REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Khamenei, One of Most Evil People in History, is Dead

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Wednesday, April 8, 2026 22:22
SHORT URL:
VIEWED: 4361
PAGE 6 of 6

Tuesday, March 31, 2026 11:06 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


The Psychology of Military Incompetence

How the Iran War was lost

Paul Krugman | Mar 31, 2026

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-psychology-of-military-incompet
ence

Transcript

So the world’s greatest military power went to war against a fourth rate nation whose military budget would be rounding error in our defense spending. And it appears that we lost.

Hi, Paul Krugman with a late night, well, evening update, which I don’t usually do, but I wanted to get this in before who knows what happens in the news tomorrow.

It’s Tuesday. It’s the day that the stock market rallied enormously, that the futures price of oil dropped precipitously, all on the happy news that the United States, at least based on Trump’s Truth Social, appears to be surrendering. Trump put up a Truth Social post saying that, you know, we don’t need to open the Strait of Hormuz. If the Europeans think they need it, they should go ahead and do it. And it’s up to them. And this is pretty amazing.

Of course, the idea that it only matters to the Europeans, that it doesn’t matter to us, is all wrong. And that will be a subject of a Substack post shortly. But it is pretty much a confession. Although it’s framed as we won, now let somebody else do the cleanup, the reality is it’s effectively a confession that, well, we lost. We can’t do this.

How the hell did we manage to do this? I mean, the objective reality is that this was never going to be... Maybe it wasn’t even going to be doable. There were reasons why we didn’t go to war with Iran, particularly why we didn’t go to war in a way that basically became an existential threat for the regime so that they have no compunction about creating lots of damage because the alternative result is annihilation for them personally. But everybody who thought about it even for a couple of minutes, anyone who knew anything, particularly anyone who’d been paying attention to four years of war in Ukraine … we know something about what modern war looks like and about the inability of countries that have conventional superior forces to avoid major damage from drones and missiles. So this was completely, unbelievably stupid.

How did we get there? Well, there was a very good article by Tobin Harshaw in Bloomberg, and mostly I’m just riffing off what he wrote, but I think that it deserves wider circulation. He resurrected a book I had forgotten about, a 1976 book by Norman Dixon called The Psychology of Military Incompetence. It was very British oriented, but the lessons apply; Dixon looked at the great military disasters of British history.

You might think there were many reasons why really bad decisions were made, but he actually said there was a kind of consistent pattern. That what happened was that you had military leaders, or people making military decisions, who for the most part shared two things. First, they believed, they had this atavistic, anachronistic belief that warfare is all about muscles and not about minds. which hasn’t been true for a very long time. And second, he argued that they are just generally anti-intellectual, anti-education.

So in some sense, it’s all about muscles and don’t give me all of these smarty-pants intellectuals who are telling me about why I’m doing it wrong. It’s an uncannily accurate portrait of Pete Hegseth, down to even seemingly minor details. Muscular Christianity is among the defining symptoms of the bad British military leaders that Dixon analyzed. So this is what happened.

This is not about specific bad judgments. It’s not, in a way, about the specifics of the case. It is that we were led into war by people who exemplified in the classic way how really bad military decisions are made. And it all comes down to believing in brute force and toughness and muscles — muscles in the age of drone warfare! — and hate intellectuals, hate learning.

What really gets me is that in a war where the deciding factor is having some intellectual understanding of what you’re doing, a theocratic regime in Iran, which basically wants to bring back the Middle Ages, mostly got it right.

And the world’s leading haven of scientific thought, or we were at least until the current administration, got it completely wrong. It’s humiliating. It’s awful. And, you know, we will all be paying the price for this incredible defeat for probably for the rest of our lives.

Enjoy the evening.

----------------------

How a Psychologist Warned of Military Incompetence

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to rewrite the military’s culture in order to replicate a mindset that has led to historical disasters, Bloomberg Opinion columnist Tobin Harshaw explains.

Mar 31st, 2026

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2026-03-31/opinion-hegseth-s-cul
ture-wars-lead-to-disaster-video

-----------------------

Hegseth’s Culture Wars Are Inviting a Military Disaster

By Tobin Harshaw | March 31, 2026 at 4:00 AM CDT

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-opinion-hegseth-culture-wars-a
re-inviting-military-disaster/

One person who understood the importance of the second half of the phrase “military mind” was Norman F. Dixon. A British psychologist with a decade of military experience, Dixon wrote a remarkable (and surprisingly funny) 1976 study called “On the Psychology of Military Incompetence,” which won a devoted following among military and corporate leaders and remains in print on its 50th anniversary.

Download for free from https://annas-archive.gl/search?q=On+the+Psychology+of+Military+Incomp
etence

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, April 1, 2026 7:29 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Trump Would Love To Leave, but Iran Might Not Let Him.

Trump has made a prison for himself. He started the war to have what he imagined would be some great “victory”. He would pummel Iran, kill its leaders, put in place compliant new ones, get paid, reap political benefits, and maybe even have a victory parade to celebrate. It was simple, really. If he cannot have his victory, there is no point to all of this. And here is the rub: he can declare “victory” at any time; indeed, he declares victory multiple times every day with ever more outlandish claims. However, if he ends the campaign and the Strait of Hormuz is not open, the Iranian theocratic regime in power, and Iran’s nuclear weapons program is not “obliterated”, he understands that his claims will be a farce. Moreover, the first of these alone means that the world economy will be on the point of implosion with a real chance of a worldwide recession and high oil prices. This stagflation world will be a massive problem for him and the GOP in the run-up to the 2026 elections. So, while Trump can declare victory at any time, he cannot ensure Iran recognizes his triumph. And this is the dilemma he faces when he gives his address to the nation tonight at 9 pm ET “to provide an important update on Iran.”

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/midweek-update-4-trump-would-lo
ve

***********************************

Trump’s First Speech About the War With Iran Explained Absolutely Nothing

Let’s take stock of just how much Trump is distorting the truth about this war.

By Fred Kaplan | April 02, 2026 5:06 PM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/04/trump-iran-war-news-speech
-lies.html

The White House heralded it in advance as a “major address,” but President Donald Trump’s actual prime-time speech on Wednesday—what he called “an update on the tremendous progress our warriors have made in Iran”—was a big nothing.

News stories, citing inside sources, had reported that Trump was thinking about escalating the war—even sending in ground troops—or exiting it very quickly. Yet judging from the speech, he’s doing neither. Instead, he’s intent on keeping up the bombing, hitting Iran “extremely hard over the next two to three weeks … to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong”—a malapropism of Gen. Curtis LeMay’s call in the 1960s to “bomb them”— meaning North Vietnam—“back to the Stone Age.”

It was the first speech Trump has delivered on his and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Iran, now in its second month—yet he still offered no serious explanation of why he started it, when it will end, or how anyone should define victory. Instead, he crammed the 20-minute address with many of the lies he’s told many times before and invented a few new ones.

Sometimes it’s worth cataloging the lies and distortions in one of his speeches to show just how incapable he is of telling—or perhaps recognizing—the truth. Because this speech was billed as so important, yet carried so little real news, it offers another opportunity.

So let us begin.

Claim: “In these past four weeks, our armed forces have delivered swift, decisive, overwhelming victories on the battlefield, victories like few people have ever seen before.”

Fact: U.S. and Israeli bombs and missiles have destroyed many targets but racked up no “victories” (if that word has any meaning). Iranian leaders have been killed, but the regime—a theocratic state empowered by a repressive well-armed military—remains intact. A lot of their missiles have been hit, but Iran is still launching a fair number each day.

Claim: “I did many things during my two terms in office to stop the quest for nuclear weapons by Iran. … I killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani. … I terminated Barack Hussein Obama’s Iran nuclear deal … [which] gave them $1.7 billion in cash … [and] would have led to a colossal arsenal of massive nuclear weapons for Iran.”

Fact: Killing Soleimani was a big deal, but the terrorist commander had nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear program. The Iran nuclear deal, signed by Obama and six other leaders, then sanctified into law by the U.N. Security Council, in fact halted Iran’s nuclear program, forced Iran to dismantle most of it, and allowed strict international inspection. The $1.7 billion in cash referred to Obama’s return of Iranian money, which the U.S. had confiscated when Iran covertly started a nuclear program. Trump’s scuttling of the deal and his reimposition of sanctions prompted Iran to restart the program, bringing the country closer than ever to an A-bomb.

Claim: “My first preference was always the path of diplomacy, yet the regime continued their relentless quest for nuclear weapons and rejected every attempt at an agreement.”

