Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, June 20, 2025
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113 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
The headline of the day- Loose chicken rescued from Buffalo Wild Wings in Iowa
Ah, the old two weeks ploy. For Trump everything is two weeks, sixty days and ninety days, except in cases where it’s 24 hours. And none of these deadlines ever mean a thing. TACO – Trump Always Chickens Out. And, the corollary, ADABS – All Deadlines Are Bullshit.
Still the best Trump acronym is Rick Wilson’s ETTD – Everything Trump Touches Dies. Right, Elon? Remember back before Trump when people actually admired you?
I saw late that Connor had noted that the 9th Circuit has ruled in favor of Trump on troops in LA. Do the troops have quarters and facilities yet or are they still sleeping in their cars and searching for open public restrooms?
@Michael Reynolds:
Wilson just said that Trump is getting played by Iran.
Girls on the Beach
Brian Wilson Mike Love
All Summer Long
The Beach Boys
1964
@just nutha: As long as Trump is defying the constitution why not test the 3rd Amendment:
@Scott: How sad it is that we’re entertaining the possibility of that scenario. My whole life, I’ve thought of the Third Amendment as a vestigial relic of a long-past time.
Phillips OBrien think USAF missions over Iran na ga hoppen:
“Phillips OBrien”
I have seen other similar takes on this.
@charontwo:
and
@charontwo:
That take seems to be pretty much unanimous. “Two weeks” is Trump’s go-to phrase meaning “in two weeks my fans will forget I said anything.”
Two weeks sounds lifted from some miserable Big Three era Saturday night drama running at 9 pm where nothing interesting happens. “In two weeks, everything will change for the Dawson family and nothing will be the same again…only on ABC.”
Also, I think Trump is pissed about how lame and humiliating his b-day parade was.
@charontwo:
OTOH: Trump has a clear tendency to do what the last person he spoke to wants him to do.
So we will see
@charontwo:
And don’t forget that Putin is an ally of Iran. Trump cannot defy Russia on anything Putin sees as important. Putin and Marjorie Taylor Greene both oppose helping Israel.
God, I hate these fascist assholes:
We are very concerned about what conditions these immigrants are being held in while this mass deportation scheme is underway,” Goldman said at a press conference after the pair were turned away in a hallway of the federal building. “Why can’t we go in? What are they [ICE] hiding?”
ICE Deputy Field Office Director Bill Joyce, with reporters and others looking on, met with the representatives on the building’s ground level. He told the officials that some immigrants had slept overnight on the floor and benches on the 10th floor.
Joyce said the site was not a detention center, which members of Congress are legally allowed to inspect, but rather an off-limits “processing center” where migrants facing potential removal are temporarily held.
American fascism just comes as the most small-town dumb cop who fools nobody but gets away with it. Lots of Americans love this stuff too. Pissing in someone’s face and telling them it’s raining is what they’re into.
Trump always does what he says he’ll do, never does what he says he’ll do, always goes farther than he says he will, always retreats from what he says he’ll do. I think you’ve all got him figured out.
@drj: Trump’s clearest tendency is being an incompetent, lying mess. Doesn’t really matter what a confused liar says from day to day, can’t trust anything he says. So with this administration, you can count on choas and messiness, and that’s about it.
@CSK:
When is Alcatraz going to re-open?
@Fortune:
Bullshit.
1) There is no ‘you all.’ We are individuals with individual opinions and we often disagree.
2) I have been remarkably consistent in my statements about Trump, going back a decade.
3) I’ll let others defend their own records, but suffice to say, you’re wrong in your usual facile, juvenile, superficial way.
4) That said, despite a remarkable degree of consistency, on those occasions where opinions change it’s because facts changed. When facts change, intelligent people change their opinions. Intelligent people. Culties double down. That would be you.
@Michael Reynolds:
Dude, don’t you see that the whole premise of the resident troll’s argument is utter nonsense?
Trump went from wanting unconditional surrender to “I will make up my mind in the next two weeks.” And somehow it’s our fault for not knowing what the Rapist-in-Chief is going to do?
Don’t even entertain this bullshit.
The Germans do not mess around when it comes to the Hitler salute.
