dunno.
I’m basically militant by philosophy and inclination. The situation feels so straightforward, that I may invent all sorts of explanations to explain what I see as making any sort of sense.
as I have been saying, my position is that I have become too accustomed to instant gratification.
I’ve basically forced myself to perceive it as ‘let the man cook’.
This is not because I have an argument that other people should also see it this way. This is merely my own life, and my own valuable and wasteful choices.
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There is a fundamental rope on Trump’s hands, that he is trying to work with Netanyahu on intel for targeting. Netanyahu was a career special operations officer, he dislikes collateral damage.
He isn’t a hypothetical Jewish retired SAC officer who grew up admiring Curtis LeMay, and has a picture of Arthur Harris on the wall of his office.
Trump also has the inherent blinder of being a deal maker.
There is another accidental good argument, that probably cannot be deliberate.
A finished war, while good in of itself, lets the Democrats return to the excuse that their actions are purely domestic, and that there cannot be any treason in assassinating Trump or in fraudulently impeaching Trump.
Two or three years is not very long as wars can go, but if the Democrats kill Trump during a war, while they are complaining against that war, there may be evidence tying assassins to Quds force, and then Vance could have a fairly free hand.
This last is a pile of conspiracy theory and worse case speculation, so I chalk it up to being silly while attempting to be thorough.
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The CIA often gets ‘credit’ for overturning the Shah. I’m pretty sure a couple teams of Green Beanies and a bunch of planeloads of AKs and ammo could repeat the coup against the IRGC and Friends.
That is, however, one of those ‘don’t do quite enough to be sure’ solutions we have applied in the last century.
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I read a book by a CIA case officer in Tehran, who said the first the Tehran office heard about the revolution was the TV in their break room.
Later, I read the autobiography of a KGB officer who was at their Tehran office, and he said the first the KGB heard of a revolution was the TV in the break room…
Both officers admitted their offices mostly ignored ordinary Iranians and targeted the “movers and shakers” class, mostly by attending or sponsoring lavish events, socializing, and sitting at their desks writing reports about it. Outside of the aristocracy, they had no freaking idea what was going on in Iran.
The amount of fail for that to happen is pretty impressive. More so, since both the CIA and KGB made the same mistakes.
Well, at least they *had* field officers. I suspect most of what they used to do is now some clerks reviewing AI reports from activity on Twitter and VK.
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Not when you consider they read the same books, attended a lot of the same schools, slept with the same women (as a group, and possibly case by case). In short, they were stamped like a template.
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I think he is bending over backwards to try and prove to the world he’s not a hitler. I don’t think it matters, they’ll call him hitler anyway. We screwed the pooch over there so often the only thing they trust is they can’t trust us.
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And to the peace at any price crowd, peace at any price is a prison or slavery to your enemies.
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The absolute last thing I want is US forces in Iran. It’s a big country. It’s also not one that would be easy to operate in. Plus propaganda issues. And after 20 years of wasted blood, time and treasure, I just don’t want to see American lives potentially wasted in another Islamic hellhole.
But: Air power by itself cannot win wars. We have 90 or so years of evidence to show that by now (I’m going back to the Spanish Civil War for the precedents in earnest). I can see why the attempt to get and sponsor an uprising of the people there…but there’s no nucleus for it to form around. And the Kurds are not dependable, at all, that’s well established.
I hope to God a good plan is in place, but…history does not teach me pleasant lessons in this regard.
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One dead, 63 injured: https://nypost.com/2026/06/03/world-news/iranian-drone-attack-hits-kuwait-airport-causing-injuries/
If Kuwait wasn’t angry before, they ought to be now. Wish I had a better view of the Big Picture but so far, all I can see is the local-ish level in any detail. We’ve got to hope the lessons Trump learned over the last 5-6 years are not being rewritten or unwritten now, but one other factor to bring to the table is the 250th anniversary. It’s just possible Trump wants lower gas so people can go celebrate.
Though by that same measure, he may be waiting for players to reposition in such places that he can set off some very big, flashy fireworks. Looking up from the bottom really does not help when trying to figure out how the dogfight is going. Drat.
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Exactly. Back in the day, I used to say “The Soviets are evil, not crazy.”
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I mean, some of them are crazy. That doesn’t necessarily mean ALL of them are. Or even most of them.
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The Russians/USSR were evil AND crazy in some cases. But they were, in general, NOT suicidal. The IRGC and its Twelvers has an eschatological view that attacking Israel (and Perhaps the Great Satan) will, to use a phrase, immanetize the eschaton. If they die in that attack they are Shahid, Martyrs, and get their 72 Virgins. Honestly I think Israel has somewhere between 70 and 200 deliverable nuclear weapons (maybe more). Nuke them and they’ll strike back. What happens next is anyone’s guess. No other Islamic country but Pakistan officially has nuclear weapons, and likely most of the Arab countries might cheer quietly if Iran got slammed, the Farsi are NOT their friends.
