Murphy suggested that if the goal is not to ensure a transition of power, the U.S. will just face more issues further down the line. He said: “So, they are going to spend hundreds of billions of your taxpayer dollars, get a whole bunch of Americans killed, and a hardline regime – probably a MORE anti-American hardline regime – will still be in charge.”
He said there didn’t seem to be a clear goal apart from “destroying lots of missiles and boats and drone factories.”
“But the question that stumped them: what happens when you stop bombing and they restart production? They hinted at more bombing. Which is, of course, endless war,” he said.
Finally, Friday Reads: “The Thought of War Blows my Mind”
Posted: March 13, 2026 Filed under: #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, #We are so Fucked | Tags: Cadet Bonespur's Iran War 1 Comment
“The dumbbeat of war echoes across the world.” @repeat1968, John Buss
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Gotta thank @repeat1968 for giving me this earworm today, as well as today’s Featured Funny. Today’s topics are War, Inflation, and a domestic terrorist attack on a place of worship. All these are brought to you by the letters #FARTUS. Yes, Cadet Bonespurs with his band of incompetents is doing more damage to the world and our country than most folks thought possible.
We’ve lost more U.S. service members, furthering whatever the Iran War is supposed to be about. This is from NBC News. “All 6 U.S. crew members killed after refueling plane crashes in Iraq. The crash brings the number of U.S. service personnel killed since the Iran war began Feb. 28 to 12. A 13th died of a medical issue.” Watching body counts rise is never a good thing to see constantly in the news. We should’ve learned by now. This sad news is reported by Patrick Smith.
All six U.S. crew members have been confirmed dead after their military refueling plane crashed in Iraq while taking part in Iran war operations, the U.S. military said Friday.
U.S. Central Command said in a post on X early Friday that the KC-135 plane went down at approximately 2 p.m. ET Thursday in western Iraq, with four crew members initially confirmed dead. That statement said “rescue efforts continue.”
CNN has the headline this morning. “Trump administration underestimated Iran war’s impact on Strait of Hormuz.” Ya think? I’m just glad that my legs, my bike, and the St. Claude Ave bus pretty much take me wherever I need to go these days. You can lessen that earworm by humming Send in the Clowns as you read about what passes as the national security advisors these days.
The Pentagon and National Security Council significantly underestimated Iran’s willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to US military strikes while planning the ongoing operation, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
President Donald Trump’s national security team failed to fully account for the potential consequences of what some officials have described as a worst-case scenario now facing the administration, the sources said.
While key officials from the Departments of Energy and Treasury were present for some of the official planning meetings about the operation before it started, sources said, the agency analysis and forecasts that would be integral elements of the decision-making process in past administrations were secondary considerations.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Energy Secretary Chris Wright have been key players throughout the planning and execution stages of the conflict, the sources acknowledged. But Trump’s preference of leaning on a tight circle of close advisers in his national security decision making had the effect of sidelining interagency debate over the potential economic fallout if Iran were to respond to US-Israeli strikes by closing the strait.
And now it may be weeks before the administration’s efforts to alleviate the intensifying economic fallout take hold, officials said Thursday, including high-risk naval escorts of oil tankers through the strait that the Pentagon believes are currently too dangerous to conduct. The president, meanwhile, has continued to downplay the tumult in energy markets and the danger. He told Fox News that oil tanker crews should “show some guts” and go through the strait.
The reality in the strait has left diplomatic counterparts, former US economic and energy officials and industry executives who spoke with CNN in a state of confusion and disbelief.
More than a dozen vessels have been attacked near Iran since Feb. 28
There have been at least 14 reports of attacks on ships in the Persian Gulf and near the Strait of Hormuz since war broke out between Iran and the US and Israel, according to UK Maritime Trade Operations. The incidents have effectively halted traffic through the vital oil corridor.
You may read the details at the link. Iran is warning ships in the air that it is also actively mining the area. There appears to be no solutions or discussion on this mess. According to Cade Bone Spurs, we shouldn’t worry about it. This is from AXIOS. “Scoop: Trump claimed in G7 call that Iran is “about to surrender”. Barak Ravid has the lede.
President Trump told G7 leaders in a virtual meeting Wednesday that Iran is “about to surrender,” according to three officials from G7 countries briefed on the contents of the call.
- 24 hours later, Iran’s new supreme leader issued his first public statement vowing to keep fighting.
Why it matters: Trump is as confident about the war’s outcome in private as he is in public. But his assessment is colliding with a more complex reality on the ground.
- The Iranian regime has shown no signs of imminent surrender or collapse — and on Day 14 of the war, is moving to gain more leverage by choking off the Strait of Hormuz.
Behind the scenes: Trump boasted about the results of Operation Epic Fury on the G7 call Wednesday morning, telling allies, “I got rid of a cancer that was threatening us all.”
- While claiming Iran was about to surrender, he also suggested there were no officials left alive in Tehran with the power to make that decision.
- “Nobody knows who is the leader, so there is no one that can announce surrender,” Trump said, according to two officials briefed on the call.
