Yep. I have a new term for what is going on in this maladministration: malignant incompetence. The gleeful push to destroy everything in order to create an oligarch's paradise. Because that is what is happening.
I suppose that's more acceptable in social circles than describing it as "evil fuckupery."
I keep focusing on what the Chancellor of Germany said (in nice words of course): 'no, Donald, we will not help you unfuck yourself -- we will not allow you to make us accomplices in your random, self-promoting, incompetent cruelty....'
When you give control of a 1 Trillion dollar war machine to two macho bros who's idea of "fun" is a rally lethal day in the neighborhood, what would we expect? Negotiations? Allies? Human compassion? That's all for Sissies. Some how these guys believe America is about "Might Makes Right" or "Onward Christian Soldiers". It's certainly true we do have "Might" on our side. In November, We the People will decide which side Morality is on.
Prepare to everything you can to protect the right to vote and we will end the brutality and corruption of the Trump eta
-His "cabinet" of idiots and sycophants, who managed to make the bearded theocrats in Tehran look intelligent and rational
-The GOP in congress, the biggest flock of beta wimp subservient sheep, led by iq challenged and severely closeted mike Johnson,
-All their voters, with a special mention of the manosphere, and the Latino and Arab self-coitus performers
- all the amoral and hypocritical techbroligarchs and corporate kleptocrats who bent the knee to the Antichrist - I'm looking at you, jeff bozo, tim apple, ... as well as the *immigrant nazis* muskrat and Thiel
- The Arab countries in the middle east who thought they could purchase favors and corrupted our system even more
They will all get their just desserts one way or another. Unfortunately they are taking us to hell with them
Deplorable was and is much too nice a word to describe those who have inflicted this catastrophe on the world. They are despicable, contemptible, detestable, abominable.
Yes, Coke Brothers, it's called going to hell in a handbasket defined as a situation that is rapidly deteriorating, falling apart, or heading toward a disastrous, inescapable conclusion. It suggests a swift and uncontrollable decline, often used to describe declining morals, failing projects or chaotic world events. I think that just about covers it.
Agree Daniel. He’ll do anything as we’re experiencing now to distract from more being exposed, although his gang will also do anything to redact, cover up deny as well. Of course miller & his cronies are forever scheming to destroy what’s left of the constitution.
The Middle Eastern countries who fawned over and plied the orange putrescence with money have been on the receiving end of Iran’s drones and missiles. Poetic justice ?
Thank you, because I have been thinking about that too. Why did we choose to bomb Iran now, for instance? Could it have been because reports were emerging from Ukraine that they were getting the upper hand in their war, and other reports emerging from Russia that their economy was in real trouble? Well, now attention and weapons are no longer flowing to Ukraine, but Putin's now unsanctioned oil sales billions are flowing to him. And Trump is making more threats to leave NATO, which has got to be a dream goal for Putin. Or maybe it won't matter if he knows that Trump will never act in NATO's interests anyway.
So, given that the First Question is, "What does Putin want Trump to do?" what do you think? Russia is supplying intelligence to Iran now targeting US sites - just enough to keep the war going with a few "wins" on Iran's side, it appears to me, suggesting Putin wants the war to continue as it is.
Trump has moved a lot of troops into the region, but would a ground war effort be something Putin wants him to do? I think not. I suspect his best interest is in the status quo: The US depleting billions and weapons with no real endgame in sight, and the world finding greater priorities than Ukraine as they fret about oil and all the hits to their economies.
I also think the longer this war goes on with its oil crisis, the more likely it is that Russia's oil will not be sanctioned again when it's over.
I think putin would in fact want trump to send US elite troops into the meat grinder. How else could he destroy the 82nd airborne without firing a single round
But what does he care about destroying the 82nd Airborne? It's not like any US president is going to send them against him directly. Far better to weaken the US economically and diplomatically with a drawn-out war where we are literally blowing up a billion dollars a day, alienating the rest of the world, and elevating once again the price of oil, which Putin has.
IF we used ground troops and it was the bloodbath that most people predict, that might also trigger Trump's ousting, which is not what Putin wants. It would also destroy Iran further, ostensibly Putin's ally in the region. And it could prompt the tit for tat destruction of the desalination plants that the rest of the Gulf countries depend on, which would be catastrophic for them, which could carry over to a possible worldwide recession or even depression (as I understand it - or maybe I am reading too many doomsday predictions!).