This Nuclear mess (thank you Obumbles) is why we’re there at all. It was clear Israel had to act, likely because they had better intelligence (Especially Humint, where we essentially had NONE) on the status of the program. Israel was probably going whether we came or NOT. Trump made the right choice there. There are 2 problems.
I think the best we can do is take (by force) or destroy utterly the nuclear materials. We can also do as much as we can to break the missile delivery systems and their supply lines. This MIGHT require breaking Iran’s economy via infrastructure attacks that they can not recover from with strong embargoes in place (i.e destroy roads, rails, bridges, pipelines, power sources and distribution). This WILL hurt the Iranian people, even if they are not directly attacked. We could skip the Infrastructure destruction, but without it we’ll have to play whack-a-mole with Iran until we can get a revolution and that might be decades. This is time we don’t have due to the US’s goldfish like focus and the fact that inevitably there will be another brainless wonder in as Democrat president, be it 2028, 2032 or 2036 or beyond. I fricking hate this evaluation, but I see no way around it given the world we have.
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There are plenty of reasons for current scheme of events. Thanks HarryVoyager for cleanly enumerating most of the good ones. Realize it’s not just The Donald but his top advisors who are working his plan. There’s never a guarantee that any plan will succeed, but so far I am only frustrated by the all too human urge for instant gratification that I have to keep in check. As HO notes, this is NOT just about Iran, or even the Middle East.
You know, even Chess is played in 3D – 2 linear and one is time. Sometimes it’s smart to punch the clock fast, but delaying as long as you have time and a good plan, can be equally strategic.
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I think most people who complain about Trump supporters thinking he’s some kind of 3-dimensional chess player don’t understand that most politicians are barely above zero-dimensional chess. For most politicians, the entire concept of adjusting plans to match desired results is completely alien thinking. At best, results exist to justify the plan, not the other way around. At worst, the whole concept of cause and effect is voodoo magic to them.
We don’t think he’s playing three-dimensional chess. We’re just happy he’s playing one or two dimensions beyond the zero-dimensional chess of everyone else.
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yes.
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We’re just happy that he doesn’t make his decisions with “I hate America” as the first principle.
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THIS THIS THIS THIS.
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It’s contrast.
Compared to the peoples soviet of sooper geniuses who were voice-acting ZOTUS Biden, and previously Barry, the smartest dolt in the slow-kids room, DJT being mostly competent is so shocking it just seems like it’s multidimensional chess. And with his experience of his first go round, he knows trusting anyone embedded in DC is a mistake, so he’s doing things like fully bypassing the Foggy Bottom Boys on important stuff, leaving them to plan the place settings request protocol meeting agenda for his trip to China.
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Not actually relevant, but on the topic of multidimensional chess, there’s this doozy. In case anyone here likes chess, needs a new game, and wants more headaches in their life.
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Sometimes you just have to let the wookiee win.
The trick is to make sure you’re the wookiee.
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It’s time to Be the Wookie. We need to tear Iran’s Metaphorical arm off…
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I wonder if 1) he’s letting Iran make itself so odious to the neighbors that they will be willing to ignore non-believers smiting other believers (even if they are the “wrong sort” of believers), and 2) he’s desperately trying not to make this Afghanistan West. Beyond that? I have zero clue, other than the need to cut Iran off from Chinese resupply.
Me personally, I’d be happy to see Qom* reduced to the ash heap of Iran, let alone the ash heap of history. Khomeini’s twisted theology needs to join him in the grave.
*Where the hard-core seminaries and religious schools are. And yes, I know that the leadership has scattered out to make themselves harder to hit. A cat can dream.
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At what point will the Arab states demand that Iran be utterly and finally crushed? That may indeed be Trunp’s preferred outcome, but those states have enough hard-line moslems that things must get very, very bad … and ideologues have a way of ignoring the suffering of their own people–and even their own suffering.
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I pretty much agree with Sarah on Trump – even when things look pretty disturbing, I try to give him the benefit of the doubt because usually he makes it work, and often much better than I’d expected. However, I am concerned about Iran. And that is because Bible prophecy says that Iran is going to join up with Russia and several other countries (including Turkey) to do a major attack on Israel at some point. Probably not too long in the future (maybe a few years?), though, of course, we are just guessing on the time frame. Given that Bible prophecy has proven 100% accurate to the last detail, I’m not worried about that attack (the Bible says that Israel will be protected directly by God when that attack happens). But, while we know that things that are prophecied *will* happen – nothing can stop or change them – another very Biblical principle is, yes, bad things will happen, but *woe* until him by whom they happen. As an example, the betrayal of Jesus Christ by Judas Iscariot was prophecied. It had to happen. But that doesn’t absolve Judas from his guilt in the actions he took.