Link to story (in German): https://www.polizei.bayern.de/aktuelles/pressemitteilungen/086647/index.html
Translation:
Meanwhile in America we were forced to endure endless puling bullshit from Trumpies about how what Elon did was “just the Roman Salute” (which isn’t even a real thing).
According to CK Smith at Salon.com, Trump is refusing to take Musk’s calls.
@drj: It’s not your fault, unless you’re pretending you know what Trump’s going to do.
@Fortune:
I agree with this point. I don’t think we can or should attempt to predict what Trump will do.
I find it much more helpful to call attention to what he has promised he would do (which while often seemingly contradictory, still seems a good bellwether) and the impact of what he has already done (including the instability created through his contradicting statements).
@CSK: Trump is refusing to take Musk’s calls.
I remember a similar situation from about 45 years ago. When my younger brother was 18, he had a 40ish woman calling him several times a day because she was infatuated with him. He had a summer job working for Gallup as a survey taker, and a co-worker decided she was in love with him. Of course, she wasn’t worth $400 billion and he wasn’t POTUS. But I suspect both of them were more mature than Musk and Trump.
@Matt Bernius: This reminds me of a shorthand I use for certain people – the fact that he said he would do something doesn’t really make it more or less likely to happen.
Today is the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere of planet Earth.
I am a Sun Worshiper, this is my High Holy Day!
My Articles of Faith are revealed in a footnote on page 18 of
The Demon-Haunted World
Science as a Candle in the Dark
by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
1995
@Bill Jempty: In a week or two?
This morning on my way to work I pulled up to a young woman in a convertible just belting Oliva Rodrigo’s “Vampire.” (Great song, btw). When it got to the chorus–“Blood sucker, fame fucker, bleeding me dry like a goddamn vampire”–I belted it out along with her. Rather than be embarrassed she burst out laughing and gave me an air high five. I think it made both of our days.
@Fortune:
Oh gosh, I’ve had him figured out for decades. Basically, Trump is being what he’s always been: a malignant/malevolent greaseball, a career white collar criminal and grifter, with some sexual abuse and harassment adjudication there too.
I will say this, I thought he’d be a terrible president, but I was wrong, he’s worse than terrible, worse than what I expected and anticipated.
@Matt Bernius:
And even all of that is routinely explained away by MAGAts, MAGA-adjacents, and neither pro- nor anti-Trump ordinary-citizen types who are only asking questions.
It’s a mug’s game all round.
@Fortune:
The greatest assembly of mind readers ever.
@al Ameda: You understand him perfectly but can’t predict him? Doesn’t make sense.
Also, I assume you disagree with “Trump always chickens out ” if you believe “with Trump nothing gets better”.
@al Ameda:
Look on the bright side. At least he doesn’t spend half his life impotently whining on some blog site. Quite the band of malcontents here.
@Modulo Myself:
This sounds so, so much to Justice Roberts’ logic of “we’re not discriminating on the basis of sex, we’re discriminating on the basis of gender dysphoria” in the recent opinion.
I did not expect him to stoop to the level of Alito logic.
There was a time when I kind of felt the Chief would be all right. He saved Obamacare, after all, from idiotic reasoning (this time on the part of Scalia and his “eat your vegetables”). But no, he’s now rotten to the core, and he’s going sit in the vegetable drawer for a long time, making everything he touches stink.
@Scott:
Well, Luddite’s envisioning what’ll happen to the troops who requisition housing in Compton…or East LA. poor poor little NGs.
Of course, that’d give the necessary casus belli for the Marines, I suppose.
@drj:
I was going to point that out but decided to wait 2 weeks.
@Jay L Gischer: Roberts is also fully understandable, completely unpredictable, rotten to the core, and a compromiser.
Fortune and Connor have us on the ropes, boys.
Instead of having to address the shit show the orange menace is creating, they can now look down on us on account of our inability to predict the next move of a serial liar and bullshitter.
They got us good here.
@Neil Hudelson: I hadn’t heard that one before, so I went and watched the video. Pretty good song…I wonder who it’s about. One doesn’t do lyrics and singing like that unless they’ve lived it.
@Mister Bluster: We should all celebrate midsummer by ingesting some St. Johnswort that blossoms at this time. It is reputed to be an antidepressant, and we can certainly use one.
@Connor:
Dude, you are impotently whining on some blog site.
