Alison Dolan

Marks & Spencer CFO. Ex Sky & News Corp. Views mine alone!

[Alison Dolan @AlisonDolan]

So excited to feature on Pugpig’s OOO podcast. Jonny has put together a great series....please like & subscribe :)
https://t.co/ksYEbvSmRq

[𝕊𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕒𝕖_𝔾𝕦𝕣𝕝 @SundaeDivine]

Every so often I just like to remember this tweet exists.

[CeCe @cecegkh]

The Golden Girls, but with today’s hair and styling.

From big 80s perms to sleek, fresh looks, Blanche is out here serving main character energy, Rose looks like your cool aunt who does Pilates, and Sophia and Dorothy still delivering one liners with the best of them.

Do you think the comedy would still hit the same today?

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

The MAGA crowd in Washington has decided that since Europeans don’t sufficiently appreciate Trump, the American bases on the continent must go. This is the strategic reasoning of a man who burns down his own kitchen.

American bases in Europe were never a favour. They are the logistical spine of every war the United States fights east of Gibraltar. Ramstein moves the cargo, Aviano launches the jets, Rota services the ships. Without them the Pentagon does not project power into the Middle East. It projects PowerPoint.

The fantasy assumes the alternative is aircraft carriers gliding majestically into the Persian Gulf. That era is ending. A modern carrier is a thirteen-billion-dollar trophy that can be reduced to scrap by a couple of hundred cheap missiles fired from the Iranian coast. China noticed.

The other fantasy is that America simply fights from home. Picture the alternative: twenty thousand transatlantic sorties shuttling spare parts, munitions, fuel bladders, mechanics and replacement pilots from Norfolk and Dover to wherever the war happens to be. A C-17 burns through roughly 35,000 dollars of fuel every hour it flies, and the round trip from the American east coast to the Gulf is the better part of a day. Multiply that by every bolt, every missile, every spare engine. The war becomes a sustained airborne traffic jam with the bill arriving by the second.

So you need land, specifically land near the war. Modern combat aircraft are not Spitfires you fuel up and send off with a wave. An F-35 demands an entire Walmart of spare parts, a small city of technicians, climate-controlled hangars and a supply chain stretching halfway round the planet. Drones need operators, networks, satellites and a steady diet of components no carrier can store. Modern war arrives by container ship and lives in a warehouse.

Close the bases, and Washington loses the warehouses. Lose the warehouses, and the next confrontation with Iran is either fought by phone or fought from Kansas with a flight schedule that bankrupts the Treasury before the first missile lands.

MAGA thinks shutting Ramstein punishes Europe. It punishes America. Europe will be inconvenienced. America will be unarmed.

And so, after a thousand insults, a thousand sneers, a thousand late-night posts about freeloading allies, Europe is quietly drafting the politest letter in diplomatic history. It thanks America for its service. It wishes the troops a safe journey home. It suggests, with great warmth, that Washington might now turn its attention to its neighbours in Latin America, where a fading superpower can busy itself with whatever a fading superpower busies itself with.

Spain had its century. Britain had its empire. The Soviets had their parades. Each ended the same way: as a shadow of itself, with the historians left to argue, volume after volume, about precisely when the rot set in and why nobody noticed in time. America is welcome to join them on the shelf.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

If you like what you read, please follow Gandalv on Substack:
https://t.co/2TO5x2O8nI

[Alison Dolan @AlisonDolan]

Awesome 🤩

[Harry Sisson @harryjsisson]

Trump had another mental health episode and spiraled out of control on social media last night:

12:18am - Demands Chuck Schumer resign
12:19am - Posts a tweet saying Obama tried to “overthrow the government in 2016.”
12:22am - Reposts a statement from Sen. Mike Lee calling for the filibuster to be removed
12:27am - Posts a conspiracy video alleging Obama and Hillary Clinton committed treason
12:27am - Posts a tweet from a MAGA account calling for Obama and Clinton to be arrested for treason
12:28am - Another post calling for treason charges against Obama and Clinton
12:28am - Yet another post demanding treason charges for Obama and Clinton
12:29am - Posts an AI image of a man holding a sign
1:13am - Demands the 2020 election be “wiped from the books and be of no further force or effect.”
2:43am - Posts about Clint Eastwood complimenting him
2:44am - Posts about Elon Musk calling the Southern Poverty Law Center a “scam”
2:45am - Posts about a far-right podcast

This man is not well. He is a demented lunatic who is spiraling out of control. He must be impeached and removed from office.