Trump has mocked Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei as a “lightweight,” previously telling Axios that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son would be “unacceptable” to the U.S.
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In a message read out on state television Thursday, Mojtaba Khamenei vowed to avenge Iranian “martyrs” and open new fronts in the war “where the enemy has little experience and is highly vulnerable.”
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Khamenei said Iran will continue to threaten the Strait of Hormuz, where attacks on tankers have already pushed oil prices above $100 a barrel and triggered fears of a global economic crisis.
Meanwhile, the Secretary of War is on the job! Not really! He said this today.
CNBC headlined his little performance this way. “Pete Hegseth on Strait of Hormuz: ‘Don’t need to worry about it’.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday brushed aside concerns that the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz because of the Iran war, which has spiked oil prices, would continue being a problem for the U.S. and the world for much longer.
Iran has been “exercising sheer desperation in the Straits of Hormuz,” Hegseth said at a Pentagon press briefing.
“We have been dealing with it, and don’t need to worry about it,” he said.
The price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil on Friday morning was around $93 per barrel. A day before the war began on Feb. 28, a barrel of WTI was selling for about $67.
I bet that made you feel so much better! I know I’m back to my original earworm now. Economic data make it increasingly clear that the economy was slowing even before Cadet Bone Spurs started his war. Prices were also rising. This is from the AP. “US economy expanded at sluggish 0.7% in fourth quarter, government says, downgrading first estimate.” Let’s see if he blames Democrats and Biden.
The U.S. economy, hobbled by last fall’s 43-day government shutdown, advanced at an unexpectedly sluggish 0.7% annual rate from October through December, the Commerce Department reported Friday in a big downgrade of its initial estimate.
Growth in gross domestic product — the nation’s output of goods and services — was down sharply from 4.4% in last year’s third quarter and 3.8% in the second. And the fourth-quarter number was half the government’s first estimate of 1.4%; economists had expected the revision to go the other way — and show stronger growth.
Federal government spending and investment, clobbered by the shutdown, plunged at a 16.7% rate, hacking 1.16 percentage points off fourth-quarter growth.
For all of 2025, GDP grew 2.1%, solid but down from an initial estimate of 2.2% and from growth of 2.8% in 2024 and 2.9% 2023.
The news from Michigan on the Temple domestic terrorist is beginning to shape the narrative on why it happened. This is from The Detroit News. “Temple Israel synagogue shooter’s family recently killed in air strike.” Damn! There goes that earwig again.
A Dearborn Heights man whose relatives were recently killed in a military strike in Lebanon is the accused assailant in Thursday’s attack on the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, two sources apprised of the investigation told The Detroit News.
Ayman Ghazali, 41, a restaurant worker in Dearborn Heights, is accused of driving his truck into the synagogue just after noon Thursday and opening fire, before he was shot and killed by security, the sources said. They spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the details publicly.
Late Thursday night, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed that Ghazali was the individual who carried out the attack.
Ghazali, a native of Lebanon, was granted U.S. citizenship more than 10 years ago, under the Obama administration, according to the department. He entered the U.S. through Detroit on May 10, 2011, on an immigrant visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen, a DHS statement said. He applied for naturalization on Oct. 20, 2015, and was granted citizenship on Feb. 5, 2016.
Ghazali’s ex-wife filed for divorce in Wayne County Circuit Court in August 2024, records show. The couple had at least one child, according to court records, and a divorce was granted seven months later, in March 2025. Mohammad Ahmad Moussa, the ex-wife’s divorce lawyer, declined comment when contacted by The News on Thursday.
So, here is the headline from The Los Angeles Times, March 1. “Israel hits Lebanon after Hezbollah attacks; in Iraq, militia targets U.S. troops.” How literal are we here about the Eye for an Eye thing in modern times?
- The Israeli military hit Beirut on Monday and urged people in nearly 50 villages in Lebanon to evacuate ahead of possible retaliatory strikes after Hezbollah fired into Israel.
- In Iraq, the Shiite militia Saraya Awliya al-Dam claimed a drone attack on Monday targeting U.S. troops at the airport in Baghdad.
So, I think the world’s pretty fucked up right now, we are doing a lot of that, and I just am going to stop at this now and hope Congress starts fighting this with some integrity and grit.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
Thursday Political Cartoons: FDT
Posted: March 12, 2026 Filed under: just because 6 Comments
There is nothing I can say…so I’m just posting cartoons and memes today.
Stay safe out there.
Wednesday Reads: Iran Dominates the News; Epstein Still Breaks Through
Posted: March 11, 2026 Filed under: just because | Tags: Dan Caine, DOGE Social Security Attacks, Donald Trump, Iran War, Jared Kusher, Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth, Sen. Chris Murphy, Steve Witkoff, Strait of Hormuz 5 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
Yesterday I tried to watch a press conference on Trump’s Iran conflict by Pete Hegseth and Dan Caine, but it was unwatchable. Hegseth waved his arms around and yelled over-the-top threats, and Caine sort of tried to sound reasonable; but none of it made sense. No one in the Trump administration has a clue why we’re in this “war.” I really do think it’s another distraction from the Epstein files.