The lack of self-awareness runs deep with you, Drew.
This is an easy to follow video on our bunker busting capabilities. Short version: it would not be easy.
@drj: But you’re not just complaining about Trump, you’re giving theories and making predictions. But they’re contradictory theories and bad predictions.
@Connor:
And yet both you and Fortune can’t quit this place.
Something @Fortune and @Connor have in common: nether will give their opinion on whether we should bomb Iran. They don’t know what the TACO Master will decide, and can’t risk expressing an independent opinion. I dislike moral cowards.
@charontwo:
I find Phillip’s analysis wanting because it appears based primarily on a reading of what Trump is thinking and ignores facts on the ground. It’s this same mistake in analysis that led many to believe that Saddam was bluffing in 1990, when the intel community, looking at the facts on the ground, knew it wasn’t. And I always wonder how things might be different today had HW Bush listened to the real experts and not the people who thought they could read Saddam’s mind and assume it was a bluff.
The facts on the ground are that the US had prepared to attack. Those bases Phillips talks about that Iran might attack have been evacuated of US personnel and assets for two days. Yesterday, Whiteman AFB opened up early, and lots of activity was observed, much of which signalled that it’s likely B-2’s or other bombers are going to Diego Garcia. The US has sent a ton of assets to the region – assets that would be needed in any conflict with Iran. They are deployed at locations and airfields that Iran would be very reluctant to attack or could not effectively attack.
These are not minor moves and changes, especially the evacuations of bases and personnel. You don’t do that unless you’re pretty confident those bases will be attacked.
In short, the US is poised to attack. Ultimately, it’s Trump’s decision, and he may TACO and call it off, but the facts on the ground strongly suggest that this isn’t a bluff.
That said, I’m do hope I’m wrong and that Trump will decide not to actively join the war.
@inhumans99:
@Connor was ever so happy yesterday when he could talk about sports. Trump doesn’t have a team, so on sports Drew is allowed to have an opinion.
@Andy:
The USAF may be ready, seemingly are ready. But that is not at all predictive of what Trump will decide. Find out who talked to him last, that’s a much better indicator.
ETA: Are you not worried about a very pissed off and scared Iran that retains a nuclear program?
@Michael Reynolds:
That’s the joy of being a MAGA: Whatever Trump does or says is fine, even if it contradicts whatever he said or did an hour ago.
And there’s always an explanation. He and Musk haven’t really fallen out; the dispute between them is just an elaborate head fake. God knows why, though.
@Connor: No, instead, the President of the United States spends half his life shitposting incoherent bullshit on social media.
@Connor:
“At least he doesn’t spend half his life impotently whining on some blog site.”
True. Trump spends it whining on social media sites, instead. Much more mature.
ETA: Or, what Jax said.
@Michael Reynolds:
I am. One of the reasons I’ve always been against bombing Iran’s program is that you can’t bomb knowledge. Israel has been remarkably effective at killing the key scientists and organizers, and much of the infrastructure, but ultimately, that can only delay things. Iraq went from zero to almost getting a bomb in a decade with an EMIS enrichment program after Israel hit their reactor, as one example.
@Matt Bernius: or for that matter on the things that he has already done. There’s plenty enough there that we don’t even need to speculate on what horrible shit he will do next
@Andy:
Trump is known to pay attention to polls, he is, in fact, pretty obsessed with them.
Some polling I just saw says 31% of Republicans and 9% of Democrats support active military engagement with Iran.
You might think on that.
@charontwo: @Andy:
I’m betting a dollar it’s another TACO.
He raced home from Canada to announce a decision. . . in two weeks. Could not have done that from Calgary. You can only chicken out on US soil. It’s in the Constitution.
For Trump, bombing is all risk and no upside. He won’t make a dime, he’ll fall in the polls, and the whole thing could easily blow up in his face. And it may even steal the spotlight from him! Plus, they’ll be making him read things and attend briefings and he has important flag poles to install.
@charontwo:
Is Trump’s obsession with polls decisive? If so, why bother looking at anything else?
In my view, it’s more mind reading. Guessing what Trump thinks and what Trump will do when the track record of predicting Trumps actions is not that good.
