Our Despot-in-Decline is issuing threat after threat like he’s the Big Bad Orange Wolf. Including threatening to completely “obliterate” Iran’s largest power plants if Iran doesn’t cry “Uncle.” Two can play that game.
Iran warns of ‘irreversible damage’ to regional infrastructure if power plants attacked
In a post on X, Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf warned that critical infrastructure and energy facilities in the Middle East could be “irreversibly destroyed” if Iranian power plants are attacked. He wrote:
Immediately after the power plants and infrastructure in our country are targeted, the critical infrastructure, energy infrastructure, and oil facilities throughout the region will be considered legitimate targets and will be destroyed in an irreversible manner, and the price of oil will remain high for a long time.
The comments come after Donald Trump gave Iran 48 hours to reopen the strait of Hormuz to shipping or face the destruction of its energy infrastructure.
On Saturday evening, the US president wrote on Truth Social that the US would “hit and obliterate” Iranian power plants – “starting with the biggest one first” – if Tehran did not fully reopen the strait within 48 hours, or 23:44 GMT on Monday according to the time of his post.
The comment on the price of oil was a rhetorical missile targeting Donald Trump.
Iran just demonstrated its potential reach with a failed attempt to hit the U.S. base on Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean:
Iran’s attempt to strike a US-UK base over 2,000 miles (over 3,000 kilometers) off its coast has renewed questions about Tehran’s military capabilities and how far its missiles can reach.
On Friday morning local time, Iran launched two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, a joint US-UK military base in the Indian Ocean, a US official told CNN, adding that neither of them struck the base. This marks what appears to be the first known attempt to target the base, which was deliberately built in a remote location beyond the reach of many adversaries.
While the attack was unsuccessful, it shows that Iran may not be adhering its self-imposed missile range limit of 2,000 kilometers, raising concerns about whether Tehran could hit US and European interests farther away than previously thought.
The New York Times reports that one missile failed mid-flight and an American warship shot down the other. Meanwhile:
Iranian missiles evaded Israel’s formidable air defenses and struck Dimona and the nearby city of Arad, shattering buildings, seriously injuring at least a dozen people and demonstrating that Tehran can still inflict damage even after three weeks of devastating airstrikes from the United States and Israel.
“This is a very difficult evening,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a social media post.
CNN offers a graphic on Iranian missile capabilities:
It’s all a video game to Secretary of WARfighting and his boss (The Hill):
The White House does argue this conflict is to keep the U.S. safe, but instead of strictly adhering to that type of somber tone, the Trump administration is producing AI-generated content, including video game memes channeling “Call of Duty” or “Grand Theft Auto” as its official messaging for the conflict. They’ve even dubbed the war Operation Epic Fury.
“We’re over here just grinding away on banger memes, dude,” a senior White House official told Politico. “There’s an entertainment factor to what we do. But ultimately, it boils down to the fact that no one has ever attempted to communicate with the American public this way before.”
That’s because Americans never allowed emotionally stunted juveniles near the highest perches in the Executive Branch before.
I don’t know who this is at @theendofnews. It’s not an editorial you’ll see in The New York Times on Sunday. That’s a shame. Tagline: “Reporting from the frontlines of civilization’s descent into stupidity. Perspectives on the news from the dumbest timeline imaginable.”
“[O]ur office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,” Barack Obama’s spokesman Patrick Rodenbush told the press in 2025. Obama’s office is so far too dignified to issue even a nonresponse to the sitting president’s Trump-dancing on Robert Mueller’s grave.
There is nothing left of Trump but a steady stream of threats and insults. The problem for us all is that he has the power of the presidency and the U.S. military backing them.
Years ago, when my dearly departed landlady’s mind was going, she merely accused absent siblings of stealing her steak knives.
“The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.”
-J. Robert Oppenheimer
Well, this happened a few days ago:
Trump: "Some of this weaponry is unthinkable. You don't even want to know about it. Oh, you could end this thing in two seconds if you wanted to."
Now, I don’t mean to be alarmist, but I recently posted this on Bluesky:
I know, I know…there is enough happening right now to keep you up nights without adding that old chestnut to the mix. That said…there must be something in the air:
As Netflix hit “Adolescence” continues to make waves and potentially inspire policy, the team behind it has turned its attention to a new impactful project – a “Threads” reboot.