Putin seems to me to be a guy who finds a more circuitous way of getting what he wants without the kind of destruction that can prove too unpredictable, as in "The Law of Unintended Consequences". He wants INtended consequences - that favor him, even if he has to get them with incremental steps.
Putin already has his own set of unintended consequences. Ukraine did not cave like he thought it would. I think, I hope Putin ultimately loses the war with Ukraine and that the Russian people hold him accountable. He probably has enemies in places he doesn’t even know.
I served in Vietnam of 15 months with the Brown Water Navy. Russia did a pretty good job of meat grinding there through the use of the North Vietnamese and VC.
Sure, it's Trump's choice, which came after one of those private phone calls with Putin. And now, he's in kind of an awkward position, wouldn't you say? He's pissed off his America First constituents, who believed him about no new wars, who are making the obvious observation of "What was in this war for US?" I think he's now also frustrating the warmongers in his admin by inexplicably not "going in to finish the job". Why isn't he? It's gotta be because Putin doesn't want that, or at least not yet.
I think it's also why Trump appears to be flailing around more than usual with nonsensical statements, contradictory statements often in the same day and just looking he has no clue. Meanwhile, Hegseth is probably flummoxed that he can't persuade him to get his "war fighters" in there fighing for glory!
But Trump can't very well admit, "I'm not going in until Putie tells me to. He likes the money he's making right now".
Trump and Putin have a special (somewhat one-way) bromance of course, but my main point was, it seems pretty clear that no foreign leader was pushing Trump to start this catastrophe more than Netanyahu.
He has been very open about it. Netanyahu has been pushing the US to bomb Iran for decades, and now that the US has greenlit every terrible action Israel has taken in the past few years, Netanyahu certainly understood this was as good a time as any, with a US pres that is uniquely easy to sway with flattery and tough talk.
PS=- IMO Trump hasn't 'finished the job' because he has no idea what the job really is, no idea how to get out of this, and no idea what he is doing. He thought this would be another Venezuela.
Can't disagree, as Netanyahu has an ally in Kushner/Ivanka, as well, to whisper in Trump's ear. But I still don't think he would have made such a bold move if Putin hadn't okayed it.
In the early days of the bombing, the media were asking, "What about Putin? Iran is his ally. Where is he in all this?" as if Trump had put himself in opposition to Putin, but then the oil sanctions were quickly removed, Putin started making billions and it became clear. At the same time, Iran has been helped with Russian targeting, costing US lives, with nary a word from Trump.
I think Putin is planning on doing a “regime change” on the US. Trump is wasting so many bombs and rockets that it is leaving our country at risk of invasion. And Putin could do it as a country that does have Nukes that could reach the US.
No. I don't really care what Putin has on Trump, suffice to say it is something and it's powerful. The proof is in the pudding.
I recall in his first admin, some pundit observing that Trump never did anything in terms of foreign policy that Putin wouldn't want done (or was uninterested in). I can't think of an instance since then, otherwise. Putin is also someone whom Trump has never insulted.
The media made a big deal about that Russian tanker heading for Cuba, for instance, calling it a "showdown" or a game of "chicken" regarding Trump's blockade. I scoffed. Trump in a "showdown" with Putin? There's only one way that goes. And sure enough, when the ship landed, the media asked Trump about it and he said, "Sure, why not?"
I wish I'd kept a link, as I read a very interesting analysis of what Kompromat is and that westerners don't really understand it. What I remember is that it's nothing as simple as "blackmail" but almost another economic system; it's "how business is done" in Russia, where favors are essential - dangerous or illegal ones maybe, and then someone has a little leverage. Knowledge of that leverage is passed on to those a step higher on the ladder, corruption deepens, meaning more leverage; power is given and taken away - often through destroying a business or killing a would-be challenger (!), and at the top of the complicated pyramid sits Putin - universally feared for his murderous and ruthless wielding of all the power he's accumulated.
That convinced me that Trump wasn't sophisticated enough to know what he was doing in any Russian deals he and his sons made, before it was too late, and then there he is, finding out that it's Putin holding the dog's leash on the choke collar he'd stuck his head into.
I use that analogy as sometimes when Putin meets Trump face to face, he comes away looking like a whipped dog, suggesting Putin just yanked his leash, e.g. Helsinki, Alaska. Other times, it's all smiles and "good dog" vibes.
