Our story so far: As nearly as I can work it out, Israel has been murdering Palestinians at a shocking rate in Gaza, claiming they’re wiping out Hamas. Apparently, EVERY Palestinian in Gaza is Hamas as far as Israel is concerned. Israel claims Iran has been financially backing Hamas in the fight, so they decided Iran should be involved, too. Never mind that Israel could NOT continue this fight without backing from the US. In Israel’s calculation, a country backing Israel is good, a country backing Israel’s opponent is an unforgivable outrage.

Israel repeats a long-ago debunked claim that Iran is working toward building a nuclear weapon and gets the Foolhardy First Felon to bomb some facilities in Iran. Then, the Felon posts in social media that he has brokered a cease-fire between the two countries. Iran “responds” to the US bombing by launching some cruise missiles at a US base in Qatar. Qatar is upset that Iranian missiles violated Qatari airspace but seems to be taking a measured response. Israel uses the launch of Iranian missiles at a US base in Qatar as a pretext to unload a huge number of bombs on Iran.

Donny knew it was going on. He says he got Bibi on the phone and told him not to drop those bombs. Bibi said he had to, the mission had already left. Donny claims he told Bibi to turn the planes around and posted to social media that the planes would do a “friendly plane wave” to Iran and go home. But the planes did a very unfriendly bombing of Tehran, instead. Iran fired back, because of course they did.

It should be noted, Israel is doing pretty much whatever it wants despite any agreements, international laws, or war crimes that might be involved. After the way they’ve been behaving in Gaza, I don’t trust the Israeli government. (The government, not “Jews,” so blow it out your ear.) The fact that the two countries were still exchanging fire after the announcement of the cease-fire really irritated Donny who said, “I gotta get Israel to calm down now,” as he left the White House, Reuters reports.

“Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before, the biggest load that we’ve seen…We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”

But speaking of not know what one is doing, he came out immediately after the unprovoked attack and claimed Iran’s nuclear facilities had been completely obliterated. It turns out, Iran’s nuclear facilities were mildly damaged and should be back up and running in a few months.

MOSTLY, this raid proved that the vaunted ‘Bunker Buster Bomb’ doesn’t work very well. Each one of those bad boys costs $20 million dollars. Each one. The US dropped 14 of them during the raid. $280 million dollars in bombs alone, that doesn’t count the cost of the B-2 bombers required to carry those bombs or the support planes to protect the B-2s for a setback of only a few months. Hell, that’s not even good business.

The Felon and some of his followers are all giddy now. Oh, he’s going to get the Nobel Peace Prize THIS time. The dude is obsessed with trying to get a Nobel Peace Prize. Obama got one (that he, candidly, didn’t deserve) and now Donny desperately wants one. He’s obsessed. And, apparently, he’ll kill anyone to get one.

Personally, I’ll be surprised if one gets a peace prize for an illegal bombing raid. “No,” MAGA will say, “it’s for the cease-fire.” Yeah, the cease-fire after the illegal bombing raid. You can’t just eliminate that part of the equation. The Nobel committee won’t. Besides, Netanyahu is still in charge in Israel. Do you really think he’s going to stand down? Especially now that the world knows America’s great big, very expensive, vaguely suggestively named bomb (“Massive Ordnance Penetrator”) only did minor damage?

But the plot thickened on Wednesday, when a new intelligence assessment from Israel was issued. It determined that the bombs really DID do bigly damage to Iran’s nuclear capability. So, to review: that’s Hyperbolic Donny and Netanyahu – both of whom desperately want to look tough, decisive, and successful – saying the bombing was the bombing of their dreams and everyone else – including Donny’s own intelligence services – saying it was just a scratch.

There’s no sense in arguing about it at this point. The whole world will know which was correct by how quickly Iran gets it’s nuclear program up and running again. But, based on the veracity of every other thing 47 says, I’m guessing that will be sooner, rather than later…

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Right now, as far as the world is concerned, the only thing keeping the American dollar going is Jerome Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve. He serves a predetermined term and that term runs another eleven months. He’s solid. He knows his stuff. He keeps standing in the way of Hyperbolic Donny’s efforts to obliterate the US economy. So, of course, 47 hates him and attacks him as “stupid” and “very dumb.” But Donny’s too stupid to know what stupid looks like, clearly a widespread affliction today in this once-great nation.

