We had a pretty good weekend. Got in a swim, went to see the Oscar-nominated shorts (animation and live action), had drinks with friends. All of this is good, because it is keeping my head from exploding over current events.
Of this new war we will say little, because what’s the use. But of events surrounding it? Like, for instance, the side-bet crypto gambling site Polymarket, where some incredibly suspicious bets were placed at the last minute on a U.S. invasion of Iran on Feb. 28. Gee, I wonder who might have that information. I wonder if they had to kick up to the boss.
Or Kash Patel’s girlfriend getting an FBI security detail to get her hair done. (When former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick broke a million rules to get his wife a red Lincoln Navigator on a city-paid lease, there were women who cut him slack because they thought it was sweet that he was looking out for his woman. I suspect the same attitude will be prevalent in MAGA land.)
Also, we gotta get this war done quick-like, because we’re running out of munitions. (WSJ story, no sub so no gift link.)
I just saw the president announcing the first American casualties and added, “There will probably be more. That’s the way it is. Likely be more.” Thank you, Cadet Bone Spurs. The Israelis thank you, too.
I think I better call this a failed effort and wrap it up. Face the week ahead, put away the clean socks, and wait to see what March brings us.
Jeff Gill said on March 1, 2026 at 5:43 pm
On the brighter side, today, March 1, is the 154th anniversary of Pres. Ulysses S. Grant signing the legislation in 1872 that made Yellowstone National Park our nation’s first. Salute!
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Deborah said on March 1, 2026 at 5:46 pm
It’s disgusting how the people in Trump’s orbit flagrantly spend our tax dollars on themselves and the Republicans just sit back and do nothing.
Today marks 23 years since we moved to Chicago, seems like yesterday. We lived in St. Louis for 23 years too, which used to be the place I lived the longest. Looking forward to many more years in Chicago (and New Mexico).
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Sherri said on March 1, 2026 at 6:42 pm
Ms. Wilkins, the daughter of a financial specialist in the aerospace industry (her mother) and a global consumer products executive for Gillette (her father), had lived in London and Switzerland, and for a time attended elementary school at Collège du Léman in Geneva. She is originally from the Boston suburb of Weymouth, but likes to emphasize her time living in Arkansas.
“There are just some things the limousine liberal will never understand from the coasts,” she recently wrote.
Well, there are certainly things I will never understand, like how a rich kid who lived overseas thinks she’s a more authentic American than I am.
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alex said on March 1, 2026 at 9:33 pm
So who’s this limousine conservative from Geneva, or wherever the fuck?
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Sherri said on March 1, 2026 at 10:07 pm
Kash Patel’s girlfriend, she of the SWAT detail protected hair appointment.
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Deborah said on March 1, 2026 at 11:54 pm
Out of curiosity I listened to about a minute of Ms. Wilkens singing a piece she supposedly wrote, she introduced the song with a southern accent, which of course is fake. The singing wasn’t good and the song was stupid. Some country music guy said her singing was about 7 1/2 but I would maybe give it a 3 or 4. I couldn’t listen to it more than a minute. How embarrassing.
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alex said on March 2, 2026 at 8:14 am
You folks got my curiosity piqued so I had to give Alexis a listen and I’m similarly unimpressed. And she’s almost 20 years younger Kash. Someone might call it a consensual relationship, but there’s no denying it’s transactional, never mind that she hitched her star to someone even more mediocre than she is.
Good lord, there are so many abuses happening in this administration I don’t know how they’ll ever prosecute them all.
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Suzanne said on March 2, 2026 at 1:17 pm
The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) is closing written public comments on the proposed 90,000-square-foot ballroom addition to the White House on March 4 at noon. Here is the link for submitting public comments.
https://www.ncpc.gov/participate/guidelines/
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Deborah said on March 2, 2026 at 1:45 pm
Suzanne, thanks for the link to the Capitol Planning Commission. I looked at it and started to come up with a written comment but then I thought about it for a bit before I finished or hit send. You have to include your name and email and then I had second thoughts because by doing that I’m opening myself up for harassment by the Trump admin. I have no idea in what way they could harass me but I’m going to have to think about it, I feel like I need to suck it up and be brave and just put out there what I think about the building.
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Dexter Friend said on March 2, 2026 at 2:06 pm
When the wars break out, the cable studios are flooded with eggheads who study the world day and night; we never see them any other time. And I watch. To consolidate all the data and predictions I have seen presented, one sticks out. Nance wrote about the munitions supply, and I heard several times that Iran has way more firepower in the sky possibilities than does Israel. The USA does not have unlimited ordnance, either. The bettors are risking wealth betting on which side runs out of drones and launched rockets first.
Memes galore urging Barron of Drumph to enlist and get his ass involved in the slaughter. Funny, some.
Major Charles Robb was son-in-law to President LBJ. He served in the United States Marine Corps from 1961 to 1970, including 2 years in the Viet Nam conflict, in-country, boots on the ground. Let’s get Barron of Drumph involved in Daddy’s little war.
