spidermike007

This war initially started with a declaration that it was about stopping Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability. Once that was debunked Trump quickly pivoted to regime change expecting millions of Iranians to take to the streets while he was devastating their homes factories and infrastructure. Well we all know how poorly that went, and how little the war planners knew. Now the big mission seems to be securing the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians have been very clever in their tactics and they have caused considerable pain to the world economy and their neighbors. Securing the strait is going to be a very difficult job. In his usual daily bluster, the boviator in chief talked about how easy it was going to be for the US Navy to escort ships through the strait. Well we know that's not going to be the case, it's actually going to be quite difficult. Trump is likely going to choose some sort of off-ramp very soon, without having achieved any of the goals he set forth, having set Iran back decades in terms of infrastructure, and completely failing at anything in the way of democratic progress or regime change for the Iranian people. That will be just another war that the US has lost, and will add to the tally of Zero Wars won since World War II unless you count Grenada or Panama. The US military is huge and they do have the largest defense budget of any nation, but they don't seem to accomplish very much with that trillion dollars a year that's being spent. Just another in the hundreds upon hundreds of failures for big Don. The Western allies trying to negotiate a way to protect the Strait of Hormuz for energy shipping face a stark reality: a similar effort in the Red Sea that started years earlier cost billions of dollars and ultimately failed against Yemen's Houthis. The costly Red Sea experience - four ships sunk, more than $1 billion in weapons expended, and ‌a route that the shipping industry still largely avoids - looms over the more complex Strait of Hormuz, the shipping artery used by roughly a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supply and now ‌blocked by Iran, a more formidable adversary than the Houthis. Iran's threats to the strait and its attacks on energy infrastructure in nearby Gulf nations have sent oil prices soaring in the worst disruption to oil and gas supplies in history. Absent the strait's reopening, shortages will become more acute, threatening higher costs for energy, food and numerous other products worldwide. "There is no substitute for the Strait of Hormuz," Kuwait Petroleum CEO Sheikh Nawaf Saud Al-Sabah said in a fiery video call streamed to the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston on Tuesday. "It is the world’s strait, under international law and practical reality." Reuters interviewed 19 security and maritime experts who described the myriad challenges facing the U.S. and its allies in protecting the strait. Iran has far more advanced military forces than the Houthis, an arsenal ‌of cheap drones, floating mines, and missiles, and easy access from its steep mountainous ⁠coast to the narrow waterway. The U.S. mission to protect Red Sea shipping from the Houthis launched in December 2023, with European nations joining in with their own operation a few ‌months later. The allies shot down hundreds of drones and missiles, but the Houthis still sank four ships between 2024 and 2025. Shippers now largely avoid the passageway, once home to 12% of world trade, opting for a much longer voyage around the Horn of Africa. "It was a strategic draw, if not a strategic defeat," said Joshua Tallis, a naval analyst at research firm CNA. The danger zone around the Strait of Hormuz is up to five times bigger than the Houthis' attack area around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait that flows into the Red Sea. Unlike the Houthis, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is a professional military with its own weapons factories and access to funding. Providing escorts for the strait would require as many as a dozen large warships such as destroyers, backed up by jets, drones and helicopters to account for the limitations created by the lack of space to maneuver, some military experts said. ‌Overhead air cover would be critical to protect against flying drones as well as explosive-laden manned or unmanned vessels that can easily blend into sea traffic. https://share.google/zk7okmke7WqnBwL0N

It's fascinating to me how his supporters constantly overestimate him, this very dim man would be incapable of playing a basic game of checkers. When they start talking about 4D chess that is absolute nonsense that comes from the constant wearing of rose tinted glasses, while sucking down gallons of Kool-Aid daily.

I think it's even worse than an apartheid state. In South Africa the apartheid regime was trying to keep the blacks under control and suppressed. In Israel it seems that the extremists are trying to exterminate the Palestinian people and literally wipe them from the face of the earth. And that is the very definition of genocide.

Anybody who has to ask whether or not Putin has Kompromat on Trump would be completely closed-minded to any evidence that we were to present, so it's a dead end conversation.

