spidermike007

He is completely and totally transactional and everything's about money, favors or leverage. The US used to use those commodities as a way to gain favor throughout the world, now Trump is using them as a bludgeon and a sledgehammer.

He cares not one I iota for the common man, the economic pain and hardship that he's causing throughout the world right now is amble proof of that.

It's just one more reason why billionaires should never be allowed to run for president, nor should they be allowed to be cabinet members, they have absolutely no clue what's going on in the rest of our lives.

Trump is street trash with a huge ego, the goon is very fragile and emotionally driven, and he treats the world like we are all inferior subjects to him.

From a major Trump supporter.

Is Trumpism crashing on the shoals of the Iran war? That is what Christopher Caldwell thinks. Caldwell is on the right. He’s a contributing editor at Claremont Review of Books.

Caldwell has been trying to define and, even, craft a coherent Trumpism. But in a recent piece in The Spectator titled “The End of Trumpism,” he seems pretty dispirited. He writes: “The attack on Iran is so wildly inconsistent with the wishes of his own base, so diametrically opposed to their reading of the national interest, that it is likely to mark the end of Trumpism as a project.”

It wasn’t just Iran that led Caldwell to that point. It was also Trump’s brazen self-dealing, the waves of influence peddling, the sense that this man who was supposed to represent the will of the people in some way was doing something very different.

The real question is: How big is MAGA? If you look at polls that measure it, or the people who have been asking that question for quite a while, like NBC has, it kind of peaked after the election at around 36 percent. So I think that gives him a lot less leeway to, let’s just say, feel that his base will follow him anywhere.

Here you have a billionaire whose major, signature legislative achievements are very unpopular tax cuts that redistributed money upward; who was elected with the help of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk; who seems to be, you note this in your piece, enriching himself, rapidly, to the tune of billions of dollars, since being in office — and who also seems to exist to many as a response to efforts at equality.

I think that the promise of no wars was a kind of ruling out. And Trump has a particular need to make this a campaign promise. There are certain things that you have to commit to not doing.

So I think that people thought: Yes, he’s going to do a lot of crazy stuff — I think people know him — but he’s not going to do that. He’s not going to bring the country into a war lasting years. There are limits somewhere.

But once he does that, once he turns around and does that, your sense of the limits is gone. Then suddenly, being a Trump supporter is a whole different proposition.

I don’t think people are willing to pay a cost for Trump’s impulse here. And to have him create a surge of inflation and scarcity, I’m not sure is survivable for a war that very, very few people were asking for.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-christopher-caldwell.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

1 hour ago, JAG said:

Come now, success is guaranteed - after all they have got a really sexy, punchy, operation name "Epic Fury" and a really cool new three letter acronym "ACE"...

All you have to do is land your giant transport aircraft on a dirt airstrip in artillery range of the Iranian mainland, in an environment swarming with drones. What could go wrong?

NB: perhaps read the accounts of the battles at Dien Bien Phu and Khe Sanh?

"No plan survives contact with the enemy" - perhaps, particularly, when the enemy have been preparing for as long as the Iranians have. The exact co-ordinates of just about every part of that island, not just the landing strip(s), will be with every Iranian rocket launcher, artillery battery and drone launcher. Sure, the USAF will launch " the mother of all suppressing operations, but a few will get through. You can have Pete Hegseth and Dan Caine working up ideas, as many staff studies as you want coming up with neat acronyms, but you are still asking large aircraft (jolly impressive aircraft but large and vulnerable) to fly in under heavy fire.

I hope I am wrong, but I think it will fail.

I agree. It will be an unmitigated disaster if Trump lands troops on the ground.

And it is likely the Persians have been planning an invasion by the US for 250 years now.

2 minutes ago, KhunLA said:

I put ... IMHO ... in a lot of posts. If I make a statement, as true as it may be, then I have to back it up with a source/link, which I sometimes can not do.

But an 'opinion', does need to be justified, so my post won't get deleted. Like calling Trump a pedofile, it's false, everyone knows it, but it's allowed, apparently, since an opinion.

The American Psychological Association (APA) Dictionary of Psychology defines pedophilia as “a paraphilia in which sexual acts or fantasies involving pre-pubertal children are the persistently preferred or exclusive method of achieving sexual excitement.”

I think it's very dangerous to call somebody a pedophile, since technically that word means something other than a man who is a predator and targets underage girls. It refers more to totally perverted men who get off on abusing young kids.

I think it would be safer to call Donald Trump a likely serial statutory rapist. We know he was best friends with Epstein for 20 years, we know they hung out together a lot, and it's impossible knowing Trump's true nature that they didn't participate and share the young girls.

Trump is on record saying that he likes them very young, what exactly does that mean? The man is morally depraved and ethically bankrupt, so why wouldn't he have gotten with a lot of young girls who were underaged, and why wouldn't he have forced himself on them? There are multiple federal agencies doing everything in their power to hide any evidence of that, but that doesn't change the reality of his history, does it?

