Marshall was right ...

The Lobby

Yours truly has waxed "poetic" about Israel with Past as Prolog/4500 detailing
the history of the country, not the lobby. Now comes a book about the lobby and it's about time. 

The following is the U.N.'s map of the proposed partition. The blue areas comprising roughly 57 percent of the land were to be allotted to Jews; orange areas were to be allotted to Palestinians. Jerusalem was to be left under the governance of the international community, because of its historical and religious importance for numerous religions and cultures.

In 1948, with war raging in Palestine, Harry Truman found himself trapped.

On one side were Zionist lobbyists and the president’s domestic political advisers, who were urging him to support the establishment of a Jewish state in as much of Palestine as possible. On the other were his top foreign policy and national security officials, led by the secretary of state, George C Marshall. Their unanimous recommendation was to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state, which they believed would trigger war in the Middle East and endanger the future of US relations with the Arab and Muslim world.

With the exception perhaps of George Washington, no diplomatic or military leader in American history had a reputation for patriotic virtue and skilled devotion to duty comparable to that of Marshall. Truman was in awe of the secretary of state, who, as chief of staff of the US armed forces, had been hailed by Winston Churchill as “the true organizer of victory” in the second world war. After the war, it had been Marshall who launched the plan named after him to rebuild Europe.

President Harry Truman shakes hands with secretary of state George Marshall in Washington DC
on 29 May 1947. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In the mid-1940s, Marshall pushed quietly but steadily against the Zionist movement’s proposals to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. He was concerned that American support would open opportunities for the Soviet Union to exploit Arab anger, put Middle Eastern oil supplies at risk in the event of a war between the Soviet Union and the United States, and require the deployment of unavailable American troops to prevent bloodshed and instability in Palestine. These were, indeed, the strongly held views of virtually all of Truman’s most important military and foreign policy advisers.

Truman was personally and deeply moved by the suffering of Jewish survivors of the Nazi “Final Solution”, but also irritated by and at times furious with the constant hectoring to which he was subjected by campaigners for recognition of a Jewish state in Palestine, including the World Zionist Organization and a host of other Jewish delegations, friends and politicians. Despite his personal exasperation, he could not ignore them. Coming in an election year that would pit him against Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, pressures from the Zionist lobby forced him into an excruciating and embarrassing position.

Such a move, according to Marshall, would be a “transparent dodge to win a few votes”, he said, leaving the “great dignity of the office of the President … seriously diminished”. Marshall declared he would not personally be able to vote for Truman should he bow to political pressure on the issue. A shaken Truman closed the meeting by saying he agreed with Marshall.

However, within two days, exquisitely sensitive to the tenuousness of his hold on the presidency and the power of Zionist sympathizers to throw New York’s electoral votes to the Republicans, he ordered that the US recognize Israel.

From 1948-2026 ...

The fact is that from Truman to Trump, most American presidents have caved to the demands of Israel and its advocates. Driven by the fear of domestic political defeats, presidents have regularly rejected or abandoned foreign policies that both they and their most senior advisers believed were in the best interests of the US and at the expense of making meaningful progress in bringing a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The greatest story in geopolitics and in American domestic affairs
is how the far-right government of a small Middle Eastern country
came to hold a controlling interest in United States foreign policy.

Past as prolog indeed.

The smell of desperation ...

US President Donald Trump posted online that to avoid a large military attack, Iran must open the Strait of Hormuz and put aside its nuclear programme [Aaron Schwartz/AFP]

The smell of desperation applies as Iran holds all the cards. The strait remains closed, Iran still has ordnance and the US is running out of same. The question to ask is, is Iran even talking?

Why has Trump halted attacks?

Trump earlier said in his post that the US was “locked and loaded and ready to go against the Islamic Republic of Iran” but Tehran and other Middle Eastern countries asked him to hold off on new attacks.

“Based on this request, I have agreed, for the future benefit of the WORLD and, likewise, the survival of a successful and prosperous Iran, to cancel the attack, subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL,”
Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

He said the deal “would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat”.

“The Country of Israel joins me in this commitment. Get to work, everybody, and get it DONE,”
he wrote in the post.

Interesting ... He's demanding total capitulation and pretending it's a negotiation.