In the same way, the abandonment and betrayal of Israel is prophecied, and it will happen. But woe unto him (or them) by whom it happens. So, while God will protect Israel even if they are abandoned by their allies, those who abandon them will pay a high price.
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“I’m saying that he has access to information I don’t have”: I’ve always assumed that about governments. As I age I get less confident that it matters much. They make apparently stupid decisions not because they have better info but because they have worse incentives.
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Newt posted on X last week that Trump is probably holding back to keep the mullahs from flinging more missiles and drones at his Gulf state partners. Not sure if this is right or if recent actions will change the situation.
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If so it isn’t working – Kuwait and Bahrain have been getting hit all week, with something large and splodey yesterday hitting that famous military target, Terminal One at Kuwait International Airport, killing one person and injuring 60.
And it’s not mullahs anymore – the IRGC business entity with guns is doing all the nations deciding these days.
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The Chinese People’s Liberation Army works similarly to the IRGC – they’re mostly-independent of the general economy, have their own factories, and do their own import/export business, among other things.
I have a couple of pistols and a rifle made by the PLA. Because this is America, and “All your guns are belong to U.S.”
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Chinese SKS for the win! Though the stock was I think balsa wood…
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Yes, and no. Norinco, the primary Chinese small arms manufacturer, is banned from selling in the US, iirc. But I seem to recall that there was a Canadian company that had licensed at least some of Norinco’s designs for sale. I don’t recall whether they’re still doing so, though.
As for generals heavily involved in manufacturing – it’s a thing in a number of countries, iirc. Generals use their power and wealth to get control of certain important industries as a source of income. And since they give orders to the guys with the majority of the guns, it’s not easy to get them to stop meddling in the economy.
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Yeah, the president of Iran had previously been complaining (on X…) that the IRGC was taking all of the decisions out of his hands (there was discussion over whether this was an attempt at, “Don’t kill me, Trump and Netanyahu! I’m not actually in charge of anything right now!”). And then just recently – earlier this week, iirc – he reportedly submitted his resignation. If true, I didn’t see any word on whether the Ayatollah accepted it.
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There is no one in charge over there that we can trust until the mullahs are overthrown.
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“Let the man cook” sums it up. I’ve seen some plausible speculation about what’s going on, but I’ve got nowhere near enough information to confirm any of it.
The only hypothesis I don’t buy is that Trump doesn’t realize he’s dealing with hardliners. The last two leaders that refused to negotiate in good faith got forcibly extradited and blown to smithereens, respectively. He knows when someone is trying to get him the run-around, and he’s got no problem using force when necessary.
So the question is why he’s drawing this out. I’d buy any of: waiting for Iran’s economy to spiral, waiting for a mass uprising, letting China stew, or trying to rope in the Arab states for a deal. But it’s hard to tell how viable/likely any of those is or what he’s really thinking.
Guess we’ll see. I’m still hoping the regime topples before all of this is through.
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As long as the average Iranian is more afraid of their government than of us, no revolution. When you consider that they routinely hang folks slowly, via crane, and routinely subject females to mass abuse prior to execution (because sinful to kill a virgin) (oh yes they do) ….
The odds of us frightening the locals into rebellion is right around nil. Ain’t happening.
The average Iranian may welcone us wiping out the MadMullahs. But as long as there are MMs, they won’t risk the wrath.
As for “boots on the ground”, oh hell no. They wont liberate themselves, no effing way we gift them freedom just to watch them let the lunatics back in. And they would. Because they fear and respect their oppressors way more than the “nice” USA.
Absent a total commitment by Americans to conquer a foe, stop squandering our folks on folly. Its obscene and evil – to us.
Sure, love to see the crazy bastards reduced to Trinitite. Way past due.
Iran has nothing we need. So don’t bother with conquest. Wreck it as required to extract consessions.
Nobody much helped -us- until we epically nut-kicked Britain. By ourselves. -Then- the help started.
Blockade and raid. Make a deal. When they break it, kick their asses again. Every time much worse. Encourage their neighbors to grab off chunks. When they do something stupid, stomp.
But absent a united left + right “kill em all”, forget invasion to nation build.
And there is no need to invade to destroy.
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The IRGC is getting attacked by locals. Due to the internet blockade imposed by the Iranian government, it’s hard to tell how widespread it is. But news and evidence of attacks occasionally gets out via Starlink.
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Trump and/or advisors assumed that the populace would rise up and that the world would do more than just blame him when Iran decided to start shooting and extorting every ship using the strait. Right now Iran thinks it just needs to wait out America same as the Taliban and Iraq given the upcoming elections.
Unless Trump can pull a rabbit out of this ponypile to mix metaphors they are probably right.
