Right now I’m feeling like Dave Bowman visiting his mother.

I’m pretty sure this a cached version of the Zone but can’t help but hope something wonderful will happen when I click the publish button….

Surely something about this preliminary agreement between the United States and Iran must have felt familiar to America’s real-estate mogul president. After all, it reads like a real-estate bankruptcy filing — an act of financial capitulation.

It is a measure of how much Iran had Trump over a barrel, and how thoroughly it cleaned his clock, that Iran’s lead negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, told Iranian state TV after the details were announced: “The agreement is a record of U.S. failure. People will see it and judge.”

You don’t need to be a foreign policy expert to see what happened here. You need to be a domestic policy expert. Trump sold out America’s ally in the war, Israel, and the Arab Gulf states for the swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan. Trump knew that the food inflation and high gasoline prices triggered by this war were a prescription for a Republican wipeout in the midterms. He had to stop the war now to get prices down by November, because if the Democrats take the House and Senate, Trump will be looking at endless investigations into how he has used the presidency to enrich himself and his family — and possibly even impeachment.

So, Trump did what he always does: He abandoned all principle and all allies and put his personal interests above all other considerations.

He even prepared the terrain to set up his vice president, JD Vance, for a fall. “If it works out, I’m going to take the credit,” he said. “If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD. You better be careful, JD.” People laughed — but nervously, because everyone knew it was a joke, but also not a joke. It was Trump’s inner voice speaking.

This was not a war I advocated, but once it started I was sure hoping Iran would lose. As such, I am shocked by the outcome so far — by the sheer cynicism with which Trump and Vance have gone from damning Iran, and telling its people to rise up because “help is on its way,” to praising its leaders, and how this deal has left Iran stronger and all its neighbors more vulnerable to Tehran’s whims.

I would have much more sympathy for Trump’s stress-filled handling of the wicked problem that is Iran if he had just once shown the same to President Obama or acknowledged that he couldn’t deliver now for the Iranian people as he promised. Instead, he just pretends that everything he did was perfect.

Let us count the ways it is not perfect. The deal not only puts off the question of the disposal of Iran’s near bomb-grade uranium to future negotiations — negotiations in which the Trump administration has already given up its military leverage — but also, most amazingly, it clearly leaves open the possibility that Iran will be able to charge a toll in the future to any ships that want to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

Just read the cease-fire agreement: Upon the signing of this memorandum of understanding, “the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only …”

After billions of dollars of bombs dropped on Iran, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner won from Tehran 60 days of toll-free passage through Hormuz. After that, oil tanker captains, bring your credit cards. Thank goodness we had these crack real-estate negotiators on the case, not wimpy diplomats.

The cease-fire deal not only is silent on any commitments by Iran to curb its development of long-range missiles and its support for proxies undermining the governments of Lebanon and Iraq, but it also makes the 60-day negotiation on Iran’s nuclear future contingent on Israel’s halting its military operations in Lebanon against Iran’s mercenary army there, Hezbollah. If Barack Obama had ever agreed to such a thing, Fox News would have interrupted its regular broadcasting to denounce it.

All of this is the result of the fact that Trump and Netanyahu never took seriously the idea that Iran would do the obvious: close the Strait of Hormuz in response to their attack. So in their attempt to stop Iran from developing a weapon of mass destruction that it was unlikely to ever use — since Israel would immediately use one on Iran — Trump and Netanyahu inspired Iran to develop a weapon of mass disruption, a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, which it can use anytime it feels too much pressure from the United States or Israel.

The message to America’s Gulf Arab allies — the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait in particular — is that we are cutting and running, so you’d better make the best deals you can with Tehran to keep it at bay. This is the biggest geopolitical power shift in the Gulf since the start of the Iran-Iraq war. There is a new sheriff in town. Dial 1-800-Ayatollah.