And then there are all the competing Trump theories about his motivations, many of which are contradictory. He’s obsessed with polls, but he’s also Russian asset, but he also just does whenever the last person he talked to suggests, but it’s all about the deal, but he’s only motivated by money, but he’s too stupid and everyone can play and manipulate him, etc.
YMMV, but as I’ve long said here, I prefer to look at actions in the real world and facts on the ground and consider those more relevant and reliable compared to mind reading and guesses about intentions.
They guy who’s created more than a dozen sock puppets in order to evade site bans telling others that they spend too much time on this site, well that’s just a whole new level of chutzpah.
@Michael Reynolds:
I hope you’re right!
But I’m not going to believe it until I see US forces standing down.
@Michael Reynolds:
IIRC, it also meant that he left before Zelenskyy arrived.
But he did negotiate a deal on EU tariffs with the UK! No one could have predicted that!
@inhumans99:
Entertainment, for one. You guys amuse in the way the 3 stooges did. And to see what bizarre theories you guys have.
It’s like a psychiatrist observing the mentally disturbed.
@Jax:
That’s odd, the news is filled daily with what Trump did or did not do. Must not be spending too much time on line.
But thank you for playing.
@Connor:
Ha. Because getting banned from a site multiple times, then creating multiple different personalities so you can continue stalk, complain about, and impotently whine about said site is totally normal, non-psychotic behavior.
Imagine living a life so boring and empty, that desperately stalking a site that banned you — so you can keep crying, whining, and tantruming about how mean they are to Trump — is all you have to entertain you. Cringe.
Bizarre theories like your psychotically stupid declaration that Kilmar Abrego Garcia had visited Mexico 100 times while under a standing deportation order? lol
As Andy noted above the U.S. military is going to high alert and moving to war footing. Meanwhile the Commander in Chief has left the White House early for a long weekend of golf at his New Jersey resort. A fine way to stay on top of things in the fast moving events of the Iran Isreal war.
@Erik: Personally, as a free citizen of a nominally free country, I reserve the right to speculate about whatever I want during harmless and freewheeling online diversions.
For example, I predict the incompetent rapist president won’t be releasing the Epstein files. Maybe because they’d offer further confirmation of his pedophilia, a la the sexual comments he made publicly about his attraction to his then-underage daughter. Gross af
@a country lawyer:
Stephen Miller golfs?!
Trump calls for special prosecutor for 2020 election, after again claiming fraud with no evidence (ABC News)
I think the fake tan is seeping into grandpa’s bloodstream. What a freak.
@Connor:
You do know that we are not insulted when you say stuff like that, and it reveals a lot more about you than the folks on this great site. You almost make it sound like a job or you are a graduate student doing field work by frequenting this blog, and I hope that is the case that someone is paying you to hang out here or it is helping you get a degree, certification, or whatever that might lead to advancement in your current role in life.
Me, I think your answer is what you want us to think but really, hanging on this great site has turned into a bit of an obsession for you, a fix that you need to go about your day.
There is a reason why you self-regulate a lot of what you want to say here, because you do not want to be banned from posting, because a post on this site that would get you a ton of likes on a site like Lucianne.com, well there is a good chance it would not fly here, and even if you are on a vacation in a spot with limited or no access to the internet, you would be frustrated if you could not post on a site like OTB when you had the opportunity to get back on the internet.
You are addicted to OTB, and hey….many folks say you can get addicted to the internet, but there are much worse things to be addicted to that can be found on the internet than this wonderful blog, so I am not going to be the one that encourages you to ween yourself from addictive behaviors that OTB brings out in you.
You do you.
Anyone else notice that @Connor has still not dared to express an opinion on Iran lest cult leader come to a different conclusion?
@Michael Reynolds:
If you’re a MAGA, you follow the leader. Although it must be exhausting having to switch paths constantly.
Steve Bannon is calling for an investigation of the Fox News hosts (Hannity, Levin, et al) because they’re obviously working for a foreign country.
Per CNN, Iran has told European officials it will only talk with the U.S. if Israel ceases shooting at it.
@Neil Hudelson: It is pretty impressive, isn’t it?
@Neil Hudelson:
Denial is a bitch.
@DK:
Now that’s an odd statement. In the last few weeks I attended the Indy 500, took in two Pacers games (I’m originally from Indy), and one round at the US Open. Next week I’m off to NYC to visit my daughter who has an internship there for the summer. Not sure what me and my wife will do on the return. But maybe a couple days in Asheville for some good eats. Not a bad few weeks.