The Felon’s attacks on Powell are political, so, of course, he claims Powell is acting politically. As of today, the Fed doesn’t do that. It’s an independent group that is supposed to act on economic data alone and, as of today, it does. That means Powell doesn’t toady up to 47. THAT means 47 wants him gone. But because of the rules, he can’t just fire him.

Instead, Donny says he’s going to name Powell’s successor early, before the end of Powell’s term. THEN, every time Powell makes an economic decision, the regime can trot out their preferred monetary moron to say HE would have done things differently, politically, whatever Donny wanted, undermining Powell’s decision.

So, the dollar has fallen to a low not seen since the world was trying to crawl out from under the wreckage of Donny’s epic mishandling of Covid-19. It turns out, there are a LOT of ways Donny can destroy the US economy and he’s going full throttle on all of them…

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Mike German, an ex-FBI agent, said immigration agents hiding their identities ‘highlights the illegitimacy of actions.’ He’s right about that. These guys KNOW that what they’re doing is wrong and the masks are the proof. But it’s worse than that. Now, bad guys are cosplaying as cops (copsplaying?) so they can do bad guy things, inadvertently supported by potential actual cops hiding fearfully behind their own masks.

SO, what stops, say, a terrorist from, oh, I don’t know, Iran maybe, from dressing up as a cop to gain access to some sensitive area and do some severe damage, possibly in retribution for some recent bombing?

Masked cops are just bad in every measurable way, and they’re likely making the whole country far LESS safe. Is there ANYTHING Donny doesn’t destroy? Anything at all? I’ll wait…

Let the spinning begin. Yes, I mean the head-spinning. Apparently on orders from Bibi Netanyahu, the US bombed Iran in an effort to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb the world agrees they were not trying to build, but which Donny has pretended they were trying to build for some three decades. Wait, actual bombs fell in response to a delusion? Absolutely.

The US is blaming Iran. Bear in mind, the US and Iran had entered into an agreement that prevented Iran from building nuclear weapons and, by all accounts, they were honoring that agreement. But because Donny is an irrational moron, he unilaterally pulled out of that agreement, for no reason other than Obama had negotiated the thing, and tried to force a new one on Iran, which Iran declined.

By all accounts (except Donny’s) Iran was sticking to the framework of the Obama agreement anyway. But they got attacked by Israel and they responded. The Israeli attack was kind of superficial and the response was also “measured.” But then it happened again. Israel attacked, this time with more devastating effect and Iran responded again, also with more devastating effect.

So now, because Iran responded to Israeli attacks, the US just HAD to bomb Iran, see? Clear as mud. It reminds me of nothing so much as an abusive husband beating his wife over some trivial “offense” while saying, “See what you make me do?” But the US sends in some planes, bombs three locations, then withdraws the planes safely. A “successful” mission, based on the fact that all of the planes that went in came out again. They DID hit their targets, too. Yay! Let’s celebrate US power.

Regime 47 officials took turns stepping up to the microphone to tell Americans how awesome we are. We hit our targets. We set back their nuclear program. We did amazing and wonderful damage and we came away unscathed and, take their word for this, there will be no repercussions whatsoever because that’s the way things work in most fantasy lands.

It turns out, Iran had an inkling that Donny might bring bombs and had moved everything important out of those facilities. Yes, the US did damage but they didn’t destroy the facilities, despite Donny’s hyperbole. Israel has since followed up by bombing access roads to those facilities but the roads and the facilities, themselves, can be repaired.

Iran can be back up and running in fairly short order – and THAT assumes the three sites bombed were the only sites available. Is it at all possible Iran had a fourth site that had gone undetected and, therefore, unbombed? Here’s the really ironic part: the very best way for Iran to put an end to all of this aggression over whether or not they have a nuclear weapon, is to develop a nuclear weapon. The US tends to shy away from bullying nuclear nations.