Fact: The week before Trump started Operation Epic Fury, Iranian negotiators presented a proposal that was actually pretty favorable to us; it would have required them to scale back enriched uranium even more than Obama’s deal had done. U.S. officials said talks would resume on Monday. The Saturday before, Trump launched his surprise attack.

Claim: “In Operation Midnight Hammer,” Trump’s attack on Iran’s enrichment sites last June, “we totally obliterated those nuclear sites. The regime then sought to rebuild their nuclear program at a totally different location, making clear they had no intention of abandoning their pursuit of nuclear weapons.”

Fact: Trump’s own director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified just two weeks ago that Iran had not rebuilt its nuclear program since Midnight Hammer.

Claim: “They were also rapidly building a vast stockpile of conventional ballistic missiles and would have soon had missiles that could reach the American homeland, Europe, and virtually any other place on earth.”

Fact: They were building more missiles, yes. But Trump’s own top intelligence officials have said there is no evidence that Iran was anywhere close to building missiles with the range to strike the U.S.

Claim: “Our objectives are very simple and clear … we will cripple Iran’s military, crush their ability to support terrorist proxies, and deny them the ability to build a nuclear bomb.”

Fact: The third aim is the main one (he cited it at the start of his speech), but later in the speech he pretty much said this had long ago been accomplished. “The nuclear sites that we obliterated with the B-2 bombers [last June] have been hit so hard that it would take months to get near the nuclear dust,” he said. “And we have it under intense surveillance and control. If we see them make a move, even a move for it, we’ll hit them with missiles very hard again. We have all the cards. They have none.” If this is true, why did he go to war in late February?

Claim: “We built the strongest economy in history. … We’ve taken a dead and crippled country—I hate to say that but we were a dead and crippled country after the last administration—and made it the hottest country anywhere in the world by far.”

Fact: No public appearance by Trump can go without kicking Joe Biden in the shins (or higher up), but “dead and crippled”? Job growth, unemployment, and GDP growth were all better under Biden’s last two years than they have been under the first year of Trump’s current term. It is odd that Trump even went here in this speech, as polls—which show his ratings on the economy at a new low—suggest few people, even among his supporters, believe the economy is so hot.

Claim (continuing the point): “With no inflation, record-setting investments coming into the United States, over $18 trillion, and the highest stock market ever.”

Fact: Inflation is at 2.4 percent and rising, high enough for the Federal Reserve to vote against lowering interest rates. Actual foreign investment amounts to a few hundred billion dollars, no higher than during Biden’s presidency. The stock market has risen, mainly because of the go-go growth (some would say “bubble”) of A.I. corporations. That said, the S&P 500 has declined each week since the war began. And while it rose 3 percent on the day of Trump’s announcement, mainly on reports that he would end the war quickly, the futures market tanked—and future oil markets rose—while he was giving his speech.

Claim: “The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait. … We don’t need it. … And the countries of the world that do receive oil through the Hormuz Straight must take care of that passage. … They must grab it and cherish it. They could do it easily.”

Fact: First, the global oil market is a global market. The U.S. might not depend directly on the oil that passes through the Strait of Hormuz, but Iran’s restrictions of that passage affect our oil prices, like everyone else’s. Second, our allies could not “grab” the Strait “easily.” We couldn’t do so either. Even given Iran’s much-reduced missile force, one well-aimed drone or missile at an oil tanker or escorting warship passing through could discourage other tankers from following along. It’s worth recalling that the strait was open before the war started. One way to reopen it might be to end the war.

Claim: “Regime change was not our goal … but regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders’ death. They’re all dead. The new group is less radical and much more reasonable. Yet if during this period of time no deal is made … we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard.”

Fact: Trump and his top aides have said contradictory things about whether regime change is one of the war’s goals, but his continued railing against the regime’s evil—and his boasts about killing its top leaders—would make no sense if it weren’t a goal. Second, as noted before, the regime is very much intact, even if the original leaders are not. Third, there is no evidence that “the new group” is “more reasonable,” presumably meaning more inclined to make a deal that pleases Trump. In fact, given the killing of the top echelons and the destruction of command-and-control, it’s not clear who has the authority to strike a deal with the U.S. Finally, threatening to destroy Iran’s electric grid—a war crime—is hardly the sort of attitude to make them more reasonable.

Claim: “The whole world is watching, and they can’t believe the power, strength, and brilliance, they just can’t believe what they’re seeing, they—leave it to your imagination—but they can’t believe what they’re seeing, the brilliance of the United States military.”

Fact: The speed, power, and precision of U.S. air and naval power is indeed something to behold. (The accuracy of the data that goes into the bombing campaigns is another matter; hence the mistaken, though very accurate, bombing of a school and an athletic center that killed many children.) What the world is watching with wider eyes, and what they really “can’t believe,” is the aimlessness, arrogance, ignorance, and shamelessness of this well-honed military’s commander in chief—his pretense to imperialism with barely a shrug toward the responsibility that has historically gone with it. That, more than anything, was what was on dismal display Wednesday night.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Thursday, April 2, 2026 6:42 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Jamie Dimon says US must 'finish this thing' with Iran to protect global economy

JPMorgan Chase CEO warns that winning the conflict is more important than short-term market moves

By Madison Colombo FOXBusiness

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is calling for a decisive end to the conflict with Iran, saying the U.S. must "finish this thing" to protect the global economy and remove the threat to the region.

Dimon appeared on "Fox & Friends" Tuesday, saying American strength depends on decisive action in the Middle East and embracing the artificial intelligence revolution.

"It’s much more important that this be successfully completed than what the market does," Dimon said.

Threats to Middle East oil flows have added uncertainty to markets, as the United States, Israel and Iran continue to exchange strikes. On Tuesday, Iran struck an oil tanker off the coast of Dubai and continues to block shipments in the vital Strait of Hormuz.

Dimon said Americans should be hoping the United States wins the latest conflict and acts to "clean up the straits," minimizing future threats to the U.S. and its allies.

"These people have been doing something bad for 47 years. They've been killing people. They've been killing Americans," Dimon said.

"I think people are surprised to find out they had a ballistic missile and go 3,000 miles. These are bad people, and they needed to be stopped," he added.

Dimon advocated for the country to "finish this thing," warning that if the U.S. fails to act, the cycle of threats will continue.

Beyond the battlefield, Dimon noted that a vital part of U.S. security is embracing AI capability and fixing a lagging defense industrial base. He singled out the U.S.’s inability to double or triple its supply of rockets if needed, noting it is a major area of concern.

Dimon discussed his $1.5 trillion Security and Resiliency initiative, which lends and invests money to companies researching areas tied to national security, including drones, space and rare earths.

He also spoke about the changes he sees on the horizon as the country adapts to the introduction of artificial intelligence. Dimon compared the AI shift’s importance to that of tractors and electricity.

"AI, in the long run, is [going to] be unbelievable. Just like fertilizer was and tractors and the internet and electricity, it’s [going to] cure cancers," he said.

"My guess is our grandkids will be working three and a half days a week. They’ll live to 100. They won’t have all our diseases. That’s good," Dimon added.


What a crock of shit.

Jamie Dimon is either a secret Zionist, or he's worried about the petrodollar and his bank's world-straddling dominance. More likely the latter.

Oh, and promoting his bank's latest get-rich-quick/ make-everyone-else poor schemes.


-----------

"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Friday, April 3, 2026 8:46 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


NATO slides into Trump-induced coma

By Dave Lawler, Zachary Basu | April 3, 2026

https://www.axios.com/2026/04/03/nato-trump-iran-war

The big picture: The alliance was built on the premise that an attack on one member is an attack on all. President Trump has made that conditional: if you won't help me in my war, I might not show up for yours.

NATO's mutual defensive framework doesn't actually apply in the case of Iran, a war taking place far from the alliance's territory.

But it could be the death knell for the most powerful and consequential alliance of the past eight decades.

Driving the news: Trump and his team have fumed at several NATO allies for denying the U.S. logistical help or access to their airspace or military bases to carry out attacks against Iran.

He's called them "cowards" for refusing to join the war to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration would now "have to reexamine the value of NATO." Trump said he might withdraw altogether.

The flip side: For their part, allies have noted that Trump launched the war without their input or any international legal framework — and created the Hormuz crisis he's now demanding they resolve.

Flashback: This all comes months after Trump threatened to seize Greenland, a territory of ally Denmark, and impose tariffs on any other allies who stood in his way.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Friday, April 3, 2026 8:59 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by second:

NATO slides into Trump-induced coma
Trump will probably not withdraw from NATO right now because he does not want to. He really would like to leave the alliance. No, he will not withdraw from NATO now because doing so would not serve Putin’s interests. It is far better for Russia to have an unreliable, destructive NATO being controlled by the USA at the top than to be faced by a European-led defensive alliance planning to protect the continent from Russian aggression.