He needs to open his borders to MAGA immigrants. All of them.
Russia has a shortage of swaggering white men. Their military desperately needs recruits.
And in Russia, guys, you don't have to think! No strain for your brain in trying to understand complex ideas or systems. Just allow the indoctrination of the state/dictator, which you have proven to be very good at!
You will be told what to do, whom to hate, where to live, and how to NEVER complain about the government or its repressive laws (unless you want to fall out of a window).
AND Putin has been pushing women to become "trad wives" - just what MAGA wants! True, they are too often quickly "trad widows", but in the meantime, they have hopefully had some younguns to replenish future wars.
If anyone have any doubts about your statement Rich, they should look at whom is the main beneficiary of this embarrassing debacle....Putin and only Putin.
Yes, he had one shortly before the bombs started dropping. A week or two before, wasn't it? Time to get his orders and start putting the pieces in place.
Trump is a Russian "asset" and, according to "The Guardian," he has been for decades. Anyone who continues to doubt this reality need only look at how he's kow-towed to Putin on Ukraine -- and his excuse for lifting the sanctions against the export of Russian gas and oil, the revenues from which Putin has used to fund his criminal war.
It's also up for question how much he kow-towed to Netanyahu to start this illegal and unconstitutional war, using false "imminent threats" to perpetrate the action. With these two war criminals in cahoots, it's clear that the end won't be good.
Dr. France, Drumpf is also a "useful idiot," a term used to describe Westerners who assisted the Soviet agenda during the Cold War. It has far more relevance now than it did decades ago.
When Western European and American banks stopped lending Trump money due to his criminality and poor business acumen, he turned to Russia and the Middle East where he found a ready supply of investment and gifts, or as we also call them, bribes and emoluments.
Rubin mentions that 'Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria' are at risk of 'severe economic crises' because of this war.
It is curious she doesn't mention that these three regions are all currently occupied by Israel, and two of them are being actively attacked by Israel (Israel bombed Syria recently again as well). Their problems from direct actions by the US/Israel alliance are far worse than possible future economic consequences of the Iran War
The Contrarian has barely said a word about Israel's attacks and effective annexation of southern Lebanon, backed and funded by the US, as usual.
Israel has killed at least 1,268 and wounded thousands more, including children and health care workers in Lebanon in the past month (on top of thousands more in the past few years). It has started wholesale demolishing homes in the south and has displaced a million people there.
Meanwhile in Israel, the Knesset passed a law to allow the death penalty and short trials for Palestinians only, that have been accused of resisting Israel. US media only causally observed while members of the Knesset literally wore noose pins as they voted for this openly racist and apartheid-affirming law. There has not been one syllable about this in The Contrarian (and The Contrarian can't just blame Netanyahu).
The Contrarian's coverage, as usual, remains focused on the easy target of Trump. He deserves all the criticisms he gets, to be sure, but the impacts of the terror wrought by the US/Israeli alliance are not limited to the catastrophe in Iran.
Aside from at least 3000 killed by the US and Israel, 750 schools, 300 healthcare centers, and 90,000-plus homes have been destroyed in Iran, hundreds of thousands have been displaced, and tens of thousands have been injured. This is far worse than Americans paying more for gas.
It is not anti-Semitic to be against what the Israeli government is doing. Netanyahu will be held accountable for the war crimes he is perpetrating in his quest for land and power. I fully support the people of Israel to live in peace and I fully support the Palestinians and the Lebanese for the same.
Absolutely, Jason. Zionism has become the new Nazism and, that is NOT an antisemitic statement. But as long as we have evangelicals anywhere near the levers of power, the U.S. will continue to aide and abet it.
We lost the war weeks ago when the Iranians resisted. No Plan B (I don't think there was an actual Plan A). Then Iran emerged victorious when they closed the Straight of Hormuz. Who saw that coming - certainly not the Very Stable Genius.
Now, having spent untold billions, killed thousands, created global economic chaos, and alienated much of the world, we are going to leave.
Putin's puppet delivers! Just not for the American people.
What I can't understand is how can a third of our country still support this corrupt, ego driven president! It is up to people like the Contrarians to continue to support and fight against his illegal, destructive orders. I am exhausted just reading the news each day. I have to have hope that some of the court decisions and the uprising of Americans are indications that the tide is turning against him. There is no good ending to this war, so we have to fight even harder to remove him and his incompetent cabinet!