There have been so many instances where this man has denied promotions to very high ranking and very accomplished women and men of color. He seems to be on a crusade to rid the Armed Forces of high-ranking women and black officers in particular.

“Hegseth, in my opinion, is the kind of white guy who has a small personality but wants to seem big, strong, and tough,” Marks said. “People like that can be very dangerous. That’s evident in some of the actions they’ve taken. I never thought that I would see the National Guard being deployed outside of a national disaster or emergency.”

https://share.google/m1kW0pruGRwAr1bUe

Hegseth recently shifted his views on women serving in combat. In November, he said he opposed women in combat, and used gender stereotypes to make his case. He stated, “I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective. Hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated.” But after meeting with several women senators in December, he said “we support all women in our military today, . . . combat included.”

https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/who-is-pete-hegseth

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is blocking the promotion of four Army officers to be one-star generals, a highly unusual move that has prompted some senior military officials to question whether the officers are being singled out because of their race or gender.

Two of the officers targeted by Mr. Hegseth are Black and two are women on a promotion list that consists of about three dozen officers, most of whom are white men, senior military officials said.

Mr. Hegseth had been pressing senior Army leaders, including Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, for months to remove the officers’ names, military officials said. But Mr. Driscoll, citing the officers’ decades-long records of exemplary service, had repeatedly refused.

Earlier this month, Mr. Hegseth broke the logjam by unilaterally striking the officers’ names from the list, though it is not clear he has the legal authority to do so. The list is currently being reviewed by the White House, which is expected to send it to the Senate for final approval.

The frustrations with Mr. Hegseth’s approach came to a boil last summer during a heated exchange between Ricky Buria, Mr. Hegseth’s chief of staff, and Mr. Driscoll about a separate promotion. Mr. Buria told Mr. Driscoll that President Trump would not want to stand next to a Black female officer at military events, the officials said.

Today, about 43 percent of the 1.3 million troops on active duty are people of color. But those leading the military are overwhelmingly white and male. Mr. Austin pressed promotion boards to look deeper into the ranks to ensure qualified women and minorities were considered for senior positions.

Senior military officials said they could not recall any previous instance of a defense secretary seeking to remove individual officers from a military board’s list.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/us/hegseth-promotion-list.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

16 hours ago, gargamon said:

Nothing important. The US is fighting WW II style. Iran is/will be fighting guerilla style. Didn't the US learn anything in Vietnam?

No. The US seems to be incapable of learning from either history or any previous war that it's been involved in. The arrogance, hubris and extreme sense of superiority due to the size of our military, and how "truly great" America is, seems to prevent any sort of wisdom from seeping into the planning or forming of major decisions.

And the fact that the US has not won a war since 1945 does not seem to enter into any equation either.

Lastly nobody seems to be considering the fact that regime change has never been accomplished without years and years of boots on the ground, and thousands of American casualties. But don't expect any wisdom from Don or Pete. They are two of the most ignorant men in America.

Part of the issue might be that enclosed air conditioned bars might be stricter about enforcing smoking rules. And that's one of the reasons why I prefer them. This time of year when it starts getting warm I'll take air conditioning over dripping sweat, whenever I have that choice.

59 minutes ago, IsmeUno said:

Fact is that the Ayatollah stated previously that they didn't want nuclear weapons. So Trump claiming that they've agreed to not have a nuclear weapon is just fodder for his gullible followers.

There is much evidence that the Ayatollah did not support the nuclear weapons program, and that his son who is far more of a hardliner does support the program. Another omelet on Don's face.

3 hours ago, emptypockets said:

Nobody cares what you think personally. The issue is much bigger than that.

More deflection. I wouldn't have expected any less.

2 hours ago, fredwiggy said:

Agreed. I dislike Trump. and wars, but I don't know any other ways to rid the earth of the maniacs that look at people as cattle to be used. It happens all over, including in the US, and a lot of us see him exactly for what he is, and has done and likely has done, but he's all we have , and hopefully this war ends with Iran's people with something better than before.

One can always hope. The Persian people sure deserve a better life.

I am skeptical if it can be forced upon them, but we shall see.

Keep up the good posts. You are a tribute to this forum.

2 hours ago, koolkarl said:

PM me. I will give you a free 1 way ticket to Iran. Enjoy.

I do have some friends that will come right out and say the man is a butthead, he's an idiot, and he's an absolute clown, but I like his policies. Those are the Republicans I admire.

It's an interesting point that you bring up, and one that a lot of Republicans just don't understand these days. During the 20 years that Clinton, Obama and Biden were in office I was continually critical of their policies. Just look back at some of my posts when Obama and Biden were in power. I was not a big fan of Obama for many of the years that he was president and my posts reflect that. As a centrist democrat I criticized a lot of his policies.

I see so little of that coming from Republicans these days, to point where their absolute fealty is actually quite frightening. Most just can't handle critique of Trump, they immediately clam up, get defensive and start making it personal. Instead of behaving like rational intellectuals and debating policy they just start throwing out nonsense, accusations that I've never criticized my own party, or that I get paid to be critical of Trump. That is not only ridiculous, it is inane. I wish somebody would offer to pay me to criticize Trump. I would spend my whole day doing it.