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/will-trump-withdraw-from-nato

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Friday, April 3, 2026 11:10 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


Has Iran captured US F-15E pilots, and has it shot down 2-seat fighter jet along with a rescue chopper? Full timeline of F-15 shot down Iran claims and rescue mission updates

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/has-iran-ca
ptured-us-f-15e-pilots-and-has-it-shot-down-2-seat-fighter-jet-along-with-a-rescue-chopper-full-timeline-of-f-15-shot-down-iran-claims-and-rescue-mission-updates/articleshow/130000797.cms

NOTIFY: N   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Saturday, April 4, 2026 2:03 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Donald Trump Isn't Sounding Like Himself

And that's terrifying

By Paul Krugman | Apr 04, 2026

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/donald-trump-isnt-sounding-like-him
self

Donald Trump isn’t sounding like himself, and that’s terrifying. Hi, Paul Krugman here with a brief update on Saturday afternoon.

Not my usual thing. No economics, no analytics, just I felt I needed to say something. On Wednesday, Trump gave a speech, which was... pretty depressing. He was low energy, listless, and seemed to be disconnected from reality, insisting that everything is going great in this war and everything is going great across the board. And in terms of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, well, it’s somebody else’s problem. And the Strait may naturally open by itself, which didn’t sound like leadership.

In some ways, it sounded like Trump, always living in a fantasy world in which things are going his way. But if you thought about the outcome for the world, it seemed to be pointing towards the U.S. never admitting it openly, but implicitly basically giving up and leaving a stronger Iran, but with the Strait of Hormuz opening up — maybe with tolls collected by the regime in Iran, and just a diminished, weakened U.S., but better than some of the alternatives.

Today, Trump put up a Truth Social post, which said that if Iran doesn’t open up the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, “all hell will reign down on them.” That was how he put it. All hell will rain down. Misspelled rain, but OK. And then finished it up with glory be to God. GOD in caps.

Wow. So first of all, this is a completely different picture suddenly. Aside from the Strait of Hormuz not being our problem to we will commit massive war crimes, presumably. That’s the only thing that makes sense here, unless they open it up, which is pretty bad.

And also... I don’t think Trump has ever said “glory be to God.” That doesn’t sound like him. That sounds almost as if Pete Hegseth wrote this post, which maybe in some sense he did. The misspellings and all do look like Trump in his own hand, but it feels like this is the influence of our religious fanatic Secretary of War, or as people in the Pentagon apparently call him, the Secretary of War Crimes.

This is really bad. It’s hard to see what happens in 48 hours. It’s clear that Trump, for all his pretense of, “I’m always winning,” is aware of how completely he screwed things up, that he’s aware that he has basically led America into an epic strategic defeat. I don’t think he cares about that from the point of view of America, but he is realizing what this has done to him — that he will probably quite rapidly lose his grip on U.S., politics, and certainly to the extent that he cares about his legacy, it’s not going to be his wonderful ballroom. It’s going to be that he’s the man who single-handedly led America to one of its greatest defeats ever. But now what?

It would be one thing if he just kind of slunk away into the night, which is what we would have hoped would happen, but instead it sounds like he’s unable to accept it and that he is going to try and do something truly awful in an attempt to somehow redeem himself and the situation.

If we had a functioning democracy, this would be 25th Amendment time. This guy should not have any authority at all. Finger on the button, although I don’t think we’re talking about nukes, but he shouldn’t have any authority on matters of state violence when this is the kind of mood he’s in. Just in general, although religiosity is often expected of American leaders, saying glory be to God before you unleash violence, that is not what used to be the American way.

Anyway, I’m scared. I wonder very much what the next few days will bring because this is looking like basically a president who is losing it and, unfortunately, losing it in a way that can really make the world a much worse place very fast.

I guess enjoy the rest of your weekend.



The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, April 5, 2026 11:03 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Donald Trump Isn't Sounding Like Himself

And that's terrifying

This guy should not have any authority at all. Finger on the button, although I don’t think we’re talking about nukes, but he shouldn’t have any authority on matters of state violence when this is the kind of mood he’s in.
Trump to Iran: "Open the Fuckin' Strait" or face bombing Tuesday

https://www.axios.com/2026/04/05/trump-iran-strait-hormuz-bombing-thre
at

President Trump threatened to bomb Iran's power plants and bridges starting Tuesday if the regime doesn't open the Strait of Hormuz.

Why it matters: Trump's 10-day deadline to Iran is expected to expire Monday. He previously threatened to bomb the country’s energy, water and oil infrastructure if no deal was reached to open the strait.

• Tehran has accused Trump of planning to commit war crimes and threatened to retaliate with similar attacks against infrastructure in Israel and in other Gulf states.

• Over the last ten days, the U.S. and Iran have held indirect negotiations through Pakistan. Egypt and Turkey to try to reach a ceasefire deal in return for opening the strait of Hormuz. No significant progress has been achieved so far.

What he's saying: "Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah," Trump wrote on his Truth Social account on Sunday morning.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, April 5, 2026 4:30 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


US forced to destroy two of its own aircraft after rescuing F-15 pilot from Iran

Two transport aircraft tasked with evacuating the special forces unit were unable to take off from a remote base in Iran. These aircraft were destroyed to prevent them from falling into enemy hands, sources said. The special forces therefore departed on three additional aircraft that were sent for them.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/04/05/8028831/

A decision to use an abandoned Iranian airstrip south of Isfahan as a forward operating location went wrong when two C-130 Hercules transporters, probably modified search and rescue variants, got stuck in the ground.

They were destroyed by the US to prevent them from falling into the Iranians’ hands, US sources indicated, and more transporters had to be brought forward to complete the extraction of the wounded second crew member. Each of the modified Hercules has a list price of nearly $115m.

An HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter involved in the rescue was also damaged by gunfire on Friday – so it is easy to conclude that the cost in lost and damaged airframes exceeds $250m, largely for the rescue of the second crew member.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/05/propaganda-f-15-crew-res
cue-downing-reminder-iran-fight-back-donald-trump

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, April 5, 2026 4:53 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Trump jumped into an enormous steaming pile of dogshit, and there's no way out.

Honestly, I can't imagine what propelled Trump into such a self destructive war. Is there something in the Epstein files that Mossad is holding over him? Is he delusional? So ill- informed that the people advising him might credibly be accused of treason?

Everyone that I pay attention to in the alt media has been saying for MONTHS that Iran would be a huge challenge to take militarily. IRAN has been saying for months that if they were attacked they would close the straits, and hit out at all of America's proxies in the ME including Israel.

The 12-day war, when Israel begged a halt, was just an image of things to come. Did the CIA's/ spec ops' success in Venezuela cause neocons and zionists to miscalculate wildly?

Now for the consequences of possible failure:

The USA driven out of the ME.
Israel cannot continue as a viable nation.

Energy production infrastructure across the ME is destroyed.
If desalination plants are destroyed, petro- monarchies crumble.

There are petroleum, fertilizer, and helium shortages across the globe.
In addition to higher prices, there will be actual scarcity of food, fuel, and high tech products, which will impact Taiwan, Japan, and S Korea; the EU; and south Asia and Africa the most. Governments will change or fall.

China will turn to pipeline supplies from Russia.
Chinese economy slows as its markets shrink.

Petro- monarchies realize that the USA can't protect them. One leg of the petrodollar deal is broken.
The dollar finance cycle is broken... from ME oil sales (in dollars) to US Treasuries and investments in high tech.
USD banks (JPMC) starved of funds.
Hedge funds collapse.
USA government unable to fund its debt. Interest rates and inflation rise even as the productive economy shrinks.

Iran is in charge of the Straits and whatever oil that is still flowing out of the ME.
Oil is traded mostly in yuan.

-----------

"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, April 5, 2026 4:54 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Dbl

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, April 6, 2026 6:09 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


The Real Intelligence Failure in Iran

A costly quagmire was predictable. Trump went to war anyway.

By Shane Harris | April 5, 2026

https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/04/iran-war-intelli
gence-failure-trump/686694/

In 2005, a bipartisan commission of lawmakers and security experts concluded that “the Intelligence Community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.” America’s spies had told President George W. Bush that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted a nuclear-weapons program and that Iraq possessed biological weapons and mobile production facilities, as well as stockpiles of chemical weapons. These supposed facts became the basis for a U.S. invasion and an eight-year occupation. “Not one bit of it could be confirmed when the war was over,” the commission found. “This was a major intelligence failure.”

