Here's the news from Iran - Donald Trump is making America lose wars again.

[Ocelot II]

Donald Trump menaces the world. He’s global public enemy number one. He’s steadily losing the illegal war with Iran he started but cannot stop. His violence-addicted Israeli sidekick, Benjamin Netanyahu, is terrorising Lebanon. And ordinary people everywhere, their security threatened, face a huge economic bill for his reckless folly.

Add Trump’s war-making to his daily debasing of democracy, appeasing of Russia, punitive tariffs, climate crisis denial and flouting of international law, and it’s clear this White House travesty has gone on long enough. Americans must put their house in order and act decisively to restrain someone who endangers us all.

Trump is a man without a plan. He hasn’t the foggiest what to do next in Iran, deluding himself that he is in control of events. The more the US and Israel batter Tehran and other cities, the more defiant is the odious, unvanquished Islamic regime. US regional bases and Gulf Arab partners are sustaining significant damage from retaliatory strikes.

Iran has succeeded in closing (and is now reportedly mining) the strait of Hormuz, which Trump, astonishingly, failed to defend. Rising oil and gas prices are driving a global energy shock that harms international trade, fuels inflation and creates food and medicine shortages. Poorer countries will suffer most. But few will escape the Trump plague. He’s the new Covid.

The rest at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/15/us-iran-war-donald-trump-failure

[Attilatheblond]

1. He's not the new Covid. He's the Bubonic Plague and he spreads with the action of a bunch of rats.

[Bluetus]

10. He was the OLD COVID too, with the US suffering 500,000 completely avoidable deaths.

[ananda]

17. And fleas.

Plague was spread mostly by fleas who had
bitten the rats.

[Attilatheblond]

19. Yes, I know, but Trump's people are all rats.

[Bluestocking]

26. Trumps plague is caused by maggots

[Attilatheblond]

28. and vise versa

[Farmer-Rick]

2. I bet if Iran gave pedo Trump 80 million barrels of oil

For him to sell off and pocket the money, like Venezuela did, he would stop attacking Iran like he did with Venezuela.

[dalton99a]

3. The war is now personal with Iran's supreme leader. Trump wounded him and killed his father, mother, wife, son

[Farmer-Rick]

5. That is horrible

I was being sarcastic about the extortion fee pedo Trump was demanding from Iran.

I'm glad they won't be paying him off. I do hope their leader stays safe.

[SergeStorms]

16. Let's not let Bibi off the hook here.

Trump found yet another lap for himself to curl up on. Oh, and an assist to Lindsay Graham as well.

[Bluetus]

12. I bet that proposition was advanced BEFORE Trump started bombing.

Everything is extortion with Trump. This is his entire life.

[c-rational]

4. Bingo. K&R.

[ToxMarz]

6. Too bad the windmills kill all the birds and whales and cause cancer.

Otherwise there might be alternatives.

[LymphocyteLover]

7. And Republicans HAVE TO PAY FOR THIS!!!!

Possibly charges of treason too

[Ponietz]

8. Dumbest military strategy in history?

Last edited Sun Mar 15, 2026, 01:19 PM - Edit history (1)

Reason #279
Pakistan wasn’t stable to begin with. Enormous social stressors and several armed internal opponents of the government. Massive public corruption. Cease fire with India barely holding. MF47’s precipitous surrender to the Taliban emboldened them to assist a Pakistani contingent in armed revolt. Pakistan is fighting on two borders and the Iran war is sure to complicate matters along a 3rd. Beware the Ides of Pakistani nukes.

[highplainsdem]

20. I produced some limericks myself, with tips for the chatbot you're using.

Last edited Sun Mar 15, 2026, 03:59 PM - Edit history (1)

Yes, an AI helped write this—because if you’re looking for pure, hand-crafted literary suffering, you’re welcome to go produce some yourself.

Your reference to human writing as "literary suffering" amused me.

No suffering when humans write.
Your choices let you keep it light.
No bot can compare -
they're never aware.
For writers the future stays bright

A bot that does not know the rules
(their learning's from theft, not from schools)
will have to be told
that line length is gold
with syllable counts among tools.

Lines 1, 2 and 5 should all match.
3 and 4 are a different batch.
Just do it enough,
it's no longer rough.
Ideas to fit lines will hatch.

I'm doing 88558 syllable lines here, though 99669 is probably as common. Line length can vary from limerick to limerick, but the lines that rhyme should have the same syllable length.

Anyway, you might want to explain that to whichever AI you're using.

[SheltieLover]

21. Very well done!

[BComplex]

11. This isn't trump. This is the REPUBLICANS, who have complete power at the moment.

They will neither impeach and remove him, nor will they vote to even slow him down, from all I can tell.

This isn't trump. One man CANNOT do this by himself. It's the commercial media who keeps pounding the drum that trump trump trump trump .... is so powerful. They've been doing this since 2015.

[dalton99a]

13. Absolutely.

[SergeStorms]

14. "Americans must put their house in order."

We intend to do that this November, if Krasnov fails in his efforts to disrupt our elections.
We're trying, please believe us.

Sincerely,
Actual Patriots (not to be confused with pitiful MAGA "patriots." )

[Cirsium]

18. If?

Too often Democrats say "we will do great things, IF the Republicans let us," and then in retrospect "we would have done great things, but Republicans..."

That is like a roofer saying "the roof I installed would be great - if not for the rain..." Stopping the rain from coming into the house is the roofers job. Stopping the Republicans is ours. No "ifs..." and certainly not ifs that depend upon what they do or say.

[SergeStorms]

22. Trump....

is trying everything possible, and some things that are impossible, to ensure there are no free and fair elections ever again.

Just how are Democrats supposed to stop him when republicans control every aspect of our government?

I doubt he'll pay much attention to the "No Kings" demonstrations.

[Cirsium]

24. That's my point

"What can we do?" I've heard that for decades. That attitude is the very reason that Republicans control every aspect of our government.

Somehow when Republicans are in the minority they have no problem stopping us.

[SergeStorms]

25. Any suggestions?

We'd all love to knock them upside the head, but legally (we know illegallity doesn't bother repubs, but Dems try to stay legal) there are few directions to turn. What should we do?

[Cirsium]

27. No

That is the wrong question, in my opinion. It can also be a deceptive rhetorical trick. The validity of a critique is not dependent upon the critic having a suggestion for an alternative.

"We'd all love to knock them upside the head, but..." I do have a suggestion, after all. I suggest that we abandon taking that line of reasoning seriously. Were it true that "we'd all love to..." it would have long since happened. It is the "but" that is doing all of the heavy lifting in that sentence, and over the years we have seen that there is an endless list of "reasons" that can follow that "but."

Thank God the Abolitionists and enslaved people didn't listen to those Whigs in the 1850s who said "we'd all love to end slavery, but legally..." They were up against much longer odds. The Women's Suffrage movement leaders, the early organized Labor leaders, the Civil Rights leaders - they all rejected that line of thinking as well.

It is the necessary will, the courage and the integrity that are missing, not the right method.

Fredrick Douglass:

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reforms. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. . .

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its mighty waters.

The struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one, or it may both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Letter from Birmingham Jail:

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

[erronis]

15. Simon Tisdall is a brilliant commentator with a long perspective on the affairs of governments and people.

I collect his opinions for later rereading as situations evolve.

[Emile]

23. Trump is a Blue Falcon!