Welcome to a Hump Day (“Il giorno della gobba” in Italian): Wednesday, February 4, 2026, and National Homemade Soup Day. Remember this place?
It’s also Liberace Day (he died on this day in 1987), National Girls and Women in Sports Day, National Hemp Day, National Stuffed Mushroom Day, and Rosa Parks Day (she was born on Feb. 4, 1913).
Here is Parks is being fingerprinted on February 22, 1956 for being one of the leaders of the Montgomery bus boycott. Her famous refusal to sit in the back of the bus occurred on December 1, 1955, and could be seen as the start of the Civil Rights movement of the late Fifties and Sixties:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 4 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Iranian and U.S. diplomats are meeting in Istanbul, with Iran hoping to stave off what looks to be an impeding attack on their country.
Senior U.S. and Iranian officials are expected to meet in Istanbul on Friday for talks aimed at de-escalating the crisis between their countries, according to three current regional officials and a former one who were familiar with the planning.
The talks, they said, aim to bring together Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy; Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law; and Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, the officials said. Also expected to attend are senior officials from Turkey, Qatar and Egypt.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists. They included an Arab official, a regional official, a senior Iranian official and a former Iranian diplomat.
White House officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The plans for the negotiations could change.
If the talks happen, they will mark a rare face-to-face encounter between U.S. and Iranian officials at a time when military threats by Mr. Trump, and the refusal of Iran’s leaders to accept his demands, have brought the two countries to the precipice of war, spreading fear across the region.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has threatened to bomb Iran if its embattled leaders, who last month crushed mass protests with lethal force, did not yield to his demands. Those include Iran’s ending its nuclear program, accepting limits on its ballistic missiles and halting its support for proxy militias around the Arab world.
So far, Iran’s leaders have said that they would not negotiate while under threat, while vowing a harsh response to any American attack.
:The Times of Israel reports this:
Iran and the United States will resume nuclear talks on Friday in Turkey, Iranian and US officials told Reuters on Monday, and US President Donald Trump warned that with US warships heading to Iran, “bad things” would probably happen if a deal could not be reached.
And this, which is an aggressive act on Iran’s part:
The US military shoots down an Iranian drone that approached the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, a US official tells Reuters on Tuesday.
The Iranian Shahed-139 drone was flying toward the carrier and was shot down by a F-35 US fighter jet.
Will the U.S. (presumably along with Israel, which Iran has also threatened if there’s an attack) attack Iran? I still think so, though talks raise the probability that there will be a diplomatic outcome. However, the only bargaining chip Iran seems willing to offer is “we will stop making nukes,” and they’ve lied about that for decades—with every U.S. President buying that nonsense. I don’t think Trump will, so I still think we’ll mount an attack. (Remember, Trump still wants that Nobel Peace Prize, and how better to get it than to bring down the Iranian regime.)
*Still stinging from his loss in the 2020 election, Trump has issued a call for the government to “nationalize voting,” a clearly unconstitutional grab at power.
“We should take over the voting, the voting, in at least 15 places,” Trump told Bongino. “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
Under the Constitution, the “Times, Places and Manner” of holding elections are determined by each state, not the federal government. Congress has the power to set election rules, but the Constitution does not give the president any role on that subject. Republicans in recent decades have often argued in favor of states’ rights and against a powerful federal government.
Trump’s demand comes less than a week after the FBI executed a search warrant at a warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, which is at the heart of right-wing conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. The unusual warrant authorized agents to seize all physical ballots from the 2020 election, voting machine tabulator tapes, images produced during the ballot count and voter rolls from that year. Days before the search, Trump claimed in a speech at the Davos World Economic Forum that the 2020 election was rigged.
UPDATE: Today’s NYT says that the White House walked this stupid idea back:
But Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday that Mr. Trump had actually been referring to legislation that would require people to prove that they are U.S. citizens when they register to vote.
“What the president was referring to is the SAVE Act, which is a huge, common-sense piece of legislation that Republicans have supported, that President Trump is committed to signing into law during his term,” Ms. Leavitt said.
“I don’t think any rational person who is being honest with themselves would disagree with the idea of requiring citizens of this country to present an ID before casting a ballot in a federal election, or, frankly, in any election, and that’s something the president wants to see happen.”
Like birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S., the rights of states to control their elections is specified in the Constitution, so the feds trying to control voting will not stand up in court. It’s just another bluff by Trump, but it’s not beyond him to start the process by filing a lawsuit, or issuing some bogus executive order.