In case they did not read that between the lines, Trump spelled it out in a news conference justifying why he did not try to curb Iran’s missile development: “What am I going to do? Am I going to let Saudi Arabia have missiles, but they can’t have them?” he asked. “Doesn’t work that way, you know, it doesn’t work that way, and missiles aren’t the problem. Missiles, they hurt a little location, but they don’t blow up the planet.”

If you are reading those words in Tel Aviv or Riyadh, a shiver just ran down your spine, along with the dawning awareness that the president of the United States no longer is playing with a full deck and you are home alone.

For all of these reasons, it is simply impossible to listen to Trump and Vance without being reminded of Nick Carraway’s famous observation about Tom and Daisy Buchanan in “The Great Gatsby”: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Indeed, shortly before Ghalibaf and his Iranian colleagues were boasting that they had imposed a “failure” on the United States, Trump was declaring the Iranian leaders to be “very rational people.” “They were nice to deal with, they were strong people, smart people,” he added. “They are not radicalized and they’re, you know, looking to help their country.” He called them “smarter” than past regime leaders.

Compare this also with how Trump and Vance talked to and about President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — the leader of a heroic democracy that has been resisting a Russian invasion for four years: “You don’t have the cards,” Trump told him, urging Zelensky to cut a filthy deal with Vladimir Putin.

That is how they talk about the leader of a people defending the frontier of freedom from its worst enemy. For Iranian leaders — part of a regime that just gunned down thousands of their own people who were seeking freedom — Trump says they are “nice.”

Trump and Vance “have no coherent view of U.S. interests, and they have absolutely no core commitment to democratic values of any kind,” Gautam Mukunda, the author of “Picking Presidents: How to Make the Most Consequential Decision in the World,” told me.

That’s the point. Trump loves to wrap himself in the American flag, but he is the least American president, in terms of his core values, in modern times.

You have to ask how Trump and Netanyahu could have miscalculated so badly as to think they could topple a regime that had been in power since 1979 by bombing it from the air. The same answer applies to both: It’s because they have surrounded themselves with sycophants and purged their parties of anyone who might challenge them.

“There are two ways to make sure your executive is a good leader — either by selecting people of good character or putting limits on what they can do — and America and Israel today have failed at both,” Mukunda said. “This war is the most perfect example of what happens when you disdain all forms of expertise, knowledge and principles, in favor of gut instincts.” Experts had predicted everything that went wrong in the war.

But therein may lie a possible silver lining for both America and Israel: The failed Trump-Netanyahu endeavor to destroy Iran’s Islamofascist autocracy might end up saving American and Israeli democracy. Both countries are facing fateful elections — America’s midterms in November and Israel’s national election in the fall. Trump and Bibi, both sinking in the polls, were hoping that a quick win in Iran would propel each of them or their parties to victory.

The whole world is worse off with a stronger Iran, but it will be triply worse off if Trump and Bibi win their elections. Because five more years of Netanyahu as prime minister would be the end of Israel as a Jewish democracy. And two more years of Trump controlling the White House, the Senate, the House and effectively the Supreme Court would pose the same danger to American democracy.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/6/18/800056323/community/the-mirage-of-mars/

And now Iran is demanding Israel withdraw from Lebanon and Syria as another condition.

To which Israel is saying fuck off. Just a note, Hezbollah has attacked Israel approximately 2000 times since the “ceasefire” they refused to agree to in April.

The best thing

The best thing about being 80 is that you outlive the clocks that have been chasing you. It’s freedom from that lie that anything was ever under control. You don’t chase the parade anymore. You’re an old king from some vanished country. You’re harder to program. You’re not rushing to become anything and you’re not haunted by things that you did. You’re haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would.

The worst thing

The worst thing about being 80 is that you still want to say yes to everything, but the world moves without asking. The old fire in your heart still tells you to do this and that, but your body says we already did it. Also, nothing surprises you. It sounds like a luxury but it’s not, and also you’ve run out of illusions. People treat you like either you’ve solved something or you’ve lost something, and you haven’t. You see life repeating itself everywhere.

