"Why can't Trump get his story straight about the nukes?"
No one on the CNN panel will *really* answer this question: Trump just ... says stuff.
Creates a kind of halting problem:
“We obliterated the regime’s nuclear program”
(but then there is no reason for war so he says)
"They are close to nuclear"
(but that sounds like we messed up so he says)
“We obliterated the nuclear program”
(but then there is no reason for war so he says)
♾️
etc.
There is a cover story for why the US attacked Iran. One that is almost believable. The argument goes like this:
Iran was developing a drone and missile program rather like the Iron Dome that would make it "impossible" for the US to bomb them, and that would mean it's impossible to stop them if they wanted to make nuclear weapons. So they had to be stopped from doing this now.
Does Iran have the right to defend itself? It's an ugly argument.
I am shocked by the number of world leaders who do not understand that the only reason our allies and our homes cities are not being attacked is because no one wants to do that. If someone wants to hurt us badly enough, if they don't care about the escalation because the US has shuttered all paths to the nation having any real future, then we are cooked. We could strike back but everyone loses.
Some things are beyond US control.
@futurebird @hazelnot I will drop this here. The implications are disturbing and aggravating.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/iran-will-retaliate-in-the-us-we-may-not-see-it-in-time
@InkySchwartz @futurebird @hazelnot
In January 2001, Bush had not won the election, and was unpopular and rightly viewed as illegitimate.
He was determined to lower taxes and cut spending, so he eliminated many of the wasteful antiterrorism programmes started by Clinton.
On September 10th, he was not liked, was having trouble passing laws and was seen as not competent to hold his role.
A few weeks later, he was enormously powerful and able to pass legislation that had been previously unthinkably fascist.
So, like, why would Trump's handlers be _against_ a retaliatory strike? If he gets blamed, it will be forgotten amidst all the other chaos. And if he isn't blamed, they can rush to fill in all the blanks in their existing policy.
@hazelnot @InkySchwartz @futurebird
A bunch of wealthy Republicans disrupted the recount and the Supreme Court declared Bush president (by stopping all unfinished recounts).
Several months later an audit showed that he lost.
@celesteh @hazelnot @futurebird Which audit? Because I found 3 major ones and all showed various outcomes depending on the standard.
https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/31/politics/bush-gore-2000-election-results-studies/
@InkySchwartz @hazelnot @futurebird
The media reporting on this was carefully vague, but all full recount of all Florida votes would be a narrow victory for Gore.
Gore didn't sue for a full recount, so his legal strategy was not a winning one, so most reporting focussed on Gore strategy and not on the end vote tally.
@InkySchwartz @hazelnot @futurebird
The Supreme Court did specifically decode the election instead of a recount, so this did call Bush's legitimacy into serious question at the time.
Source: am old
@celesteh @InkySchwartz huh, sounds kinda like what happened here in Romania in 2024
Here it was... really weird, a fascist dude that showed up out of "nowhere" ("nowhere" meaning likely propped up by the "Social-Democratic" (right-wing populist) Party, the National Liberal (run of the mill European conservatives/neoliberals) Party, and the intelligence agencies), was gonna go up in the run-offs with a neoliberal candidate from a different party, and the Constitutional Court just invalidated the elections based on unsubstantiated claims of a "foreign cybernetic attack" and banned him from running again
Wich was uhhhhh good on the one hand cause the guy is a fascist conspiracy theorist, but on the one hand, what the actual fuck!?
myrmepropagandist
hazelnot 
Inky says "What the hell?!"
Charles ☭ 
is a Green