All of this hand-wringing over whether Iran can have nukes is kind of stupid. I mean, what are they going to do with them? Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is a real thing. Israel plays coy but the whole world knows Israel has nukes already. Iran can’t nuke Israel without Israel responding in kind – and BOTH sides face a very high risk of radiation blowback.

Are we really so afraid that “a madman might get nukes?” Well, guess what? A madman has full control over an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons right now! If that’s a legitimate basis for regime change, shouldn’t the US start at home? I say we get rid of our own madman with nukes before we worry too much about some guy somewhere else who doesn’t even have any.

Matthew, Chapter 7, verse 5 sums it up nicely: “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye…“

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Don’t be distracted by Donny’s dirty little war. Remember, the GOP is trying to take away your health care so they can give tax cuts to the wealthy. For as long as I can remember, the GOP motto is: comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted…

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Here’s a weird one. Some nutball opened fire at a church in Detroit on Sunday. Please note the LACK of speculation as to the shooter’s motives at this point. All we know, for sure, is that a 31 year old, white gunman opened fire. He shot a security guard in the leg. The newspaper article I saw in the Guardian said the security guard then shot and killed the gunman. That’s all kind of normal stuff, right? Standard American carnage.

But it turns out, the wounded security guard managed to shoot back only AFTER a church member ran over the gunman in a truck. You’ve got to admit, that’s a twist ending you didn’t see coming, right? Apparently, another thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a truck. THEN the guard shot and killed the gunman.

Okay, first, props to the driver of the truck. His quick thinking and bold action almost certainly saved lives. But then a weird little thought popped into my head. If I’m attacked, I’m allowed to use whatever force I need to use to protect myself – but no more. You’re allowed to defend yourself. You’re not allowed to escalate. If I manage to subdue my attacker, I’m not allowed to then grab a board and start pounding. The guy’s not a threat anymore.

I know it isn’t going to happen, but I found myself wondering if the security guard might get into trouble. I presume that once the congregant drove over the shooter – in a truck – the shooter was likely disabled long enough for someone to get the gun and secure the shooter. That is, I’m not sure the security guard needed to shoot and kill the gunman. It seems like excessive force.

The details on this shooting are still a little murky, but no, I would NOT have the guard face charges. It just crossed my mind that he could. If the gunman was down, having been run over by a truck, why did the guard open fire? But, like I say, murky details. Maybe the shooter was getting back up, like the Terminator. Either way, I don’t have any sympathy for the gunman and I feel like he should have holstered his weapon instead of shooting at people.

MAGAmerica is an insane, bloodthirsty place and and we have all just come to accept these regular shootings as part of our daily lives. It’s MAGA “freedumb.” You’re free to get shot anytime some nutball chooses…

Donny says HE invented the term “America First” so HE gets to choose what it means. Here’s the thing. HE did NOT invent the term “America First.” He revived it from Nazis. It was a slogan used by American Nazi sympathizers in the 1930s. 1930s Americans can be forgiven for being attracted to pretended Nazi ideology. The Nazis hadn’t Nazi’d yet. The modern Nazi, these days calling themselves MAGA, deserve no such grace.

This is all in relation to whether or not Felon 47 should use America’s biggest, non-nuclear bomb in Iran to “stop Iran from having nuclear weapons.” The question of whether or not he should bomb Iran and drag America into yet another moronic and wrongheaded Middle East war created quite a rift in MAGA-land. Should he or shouldn’t he? Two firmly held camps. The left started to get a little excited that it might be a “MAGA civil war.”

I don’t think such a threat actually ever existed. Remember, this is the crowd that actively killed their parents and grandparents during Covid-19 just to score what they thought were a few political points. Do you really think they’re going to split over bombing Iran? Now that he’s done it, he’ll just tell the “don’t do it” crowd to sit down and shut up – and they will. They’ll fall in line because that’s what they do. Independent thought is NOT a virtue in MAGAmerica.

This bit is funny: Pakistan announced on Saturday – before the bombing – they were going to nominate Felon 47 for a Nobel Peace Prize. He really wants a Nobel Peace Prize. He just doesn’t deserve one. He thought he might get it for ending Putin’s war in Ukraine. He brought his best game to that one, inducing the infamous “Stop it, stop it, STOP it!” chant – but it didn’t work and he was out of ideas.