My husband keeps saying, incredulously, that: 30% of Americans support this corrupt and malignant administration!! My comment is that there have always been bigoted, war-mongering, misogynists! We just didn't hand them the keys to the White House and Congress!
I am quite tired of commentary that talks about objectives — met or unmet — for this war. This war was about where Trump fits in the Epstein files. Trump’s objective was to make us look away. Trump was willing to use the military might of the United States, meaning he was willing to use each and every one of us American citizens, without telling Congress or allies, because Epstein was reaching high volume once again. A world war to change one man’s subject. And when facts finally emerge, I don’t think it will be sex crimes that he worried about most, it will be corruption, money laundering and what I expect to be a treasonous arrangement with Putin. (MBS won’t be far behind) Everything he’s done, in both terms, has propped up Russia and Putin. Imagine what the money and military might spent on Iran would have accomplished if spent on Ukraine. This Iran war is a diversion for one man’s purposes that has upended and rearranged the whole world. So when people say the President of the United States is the most powerful person in the world, I think that sentence now belongs in the past tense, but it also has been proved true this post month by this one president’s vulnerable treachery.
Exceptionally well put RR, it is easy to get distracted (especially if you are the head Magat) but you have us on point. To the casual observer, Putin seems more than willing to send hundreds of thousands of young men to die in Ukraine and for that he should burn in Hell for all Eternity. But in today's case, tRump has opened the floodgates of depression for millions, and in the end may have more blood on his hands than his Russian Mentor VP.
Is there any stupider leader of a nation anywhere on the planet? Nope. And his cabinet and Republican senators and Congressmen/women? They are even stupider for letting Trump get away with his actions that are destroying America.
Until experts message that we have a psychopath in the White House (per Robert Hare's Checklist of Psychopathy) this will go on. In order to extract any meaning from what is happening, we cannot understand the "thinking" of the president from a false perspective of normality. Think of trying to extract a slotted screw from a board with a Phillips head screwdriver.
Every day djt remains in power is a day our precious country is further diminished. He erodes our credibility, embarrasses us, and makes the planet less safe. Shame on those who continue to support this horror show.
"No one, therefore, should be surprised that the war may end with the United States and its allies (or, rather, countries that used to be allies) worse off than when the war started."
It has not taken the end of the war to produce these results. From the summary of this article, it's clear that: the war has alread cost taxpayers $1B per day, the war has cost global purchasers of motor fuels (incuding us) significantly more, the war has once again destabilized the region of the world, and has ruined the U.S. international relations. Trump should be labeled a world destructionist. That is what he is.
You left out rigging the 2026 election from the consequences. We are not in Kansas any more. We are a very strong and very stupid country teetering on the edge of dictatorship in a very dangerous world. In one sense MAGA is right. Time to get our own house in order and find partners to work with as equals for a better world. To summarize my quibble with this summary, you want your cake and eat it too. You want the world where we stripped Iran of its oil wealth in 1953, you just want it run more intelligently. That is a fatally flawed arrangement and the disastrous consequences have reached our doorstep.
"No other president could possibly have done this much damage in such a short time"? OK, but no president could have done this much damage in such a short time if the way hadn't been paved by previous presidents (with a special nod to Reagan's corporate tax breaks), the Supreme Court (the 2010 Citizens United decision helped make Trump possible), and the anti-democratic backlash to the civil rights and women's rights advances of the 1960s and early '70s.
Making it too much about Trump is yet another example of what the US of A does best: refusing to learn from history.
Yep. I have a new term for what is going on in this maladministration: malignant incompetence. The gleeful push to destroy everything in order to create an oligarch's paradise. Because that is what is happening.
I suppose that's more acceptable in social circles than describing it as "evil fuckupery."
I keep focusing on what the Chancellor of Germany said (in nice words of course): 'no, Donald, we will not help you unfuck yourself -- we will not allow you to make us accomplices in your random, self-promoting, incompetent cruelty....'
When you give control of a 1 Trillion dollar war machine to two macho bros who's idea of "fun" is a rally lethal day in the neighborhood, what would we expect? Negotiations? Allies? Human compassion? That's all for Sissies. Some how these guys believe America is about "Might Makes Right" or "Onward Christian Soldiers". It's certainly true we do have "Might" on our side. In November, We the People will decide which side Morality is on.