*As always, I’m a sucker for prognostications about the Democratic party. Here’s one from Ruy Teixeira at the Free Press, “If Newsom is the front-runner, Democrats may be doomed.” Here is some shoot-me-now data:
After all, [Newsome has] had quite a year. While other Democratic politicians have struggled to adapt to the chaos of the second Trump term, Newsom has responded with a blitz of activity that has dramatically raised his profile. At this time last year, he was polling in the single digits for the 2028 primary, stuck in a scrum with other possible candidates and trailing Kamala Harris by a wide margin. Today Newsom tops all three major poll averages—enough to make him the undeniable front-runner.
Newsom’s strength is also showing in the betting markets. On PredictIt, he is far and away the betting favorite for the Democratic nomination, way ahead of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Harris, the second and third most popular choices. He trails only J.D. Vance in the betting for the 2028 general election.
AOC? Harris? Please, shoot me now. But of course I don’t want Vance as President, since he has apparently learned his behaviors from Trump. More:
What accounts for this remarkable surge? How did a liberal California Democrat win so much support a year after Democrats got walloped when their candidate was . . . another liberal California Democrat?
The answer lies in Newsom’s ability to be everything to—well, not quite everybody, but every Democrat. Think of him not as an ordinary politician but as a message delivery system, and a very effective one. All politicians fit that description to some degree, but Newsom lets absolutely nothing stand in the way—not principles, not beliefs, not prior positions. He reliably presents whatever message he deems most politically effective at any given time to any given audience. That has enabled him to appeal to nearly every Democratic faction.
. . . In essence, Newsom appointed himself chairman of the anti-Trump resistance and then backed up the move with words and actions. The Democratic base is loving it, just as he intends.
But many other Democrats worry that in order to win, the party will need to moderate some of its more unpopular positions, rather than simply criticize Trump. Naturally, Newsom has something for that crowd too.
He started a podcast, This Is Gavin Newsom, where his guests have included the late Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon, Ben Shapiro, and other conservative luminaries. This has given him an opportunity to flash a few cautious signals that he is more moderate than the average Democrat. In his episode with Kirk, he agreed that letting trans-identifying biological males play in girls’ and women’s sports seemed “deeply unfair” to him. And in his recent episode with Shapiro, he agreed that calling ICE activities “state-sponsored terrorism” was not justified, and that it was probably not a good idea to abolish ICE.
So why isn’t that good? Because he has no firm positions, and apparently no guiding principles:
On the other hand, he has not been shy about reassuring progressives and “woke” Democrats that he is still one of them. For example, after his podcast statement on trans-identifying boys in girls’ sports, he almost immediately denied any implication that he would support a policy to change that situation in California or any other place. In his interview with Klein, he was quick to defend the provision of subsidized healthcare for undocumented immigrants as part of his overall commitment to universal healthcare.
On the other hand, he has not been shy about reassuring progressives and “woke” Democrats that he is still one of them. For example, after his podcast statement on trans-identifying boys in girls’ sports, he almost immediately denied any implication that he would support a policy to change that situation in California or any other place. In his interview with Klein, he was quick to defend the provision of subsidized healthcare for undocumented immigrants as part of his overall commitment to universal healthcare.
Newsom also refused to support Proposition 36, a ballot measure backed by many prosecutors to classify more crimes as felonies and increase penalties. (It passed overwhelmingly anyway).
. . . Gavin Newsom: friend of the resistance, friend of moderates, friend of progressives, friend of populists, friend of labor, friend of abundance-istas, special chum of Big Tech, and hard man for the Democratic Party. He’s got it all, twinned with a preternatural ability to deliver a perfectly calibrated message to each of these audiences when called upon to do so.
Newsom’s gift (if you can call it that) of appealing to all the factions within his own base works well for individual candidates in blue states but terribly for the party as a whole and its presidential candidates. It encourages candidates to think their basic positions don’t have to change much and that their progressive record, commitments, and statements over the years won’t turn off voters.
This is egregiously wrong, as the Deciding to Win report shows definitively, and as common sense would suggest. Candidates’ records and past positions matter a lot once they have to speak to a general electorate that doesn’t share the basic assumptions of partisan Democrats. Just ask Kamala Harris.
Could the Democrats make the same mistake with Gavin Newsom? Absolutely, because he knows just how to talk to them. That’s too bad because what they really need is a Bill Clinton and, well, Gavin Newsom is no Bill Clinton.