I wish we had a logical populace but even desantistan has a significant populace that believes the media lies.
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They did rise up in the streets. They didn’t have any guns. The IRGC killed around forty thousand of those kids.
The U.S. military not being able to kick off strikes there at the run when that window opened underlines a pretty significant criticism of the way the Pentagon does things. I doubt any near peer adversary would give us the weeks of interference-free logistics build up time we got before the Iran strikes began.
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One month delay, ot one and half, to two.
One month delay, if Trump suddenly made the decision with Walz’s fort sumter comments as the decider.
We basically don’t know what Trump’s intel is on how screwed readiness got under Biden.
If we are weak enough, and cannot avoid a war with CRINK, having a war with Iran when we are ready might be the most favorable possible grounds for that fight.
If the additional constraint to fuel means that China cannot force a war on their chosen timing and place, then it is best,
Proactive, offensive war for defensive ends. Which is basically what he said this was.
Now, I am completely outside of the loop on what really happened with the prep for Epic Fury, and I do not understand the modern military weapons or logistics.
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I would experience zero surprise if it turns out that weekly brief was “We’re out of missiles in theater, JDAMs are at 5%, and we’re close to out of those cool new totes-not-a-shaheed LUCAS drones. We can keep sending B-52s and B-1s from the UK at full loadout, but locally it’s pretty much down to Gatling guns on the fighters”
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I also believe that Trump is pushing negotiations right now because of the slim Republican majority in Congress, which with the RINOS, is effectively a majority against supporting doing what is needed to remove the Mullahs and their modern day SS the Revolutionary Guard.
https://nypost.com/2026/06/03/us-news/house-defies-trump-admin-and-approves-war-powers-resolution-to-halt-military-action-against-iran/
Given that we are still engaged in almost daily combat against Iran of various sorts, I suspect that Trump knows that by emphasizing negotiating he can present continued military action as being a last resort with “hey, we tried negotiating and wanted a deal, but Iran’s current powers that be simply make a negotiated resolution impossible”
Remember that Trump has always approached business and dealings in general like a poker player.
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Apparently there were 18 GOP absences because it’s the middle of primary season.
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https://redstate.com/joesquire/2026/06/03/house-passes-iran-war-powers-resolution-with-help-from-18-gop-absences-n2203014
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There is significant question about whether the War Powers Act would survive constitutional challenge.
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The Gun Control Acts of 1934, 1968, and 1986 surely couldn’t, not by any honest reading of the Second Amendment.
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“Mind you, if we sent boots in, my idea would be, go in, break everything, come home and tell them not to make us come out again.”
This is the thing you do when you’re -done.- He doesn’t want to do that. Much better to snipe their fruitbat leadership every time a new guy takes command. “Oh, you want to keep launching at Qatar and Kuwait? No problem, have some more JDAMs.”
Easier, cheaper and better than losing a bunch of men trying to take Kharg Island. And the USA would lose a bunch. Attacking a fortified installation and cleaning it out is a different thing than dropping munitions on it from 40K feet.
So much better to make the Europeans, the Chinese and the Gulf States lose THEIR fricking guys and spend THEIR money conquering Iran and rooting out that regime down to the last mullah.
Let they fruitbat Iranians keep the Strait closed another 6 months to a year. Let the Euros start losing the conversation with their citizens the way Britain is this week. The Labour government had to shut down the internet to quell rioting this week. Pretty soon the Germans, the French, the Belgians, the Spaniards will be doing the same.
In other news, China is not going to survive much longer. Their hopes of conquering Taiwan will not surviive the SpaceX IPO. Elon is going to be flying a rocket into LEO every day. He’s aiming for one every hour. Cheap, re-useable orbital shipments of ANYTHING YOU WANT. Starlink, astronauts, Mars probes, or ridiculous amounts of munitions.
Like THOR. The Rods from God.
Can the Chinese Navy survive THOR? Can Iran’s bunkers survive it? It’s MYCROFTXXX dropping a canister of rocks on the same mountain, hour after hour, day after day, week after week. Because with a Starship launch every hour, or even every week, they can actually do it.
We do not want America to send soldiers to die in the sand. We want America to do nothing and let the Iranians incompetence themselves into extinction. Make the enemy punch himself in the face until he’s done like dinner.
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And let’s not forget that the mullahs are currently facing the prospect of having to evacuate Tehran because they’re having a 5 year drought and the city reservoirs are failing.
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“Nice reservoir you have here. Shame is something happened to it…”
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There is a dam, upstream from a city which has greatly offended me. Some Rods From God are just the ticket.
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I’ve pointed out that Elon Musk doesn’t just have a “space company.” He also has personal control of a fleet of ICBMs that will go wherever he tells them to.