The really worst part about being 80 is that you find, at last, you’ve got an understanding of something that might have altered everything in the past, had it come at a time when something could still be altered. When you’re young you think that time moves forward. At 80 you know that it doesn’t, it stands still. We’re the ones that move.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/opinion/trump-turns-80.html

Le Vieux Roi
Georges Rouault, 1936

The moment Israel enters the room, or is implied, or is simply decided to be relevant by someone in the hate mob, everything becomes a verdict. And the people delivering that verdict say “genocide” the way other people breath. It’s like some self-righteous Tourette’s.

This is not normal. Israel haters call themselves activists. For what, peace? Is that what they believe Hamas wants? Peace? Looking at pro Palestinian protesters, I see relatively normal bright people suddenly believing medieval blood libels. Jews are demons. Israelis are ghouls. Every insane accusation is swallowed whole. Respectable newspapers and educated adults entertaining the idea that Israelis train dogs to rape humans. Seriously WTAF!?

The world has turned on Jews again, and everyone doing it thinks they are virtuous. It is easy to feel holy when you have convinced yourself that the people you hate are monsters. Absurd propaganda “aid flotillas” while 600 UN aid trucks enter Gaza every day through Israel. Claims of starving children while Gaza holds a mass marathon race. Gays marching for Palestine while Israel has Pride parades and Hamas throws LGBTQ people off rooftops. Women protesting for Gaza, where they would be jailed for the clothes they where, where women are second class citizens who suffer “honor” killings and FGM. Accusations of ethnic cleansing when 2 million Palestinian Arabs live in Israel with full citizenship rights. They are doctors, lawyers, police, judges, members of Parliament. They have there own political parties and are free to worship their faith. Compare that to Gaza where zero Jews live, where none are allowed to live, and how a million Jews were ethnically cleansed from Muslim nations after 1948. Claims of Israeli genocide when they warn civilians ahead of attacks and provide aid to civilians on the other side during a war – like no other nation has ever done in human history. Compare that to Hamas and their sadistic, psychopathic, homicidal rampage deliberately targeting civilians on Oct 7. The endless chants of “from the river to the sea” essentially calling for genocide against Israel.

Israel is accused of stealing the Palestinians’ land. There was NEVER a nation called Palestine. Jews have lived there for 3500 years. They were there first. That is an undeniable fact. Even during the Diaspora there were always thousands of Jews still living there. Arabs, from Arabia, violently colonized the rest of the Middle East and North Africa 1600 years ago. They are the colonizers and in fact during the recent Toronto March for Israel, many native American tribes marched with Jews, stating Israel is a successful example of de-colonization. That said, Palestinians have been offered a nation no less than 6 times. Their leaders have refused every single time because they would rather murder Jews.

Israel is not attacking Egypt or Jordan who they have made peace with. They are not attacking the Gulf States who they have good relations and mutual security concerns with. If Hamas, Hezbollah and the rest of Israel’s Islamo-fascist enemies laid down their arms, the wars and deaths would end immediately. If Israel laid down their arms, there would be a horrific 9 million person Oct 7 style slaughter. People complain Israel has nukes. If Hamas had nukes how many seconds would it take for them to nuke Tel Aviv? Those points tell all anyone needs to know about who is the obstacle to peace.

When does it end? When will people stop saying it is a crime for Israel to defend itself from people trying to murder them? When do people start screaming about the actual disaster in the Middle East: regimes run by maifi-style terrorists, Islamo-fascist death cults where murder is glorified and martyrdom is rewarded with a whorehouse heaven? Hostage takers, suicide bombers? And of course the useful idiots in the West polishing their slogans?

They will never admit this is not a genocide, and they will keep saying it until the death cult comes for them too.

Cinematographically, the film is a gem. Spielberg is good at that, there is no denying it. But the story was all cliches. I can’t really say more than that without dropping a bunch of spoilers. Emily Blunt is superb, so I suppose that alone is worth the price of admission.

I didn’t care for “Operation Hail Mary”, either. I just don’t like cutesy aliens.

https://www.openculture.com/