More distraction, more pathetic deflection. Hunter was accused of accepting money from the Ukrainian government in return for consulting. Do you really think that is in any way comparable to the billions upon billions of dollars that the Trump Mafia Clan has amassed in the first 14 months of his presidency? Really? Objectively? Are you going to tell me that you don't think Trump's pathetic sons buying a drone company at the same time that Trump declares war on Iran is any sort of conflict of interest, or smells like corruption? And the Hunter Biden thing was investigated to death, why aren't any members of the GOP raising issues with regard to Trump's corruption? Do you know why? They've been neutered by the new fascist king.

Yes he works for one of them.

I saw Old Henry again last night and it's a very good Western. Tim Blake Nelson is amazing, as usual, and Stephen Dorff plays a wonderful villain. Very well done by a director that I've never heard of, but pitch perfect pacing and a great soundtrack to boot. The last 30 or 40 minutes was quite an amazing ride.

Countless people are saying that it lacks the gravitas, pacing and entertainment quality of Yellowstone, which was extraordinary. Those two characters are pretty fantastic, so it's hard to imagine how you could screw something like that up.

I think in general sequels are very difficult, and in this particular case the original was was fantastic and a total surprise, and I thought the sequel was horrendous.

I recently saw I swear, and though I tend not to enjoy films about people that are on the spectrum, this one was really well done, very heartfelt, well written, very funny, based on a true story, and quite a satisfying watch.

Can somebody please try to explain the Studio to me? I've tried watching it and though I like Seth Rogen I found the characters to be obnoxious to the point of being unbearable and insufferable. I know it's supposed to be a comedy and a satire and I know it's supposed to be a spoof. But sometimes sitting with portrayals of completely obnoxious human beings for 30 or 40 minutes at a time, just isn't fun or funny or amusing. Am I missing something here? Why is it so incredibly popular?

Life sometimes doesn't go our way and deals us a bad hand and for one reason or another people decide to end it. But why do it in such a public manner, why do it in a way that will traumatize people and potentially harm people in the process? Why not just do it in the quiet of your own home using poison or overdosing on drugs or doing something else that is an effective way of ending it without causing a public spectacle? Show some dignity.

I'm sure the manager of the petrol station, who is no doubt making nationwide decisions as to which stations should ration gas and which shouldn't, was very moved by this demonstration.

Not only every leader but the offspring of every leader should be required to fight on the front lines. You want to put boots on the ground in Iran? Include Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka, Barron, along with Don in that group, and perhaps JD, Witkoff, Kushner, Lutnick, Patel, Bondi, Tiny Pete, and some of these other morons can volunteer too.

No. Absolutely not. He is incompetent, he is vengeful, he is not about law and order, but rather about exacting vengeance on his perceived enemies. He is holding the world hostage to his whims and, wars, and fantasies and he has shown himself to be a terrible leader. Rather than trying to improve the quality of life for the average American, it now appears crystal clear that his agenda the whole time was to increase the grift, and increases his wealth through corrupt means, knowing that his supporters would not make any attempt whatsoever to stop him being the most corrupt president in American history. Trump has to go. He must be removed. ASAP. There's no doubt that he is the most dangerous man on the planet right now, the most unstable, he is completely insane and he is totally unhinged.

I sure hope so. My guess is that those Ultra Orthodox guys that are encouraging the extremism will have a very hard time finding another country willing to accept them, they are nearly bad as the Islamic extremists.

I think this is a wonderful thing and a true and pure expression of democracy. The corruption that's going on in this Administration is unheard of and beyond anything that we've ever seen from any president previously. Whether legal or not, two sons profiting from drone companies while their father wages a drone war is a terrible look. Eric invested in XTEND, an Israeli AI drone company, as part of a $1.5 billion merger announced on February 17, 2026. Donald Jr. sits on the advisory board of Unusual Machines, which also invested in the deal. Both brothers are additionally investors in Powerus, a new drone manufacturer planning to go public. XTEND was selected for the Pentagon's Drone Dominance Program, which plans to spend $1.1 billion on drones by 2027. The company markets its weapons as "low cost per kill" and holds multimillion-dollar DOD contracts. Eleven days after the investment was announced, the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran in the largest use of attack drones in U.S. military history. Ethics experts say the investments create a clear appearance of profiting from the presidency. No links needed as this is widely available information. But chances are most Trump supporters will not even bother to look, as they sort of know what's going on and it just doesn't seem to bother them.