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alex said on March 2, 2026 at 3:56 pm
I did Ancestry DNA a while back and today got an e-mail telling me that George Washington is my second cousin eight times removed and Nathan Hale is my fourth cousin six times removed. No tree showing how we’re connected though.
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Sherri said on March 2, 2026 at 5:08 pm
“The U.S. stands with all of the children throughout the world.”
That’s what the First Whore said today as she chaired the UN Security Council. Sorry, that’s the kindest thing I can say about her, if she’s going to go to the UN and make statements like that right after we bombed a school in Iran.
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Deborah said on March 2, 2026 at 5:31 pm
Sherri, as you said the recent girls school bombing and also the hundreds of thousands of kids they let die by cutting USAID. Not to mention all the children in Gaza they disregarded. Etc etc etc.
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Deborah said on March 2, 2026 at 5:50 pm
This skin condition on Trump’s neck https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/02/politics/trump-neck-rash-skin-treatment?Date=20260302&Profile=CNN&utm_content=1772480488&utm_medium=social&utm_source=bluesky looks a lot like the results of a cream I was prescribed by my dermatologist for precancerous spots I had on my face from exposer from my sun worshipping youth in Miami. It’s basically a kind of chemo cream treatment that I put on at night and washed off in the morning. I had to use it for a month and it took another month to heal. It was painful and gross but it worked. I have a couple of new spots under my lower lip but I can probably get those removed by having them frozen off. When you have to use the cream it’s because you have so many they can’t be individually removed. His golfing days in Florida are catching up with him.
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Sherri said on March 2, 2026 at 6:07 pm
You know, I think that the past few days, the level of stupidity in the world has exceeded my ability to cope with it. Doing a repeat of the Iraq War, only with dumber people (and I thought the people doing that were pretty dumb!), just breaks my brain.
I’m finding it hard to envision how we remain a country in 10 years. Not because of civil war, but due to collapse.
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Sherri said on March 2, 2026 at 6:57 pm
We need a less stupid class of money people, too. I’m sorry, did you not understand where Dubai was? Did you think it was the Disney version of the Middle East?
An executive at a large global hedge fund with a presence in Dubai said: “We have been exploring how to evacuate people but it’s not easy.”
He added: “It’s pretty scary — this is going to have implications for some of my guys . . . The trade was not that you were getting exposed to geopolitics when moving to Dubai. It was not a consideration. People have moved families. This element of concern is new.”
From https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/b04272e8-1039-41ec-9a51-327d2c11aeb8
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Sherri said on March 2, 2026 at 10:43 pm
They want Armageddon. They believe it will hasten the Second Coming and the Rapture.
https://jonathanlarsen.substack.com/p/us-troops-were-told-iran-war-is-for
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Mark P said on March 3, 2026 at 3:13 am
JFC. It’s enough to make me wish Jesus was coming back. It would be amusing to see the faces of these ignorant fundamentalists when they get sent straight to hell.
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Jeff Gill said on March 3, 2026 at 8:10 am
On drafting Barron Trump, someone on Xwitter noted it was an interesting idea, but would probably have more impact on Donald Trump if it involved someone he knew personally.
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alex said on March 3, 2026 at 8:58 am
Jeff at 19 for the win.
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Sherri said on March 3, 2026 at 1:58 pm
I swear, every time Trump lies, the White House grows more tacky gold.
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Suzanne said on March 3, 2026 at 2:27 pm
Over the years, I have mentioned to a number of people that many evangelical Christians want a war between Israel and neighboring countries because they believe it has been prophesied in the Bible. Very few have ever believed me. When the US Embassy was moved to Jerusalem in Trump’s first term, it was obvious why.
Now we are seeing the fruit of this thinking in the upper echelons of Government. They have no plan for what happens next because they think they don’t need to. Jesus will return from the heavens and take care of everything. Bloodshed and death and destruction is all part of God’s plan.
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ROGirl said on March 3, 2026 at 2:41 pm
I think a lot these days about the fact that no matter what he does to further his whims, no matter how many people he sues, persecutes, prosecutes or kills, no matter what he
destroys or threatens to destroy, no matter how much power he amasses and wields, no matter who sucks up to him or how much, no matter how much money he hoovers up, it’s never enough, he always wants more. He’s always angry, he pines for the acceptance of people who despise him, he’s a failed Borscht Belt comedian who has been repeating the same act for 40 years.
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Deborah said on March 3, 2026 at 2:49 pm
Suzanne, have you heard the one about the completely red calf without a hair on its body that wouldn’t be red, that had been prophesied to be the coming of the reconstructed temple or something and when that happened it would be the end of the world as we know it and the coming of the true messiah (or something completely nuts). I don’t remember the details but it’s crazy and there are people in Texas who are trying to breed this particular animal to have not a single hair on its body that isn’t red. I heard about it when I listened to the book Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters by Brian Klaas. He was not a proponent of the theory but described it as something people actually believe to be absolutely true.
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alex said on March 3, 2026 at 3:19 pm
I’ve heard village idiots blathering about the End Times for as long as I can remember, and politicians like Mike Pence sucking up to these goobers. Ronald Reagan gave them a place at the table and since then they’ve run everybody off who was sane.