Prepare to everything you can to protect the right to vote and we will end the brutality and corruption of the Trump eta
"Malignant incompetence" Brava!!
Fuck
-Trump
-SCOTUS
-His "cabinet" of idiots and sycophants, who managed to make the bearded theocrats in Tehran look intelligent and rational
-The GOP in congress, the biggest flock of beta wimp subservient sheep, led by iq challenged and severely closeted mike Johnson,
-All their voters, with a special mention of the manosphere, and the Latino and Arab self-coitus performers
- all the amoral and hypocritical techbroligarchs and corporate kleptocrats who bent the knee to the Antichrist - I'm looking at you, jeff bozo, tim apple, ... as well as the *immigrant nazis* muskrat and Thiel
- The Arab countries in the middle east who thought they could purchase favors and corrupted our system even more
They will all get their just desserts one way or another. Unfortunately they are taking us to hell with them
It was impolitic for Clinton to say so, but they ARE a basket of deplorables.
Deplorable was and is much too nice a word to describe those who have inflicted this catastrophe on the world. They are despicable, contemptible, detestable, abominable.
Yes, Coke Brothers, it's called going to hell in a handbasket defined as a situation that is rapidly deteriorating, falling apart, or heading toward a disastrous, inescapable conclusion. It suggests a swift and uncontrollable decline, often used to describe declining morals, failing projects or chaotic world events. I think that just about covers it.
The magic word remains EPSTEIN.
Agree Daniel. He’ll do anything as we’re experiencing now to distract from more being exposed, although his gang will also do anything to redact, cover up deny as well. Of course miller & his cronies are forever scheming to destroy what’s left of the constitution.
A world where 12 is the threshold of toleration is not hard to see if you stand on the toilet and look out the window.
Well said Brothers. Hope your outrage is contagious. ✊️
The Middle Eastern countries who fawned over and plied the orange putrescence with money have been on the receiving end of Iran’s drones and missiles. Poetic justice ?
My schadenfreude is strong on that one
Let's be cordial: Tuck Frump!!
And Trump is STILL mentioned in the Epstein Files more than a million times.
As I have said in the past, everything Trump has done appears to have been done in servive to Putin, because it was and is.
Thank you, because I have been thinking about that too. Why did we choose to bomb Iran now, for instance? Could it have been because reports were emerging from Ukraine that they were getting the upper hand in their war, and other reports emerging from Russia that their economy was in real trouble? Well, now attention and weapons are no longer flowing to Ukraine, but Putin's now unsanctioned oil sales billions are flowing to him. And Trump is making more threats to leave NATO, which has got to be a dream goal for Putin. Or maybe it won't matter if he knows that Trump will never act in NATO's interests anyway.
So, given that the First Question is, "What does Putin want Trump to do?" what do you think? Russia is supplying intelligence to Iran now targeting US sites - just enough to keep the war going with a few "wins" on Iran's side, it appears to me, suggesting Putin wants the war to continue as it is.
Trump has moved a lot of troops into the region, but would a ground war effort be something Putin wants him to do? I think not. I suspect his best interest is in the status quo: The US depleting billions and weapons with no real endgame in sight, and the world finding greater priorities than Ukraine as they fret about oil and all the hits to their economies.
I also think the longer this war goes on with its oil crisis, the more likely it is that Russia's oil will not be sanctioned again when it's over.
What do you think?
I think putin would in fact want trump to send US elite troops into the meat grinder. How else could he destroy the 82nd airborne without firing a single round
But what does he care about destroying the 82nd Airborne? It's not like any US president is going to send them against him directly. Far better to weaken the US economically and diplomatically with a drawn-out war where we are literally blowing up a billion dollars a day, alienating the rest of the world, and elevating once again the price of oil, which Putin has.
IF we used ground troops and it was the bloodbath that most people predict, that might also trigger Trump's ousting, which is not what Putin wants. It would also destroy Iran further, ostensibly Putin's ally in the region. And it could prompt the tit for tat destruction of the desalination plants that the rest of the Gulf countries depend on, which would be catastrophic for them, which could carry over to a possible worldwide recession or even depression (as I understand it - or maybe I am reading too many doomsday predictions!).
Putin seems to me to be a guy who finds a more circuitous way of getting what he wants without the kind of destruction that can prove too unpredictable, as in "The Law of Unintended Consequences". He wants INtended consequences - that favor him, even if he has to get them with incremental steps.