The question to ask is two fold. Trump and Bibi can't survive if Iran "wins" as Trump will appear weak and Bibi faces an upcoming election while the hard liners in Iran remain in power.

In closing, people far smarter than me have said, just stop fighting. No negotiation.
Both parties agree to disagree, the Strait reopens and Iran becomes the true hegomon of the region.  

Chasing a dream ...

FotoField / Shutterstock / Futurism

Chasing a dream applies even if the dream itself becomes a nightmare as limitless money tends to cloud one's mind in conveying a vision even if there is none. Zuck's a prime example of why this take applies.

Despite having almost nothing to show from his enormous spending on AI,
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is doubling down.

Earlier this week, the social media company announced during its second quarter earnings call that it was raising capital expenditures from $125 billion to at least $130 billion, a clear sign that it’s not taking its foot off the pedal.

Yet amid renewed concerns that the tech industry may be nearing the edge of a cliff thanks to its obsession with building out enormously expensive data centers without a clear path to profitability, investors sent back a clear signal in return. Meta’s shares nosedived following its announcement, plummeting over 11 percent over the last five days alone.

According to Zuckerberg, all that extra AI spending was “accelerating every part of our core business.”
He also claimed that some of the tech would be sold off to other businesses.

But whether the company will have anything compelling to offer them remains dubious at best. Meta has been burning through its funds at an alarming rate. Even strong revenue numbers — a 28 percent increase this latest quarter compared to the same period last year — couldn’t stem the bleeding, with free cash flow sinking to the lowest level in at least five years thanks to AI spending.

Despite committing well over $100 billion to the tech, Meta has been practically absent from the frontier AI model race. Its so-called Superintelligence Lab has turned into a “soul-crushing gulag” plagued with
rock-bottom morale — and most importantly, it’s not getting results.

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism.
Source: Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images; Shutterstock

The loss of ethics ...

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Shutterstock

Your's truly loves books. Paperbacks, hard copy, you name it. If something has to go, the item in question is donated to the library whereupon a huge book fair in my town, puts it out for people to peruse and perhaps buy. Thus far, most of the work gets sold. The rest is donated to schools and other entities wanting people to have access to said resource. In reading Futurism's piece about Anthropic, the loss of ethics applies.

Traditionally, books have been good for two things: reading, and looking nice on a shelf.

But AI companies are interested in neither.

To those building large language models, books are nothing more than fodder to be devoured en masse before being spit out like fishbone. Often, they’re happy to use digital books — or even better, pirated digital books, as Meta has been accused of doing, and as Anthropic was forced to pay a $1.5 billion settlement to authors for also doing.

But many companies, including Anthropic, have turned to ingesting physical books instead, which they can buy countless used copies of on the cheap. According to the settled lawsuit, Anthropic used a hydraulic powered cutting machine to neatly remove the pages from the books it procured from book resellers and then scanned them using industrial-grade imaging equipment. In other words, it was literally ripping off authors’ books to train its AI.

This process took advantage of a legal concept known as first-sale doctrine, which allows a buyer to do what they want with a purchase without the original copyright holder’s say-so. And since Anthropic was turning
the original physical texts into digital ones — rather than redistributing them as new copies — a judge found this to be “transformative,” and therefore protected by fair use.

This is akin to the ancient Greeks and the notion of seeing a sculpture without paint,
something considered obscene.

True colors

54 years later ...

Image by Noel Johnson. Data source: MIT World3 ‘Business as Usual’ model (Meadows et al., 1972).

A truly excellent article by Noel Johnson on Medium on the Limits to Growth brings back memories as I too wrote pieces on LTG back in 2021/3 echoing some of Johnson's thoughts about a 54 year old prediction proving out to be all too true in terms of accuracy most astounding in this writer's opinion.

Recently, I found myself gazing at a line graph that felt more like a mirror than a piece of data. It wasn’t a graph of last year’s inflation rate. It was a 1972 forecast of the future, shown on a computer model known as World3. This model was created by a group of MIT researchers working for the Club of Rome and was used in the authored book, The Limits To Growth.

