Which is why he won’t do this. One of his sycophants will explain at a 5th grade level that those bases benefit the US and Trump will forget about this.

Uh oh. Somebody’s going to get a call from Bibi and immediately back down from this stance.

No they can’t because they lack the strength. There are no reasoned arguments or claims in play here beyond “the strong do what they want”.

Minivan full of usb keys. Probably still the fastest data transfer method too.

It’s worth understanding the causation here. Was Joe Biden a staunch Zionist because of AIPAC funding? Or did AIPAC fund Biden knowing he was a staunch Zionist in order to ensure he would win?

To me, especially post Oct-7th, Biden seemed like a true believer. He seemed to believe in the Zionist project in the form of unconditional support of the Israeli government (no matter who was in power there) as part of his personal sense of morality. As in, don’t steal , don’t lie, support isreal. It’s why he wasn’t able to even try to reign in Israel no matter how much Bibi humiliated him or openly colluded with Trump or whatever.

Having a geopolitical stance as a part of your basic personal morality (as opposed to a reasoned stance based on available information) is of course incredibly stupid and dangerous. But that’s my read on Biden.

Meanwhile a guy like Cory Booker seems to have just knowingly sold out to AIPAC and is now committed to that position. AIPAC is designed to create an easy path for American politicians in terms of a certain degree if good PR in the press and campaign funding. Many politicians simply took that deal. Biden never struck me as one of these, especially not at the end.

Too many of them are true believers. For example Joe Biden wasn’t a Zionist because of AIPAC. He did it for the love of the game.

You say that and yet the nightmare scenario of Tucker Carlson winning the GOP nomination on an anti-isreal platform (sincere or not) inches closer and closer. The DNC is going to prove to be more rigidly Zionist than the Republicans .

They want to prosecute peope in open court so using the NSA to id people would be inconvenient (but not impossible).

That would actually be massive escalation in more than the obvious ways. Gulf states are the ones buying up most US debt (which is piling up extremely quickly). This is a large part of their leverage to secure continues US military protection. Should the US Navy be used to block the straight to enforce some kind of all-or-nothing approach, it’s going to be cause a lot of knock on effects in the bond market. We do be living in interesting times!

Neither of those things has anything to do with this. You can eliminate the NASA budget and you still won’t have healthcare lol. You have to actually fight for that.

Even if that weren’t true, the idea that this type of open corruption is grounds for firing in a Trump admin is laughable. Trump himself is far more corrupt, and hegseth being corrupt just goes further to ensure his loyalty. He can always have Bondi do a selective prosecution of this should he step out of line.

It’s basically kompromat that only Trump (through control of the DOJ through Bondi) can use.

We all said rightly that the president doesn’t control gas prices, at least those of us who had half a clue how economics worked did.

The logic is mostly sound because president’s don’t have a magic dial to control oil prices. But the logic also has sane decision making baked into it - president’s consider the effects that their actions will have on the price of oil and don’t do shit like this that will definitely increase it. Since that sanity no longer holds , the logic no longer holds .

The moment anyone else moves to assist he will simply bail out and walk away. He was actually dumb enough to say that out loud too. It would be strategically stupid and politically suicidal for anyone else to get involved.

China is getting Iranian oil right now and the US isn’t going to control Iran. Why would either of them commit to this? Pretending like you solved the problem when none of the incentives line up is ridiculous. Either of them could militarily defend Iran if they want to without commiting to a security guarantees for Iran. So why would they bind themselves unnecessarily?

Yes they could do that. But why would they commit to that?

Lol so now Russia China and Europe have to jump into militarily attack the US ? This is your plan? Well sounds solved to me.

This is basically just the Obama Iran deal. It was working pretty much exactly like this until Trump tore it up and began in multiple rounds attacking Iran.

After this war, Iran has no reason to sign such a deal especially since Trump and Israel will just tear it up whenever they want. Iran needs security guarantees which your deal doesn’t provide.

That doesn’t matter if he’s been failing upwards ever since.

I visited friends near Bath last year and they decided to take me canal boating. They signed one form to rent the boat and then a guy came on board and taught us how to drive it. I didn’t sign anything. They didn’t check my license or sort out any insurance or anything. I drove it for over 3 hrs lol. I was thinking how much paperwork such a thing would take of this was in the US or Canada.

You like many Americans are trying to solve cultural rot by putting in more rules. “If only we had a rule that ___” this wouldn’t have happened. That’s not going to solve this. Being a congress-person is a skill. It requires actual skill, and it takes time to get to know how to be most effective. You can put in this rule if you want, and it might solve the problem you’re targeting, but it will create many more. You can’t solve problems caused by cultural rot (literally tens of millions of voters being okay with this) by putting in more administrative rules. Ultimately , democracies grant the people the power to destroy democracy. That is what the US is choosing.