Putin already has his own set of unintended consequences. Ukraine did not cave like he thought it would. I think, I hope Putin ultimately loses the war with Ukraine and that the Russian people hold him accountable. He probably has enemies in places he doesn’t even know.
I served in Vietnam of 15 months with the Brown Water Navy. Russia did a pretty good job of meat grinding there through the use of the North Vietnamese and VC.
The choice was Trump's and his staff of sycophants and zealots, but of course Netanyahu has been urging him to do this for a year, more than that.
Sure, it's Trump's choice, which came after one of those private phone calls with Putin. And now, he's in kind of an awkward position, wouldn't you say? He's pissed off his America First constituents, who believed him about no new wars, who are making the obvious observation of "What was in this war for US?" I think he's now also frustrating the warmongers in his admin by inexplicably not "going in to finish the job". Why isn't he? It's gotta be because Putin doesn't want that, or at least not yet.
I think it's also why Trump appears to be flailing around more than usual with nonsensical statements, contradictory statements often in the same day and just looking he has no clue. Meanwhile, Hegseth is probably flummoxed that he can't persuade him to get his "war fighters" in there fighing for glory!
But Trump can't very well admit, "I'm not going in until Putie tells me to. He likes the money he's making right now".
Trump and Putin have a special (somewhat one-way) bromance of course, but my main point was, it seems pretty clear that no foreign leader was pushing Trump to start this catastrophe more than Netanyahu.
He has been very open about it. Netanyahu has been pushing the US to bomb Iran for decades, and now that the US has greenlit every terrible action Israel has taken in the past few years, Netanyahu certainly understood this was as good a time as any, with a US pres that is uniquely easy to sway with flattery and tough talk.
PS=- IMO Trump hasn't 'finished the job' because he has no idea what the job really is, no idea how to get out of this, and no idea what he is doing. He thought this would be another Venezuela.
Can't disagree, as Netanyahu has an ally in Kushner/Ivanka, as well, to whisper in Trump's ear. But I still don't think he would have made such a bold move if Putin hadn't okayed it.
In the early days of the bombing, the media were asking, "What about Putin? Iran is his ally. Where is he in all this?" as if Trump had put himself in opposition to Putin, but then the oil sanctions were quickly removed, Putin started making billions and it became clear. At the same time, Iran has been helped with Russian targeting, costing US lives, with nary a word from Trump.
None dare call him Krasnov.
I think Putin is planning on doing a “regime change” on the US. Trump is wasting so many bombs and rockets that it is leaving our country at risk of invasion. And Putin could do it as a country that does have Nukes that could reach the US.
Have you read "American Kompromat
" by Craig Unger?
No. I don't really care what Putin has on Trump, suffice to say it is something and it's powerful. The proof is in the pudding.
I recall in his first admin, some pundit observing that Trump never did anything in terms of foreign policy that Putin wouldn't want done (or was uninterested in). I can't think of an instance since then, otherwise. Putin is also someone whom Trump has never insulted.
The media made a big deal about that Russian tanker heading for Cuba, for instance, calling it a "showdown" or a game of "chicken" regarding Trump's blockade. I scoffed. Trump in a "showdown" with Putin? There's only one way that goes. And sure enough, when the ship landed, the media asked Trump about it and he said, "Sure, why not?"
Yeah Janet, I don't need a book to know which way the wind blows either.
I wish I'd kept a link, as I read a very interesting analysis of what Kompromat is and that westerners don't really understand it. What I remember is that it's nothing as simple as "blackmail" but almost another economic system; it's "how business is done" in Russia, where favors are essential - dangerous or illegal ones maybe, and then someone has a little leverage. Knowledge of that leverage is passed on to those a step higher on the ladder, corruption deepens, meaning more leverage; power is given and taken away - often through destroying a business or killing a would-be challenger (!), and at the top of the complicated pyramid sits Putin - universally feared for his murderous and ruthless wielding of all the power he's accumulated.
That convinced me that Trump wasn't sophisticated enough to know what he was doing in any Russian deals he and his sons made, before it was too late, and then there he is, finding out that it's Putin holding the dog's leash on the choke collar he'd stuck his head into.
I use that analogy as sometimes when Putin meets Trump face to face, he comes away looking like a whipped dog, suggesting Putin just yanked his leash, e.g. Helsinki, Alaska. Other times, it's all smiles and "good dog" vibes.
