Wingate

LOL! If "lefties" supported anyone against their own country and people, lefties would all support Trump. You see lefties, who are the last remaining true American patriots, support the ideals of the US as laid down by the Founders: free speech, a free press. freedom from unlawful search and seizure, equality under the law, etc. Trump is against all of that. He tries to prosecute people merely for criticizing him, wants broadcast license pulled for networks who criticize him or employ comedians who make fun of him, he likes masked and unidentified secret police, and he thinks it's okay to use his position to enrich himself to the tune of $4 billion since January 2025. True patriots also expect both a rationale for war and a clear objective, as even lefties sometimes go into harm's way or send their sons and daughters into it. There is no such thing as "my country right or wrong". The US is a democracy, not a monarchy or dictatorship. Add to this---not only the lies and inconsistent messaging---the psychopathic nonsense of the White House itself posting videos of strikes interspersed with NFL football highlights and video games. That is disgusting and makes the US a sick joke of a once great nation.

If the childish war videos produced under the auspices of the President of the United States are not sufficiently amusing for you---yes, death is such fun!---I guess I have provided a public service in entertaining you additionally. I mean, what's not to like about headless schoolgirls and body parts strewn far and wide. Who doesn't love the screams of the injured and grief-stricken. And entrails...Whoa....entrails stretched out twenty feet from their former user....fun stuff, kind of a Jackson Pollock style masterpiece or maybe a Rube Goldberg. No, make that a reverse IKEA. Yea, IKEA can used body parts messing up a former elementary school in a new ad campaign....slip Head A on to Neck Slot B. One just have to applaud the kind of morality you show. Very MAGAish. Happy to amuse your sordid character. But why just enjoy it from thousands of kilometers away. Go sign up. Go see it for yourself. You can then smell it....the iron in the blood of the deceased, the stench of the partially digested food or feces near what was the alimentary canal, the burnt flesh of humans that will remind you of a pork BBQ. Go for it, killer!

The childish and ghoulish Trump Administration has made war a game. It's fun! You get points for big explosions and big kills! On the official White House social media feed, videos have been posted using segments from Call of Duty, Hollywood movies, and even big hits during National Football League games....all interspersed with actual strikes on targets in Iran. War is a game in Trump world. But it's not a game. People die. Even people on our side die. To use actual war footage, and then post "+100" points, like in a video game, is disgusting. Kill 168 elementary school girls....+100000 !!!!! Bonus time ! Trump and his Carnival People administration's psychopathy is showing. People used (abused) for Trump and Hegseth's entertainment purposed have responded...everyone from NFL greats Ray Lewis and Ed Redd to film maker and actor Ben Stiller (whose Tropic Thunder was used by Trump to entertain). Another aspect of this war of choice that gives people cause for concern is that much targeting is being driven by AI. Massive amounts of data is being consumed by AI programs, which then produce targeting instructions. This dramatically speeds up targeting, but if data is incorrect or AI errs, innocents die. CEO Dario Amodei of Anthropic chose morality over profit and refused Hegseth's demand for the use of Claude. Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg and other AI producers lack Amodei's morality, so they will play so long as they get paid.