Warp Films has confirmed it will be turning the BBC’s pivotal TV film into a series. For those unfamiliar, “Threads” aired on BBC Two in 1984 and depicted the devastating effects of a fictional nuclear apocalypse.
Mark Herbert, founder and chief exec of Warp, said: “Threads was, and remains, an unflinchingly honest drama that imagines the devastating effects of nuclear conflict on ordinary people. This story aligns perfectly with our ethos of telling powerful, grounded narratives that deeply connect with audiences.
“Re-imagining this classic film as a TV drama gives us a unique opportunity to explore its modern relevance.”
Emily Feller, chief creative officer and exec producer, added: “This adaptation will allow us to uncover fresh interpretations in light of today’s world. We imagine highlighting how resilience and connection can offer hope even in the most challenging of times. […]
Not much else is known about the reboot at this stage, or which, if any, original cast members might make a return.
Threads debuted on the BBC in 1984, later airing in the U.S. on TBS. Director Mick Jackson delivers an uncompromising realism that makes The Day After (the 1983 U.S. TV drama that depicted the aftermath of nuclear war on an American city) look like a Teletubbies episode. It’s a speculative narrative that takes a medium sized city (Sheffield) and depicts what would likely happen to its populace during and after a nuclear strike, in graphic detail. The message is simple and direct-nothing good comes out of a nuclear conflict. It’s a living, breathing Hell for all concerned-and anyone “lucky” enough to survive will soon wish they were dead.
There was a proliferation of Cold War nuclear paranoia films in the 80s. In addition to the aforementioned made-for-TV movies Threads and The Day After, other notable releases included the funny-scary doc Atomic Cafe (1982), the riveting made-for-TV thriller Special Bulletin (1983), and the feature films War Games (1983), One Night Stand (Australia, 1984), TheManhattan Project (1986), the animated drama When the Wind Blows (UK, 1986) and Miracle Mile (1988).
There was definitely “something in the air” in the early 80s, vis-à-vis the looming specter of global thermonuclear annihilation. The 1980 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led to America’s withdrawal from the SALT II arms treaty (signed by President Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in 1979, the treaty had limited the total of both nations’ nuclear forces to 2,250 delivery vehicles). When President Reagan took office in 1981, he wasted no time ratcheting up anti-Red rhetoric and aggressive posturing toward the USSR (UK PM Margaret Thatcher added her twopence to the chiding, further fueling the unease).
1983 was a particularly dicey year on the nuclear front, beginning with Reagan’s infamous “evil empire” speech in March (he was addressing the National Association of Evangelicals). That was also the year that Reagan proposed his so-called “Star Wars” defense strategy (aka the Strategic Defense Initiative) which he envisioned as a space-based shield. Critics (and the Soviets, unsurprisingly) took the view that this would increase the threat of a nuclear war by giving the U.S. a more assured first-strike capability.
1983 also saw mobile, intermediate-range Pershing II ballistic missiles deployed by the U.S. Army at American bases in West Germany and aimed at targets in the western Soviet Union. And then there were two unnervingly close calls in the Fall of that year:
At the height of the Cold War, the Soviets designed an early-warning radar system meant to track fast-moving threats to increase the chance of reprisal. On September 26, 1983, however, the system, code-named Oko, malfunctioned. At around midnight, Oko’s alarms rang out, alerting the base of one incoming nuclear missile. The screen read, “LAUNCH,” which was not a warning, but an automatic order to prepare for retaliation.
Believing that a U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was incoming, the base went into a panic. However, some officers on duty were skeptical that the United States would choose to send only one ICBM, knowing that it could not affect the Soviets’ counter-strike capability. Stanislov Petrov, an officer that helped create the code for the early-warning software, also knew that Oko was prone to error. He reset the system, but the alarms persisted.
Rather than following protocol, which entailed alerting superiors up the chain of command, Petrov awaited corroborating evidence. No evidence came, and the alarms soon stopped. Petrov’s actions, or inaction, almost certainly averted a nuclear disaster.
Just 11 days later, NATO forces in Brussels took part in a joint military exercise that simulated a response to a hypothetical Soviet nuclear attack. The exercise was code-named Able Archer 83.