They don’t need warheads. A Falcon 9 auguring in at Mach 3 with half a load of fuel would make a warhead redundant. And I bet his engineers could figure out a way to make those tons of LOX and kerosene work like a fuel-air explosive, and a MOAB would look like a firecracker.
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“He also has personal control of a fleet of ICBMs that will go wherever he tells them to.”
Yas, it would be a shame if one of those “went off course” and landed on something expensive. Cryin’ shame.
I’m still pretty invested in the flying telephone pole. No warhead, no guidance to speak of, just a lance traveling at orbital speed, landing point first on something expensive. 11.5 tons of TNT, per rod. A little more than a M.O.A.B.
That’s going to leave a mark.
Sinking an entire navy at one go type of mark, right? You don’t even have to hit the ships, close is good enough. (I haven’t done the math, but a MOAB going off next to a frigate, I think it won’t be good for the boat.)
Best part, they’re cheap. I’m sure somebody will be big-brained enough to figure out a way to make them cheaper and harder hitting. Tungsten tip, cast iron body? Make it a funny shape that flies better? Shockwave riders from Thor? So many possibilities. >:D
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I understand that there may be a surplus of Falcon 9s. I think giving one to WPDE HQ would be appreciated by someone.
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In a story I’m writing, the Iranian regime is going to piss off somebody it really shouldn’t have. One day they will announce a Special Delivery — more than 50 1-kilogram steel balls incoming at 10% of light speed, along with about a dozen 10-KG balls for the hardest targets.
Effective yield just over 100 kilotons for the little balls, and just over a megaton for The Big Ones. Zero fallout, no radiation aside from a pulse of thermal X-rays released on impact.
They deliver a declaration of war and a target list. “Be a real shame if you don’t evacuate these military sites in the next 2 hours.” 😁
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And the current Iranian regime would simply stack civilians on top of them and set up the recorders.
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One of the reasons they’re only given 2 hours notice. Also, fractional-C steel balls are not the only weapons deployed. Any attempts to herd people into the target sites will be…dealt with. Permanently.
Why do idiots in the media always blame the innocent party when their enemies commit war crimes? Planting rocket launchers in schools and hospitals is the war crime, not blowing them up.
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Imaginos1892 asked
Truly Imaginos1892 you have to ask this? The Idiots in the Media WANT us to lose. To them we’re the baddies, always and forevermore. Somehow they believe that Islam is really Roseau’s Noble Savage or that when the Islamists meet the nonsense the Social Justice Warriors spout they will leave their brutish state and become enlightened and see the light. Having no truck with any actual faith they have no idea how one works.
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Toss in that a lot of the “better sort” don’t take religion of any kind seriously, so they don’t take the teachings of Islam seriously. Including the “we want to trigger the return of the 12th Imam and second coming of Jesus in order to speed up the Last Judgement” parts.
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There’s no “power” to whom they can “speak truth” if our side is the good guys and we win.
The entire j-skool identity remains invested in the Vietnam War political alignment that the KGB and GRU pumped up in the 1960s.
Doing anything else is literally unthinkable, beyond their ken, nonpossible, etc.
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Not to mention the capacity to remove the combined recon satellite capability of the rest of the world faster than they can replace it.
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The problem with putting boots on the ground in Iran is the same as the problem of putting boots on the ground in Afghanistan. You’re only going to get so many of the rats on their own turf, and the rest will nibble you to death. Unless you’re willing to exterminate everyone in the country, the roaches are just going to hide and come back later.
As I see it, in order for this to be a strong win, Trump needs to eliminate the Republican guard, the people, not just the equipment and bases. He also needs to eliminate the Islamic elite, their clergy. And finally, he needs to eliminate the community foot soldiers who have been acting as the privileged enforcers for the Islamic elite. And it’s the personnel eliminations that really can’t be done from altitude, or remotely; especially if they stop holding in-person meetings.
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It could be done. Do the no-two-stones-touching-and-salt-the-earth thing, install a compliant general officer who knows we are tracking him 24/7/365 from orbit, and go home. No colonization, no nation building, just ”don’t make us come back” – i.e. what we should have done in Iraq.
Avoiding forever wars does not mean no boots on the ground ever – it means kill people, break things, and go home.
That said, as noted elsewhere I remain ambivalent about putting US boots into Persia. Nothing in the region appears to be in the US national interest anymore aside from the preventative efforts underway now re fission things and ICBMs, and that’s not small scale engineering, so between us gazing down from orbit and the Israelis doing their humint thing we’ll know.
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Not if we break ties with Israel, which a fair number of people are trying to manage. If the Democrats manage the midterms (and they might), it will happen faster.
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Negotiating with an enemy that can’t be trusted is an exercise in stupidity. They will agree to anything, but the only way they will hold up their end of the deal is if they’re too dead to break it. Trump has to be made to believe that.