If a similar panel of experts scrutinized the run-up to the current war in Iran, their assessment might go something like this:

The intelligence community was accurate and consistent in its prewar judgments about Iran’s capabilities and intentions to attack the United States and its allies. Contrary to what President Trump has said to justify his decision, the intelligence showed that the Iranian regime was not preparing to use a nuclear weapon; it did not have ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States; and in response to a U.S. military attack, Iran was likely to strike at neighboring countries in the Persian Gulf and try to close the Strait of Hormuz, precipitating a global economic crisis. All of this was known before the war and presented to President Trump. This was an intelligence success.

Trump’s “excursion,” as he calls the biggest U.S. military operation of his second term, has unleashed a parade of horribles. Iran now controls the strait, where it plans to charge vessels a toll and can govern global flows of oil, natural gas, fertilizer, and chemicals that are crucial for manufacturing. A regime that Trump claims to have replaced still remains in the hands of hard-liners, whose repression of the Iranian people will be strengthened for having survived a decapitation strike by the world’s only superpower. And neighboring countries in the Gulf, whose livelihoods depend on exporting energy and creating safe places for people to visit, live, and work, will amass new weapons and reconsider their strategic partnerships with the United States.

Two decades ago, a president embraced information that turned out to be wrong, and disaster followed. Today, a president disregards assessments that proved to be right, and the predictable comes to pass. There’s a failure of intelligence there too—just not the kind we’re used to seeing.

“Your successes are unheralded—your failures are trumpeted,” President John F. Kennedy remarked in a speech to CIA staff at their headquarters, in Langley, Virginia, in 1961. Ever since, intelligence officers have ruefully invoked that truism whenever they’re blamed for a major screwup. The familiar storyline of an intelligence failure features analysts who neglect to “connect the dots,” case officers who get seduced by sources who exaggerate or lie, and politicians who contort ambiguous information to align with their preferred outcome. That’s what happened in the months before the Iraq War.

The lead-up to Operation Epic Fury turns this narrative on its head. The spies called it right, but the president went another direction. The failures of the intelligence community on Iraq’s WMDs produced systemic changes meant to keep botched calls like that one from recurring. In many respects, those reforms have worked. But they couldn’t account for a decision maker who had been seduced by previous military successes into thinking that the U.S. armed forces, under his inspired and perhaps divinely endowed command, could never stumble.

Some of Trump’s allies have criticized him for not making a public case for war, as the Bush administration did. But if he had accurately presented the intelligence, the facts would have argued against attacking Iran—or at least for not striking before the diplomatic options had been exhausted. Perhaps that’s why the president ignored, and later misrepresented, what his advisers told him.

“The regime already had missiles capable of hitting Europe and our bases, both local and overseas, and would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America,” Trump said before a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House on March 2. But the Defense Intelligence Agency had concluded that building a missile that could hit the United States would take Iran until 2035, and only then if it was determined to do so, which analysts concluded it was not. When Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard—hardly the model of an apolitical presidential adviser—testified before Congress a few weeks later, she reported that Iran had missile technology that “it could use to begin to develop a militarily viable ICBM before 2035,” but did not say that it had done so. That timeline is crucial to understand, because to hit the United States with the ultimate weapon, Iran would have to place a nuclear warhead on top of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

That threat was not years away, Trump insisted. Iran was “going to take over the Middle East. They were going to knock out Israel with their nuclear weapon,” he told reporters in the Oval Office on March 16. A charitable reading might be that Trump believes Iran wants to use a nuclear weapon. But desire, or even intention, does not equal capability.

It’s true that Iran possesses uranium that could eventually be used to build a nuclear weapon, were it to be further enriched. But in late June, U.S. bombers struck nuclear-related facilities in Iran, which had made “no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability,” Gabbard said in her written statement to Congress. “The entrances to the underground facilities that were bombed have been buried and shuttered with cement.” That’s not a picture of a country on the brink of using a nuclear weapon.

Trump not only has misstated intelligence about Iran’s military potential. He has expressed surprise at the regime’s response to American and Israeli bombing, particularly Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the heavy drone and missile attacks it has launched on its neighbors in the Persian Gulf. But the president’s advisers had told him this was likely to happen. They knew that restricting a shipping artery would give Iran a chokehold on the world’s economy. It’s such a no-brainer maneuver that the Pentagon has built it into its war planning. When Trump’s military advisers apprised him of this possibility, he appeared to have shrugged them off. Iran would probably capitulate before trying to close the strait, he said, and in any event, he thought the military could handle it, The Wall Street Journal reported.

After threatening to bomb Iran if ships weren’t allowed to travel freely, Trump now says other nations should bear the burden of reopening the waterway. “The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait and won’t be taking any in the future,” Trump said in a primetime address to the nation on Wednesday. “We don’t need it.” Oil prices rose following his remarks.

Trump has also said that no one told him that Iran was likely to attack Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and other Gulf nations that are close allies of the United States and host vital military bases. “They weren’t supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East,” Trump said during a White House event on March 16. “Nobody expected that. We were shocked.”

How could they be? In 2025, the U.S. intelligence community publicly reported that “Iran’s large conventional forces are capable of inflicting substantial damage to an attacker, executing regional strikes, and disrupting shipping, particularly energy supplies, through the Strait of Hormuz.” No less than Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, perhaps the war’s biggest cheerleader in the administration, had to admit that Iran’s regional retaliation was not exactly a surprise. “I can’t say that we anticipated necessarily that’s exactly how they would react, but we knew it was a possibility,” he said at a press conference on March 10.

Before the war, officials from two Arab countries told Trump and his top aides that they worried Iran could launch counterattacks on them, in order to halt the flow of oil, drive up prices, and trigger a global economic crisis, Politico reported. In early February, as U.S. warships were moving into position, I met with several of Qatar’s senior government officials. The likelihood of an Iranian reprisal was top of mind. One official pointed out the obvious, that a war could make it impossible for Qatar to produce and ship liquefied natural gas, the foundation of its economy. That’s exactly what happened.

After conducting its own war-gaming, one of the United States’ closest intelligence-sharing partners in Europe determined that a major American attack would compel Iran to hit countries in the Gulf and try to close the strait, an official in that government recently told me on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive assessment. The Americans were aware of those conclusions, according to the official, who was baffled that Trump claimed to be surprised.

Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee were also nonplussed, and angry, when Gabbard appeared before them last month. “There seems to be a discrepancy between what the intelligence community has reported over the years and what the president has said in terms of this action” in Iran, Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine, said. “And my question is, did you tell him?”

Gabbard avoided answering directly. But she said that the agencies she oversees had provided Trump “with the intelligence related to this operation in Iran, before and on an ongoing basis.” CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who was also present, said that he had participated in “dozens and dozens of briefings with the president,” including in the weeks before the war. He emphasized that “Iran had specific plans to hit U.S. interests in energy sites across the region.” Gabbard backed him up, noting that “this has long been an assessment of the IC that Iran would likely hold the Strait of Hormuz as leverage,” using a shorthand to refer to the intelligence community.

Senators were also keen to understand why one of Gabbard’s top deputies had quit his job over the president’s decision to go to war. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation,” Joe Kent, whom Trump had nominated to run the National Counterterrorism Center, wrote in his resignation letter, a revealing statement from an official who had access to some of the most highly classified intelligence in the U.S. government. Ratcliffe told the committee that he disagreed with Kent and that Iran maintained an aspiration to build a nuclear weapon. But that is not the same thing as actually building one and preparing to use it, as Trump has claimed Iran was doing.

Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat from Georgia, read aloud a portion of a White House statement from the day after the war began: Trump had ordered “a military campaign to eliminate the imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime.” He asked Gabbard: Had the intelligence community assessed that the threat was imminent?

The intelligence director, who had taken passionately anti-war stances as a member of Congress, walked an awkward line. She told Ossoff that the president is “the only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat,” and that doing so was not the intelligence community’s job. In fact, it is precisely the job of the intelligence community to make that determination. But putting Gabbard’s evasive characterization aside, she said that “Iran maintained the intention to rebuild and to continue to grow their nuclear enrichment capability.” What she didn’t mention: There is a world of difference between intention and imminent threat.

Plenty of presidents have dismissed the warnings and prognostications of their intelligence advisers, or simply not made time to hear them. When a stolen Cessna crashed on the South Lawn of the White House in 1994, some joked that it was flown by Bill Clinton’s CIA briefer, trying desperately to get a meeting with the president. At the other end of the spectrum, George W. Bush became obsessed with the minutiae of counter-terrorism operations, keeping track of the various al-Qaeda members whom the CIA was hunting and killing.

