Trump Attacks Iran, IV

[92tide]

https://bsky.app/profile/did%3Aplc%3A4m2mvqumu72dar3pcm2tpebi%2Fpost%2F3mt37gowdqx25

 

[92tide]

Trump says he will soon declare the Strait of Hormuz a US territory

President Trump said he plans to declare the Strait of Hormuz a U.S. territory as he once again asserted control of the critical waterway.

www.usatoday.com

 

[CrimsonJazz]

 

[81usaf92]

Trump says he will soon declare the Strait of Hormuz a US territory

President Trump said he plans to declare the Strait of Hormuz a U.S. territory as he once again asserted control of the critical waterway.

www.usatoday.com

I think the fact that Saudi, Pakistan, and Turkey have now declared an alliance is making him more desperate not to become the president known for “showing the world how weak America is”

 

[JDCrimson]

If you want to see how weak our individual and collective character is in our nation, we allowed such a pathetic person to rise to power, return to power, and expand his power. And too boot we are $40T in debt...

 

[selmaborntidefan]

If you want to see how weak our individual and collective character is in our nation, we allowed such a pathetic person to rise to power, return to power, and expand his power. And too boot we are $40T in debt...

In the end, the voters are to blame for not insisting on better.

==========

When I was a young reporter covering city hall for the Evening News in Monroe, Michigan, the publisher suggested one day that I should write an occasional editorial on local issues. Fired with the self-righteous certitude of youth, I leaped at the chance. I would straighten out those hacks on the city commission whose meetings I was obliged to cover every Monday night.

But the publisher, a wise man named JS Gray, cautioned me to be patient. “Don’t nip at their heels,” he said. “We get about what we deserve”—meaning that the quality of the city government reflected the seriousness with which the voters of Monroe considered their decisions when choosing commissioners. We had the proprietor of a small dry-goods store, a salesman in a haberdashery, the operator of a service station, and a couple of young lawyers on the hustle. They were all nice enough people, but we didn’t have the municipal equivalent of Robert Taft or Sam Rayburn. So, by JS Gray’s reckoning, we shouldn’t expect too much.

He was right. Today, after fifty years of exposure to thousands of politicians, I am convinced that we get about what we deserve at all levels of government, up to and including the White House. These days, because so many Americans—almost half—don’t bother to vote even in presidential elections, they deserve choices like the one they were offered in 2000, between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Because so few Americans understand the political process or bother to follow it with even a modicum of attention, we elect presidents as empty as George H. W. Bush or as self-absorbed as Bill Clinton—only to be followed by a choice between a Republican obviously over his head and a Democrat too unsure of his own persona to be convincing.

As a group, it turns out, politicians are just like everyone else in our society—a few men and women of high quality, many of different levels of mediocrity, and, finally, a few knaves and poltroons. There are members of Congress who would be overpaid at ten thousand dollars a year and others who would be underpaid at a half million. Nor are presidents of the United States men of some extra dimension, a phrase favored by Richard M. Nixon, other than perhaps the tenacious ambition required to win the office. On the contrary, our presidents are, perhaps too often, very ordinary people.

- Jack Germond, "Fat Man Fed Up, How American Politics Went Bad," 2004, 20-21.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

https://bsky.app/profile/did%3Aplc%3A4m2mvqumu72dar3pcm2tpebi%2Fpost%2F3mt37gowdqx25

I love when a draft evader with terminal bone spurs has an ignorant opinion on those who, you know, actually serve. This guy couldn't be more chicken if he donned the Red Rooster gimmick from the 1980s WWE and cackled.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan; billions of dollars, thousands of lives and we haven't learned anything about the limits of power!

It took Netanyahu twenty years to find another idiot to support his madness.

Your verbiage here reminds me of a quote attributed to Cyrus Vance, when he opposed the attempted hostage rescue raid in Iran in 1980.

Carter's decision on this was made WHEN VANCE WAS OUT OF TOWN, which obviously ticked him off. He went in and passionately argued his case, telling Carter it had a 0% chance of succeeding - at a minimum some hostages would be executed during the extrication, and they would be replaced overnight by other Americans in Iran.

He pointed out after the fact that he was "too old" to be part of Carter's inner circle, but "I'd been around too long." He pointed out that he was the ONLY ONE on the Carter team who knew how difficult it had been to move troops to Ole Miss to integrate the school in 1962, much less fly thousands of miles around the world and pull off a chopper raid in the dark. His conclusion was he had "long ago learned the limits of American power," saying, "An aircraft carrier can do anything - but it cannot occupy land."