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Agreed. It’s a fundamental requirement of Islam to lie to infidels if doing so advances their conquest of the world. For Muslims, “honor” is fungible.
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Uncle Don has been negotiating all his working life. He would certainly know that the Iranians are not negotiating in good faith, yet he continues to go through the motions.
A wider view suggests that he doesn’t *expect* any useful results from the negotiations; they’re just a plausible delaying tactic.
As to what… beats me. But his previous record is such that I’m willing to sit back and see what happens, rather than automatically assuming he doesn’t know what he’s doing.
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“Negotiating with an enemy that can’t be trusted is an exercise in stupidity.”
Not when you show the guy a picture of his house, taken from orbit, and observe that it would be a cryin’ shame if something might happen to it when he was home. Elon might drop a telephone pole on it. By accident, like.
That they can’t be trusted is a given. You don’t expect that. So you just whack every leader that continues the war until all the stupid ones are dead, and the first smart one makes a deal. When, not if, he breaks the deal, you whack him and make a new deal with the next guy. If you just keep doing that for a while, eventually word will get around that you don’t mess with the Americans any more.
It’s accepted that with mullahs appealing to their greed isn’t going to be very effective, and they can’t be trusted as far as you can throw them by the ear. So you appeal to their basic sense of self-preservation. But they’re stupid, so you must repeat the lesson a few times until it penetrates their tiny little poisoned minds. When they finally understand that there is nowhere to hide, and THEY will be doing the dying, not the peasants, that’s when you get the deal you want.
Also the general citizenry is not happy, that’s working for the USA as well. #TheDonald has been smart about blowing up stuff the mullahs care about, not the things the people care about.
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What makes me laugh is that by their theology nothing happens without their god’s approval. The will of allah. But somehow they never manage to connect the dots when they lose.
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They do connect dots: “Allah will grant us victory when we please him by carrying out his command to kill infidels. Obviously we have not carried it out well enough.”
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Speaking of “our approach failed, so we should repeat it harder”….
https://notthebee.com/article/media-praises-dc-comics-new-transgender-wonder-woman
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Oh Lord.
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That doesn’t even begin to cover it. I have obscenities I’d like to use for this situation that are unsuitable for a PG blog. It appears they are bound and determined to skinsuit Diana Prince’s alternate personality.
Linda Carter And Gal Godot Forever !!!
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Sounds like the Aztecs. “We sacrificed hundreds of thousands of people to our gods and we got nothing from them. Obviously we need to sacrifice MOAR!!!“
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My rejoiner to the idiot antisemites online (but I repeat myself) who snark “It was promised 3000 years ago” uses that:
“It was given to them by God in 1948, when Allah the All-Merciful decided that a small group of outgunned and outnumbered Jews who had been a formal army less than a few weeks should defeat the numerous, well armed, and fully trained armies of 5 Arab countries. Sounds like you’re being a bit impious in questioning it”
Their brains tend to break at that point
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That’s the recent events I was referring to.
We’ll see what happens
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Iran has a legitimate government; a President and Assembly elected by the people — but it’s completely impotent. Helpless. The country is actually a thug-ocracy ruled with an iron fist by a self-perpetuating gang of militant theocratic thugs that will never surrender power until they are all dead. Every last one of ’em. That is what it will take to end the war. Anything less is just kicking the can down the road again.
Oh, and confiscate all the uranium. Remove it from the country.
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Based on what I’ve seen of Uncle Don’s previous “military adventures”, my guess is he doesn’t just want to ‘win’, for whatever values you choose for ‘win’. He can simply send bombers over until Iran is mostly rubble if that was his primary goal.
The way I see it, his primary goal isn’t to ‘win’, it’s to come out with some kind of profit for the United States. Maybe just political, but probably a piece of Iran’s action, somehow.
I don’t think Don views the world – or Iran – in terms of geopolitics or military force. I think the lens he looks through is “What’s in it for us?”
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That’s fine, as long as he’s also considering the short- and long-term risks to benefits.
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You’ve addressed in a round about way the question I’ve been asking the whole time: “Why now?”
Was this going to happen? Sure. I’m old enough to remember when “Nightline” was called “The Iran Crisis – America Held Hostage” (even the “Day X” was added later). Now, I get why Carter and even Reagan didn’t act. In the context of the Cold War invading something that close to the USSR was a risk. Hell, we invaded them in the early 1940s to get access to the USSR, just then for lend lease, and the Soviet leaders were all old enough to remember that.
But either Bush or Clinton could have acted. Hell, Bush II had the pretext and used it in Iraq instead (something I questioned then). This is a can long kicked.
So why now? They were close to a nuke? I thought we bombed them in 2024 to take that off the near term table. Was that ineffective? If so, why? If so, how do we know the intelligence for this round was any better?