Trump’s relationship with the intelligence community is more fraught than any of his predecessors’. As a candidate, he excoriated the agencies for their botched call on Iraq’s WMDs. As president, he has railed against a “deep state” that he claims has been out to get him for more than a decade. Trump has long said that he trusts his gut. He’ll know the war in Iran is over, he recently told an interviewer, “when I feel it, feel it in my bones.”

The U.S. intelligence community is neither designed nor equipped to restrain a president who is moved by impulse, emotion, and his own feelings. It can only provide him with information. When the president disregards what he’s told, or distorts it, that failure is his alone.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, April 6, 2026 6:10 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK




--------------------------------------------------

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, April 6, 2026 4:47 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:


--------------------------------------------------

Be Evil. Be a dick.
The Terrorist in Chief

It’s time for us to face up to the ugly reality

Paul Krugman | Apr 06, 2026

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-terrorist-in-chief

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP
Apr 05, 2026, 8:03 AM

Terrorism, according to ICE — yes, that ICE — “involves violence or the threat of violence against people or property to further a particular ideology.” The official website goes on to declare that “Terrorists do not care who they hurt or kill to achieve their goals.”

If you haven’t read Donald Trump’s Truth Social post from Sunday, above, take a minute to do so. Don’t rely on sanewashed descriptions in the media. And then tell me that Trump doesn’t perfectly fit his own officials’ definition of a terrorist.

Don’t tell me that his cause is just, that the Iranian regime is evil. That’s what terrorists always say, and even if it’s sometimes true, terrorism is defined by its means rather than its ends — by its attempt to achieve political goals by violently attacking the innocent.

And that’s exactly what Trump is doing: he’s threatening to attack civilian infrastructure if he doesn’t get his way. And since Trump is talking about targeting essential services — power plants! — this is a threatened attack on people as well as property.

Later on Sunday Trump told Axios that the U.S. is in “deep negotiations” with Iran. Forgive me for doubting that anything like that is happening. But he went on to say that if there isn’t a deal by Tuesday, “I am blowing up everything over there.”

He has issued these threats without even a pretense that we will be attacking military targets, and if anything he seems to relish rather than regret the death and suffering his actions will cause.

On second thought, however, I shouldn’t say that Trump is making a threat of violence; he’s promising violence. That vile post isn’t part of a negotiating strategy, since there is, after all, zero chance that Iran will open the Strait of Hormuz by tomorrow evening. The Iranian regime almost certainly couldn’t open the strait on short notice if it tried: Military control in Iran has, by all accounts, been decentralized to local commanders to limit the effects of U.S. and Israeli decapitation strikes. So there’s no way people in Tehran could order the whole Iranian military to stand down at short notice even if they wanted to.

And of course they don’t want to, because they think Iran is winning. And so do Trump and the people around him, even though they will never admit it.

For terrorism is a strategy of the weak. It’s what extremists do when they lack the ability to achieve their goals through military action or other non-criminal means.

And that’s where Trump and his officials find themselves. They inherited a powerful military (which they are rapidly degrading), but for all its firepower this military lacks the wherewithal to open the Strait of Hormuz to normal traffic. So the Trumpists are gearing up to impose suffering and death on innocent civilians instead, even though this suffering and death will do nothing to achieve America’s objectives.

I don’t know what Trump will do when his deadline passes and the Strait is still closed. He probably doesn’t know either. But he is promising to commit war crimes on a massive scale. And the duty of everyone with any influence who isn’t part of Trump’s inner circle is to do all they can to stop him.

Most immediately, military officers should be aware that they have the right and the duty to disobey illegal orders. It’s incredible that we have gotten to this point, especially so quickly, but here we are. You may recall that Admiral Alvin Holsey resigned in December, reportedly because he refused to be a party to illegal attacks on supposed drug boats. What Trump is now saying he will do is infinitely worse. And a refusal by senior officers to participate in war crimes may be the only thing that could stop this evil in its tracks.

Now is when we find out how completely our once honorable military has been corrupted.

Beyond the military, every politician, dare I say every public figure, in America should make it clear that Trump is not acting in their name.

This is not a time for Republicans who know — and most of them do know — that Trump has gone completely off the rails to remain obsequious for fear that he might endorse their primary opponents. One hopes that there are still a few genuine patriots left on that side of the aisle.

It is also not a time for Democrats to listen to strategists who urge them to stay silent on foreign policy and talk only about grocery prices. As it happens, that’s even bad political advice: Public disdain for Congressional Democrats has a lot to do with perceptions that they are weak and ineffectual, and ignoring Trump’s criminal madness will only reinforce that perception. And there has been no rally-around-the-flag effect from this war, which is growing more unpopular by the day.

But in any case, political considerations should take a back seat to civic duty.

The horrible but undeniable fact right now is that America has a terrorist president. And the whole world knows it. But we still have a chance to show the world that he is an aberration, that we are not a terrorist nation. And we can do that by standing up for the values that have always defined us.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, April 6, 2026 7:52 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Trump threats cause dilemma for US officers: disobey orders or commit war crimes

By Julian Borger | Mon 6 Apr 2026 14.06 EDT

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/apr/06/trump-threats-dilemma-for-
officers-disobey-orders-or-commit-war-crimes

“We are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously,” Trump said in prepared remarks that were amplified by the state department’s social media accounts.

There is little debate among legal experts that such an attack on the life-supporting infrastructure for 93 million Iranians would constitute a war crime.

“Such rhetorical statements – if followed through – would amount to the most serious war crimes – and thus the president’s statements place service members in a profoundly challenging situation,” two former judge advocate general (JAG) officers, Margaret Donovan and Rachel VanLandingham wrote on the website Just Security on Monday.

“As former uniformed military lawyers who advised targeting operations, we know the president’s words run counter to decades of legal training of military personnel and risk placing our warfighters on a path of no return.”

They noted that Trump’s boast that he would bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages”, and the order by his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, to show “no quarter, no mercy” were not just “plainly illegal” but they also represented a rupture from the moral and legal principles that US military personnel had been “trained to follow their entire careers”.

Charli Carpenter, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said there were many historical examples of service members questioning orders, refusing to obey, passively disobeying or even intervening to stop war crimes.

She cited as an example US soldiers who refused to take part in the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, including a helicopter pilot who threatened to shoot the perpetrators.

In his court martial, the officer who ordered his men to gun down hundreds of Vietnamese villagers, 2nd Lt William Calley, argued that he was only obeying orders, but the court ruled that was no defence as such orders were “palpably illegal”.

The question is whether officers who carried out orders to bomb Iranian power stations and bridges could argue that they did not know it was “palpably illegal”.

When Democratic members of Congress published a video message in November telling US service members, “you can refuse illegal orders, you must refuse illegal orders”, Trump went on Truth Social to accuse them of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH”.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, April 8, 2026 7:29 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Trump has his deal. But this senseless episode has caused him incalculable damage

By Daniel Bates | April 8, 2026

https://inews.co.uk/news/world/trump-has-his-deal-but-this-senseless-e
pisode-has-caused-him-incalculable-damage-4340613

In the end it was the ultimate Taco moment – thank God.

Donald Trump’s decision to call off his apocalyptic strikes on Iran meant he once again lived up to the nickname Wall Street traders have given him: Trump Always Chickens Out.

But my goodness, didn’t we come uncomfortably close to what could have been the start of the Third World War.

Trump had vowed to launch an air assault at 1am UK time on Wednesday morning that would target Iran’s power plants and bridges.

“A whole civilization will die tonight,” the President said on Monday, adding with jaw-dropping glibness: “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

The President’s U-turn came 90 minutes before the deadline that put the entire world on edge and drew worldwide criticism, with even Pope Leo calling the plans “truly unacceptable”.

The threat of a war crime – the bombing of civilian targets – had sparked the biggest pushback against Trump since 2018, when Pope Francis led the criticism of his separation of migrant families.

In his announcement of the ceasefire, Trump said that there would be a two-week pause in his threat to annihilate the entire Iranian nation.

But really he sounded like a man who desperately wanted it all to be over, saying it was an “honour” to have this long-term problem come close to a resolution.

He claimed that the Iranians agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway which carries 20 per cent of the world’s oil and has been effectively shut down since the conflict began on 28 February.

In statements from senior officials, Iran claimed that it was America that had agreed to its terms, including that it controlled the Strait of Hormuz, all sanctions would be lifted and that it could continue to enrich uranium – a non-starter for the US.

The fact that both sides were so far apart added to the sense of desperation from Trump: can you imagine the Good Friday Agreement being announced only with Tony Blair and the IRA contradicting each other?

With the reality of what was agreed, if anything, unclear, it does appear that we have been brought back from the brink for now.

But this episode has done incalculable damage to America, and Trump.