The primary purpose of the exercise was to test the command-and-control procedures for NATO’s nuclear forces in the event of a global crisis. Unlike previous wargames, however, Able Archer 83 featured new elements specifically meant to confuse and disorient the Soviets.
KGB observers alerted Moscow of the unusual activity, and paranoia set in. Working off dubious intelligence that a NATO offensive against the U.S.S.R. could be cloaked under the guise of a military exercise, the Soviets began preparations for a large-scale retaliation. Then Soviet leader Yuri Andropov mobilized entire military divisions, transported nuclear weapons to their launch sites, and scrambled a fleet of bombers carrying nuclear warheads. Military command handed Andropov the nuclear briefcase, known in Russia as the “cheget.”
Lenoard Perroots, a high-ranking intelligence officer for the U.S. Air Force stationed in Europe, observed that the Soviets were responding as though the exercise was real. In what the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board has called a “fortuitous, if ill informed” decision, Perroots did not reciprocate by raising western asset alert levels. Instead, he waited. The Soviets eventually realized that the exercise was not a surprise attack and aborted their planned response.
This was the shaky and unsettling political climate in November of 1983, which is when Testament, a modestly budgeted PBS Playhouse production, opened in theaters. The official PBS premiere wasn’t until a year later in November of 1984; the film had been so well-received in previews that Paramount Pictures gave it a theatrical release (while this has become standard practice for production/streaming studios like Amazon, Apple TV+ and Netflix, it was unusual for the time).
“They” say that history is, if anything, cyclical. As Fate would have it, not two days before the current occupant of the White House whimsically mused “Oh, you could end this thing in two seconds if you wanted to” within earshot of the prime minister of the only nation on earth to date that has experienced the horrific effects of nuclear war firsthand, Criterion has reissued Testament on Blu-ray.
Beautifully directed by Lynne Littman, Testament (with a screenplay adapted by John Sacred Young from a story by Carol Amen) takes a low key approach, but pulls no punches; I think this is what gives her film’s anti-nuke message more teeth and makes its scenario more relatable than Stanley Kramer’s similarly-framed but more sanitized and preachy 1959 drama On the Beach (or more contemporaneously, the relatively histrionic and sensationalistic 1983 TV movieThe Day After).
Jane Alexander (who received a well-deserved Best Actress nomination for her work here), her husband (William DeVane) and three kids (Roxana Zal, Ross Harris, Lukas Haas) live in sleepy Hamlin, California, where afternoon cartoons are interrupted by a news flash that nuclear explosions have occurred in New York. Then there is a flash of a different kind when nearby San Francisco (where DeVane has gone on a business trip) receives a direct strike.
There is no exposition on the political climate that precipitates the attacks; this is a wise decision, as it puts the focus on the humanistic message of the film. All of the post-nuke horrors ensue, but they are presented sans the melodrama that informs many entries in the genre. The fact that the nightmarish scenario unfolds so deliberately, and amidst such everyday suburban banality, is what makes it very difficult to shake off.
As the children (and adults) of Hamlin succumb to the inevitable scourge of radiation sickness and steadily “disappear”, like the children of the ‘fairy tale’ Hamlin, you are left haunted by the final line of the school production of “The Pied Piper” glimpsed earlier in the film… “Your children are not dead. They will return when the world deserves them.”
Criterion’s Blu-ray features a new, director-approved 4K digital restoration. The new print is gorgeous; a night and day upgrade from the 2004 Paramount DVD (which I will now happily retire). Criterion has ported over two of the extra features from the Paramount release, Testament at 20 (featuring a moving 2004 reunion of the director and principal cast) and Nuclear Thoughts (featuring nuclear science experts)
Other extras include an engaging new conversation between Sam Wasson and director Littman (she has had a fascinating career), two restored short documentaries by Littman (from 1976 and 1985), and an audio recording of Jane Alexander reading the short story “The Last Testament” (on which the film was based).
Highly recommended…watch it while you can. And don’t forget to say your prayers.