When the world3 model was first introduced, the entire scientific community basically laughed at it. Most economists dismissed it as "Malthusian," and politicians ignored it. We had entered into a period of unprecedented economic expansion and the concept that there would be an end to this type of expansion seemed like a total buzzkill from another era.

Sunset/rev L

Yesterday, I viewed the recent update to this information. What was interesting to see was how well the chaos of the 2020s supply chain fragility, along with the increasing costs of raw materials and the overall sense that our global economy is beginning to sputter, was nothing short of predictable. In fact, if you look at it now, a decade ago we mapped out exactly where we’d be today. We aren’t drifting wildly through history. We’re tracking a decades old systems model with alarming accuracy.

Growth does not cease due to lack of creative solutions. Growth ceases due to increased resistance within the system. As we deplete resources with increasing ease of access, we are forced to expend greater amounts of both energy and capital to obtain each subsequent unit of production. This phenomenon is referred to as diminishing returns on investment.

Lastly.

This is the Innovation Trap. Technology is a means of directing energy and materials, not a miraculous source of energy. Advanced technology often requires more complexity, not less. Rarer minerals, more accurate production and a highly specialized international supply chain are all necessary. Each ‘solution’ we design adds a new layer of upkeep and a new set of dependencies.

Technology is quicker and more effective, it is also far more prone to malfunction when the surroundings change.

And we haven't even discussed global warming, habitat destruction or the impact of forever wars.

And so it goes -  K. Vonnegut.

The fate of the country ...

A banner in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar featuring the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an airstrike at the start of the U.S.-Iran war.Credit...Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times

A year ago, yours truly predicted this escalation of war with Iran and friends of mine laughed.
I bet they aren't laughing now.

This CF goes beyond Custer as Custer's fate was confined to a single battlefield. The US was not impacted.
With the war with Iran, foisted upon us by Israel and Trump, the impact of this CF's becoming existential.

To America’s allies, President Trump’s war in Iran, now in its sixth month,
seems headed for a strategic defeat.

They worry that the inability of the United States to turn military superiority into a sustainably changed Iran has displayed a vulnerability that Russia and China will welcome. In addition, Mr. Trump’s goals remain unmet, and the U.S. military is running short on key armaments that it needs for global reach.

For the moment, Iran is seemingly resolute under a more radical government, its nuclear and ballistic missile programs are degraded but not destroyed, and the Strait of Hormuz is effectively under its control. The war has left both the United States and Israel in weaker positions — and blaming each other for the mess.

Iranian missiles and drones not only restrict traffic through the strait and damage the economic infrastructure of allied energy production, but they also continue to threaten American bases across the Middle East and have killed or injured American service members.

The dignified transfer in Delaware for U.S. Army soldiers killed in action last month
while deployed in Jordan.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

What the domestic U.S. news is actively suppressing is the staggering scale of the devastation. The Pentagon officially admits to 19 U.S. soldiers dead, over 624 wounded, and 42 aircraft lost. But independent intel shows the Muwaffaq al-Salti Air Base in Jordan was absolutely gutted by Iranian ballistics.

Worse, the unrestricted infrastructure war has already started. The U.S. and Israel struck civilian, academic and gas sites in Tehran and Iran immediately responded by hitting critical water and electricity infrastructure in Kuwait. Factor in the Houthi blockade choking the Red Sea and one sees the entire Levant breaking apart under the thermodynamic stress of this war.

But the true tripwire? Iran's strikes inadvertently hit a Chinese installation by circumstance.
By dragging China's physical assets into the crossfire, the calculus of this disaster has officially
been raised to a possible World War III scenario.

This administration is destroying America as we speak. From the demonization of science and medicine to the weaponization of education and immigration, the damage is extreme and ongoing. Combine this with Israel defining our foreign policy and dictating how to destroy Iran has been a loss leader for the ages and supports the fact this war has become existential in scope. Where this goes, no one knows but from this writer's perspective, nothing good will come from this unless Trump is removed from office via the 25th. 

In closing, the midterms are the last hope for this nation as both houses must turn blue to try to limit the damage
and hold course until 2028. The fate of the country depends on it. 