[Pehn Di Siri @PehnDiSiri]

JD Vance trip to Pakistan

[Alison Dolan @AlisonDolan]

@Gianl1974 They didn’t just say nothing…they supported it all. All the way.

[ALASTAIR CAMPBELL @campbellclaret]

What fantastic news from Hungary. Proof that if you stand up to it right wing kleptocratic populist authoritarianism can be beaten. Orban will now flee somewhere with his wealth. But this is more than a bad night for him. It is a bad night for Putin who as in Moldova spent a fortune trying to rig it. It is a bad night for Trump. It is a bad night for Vance and Rubio who believed that their mere presence in Budapest would swing the vote Orban’s way. They helped Magyar! . It is a bad night for Farage the AfD and Le Pen because it shows that when their brand of politics is exposed to serious opposition and scrutiny it collapses. Magyar is far from the perfect leader but my God he deserves all the congratulations coming his way for ousting Orban and showing how it can be done. He now has the tough job of dismantling the corrupt systems and bodies installed over 16 years. The people of Hungary deserve our thanks for showing these people can be beaten. And Zelensky now deserves far greater support from Europe.

[Amock_ @Amockx2022]

BREAKING : This is tight slap to Netanyahu 🔥

🇮🇱 Netanyahu –– "Spain leadership is defaming Israel. We will now consider Spain our enemy"

🇪🇸 Spain –– 🔥 "We are not defaming you, we are defining you. You are a genocidal and criminal regime

All of you will appear before the International Criminal Court" 🫡

You say Spain, I hear Spine

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

Too on point not to share, “Aussie reply to Trump rant about NATO not being there for us.

Mate. You run a country with 600,000 homeless people sleeping on the street tonight. A country where 40% of adults can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. A country where insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. A country where medical debt is the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. A country where women are dying in hospital car parks because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage.
You lock up more of your own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has 2 million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven't even been convicted of anything. They're just too poor to make bail.
Your life expectancy is going backwards. You're the only developed nation where that's happening. Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba's. Your kids do active shooter drills between maths and English while you sell the gunmaker's stock to your mates.
Your minimum wage hasn't moved in 15 years. You've got teachers working 2 jobs and veterans sleeping under bridges and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that didn't attack you.
And you’ve got a convicted felon, adjudicating raping, paedophile protecting, porn star shagging insurrectionist running the biggest dumpster fire war campaign since the Taliban thanked you very much for losing again.
And you're calling Greenland poorly run?
Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. Nobody goes bankrupt there because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because their insurance said no.
"NATO wasn't there when we needed them." When exactly was that, champ? September 11? Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU. Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU. Australia wasn't even in NATO and we still showed up. For 20 years.
And you pulled out at 2am without telling anyone and left them to deal with the mess.
So maybe before you start calling other countries poorly run, have a look at your own backyard, you spray-tanned aluminium siding salesman. The only thing poorly run in this picture is your fucking mouth. Credit (borrowed from) Jim Scroggins - original author 📷 unknown”

[Captain Obvious™️ @TheFungi669]

I hope that I live long enough to see this. 👇

[D.Radka, #NAFO 🇨🇿🤝🇺🇦 @DakdaR22]

He has not stopped working for Ukraine for a single day in 4 years.

More than President.
This is Volodymyr Zelensky🇺🇦

Respect to this man, every day🫡

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Let me explain something to the MAGA crowd, because clearly someone needs to.

They seem to think NATO is cosmic room service. You pick up the phone, say “hello, we’re having a bit of a war here,” and thirty-one countries march to your rescue. A continental Uber for military adventures.

That is not how it works.
Article 5 is a mutual defense clause. The clue is in the word mutual. And it has been triggered exactly once in NATO’s entire history. After September 11. When America was attacked. Not Europe. America.

Every NATO member showed up. They went to Afghanistan. They fought. They bled. They died. In America’s war. On America’s behalf.

Now imagine they hadn’t.
Over 1,100 allied soldiers died in Afghanistan. British, Canadian, German, Danish, Polish. And yes, even Ukrainian soldiers, who had no NATO obligation whatsoever. Gone. Without them, those are American names on those graves. Sons from Ohio. Fathers from Georgia. Kids from Nebraska who never came home.

Then there is the money. NATO allies spent over 100 billion dollars on a war that started on American soil. Without that, Washington pays every cent. On top of the 2 to 3 trillion the war already cost.

And without allied bases across Europe and Central Asia, American supply lines collapse entirely. Without British forces in Helmand and Canadians in Kandahar, the Taliban reconstitutes in three years instead of ten. The gaps get filled one way. More American deployments. More American coffins arriving at Dover.