In fact, I would say that Putin owes us a favor.
He needs to open his borders to MAGA immigrants. All of them.
Russia has a shortage of swaggering white men. Their military desperately needs recruits.
And in Russia, guys, you don't have to think! No strain for your brain in trying to understand complex ideas or systems. Just allow the indoctrination of the state/dictator, which you have proven to be very good at!
You will be told what to do, whom to hate, where to live, and how to NEVER complain about the government or its repressive laws (unless you want to fall out of a window).
Good riddance.
AND Putin has been pushing women to become "trad wives" - just what MAGA wants! True, they are too often quickly "trad widows", but in the meantime, they have hopefully had some younguns to replenish future wars.
If anyone have any doubts about your statement Rich, they should look at whom is the main beneficiary of this embarrassing debacle....Putin and only Putin.
Trump does what his mentor Putin tells him to do during secret telephone calls.
Yes, he had one shortly before the bombs started dropping. A week or two before, wasn't it? Time to get his orders and start putting the pieces in place.
Trump is a Russian "asset" and, according to "The Guardian," he has been for decades. Anyone who continues to doubt this reality need only look at how he's kow-towed to Putin on Ukraine -- and his excuse for lifting the sanctions against the export of Russian gas and oil, the revenues from which Putin has used to fund his criminal war.
It's also up for question how much he kow-towed to Netanyahu to start this illegal and unconstitutional war, using false "imminent threats" to perpetrate the action. With these two war criminals in cahoots, it's clear that the end won't be good.
Dr. France, Drumpf is also a "useful idiot," a term used to describe Westerners who assisted the Soviet agenda during the Cold War. It has far more relevance now than it did decades ago.
Nyet. How do you say "agent" or "punk" in Russian?
The orange felon has been a great place to launder Russian money.
When Western European and American banks stopped lending Trump money due to his criminality and poor business acumen, he turned to Russia and the Middle East where he found a ready supply of investment and gifts, or as we also call them, bribes and emoluments.
Rubin mentions that 'Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria' are at risk of 'severe economic crises' because of this war.
It is curious she doesn't mention that these three regions are all currently occupied by Israel, and two of them are being actively attacked by Israel (Israel bombed Syria recently again as well). Their problems from direct actions by the US/Israel alliance are far worse than possible future economic consequences of the Iran War
The Contrarian has barely said a word about Israel's attacks and effective annexation of southern Lebanon, backed and funded by the US, as usual.
Israel has killed at least 1,268 and wounded thousands more, including children and health care workers in Lebanon in the past month (on top of thousands more in the past few years). It has started wholesale demolishing homes in the south and has displaced a million people there.
Meanwhile in Israel, the Knesset passed a law to allow the death penalty and short trials for Palestinians only, that have been accused of resisting Israel. US media only causally observed while members of the Knesset literally wore noose pins as they voted for this openly racist and apartheid-affirming law. There has not been one syllable about this in The Contrarian (and The Contrarian can't just blame Netanyahu).
The Contrarian's coverage, as usual, remains focused on the easy target of Trump. He deserves all the criticisms he gets, to be sure, but the impacts of the terror wrought by the US/Israeli alliance are not limited to the catastrophe in Iran.
Aside from at least 3000 killed by the US and Israel, 750 schools, 300 healthcare centers, and 90,000-plus homes have been destroyed in Iran, hundreds of thousands have been displaced, and tens of thousands have been injured. This is far worse than Americans paying more for gas.
It is not anti-Semitic to be against what the Israeli government is doing. Netanyahu will be held accountable for the war crimes he is perpetrating in his quest for land and power. I fully support the people of Israel to live in peace and I fully support the Palestinians and the Lebanese for the same.
Absolutely, Jason. Zionism has become the new Nazism and, that is NOT an antisemitic statement. But as long as we have evangelicals anywhere near the levers of power, the U.S. will continue to aide and abet it.
We lost the war weeks ago when the Iranians resisted. No Plan B (I don't think there was an actual Plan A). Then Iran emerged victorious when they closed the Straight of Hormuz. Who saw that coming - certainly not the Very Stable Genius.
Now, having spent untold billions, killed thousands, created global economic chaos, and alienated much of the world, we are going to leave.
Putin's puppet delivers! Just not for the American people.
Russia FIRST!