My parents spent a lot less time with my dad’s best college buddy who was the best man at their wedding because the buddy’s wife was a crackpot who believed in this shit and wouldn’t stop pestering other people with it. That and MLM supplements and all kinds of annoying garbage.
I wish the Rapture had a legitimate basis. If Heaven means having to spend eternity in the company of people this stupid I’ll gladly go to Hell.
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Deborah said on March 3, 2026 at 3:40 pm
I always wonder what these people do when the supposed prophesy timing passes and nothing happens. Do they give up and realize they’ve been duped or do they still believe and try to rationalize that there’s some other reason it didn’t happen?
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Sherri said on March 3, 2026 at 4:09 pm
As I understand it, some Jews believe that an unblemished red heifer must be sacrificed before the Third Temple can be built in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount (the Second Temple having been destroyed in 70 AD). Currently occupying that space are the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which are obviously quite significant to Islam.
Evangelical Christians who believe in the Second Coming and the Rapture also generally believe that the Temple has to be restored in Jerusalem for all that to happen, so they’re all for that. Of course, then they expect all the Jews to either convert or die during the Tribulations, but hey, details.
Michael Chabon’s excellent The Yiddish Policeman’s Union has a red heifer as a major plot point.
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Sherri said on March 3, 2026 at 5:39 pm
Iran is a country about 10 times older than the United States. It had existed as a civilization hundreds of years before the arrival of that carpenter from Bethlehem the evangelicals want to make a return engagement.
Republicans are trying to pretend that Trump didn’t start this war, he’s just finishing a war the Iranians started in 1979. It’s probably a safe assumption that not many Americans ever wonder what happened in Iran prior to 1979. They probably don’t know that Iran had an elected leader in 1953, but the US and the Brits were unhappy that Prime Minister Mosaddegh had this silly idea that Iran’s oil belonged to Iran, not foreign oil companies. The CIA sent in Teddy Roosevelt’s grandson, Kermit, Jr, to stage a coup, and put the Shah in power.
We’ve never learned that putting a despot who is cooperative with us and brutal to his own people never works out well, but we’ve never liked rolling the dice on democracy in client states.
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Jakash said on March 3, 2026 at 7:51 pm
I recall your occasional comments about the MAGA “Christians” in your neck of the woods, and their focus on the Apocalypse, Suzanne. Indeed, we’ve gone from your prescient remarks here at nn.c to today’s news.
The Guardian’s version of the story told in Sherri’s link to Substack @ 17:
“US military commanders have been invoking extremist Christian rhetoric about biblical ‘end times’ to justify involvement in the Iran war to troops, according to complaints made to a watchdog group.
“The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) says it has received more than 200 complaints from service members across all branches of the armed forces, including the marines, air force and space force.
“One complainant, identified as a noncommissioned officer (NCO) in a unit that could be deployed ‘at any moment to join’ operations against Iran, told MRFF in a complaint viewed by the Guardian that their commander had ‘urged us to tell our troops that this was “all part of God’s divine plan” and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.’
“He said that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth’, the NCO added.”
I don’t recall what Nancy’s rule is with regard to quoting articles, but I imagine that’s way too much. Oh, well.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/03/us-israel-iran-war-christian-rhetoric
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Jakash said on March 3, 2026 at 8:11 pm
Thanks to Obama, the U.S. signed onto the Iran Nuclear Deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in 2015. That Plan was not ideal, but it was something, and it was way better than war. Needless to say, Cadet Bone Spurs hated it, and insisted that we withdraw from it in 2018, based on the same knee-jerk reaction he has to anything achieved by his predecessor of whom he’s so, so jealous.
It’s just interesting to look at the Wikipedia page about that fateful, poorly considered 2018 withdrawal. Under the heading “Reactions,” we find listed those in support of this stupid move: The Republican Party, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Dick Cheney. Also in support were (guess who?) Saudi Arabia and Benjamin Netanyahu, along with Bahrain, Egypt, the UAE and Yemen.
Opposed were this small, insignificant group: The United Nations, the Democratic Party and a bunch of leading Democrats, political scientists, and Colin Powell. Also Iran, the European Union, China, France, the UK, Turkey, Germany, Austria, Russia, Japan, Italy, Finland, Portugal, Spain, Australia — well, you get the idea.
“According to the Pew Research Center, 53% of the American public and 94% of U.S. scholars in international relations disapproved of Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear weapons agreement,” while a CNN poll found only 29% of Americans in favor of withdrawing from the deal.
Now we have this war as the alternative that Bibi and Don the Con managed to come up with in the ensuing years. Two criminals who should both be in prison, but instead, the world watches as they each have the power to engage their countries and everybody else in a real-life game of RISK.
Even given how much he lies, up until a couple months ago I was actually foolish enough to believe that the FIFA Peace Prize recipient, the “America First” guy, WAS interested in keeping us out of foreign entanglements. Just another load of bullshit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_the_Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Action
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