I suspect you will be here……………morning, noon and night. Miserable and whining. Chacun son goût.
@a country lawyer:
Indicates Trump is not waiting two weeks so he can study the issue think it through. While I don’t think Trump is a Russian asset in the conventional sense, just in the useful-idiot way, he listens to Putin, it it’s likely Putin has asked for a chance to talk to the Iranians. Just guessing, of course.
Seems we have some time to kill. Charon, IIRC, posted this a few weeks ago. An interesting look at why Trump is easily influenced by certain people, Putin being but one. Grain of salt: He’s not a shrink like Trump’s niece, but there’s no serious conflict between what she wrote in her book and what this guy is saying. I found it quite interesting as it seems to be logical explanations for several of Trump’s behavioral peculiarities.
@dazedandconfused:
Trump reiterated today, whilst golfing at Bedminster, that 2 weeks is the maximum time frame.
Well, mea culpa, looks like I was much mistook about my prediction few days ago that tthe US wa on the cusp of military action.
Trump seems once again to be combining his frequently evidenced tendency to combine maximum unhelpful rhetorical stances, with dithering indecision in practice.
On the other hand, it may provide an opening for the Europeans to to work on a negotiated settlement.
@CSK:
Unless, of course, he changes his mind.
Sooner or later Trump may learn that getting a reputation for not having “a word” is not a good thing in international relations.
Presented for your consideration:
Breathlessly awaiting someone’s assurance that the suspect is a closet Democrat, and the fact that he was apparently targeting a Black Democrat Gummint Official is a false-flag something something something.
https://www.axios.com/2025/06/20/memphis-tennessee-mayor-kidnap-arrest?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiospm&stream=top
@CSK:
Hardly an unsurprising opening stance; which depends on the Europeans desiring talks more than Iran desires Israel to stop its attacks.
The Israeli inclination to do so seems open to doubt.
As does the European desire to pressurise Israel to do so.
Iran can only change that equation if it commences attacks on non-Israeli targets.
But the downside of that will be massively increased likelihood of various parties to favour the US taking direct action.
@Connor:
Exactly, he spends half of his life whining on Truth Social (is TS a blog?)
Bright side? Well, his Soviet Style birthday celebration happened without anyone noticing.
@Connor:
As an uncredentialed armchair fake psychiatrist, you’re surely familiar with projection. You’re the one constantly bitching and moaning about this site from your umpteenth new fake personality. I come here because I like it. You’re here hate stalking a site just to complain.
If I wanted to be miserable, I’d emulate you: go to Breitbart just to grumble about it. I don’t do that, because unlike you I’m not a malajusted loser.
I don’t know of any Pacers fans stalking political blogs just to gripe for entertainment. But I suspect your NBA attendance is like Kilmar Garcia’s 100 trips to Mexico: a fake’s deluded fakery.
Yes, I’ll check-in here in upcoming weeks amid my gay rounds — from a cruise out of Greece, back to my part-time Deutsch home (gay summer in Berlin in amazeballs), to my bf’s parents’ in Poland, to Fire Island and then Provincetown. But unlike you and your fellow low IQ, amoral, rapist-apologist Trump slave buddy Fortune, my check-ins will indicate my enjoyment of OTB. Very different from your tedious grousing about this site — like a whiny, bitter, miserable little bitch.
@Connor: You forgot to mention that you flew to the moon on Blue Horizon, negotiated an end to the Ukraine war and designed the next iPhone.
@DK: You may be the most bitter and miserable person on Outside the Beltway.
@Fortune:
The unpredicatability of a leader is not necessesarily an advantage.
It can easily lead an adversary to make moves that lead to a catastrophic outcome.
See Europe 1939, etc etc.
It’s as if Truman, Eisenhower, or Kennedy had responded to the question: “What if the Soviet Union attacks Berlin?” with “I don’t know, maybe I’ll act, maybe I won’t, lets give it two weeks. Maybe we can do a deal?”
Keep this up, the US will have no allies left at all.
This does not mean the US must/should strike Iran.
It means making “may/may not” comments that indicate indecisiveness are sub-optimal, and likely driven by a rather egotistical desire to speak when silence would serve better.
