InevitableSwing

Delaware Online is functioning as a White House PR tool...

Trump visits Dover air base for dignified transfer of 6 US soldiers

I clicked the link thinking - silly me - that it would be an article so maybe it would have some c/slop material. Nope.

8 PHOTOS

Vaccination should be made mandatory. Enough of this fucking "choice" shit. It's called public health for a reason.

"I can give a family and I can give patients all the information that I feel like that they need in order to make decisions, but ultimately, it is the family's choice and decision how to care for their child and how to proceed."
Amanda Jocelyn, nurse practitioner

I edited it a bit for clarity.

a fucking onion bit

I considered changing the thumbnail because it really does have that vibe.

it's just a building with an ad for Warner Bros World in Abu Dhabi on it

You worked harder on the NYT update than their fucking reporter did.

NYT

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a statement that it had launched another wave of attacks on American and Israeli targets, including ballistic attacks on Haifa, Israel, and drone attacks on Dubai’s marina area where it said American troops were stationed. The statement said a structure belonging to “Warner Brothers” was also attacked in Dubai and the Guards naval forces had attacked U.S. military warehouses in the Salman Port of Bahrain.

Edit

You might be wondering about...

a structure belonging to “Warner Brothers”

See mkultrawide's comment.

"Jeff, turn off live updates."

"The Iran live updates page?"

"Yeah. Off. I don't like it."

"But it's a highly active page. In addition—"

"Off. I don't like it."

"Surely - you don't mean in the next few minutes?"

"Now. Off. That huge AI contract you want... Maybe - it goes bye-bye. You don't get it."

"Yes, Mr. President."

"Say 'Hello' to your wife too. Great piece of ass."

"Yes, Mr. President."

Thanks. That was awesome.

It seems that the WaPo nuked its "live updates" page for the Iran war. If that's true - from a news and income POV that's insane. But must be missing something obvious. Why would Bezos have them shut it down? What does he gain?

Edit

In case you want to have a google look for yourself - wapo iran war live updates page

Trivia: One of the top results for me right now is some Youtube channel called "Firstpost".

Off topic

At ~0:27 the anchor's unnotable intro has stopped. There's an edit to the reporter and she says "The state has laid out its case..." It's been so long since I heard the odd "slightly unnaturalistic and not quite dramatic local reporter voice" that I almost starting laughing when she started speaking.

I assume when budding actors get a bit nervous in acting class - they can end up speaking the same way. It's in that netherworld between an ordinary voice and a dramatic voice.

Yet another thing is that Trump is the head of the military yet so many libs are working so hard to pretend it's no problem at all. It's so weird to me. I posted the following a couple days ago...

Why a Democratic Congressman Is Supporting Trump’s War with Iran - The New Yorker
Representative Greg Landsman explains his hope [to Isaac Chotiner] that the conflict remains limited but also creates an entirely new Middle East.

This bit is surreal.

I just meant that it seems like we were trying to effectuate regime change, which the President himself has said, rather than just knock out military targets.

Yeah. And let me also be clear. I’ve never trusted Trump on this, or on the economy, or on keeping us safe in general.

You are trusting him on this, though, right?

No.

You aren’t?

I’m trusting the military and our generals. I’m trusting what I understand to be the operation and the people leading it—that is, the generals and our military and our allies.

You’re trusting the people leading the operation who don’t include the President?

Well, I don’t trust that guy. Yeah.

He’s the Commander-in-Chief, right?

Sure. Yeah. But I can’t [trust him]. And he’s proven that over the past couple of days, being all over the place, unlike everybody else involved in this.

you can always just stop

What is this crazy talk?

Now, when the day goes to sleep and the full moon looksThe night is so black that the darkness cooksDon't you come creepin' aroundMakin' me do things I don't wanna do

The Orange Cheeto Man~~The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown)~~Song

You might not like it but this is what peak lib performance rationalization looks like.

Uh, oh...

Trump has privately shown serious interest in U.S. ground troops in Iran - NBC News

God - do I hate natsec guys.

"You don’t want [Iran] to become a failed state nuclear bazaar."
In the event of collapse of the Iranian regime, U.S. forces could be used on the ground there to try to help facilitate a dynamic between the U.S. and Iran that mirrors Venezuela or to help keep track of Iran’s uranium stockpile, which is believed to be entombed beneath some of its nuclear sites.

Full text

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has privately expressed serious interest in deploying U.S. troops on the ground inside of Iran, according to two U.S. officials, a former U.S. official and another person with knowledge of the conversations.

Trump has discussed the idea of deploying ground troops with aides and Republican officials outside the White House while outlining his vision for a post-war Iran in which Iran’s uranium is secure and the U.S. and a new Iranian regime cooperate on oil production similar to how the U.S. and Venezuela are, the sources said.

The president’s comments expressing serious interest in deploying ground troops have not focused on a large-scale ground invasion of Iran, but rather on the idea of a small contingent of U.S. troops that would be used for specific strategic purposes, the U.S. officials, the former U.S. official and the person with knowledge of the discussions said. They said Trump has not made any decisions or given any orders related to ground troops.

