Political Posts

[Buckeye]

So did Pentagon Pete bomb an all-girls elementary school and kill 170 people? 

[Pelagic]

7 minutes ago, Buckeye said:

So did Pentagon Pete bomb an all-girls elementary school and kill 170 people? 

Unfortunately that looks to be the case. One of the better Twitter OSINT accounts did a thread on it that's worth reading

 

[changegonnacome]

15 minutes ago, Buckeye said:

Pete bomb an all-girls elementary school and kill 170 people? 

 

Reminder why aerial bombardment rarely results in regime change on the ground - quite the opposite in fact - aerial bombardment tends to strengthen the regime via a rally around the flag phenomenon. Let's put it this way - killing 170 innocent school girls is not conducive to creating a groundswell of support for the perpetrators and by extension anti-regime sentiment.

 

The Iran circular puzzle depressingly remains - 

 

- Removal of nuclear/ballistic missile threat permanently requires root and branch regime change.

- Root & branch regime change is highly unlikely via aerial bombardment alone so massive ground forces deployment is required

- massive ground forces deployment is unacceptable to the American public so Trump/US really wants Iranian capitulation around a JCPOA PlusPlus style deal

-  a JCPOA PlusPlus deal is unacceptable to Bibi - he is seeking to put the Iranian existential threat to bed permanently. Root and branch regime change or the tearing apart of Iran via civil war -  is the only permanent answer that will satify Bibi.

 

Every combination of a scenario you can think of is unacceptable to at least one of the parties. 

 

I'm still trying to figure out the Trump strategy here - but think it boils down so much demonstrable destruction of Iran's offensive military capability in the next few weeks with some capitulation on a JCPOA PlusPlus type deal plus a whole lot of Trump PR messaging around the new Iranian leadership being chosen by and reporting to him that Bibi case to "finish the job i.e.further escalation is greatly diminished

 

Bibi's calculation is that something happens in the coming weeks/months that changes the American public's appetite for root and branch regime change in Iran and all that entails.

[John Hjorth]

2 hours ago, Buckeye said:

So did Pentagon Pete bomb an all-girls elementary school and kill 170 people? 

 

2 hours ago, Pelagic said:

Unfortunately that looks to be the case. One of the better Twitter OSINT accounts did a thread on it that's worth reading

 

 

15 minutes ago, changegonnacome said:

Reminder why aerial bombardment rarely results in regime change on the ground - quite the opposite in fact - aerial bombardment tends to strengthen the regime via a rally around the flag phenomenon. Let's put it this way - killing 170 innocent school girls is not conducive to creating a groundswell of support for the perpetrators and by extension anti-regime sentiment.

 

The Iran circular puzzle depressingly remains - 

 

- Removal of nuclear/ballistic missile threat permanently requires root and branch regime change.

- Root & branch regime change is highly unlikely via aerial bombardment alone so massive ground forces deployment is required

- massive ground forces deployment is unacceptable to the American public so Trump/US really wants Iranian capitulation around a JCPOA PlusPlus style deal

-  a JCPOA PlusPlus deal is unacceptable to Bibi - he is seeking to put the Iranian existential threat to bed permanently. Root and branch regime change or the tearing apart of Iran via civil war -  is the only permanent answer that will satify Bibi.

 

Every combination of a scenario you can think of is unacceptable to at least one of the parties. 

 

I'm still trying to figure out the Trump strategy here - but think it boils down so much demonstrable destruction of Iran's offensive military capability in the next few weeks with some capitulation on a JCPOA PlusPlus type deal plus a whole lot of Trump PR messaging around the new Iranian leadership being chosen by and reporting to him that Bibi case to "finish the job i.e.further escalation is greatly diminished

 

Bibi's calculation is that something happens in the coming weeks/months that changes the American public's appetite for root and branch regime change in Iran and all that entails.

 

It's gradually getting more and more out of hand. No plan, no  goal, no real plan, in the publicly communicated narrative now changed 5 - five! - times.

[cubsfan]

6 days into it - declaring it a failure - you guys are hilarious.  Never give up on the TDS.

