... demanding that the Pope get behind Donald Trump, ...

You might as well ask the Pope to get behind the devil.

I mean, really.

@#10

Wait, what?!?!?!

The Trump-appointed CIA Director was quoted as saying ...

... CIA Director John Ratcliffe described that aspect of the plan as "farcical." Secretary of State Marco Rubio was even more direct: "In other words, it's bu11sh!t." ...

@#9

From that article ...

... On February 11, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the White House with a clear objective: persuade US President Donald Trump that the time had come to strike Iran. Inside the Situation Room, in a tightly controlled and highly classified setting, Netanyahu delivered a detailed military and intelligence briefing.

Flanked virtually by Israel's top security officials, he laid out a compelling case for immediate action. Iran, he argued, was vulnerable. Its defenses could be dismantled, its leadership targeted, and its regime weakened to the point of collapse.

Trump's response was brief but decisive. "Sounds good to me." That moment set the United States on a path toward war.

Within hours, US intelligence agencies began evaluating the Israeli proposal. Their conclusions were sharply different.

American officials agreed that targeted military strikes could degrade Iran's capabilities. But the broader goal of regime change was dismissed as unrealistic.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe described that aspect of the plan as "farcical." Secretary of State Marco Rubio was even more direct: "In other words, it's bu11sh!t."

Rubio clarified his position in strategic terms. Limited military objectives were achievable. Regime change was not. "If our goal is regime change or an uprising, we shouldn't do it. But if the goal is to destroy Iran's missile program, that's a goal we can achieve."

The debate within Trump's inner circle revealed deep divisions, not over whether Iran posed a threat, but over how far the United States should go.

Vice President JD Vance emerged as the most consistent voice of caution. He warned that a full-scale war could spiral unpredictably, destabilize the region, and strain American resources. "You know I think this is a bad idea, but if you want to do it, I'll support you."

Rubio, meanwhile, took a pragmatic middle ground, skeptical of diplomacy but cautious about escalation.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth argued the opposite. In his view, confrontation with Iran was inevitable. If conflict were coming, delaying it would only raise the cost.

Warnings from military and political advisers

Behind the scenes, concerns extended beyond strategy. White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles worried about the broader consequences, economic shocks, rising oil prices, and the risk of another prolonged conflict in the Middle East.

Military leaders raised operational concerns. A war with Iran could deplete US weapons stockpiles and expose vulnerabilities in global supply chains. Securing the Strait of Hormuz, a critical oil transit route, would be a major challenge. Yet these warnings were presented as risks, not red lines. No one directly moved to block the president's decision. ...

Without the NYTimes paywall ...

@#49 ... Afriend swallows cockkk ...

The usual lame [obscene?] trolling attempts of your current alias to attempt to deflect the thread from what is reports ...

From #1 ....

... Hiding alone in a mountain crevice behind enemy lines, the injured American airman knew exactly what to do: survive and evade.

For more than a day, the weapons systems officer whose F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down inside Iran avoided being captured by encroaching Iranian forces. At one point, he scaled the rugged terrain to a ridgeline 7,000 feet above sea level, equipped with little more than a pistol, a communication device and a tracking beacon.

It was into the high mountains that a team of American commandos, accompanied by US aircraft dropping bombs to clear the area, swarmed to locate the officer, bringing him and themselves to safety. ...

Why does your current trolling alias seem to be so against the heroic recovery of a downed American pilot?

@#7 ... [VP] Prance is a poof. ...

Oh, I disagree.

I would not want to denigrate the gay community (who are able to walk past exposed sofa cushions) with VP Vance's actions in Hungary.

@#17 ... But they're NOT Mamdani clones, regardless of what others might claim.

No.

They were Democrats, members of the Democratic Party, who won.

They campaigned as they needed to campaign for their voters ...

Exactly.

Democrats need to run on the issues that the voters, whose support they want to garner.

I want to talk about Mayor Mamdani once again, not because I support everything he espouses (quite the contrary), but because I support his campaign style.

During his campaign, he talked with the voters whose support he was hoping for. He did not talk at them, he talked with them.

He listened, he discussed, he heard what was on the minds of the voters in NYC.

Now, should Democratic candidates across the Great Country mimic his policies?

No, absolutely not.

Should Democratic candidates across the Great Country mimic his campaign style of talking with constituents?

Yes, absolutely.

2026 Generic Congressional Vote
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/state-of-the-union/generic-congressional-vote

...
RCP Average 3/2 - 4/6
Democrats: 47.5
Republicans: 41.7

Democrats +5.8
...

2026 Generic Congressional Vote
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/state-of-the-union/generic-congressional-vote

...
RCP Average 3/2 - 4/6
Democrats: 47.5
Republicans: 41.7

Democrats +5.8
...

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/images/rcpolling/8670/share_image.png

Pres Trump seemed to be desperately looking for an off-ramp from the corner he backed himself into with his unprovoked war against Iran.