Knowing how twisted Trump's mind is, and knowing how psychologically impaired the man is, it would not surprise me if a scenario like that was correct. In most nations a leader doing something like that is tantamount to treason, which would be punishable by death. However since the US Senate is unwilling to even investigate some of the massive amounts of corruption that are going on with Trump and his family, he would likely be allowed to get away with treason too.

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said Moscow’s actions were not affecting American military operations. “There is nothing Russia is doing for Iran that is impeding or affecting our operation or its effectiveness,” Rubio told reporters following a meeting of the Group of Seven countries. I used to think he was the most reasonable man in the Trump cabinet but he's gone from being fairly level-headed to being a blazing idiot following the path of his ridiculously dumb leader. In my mind there's no doubt Russia is aiding Iran, and I think that China is likely aiding them too, at a minimum with significant financial assistance, which they can then turn around to use to purchase weapons through their proxies. Why wouldn't they be helping Iran? It feeds right into all of their goals and ambitions, they know how much of an imbecile Trump is, and they're taking advantage of the door that he's opened very widely for them.

One of the reasons why this man might be so obsessed with extraterrestrials is that he actually might be one. The thing that scares me the most when it comes to American politics is that as much as I despise Trump, the thought of him dying from poor health or getting assassinated, is that JD Vance will then become president. That is an incredibly scary thought and it beats the content of any horror movie that I've ever seen. If you think Trump things are bad under Trump, one can only imagine how bad they would be under Vance.

Just more deflection. Tell me the last time a Democratic president implemented tax cuts the size of both of the Trump tax cuts, during both terms. I'll bet you cannot.

Mr. TACO does it again. Except this time it might be a good thing cuz the more he hits Iranian infrastructure the more the world economy is going to suffer and the longer this war will be prolonged. Iran is prepared to hold out for a long time and this is something that the dummies in America just don't understand. Just wait until Trump antagonizes Iran to the point where they let their proxies go, and they start unleashing cyber attacks, and bombs on the mainland in America. If they have been surprised by Iran's action so far, I think that will come as quite a shock to the arrogant and ignorant fools who are planning this war.

One can only hope that the IDF collapses upon itself, these poor young men who have been recruited under a false flag of fake patriotism and nationalism, have been turned into genocidal killing machines and ordered to kill women and children in order to eliminate and exterminate the Palestinian people. It is an epic and historic mistake and there is a good chance that Israel will cease to exist within a decade or two. They certainly no longer have the right to exist as a nation as they have become the new terrorist organization within the Middle East.

No. Just look at the history of American wars and interventions the last war America won was 81 years ago. There have been over a hundred incursions, bombings, invasions and wars since then, and guess what? Other than the incredibly inconsequential war in Panama and Grenada, all have been lost. That kind of History seems to be lost on dunces like Trump and Hegseth, and they seem to be desperate to somehow prove their manhood by invading nation after nation. This is not going to work out well for them and invading Iran was a mistake of historic proportions. The Iranians are used to suffering and they will hold out until the end of the world. America on the other hand is very impatient, the average American is very soft and totally unprepared to make personal sacrifices, This war was a huge miscalculation and this is going to come back to haunt Trump and this will be his demise. And billions of people will be celebrating in the streets for weeks once Trump is either gone from office, or rotting in the ground.

Very few billionaires and very few American corporations pay their fair share of taxes. A very clever CPA that I use told me that his wealthiest clients rarely ever pay taxes. The system is totally rigged against the common man, and is set up to favor the very rich and Corporate America, and Trump is the biggest defender of that policy we've ever seen, despite his fake rhetoric about representing blue collar America. They are the ones who are getting decimated along with tens of thousands of farmers who are losing their generational farms due to his policies.