[Gregmal]

Yup, the contras are slowly, but surely showing up, feeling owed explanations and narratives they dont deserve lmfao. 

Edited March 6 by Gregmal

[Parsad]

10 minutes ago, cubsfan said:

6 days into it - declaring it a failure - you guys are hilarious.  Never give up on the TDS.

 

This Iran War/Attack is doing one hell of a job distracting from all of the shit not fixed or looked at domestically!  

 

• Tariffs
• Tariff repayment
• Economy
• Jobs
• Inflation due to oil prices
• ICE
• Trump-Epstein Files
• Funding for higher institutions being cut
• Healthcare
• Education
• And of course the biggie...mid-terms that are not looking good for the GOP!

 

I'm sure there are others, but my fellow TDS survivors can probably point them out in subsequent posts.  

 

At least:

 

• Peace Prizes have been handed out
• The Washington Monument is now the Trump-Washington Monument
• People are getting the hell blown out of them in Iran
• Allies are taking hits in glass Dubai/Saudi houses
• Bad Bunny is no bono
• Somalis aren't eating dogs and cats (was it both or do they have a preference)
• ICE has things under control in Minnesota (or do they)
• Venezuela's leadership transition is complete
• Insurrectionists are all running free and happy like scurrying MAGA-loving rats
• Noem is back to killing puppies on her farm
• Kash Patel's severe astigmatism was miraculously healed during the prayer meeting in the Oval Office

 

Mission accomplished!  Cheers!

[Spekulatius]

On 3/5/2026 at 8:24 AM, 73 Reds said:

Are you serious?   Continuing to enrich uranium?  Death to Israel?  Death to America?  Funding terrorism?  Are you so blinded by ideology?  The "terms" of a deal are utterly meaningless when the spirit of the same deal is violated at every turn.      

So you really did not read it then.

[Spekulatius]

Clark always has good commentary.

 

Edited March 7 by Spekulatius

[changegonnacome]

7 hours ago, cubsfan said:

6 days into it - declaring it a failure

 

Failure......Success.......I'm still trying to understand what the objective here is @cubsfan have you figured it out yet?

[Spekulatius]

13 minutes ago, changegonnacome said:

 

Failure......Success.......I'm still trying to understand what the objective here is @cubsfan have you figured it out yet?

Regime change would be a success, assuming the new regime is more amenable. Everything else requires either lengthy engagements (years) or frequent do-overs. That would be hard to sell as success.

[Parsad]

I suspect the war will slowly come to a non-surrendered, but agreed upon end shortly:

 

https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/iran-war-us-israel-trump-03-07-26

 

Ok, we apologize for bombing our neighbors who didn't shoot at us!  All good!  

 

Ok U.S., we will never surrender, but let's talk!  Cheers!

[Dalal.Holdings]

16 hours ago, cubsfan said:

6 days into it - declaring it a failure - you guys are hilarious.  Never give up on the TDS.

Yep—the armchair generals are horrified their stocks are down a few % from ATH have determined it’s a failure.
 

Less than a week in with the top leaders (incl “supreme leader”) taken out on the first day, a few poorly aimed drones at gulf states is what it takes for these people to wave white flags and claim failure.

 

Even funnier is listening to European commentators criticize and question the strategy. They would have preferred a nuclear armed Iran to a few weeks of disorder. Hey, “international law”, amirite? Europeans of course didn’t prepare for any sort of tail event like this despite so many “experts” on the continent—that’s why their energy situation is a disaster. That anyone listens to such people largely explains why Europe is where it is today geopolitically (esp Re: Russia-Ukraine). People like Putin will continue to run circles around them.

[dealraker]

1 hour ago, Parsad said:

I suspect the war will slowly come to a non-surrendered, but agreed upon end shortly:

 

https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/iran-war-us-israel-trump-03-07-26

 

Ok, we apologize for bombing our neighbors who didn't shoot at us!  All good!  

 

Ok U.S., we will never surrender, but let's talk!  Cheers!

I can assure you that total victory - problem solved - is near and yours and my total attention will be escorted elsewhere (where of course a resounding total victory problem solved declaration is sure to follow).

