Another in a weekly series of posts with interesting reading / viewing material (note: some linked articles contain adult language).
The “Peace President‘s” war of choice with Iran, formally called Operation Epstein Epic Fury continues apace, and has dominated the week’s news. A few facets of the exercise stand out, though.
- Trump and his minions have yet to put forward either a clear justification for starting the war, a plan to finish it, or an exit plan for cleaning up afterwards. There are so many rationales to choose from, but it sounds increasingly likely that Israel forced the U.S.’s “hand,” and we went to war since it was thought safer than waiting for the Iranian response to an Israeli assault.
- Modern munitions are sophisticated– so they take time to produce, and are expensive. As a result, Trump is rapidly burning through our ammo stockpiles, and the tab for all this mounts up.
- Military commanders at more than 30 installations in all branches of the U.S. military have told their troops that the war is part of God’s plan and that Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” This kind of nonsense has been a problem in the U.S. military for years, even though it violates constitutional and Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) prohibitions against injecting religious beliefs into official military instruction or messaging. It’s also bogus theology. At least some Congressional Democrats are asking for an investigation.
- The administration is downplaying our own war dead and refusing help to Americans trapped in the war zone. Meanwhile, Democratic Party leadership are sitting on their hands.
The Epstein files — they’re still out there. But 47,000 of them just disappeared from the Justice Department’s database. At least some of them are now trickling back; DOJ promises the rest will follow. Meanwhile, there are new revelations w.r.t. Epstein’s death.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hauled Bill and Hillary Clinton in for depositions, and… things didn’t go as planned. If you have 9 or 10 hours to spend on it, you can now watch the video of their questioning.
Remember when inflation was news-breaking? Between the war with Iran and tariffs, we can expect to see it return with a vengeance.
Looking for another action you can take? If you use AI on your phone or computer, quit ChatGPT — it’s produced by OpenAI, whose president is a big Trump donor, and is being used by the Pentagon without constraints. More info is available here. Anthropic seems to follow better ethical guidelines, anyway.