As I said, I’d vote for him over any Republican, but I wouldn’t be happy about it as I wouldn’t know whom I’m voting for. In the end, I think Newsom’s wokeness would dominate. And if he waffles that much, it’s good fodder for Republicans, whether in ads or in a debate.
*When Trump was blackmailing Harvard earlier over its antisemitism, he demanded that the University pay the government $200 million. He’s now dropped that demand. Instead, the Prez wants Harvard to cough up a billion dollars.
President Trump said he is seeking $1 billion in damages from Harvard University, the latest escalation in his administration’s fight with the institution over alleged antisemitism.
Trump posted on social media after the New York Times reported that his administration had dropped its demand for a $200 million payment to the government to settle the dispute.
“Strongly Antisemitic Harvard University has been feeding a lot of ‘nonsense’ to The Failing New York Times,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform overnight. “This case will continue until justice is served,” he added. “We are now seeking One Billion Dollars in damages, and want nothing further to do, into the future, with Harvard University.”
Trump didn’t specify how or when he might seek the $1 billion. Harvard didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Ivy League school has been locked in a battle with the Trump administration for months over allegations of antisemitism and concerns about diversity practices. Last year, the government pulled billions of dollars in federal research funds, threatened the school’s tax-exempt status and attacked its ability to enroll international students.
The Times reported Monday that Harvard had rejected the idea of the $200 million payment because it was wary of backlash from liberal students and faculty. Hours later, Trump criticized the newspaper and Harvard in two Truth Social posts.
Before the president’s latest remarks, the administration had been in discussions with Harvard to settle their dispute.
*From the UPI’s Odd News, we have a video of the latest weird stuff that happened, including a Chinese toy horse that turned sad when its muzzle was sewn on upside down (it became a popular hit), and kangaroo of unknown origin was loose in Texas. The ‘roo has been captured, but nobody knows who should get it back.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is sick to death of winter, as she always is during the season:
Hili: Weeks go by, and these frosts just will not end.
Andrzej: Do not complain, you have it warm at home.
In Polish:
Hili: Mijają tygodnie, a te mrozy nie chcą się skończyć.
Andrzej: Nie narzekaj, masz ciepło w domu.
*******************
From Meow Incorporated:
From CinEmma:
From The Language Nerds:
From Masih, Iranian students protesting at their university. And yes, it’s true that the regime is arresting doctors and nurses who treat wounded protestors.
Have executions in Iran really stopped? No.
This is the voice of brave students who have gathered at their university, protesting and demanding an end to the executions of their colleagues and doctors.
The regime is arresting doctors and nurses for treating the wounded, and… pic.twitter.com/1DsvnUAYyp— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) February 3, 2026
From Malcolm. Who says cats don’t experience love?
Cats love to sleep with their favourite human 🥹❤️
— Antidepressant Content (@depressionlesss) January 29, 2026
From Luana; a tweet by Colin Wright arguing that there should be no topic that’s off limits in research, a question I ponder constantly.
I’m not particularly interested in questions about race and cognitive ability, but I don’t believe such questions should be off-limits.
What you’ll find in this new NYT article isn’t a scientific takedown of so-called “race science,” but rather an attempt to poison the well… pic.twitter.com/cRQEJ0pzdg
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) February 1, 2026
Retweeted by J. K. Rowling. The Taliban previously banned girls from secondary education, but the Guardian article says that they’re now banned from University education, too. Even the UN is objecting to this one. Half the population can’t get an education! The Taliban had promised earlier that there would be no ban on school for females.
As the Taliban continue their war on women and girls, it is clear that appeasement has failedhttps://t.co/3JJL1XM89l
— Gordon Brown (@GordonBrown) January 30, 2026
One from my feed. I love donkeys but am told that they can be mean, biting and kicking:
When this donkey wants to hug his keeper, he comes to his shop, opens the door, and waits for him to let him in.pic.twitter.com/IZfegxxjh6
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) February 3, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial: a survivor whose birthday is today (she’s 101):
Moved to Auschwitz at 19, and then to two other camps, this French Jewish woman survived, and turns 101 today. Happy birthday, Ginette! https://t.co/aKx5FPph1d
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) February 4, 2026
Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, the Sun’s large-scale granularity:
The seething visible surface of the Sun.Each of these cell-like structures is about the size of Texas. They’re granules where hot plasma rises and cooler material sinks back down. Details as small as 30km are visible.Credit: NSO/NSF/AURA#astronomy
— Colin Stuart 🔭 (@colinstuartspace.bsky.social) 2026-02-03T14:21:07.139Z
This is, of course, all over social media. And Matthew told me, “We both know how it got there.”