If I know my tacos, it will take another -1000 pt down day in the Dow for Trump to truly taco. His manner of capitulation will be as it was the other day: call into a news outlet (maybe Jesse Watters or Maria Bartiromo of Fox this time) while the market is still open and claim "total and complete victory", plus announce he is removing all forces from the theater. He would go on to say, "Nobody thought we could do this well; many people are saying it's the greatest victory since I stopped the Rwandan Genocide in 1994". As oil climbs back up, and prices of everything from filling the car to getting food on the shelves soars, Republicans in Congress will quietly get word to Trump that it looks as if they might lose their seat in November, if living costs keep rising and 401Ks keep falling. Of the many fallouts from this war of choice, one of the most consequential might be a total shift in the US' view of Israel. Already the youth of the US (i.e., up and coming voters) has turned on Israel owing to the genocide in Gaza, but the reality that Netanyahu drew Trump and the US into this debacle could even resonate among senior Republicans and even the American Jewish community. Israel may be forced to dump Netanyahu (and prosecute him for his Trumpian-level corruption) in order to remain in the good graces of the American people. As for Iran, its people will continue to suffer under the thumb of fanatical (and self-serving) theocrats, perhaps BECAUSE of the war. One wonders what could have been if Trump had kept the JCPOA and used it for what it was intended....as a basis for further negotiation with the aging mullahs, who may well have passed before passing leadership on to the next generation of hardliners. The wars and the sanctions led to the economic fallout within Iran that had the people rise up in massive protest, which then forced the government's brutal hand. Absent the fallout after the JCPOA was tossed and the sanctions imposed, the government might not have become so hardline against its own people, and instead slipped quietly into history. Instead, Trump and Netanyahu made them a cornered dog, and they fought back.

Using your "logic", if Mossadegh was not overthrown in 1953, Iran might be the sole true democracy in the Middle East and not funding groups called Hezbollah or Hamas. Chicken and egg.

Not sure you've seen the news, but Khomeini is dead. Banisadr is dead. Reagan is dead. Malcolm Kalb is dead. Bill Doherty is dead. Many of the "students" and many of the other hostages are dead. Tony Menendez is dead. Shah Pahlavi is dead. Trump did not attack Iran because of 1979. Going back even farther, Kermit Roosevelt is dead. Mossadegh is dead. The former CEOs of British Petroleum and Esso in 1953 are dead. You say Trump is hostile to Iran because of 1979? Iranians say the Iranians are hostile to the US because of 1953. In a line from the movie Body of Lies: Ain't nobody innocent in this thing........but 180 elementary schoolgirls paid for someone's wrongdoing.

Suze, "bored with life" is a guy who has posted 200,000 times under about ten screen names, and seemingly spends every waking hour churning out one liners with no value or merit. Some people check out this site once or twice a day, and then hit the gym, hit the office, meet with friends (Google that word "Friends", suze, as that concept is alien to you) and enjoy the wonders that life offers. Think back to your days as a schoolboy. Did you ever imagine you would be where you are today, friendless, Incel-ish, living what remains of your banal existence posting 200 times a day on a Forum, scrapping up 30 baht for a street food Pad Thai and a 500 baht a night flophouse....or did you still harbor delusions that somehow you would achieve even a minor degree of success in life? Would Mama suze think it was worth her pain and discomfort to tote around your zygote and fetus for nine long months?

In a recent presser, Trump essentially admitted it was Tomahawk missiles that hit the girls elementary school. When asked by a NYT's reporter, Trump claimed that it was likely a "stolen US Tomahawk" Iran used to hit the school itself. He used these "I've been told...." lie. Nobody told him that. Plus, it was a double tap, so according to Trump 2 US Tomahawks had been stolen by Iran and used in a false flag against the school. Nobody else has said that, just Trump.

Kim Jong-un---you know, the guy with whom Trump exchanges love letters---had schoolchildren executed because they watched pirated copies of The Squid Game. Kim made other schoolchildren watch schoolchildren being shot. Not a word from Trump on that horror. No military buildup in East Asia; in fact, weapons systems have been pulled from South Korea, because the US was running low in the Middle East. Kim Jong-un has been starving his people for years, even when Trump was writing love letters. Does it require 36,500 in 2 days (even if you numbers are correct), or if a million die of starvation over a period of years, that's acceptable? You Trump lovers are so full of worship and adoration, you can't see the bias. And please, suze, you couldn't care less about dead Iranians. Don't pretend.