It isn’t so much that Trump has turned Europe against him – the potential invasion of Greenland did a pretty good job of that – he has likely lost the support of many Iranians too.

It’s one thing to bomb the hated Iranian regime, it’s another to threaten to wipe the entire country off the face of the Earth.

Does Trump really expect Iranians to welcome him as a liberator when he’s to blame for blackouts and hospitals reduced to rubble?

And does anyone expect us to believe him next time he makes such outrageous threats?

At 79 years old and in his second term in the White House, Trump is closer than ever to bringing us the moment we all feared when he first ran for president in 2015.

As he came down a golden escalator in Trump Tower, critics wondered what would happen when you gave control of the nuclear codes to a madman whose idea of strategic thinking is to set his TiVo to record Fox News.

Now we have the answer, and it was shocking.

We are also getting a disturbing picture of how Trump was led to war thanks to reporting in The New York Times which said he is now surrounded by yes-men who do not stand up to his whims.

Only Vice President JD Vance made the case as to why the conflict would be a bad idea, making an eerily accurate prediction about the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and rising petrol prices.

As The New York Times reported, US intelligence agencies mocked claims from Israel that the conflict would be quick, the Iranians would rise up against their rulers and that the Islamic theocracy would be replaced.

Trump ignored them and focused on the things that mattered to him: blowing stuff up and killing supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

This whole episode was so senseless you do have to wonder if Trump’s only goal is to make season two of the Trump White House more dramatic than the first.

That’s the problem when you live in a reality TV show as the President does: you have to keep upping the ante to keep people watching.

Heaven help us for what the end of season cliffhanger will be.


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, April 8, 2026 7:56 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


This Is No TACO: This Is Complete US Strategic Failure.

Trump Agrees To Iran's Victory Conditions.

Donald Trump yesterday showed how few cards the USA had to play in his war of choice, when he went from threatening to destroy the Iranian people, culture and history, to agreeing to a two-week ceasefire and talks based on an Iranian ten-point plan. The details of this plan (see below) amount to a comprehensive US defeat. If this indeed is the end of the war and that Iranian plan is the basis of a deal, it makes this the most pointless war and a complete waste in US history. Iran looks on the verge of emerging stronger, with the ability to generate massive new income, while the US looks, in a word, like a busted flush.

This is no run-of-the-mill TACO. This is a complete US strategic failure.

Here are the key developments:
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/midweek-update-5-this-is-no-tac
o

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, April 8, 2026 8:55 AM

THG

Keep it real please, and use a VPN


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116150413051904167

Quote:
Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead. This is not only Justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans, and those people from many Countries throughout the World, that have been killed or mutilated by Khamenei and his gang of bloodthirsty THUGS. He was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do. This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country. We are hearing that many of their IRGC, Military, and other Security and Police Forces, no longer want to fight, and are looking for Immunity from us. As I said last night, “Now they can have Immunity, later they only get Death!” Hopefully, the IRGC and Police will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots, and work together as a unit to bring back the Country to the Greatness it deserves. That process should soon be starting in that, not only the death of Khamenei but the Country has been, in only one day, very much destroyed and, even, obliterated. The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!

Thank you for your attention to this matter.



Now I guess we just wait and see what happens...




Trump was outsmarted by Iran and lost. He fucked everything up.


T

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, April 8, 2026 10:01 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


The Iranians know Trump is a coward

No One Is Intimidated by Trump Anymore

From Iran to the Supreme Court, the president’s attempts to bully both his adversaries and allies are proving increasingly fruitless.

By Ross Rosenfeld | April 7, 2026

https://newrepublic.com/article/208630/trump-iran-supeme-court-not-int
imidated

A quiet fell upon the Supreme Court chamber on Wednesday as Donald Trump arrived and sat in the public gallery with his soon-to-be-dismissed attorney general, Pam Bondi, and White House counsel David Warrington. He was purportedly there, in a presidential first, to witness oral arguments for Trump v. Barbara, a case concerning Trump’s executive order to limit birthright citizenship. In reality, his appearance was the culmination of a weeks-long intimidation effort targeting the justices, during which he lambasted his own appointees, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, as “an embarrassment to their families” and insisted that only “Dumb Judges” would disagree with his position. Now he’d come to the court to stare down any robed figure who might dare oppose him.

Yet none of the Supreme Court justices appeared to even notice, much less care, as they entered the room and sat, never so much as acknowledging Trump’s presence. If the president intimidated anyone, it may have been his own solicitor general, D. John Sauer, whose raspy voice wavered as he began to make specious arguments about the intentions of those who had crafted the Fourteenth Amendment. Evidently, Chief Justice John Roberts was far from convinced. When Sauer contended, “We’re in a new world now … where eight billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a U.S. citizen,” Roberts rejoined, “Well, it’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution.” Laughter echoed throughout the chamber.

And there sat Trump. His glare had evidently failed to do the trick. As the justices questioned the ACLU’s Cecilia Wang, the attorney representing the opposition to Trump’s gambit to gut birthright citizenship, he walked out. It was the latest example of what has become a clear trend in his second term as president: No one of consequence is intimidated by him.

Attempts at intimidation—sometimes successful, often failed—have always been part of Trump’s modus operandi, dating back to early in his real estate career. The tale of 100 Central Park South is a telling example. After buying the rent-stabilized building in 1981, Trump menaced the tenants to get them out so that he might raze and replace it. His tactics included threatening them with eviction, ignoring a rat infestation, and shutting off the heat and hot water. Though at one point Trump paid out over half a million dollars to the tenants and agreed to government monitoring, the fight dragged on for decades.

Much of Trump’s intimidation strategy as a businessman—threatening lawsuits and using the media to level attacks—was influenced by his friendship with Roy Cohn, the notoriously pugilistic attorney and Communist-hunter. And Trump often doubles down on this strategy when he’s on the losing end of a fight. After his failed attempt to buy an NFL team in 1981, he bought the New Jersey Generals of the upstart rival USFL in 1983. He tried to use the team and the media coverage he’d garnered as leverage to buy an NFL team in 1984—and failed again. (He would later admit that he had no interest in owning a team filled with “low class, all third-rate players.”) Trump also sued the NFL, claiming it was an illegal monopoly. Here, he won: A jury ultimately awarded him the massive sum of one U.S. dollar. The USFL, bleeding money and exhausted from Trump’s constant feuds, folded in 1986.

But then Trump realized that he could control his public image even more by becoming part of the media. In 2004, he became the host of The Apprentice, a reality-TV competition show that sold the fantasy that Trump was a successful businessman rather than simply the spoiled scion of a real estate empire established by his much savvier father. Falsely claiming to be “the largest real estate developer in New York,” Trump relished the opportunity to intimidate contestants who had not been born with a silver spoon and the filial resources to survive multiple failures. In season 3, he asked contestant Michael Tarshi if he was stupid, called him “lazy,” and said that the difference between them was that Trump works hard. In a 2013 episode of Celebrity Apprentice, Trump remarked to the former Playmate Brande Roderick that “it must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees.”

Over the course of 15 seasons, plus another eight for its celebrity spin-off, The Apprentice projected exactly the image of Trump that he desired—an image that endures in the minds of many millions of Americans to this day. Sitting in his leather wingback chair at the head of a shiny wood table, spotlighted in the show’s otherwise dimly lit “boardroom,” he cut a physically and mentally imposing figure. Before The Apprentice, Trump had been a loud and obnoxious playboy, no doubt; arrogant, yes, but not quite imperious. The show made him into a kingly figure: all-powerful and all-knowing. (“Nobody outthinks me,” he said in one episode. “Nobody.”)

Hollow as it was, this omniscient-bully act played well on TV—which proved just as true in politics as in entertainment. In his 2016 run for president, Trump dispatched the Republican field by publicly belittling his opponents at every turn, then tried to do the same to Hillary Clinton. In their second debate, following the emergence of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, Trump brought along several of Bill Clinton’s accusers and sat them in the audience to intimidate his Democratic opponent. But that’s largely forgotten today because of what happened later that evening: He stalked Clinton around the stage as she spoke, his chin raised high, attempting to loom over her.

This imperial glare became his signature as president, or one of them. An even odder mannerism is his aggressive handshake, which, like a country club test of masculinity, often involves tugging the person’s hand toward him and refusing to let go. It has led to some rather awkward situations. There was the famed “Handshake Showdown” with the newly elected Emmanuel Macron, during which Trump sought, rather literally, to exert pressure on the French leader; more such handshakes would occur between the men over the years. Other world leaders have been subjected to this puerile charade, as well. There was the extra-long lock with the late Shinzo Abe of Japan, several deeply analyzed grips with former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and more recently his tug-of-war shake with the president of Paraguay, Santiago Peña.