“Hospital evacuated as man found to have WW1 artillery shell in rectum”A difficult day for le squad de bombe…
Rectum? Damned near killed ’em.
Rim shot!
Blew my mind!
The taboo that Colin Wright points to is there precisely because the “establishment” has a strong inkling what the answer might be, and knows that it really, really won’t like it, so resorts to trying to prevent the questions being answered.
In order to access major databases, institutes such as the NIH make scientists swear, Scouts Honor, pinky promise, that they won’t investigate certain issues about race (and if they then did it would be career suicide). There are people lobbying the Trump administration to override these restrictions, such that finding out (aka “science”) will win out over ideological taboos.
Sam Harris pointed this out: The only reason ongoing research into Neanderthals continues is because it turned out that Europeans have some Neanderthal genes and Africans none or very little. Suppose the genetic analysis had yielded the opposite results. If it had turned out that black Africans had significantly more Neanderthal genes, that would have immediately terminated further research into Neanderthals genetics. Any scientists and anthropologists who wanted to study Neanderthals would be accused of having a racial supremacist agenda even if their only motive was to learn about our close kin who lived tens of thousands of years ago.
On an adjacent point, why did Neanderthals (a) never become very numerous, (b) never get beyond their ancestral range, even though they had far more time than did our sub-species, and (c) become effectively extincted by our sub-species? The more plausible answer is that they simply did not have the mental faculties to adapt and compete. But you can never suggest what I just suggested.
One thought is that they were poorly adapted for breathing the air in very cold climates.
A BIRTHDAY THOUGHT:
There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience. -Hartley Shawcross, barrister, politician, and prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes tribunal (4 Feb 1902-2003)
101!
I mean, one-hundred and one years old! Awesome!
🎂
Remember when Trump mentioned canceling the midterm elections a few weeks ago? Then Karoline Leavitt walked that back by saying Trump was just joking. This is a common tactic in the administration. Trump makes an outrageous statement, gauges the public reaction, and then reinforces it or walks it back. He is constantly testing what he can get away with.
Regarding Trump’s statement about nationalizing the elections, Leavitt walked that back by referencing the SAVE Act. However, we’ve seen the guardrails from his first administration are gone. We have the administration ignoring and defying court orders, we have the military in our streets, we have citizens being killed, we have states taking up midterm redistricting to keep GOP/MAGA in power, we have states giving voter rolls to the administration, we have a raid on the Fulton County election center, we have the history and contributions of minorities being stripped from the public eye, we have shakedowns from universities and companies, and we have massive amounts of grifting taking place in the White House. The “alarmists” are not alarmists if their predictions become true.
Greg, the Administration has not been ignoring or defying court orders. (Yes I know about the plane that didn’t turn back.) It has appealed many adverse decisions in the lower courts against its executive orders, which is its right and prerogative and shows the courage of its convictions (or folly, as some no doubt see it), but it hasn’t been defying them in the only sense that matters: getting civil servants to execute its orders over the injunctions of the Courts. If it was doing that, and Congress didn’t impeach the President or the offending Cabinet Secretary, then you would have lost your Republic and You The People would be obligated to overthrow the government if you wanted to get it back. Be careful where you go with that.
I suggest you entertain the near certainty that the President is not behaving unconstitutionally and the various human guardrails are fully aware of that, much as they might disagree with his policies, tastes, attitudes, avarice, and comportment.
I know you believe the country made a mistake in electing Donald Trump twice but I’m not sure you know what you’re asking the rest of the country to do to correct its mistake before the President’s duly elected term ends. I do hope no one takes the matter into his own hands.
“… the Administration has not been ignoring or defying court orders…”
I really don’t want to get in the weeds on this, but the opinion of many in the legal community is that the Administration is doing just that:
https://truthout.org/articles/trump-white-house-refuses-to-abide-by-1-in-3-court-orders-made-against-them/
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-federal-court-ruling-ignore-b2792939.html
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/6-times-trump-administration-clashed-opponents-court-orders/story?id=120846599
I don’t want to get into the weeds either. I’m just acknowledging your citations with thanks and that I have read them.
“When asked why she is little known and why everyone thinks only of Rosa Parks, [Claudette] Colvin says the NAACP and all the other black organizations felt Parks would be a good icon because “she was an adult. They didn’t think teenagers would be reliable.”
She also says Parks had the right hair and the right look.