Afghanistan was bloody. But NATO took the hit. Without them, every single one of those casualties would have had an American name.

Trump called allies like these losers. Suckers.

If you are a certain kind of broken person, that probably makes sense to you. But for the rest of us, what those soldiers did has a different name. Honor. The bond between men who have been in the same dirt, under the same fire. Between Brits and Americans, Frenchmen and Norwegians, Canadians and Danes. Not a diplomatic relationship. A blood bond. Brotherhood forged in places most people will never see and cannot imagine.

In that culture, you do not mock a fallen ally. You do not sneer at the dead. It is the lowest thing a human being can do. Trump did it to a standing ovation.

If you are a MAGA supporter travelling to NATO countries, understand this. There are no friendly pats on the back waiting for you. No one will buy you a beer. The governments who share your worldview sit in Minsk, Moscow and Pyongyang. Brutal dictatorships where journalists disappear, elections are theatre and dissent is a medical condition treated in basements. Not London. Not Paris. Not Rome, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin or Ottawa.

You have abandoned the open societies, the free press, the rule of law, the places where people actually want to live. You traded the best of civilization for a very small, very dark room. Frankly, it serves you right.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[Jonathan Pie @JonathanPieNews]

Just saw this and was about to post something amusingly ironic along the lines of : I'm sure Trump will be magnanimous in his response to a former foe. Then I saw his response and even my jaw hit the floor.
Bush: "He helped prevent another terrorist attack on US soil."
Obama: "One of the finest directors in the history of the FBI"
Trump: "I'm glad he's dead."
The current President of The United States is not a normal human being. He's a vicious, crude, unhinged cunt of a man.

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Robert Mueller died last night.

He was 81 years old. He had a wife who loved him for sixty years. He had two daughters, one of whom he met for the first time in Hawaii, in 1969, on a few hours of military leave, before he got back on the plane and returned to Vietnam. He had grandchildren. He had a faith he practiced quietly, without performance. He had, in the way of men who have seen real things and survived them, a quality that is increasingly rare and increasingly mocked in the country he spent his life serving.

He had integrity.

And tonight the President of the United States said good!

I have been sitting with that word for hours now. Good. One syllable. The thing you say when the coffee is hot or the traffic is moving. The thing a man who has never had to bury anyone, never had to sit in the specific silence of a room where someone is newly absent, reaches for when he wants the world to know he is satisfied. Good. The daughters are crying and the wife is alone in the house and good.

I want to speak directly to the Americans reading this. Not the political Americans. Just the human ones. The ones who have lost a father. The ones who know what it is to be in that first hour, when you keep forgetting and then remembering again, when ordinary objects become unbearable, when the world outside the window seems obscene in its indifference. I want to ask you, simply, to hold that feeling for a moment, and then to understand that the man you elected looked at it and typed a single word.

Good.

This is not a country having a bad day. I need you to understand that. Countries have bad days. Elections go wrong. Leaders disappoint. Institutions bend. But there is a different thing, a rarer and more terrible thing, that happens when the moral center of a place simply gives way. Not dramatically. Not with a single catastrophic event. But quietly, in increments, until one evening a president celebrates the death of an old man whose family is still warm with grief, and enough people find it acceptable that it becomes the weather. Just the weather.

That is what is happening. That is what has happened.

The world knows. From Tokyo to Oslo, from London to Buenos Aires, people are not angry at America tonight. Anger would mean there was still something to fight for, some remaining faith to be betrayed. What I see, in the reactions from everywhere that is not here, is something older and sadder than anger. It is the look people get when they have waited a long time for someone they love to find their way back, and have finally understood that they are not coming.

America is being grieved. Past tense, almost. The idea of it. The thing it represented to people who had nothing else to believe in, who came here with everything they owned in a single bag because they had heard, somehow, across an ocean, that this was the place where decency was written into the walls. That idea is not resting. It is not suspended. It is being buried, in real time, with 7,450 likes before dinner.

And the church said nothing.

Seventy million people have decided that this man, this specific man who has cheated everyone he has ever made a promise to, who has mocked the disabled and the dead and the grieving, who celebrated tonight while a family wept, is an instrument of God. The pastors who made that bargain did not just trade away their credibility. They traded away the thing that made them worth listening to in the first place. The cross they carry now is a costume. The faith they preach is a loyalty oath with scripture attached. When the history of American Christianity is written, this will be the chapter they skip at seminary.

