The Poor Player

The decision by President Trump to give the go-ahead to join Israel in attacking Iran was influenced by a presentation by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in February that led to a series of discussions inside the White House over the following days and weeks.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times

The Poor Player, you know, the guy who does the Foghorn Leghorn bit of stating how he knows all without knowing anything at all, applies to Trump's war, a fiasco of biblical proportions making the lie of Nam and Iraq, not to mention Afghanistan, master classes of strategic thinking. 

Foghorn Leghorn was directly inspired by the character of Senator Claghorn, a blustery Southern politician played by Kenny Delmar on Fred Allen's popular 1940s radio show. Foghorn adopted many of Claghorn's catchphrases, such as "I say..." and "That's a joke, son!" Delmar's inspiration for Claghorn was a Texas rancher who was fond of saying this.

The instigators

David Barnea, the director of Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, Mr. Netanyahu and Israeli military officials all participated in the high-stakes meeting with Mr. Trump in the White House Situation Room.Credit...Amir Cohen/Reuters; Eric Lee for The New York Times

The start point for this disaster lies with these two getting Trump on board to do the unthinkable.

The black S.U.V. carrying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the White House just before 11 a.m. on Feb. 11. The Israeli leader, who had been pressing for months for the United States to agree to a major assault on Iran, was whisked inside with little ceremony, out of view of reporters, primed for one of the most high-stakes moments in his long career.

U.S. and Israeli officials gathered first in the Cabinet Room, adjacent to the Oval Office. Then Mr. Netanyahu headed downstairs for the main event: a highly classified presentation on Iran for President Trump and his team in the White House Situation Room, which was rarely used for in-person meetings with foreign leaders.

The gathering had been kept deliberately small to guard against leaks. Other top cabinet secretaries had no idea it was happening. Also absent was the vice president. JD Vance was in Azerbaijan, and the meeting had been scheduled on such short notice that he was unable to make it back in time.

The presentation that Mr. Netanyahu would make over the next hour would be pivotal in setting the United States and Israel on the path toward a major armed conflict in the middle of one of the world’s most volatile regions. And it would lead to a series of discussions inside the White House over the following days and weeks, the details of which have not been previously reported, in which Mr. Trump weighed his options and the risks before giving the go-ahead to join Israel in attacking Iran.

And it shows how, in the end, even the more skeptical members of Mr. Trump’s war cabinet — with the stark exception of Mr. Vance, the figure inside the White House most opposed to a full-scale war — deferred to the president’s instincts, including his abundant confidence that the war would be quick and decisive. The White House declined to comment.

Mr. Netanyahu and his team outlined conditions they portrayed as pointing to near-certain victory: Iran’s ballistic missile program could be destroyed in a few weeks. The regime would be so weakened that it could not choke off the Strait of Hormuz, and the likelihood that Iran would land blows against U.S. interests in neighboring countries was assessed as minimal.

Besides, Mossad’s intelligence indicated that street protests inside Iran would begin again and — with the impetus of the Israeli spy agency helping to foment riots and rebellion — an intense bombing campaign could foster the conditions for the Iranian opposition to overthrow the regime. The Israelis also raised the prospect of Iranian Kurdish fighters crossing the border from Iraq to open a ground front in the northwest, further stretching the regime’s forces and accelerating its collapse.

Mr. Netanyahu delivered his presentation in a confident monotone. It seemed to land well with the most important person in the room, the American president.

Sounds good to me, Mr. Trump told the prime minister. To Mr. Netanyahu, this signaled a likely green light for a joint U.S.-Israeli operation.

The nay sayers ...

The intelligence officials had deep expertise in U.S. military capabilities, and they knew the Iranian system and its players inside out. They had broken down Mr. Netanyahu’s presentation into four parts. First was decapitation — killing the ayatollah. Second was crippling Iran’s capacity to project power and threaten its neighbors. Third was a popular uprising inside Iran. And fourth was regime change, with a secular leader installed to govern the country.

The U.S. officials assessed that the first two objectives were achievable with American intelligence and military power. They assessed that the third and fourth parts of Mr. Netanyahu’s pitch, which included the possibility of the Kurds mounting a ground invasion of Iran, were detached from reality.

John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, cautioned against considering regime change
an achievable objective in a Situation Room meeting the next day.
Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

When Mr. Trump joined the meeting, Mr. Ratcliffe briefed him on the assessment. The C.I.A. director used one word to describe the Israeli prime minister’s regime change scenarios: “farcical.”