“This story is based on assumptions from anonymous sources who are not part of the President’s national security team and are clearly not read into these discussions,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “President Trump always, wisely keeps all options open, but anyone trying to insinuate he is in favor of one option or another proves they have no real seat at the table.”

Publicly, Trump has not ruled out putting U.S. “boots on the ground” in Iran, though the war has so far consisted only of an air campaign. His private discussions about the idea show a president perhaps more willing to consider taking such a step than his public comments on the issue so far have suggested. Any deployment of American troops inside of Iran could increase the scale and scope of the war — and escalate the risks to American forces.

Since the war began on Saturday, six U.S. service members have been killed and 18 wounded in counterattacks from Iran, according to the Pentagon.

Trump has privately described to aides and Republican officials outside the White House that his ideal outcome in Iran is one like the emerging dynamic between the U.S. and Venezuela since American special forces captured Nicolás Maduro in January, the current U.S. officials and former U.S. official said. In post-Maduro Venezuela, the U.S. backed a new president, Delcy Rodríguez, under the condition that she implement policies that Trump views as favorable to the U.S., including that the U.S. benefits from Venezuela’s oil production.

The president said in an interview with the New York Post this week, “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground.” He said while other presidents have ruled out boots on the ground, “I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.’”

Foreign policy experts offered various scenarios in which the president might choose to deploy U.S. troops on the ground in Iran.

“You could envision them doing some sort of special operations insertions if there were targets that they absolutely needed to take out or reduce but didn’t lend themselves to bombardment,” said Joel Rayburn, a former Trump administration official and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. “That’s the kind of thing where you do an insertion, you attack a target, or conduct a raid, and then you get out.”

But Rayburn said such a scenario is very different from what most Americans imagine when they think about deploying ground troops or putting “boots on the ground,” and that he had so far not seen the conditions emerging that would require that step.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, the Iran program senior director at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said in the event of collapse of the Iranian regime, U.S. forces could be used on the ground there to try to help facilitate a dynamic between the U.S. and Iran that mirrors Venezuela or to help keep track of Iran’s uranium stockpile, which is believed to be entombed beneath some of its nuclear sites.

“You don’t want it to become a failed state nuclear bazaar,” Taleblu said of Iran.

Nate Swanson, a senior fellow and director of the Iran Strategy Project at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, D.C., said the U.S. could rethink its military options if Iran “thinks it can win a war of attrition.” Such a scenario could lead the president to deploy ground forces into Iran or arm opponents of the Iranian regime. Trump is considering whether to arm opponents of the regime.

In an interview with NBC News on Thursday, Trump suggested he is not seriously considering a ground invasion of Iran at this time. He said he wants new leadership in Iran that he approves of and has said he expects the war, which began Saturday, to last four to five weeks while leaving open the possibility of it continuing indefinitely.

Leavitt said Wednesday that U.S. ground troops are an option that remains on the table for the president although “not part of the plan for this operation time.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC News’ Tom Llamas on Thursday that Iran is prepared for U.S. ground troops. “We are waiting for them,” Araghchi said, adding that “we are confident that we can confront them, and that would be a big disaster for them.”

“We have prepared ourselves to confront with any scenario,” Araghchi said.

The GOP loves the maximalism that is built-into American society. And nobody is more maximalist than Trump. Fuck the poor. Fuck people who can't afford rent.

Liberals pretend maximalism isn't everywhere and they pretend they aren't that way either but - of course - they often are. Housing shows the difference between what a liberal says: "I'm a Yimby!" With what they actually usually are: "I'm a Nimby!"

Alice Waters

Many years ago - when I was still a liberal - I remember reading a NYT puff piece about her and her promotion of slow food. By design puff pieces are bullshit but it worked its magic on me. She seemed like a good person.

Serious question - why is she and others bad? I checked her Wikipedia page but it reads like it was written entirely by her PR firm. An example...

In celebration of the restaurant's 25th anniversary in 1996, Waters founded the Chez Panisse Foundation, whose mission is to transform public education by using food to teach, nurture, and empower young people. In particular, the foundation has worked with the Berkeley Unified School District to develop a public school curriculum that is integrated with the school dining services and incorporates growing, cooking, and sharing food at the table into the school day in order to build a humane and sustainable future for the school's students.

I wonder if google broke vs. Up until around the middle of last year - it was golden. It was nifty and it always worked. But sometime last year I noticed it had started to fail. An example - right now I want to know the differences between a Tomahawk missile and a Hellfire missile. I already know a tiny bit - the Tomahawk is much bigger and much more powerful so more state-of-the-art bang-bang.

Tomahawk vs Hellfire difference

Garbage results: ~0.5/10. Removing the word "difference" is slightly better but still annoying and awful: ~1.5/10.

Edit

I just realized I entirely missed something obvious. I use a Ublock filter to remove the AI. Google probably intentionally broke vs in the results so if you want an answer - you'll have to use the AI "top result".

Cough - chef's kiss

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