So why did Trump decide to start a war with Iran? Does he even know? Does anyone in his Administration know? Why he is now trying to declare victory and call it off is readily apparent: oil and the stock market. Trump saw oil approaching $120/bbl and Dow futures down 1200 pts pre-market on Monday and decided to make up a definition for “victory”, claim he had achieved it, and do it WHILE the markets were open (I’ll also guess his buddies and sons went long equity futures and short oil before Trump’s CBS interview.) . Taco was just being taco again. That is abundantly clear. Still, the question remains: why did he start a war? Was it to carry out regime change? I guess technically he achieved that last week, as Ayatollah Khamenei was killed in an early strike. On the other hand, Khamenei’s son seems to have taken over, and he is more hardline than his father, and the regime is at least as popular in Iran as Trump is in the US, though neither is anything to brag about. Iran doesn’t even need to change the official letterhead of the President’s office, as it will still read “From the Desk of Ayatollah Khamenei”. Was it because, as his WH mouthpiece Leavitt said, he “had a hunch” Iran was going to attack the US? Well, unless Trump also had a hunch a major and massive tectonic plate shift was about to occur on Earth, moving Iran a few thousand miles closer to the US, Iran was incapable of directing any sort of attack against the US. How about the slaughter of protesters carried out by the regime recently? I doubt anyone on this planet thinks Trump gives a flying eff for any brown person, especially a Moslem one. That would be crocodile tears at best, if Trump claimed that. Besides, Trump’s penpal Loverboy in North Korea has killed far more of his subjects. In fact, recently Kim Jong-un executed schoolchildren for the “crime” of watching pirated copies of The Squid Game. Kim even made other schoolchildren watch the executions, in order to send a message. The DPRK has between 65,000 and 100,000 people in “re-education camps”, sentenced for what are essentially “thought crimes”. Also during Kim Jong-un’s reign of terror, at least 1 million North Koreans have died of starvation, all while Kim enjoys as lavish a lifestyle as a miscreant like him can create in a hermit kingdom. The DPRK, however, gets a pass, because Kim already has workable nukes, even miniaturized nukes that can be loaded on to a Hwasong 20 rocket capable of reaching the US. If only the Ayatollah had sent love letters praising Trump. Trump announced early on that he was starting a war in order to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program, something he boasted already about doing back in July 2025. If Iran was able to restart the program and already enrich U235 to weapons’ grade level of 93%, after never having been able to get above 50%, that is astonishing manufacturing ability, from which the rest of the world could learn a lesson. Of course Trump is lying, likely lying twice. He probably did not destroy Iran’s ability to get to 50% enrichment back in July, and no way Iran could have reached 93% by February 2026. One cannot just go down to the local HomePro and buy high speed centrifuges. As the possibilities for the justification are eliminated, what’s left? Maybe SecState Rubio spoke the truth on Day One of the war when he said Israel was going to strike, and despite the US not being ready, the US had no choice but to join in. That’s hardly “America First”, but then again, Trump campaigned on “no foreign wars” and “no regime change”. I guess if Trump was going to break two promises, he might as well go for the Trifecta. There is another possible excuse, which might be summed up partly with the old saying, “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Trump presides over an incredible military with capabilities that are simply astonishing. As a power hungry miscreant, Trump is wont to use it. He seems to take great joy in his ability to blow up stuff simply by ordering that it be done. That is as god-like as any human can be, and we all know Trump like to consider himself a messiah, if not semi-divine. He probably got bored just blowing up little boats in the Caribbean, even if some belonged to drug cartels, though some were just fishing boats from Trinidad in the wrong place at the wrong time. He wanted big explosions, so Iran was his canvass. Too bad it seems the US struck an elementary school killing upwards of 180 pre teen girls, though Trump is trying to claim it wasn’t the US. Privately, I would be willing to bet not only does he know the US did it, but it probably thrills him that he blew up 180 little brown Moslem girls. Finally, it may be that in some oddball way, Trump thought he could steal Iran’s oil, trying to play an 18th or 19th Century European monarch living the Kipling-esque dream of Colonialism and The White Man’s Burden. Certainly Lindsey Graham thought that, as over the weekend Graham hit the Sunday talk show exclaiming “how much money we’re going to make selling Iran’s oil”, sounding like a little kid on Christmas. Whatever Trump’s excuse, both the tumbling stock market and what Trump calls the “affordability hoax” got him to play taco yet again. As far as Trump is concerned, the war---whoops! Now he wants it just called an “excursion”, kind of like when one takes a weekend trip down to Hua Hin---is over. Iran may have other plans, though that remains to be seen. One thing is certain: every developing nation on the planet sees “Iran attacked” and “North Korea ignored”. The primary difference is nukes. The world is going to see an arms race the likes of which it has never seen, and with nuke scientists similar to the late for-hire nuke guy AQ Khan, plus lots of 93% U235 and lots of plutonium floating around on the Black Market from the former Soviet Union, that race is going to move into top gear.