One more thing…
More 80s Cold War nostalgia- Siskel & Ebert’s Testament review:
Former Marine, U.S.Attorney, FBI Director and Special Counsel Robert Mueller passed away Friday evening. He was a giant of a man whose commitment to justice and fairness was staunch. I met him for the first time during the investigation into the murder of my Father-in-Law shortly before I went to DOJ. His, was one of the good examples. Every prosecutor who came in contact with him was better off for it.
When the Mueller report was finished during Trump’s first term in office, Trump‘s Attorney General, Bill Barr, claimed it was a total exoneration. That, of course, was not the case. Once the entire, albeit redacted, report became available, it was clear that it was a stunning indictment of a sitting president—but one that respected constraints on prosecutors that prevented an actual indictment of a sitting president. It should’ve been a roadmap for Congress to impeach and convict, but they did not take up Muller’s invitation.
Mueller and his team were not up to the task of dealing with these monsters. In their defense it was early in his first term and everyone was still learning what we were dealing with. And Vance is right that he left and explicit road map for the congress to impeach — and the DOJ to then prosecute him. That’s now pretty well been foreclosed by the daft Supremes who granted him immunity (because they have Fox News Brain Rot and were apparently convinced that the investigations against Trump were all partisan witch hunts.)
That post by Trump says it all. He’s lost his marbles and there’s not a goddamned thing we can do about it.
I’m sharing this analysis of what’s wrong with this war by Richard Haas, old-hand diplomat and expert on the region, because it’s clearly written and very honest. As far as I can tell, and I’m far from an expert, this is it:
They have gotten it wrong at just about every turn. There was no new intelligence or development justifying the decision to go to war. Even the loyalist serving as Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, could not provide evidence to the contrary. That said, her comment that “it is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat” is flat-out preposterous. That is precisely its responsibility. And the president’s responsibility is to make policy decisions informed by sound intelligence.
The errors did not end there. There were expectations that Iran would quickly capitulate—and no expectations that it would retaliate effectively. Regime change was seen, at least by the president, as likely. The list goes on. What explains this record? I would suggest hubris in the aftermath of the Venezuela operation and more broadly in the wake of Trump’s reelection. Then there was the hollowing out of government agencies, from the National Security Council staff to the State Department, resulting in a marked lack of expertise and experience. The appointment of people to jobs they had no business holding – from Gabbard to Hegseth to the two envoys handling or, more accurately, mishandling the negotiations with Iran (not to mention Russia and Ukraine and Gaza) – is another factor. The absence of much in the way of a formal policymaking process where truth is regularly spoken to power compounds the mistakes and helps explain what has gone so wrong.
Some are blaming Israel and its prime minister for where we find ourselves. I disagree. Bibi Netanyahu is free to make his case to this president, as is any foreign leader. It is up to Trump, though, to decide what is in the best interests of the United States.
The problem is that Trump has not done this. He has failed to stand up to Netanyahu even though the interests of the two countries have been and remain different. Israel was pressing for war to eliminate much of Iran’s ballistic missile inventory. The United States was, ostensibly, far more focused on the unresolved nuclear issue. Yet the Trump administration walked away from negotiations that showed some potential to deal with nuclear matters, instead launching an ill-advised war that, thus far, has left Iran’s nuclear capabilities intact.
And now the divergence between the interests of the two countries is even greater. Israel’s strategy toward Iran mirrors its strategy toward Gaza and Lebanon: an open-ended war of attrition to reduce military capabilities and destroy leadership. The preference is for regime change, but Israel is willing to accept disarray, in the leadership, the country, or both. It is willing to pursue this policy for as long as it takes, i.e., forever if need be, as the bulk of its interests as it sees them are in play.
By contrast, U.S. priorities are largely elsewhere (or at least should be), namely in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, where rival major powers reside, as well as in the functioning of a global economy. This war is at odds with all this: it has seriously disrupted the global economy and is consuming U.S. resources better deployed and employed elsewhere.
From Worse to Even Worse
Israel made a bad situation worse this week by attacking Iran’s South Pars gas field. Trump has been all over the place since, at times denying and at other times admitting his involvement, but there is little doubt that he knew of and even approved the misguided Israeli action, one that led to multiple Iranian attacks that destroyed energy infrastructure in Qatar and other neighboring countries.