Criticism and open mindedness is what independent thinkers engage in, and it sets them apart from dogmatic subjects of a wannabe king. I invite you to reflect on that for just a moment.

50 minutes ago, cowellandrew said:

Kershaw’s family have said the case is now being treated as “murder/manslaughter”, citing preliminary toxicology findings of “a combination of seven different substances in his system at extremely high levels

Switching off if somebody were to try to kill somebody why would they use seven substances to do it? That alone raises an awful lot of suspicion.

I'm not saying he wasn't murdered but the presence of seven drugs in his system seems odd.

2 hours ago, koolkarl said:

Thanks to Iran holding the world hostage by controlling that strait and also having the potential to having or getting a nuclear bomb.

They want oil prices to rocket. They bomb neighboring oil producing countries and they know they will get world pity by blaming US and Israel.

With many people, once they got attached to a theory, it was hard to get them detached. They’d screen out unhelpful facts, invent favorable ones, and ignore contradictions in their own claims. Look at those Sandy Hook, multiple fraud convictions, and Jan. 6th truthers, babbling about false flags and crisis actors and all the rest. When people were motivated enough to believe something, they were going to believe it no matter what. There was no such thing as a bridge too far.

2 hours ago, koolkarl said:

Thanks to Iran holding the world hostage by controlling that strait and also having the potential to having or getting a nuclear bomb.

They want oil prices to rocket. They bomb neighboring oil producing countries and they know they will get world pity by blaming US and Israel.

Israel and America are directly to blame for the high prices of gas right now, and worldwide they should be calling it the Trump Tax.

Just another example of Trump raining economic destruction down upon America, and creating more Trumpflation everywhere he goes.

The positive side of all this is that he's going to be gone very soon.

Well we know the IRG already had at least 150,000 men and we know the National Defense Forces already had at least 200,000 men. With the reckless attitude that both Israel and the US have demonstrated toward the Iranian civilian population and infrastructure, it is likely that they've been able to recruit hundreds of thousands of young men for the cause.

Had the nimwits adopted a different approach, a public uprising would have been very possible, but now it's virtually impossible. And if Trump does send troops into Iran it is going to be a slaughterhouse and thousands upon thousands of Americans are going to lose their lives. And the only good that's going to come of that will be the total and complete downfall of Donald Trump, Hegseth, and the MAGA movement.

2 minutes ago, fredwiggy said:

Not the main reason but one reason I'm taking my daughter to the US to live. Better schooling, higher paying jobs, less chance of being molested in school, and a much better chance of finding a husband who will stay, especially after a child is born.

I would consider that to be a fairly accurate assessment.

56 minutes ago, ColeBOzbourne said:

Thanks, that sentence is a great example of NOT being woke. You have a little bickering tantrum with one person on an anonymous forum, and you find a way to use that to bash and make sweeping insults to ALL Americans.

I told you I wasn't woke and I don't pretend to be. @fredwiggy and I disagree on a lot of topics but as you can see we treat each other with kindness and respect for the most part. Though there may be a little snarkiness from time to time, it's not highly personal and that makes a big difference. Disagreements on many topics make the world go round, and I find them fascinating and try to be accommodating when it comes to different points of view.

What I said about most Americans being prudish is absolutely true. I see more first-timers to Thailand from America that have a problem with the sex industry than people from any other nation, who tend to be a lot more tolerant and a lot less judgemental.

A lot of Americans have an air of superiority and tend to judge people harshly. That's not a sweeping statement that's just simply truth, and I realize it's not PC, but as an American I think I have the right to state certain truths.

1 hour ago, fredwiggy said:

Just that Thailand has been an accepting country for all types of sex activity for a long time, sex tourism, for 6 decades, including transgender and ladyboys, along with a much more relaxed attitude towards prostitution. Trafficking of humans here is huge, being a big hub of that activity., along with slavery itself. I'm not near a prude but just moral thinking. Allowing people to be used, and profiting from it, isn't what you would call a good thing.The Buddhist culture itself might be more forgiving, but still looks at all of this as immoral and bad karma.

With all that being said some of us look at a factory owner paying someone 15,000 baht a month to work 50 to 60 hours a week, and then treating them poorly, is immoral and something that Buddha would not approve of.

Thai friends of mine tell me even with the University degree unless one has been smart enough to specialize in a high demand industry, the pay is only about 5,000 baht a month more to start. And yet the amount of time effort and money that it takes to earn a four-year degree is significant.

So you have to look at it through a cultural context and be a little bit more forgiving in one's outlook. For a gal from Issan, who barely has a high school education, the options are very limited here.

2 hours ago, Hummin said:

If you didn't know, cave men lives in mansions and drive Ferrari to

Exactly. Just think Steve Miller, Bessent, Lutnick, Vance, Trump, and other other bozos.