These efforts seem silly, but Trump’s intimidation shtick can sometimes work, which is of course why he does it. During his first term, he continually pressed NATO allies to increase their defense funding. Recently they agreed to raise their military spending to 5 percent of their national income—a significant increase. His tariff threats may have been ridiculous and ultimately prove damaging, but they did lead to a series of deals as nations tried to avoid his wrath. While many educational institutions have fought back against his attempts to limit free speech on college campuses, some weak-willed and shortsighted universities, including Columbia, capitulated to him. Some of the country’s biggest law firms proved similarly weak-kneed.

More often than not, though, Trump’s intimidation act falls flat. This is largely because, despite the fact that so many alpha males see him as the top alpha—an image he continually promotes through nonsensical memes refashioning his flabby, overweight body as some sort of iron-fisted muscleman—in the end he’s all bark, no bite. Or, as some put it, Trump Always Chickens Out.

We see his true colors when it counts. During his infamous meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in 2018, Trump not only failed to confront the Russian dictator about his nation’s interference in our elections, but he practically kowtowed to him, stating that he trusted Putin more than our own intelligence agencies. In his second term, Trump’s been louder and more demanding than ever, with rarely a day going by without him spewing vitriol and threatening someone or some nation. But it’s hardly made a dent. He’s repeatedly threatened Jerome Powell for not lowering interest rates, even ordering his Justice Department to open a bogus investigation to put the screws on the Federal Reserve chair. But the Fed has refused to do his bidding. Trump tried to bully Denmark into ceding Greenland, yet that just made that nation more determined than ever to protect the territory. He’s also tried to bully Canada, repeatedly calling Trudeau a “governor” and threatening the current prime minister, Mark Carney, with closing the Gordie Howe International Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. And he’s gotten bupkis.

No one’s buying Trump’s routine any longer, but this is not to say that he isn’t still dangerous. He is, very much so—not because he’s an iron-willed titan but because he’s a foolhardy buffoon. He’s never been tough enough to admit defeat, like a real man would, so he’ll go to great lengths to deny his losses and cover up for his failures.

We’ve seen this in his war with Iran. As the U.S. fails to meet Trump’s stated objectives there, he’ll continue moving the goalposts. Though he initially promised the Iranian people freedom, he’s abandoned that promise of late, suggesting that somehow that goal was already achieved, even though the Iranians remain under the thumb of a vicious theocracy. So, no regime change after all. What about “ensuring” Iran will never get a nuclear weapon? Iran still has its stockpile of enriched uranium. Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz, where maritime traffic flowed freely until the U.S. and Israel bombing campaign began on February 28, remains closed, and the global economic repercussions continue to worsen—indeed, the damage may be permanent.

Trump has given Iran a deadline of Tuesday night to reopen the strait. Otherwise, he wrote on Truth Social on Sunday, “you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH!” At the White House on Monday he added, “The entire country could be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night.” But Iran’s leaders aren’t scared of Trump, and why should they be? He’s been giving such ultimatums and deadlines for weeks, to no avail. Iran has learned what’s now finally dawning on Americans, including even some Republicans in Congress: Trump’s will never matches his bluster, and his attempts at intimidation are merely the hallmarks of a weak, insecure, and overcompensating coward.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, April 8, 2026 11:49 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Ignorance and Ignominy

Our Hormuz humiliation was not an accident

Paul Krugman
Apr 08, 2026

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/ignorance-and-ignominy

So the world’s greatest military power went to war with a poor, medieval theocracy. It was an incredibly uneven match. Here are the GDPs of Iran and the United States in 2024:

Iran: $0.48 trillion
US: $28.75 trillion
Source: World Bank

Yet Iran won. The Iranian regime has emerged far stronger than it was before, controlling the Strait of Hormuz and having demonstrated its ability to inflict damage on both its neighbors and the world economy. The U.S. has emerged far weaker, having demonstrated the limitations of its military technology, its strategic ineptitude and, when push comes to shove, its cowardice.

We’ve also destroyed our moral credibility: Trump may have TACOed at the last minute, but he threatened to commit gigantic war crimes — and for all practical purposes, our political and civil institutions gave him permission to do so.

How did this happen? Naturally, the Iranian Minister of War credited divine intervention, declaring that “God deserves all the glory.” His nation, he said, fought with the “protection of divine providence. A massive effort with miraculous protection.”

Well, theocrats gonna theocrat.

But I lied. That wasn’t a quote from an Iranian official. That’s what Pete Hegseth, our self-proclaimed Secretary of War, said while claiming that one of the worst strategic defeats in American history was a great victory.

There will be many analyses by military and strategic experts of the Iran debacle. But let’s not lose sight of the larger picture: We were led to disaster by the boastful ignorance of men like Trump and Hegseth — boastful ignorance made even worse by claims that God supports whatever they want to do.

With men like that running America, major disasters were just a matter of time. I’d like to think that they have been chastened by this debacle, that they have learned something. But I don’t believe that for a minute.

God help us.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, April 8, 2026 5:37 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Hegseth Accidentally Reveals Big Hole in Trump Victory Claim

Who blinked first? So Iran came to the table because Trump threatened to blow up their civilization, eh? Sorry, that spin is in tatters.

By Greg Sargent | April 8, 2026

https://newrepublic.com/article/208794/hegseth-reveals-hole-trump-vict
ory-claim

Now that Donald Trump has backed off his threat to obliterate a nation of 93 million people, his propagandists are already retconning it into proof of his Solomon-like foresight and wisdom. The new spin is that the war with Iran temporarily ended in a ceasefire precisely because he made this threat, forcing Iran to renegotiate on more favorable terms.

“Iran ultimately understood—their ability to produce, to generate power, to fuel their terrorist regime—was in our hands,” Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth told reporters Wednesday, in response to questions about Trump’s threat. Hegseth insisted Trump’s vow to eradicate “a whole civilization” persuaded Iran that he could crush their ability to “export energy” and thus end the entire basis for the regime’s existence.

“That type of threat is what brought them to the place where they effectively said, ‘We want to cut this deal,’” Hegseth continued. This talking point has gone out widely: GOP Representative Mike Lawler of New York, a top target of Democrats, suggested that due to Trump’s “extreme rhetoric,” the Iranians “understand for once that they need to actually negotiate.”

But there’s a small problem with this spin. It’s that the Iranians were already negotiating with Trump before the war started. Trump largely sabotaged those negotiations, because he was talked into believing the war would be easy and deliver a quick burst of glory. Trump’s approach to the talks made success impossible—deliberately.

As The New York Times’ magnum opus on this reveals, Trump had decided to take the plunge (all that remained uncertain was the timing) weeks before those talks with Iran hit their critical phase. This was partly because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talked Trump into believing the risks of war were manageable—that strikes could render the Iranian regime too debilitated to close the Strait of Hormuz (which proved disastrously wrong). U.S. intelligence officials disputed Israeli confidence about all this, the Times reports, but Trump brushed off these warnings—because he “appeared to think it would be a very quick war.”

The prewar talks with Iran were doomed because Trump shifted between objectives in a way that ensured that outcome. The core issue was supposed to be ending Iran’s capacity to develop a nuke. But the Times also reveals that Iran was prepared to make meaningful concessions on that front, yet Trump officials effectively decided only regime change was acceptable, ensuring war.

For Hegseth’s story to be true, Iran would have to be more willing to give Trump the concessions he wants than before, due to his mighty threats. But, while the war did badly degrade the Iranian military and kill many senior leaders, here’s what else we know: The regime is still there in more radicalized and brutal form. The strait is being reopened, but as Ben Rhodes notes, the regime’s control over it now appears tighter. The fate of Iran’s nuclear material remains as indeterminate as ever.

Will talks now get Trump a better deal than he might have gotten the first time? Maybe, but Iran seems emboldened by its survival to demand more this time. The points that Trump accepted as the basis for talks appear more friendly to Iran than before.

“Iran is at the table because Trump now appears willing to base negotiations on a wider range of Iranian demands,” Sina Toossi, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, told me. He cites Trump’s apparent willingness to entertain total relief from U.S. sanctions, continued control over the strait, and some form of uranium enrichment: “The civilizational threat did not factor into the ceasefire.”

So what did Trump’s threat—which would have been a massive war crime—actually accomplish? It’s exclusively negative. As Bill Kristol writes:

Trump’s war has further shaken any confidence our allies might still have in us. It will be seen as confirmation that Trump’s United States of America has become just another rogue nation in the international arena, if a less disciplined and cunning one than Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China.

