Mark Davis

I'll answer. Because he's the "anti Trump" cause of the moment. We literally had someone leak classified national security information to spin a story from an early damage assessment in Iran in an attempt to make Trump look bad. Someone is risking their career and their freedom to do that over something as serious as national security. Are we to believe that nobody out there on the left would attempt to help hide this guy or flee from justice? That seems like a very likely scenario to me.

Exactly. He never made pretense that he was going to pick the person with the best qualifications. He may have within the construct of only looking at black females. Maybe one day we can just hire people based on merit. I feel the same about immigration. We can make it merit based. That doesn't mean we don't need some percentage of folks willing to do "those jobs that others aren't". But we need to revamp that whole system.

I honestly don't think the party will be able to do that again. Every passing day the left fringe is gaining more power and forcing the old guard out.

Well, true. But those that have been hesitant to embrace him such as Jeffries are going to be forced into it. They're going to have to cave to the fringe left as they seize more control of the party. There will be more of these type candidates too. I don't see how Chuck Schumer can even run for re-election at this point.

Well, I realize you said you wouldn't be gambling. But I'll put this out there. You are right on 2, I'd bet on that. I'd also bet on the D's retaking the House in '26 because it's near impossible for a party in control of Presidency/House/Senate to not lose seats in a midterm. Granted, stuff like occurred in NYC and the LA ICE stuff is definitely helping the R's and could limit losses if it continues. But I'd bet on the D's retaking the House unless they keep going left even faster, and they might. The other thing that would stop it is if, heaven forbid, we do have a terror attack where it's shown someone who is here illegally was behind it. However, I'd wager as much as you want on '28. Especially since we both believe it's a leftist vs Vance. There's no reason to think the left isn't going to lurch the D's further left. We also saw that while many swing voters don't like Trump's rhetoric, they will vote for him when they view the alternative as too extreme. There's no reason to think Vance's tone and the actions of the Dems in the interim won't at least keep those feelings the same. If what the Dems are doing is a reaction to Trump, then it's at their own detriment for the future. We will see how it goes but in NYC look at the exit polling by race. Most black and Hispanic voters aren't for the kooky left stuff. I wouldn't be celebrating this "because of Trump" narrative. These kinds of candidates and narratives are the best way to hand things over to Vance down the line.

The military can run a specific subset of things well, but I don't want them in charge of our economy either.

I'd say in response, let me know how Brandon Johnson is working. Maybe you think he's doing fine though so you can speak to that. But if New York wants it, they can have it. The left may well be lurching further as a reaction to their hatred for Trump, but they are pulling out all the stops to help save the House for the Republicans in '26. This guy is going to be gold for the commercial reels. It's nights like this where I realize what two different futures and worlds people want to live in going forward. All I can do is laugh and shake my head. This should help expedite some population shifts though.

I generally find people who believe communist type ideals will work to be for other horrible policies.

This guy is for city government owned groceries. This is gonna go great!

If they were deceived then that's on them. When you watch what he said, he states it that two weeks is the maximum and it was up to two weeks. I've seen all the upset tweets about he promised two weeks etc which was just never factually the case. Some of the same folks did take the Iranian politicians at their word that they had closed the Straits of Hormuz.

Chicago hated leftist Lori Lightfoot so they replaced her with off the reservation, even further left, Brandon Johnson. You can see how well that's working out for them.

There won't be boots on the ground,, well maybe Israeli in a limited raid type capacity. I do think they, or we, are capable of just killing the leaders and letting them fight it out for power after that. I've heard people speculate the Israeli's have a regime plan in mind, but I have no reason to think it would succeed any better than our previous efforts in that region have. If you're gonna kill the regime, best to let their people hash it out after.

Agreed, when this broke this morning that was my thought. If it's no more than this, those they lobbed get swatted away and we move on. We always knew they'd have to make a show to save face.

Glad we got this guy on the loose again https://x.com/gunthereagleman/status/1936929158522601960?s=46&t=QA56vEicq_0uiHVUVTt_Hg

Unfortunately we can't stop them from making a wrong decision that hurts us and likely ends their regime. But the fact that we are even contemplating they could take that action now, gives support to why you can't allow them to have nuclear weapons. They are zealots and don't always act rationally.

That's true and I got in many arguments with friends at the time. And while I'm always skeptical of bombing anyone, just because that was the wrong decision then doesn't mean bombing that site is the wrong decision now. There are a lot of differences in the evidence, objectives, and regional outlook. The dumbest part of the Iraq situation was we removed the counterweight and took out the natural predator of Iran by killing Saddam's regime. I admit to being for America First, and embrace being to some degree isolationist. But that doesn't mean you just close your eyes and ignore what's going on around you. Iran with nukes is a threat to America and if you put yourself first, taking the means out of a regime's hands to kill you who has declared they want to kill you might be worth doing. I hope the Israeli's can do it, I hope there is an uprising to overthrow the regime, but time is running short for those chances. Let me add that I voted for Bill Clinton and the time with him as President and Gingrich as Speaker was in my opinion good for the country. However, his biggest failure was failing to kill Osama bin Laden when he had the chance. He let the moment pass, and it cost us a lot more to deal with him later. Sometimes you have to take advantage of situations of vulnerability amongst your enemies.