Now I want to talk about the men who stand next to him.

Because this is the part that actually breaks my heart.

JD Vance is not a bad man. I have to say that, because it is true, and because the truth matters even now, especially now. Marco Rubio is not a bad man. Lindsey Graham is not a bad man. They are idiots, but not bad, as in BAD! These are men with mothers who raised them and children who love them and friends who remember who they were before all of this. They are not monsters. Monsters are simple. Monsters do not cost you anything emotionally because there is nothing in them to mourn.

These men are something more painful than monsters.

They are men who knew better, and know better still, and will get up tomorrow and do it again.

Every small compromise they made had a reason. Every moment they looked the other way had a justification that sounded, at the time, almost reasonable. And now they have arrived here, at a place where a president celebrates the death of an old man and they will find a way, on television, to say nothing that means anything, and they will go home to houses where children who carry their name are waiting, and they will say goodnight, and they will say nothing.

Their oldest friends are watching. The ones who knew Rubio when he still believed in something. Who knew Graham when he said, out loud, on the record, that this exact man would destroy the Republican Party and deserve it. Who sat next to Vance and thought here is someone worth knowing. Those friends are not angry tonight. They moved through anger a long time ago. What they feel now is the quiet, irrecoverable sadness of watching someone disappear while still being present. Of watching a person they loved choose, again and again, to become less.

That is what cowardice costs. Not the coward. The people who loved him.

And in the comments tonight, the followers celebrate. People who ten years ago brought casseroles to grieving neighbours. Who stood in the rain at gravesides and meant the words they said. Who told their children that we do not speak ill of the dead because the dead were someone's beloved. Those people are tonight typing gleeful things about a man whose daughters are not yet done crying. And they feel clean doing it. Righteous. Because somewhere along the way the thing they were given in exchange for their decency was the feeling of belonging to something, and that feeling is very hard to give up even when you can no longer remember what you gave for it.

When Trump is gone, they will still be here.

Standing in the silence where the noise used to be. Without the permission the crowd gave them. Without the pastor who told them their cruelty was holy. They will be alone with what they said and what they cheered and what they chose to become, and there will be no one left to tell them it was righteous.

That morning is coming.

Robert Mueller flew across the Pacific on military leave to hold his newborn daughter for a few hours before returning to the war. He came home. He buried his dead with honour. He served presidents of both parties because he understood that the institution was larger than any one man. He told his grandchildren that a lie is the worst thing a person can do, that a reputation once lost cannot be recovered, and he lived that, every day, in the quiet and unglamorous way of people who actually believe what they say.

He was the kind of American the world used to point to when it needed to believe the story was true.

He died last night. His wife is alone in their house in Georgetown. His daughters are learning what the world is without him in it. And somewhere in the particular hush that falls over a family in the first hours of loss, the most powerful man and the biggest loser on earth sent a message to say he was glad.

The world that loved what America was supposed to be is grieving tonight. Not for Robert Mueller only. For the country that produced him and then became this. For the distance between what was promised and what was delivered. For the suspicion, growing quieter and more certain with each passing month, that the America people believed in was always partly a story, and the story is over now, and there is nothing yet to replace it.

That is all it needed to be.

A man died. His family is broken open with grief.

That is all it needed to be.

Instead the President said good.