@Fortune:
Nah, that’s me. 😉
@CSK:
And it always will be.
@Fortune: And yet somehow, you manage to do 1,000x more bitching and complaining about the content and commentary on Outside the Beltway that I ever have. Funny that.
Cry more, Trump cuck.
@JohnSF: I agree. For the most part you want to appear predictable to your allies and unpredictable to your adversaries, even if that’s impossible to sustain long-term. But to be a stabilizing force in the world as the most powerful country should be, you have to lean toward being predictable.
@Kathy:
Of course. And it always will be. As I and everyone else have pointed out, it’s his default response.
@DK:
I complain about Outside the Beltway, you complain about everything else.
@Andy:
I was looking at major spike in the air support (tanker/surveillance) activity out of RAF Akrotiri
It seems highly likely that, at that point, a war decision within 24 hours was expected.
@Andy:
But the difference is, that experience is now known.
The extent of Israeli and US knowledge of Iranian activity seems to be much higher.
And I personally suspect it’s possible to both kill suffiecient engineers and hit sufficient targets to delay such a programme for decades.
Both electromagnetic and centrifugal separation are rather large power-hogs.
Tracing otherwise unexplained electrical generation or transmission capacity should be possible, if close enough attention is paid.
Telegram boss to leave fortune to over 100 children he has fathered (BBC)
The clickbait headline worked on me, I must admit.
@JohnSF:
I KNEW there was something besides your British savoir faire and knowledge that I liked about you!
Although can I please have a participation trophy for my runner-up placement in your personality contest. I have one, I promise.
ETA, despite my dear wife’s families’ opinions, I’m neither miserable nor bitter. Psychotic (probably not), sociopathic (getting warmer), homicidal (reformed) balding and overweight (certainly), but I enjoy a good cigar, ethanol thinly disguised as fruit juice, and popping up in sites that haven’t banned me yet like the mole in the Wack-It game.
@Fortune:
Obvious lie. I’ve never complained about Hillary Clinton (aside from politically useless Tim Kaine pick), about Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill or CHIPS Act, about arming Ukraine, about Europeans who polled as overwhelmingly preferring Harris to Trump because duh, or about the 92% of black American women voters that understood a pedophile rapist that incited a terror attack on Congress should not be president — setting an example for the majority of white and Latino male American voters who lost their decency, humanity, and their effing minds in 2024.
Why do you lie so much?
@Michael Reynolds:
No we don’t! 😉
@Flat Earth Luddite:
Is there a True Crime documentary about you? I’ve almost run out out of 48 Hours and Evil Lives Here was too heavy for me to finish.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
Lol.
As for me:
Psychotic (reformed)
Sociopathic (yup)
Homicidal (too cautious)
Balding and overweight (it’s just age, *sigh*; I used to be pretty *sobs*)
Cigars and a pipe make an alternative to vapes.
Expensive wine is now my greatest indulgence. Well, apart from XO Armagnac and old malt whisky.
And my current tally of blocks on Xitter is quite the thing. 😉
@Fortune:
He’s not even close to the most bitter and miserable. I have a few other people in mind, but it would seem like picking on them to name them, and most of them I rather like.
One though… I’m sure we all have someone who is probably fine but just annoy us.
Anyway, enough of this nonsense.
Does not everyone realise that India scored 359-3 on the first day of the England vs India Test series?
Dear me.
And that Argentina beat the British and Irish Lions rugby team 28-24?
Dammit.
@Gustopher:
Paging Lounsbury? lol
I liked el-Louns.
Smart and annoying in equal measure.
Though, tbf, neither bitter nor miserable, that I ever noticed.
@Fortune:
I can understand why you may think so, but I profoundly disagree.
Based on my judgements of British and European history.
Had Germany been certain in both 1914 and 1939 that its next moves would inevitably lead to war with the British Empire, it might have been more cautious.
There’s a reasonable argument that the Korean War originated due to ambiguity about the US comittment to defend South Korea.
There are various other examples of uncertainty about commitment for domestic political reasons leading to adversary opportunism and then wider war.
The current massive problem in this regard is Taiwan: Trump’s ambivalence on this could quite easily lead to a collapse of the US alliance system in East Asia.
Not to mention Europe and NATO, which is similar.