 

As long as Mr. Market behaves we will perceive all these outings as successful.  Mr. Market is the economy, we see things via his performance, we spend accordingly.  

 

Trump controls events for now.  For now...yea for now.

 

Buy the dip.

 

 

[73 Reds]

11 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

So you really did not read it then.

Is that your response?  What you and many can't possibly appreciate with your comfortable lives, secure homes and friendly environments is how the people in Israel have managed to live and prosper with the likes of Iran and its proxies constantly causing fear and destruction.  

[SharperDingaan]

1 hour ago, dealraker said:

I can assure you that total victory - problem solved - is near and yours and my total attention will be escorted elsewhere (where of course a resounding total victory problem solved declaration is sure to follow).

 

As long as Mr. Market behaves we will perceive all these outings as successful.  Mr. Market is the economy, we see things via his performance, we spend accordingly.  

 

 

I understand that the new multi-billion insurance/armed escort scheme, for shipping to transit both the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea/Suez Canal .... was not well received .

 

By some reports .... the US was out-of-touch and clueless; by others ... it was an attack on the private insurance market, that just will not be tolerated. It ain't WW II bud, and 75+ years later .... not the same ball game. Good possibility that shipping remains blocked next week, alongside most of the Gulf producers declaring force majeure and shutting in. Crude prices going higher, indexes going lower, gas in most US states at USD 4/gallon ... and tipping into USD 5/gallon 2-3 weeks out .

 

Hard to see how Orange Boy hasn't cooked the goose this time. It is straightforward to distract with a new outrage when the linkages are abstract, and the outrages aren't immediately affecting the pocket book .... but a different thing entirely when the adverse change is directly reinforced, every time there is a fill up at the pump. Ship baby, ship! .

 

A trapped short is a beautiful thing .... a trapped orange, even better . The body bags that follow, if/when there are boots on the ground, will be harder still to 'distract' from.

 

SD

   

[cwericb]

Confused about the grounds for US to declare war. 

 

Was it that imaginary nuclear problem that disappeared from Iraq and now appears to be in Iran?

 

Anyone remember something about some guy with an island somewhere and underage girls?

 

[changegonnacome]

14 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

Regime change would be a success,

 

Yep...when you get down to it that's the bar......Trump said it out loud at the start of the war, his minions tied themselves in knots for days pretending the objective was something else. Which tells you all you need to know about the probabilities assigned to achieving that by the Pentagon.

 

Trump is PR crafty - his decapitation definition version of regime change is like no other (see Venezuela). The issue for Trump the 'regime change' snake oil salesman is that Bibi/israel will loudly call bullshit on bullshit regime change.

 

He's got himself and the world into a right little pickle here has our dear leader Captain Chaos - for the US to 'win' we have to do the improbable and overthrow the Iranian revolutionary regime from the air, for the Iranian revolutionary regime to beat the US and 'win' the war all they have to do is survive.

 

As John Mearsheimer pointed out in a recent podcast - the US won every battle of note in Vietnam but ultimately lost the war. Entirely possible here the US will achieve every conceivable and gloat worthy military objective (air dominance, Iran navy destroyed, nuclear/ballistic missiles facilities obliterated! ) but at the end of the day the Iranian's will win the war simply because the Islamic Republic of Iran will continue long after the US aircraft carriers have gone home. We are not in a forever war (yet) but make no mistake about it THIS has all the ingredients of one!

 

[Blake Hampton]

4 hours ago, dealraker said:

I can assure you that total victory - problem solved - is near and yours and my total attention will be escorted elsewhere (where of course a resounding total victory problem solved declaration is sure to follow).

 

It's interesting how all of this works. Trump starts something that has the capability of creating chaos, it then scares a good amount of people, he ends up walking it back and declaring victory once we're close to the edge, and then he waits a while and eventually does it again.

I read the WSJ, NYT, FT, and my local paper every single morning (it's all fake news, I know). I'm only 24 so I've only been doing this for a couple of years, but sometimes I like to reminisce on the dark days of our evil Biden overlord, and it's difficult for me to remember much. Of course the man was a business moron, so there was a lot of stuff that I found sort of dumb. But never anything that was truly shocking to me.