Not surprisingly, Trump is now frantically looking for a way out. For only the second time in his experience as president (the other being the COVID-19 pandemic in his first term), Trump is up against something he cannot control. He has let slip the dogs of war, and in their own way both Israel and Iran have seized the initiative. Instead of an easy victory, which is how Trump viewed Venezuela, he finds himself struggling with what could be the defining moment and failure of his presidency.
Trump’s latest idea, advanced by Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, is to “unsanction” Iranian oil that has left Iran but has yet to reach its destination. It is a singularly bad move. Any impact on oil prices will be small and fleeting, but the offer signals to Iran that the U.S. is increasingly desperate for the conflict to end, a signal that will only increase Iran’s price for ending it and the lengths Iran will go to ensure it ends on its terms. Any easing of sanctions on Iran should be conditioned on changes in its behavior. That this offer came just hours after Iran attacked many of its neighbors who also happen to be U.S. partners and allies only made a bad decision worse. The price tag for this war, no matter how it ends, will be large and long-lasting.
He has some ideas for how to possibly get out of this thing which you should read at the link.
This mess gets worse every day. Trump is just flying by the seat of his pants impulsively making decisions that have no strategic logic. There is simply no way of telling where this is going but it will be sheer luck if the consequences aren’t catastrophic.
“America is becoming predatory. America is unreliable. There’s a sense that we are not a reliable security partner right now…you can’t bring allies on board if they don’t trust you”pic.twitter.com/gz30TUtRcq
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) March 20, 2026
He came out last fall with a statement against Trump. But he didn’t put himself on the line during the election (although in retrospect, I doubt it would have made any difference.) Still it’s good that he’s saying what he says now. Every voice is important.
The whole interview is worth watching if you have the time. He talks about how “stoic virtues” are important for military leaders and it made me chuckle when I thought of Pete Hegseth. I’m pretty sure Mattis had him in mind when he made that comment. And Trump.
Here’s how much A.I. is fucking with Americans’ brains:
The beautiful Army blonde Jessica Foster has posed with an F-22 Raptor fighter jet, donned camouflage in the desert and walked a tarmac with President Donald Trump on the first day of the strikes on Iran.
The slew of photos and videos depicting the patriotic life of the MAGA dream girl have led her Instagram account to explode, gaining more than a million followers since she began posting four months ago.
But Foster is an illusion — a fake woman who experts say was probably created by an artificial intelligence image generator. There’s no public record of Foster’s military service and the account,despite not being labeled AI, is packed with indicators that she is fake. Between many of her pro-Trump posts, Foster also prominently displays her feet.
Why be surprised? Donald John Trump is a fake president. If only he was an A.I. invention.
Bari Weiss, the editor-in-chief at the now Trump-friendly CBS News, has announced there will be mass layoffs at the network.
In a Friday memo to staff, seen by the Daily Beast, Weiss and CBS president Tom Cibrowski announced the cuts, saying those affected will be notified by the end of the “difficult day.”
“It’s no secret that the news business is changing radically, and that we need to change along with it,” Weiss and Cibrowski wrote.
“New audiences are burgeoning in new places, and we are pressing forward with ambitious plans to grow and invest so that we can be there for them. That means some parts of our newsroom must get smaller to make room for the things we must build to remain competitive.”
It’s worth remembering that whenever a MAGA figure enters an institution as a “leader,” that institution is soon destroyed, with the MAGA figure thereafter blaming everyone else for what happened and launching a round of mass layoffs
Sometime in the future, the MAGA figure will be paid off to go away, even as they leave the institution they poisoned utterly destroyed forever
Once you start looking for this phenomenon you can’t stop seeing it, and it’s exactly what’s happening at CBS News today
Abramson continues. But you know where this is going:
MAGA is a death cult. That means it doesn’t build anything or innovate or foster any community or develop ethoi that inform or inspire… it has only one setting, and that setting is war. Tear everything down, attack everyone, delegitimize everything, defile everywhere. The idea that Bari Weiss has any vision whatsoever that relates to the news or anything else is simply laughable. She is a self-aggrandizing, clueless chaos agent who will throw all the toys out of the crib until she skulks away.
The only thing any professional operating in good faith can do in the face of something like this is get as far away from it as possible as quickly as possible so that you don’t get any of the moral and spiritual stink of MAGAism on you.