And the country that once stood for something looked away 🇺🇸

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

President Trump says the US in conjunction with "many countries" is sending war ships to the Strait of Hormuz to keep it "open and safe."
Trump also calls on China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others to send war ships to Hormuz.
Oh. Oh this is beautiful. This is the geopolitical equivalent of the guy who starts a bar fight, gets his head put through the pool table, and then looks up at the bouncer with blood pouring out of his nose going "Are you gonna DO something about these guys?!"
Let me get this straight. You bombed Iran. YOU started this. You launched Operation Epic Fury like a kid naming his Nerf gun. You flattened their cities, cratered their infrastructure, killed God knows how many civilians, and now that they've done the ONE thing that every single analyst on Earth said they would do... close the Strait of Hormuz... you're asking CHINA for help?
CHINA. The country you've spent three years tariffing into oblivion. The country you called an enemy of civilisation. You want THEM to send warships to protect YOUR oil supply chain? In what universe does Xi Jinping take that phone call and not just put it on speaker so the whole room can laugh?
And here's the bit that should be printed on a plaque and hung in the Smithsonian under the heading "Weapons Grade Cognitive Dissonance Dipshit." Direct quote from the man himself:
"We have already destroyed 100% of Iran's Military capability."
Next sentence. LITERALLY the next sentence:
"But it's easy for them to send a drone or two, drop a mine, or deliver a close range missile somewhere along, or in, this Waterway."
I'M SORRY, WHAT? You destroyed ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of their military capability and they can STILL mine one of the most important shipping lanes on the planet? What kind of shit maths is that? That's not 100%, mate. That's not even close to 100%. If you hired a pest exterminator and he said "I've eliminated 100% of the termites, but they can still eat your house," you'd want your money back.
He calls the Strait closure an "artificial constraint." ARTIFICIAL. Brother, there is nothing artificial about it. You dropped bombs on a sovereign nation and they blocked a chokepoint that carries 20% of the world's oil. That's not artificial. That's called CONSEQUENCES. That's cause and effect. That's the thing that happens AFTER the thing you did. Toddlers understand this concept. You touch the stove, you get burned. You bomb Iran, they close Hormuz. This is not complicated.
And the absolute cheek of calling Iran "a Nation that has been totally decapitated" while simultaneously admitting they're holding the entire global energy market hostage with speedboats and sea mines. Pick a lane, Donald. Either they're decapitated or they're not. You don't get to claim total victory AND beg France for naval escorts in the same paragraph.
Speaking of France. And Japan. And South Korea. And the UK. Notice who's NOT on that list? Australia. Not even worth asking apparently. Which, honestly, fair enough, because we've got about four days of fuel reserves and a navy that couldn't project force to Bondi Beach, but it does sort of highlight how far down the pecking order we've fallen while our politicians were busy kissing the ring at Mar-a-Lago.
But here's the real headline buried under all the tough-guy cosplay. He's LOSING. This post is what losing looks like when you're a narcissist who can't say the word. He can't reopen the Strait alone. The US Navy, for all its power, cannot clear mines and fight asymmetric warfare across a narrow waterway while simultaneously bombing the shoreline AND keeping tanker traffic flowing. It's a logistical nightmare and he knows it. That's why he's begging. That's why a man who has never asked anyone for anything in his life is out here publicly requesting that other nations come bail him out.
And they won't. Because why would they? China's already getting its oil overland from Russia. France has no skin in this game. Japan and South Korea are furious about tariffs. And the UK is trying to figure out how to diplomatically distance itself from a war it never supported without losing its trade deal.
He's alone. He did this to himself. And the only people who'll pay the price are the rest of us, watching fuel prices rip through the roof while this spray-tanned catastrophe stands at the podium claiming everything is going exactly to plan.
One way or the other, he says. OPEN, SAFE, and FREE, he says.
Mate, the only thing that's open is the hole you've dug yourself into. And it's getting deeper by the hour.

[Gianl1974 @Gianl1974]

“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response:

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.

• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.

[Beefeater @Beefeater_Fella]

The orange shit-gibbon has no comprehension of the Pandora’s box he just opened.

🇦🇪🇺🇸 Prominent UAE billionaire Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor just published an open letter to Trump. It's brutal.

"Who gave you the authority to drag our region into a war with Iran? Who gave you permission to turn our region into a battlefield?"

Al Habtoor's a major figure: billionaire, former diplomat, outspoken political voice in the Gulf. When he talks, UAE leadership's listening.

His questions:

* Was this your decision or Netanyahu's pressure?
* Did you calculate collateral damage before firing?
* You placed GCC countries at the heart of danger they didn't choose
* Your "Board of Peace" initiatives were funded by Gulf states. Now we're getting attacked. Where did that money go?
* You promised no wars. You've conducted operations in 7 countries: Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, Nigeria, Syria, Iran, Venezuela
* 658 airstrikes in your first year back = Biden's entire term (which you criticized)
* War costs $40-65 billion for operations, possibly $210 billion total
* Your approval rating's down 9% in 400 days
* Americans were promised peace. They're getting war funded by their taxes

The sharpest line: "Before the ink has dried on your Board of Peace initiative, we find ourselves facing military escalation that endangers the entire region. So where did those initiatives go?"

Al Habtoor's not some random critic. He's establishment. Connected. When UAE elites start publicly questioning Trump's decision-making, that's America's closest Arab allies saying "we didn't sign up for this."

The letter ends: "True leadership is not measured by war decisions, but by wisdom, respect for others, and pushing toward achieving peace."

@KhalafAlHabtoor

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

"In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, "And we shall overcome." I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh's madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing 'Amazing Grace' in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
"These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.
"And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.
"The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.
"Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don't have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.
Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn't he a funny man? Isn't what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now."
- Charles Pierce