 

Then comes Trump. One after another, unprecedented event after event, it never seems to end with this guy. It never seems to be enough. Every month seemingly there is some new, crazy thing that he's fixated on doing, all of which have the potential for causing serious problems in the future.

[Gregmal]

Well you guys could stop letting your derangement syndrome allow you to fall for it, every, single, time! I mean did anyone REALLY think we were gonna take Greenland? Oh wait, they did...the market sold off, and....pretty much nothing happened. And while some whined, others made money. Thats life I guess. 

[73 Reds]

22 minutes ago, Blake Hampton said:

 

It's interesting how all of this works. Trump starts something that has the capability of creating chaos, it then scares a good amount of people, he ends up walking it back and declaring victory once we're close to the edge, and then he waits a while and eventually does it again.

I read the WSJ, NYT, FT, and my local paper every single morning (it's all fake news, I know). I'm only 24 so I've only been doing this for a couple of years, but sometimes I like to reminisce on the dark days of our evil Biden overlord, and it's difficult for me to remember much. Of course the man was a business moron, so there was a lot of stuff that I found sort of dumb. But never anything that was truly shocking to me.

 

Then comes Trump. One after another, unprecedented event after event, it never seems to end with this guy. It never seems to be enough. Every month seemingly there is some new, crazy thing that he's fixated on doing, all of which have the potential for causing serious problems in the future.

Blake, Trump was elected to be a disruptor.  You're complaining about the very thing he was elected to do.  Who was it that first said "elections have consequences"?

[changegonnacome]

9 minutes ago, Gregmal said:

And while some whined, others made money.

 

Yep - the money to be made in this scenario is easy IMO.........Trump will wake someday in the next couple of weeks most likely after some incremental market/oil price pain, maybe after some cool video emerges of the US blowing something up inside Iran and decide ok today would be a very good day to declare the 'war' is 'won'....not won in any logical traditional strategic sense, not won in the sense that Iran regime is gone or actually replaced.... but won in a Trumpian way.....won in the way he 'won' the 2020 Presidential election....won in the sense that Donald has decided in his mind that there is enough there, there to sell a win to his supporters first and the American people second and then as is his way he wont stop talking about about how he won the war in Iran till he leaves office and there is nobody left to listen to him.

[73 Reds]

8 minutes ago, changegonnacome said:

 

Yep - the money to be made in this scenario is easy IMO.........Trump will wake someday in the next couple of weeks most likely after some incremental market/oil price pain, maybe after some cool video emerges of the US blowing something up inside Iran and decide ok today would be a very good day to declare the 'war' is 'won'....not won in any logical traditional strategic sense, not won in the sense that Iran regime is gone or actually replaced.... but won in a Trumpian way.....won in the way he 'won' the 2020 Presidential election....won in the sense that Donald has decided in his mind that there is enough there, there to sell a win to his supporters first and the American people second and then as is his way he wont stop talking about about how he won the war in Iran till he leaves office and there is nobody left to listen to him.

LOL, while you guys try to psycho-analyze Trump backwards, forwards, upside-down and sideways, Iran is now much further away from being a nuclear threat and has now antagonized just about everyone on the planet.  Seems simple enough to me.

[Blake Hampton]

Here's some interesting figures:
- U.S. fiscal deficit: 6.5% of GDP, nearly $16,000 per household

- U.S. current-account deficit: 3.5% of GDP, nearly $8,000 per household

- U.S personal savings rate: 3.6% of PDI, about $2,300 of the median household income

 

Only in the United States are we dumb enough to vote for a man who'd threaten to invade an NATO ally. Only in the United States are we dumb enough to vote for a man that would do his best at making the entire world hate us, that same world that in a large way subsidizes our living.

 

This is wisdom at its worst, and I imagine it'll end quite badly. Though I also believe that we will have deserved it.

[Blake Hampton]

I drove an hour and half to vote for Kamala in a state where a Democrat hasn't won the electoral vote since 1964.

 

Why?

 

Because I knew Trump was going to be an absolute disaster.

Edited March 7 by Blake Hampton