Pakistan gave him such an off-ramp.

Unfortunately, Israel did not seem to be looking for a similar off-ramp.

While I do hope that the ceasefire holds over time, I do have concerns.

@#5

I cannot disagree.

Oddly, one of the first things that VP Vance was reported as doing when he arrived in Hungary was to state (without evidence) that the EU should stop trying to influence the Hungary re-election of PM Orban.

Yet, what does VP Vance do? Try to influence the re-election of PM Orban.

Typical MAGA behavior ... every accusation seems to be an admission.

More from the article ...

... On Monday afternoon President Donald Trump and CIA Director John Ratcliffe hinted at technology that had helped locate a downed American Air Force officer hiding in a mountain crevice in southern Iran.

By Tuesday, the New York Post reported that the CIA had deployed Ghost Murmur, a device that uses vaguely described "long-range quantum magnetometry" to find signals of human heartbeats, after which artificial intelligence software isolates each heartbeat from the noisy data. An unnamed source told the Post it was like "hearing a voice in a stadium, except the stadium is a thousand square miles of desert." Another line landed like a movie tagline: "In the right conditions, if your heart is beating, we will find you."

It's a terrific story.

It is also, according to scientists who study magnetic fields, almost certainly not true. The rescue was real -- the mission involved multiple aircraft and a survival beacon carried by the airman -- but Ghost Murmur, at least as publicly described, finds no support in decades of peer-reviewed physics, even with the help of AI, experts told me.

Quantum magnetometers are real; they are ultraprecise at, for instance, detecting heart arrhythmias by measuring magnetic fields (via quantum properties) produced by the cardiac muscle.

The problem is that the heart's magnetic field is weak. "At the surface of the chest, where you're about 10 centimeters away from the source, the magnetic field is just barely detectable," says John Wikswo, a professor of biomedical engineering and physics at Vanderbilt University. "Now, [if] instead of going 10 centimeters away -- which is a tenth of a meter -- you go a meter away, the amplitude of the signal has dropped to a thousandth of what it was." The signal becomes dramatically weaker at a kilometer.

Wikswo was the first scientist to measure the magnetic field of an isolated nerve and has been measuring the heart's magnetic field since the mid-1970s. ...

@#25 ... It is becoming too much of a headache ...

Streaming services did a similar thing.

Initially they were relatively inexpensive as they tried to lure cusomters away from cable TV.

Then when they reached what I call a critical mass of cable defections, the prices started to rise, and rise, and rise, and rise.

Now I'm seeing advertisements for second-rate streaming services that say something along the lines of ~starting at only $49.95 per month.~

Also this ...

@#5 ... Same thing in law. ...

Yup.

@#3 ... Iran closes Strait of Hormuz again despite orange chomo's ceasefire deal ...

Defense Sec Hegseth's "Mission Accomplished" moment?

VP Vance continues on his Make Putin Great Again tour of Hungary.

More from the article ...

... Vance said the Trump administration had made "significant progress" in its efforts to broker a halt to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and an accord between Kyiv and Moscow, but conceded it had been "the hardest war to solve."

"In some ways we thought it would be the easiest, but it has been the hardest," Vance said.

He criticized European leaders while praising Orban, arguably the NATO leader who has retained the closest ties to Moscow during the war, for their behavior amid the diplomatic impasse.

"We've been disappointed by a lot of political leadership in Europe because they don't seem particularly interested in solving this particular conflict," he said.

European governments, meanwhile, counter that while they want to bring the conflict to an end, it should be what they call a just peace and not amount to an enforced partial Ukrainian capitulation. ...

... The story quickly fizzled. And instead of receiving a Pulitzer, the Blaze was forced to backtrack. It retracted its story on December 4. As for Baker, he was fired on Wednesday morning, as the publication faces the possibility of a massive libel judgment over the story. ...

Quelle surprise.

Will the Democrats be able to maintain the momentum going into November?

@#5 ... What WAS a surprise was the 25% drop in the winning margin. ...

Yup.

Another view ...

Related ...

More from the article ...

... Peer pressure isn't what it used to be -- a new study has found more teens feel pressured to be online than they do to smoke, vape, ditch class and even drink.

The poll of 2,000 American children aged 11 to 17 found 44% feel peer pressure to be online or on social media. That's compared to other vices, such as smoking and vaping (31%), ditching class (28%), drinking alcohol (24%), shoplifting (13%) and vandalism (8%).

The top platforms kids said they have felt pressured to be on are TikTok (44%), Instagram (39%), Facebook (37%), Snapchat (35%), YouTube (34%) and Roblox (24%).

Over half (56%) said they've felt left out by friends and peers because they weren't in the same online groups or social media platforms as them. And 36% frequently worry about how many likes, comments, views or reactions they receive on their social posts.

Over a third (37%) admit phones and social media posts frequently cause arguments within their friend groups. ...

(back when AI was just a name for drum machines and synthesizers ...)