At that point, Mr. Rubio cut in. “In other words, it’s bullshit,” he said.

It was and is. 

6 interesting findings ...

One Point Perspective

6 interesting findings. Decoherence is fact, Black Holes evaporate, Information is scrambled, Entanglement/Decoherence refreshes every 232 Attoseconds, The universe may reside in a black hole. Microtubules, Nature's Quantum Processor

vitacop/Alamy Stock Photo

In the last 5 years, research in the above 6 have changed how man views the universe as we now have tech able to tease out the fabric of reality in ways not thought possible until now. As a lay scientist, yours truly finds this dataset endlessly fascinating as it forces one to realize just how little we know about a reality we will never fully understand. The language in this dataset is arcane but understandable if one takes the time to learn what is being stated.
If nothing else, research, at this level, is designed to be disproved as science is ruthless. If theory,
as per Richard Feynman, doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong. :)

 

Circularity/Rv II

A brief segue on Black Holes evaporate ...

To this writer, the notion of black holes of differing sizes and life spans endlessly evaporating/exploding 24/7 may not only describe the quantum jitters but also explains the existence of big bangs of all sizes powering reality and giving rise to the particle zoo because, if true, the theory is truly scale invariant and begins to answer the question of how reality works at deep level. ER=EPR rules and ... we may be living inside a black hole after all. :)

If so, many worlds and the same physics for reality applies because if black/worm holes comprise the quantum foam, many worlds is fact, not fiction but many worlds will differ from the usual model envisioned depending on the size and life span of the black/worm holes in question as the smaller the hole, the shorter the lifetime. 

"Embedding diagram" of a Schwarzschild wormhole

Scrambled but not lost :)

Mirror Plex :)

This "wonderful" pix relates, in indirect fashion, to Quantum Mechanics and the "art" of observation and to Jonathan Wheeler's It from Bit as information is never lost, it's scrambled and, with effort, the data can be recovered. 

In dynamics with fast entanglement generation, quantum observables generally become insensitive to the details of the underlying dynamics at long times due to the effects of scrambling. In experimental systems, repeated time-reversal protocols have been successfully implemented to restore sensitivities of quantum observables.4 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.10191

In english, as per Gemini with small edits. :)

The Willow findings are the first physical evidence that
Johnathan Wheeler’s "It from Bit" is the primary operating system of the vacuum.

The fact of observation destroying the quantum state of superposition, thus causing collapse/decoherence, is well known. To prevent that, Willow uses constant, non-destructive observation to correct errors by "reversing" time to find the scrambled data, thus proving information is never lost; it’s just scrambled.   

 

The Multiverse beckons. Hartmut Neven (Google) suggests Willow’s speed validates parallel universes as the quantum foam is conjectured to consist of worm holes winking in and out of existence and that the notion of us residing in a black hole, which is gaining credence, points to the fact the multiverse is indeed real.   

The informational "Bit" of the error-correction circuit is what actually creates the physical  stability of the qubit in Willow.

From John Wheeler (1983), Law Without Law. In: Quantum theory and measurement.

As stated before.

Johnathan Wheeler's insightful notion of existence being an information construct (It from Bit) makes sense as the photon, (boson), the force carrier of the electromagnetic, becomes digital by transitioning from an analog wave into discrete energy packets (quanta) when absorbed by leptons (the electron), a radical solution to the black body problem described in detail by Max Planck in 1900, thus introducing Quantum Mechanics to the world.  Prior to absorption,  photons, aka light, exist as analog waves, something readily seen by Thomas Young's brilliant 1801 double slit experiment.

Photons or matter (like electrons) produce an interference pattern when two slits are used.

Mirror Plex/Wide View The Equestrian Checkpoint

The 25th ... NOW!!!

President Trump speaks about Iran at a White House press conference on April 6.
Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

The 25th ... NOW!!!

Calls for President Trump's removal from office reached a fever pitch among congressional Democrats on Tuesday after he threatened that "a whole civilization will die tonight" in a post about Iran.

Why it matters: Lawmakers are openly floating impeachment or even removal via the 25th Amendment — a far cry from the strict taboo around such procedures at the start of Trump's second term.

With the Democratic grassroots increasingly raging at what they see as corruption and Constitutional violations by the Trump administration, their allies on Capitol Hill have warmed to more drastic methods.

Trump's strikes on Venezuela and now Iran this year have galvanized Democratic lawmakers around measures like impeachment.

Driving the news: Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), the Iranian-American president of House Democrats' freshman class, was the first out of the gate on Monday following Trump's threat of "Hell" for Iran on Easter Sunday.