He has been FAR too supportive of Israel’s attempted genocide, too. It turns out, one cannot supply weapons to a maniacal government and encourage that government to use those weapons to murder as many women and children as they can and be in the top running for a peace prize. The whole world knows Israel would not be able to continue in Netanyahu’s insanity but for American weapons – now happily supplied by Felon 47, for a small fee, of course.

He failed in Ukraine and he failed in Gaza so he apparently decided his best path to a peace prize might be in bombing the crap out of a foreign sovereign nation over a fraudulent and made up story. Damn, it feels like I’ve seen this movie before. The actors are different and it’s set in a different country but the plot… the plot is very familiar. Hackneyed, even.

Here’s an interesting tidbit. Outside of American (and probably Israeli) media? The entire world agrees that Iran does not have nuclear weapons, is not planning on having nuclear weapons, does not have enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons, is not building nuclear weapons. Even Tulsi Gabbard, his own National Intelligence Director, said Iran isn’t trying to build a bomb.

The whole threat of Iran’s “nuclear weapons” is Iraq’s WMDs all over again. Remember how that worked out? Remember when Kindasleazy Rice terrorized people with this lie, “The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. It couldn’t have been. Saddam didn’t HAVE WMDs.

He had been thoroughly defanged by the time the US went in the second time. MAGA was left pretending that some rotted and rusted chemical weapons found buried deep in the sand in the middle of a desert counted as WMDs, despite the fact that Weapons of Mass Destruction had been clearly associated with nuclear weapons.

Iran does want a nuclear power plant and such a beast requires enriched uranium, too. But the level of enrichment is vastly lower than that required to build a nuclear bomb and, again, Iran is making NO effort to enrich uranium to that extent. Well, they weren’t. It’s pretty clear the best path to avert American bullying is to HAVE a nuclear device, and Donny has now, likely accidentally, made that fact very clear to Iran.

Another promise made, another promise broken…

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I often accuse MAGA of lacking morals. I make the point because of all the immoral stances MAGA supports. It’s a judgement call, subjective. But the more I hear about 47’s big bill, the more sure I am. Remember, one of the main themes of this nightmare is to inflict as much pain as possible on struggling Americans in order to make a very small segment of our country – rich people – I was going to say “more comfortable,” but they won’t BE more comfortable. How could they? They’ll just have more money on their pile.

It turns out, one route to all of that suffering is this slashing of Medicaid. That’s going to have widespread effect on the whole nation, things one might not initially think about, like closing rural hospitals. Obviously, the White House minions are pretending that cutting needed money won’t hurt anybody or anything. In fact, the less people have, the happier they’ll be, right? So, who needs medical care?

Are you having a heart attack because you were rage-screaming at the television about “Libtards?” Did you shoot yourself in the leg while you were cleaning your gun? Did your wife go into labor unexpectedly, three months early? Wow, you need a doctor, and fast. Too bad, though. The nearest doctor will be roughly two to four hours further away now that the only medical facility in the area lost funding to the Medicaid cuts and had to shut down. Try not to bleed out, okay?

Oh, I know, MAGA was told the Medicaid cuts actually only represented fraud, waste, and abuse. You’d better check that out more closely. The GOP – I should say, the very wealthy GOP – is taking money people need so they can give it to people with no need. Rural hospitals WILL shut down. Here’s the thing: one cannot just close down a hospital, realize it was a massive mistake, then reopen the thing as though nothing had happened.

This is not like DOGE firing everybody in sight, realizing the people they fired did an important job, and bringing them back a few days, weeks, or months later. Once those hospitals close, it will be very difficult to re-open them. Once rural Americans have lost their only local access to health care, that local access will likely be gone for a long, long time, maybe forever.

Only MAGA can stop this thing. I’m a lefty. I live in California. My representatives are already against this monstrosity. If I lived in a red state, my representative would just dismiss my input as radical lefty stuff. Only MAGA can make clear to MAGA politicians that this bill will cost those politicians more than they cost the victims of the bill and they’d better do it soon – or hope that no emergency medical situations come their way…