Washington Doctrine of Unstable Alliances applies

 

People hold signs during a news conference on the Venezuela War Powers Resolution on Capitol Hill, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

Forever wars are a great way for the arms merchants to make ever more money with the end product, killed and maimed service members and shattered countries. Combine this with foreign policy errors and the track record for the US equates to 0 wins, 4 losses with loss no 5 coming up. The scoreboard. Nam, L, Iraq, L, the Iranian 1979 revolution against the Shah L and Afghanistan, L. For No. 5, the Iran war unless Israel and US do the unthinkable, involve the use of nukes.

With this in mind, there's one guy trying to do something about it and he's a Republican. :)

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) plans to reintroduce an amendment removing a provision from the Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would substantially expand military technology cooperation between the United States and Israel.

The provision, which was renumbered from Section 224, would establish a United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative. It would require the defense secretary to appoint an official responsible for coordinating joint research, testing, weapons development, technology integration and industrial cooperation between the two countries.

The initiative would cover areas including missile defense, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, cybersecurity, quantum technology, electronic warfare and weapons co-production.

Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) introduced a bipartisan amendment in June that would have removed Section 219 from the bill. Reps. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) later joined the proposal.

Logo of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Why 219? Because of money. The House members voting for this disaster are bought and paid for by AIPAC, the most powerful lobby in the US. If the Senate approves, which they have not, the sovereignty of this once great nation will be forever shattered as it matters not what country is connected to this nation's military, it's the elimination of either country's ability to pursue it's national interest in unencumbered fashion. Washington Doctrine of Unstable Alliances says it all, entangled alliances are dangerous. 

George Washington used a passage in his farewell address to defend his foreign policy toward France.

In closing ... 

“If Section 219 is signed into law, the American people should see it
as Congress fully capitulating our nation’s autonomy to foreign influence.”  Thomas Massie, (R-KY)

The widening war

The widening war

Iago came to Washington and whispered in Othello's ear. Destroy Iran for Greater Israel. 

Let it be written, let it be done - Rameses

No big links here, just yours truly's take on a possible WWIII foisted upon the world
by two monsters, one sane and calculating, the other demented and insane.

A man inspects the damage at the site of a strike in the northern Iraqi Nineveh province. The US and Saudi Arabia said they had struck Iran-backed militants in Iraq Photograph: Zaid Al-Obeidi/AFP/Getty Images

The strategic trap: Ramping up war

The situation unfolding today is the textbook definition of a expanding geopolitical failure, driven almost entirely by the domestic electoral vulnerabilities of Bibi and Trump.

Based on latest intel and ongoing events of the past few hours, here's the grim reality of the "unnecessary catastrophe, AKA the CF" currently gripping the Middle East:

1. The collapse of the pause and proxy escalation

The Guardian reporting confirms the brief pause in fighting is now history. The above pix—showing the gutted remains of a site in Iraq's Nineveh province, complete with militia iconography—shows the end result of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia launching joint retaliatory strikes against the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq in response to a surprise Iranian ballistic missile barrage targeting a U.S. base in Jordan. 

Why you may ask?  Because Israel and the US assassinated the moderate leader in Iran, enabling a less intelligent and radical hard liner to become Supreme Leader. By doing that, they accomplished the exact opposite of what Trump and Bibi wanted, regime change, thus reigniting Iranian fervor to end the Great Satan and it's accomplice, the Zionist entity known as Israel.

We're no longer just looking at a bilateral conflict; the expanding war is rapidly spreading across the region, pulling Iraqi militias, Saudi forces, and Jordanian territory directly into the crossfire, aided and abetted by Iranian proxies Hezbollah and the Houthis.

Iranian missiles are displayed in Tehran amid the US war on Iran. Follow live for latest updates in the Middle East crisis. Photograph: Vahid Salemi/APThe Strategic Trap: Escalation in the July 2026 Iran War

2. The White House pivot

The timing of this escalation's not coincidence. It comes exactly after Benjamin Netanyahu concluded in his first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump at the White House since the war began in February.

The political calculus ...

Netanyahu's Position: Facing critical elections on October 27 and a battered reputation, Netanyahu's political survival depends on maintaining a hardline, offensive posture against Iran. His goal in Washington was to ensure Trump doesn't back out of the conflict or accept a premature ceasefire.