"The 25th Amendment exists for a reason; his Cabinet should use it. The fate of U.S. troops, the Iranian people, and the very foundation of our global system are at stake," she said in a statement.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said in a post on X: "This is not ok. Invoke the 25th amendment. Impeach. Remove. This unhinged lunatic must be removed from office."

Matters escalated on Tuesday after Trump posted on Truth Social: "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again."

Time for the orange menace to go ... NOW!!!

The 2 week delay does not change the 25th removal bit in any way, shape or fashion.

A hole in the world ...

A building damaged by recent strikes is seen through a curtain placed on the partial exterior of the historic
Golestan Palace in Tehran, on April 4, 2026. | Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images

A hole in the world looms if Trump carries out the ultimate atrocity.

President Donald Trump threatened the death of an entire civilization in a Tuesday morning post on Truth Social, the latest violent warning for the Iranian regime ahead of an 8 p.m. deadline for reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Tuesday night may well be “one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World,” he wrote.

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” he wrote. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?”

A hole in the world ... looms.

Oh, we now have a 2 week delay. The Donald, what a bro, what a stud. Unreal ...

And so it begins ...

Emergency crews work at the site of an airstrike on a residential building that also destroyed
the adjacent synagogue in Tehran, Iran, on Tuesday. Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

And so it begins ... K. Vonnegut

Israeli strikes hit railways and bridges in Iran on Tuesday,

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said.

“Yesterday, our pilots destroyed transport aircraft and dozens of helicopters at an Iranian Air Force base. Today, they attacked the railways and bridges used by the Revolutionary Guards,” Netanyahu said in a video message released by the Prime Minister’s Office.

“They use them to transfer raw materials for weapons, weapons themselves, and the operatives who attack us, the United States, and the countries of the region — those same operatives who also oppress the Iranian people,” he continued.

Netanyahu said that the strikes were “not intended to target the Iranian people.”

The word "assume" applies. Iran's response ... Israel's desalination plants.

3/7/26 A two week reprieve, and then what?

It is a tale ...

Black Cow

This may be one place to go to if the mad king in the White House does the ultimate, end the 5000 year old civilization of Iran egged on by Israel in order to avoid Epstein. This is F**CKING insane. Yours truly has ranted about this in previous blurbs, as you, my loyal readers know, and now we wait until 8:00PM to see if this horrific event comes to pass. Being an old guy, I have never seen anything like this as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 was debated by sane people terrified of what could happen if hotter heads prevailed. This is different. This is a deranged, hollow man realizing, deep down, he's a failure but will never admit it and is willing to destroy the world, as we know it, to show everyone he is not. Tragic beyond words.

MACBETH.

She should have died hereafter;

There would have been a time for such a word.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing.

William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, Scene V, lines 17–28

Old Blue

The 50 yearl old tree, planted by the Redding Garden Club in honor of their
beloved Edith Pharr (Active Civic Beautificaltion Chair persn) is being replaced.
The original Colorado Blue Spruce tree had developed a fungus and was losing its lower limbs. 

The wood from the tree will be used to create several momentos
including a commorative wooden bowl.

A new tree will be planted in April 2026 in hopes it will be
suitable for lighting the 2026 Holiday season.

Addendum: The clip shows just how involved it is to take down Old Blue.
Professionalism to the max applies.

We don't need you

Animated Gif by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty Images/x

The pix says it all. Psycho Pete has to go, now.

And if Trump doesn’t fire him, Congress has to force out
the Secretary of Brain-Dead Racist, Sexist Bro-osity.

Pete Hegseth wants us to call him the Secretary of War.

One problem with the idea is that it's not up to him. The name of the Department is is screwing up to a fare-thee-well every single damned day is established by statue, and only Congress can change it.

So Congress, grow a pair and fire the bastard. 

Time to end this insanity NOW!!!

A view of the damaged B1 bridge on 3 April, a day after it was destroyed by an airstrike, in Karaj, Iran.
Photograph: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

Some US politicians have reacted with alarm and questioned the US president’s mental state after Donald Trump issued an abusive, expletive-laden threat to Iran in which he called on the regime to “open the fuckin’ strait [of Hormuz], you crazy bastards”, as he threatened to further attack the country’s energy and transport infrastructure.

The US president wrote on his Truth Social platform: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”. 

Time to end this insanity NOW!!!

Mary Trump was right. Her uncle will take the world down in order to avoid Epstein.