And what is the end game this close to midterm? Apparently a series of ceasefires and negotiations. I’ll at least give Trump credit for being honest that in this part of the world a ceasefire means not shooting as much.
But I still don’t get why now, this year. If I was the conspiracy type it was the handful of GOP regulars he still listens to setting up the 2028 loss to rid them of this troublesome MAGA so they can go back to going alone and getting along and cashing the loyal “opposition” checks. Plenty of them still think once Trump is gone this will all be over, seeing Trump as the disease and not the symptom.
But I can’t come up with a better “why now” than that.
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The answer is here:
https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2026/05/31/ny-times-fearmongers-over-exodus-of-lawyers-trump-has-the-last-laugh-n2202907
It has taken Trump and his Cabinet a year to complete enough of a house cleaning of long term swamp creatures to maintain OPSEC and a team that could be relied on. That process is still not complete.
He’s done it strictly legally (and as that article makes clear, in spite of the backstabbing). Going any faster would have required bucellarii to address the swamp directly.
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That’s still not a sufficient explanation. If his hand are tied by the mid-terms looming, a reasonable explanation for the on and off nature of this war, you could have said “the lawyers are gone but it’s too close…draw up plans for action in December/January”.
Or was the thought this would be done before April much less June.
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Now extend that through the entire officer corps.
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I think they were just out of ammo locally. The USN certainly was getting close to empty magazines, and they can’t reload the Mk41 VLS cells at sea so they have to drive the boats back to a secure port. The CVNs probably could have kept generating sorties, but we don’t have all that many UNREP ships anymore either. All indications are the USAF logistics were running short of replacement rates in theater, though RAF Fairford and the heavy bombers operating from there (notably they are still there) were getting enough.
By now though? I think everything is reloaded.
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Officially, Iran has 90 million people, Russia has 140 million, and you discount those as you like.
PRC estimates range as low as 400 million.
The intelligence this round was apparently in part the Iranians saying so, in diplomacy.
Lots of things could explain the timing.
So what communist parties tell themselves makes AI cocaine for them. What Chinese academics who identify as scholar advisors to rulers tell themselves and the rulers makes AI metaphorically cocaine. It does not literally have the neurological hits of cocaine for them, but the psychological hits are still pretty strong. To them, it is either a special opportunity, or a unique possible remedy to whatever existing issues.
We also have the convergence of the law professors, and the Obama regime in the US. The latter set the stage for Trump 1.0, and the former started to become apparent in 2020-21. We can skip over much of this, except to note that this shaped a lot of foreign priors.
There is some fairly strong evidence of long lead time Russian behavior (the pipeline hack), that showed that maybe 2022 was premeditated enough that it might not have purely been a reaction to the ‘opportunity’ of Biden. May 2021 is early enough that they could have made the go decision after Biden was a sure fit in. Heck, it could have been after the mousetrap of January 2021. If my search today was for the correct pipeline hack, this was pretty clearly aimed at US fuel supplies for the European theater.
There is a basic unknown to us of whether the PRC put Biden in, and for what end.
From a Trump perspective, Biden is clearly a waste to outright harmful in terms of opportunity to shape the decisions of the rest of the world.
2023 on, the push against the Jews, has many explanations. Spontaneous evil, for one. But, in hindsight inferences are possible in context of the April-May ‘Trump is a Jewish puppet, and that is the only reason he could have made this choice’.
2025 is clearly a wash because of reorganization, and reform. Or, rather it was productive in a way that is heavily about preparing to act.
Peace and regime change in Iran serves the end of a lack of nuclear war.
War with Iran stops manufacturing supply to Russia, and oil supply to PRC.
A defeat for Russia is maybe not that important to Trump, but it could be for all that we know.
All Trump has to believe for oil supply leverage to be a good choice, is that PRC will soon invade Taiwan, and the PLA thinks they can win. They cannot do it without oil, and something something.
I could not tell you the exact state of US semi production, and the market impact, but it should at least be order of magnitude compared to what we see now.
The use of academics domestically to push against Jews, alone, could be a reason to go after Iran. Students for Justice in Palestine was very quick to take up the cause of opposing ICE to product their ‘community’. So far the big name political terrorists here have been domestic, but it is not clear that foreign backed terrorists could not add enough to the Democrats to make things sporty.
Trump was too late to back the January uprising in Iran. That was quashed fast enough, and hard enough, that we cannot count on them doing the needful.
The ‘not now, not in an election year’ is an argument that does seem quite compelling. It feels like it should be a reasonable concern. Federal election years, and non-election years, are pretty literally split half and half.
If American domestic politics or the security situation were cooked enough, a house election going badly could literally not be worse than refusing to act for fear of the electoral consequences. If.
Tim Walz was literally implying civil war earlier this year.