“Her skin texture was the kind that people associate with the middle class,” says Colvin. “She fit that profile.”
[…]
After Colvin’s arrest, she found herself shunned by parts of her community. She experienced various difficulties and became pregnant. Civil rights leaders felt she was an inappropriate symbol for a test case.
Parks was the secretary of the NAACP. She was well-known and respected and, says Garrow, Parks had a “natural gravitas” and was an “inherently impressive person.” ”
https://www.npr.org/2009/03/15/101719889/before-rosa-parks-there-was-claudette-colvin
https://beautifultrouble.org/toolbox/tool/lead-with-sympathetic-characters
My understanding is that Parks had tried to get arrested earlier in the day by sitting in the front of a bus, but no one complained. So she tried again in a different bus. That worked.
This in no way diminishes her place in history. Just the opposite (to me); it is evidence of her (and the NAACPs) intelligence and determination.
“We cannot repeat too often that men do not lead the Revolution; it is the Revolution that uses men.”
Joseph de Maistre
Considerations on France
1796
I know how the media likes to portray everything that Donald Trump does as an affront to law, precedent, and common sense (and sometimes it is!). But I don’t recall many in the press hyperventilating when the Democrats had 222 co-sponsors for and passed House Resolution 1, the “For the People Act of 2021.” What state election prerogatives would that act have usurped and placed under federal control had it not been blocked by Republicans in the Senate? From the bill’s summary:
“Specifically, the bill expands voter registration (e.g., automatic and same-day registration) and voting access (e.g., vote-by-mail and early voting). It also limits removing voters from voter rolls. The bill requires states to establish independent redistricting commissions to carry out congressional redistricting. Additionally, the bill sets forth provisions related to election security, including sharing intelligence information with state election officials, supporting states in securing their election systems, developing a national strategy to protect U.S. democratic institutions, establishing in the legislative branch the National Commission to Protect United States Democratic Institutions, and other provisions to improve the cybersecurity of election systems.”
Oh, I see. That seems a bit more extensive than a voter ID requirement, which happens to be supported across demographic blocks—to include a majority of Democrats, blacks, and Latinos.
The below link to the Constitutional language has commentary about federal regulation of elections and Congress’s constitutional authority to override state election laws.
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-4/
“Oh, I see. That seems a bit more extensive than a voter ID requirement..”
What I see is that every one of those provisions is a response to Republican efforts to disenfranchise Democratic voters, and/or that every one of them bolsters states rights to control elections in a non partisan way.
It really doesn’t matter, Roger, whether the legislation has merit. I was making a more narrow point about constitutional authority and the partisan double standards. The authority precedes the perceived merit of the legislation—not the other way around as many of our partisans on both sides would have it. Whether the authority should be exercised is also a different matter.
None of the proposed provisions of House Resolution 1 put a burden on individual voters which could lead to lowered voting participation. That is the true intention of the FACE act, since we know that vote fraud is not an issue.
The extent of House Resolution 1 is a curiosity but ultimately irrelevant – what matters is the intent. The Democratic proposals were to insure and offer assistance to states for free and fair elections; the past actions of the Republicans (illegitimate voter roll purges, required voter identification validation that looked like junk mail, restrictions on mail-in ballots, etc) and the FACE Act are for the partisan purpose of disenfranchisement of Democratic voters.
When Republican governors/legislators act badly, the US Congress has a duty to act. The “For the People” act is not an example of Congressional overreach of states rights, but an example of needed corrective action because of un American behavior by Republicans who found they had the power to do whatever they wanted.
That you characterize the defeat of that bill as a good thing is bewildering to me.
How do you know that voter fraud is not an issue? Or, more pertinently, how do you know that they know that fraud is not an issue (if you’re evaluating their intent)?
Illegal aliens may be “Democratic voters” but they are not legally entitled to vote. In CA, just getting a drivers licence automatically registers you to vote – and illegals can get drivers licenses in CA. I think voter ID is a good idea.
“In CA, just getting a drivers licence automatically registers you to vote”
If you’re eligible.
“The California Motor Voter program applies to Californians who are 18 or older and meet the following criteria:
• A United States citizen and a resident of California.
• Not currently serving a state or federal prison term for the conviction of a felony (for more information on the rights of people who have been incarcerated, please see the Secretary of State’s Voting Rights: Persons with a Criminal History), and
• Not currently found mentally incompetent to vote by a court (for more information, please see Voting Rights: Persons Subject to Conservatorship).