Trump seems unable to resist playing the tease, either because it garners attention, or because he’s foolish enough to transfer US construction/casino/hotel deal-making into the realm of international Power Politics.
Which is why most US allies consider him an idiot.
@JohnSF:
Yeah, Israel seems to have excellent access to inside information in the Iranian government. That’s a big problem for Iran.
Potentially decades, especially if Iran can’t plug the leaks and Israel can do maintenance bombing if they try something.
But I think Fordow will be a lesson for them – building that deep and hardening is extremely expensive, but if Iran wants to keep playing footsie with having nukes, my guess is that’s what they’ll do. Fordow was about 6 or 7 years from the start of construction until the first centrifuges were spinning. They can’t put everything deep underground like that, but they can put a lot.
@JohnSF: @Flat Earth Luddite:
Sociopath, not just reformed but like so many converts, annoying about it.
Arrogant and um. . . working on it?
Used to be angry and I’ve evolved from hot angry to icy angry. Progress?
Weirdly happy. I feel very lucky, what Christians would call, blessed. At age almost 71 I look back at my life and just think, to paraphrase The Grateful Dead, it’s been a long, strange trip, and it’s been a kick. Can’t believe I got to live this life.
@Andy:
Fordow may be deep.
But it has entrances, which are more vulnerable.
It must have power supply, either internal or external.
If external, the lines can be cut.
If internal, it requires supply of fuel.
via the entrances.
Deep bunkers are just fine, short term.
But for long term industrial-scale operations, perhaps not so much.
The only way for Fordow to be largely self-suficient would be by having a reactor or a geothermal plant, with also no requirement for external water supply for steam and cooling.
Non-trivial.
Absent such, it can simply be cut-off and rendered effectively inoperable.
@JohnSF:
Agreed and well stated.
@JohnSF: “You may be the most bitter and miserable person on Outside the Beltway.
Nah, that’s me.”
Well, yeah, but you’re British, so I’m not sure it counts…
Trump is complaining that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, but that “they only give it to liberals.”
@CSK:
The love is gone. Very sad.
@wr:
Not when us Brits are getting hammered at both cricket and rugby, fgs
Bitter misery are us.
🙂
Actually, perahps not so much.
At the Test Match, two of the most memorable moments where when Rishabh Pant slammed a delivery from Stokes straight back over his head for six, and Stokes burst out laughing and congratulated Pant.
And when the entire stadium rose to applaud Shubman Gill when he got his century.
The true spirit of cricket: the game is the thing.
@DK:
Nope, only one crime didn’t have a statute of limitations – and I did my time for it*, all long before Al Gore invented the Interwebs. Although the stories I could tell, but for those pesky NDAs./s/
However, I did have the dubious honor of the Lifer’s Club making me an honorary member (see*). In my salad days put my hand through a closed car window to grab the driver and once ingested 2-3 tabs of blotter * I also went back for seconds on the slash made from distilled fermented grapefruit, and spent 30+ years herding attorneys. The Stage IV diagnosis and 3.5 years of chemo, with accompanying radiation and surgeries, while a great weight loss plan, were somewhat anticlimactic, as is the decade NED.
*Although the DA repeatedly informed the jury that I was arguably the most dangerous sociopath he’d ever encountered. Strangely enough, he never met Ted Bundy, also from my neck of the woods around the same time. Ted was a true wack-job, who roundly deserved the death penalty multiple times.
** Strictly speaking, the guys on the football team slipped them to me to see what would happen. I was supposed to be the non-imbibing driver that night.
Generally speaking, for the last 45 years, I’ve by and large been the person who’s all too aware of the abyss waving to me from the darkness, and telling it quietly, “nope, not today. Maybe tomorrow, but not today.”
From small victories come grace, I hope.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
You remind me of some people I used to know back in the 1990’s.
Unfortunately, life caught up so many of them, in various ways.
I was always too cautious/calculating/timid.
And so walked another path.
@JohnSF:
Well, I’ve frequently told people that everyone has a past, but the important thing is did they learn from it? I was frighteningly suburban wonder white bread until my age made “youthful indiscretions” into “felonies.” Like cancer and sitting in a crooked card game, these are not recommended life choices if at all possible. Learn from my mistakes, kiddos!!