And, it is precisely during an election year when it might be most valuable to disrupt foreign financing of Democratic campaigns.
I have heard that the UK is shutting down their internet, to mitigate riots.
The finances it would be helpful to disrupt could well be our so called allies.
There are literally too many possible explanations to sort for a single one that is most persuasive, that most clearly explains the policy. We can literally forget to mention possible explanations.
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One demographic note on Iran: That 90m incorporates a very young population compared to other countries – draw a line on the population pyramid below under the “49-49” row and that’s people born since the revolution – and frankly the next row of people who were five or under in 1979 have no recall of the Shah either. The totals above the line are tiny compared the totals below. This is why they can kill 40,000 people in their 20s and not notice societally – they have lots more.
But to those families – they just made mortal enemies in every generation still alive. And Persians can hold grudges.
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Bush the Elder was a Cold Warrior through and through, so his mindset was always “watch out for what teh Red Army will do – and the USSR was dissolved on 26 December 1991, where the election he lost to Ross Perot helping Bubba win was 3 November 1992. He had no time.
And Billy Jeff was not going to do anything to the mullahs, since history had by that point ended and all was peace dividend and cigars (eeew) as far as the eye could see.
Might have GWB done something absent 9/11? I doubt it. He was not the guy to make that bold of a decision. Mister pallets of cash was simply on the other team, and the peoples soviet running ZOTUS Joe was certainly not going to vary from anything the Foggy Bottom Boys were doing, i.e. more cash. That leaves DJT first round, and frankly I doubt the Pentagon would have let him.
So this is pretty much the first real opportunity since the end of the Cold War.
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Oh, and I left out the House of Saud, whose prior leadership would very much not have been in for rolling over anyone in the region, excepting Saddam once he proved to be okay with invading and occupying Kuwait, thus being an existential threat to the House of Saud itself. Not so now. Having the Saudis on our side, and at the same time not needing any of their damned oil ourselves, is the main difference regionally.
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He was, however, the first clear sign we had of a Deep State when his own State Department sabotaged him.
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Sarah, your instinct to let the man cook is still your best position.
It has bothered me since the beginning of this action how many people in this country have been opposing what President Trump is doing; not so much the Dems and their media, which will never stop, but people allegedly on our side (read that as the American side) of the aisle, to the point of emboldening the the mullahs and the IRGC to think that they can wait out Trump with false negotiations until the midterms cripple him.
But here’s what I think is really happening:
Trump is playing a semi-long game. Sure, he doesn’t want to expose our service members anymore than he has to. He has said repeatedly that it’s up to the Iranian people to do something about their government. He talks about a DEAL, but who that deal will be with is still an unknown.
Whatever is left of the old regime is still being emboldened (thanx in part to the various idiots here at home that I bemoaned further up in this reply.) The blockade is ongoing, and Trump has their economy in a stranglehold. The regime is falling apart, and the longer they remain emboldened the weaker they become.
How long will it take for the people like those who’ve been killed protesting in the streets to effectively finish the regime? I don’t know. Are we secretly arming them? I don’t know. Do we have ops going on inside? I don’t know, but considering how many layer of regime have disappeared, I think so.
Trump has been very vocal for as long as he’s been in politics that it’s stupid to tell the enemy (and he has a LOT of them) what you’re going to do; he’s the most effective leader I’ve seen at letting criticism bounce off him while he maintains actions that remain secret because he isn’t foolish enough to show anyone his cards unless he has a good reason to show them (and even then you don’t know if the card is real.)
I’m content to let him cook. Iran is not what will cause a problem in the midterms – it’s still establishment republicans refusing to do what’s necessary to secure our elections from the inevitable fraud. That’s where the focus needs to be (which may explain why we’re seeing an upsurge in proof of fraud in 2018, 2020, etc.
Let the man cook.
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I read a theory the other day that every time Pres Trump agrees to a “ceasefire” it restarts the clock on the (unconstitutional) wartime powers act.
i don’t know if this is true
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That unconstitutional clock was the reason they announced the end of hostilities. The pattern of remaining arguably within the letter of the law is sustained.
Congress can play “absent house members because it’s primary day” vote games all it wants (why the Speaker let that one go to vote that day is beyond me), but the fact is self defense, in airstrikes at launch sites in response to missiles shot at US bases, does not trigger even the Unconstitutional War Powers Act even on a facial reading.
It should also be remembered that the War Powers Act was the Dem’s “we won’t let ourselves do it again we promise pinky swear” after the Vietnam War, looking back at when DEMOCRAT President Johnson pushed through the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in the DEMOCRAT Congress to expand US assistance to South Vietnam.
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Welp, the SpaceX IPO is official. Estimated price is $135 per share. I decided I can risk $5,000 on it. Might pay off bigly, might drop like a rock, might just diddle along without doing much. Time will tell.
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