…If you indicate that you are eligible to vote, once you complete your DMV transaction online, by mail, or in person, your voter information is transmitted securely and electronically to the California Secretary of State. Once your eligibility to vote is determined, you will be registered to vote.”
(Emphasis added by me.)
https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/california-motor-voter
Yes, and all you have to do is tick a box indicating you are a citizen. Easy enough to do. Thus a few years ago an investigation found that at least one thousand illegals had voted.
“…an investigation found that at least one thousand illegals had voted.”
According to Perplexity Pro AI, 1500 ineligible aliens were incorrectly granted the right to vote in 2018 in California. However, California realized they had made an error, and revoked their status.
There is one documented case of an illegal alien who did vote for years in multiple elections in California. This person was referred to immigration for prosecution.
That said, Trump did say something I agree with – we should end the use of electronic voting machines and vote scanners, and move back to paper ballots, counted by hand by actual people. Unfortunately, the House Republican SAVE act (I think I mistakenly called it the FACE act, above) does not address this.
Almost every country in the world requires voter ID, and many countries have paper ballotts, vote counting can be observed by anyone, etc. Democratic opposition to voter ID makes no sense. If fraud is not an issue, then why to they oppose it? The idea that it would disfavour minorities is absurd.
I read yesterday that Iran wants to move the talks to Oman, rather than meet in Istanbul, but there may be multiple locations where talks are taking place (which I also read). But maybe Iran is yet again trying to jerk us around. I don’t think that Trump will look kindly on that kind of bullsh*t.
More on moving the talks to Oman:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-iran-talks-friday-oman-iranian-drone-shot-aircraft-carrier/
And, the meeting may not happen at all: https://www.israelhayom.com/2026/02/04/us-sets-preconditions-for-iran-talks-casting-doubt-on-istanbul-meeting/
From the perspective of someone who is unqualified and knows nothing, I don’t think Trump will attack Iran. There’s nothing to be gained: even with killing Khamenei the regime isn’t going to fall because the Republican Guard and most of the Armed Forces are right behind the government, and those in power have too much to lose to let anyone who isn’t part of the current establishment take over. The people can’t overthrow the government by force or by protest – the government has shown they’re willing to be ruthless in putting down any protests. And Trump’s promise that he was “coming to help” came to nothing, as always. Trump can’t justify attacking Iran’s nuclear sites because he supposedly destroyed them last year.
I’m sure Iran does want to reduce the tension – its Internet blackout cost it too much in financial terms and the view of the rest of the world – but, like PCC, I would give no credence to any agreement, unless it was backed up by really stringent checks and unlikely levels of openness on the part of Iran.
It is hard to predict the unpredictable. I think Trump is just making the Iranian regime nervous with its ships out there, and that it has no plans for an attack.
But possibly this could inspire Iranians to rise up again in very large numbers, and who knows what will precipitate from that?
Augustus sent 500,000 troops to Persia, which had been at war with Greece and then Rome for centuries, and said to the Persian king “let’s make a peace deal”. And the king obliged. The peace lasted until the reign of the insane Nero. Peace through strength is always a good strategy. And history does seem at times to repeat, at least in broad outline.
The Democratic Party should ban anyone from California or New York running for President. Put it in the Charter and Bylaws.
I live in California and I approve this. Newsom is a liar, a born politician. He is totally committed to something until he isn’t and then tries to pretend otherwise. Like Clinton, after I hear him speak, even when I agree with him, I feel like I need to take a shower. The Dems MUST do better.
I think the Democratic Party should run Eric Swalwell, US Rep from California’s 14th district, for President.
Enjoyed the sun video, thank you.
To sit on my couch, with a laptop, observe hot plasma granules, the size of Texas, rising on our nearest star, while sipping coffee, I find it all interesting to ponder on.
I am sure I have posted about my local vet and his encounter with a donkey at an earlier time, but here I go again.
The vet phoned me and said he had a long-billed corella with a damaged wing and wondered if I could house it. Corellas are cockatoos with a large bill and you don’t want to be bitten by one.
When I arrived to pick up the bird, the vet was sporting a weird looking finger stall on his thumb: it had wires and leather and stainless steel struts. I asked if the corella had bitten him, and he said “Naah – a donkey bit off my thumb!” The thumb was reattached successfully.
A reason given for why donkeys can be dangerous is that their short legs don’t allow a ‘fight or fight’ response to perceived danger, so their first response is to lash out.
This is surprising information. I have known some very affectionate mules.