Trump's Trap: Trump originally entered this joint war in February with an aggressive decapitation strike, likely believing his own aura of invincibility would result in a swift collapse of the regime in Tehran. Instead, he has stumbled into a grueling, five-month war of attrition. Now, he's facing intense pressure, ahead of the November midterms, to end a deeply unpopular war that he unilaterally owns.

3. The economic chokehold

Iran understands Trump's electoral vulnerability perfectly. They can't defeat the U.S. militarily, so they attack his poll numbers via the global economy. Also, they have the strategic advantage. They don't have to win, just outlast.

By maintaining the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz and renewing attacks on oil tankers, Iran manipulates the global energy market. Brent crude is moving up again as tit for tat exchanges continue. Iran's strategy is to inflict maximum economic pain at the American gas pump, forcing Trump into a dilemma: escalate the war dramatically (risking further instability and troop casualties) or capitulate to a ceasefire that makes him look weak before the midterms.

4. The ordnance cliff and US strategic exposure

The grim reality of this conflict is rapidly outpacing the industrial base. The U.S. is burning through precision-guided munitions, interceptors, and high-end ordinance at an unsustainable rate. If the current tempo holds, critical stockpiles could reach depletion levels within weeks. This creates a terrifying strategic vacuum: by over-committing hard power to support Netanyahu's immediate objectives, the U.S. leaves itself dangerously exposed on the global stage. This represents a complete abandonment of the strategic restraint and long-term deterrence doctrines championed by leaders like Eisenhower and Kennedy, who warned explicitly against this type of overextension.

5. Domestic issues and escalation risks

The most dangerous variable may not be in the Middle East, but in Washington. As the November midterms approach and the war's unpopularity deepens, the pressure on the administration becomes immense. In deeply polarized environments, the historical fear is that domestic political desperation can lead to manufactured crises, AKA false flags—or exploiting real ones—to justify emergency powers or rally a fractured base. If the conflict is perceived as being manipulated for electoral survival or if emergency measures are invoked, a possible civil war looms.

Conclusion

Yours truly guessed correctly: Bibi got the initial commitment, and now the administration's trapped in a war of its own making. Both leaders are making monumental military decisions based on their immediate political survival rather than on coherent strategy. The result is a volatile, escalating proxy war that is pushing the entire region—and potentially the entire world—closer to the brink.

Remember, this all started in 1953.

Being alive or dead, that is the question ...

Schrödinger's cat

Schrödinger's Cat, forever residing in the nether world of being either alive or dead, is the glamor puss of quantum mechanics, the star participant in a theory most mystifying when it comes to trying to learn how reality works at deep level, is, unfortunately, not the gist of this article but rather ... is The Turtle alive or dead in the year of our lord 2026.

Are you there, Senator McConnell? It’s me, Governor Beshear.

More than six weeks after Senator Mitch McConnell, the former Republican leader from Kentucky, entered the hospital and vanished from public life, the state’s ambitious Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, sent him a letter.

“I am addressing this letter to Senator McConnell under the assumption that he is capable of reading and responding verbally, and not incapacitated by means of consciousness or cognition,” the governor began. He went on to call on Mr. McConnell to “directly and verbally address the people of Kentucky and provide proof of your capacity to serve, or resign.”

Which means, if McConnell has passed, Beshear can appoint a democrat to replace the turtle.

If so, the senate going blue in the midterms becomes a distinct possibility.

The guy on the left looks better without question

With his request for proof of life, Mr. Beshear, 48, was seizing on — and stoking — the frenzied speculation that has swirled on both the left and the far right ever since Mr. McConnell, 84, was hospitalized in mid-June.

And it was an unusual attempt by a politician to puncture the veil of decorum that has long been afforded to aging politicians in the Senate, where more than a third of the senators are now 70 or older.

Terms limits now as nature recycles while this nation refuses to do so.

Washington, DC - August 2 : Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., speaks during a press conference on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Aug 02, 2022 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

4 years ago, the turtle was alive, in 2026 ... No one knows, do one? - Fat Waller

Time lapse to the extreme :)

 Time lapse to the extreme :)

This composite of images taken by NASA’s Psyche mission shows the crescent of Mars grow as the spacecraft approached the planet for a gravity assist from May 2 to May 15, 2026. The series begins with the smallest crescent at the center of the of the image as Mars is farthest from the spacecraft, and progressively grows as the spacecraft gets closer. After these views were captured by the spacecraft’s multispectral imager instrument, Mars began to overfill the field of view as Psyche made close approach with the planet and captured a series of high-resolution images of the surface.