Kristol is referring to the overall war’s impact, but Trump’s threat of civilizational erasure is also a factor in ensuring these outcomes. That the American president eagerly vowed to obliterate a nation of 93 million is bad enough. On top of that, the U.S. political system appeared utterly powerless to stop it—largely because one of our major parties revealed that it will not step up even when its leader threatens unthinkably massive war crimes and even genocide.

Brian Beutler points out that Republicans who wouldn’t challenge Trump’s maniacal designs got lucky that he blinked. Next time, they might not be so lucky—and neither might we. Indeed, it’s also worth asking what sort of dispiriting toll this glimpse of our profound powerlessness in the face of Trump’s madness will take on the millions of Americans who find the idea of their country threatening such wanton, indiscriminate destruction extremely troubling, which surely includes a lot of ordinary Republicans.

One can hope that this galvanizes millions into voting against the GOP in the midterms—and it probably will help—but translating this into serious checks against a rerun of this insanity is a tall order. That, too, is a painful realization to endure.

In a sense, Hegseth’s spin is doing us a public service. By insisting Trump’s threat drove Iran to the table, it should force a reassessment of why the original talks fell apart, why we went to war in the first place, and what Trump’s vicious, sadistic bluster actually accomplished. This is a story of failure all around, and the threats, too, accomplished only bad things. Which reveals another layer to this catastrophe, blowing another hole in Trump’s claim of victory.

That’s because the core story that Trump and Hegseth have told about this war is that it showcases that American strength and power are supreme, unquestioned, and can accomplish anything literally. That includes the mere threat to unleash that power: Because the specter of American military violence and terror can make literally anyone do anything that Trump wills, maximal threats of annihilation are inherently good. Hegseth constantly preens about America’s superlative killing power with unnerving relish and bloodlust in order to tell that story.

But it’s taken a big hit. Yes, the war showcased awesome technological prowess. But that cannot accomplish literally anything Trump wants it to. Nor can threatening to rain it down on millions of innocent people with unconstrained brutality and savagery. Trump and Hegseth set out to prove otherwise, and at this too they failed miserably.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, April 8, 2026 5:51 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


lol @ your fanfic.

--------------------------------------------------

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, April 8, 2026 7:55 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


You guys are hilarious....

"IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD! IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD! IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD! IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD! HE'S GOING TO GET US ALL KILLED!!!!!!"

6 HOURS LATER:

"HAHA! TACO TUESDAY TRUMP! WE KNEW THAT PUSSY COWARD WASN'T GONNA DO SHIT!"



You should consider yourselves very lucky that you have a President that allows you to continue being annoying, idiot jagoff assholes to everyone around you since it seems like this is the way you want to continue living your sad, pathetic lives until the very end.

I guess this means we're not going to invoke the 25th Amendment now, huh?

Retard, faggots.

--------------------------------------------------

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, April 8, 2026 9:49 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
You guys are hilarious....

"IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD! IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD! IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD! IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD! HE'S GOING TO GET US ALL KILLED!!!!!!"

6 HOURS LATER:

"HAHA! TACO TUESDAY TRUMP! WE KNEW THAT PUSSY COWARD WASN'T GONNA DO SHIT!"



You should consider yourselves very lucky that you have a President that allows you to continue being annoying, idiot jagoff assholes to everyone around you since it seems like this is the way you want to continue living your sad, pathetic lives until the very end.

I guess this means we're not going to invoke the 25th Amendment now, huh?

Retard, faggots.

--------------------------------------------------

Be Evil. Be a dick.
Only Losers Play the Madman

Does Trump seem crazy? Sure. Credible, not so much.

By David Frum | April 8, 2026, 4:43 PM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/trump-iran-war-ceasefire/686
736/

The most important thing to understand about the “madman theory” of foreign policy is that it was designed by losers for losers.

The world first heard of the madman theory from a 1978 memoir by President Richard Nixon’s former chief of staff H. R. Haldeman. According to Haldeman, Nixon said: “I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war.” Faced with an otherwise hopeless war in Vietnam, Nixon would pretend to be crazy to intimidate the North Vietnamese into allowing him some face-saving escape.

Nobody executes a madman strategy when he feels that he’s winning. Strong and successful powers emphasize consistency and predictability. So do powers that hope to be seen as strong and successful. When China’s foreign minister speaks to the world, he uses language such as “China will be a reliable force for stability” and China “is providing the greatest certainty in this uncertain world.” He understands that true power does not need to boast or yell.

Those who feel their power ebbing, however, may bluster and bellow. Over the seven weeks of his Iran war so far, Donald Trump has discovered that no amount of the force at his disposal will calm world energy markets or boost his sagging poll numbers. He has tried a double strategy of promising imminent breakthroughs in negotiations while posting ever more violent threats on social media to ostensibly accelerate those negotiations. But if this was a madman strategy, it signally failed to gain the advantage that he sought. Everyone could see that Trump wanted a deal more than his Iranian counterparts did. A good rule of thumb is that the side that wants a deal more is the side that is losing.

The madman strategy is for not-crazy leaders caught in adverse predicaments. It’s a strategy of deception. The madman strategist pretends to be willing to do things that he’s not really willing to do. This approach relies on credibility: Rivals must be able to take the threat of extreme action seriously.

Trump’s problems with this strategy are ironic. Foreign leaders are surely willing to believe that Trump is “crazy” in the sense that he is detached from reality. They have seen him miscalculate risk and bungle all kinds of projects, such as his trade wars with China and his attempted coup on January 6, 2021. But they also know that when push really comes to shove, Trump will flinch. TACO has become, like NATO, an acronym so familiar that it no longer needs spelling out.

The Iranians just executed the most dramatic TACO event in history. Trump threatened to annihilate their entire civilization if they didn’t agree to his demands to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Iran defied the threat—and now Trump has apparently conceded control over the strait and the right to impose tolls on the ships that navigate it. On the point in which Trump tried hardest to terrorize, the Iranians aptly guessed that he was bluffing.

Trump has taught the world that he has every quality of the madman except indifference to pain. He likes his wars unilateral, quick, and cheap. He won’t seek consent from Congress; he cannot appeal to public opinion. He just gambles that the war will end before his poll numbers sink too deep. When this latest war of his turned difficult, he panicked. Everyone could see the panic, including the Iranians. His blood-curdling Truth Social posts—shocking as they were—proclaimed desperation, not resolve. That’s the Trump version of the madman strategy: yelling at people in the street while begging those same people for a bailout. What’s the opposite of the expression crazy like a fox?

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, April 8, 2026 9:50 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Iran Deal By Obama:
• Strait of Hormuz open for free
• Iran limits Uranium enrichment
• Iran agrees to make no nuclear weapons
• Iran allows Int'l inspectors to ensure compliance
• Inspectors confirm Iran's full compliance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_nuclear_deal

Iran Ceasefire By Trump:
• Strait of Hormuz closed, only open for $2M Per Ship
• Iran makes no guarantee of limit on uranium enrichment
• Iran makes no guarantee of no nuclear weapons
• Iran makes no guarantee to allow Int'l inspectors
https://www.npr.org/2026/04/08/nx-s1-5771492/iran-war-goals-unmet-ceas
efire-strait-hormuz-trump

MAGA:
Trump Playing 5D Chess!
Art Of The Deal!!

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, April 8, 2026 10:22 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


You're such a fucking loser dude.

America hates you more than you hate America.



--------------------------------------------------

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

YOUR OPTIONS

NEW POSTS TODAY

USERPOST DATE

OTHER TOPICS

DISCUSSIONS
In the garden, and RAIN!!! (2)
Thu, April 9, 2026 05:24 - 6945 posts
Iranian officials on Tuesday urged young people to form human chains to protect power plants
Thu, April 9, 2026 04:12 - 27 posts
Khamenei, One of Most Evil People in History, is Dead
Wed, April 8, 2026 22:22 - 276 posts
Matthew Perry Drowned in Jacuzzi
Wed, April 8, 2026 17:49 - 55 posts
Midterms 2026
Wed, April 8, 2026 14:34 - 415 posts
A.I Artificial Intelligence AI
Wed, April 8, 2026 12:02 - 423 posts
Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
Wed, April 8, 2026 06:17 - 9985 posts
Byron Allen's 'Comics Unleashed' will replace CBS late night host Stephen Colbert
Tue, April 7, 2026 22:29 - 3 posts
Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
Tue, April 7, 2026 15:50 - 4494 posts
The Conservative vision for America: cut infrastructure, let's see what happens...
Tue, April 7, 2026 15:49 - 66 posts
Artemis II
Tue, April 7, 2026 13:59 - 5 posts
I must be a secret communist
Tue, April 7, 2026 12:46 - 35 posts
 VIEW MORE TOPICS 

FFF.NET SOCIAL