What I can't understand is how can a third of our country still support this corrupt, ego driven president! It is up to people like the Contrarians to continue to support and fight against his illegal, destructive orders. I am exhausted just reading the news each day. I have to have hope that some of the court decisions and the uprising of Americans are indications that the tide is turning against him. There is no good ending to this war, so we have to fight even harder to remove him and his incompetent cabinet!
My husband keeps saying, incredulously, that: 30% of Americans support this corrupt and malignant administration!! My comment is that there have always been bigoted, war-mongering, misogynists! We just didn't hand them the keys to the White House and Congress!
Clearly, the markets are not amused by Mad King Donald's April Fools Day address.
I am quite tired of commentary that talks about objectives — met or unmet — for this war. This war was about where Trump fits in the Epstein files. Trump’s objective was to make us look away. Trump was willing to use the military might of the United States, meaning he was willing to use each and every one of us American citizens, without telling Congress or allies, because Epstein was reaching high volume once again. A world war to change one man’s subject. And when facts finally emerge, I don’t think it will be sex crimes that he worried about most, it will be corruption, money laundering and what I expect to be a treasonous arrangement with Putin. (MBS won’t be far behind) Everything he’s done, in both terms, has propped up Russia and Putin. Imagine what the money and military might spent on Iran would have accomplished if spent on Ukraine. This Iran war is a diversion for one man’s purposes that has upended and rearranged the whole world. So when people say the President of the United States is the most powerful person in the world, I think that sentence now belongs in the past tense, but it also has been proved true this post month by this one president’s vulnerable treachery.
Thank you for bringing the discussion back to what's actually happening, Robbie. I think you are right on point.
Exceptionally well put RR, it is easy to get distracted (especially if you are the head Magat) but you have us on point. To the casual observer, Putin seems more than willing to send hundreds of thousands of young men to die in Ukraine and for that he should burn in Hell for all Eternity. But in today's case, tRump has opened the floodgates of depression for millions, and in the end may have more blood on his hands than his Russian Mentor VP.
Is there any stupider leader of a nation anywhere on the planet? Nope. And his cabinet and Republican senators and Congressmen/women? They are even stupider for letting Trump get away with his actions that are destroying America.
Follow-up question: "Is there any stupider electorate in any ostensibly democratic nation anywhere on the planet?"
Yes. Several.
Until experts message that we have a psychopath in the White House (per Robert Hare's Checklist of Psychopathy) this will go on. In order to extract any meaning from what is happening, we cannot understand the "thinking" of the president from a false perspective of normality. Think of trying to extract a slotted screw from a board with a Phillips head screwdriver.
As the saying goes, monsters will be monsters (think DJT). They do what monsters do. The others have a choice!
Every day djt remains in power is a day our precious country is further diminished. He erodes our credibility, embarrasses us, and makes the planet less safe. Shame on those who continue to support this horror show.
"No one, therefore, should be surprised that the war may end with the United States and its allies (or, rather, countries that used to be allies) worse off than when the war started."
It has not taken the end of the war to produce these results. From the summary of this article, it's clear that: the war has alread cost taxpayers $1B per day, the war has cost global purchasers of motor fuels (incuding us) significantly more, the war has once again destabilized the region of the world, and has ruined the U.S. international relations. Trump should be labeled a world destructionist. That is what he is.
You left out rigging the 2026 election from the consequences. We are not in Kansas any more. We are a very strong and very stupid country teetering on the edge of dictatorship in a very dangerous world. In one sense MAGA is right. Time to get our own house in order and find partners to work with as equals for a better world. To summarize my quibble with this summary, you want your cake and eat it too. You want the world where we stripped Iran of its oil wealth in 1953, you just want it run more intelligently. That is a fatally flawed arrangement and the disastrous consequences have reached our doorstep.
MAGA: Morons Are Governing America
"No other president could possibly have done this much damage in such a short time"? OK, but no president could have done this much damage in such a short time if the way hadn't been paved by previous presidents (with a special nod to Reagan's corporate tax breaks), the Supreme Court (the 2010 Citizens United decision helped make Trump possible), and the anti-democratic backlash to the civil rights and women's rights advances of the 1960s and early '70s.
Making it too much about Trump is yet another example of what the US of A does best: refusing to learn from history.
Refusing to even look at history, no less learn.
Point! The conundrum is that they manage to rewrite it without knowing what it is.
The Confederacy never truly surrendered.