Because Psyche approached Mars from a high phase angle, the planet appeared as a thin crescent in the days running up to the close approach, lit by sunlight reflecting off its surface. Using these views of the approach, close approach, and departure from Mars, the Psyche team compiled a stunning time-lapse of its entire Mars encounter.

The Psyche mission. 

Project Overreach ...

(E+/Getty Images)

Let's think about this, not the Orwellian part and it's gross violation of people's privacy but rather the logistics. Complexity reigns in terms of patient records. The US HC system is bad enough but now, to have a tiny agency, ill equipped to handle the dataset in question, data coming from many EHR databases using different field names and relational configurations to manage said content, promises to be a CF for the ages, not to mention the security issues of protecting these inhaled records and the possibilities of records getting lost or sent to unknown destinations. This is not feasible. The innate stupidity of trying to do this in direct violation of the 4th amendment boggles the mind. 

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, responsible for tracking and issuing recalls of dangerous products sold in the U.S., began discreetly pressuring hospital executives this year to share personally identifiable health data with a private contractor. But hospital lawyers and other industry experts have questioned the agency’s authority to collect, its ability to safeguard such a swath of sensitive information, and whether it has followed the legal process to overhaul its surveillance system.

After KFF Health News asked the CPSC about the new system, the agency announced the program on July 21. Left unmentioned, however, is the alarm it has raised among hospital executives, as well as the nature and extent of the agency’s data demands.

In a stark departure from its product-focused mission, the agency’s goal is to obtain millions of Americans’ medical records from emergency room visits for most injuries, from a broken bone to a childhood vaccine reaction or even a suicide attempt, according to documents and emails obtained by KFF Health News, as well as interviews with five people involved or familiar with the discussions.

A CPSC official also insisted in the emails that the institutions provide all ER patients’ identifiable information — such as names, addresses, diagnoses, and other personal details — to the contractor, Konza Health, for analysis. In correspondence with hospital executives, Konza representatives described participation as “mandatory” or “required.”

Click here for the CPSC document.

Chilling says it all. 

Read the rest of the in depth KFF Health Report, you will learn something, I know I have.

4th term ...

2028 ...

Ok, the crazy uncle in the closet speaks, you know, the relative you want to go away and soon.
WTF applies. 

Selling "god to the masses" ...

 

Gothic Church Vue model/Vue/RM

The goal of the cathedral was to make the human observer feel microscopic. By building the church to an impossible scale, the architects created the feeling of one standing on the edge of the infinite. When a medieval peasant walked into that space, they were completely overwhelmed by the sheer, staggering geometry of the edifice they were in. The space demands submission to not only the structure but also to the deity behind it. Selling "god to the masses"applies.

Yours truly sensed the awe part when entering Notre Dame in Paris.
You could smell the age of the place while experiencing the grandeur.

Gothic Church Vue model/Vue/RM

Gothic Church Vue Model/Vue/RM

The age equation is forever.

Suicide is Painless ...

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The lights are on but nobody's home

Question, what's the betting pool the orange menace does the unthinkable and puts boots on the ground. For yours truly, 75% as the bombing's bombing out and the POTUS is getting angry.

Donny is frustrated. The Wall Street Journal reports that at a recent White House meeting, President Trump “launched into a tirade against Iranian leaders, calling them scumbags and lunatics, and unleashing a series of expletives.” He is worried that the war is “consuming his presidency.” He doesn’t understand why those silly mullahs don’t understand that he’s Mr. Art of the Deal.

One administration official told the paper that Trump sees few good options besides continuing these daily strikes. But these strikes apparently aren’t having much impact, either militarily or psychologically. The Journal also reported this week that satellite images show that Iran is rebuilding the damage done by U.S. strikes and is doing so fast. And after all, if Iran were afraid of the U.S., it wouldn’t have broken the ceasefire earlier this month by striking commercial vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

In the current case, I’m sure Donald Trump no more anticipated that this war would prove problematic than Lyndon Johnson did with respect to Vietnam or George W. Bush did vis à vis Iraq. These things are always supposed to be easy for the mighty United States.