They do have all the pieces to make it so though. It's like having an unassembled desk in your house that's still in the box. You don't have a desk until you put it together. Their uranium enrichment is getting right at the cusp. This isn't an Iraq situation where we are taking the words of Saddam or worried about some mustard gas that he is dropping in his own country. I hope we don't have to bomb them, I don't think there is a good outcome to that. But the worst possible outcome is letting them have nukes.

No matter how this turns out I wish we had all this skepticism before the Iraq War started.

We do want a democratic and peaceful Iran. The problem is we don't get to make that decision. We tried that in Afghanistan and Iraq. We at the very least aided such an effort in Libya. We have zero track record for successfully achieving that and in my mind make it even worse when we try to stipulate who leads those nations. Nobody wants terrorists striking around the globe or the Strait of Hormuz closed, but if we capitulate to the possibility that Iran may do this, then where does that leave us when it comes to North Korea, China, any other foe? There's a difference between being peaceful and trying to avoid foreign entanglements and cowering from those who threaten you. I prefer we don't strike, as that would leave the unintended consequences out of the equation. I'm glad Trump is giving this a chance to play out and hope they either give up the program or the regime is toppled from within. I don't think either is the likely outcome, but we need to give it a chance. But if all else fails, I agree we should not let them have nukes. At least with the North Korean regime they are self interested and use them as a threat to stay in power. In Iran, you are dealing with religious zealots who don't care if they die as long as they take us with them.

There has always been a belief that if you bomb, you have to have a plan for the regime collapsing, whether that's helping a new government or rebuilding the society. I submit to you the idea that Afghanistan is in the place today that it would be had we simply bombed them until Bin Laden fled and then just left it as it was. We didn't need to spend fortunes and lives in a hopeless effort to turn their society into something it isn't. It's up to the Iranians to determine their society. The only reason I give a moment's care to whether their leader lives or dies is the nuclear program. It's becoming pretty obvious that if he gives it up, for the time being the window is open for him to stay in power. If he fails to do so, that site will be bombed by the U.S. or be subject to an Israeli commando raid, at the end or simultaneously with either the Ayatollah will cease to breathe. I simply don't think Trump is the old standard in where he much cares what happens to that country after he deems our direct interests are met. It would have served us well in Afghanistan and maybe would have helped us stay out of Iraq. I still have extreme anger towards Bush/Cheney for getting us into that mess. Part of the reason Iran had to be dealt with now is that removed the counter-weight to their power in the region when we toppled Saddam. When you have two bad actors that hate one another, let them constantly fight and weaken the other and it also keeps them from turning their attention to you.

Yep. We need to outlaw Chinese companies taking ownership in American land.

I have a lot of old minor league baseball items around my office. Some old jerseys and hats, things like that. Especially those teams that no longer exist that I remember.

Is this the point we walk out on the day and go celebrate by looting the Von Maur?

I'm not big on us having to bomb them. But the question remains on what to do if we don't. I don't think there's any way you can trust the Iranian regime on any negotiated deal. They've shown they will cheat on any deal just as the Chinese do on trade, they are intent on the need for the bomb. If you think they are hard to deal with now, once they have the bomb it will be way worse. I'm not in for nation building. The best case outcome is the regime is overthrown from the inside, but that is probably a longshot. If we bomb them and aren't down for nation building, which I hope we aren't, it is saying we are wiping out the nuclear program and just spinning the wheels on the slot machine and see what shows up in their place. In retrospect, we should have done that in Afghanistan and we would have ended up in the same place, just without all the loss of American lives and money. There's also the longshot that suddenly the regime doesn't have a death wish and heeds the warnings and makes a settlement of giving up the program and agreeing to outside verification in order to survive.

What they are trying to achieve, and have some varying probability of success of achieving any of these, is to weaken Iran and their defenses to the point the U.S. will use the bunker buster bombs to clean up the nuclear sites with little to no resistance left from Iran, weaken the regime enough so someone overthrows the regime from inside, or floats out they have a plan to kill their leader so they are forced to the table and allow a supervised dismantling of the nuclear program. Failing any of those three they may just kill the Ayotollah with the obvious risks as to what follows for Iran itself. I just think we are out of time to stop them from having the bomb and this thing is so far down the road now one of the above is going to happen.