Last week Trump said that he was going to pick the new leader of Iran, and that he had a list of acceptable candidates. I have to be honest; I did not have Mojtaba Khamenei on my Bingo Card.

He earned his name yet again: TACO. Dow futures were down 1200 pts, oil was $118. As the world knows from his on again, off again tariffs, the stock market level is EVERYTHING to Trump. Oh, and "affordability" could no longer be called a "hoax". So the guy who started a war AFTER the markets closed on a Friday, made a phone call to the newest MAGA media outlet---CBS under Bari Weiss---and made up a definition of success in order to say he achieved it, and all BEFORE the markets closed. There was never an imminent threat. There has not only been no regime change, but like North Korea, the next generation is even worse than the previous one, a Khamenei, Jr. is supposedly even more hard line than his father. Trump also claimed that not only is the Strait open, but he is thinking about taking it over. Trump's lapdog Lindsey Graham was frothing at the mouth on the Sunday talk shows, believing the US was going to play 18th Century Imperialist and steal Iran's oil, "We're going to make so much money!" Graham said. We'll, it looks like Lindsey will have to be content using his position to front run stocks and engage in insider trading (as all Congress people do, D & R, as it is allowed under rules they voted for themselves). Trump was not clear on what "victory" means any more than he and his Carnival People administration were clear about why the US entered the war. I guess Trump and his drunkard SecDef can rejoice in the fact they blew up a couple hundred school girls. Not sure what comes next, as Iran still has its army and its theocracy. Militarily they are diminished, but they still have their proxies who simply need targets and small weapons to wreak havoc around the world. Iran will also likely redouble its efforts to become a member of the nuclear club, perhaps getting help from China or Pakistan, even using them as proxies to deliver ready-made nukes. I guess what we can safely assume is a long list of superlatives coming from Trump, about how nobody else could have done what he did, whatever it was he did, and whatever it means long term. In the meantime, let's see if Iran holds off any new missile and drone launches, because they are under no obligation to go along with Trump. Oh, and if he winds down the war, a thing called the Epstein Files rears its ugly head again.

Is that the infamous Trumpian "two weeks"? Does he even have a concept of a plan? As far as I know, the MSM talking heads are not the major players in the crude futures market. It's the market players who have run up near and longer term crude contracts. Perhaps they know more than Trump about crude pricing. Trump has no clue how long the Strait will be closed. He doesn't even know what's next in the war he started. Neither does he know how much additional damage Iran might do to other GCC nation's production, such as taking out GOSPs or destroying refineries. A damaged refinery can be put back in service in months; a new refinery takes a decade to build. Trump is also destroying Iran's production, so that will be production off line for years, affecting prices on the margin. Iran doesn't need a navy to close the straits. A few mines, or even a Boston Whaler with a few guys carrying RPG7s can set a ULCC ablaze. Maybe the oil spike lasts a few weeks, but Iran shows no signs of caving or taco-ing, and major crude traders are not seeing this spike as a short term phenomenon..

Interesting fact: Trump's war of choice is already less popular with the American people than the Vietnam War was the day in April 1975 when the last helicopters were leaving the roof of the US embassy in Saigon. Wars even tend to get less popular with time.

Incidentally, it's also abundantly clear why both Bill and Hillary agreed to testify under oath: Precedent. A former POTUS and a former First Lady. Opens it up for BOTH Trump and Melania.