But somehow they rarely are. Only George H.W. Bush successfully prosecuted a short war. Why? Because the Persian Gulf War had one very specific and contained goal: force Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. One can agree or disagree with his decision to launch the war, but at least it was aimed at doing one and only one small and specific thing.

Do we think Trump gave these matters two minutes’ worth of thought before he decided to start this war? We know the answer to that question. Of course he didn’t. Because to Trump, the laws of history don’t apply to him. He’s different. And Benjamin Netanyahu, who according to Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan did the lion’s share of the work of convincing Trump to do this, knew perfectly how to feed Trump’s vanity and take advantage of his total historical ignorance.

So now, Trump is frustrated, like a little boy whose Christmas toy won’t work. That frustration is key here, and much, sadly (I hope not tragically), hangs on it. Will he be content to keep launching strikes that aren’t accomplishing much? Eventually, it seems, the odds are that he’ll get tired of that, and he’ll need to teach those “scumbags and lunatics” a real lesson.

Remember, Suicide is Painless

The song was written for Ken Prymus, the actor playing Private Seidman, to sing during the faux-suicide of Walter "Painless Pole" Waldowski (John Schuck) in the film's "Last Supper" scene.[1] Director Robert Altman had two stipulations about the song for composer Johnny Mandel: it had to be called "Suicide Is Painless" and it had to be the "stupidest song ever written".[2] Altman attempted to write the lyrics himself, but, upon finding it too difficult for his
"45-year-old brain" to write something "stupid" enough,[3] he gave the task to his 15-year-old-son Michael,
who reportedly wrote the lyrics in five minutes.[4][5]

The Bireme ...

Greek Bireme - the Odyssey/RM/Vue

 The Odyssey Render: Vue and the Bireme

The Vue model is accurate, something awesome, something Noland should have used in the film.

Factoids garnered from Wikipedia & the web with edits ...

But beyond the technical execution, there's a fascinating historical and architectural observation
regarding the ship itself.

1. The Viking Delusion

Accuracy is key. In many modern Hollywood depictions, ancient seafarers are often stylized, in this case, using the immediately recognizable, overlapping clinker-built hulls and sweeping, dragon-headed prows of Viking longships.

But a Viking longship in the Odyssey doesn't compute. It's applying a 9th-century CE Northern European tech to an 8th-century BCE Mediterranean reality.

2. The Greek Bireme (The Penteconter)

The ship rendered in the above pix is a highly accurate representation of an ancient Greek galley—specifically a Bireme or a large Penteconter.

Here is why this structure is historically and mechanically sound for the Homeric era:

The Ram: Look at the waterline at the bow. There's a distinct, protruding bronze-sheathed ram. Viking longships were troop transports built to ride over the waves and land on beaches. They don't have rams. Greek galleys were built for the Mediterranean; their primary method of naval warfare was using massive kinetic force to physically puncture the hull of an enemy ship.

The Oar Banks: The model features two distinct vertical levels for oarsmen (the defining characteristic of a bireme, which evolved from the single-banked penteconter). This was required to maximize kinetic thrust without making the ship too long and brittle.

The Fighting Deck: The flat, raised deck above the oarsmen allowed hoplite marines to fight without interfering with the rowers.

3. The Apotropaic Eye (The Ophthalmos)

The most striking and historically perfect detail in this Vue render is the eye painted on the bow.

In ancient Greece, these were called ophthalmoi (eyes). They were not just decorative. They were apotropaic—talismanic symbols specifically designed to ward off evil and bad luck. The ancient Greeks literally viewed their ships as living entities navigating the chaotic, high-entropy void of the ocean. The eyes were painted (or sometimes carved from marble and bolted on) to give the ship "sight" to find the path of least action and avoid the crushing kinetic force of a storm or an enemy ram.

The movie appears to be great but accuracy should be part of the equation.
Artistic license is fine but when artistic license violates common sense, there's a problem. 

The story behind the Bireme would have made Noland's film even better. :)

In transit - RM/Vue