So this morning I enjoyed reading this description by John Ganz at Unpopular Front: Command-Shift-War. War as Cliché.
This war is notable not for its use of Artificial Intelligence, but for the fact that it is the first war that feels like it’s been launched by A.I: It’s all been done on a level less than thought. Trump’s remarks, Hegseth’s speeches; they all sound like autocompletes or snippets of half-remembered things. When Trump bellows, “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,” he knows not what it means; he just heard it somewhere, probably on TV.
The barrage of clichés from Hegseth’s mouth is astonishing—“Flying over their capital. Death and destruction from the sky all day long. We’re playing for keeps. Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly. Our rules of engagement are bold, precise, and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it. This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be….” Then General Caine (what a name) joins in the fusillade: “Profound sadness and gratitude….wounded warriors…standing shoulder to shoulder…making steady progress…clear-eyed…quiet professionals…call balls and strikes.” Clear-eyed, quiet professionals are making steady progress calling balls and strikes on our wounded warriors, to whom we feel eternal gratitude. We may run out of interceptors, but we are well-stocked with hackneyed phrases. And the munitions may be “precision guided,” but the language is necessarily vague. Too bad they can’t bore the enemy to death.
Pete Hegseth and Dan Caine try to make sense of the Iran war.
The images, too, are familiar and shopworn for anyone who can remember as far back as the First Persian Gulf War. The grainy footage of “precision strikes” (another cliché) on “key targets.” The night sky of a Middle Eastern metropolis illuminated with fire and smoke—we’ve all seen Shock and Awe (2002), dir. George W. Bush and Michael Bay—Tomahawks streaking into the sky. The jets screaming off the decks of carriers; The video edits using “the Macarena” or “Fortunate Son,” meant to recall Forrest Gump, itself already a pastiche of Vietnam movies. I’m sure something is reassuring about it all to a Fox viewer approaching senescence. But also for the young who have processed everything through video games. They’ve seen this movie before. (That’s another one, in case you didn’t notice.) It’s a kind of medley of America’s wars; the themes come and go: oil crisis…Iran…Kuwait…boots on the ground…Patriot missiles…Scuds. Even the sinking of an apparently unarmed Iranian warship by a submarine was a callback: Hegseth reminded us it was the first time a US sub had sunk an enemy vessel with a torpedo since WWII. It had no strategic or tactical purpose; it was just meant to generate an image: a ship going down viewed through the crosshairs of a periscope. Something out of Run Silent Run Deep, watched on a Sunday afternoon. Or the Victory at Sea doc,not for nothing, a movie that Trump obsesses over. Of course, “unrestricted submarine warfare” and abandoning survivors at sea recalls a coldhearted U-Boat skipper more than Clark Gable, but no matter.
In the past, propaganda served the purposes of war; now war serves the purposes of propaganda. But the blood remains real.
A.I. will supposedly give us fully automated wars in the future, but it’s here, right now. There’s a blind automatism to this war; It’s a war without thought or deliberation, public or private. It’s war as autocomplete. Of course, we were gonna “do” Iran. It was just what was next. Another barrage of clichés: “American blood on their hands…theocratic lunatics…the mullahs…We’ve been at war with Iran for 47 years.” The last one is particularly Orwellian: We’ve always been at war with West Asia.
Read more at the Substack link above.
Here’s the latest news and opinion about Trump’s “war.”
The Pentagon tried to hide the number of U.S. injuries in the war until Reuters did an independent investigation. Now they say there are 140 wounded.
Reuters: Exclusive: As many as 150 US troops wounded so far in Iran war, sources say.
As many as 150 U.S. troops have been wounded in the 10-day-old war with Iran, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.
The casualty figure has not been previously reported. Prior to Reuters’ publication of the figure, the Pentagon had only disclosed eight U.S. personnel seriously injured.
In a statement after Reuters published its report, the Pentagon estimated the figure to be approximately 140 wounded and said the vast majority of them were minor.
“Since the start of Operation Epic Fury, approximately 140 U.S. service members have been wounded over 10 days of sustained attacks,” said chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell.
He said 108 of the wounded service members had already returned to duty.
Parnell said the eight seriously wounded service members were receiving the highest level of medical care.
Reuters could not determine the types of injuries and whether they include traumatic brain injuries, which are common after exposure to blasts.
Iran has launched retaliatory strikes against U.S. military bases since the start of the conflict on Feb. 28. It has also struck diplomatic missions in Arab Gulf states as well as hotels and airports and damaged oil infrastructure.
The New York Times: At Least 3 Ships Are Struck In and Around a Key Gulf Oil Passage.
At least three ships were hit on Wednesday in and around the vital oil route of the Strait of Hormuz, according to a British maritime monitoring group, as the Middle East war chokes off one of the key conduits for the global oil trade.
An image released by the Royal Thai Navy shows a tanker near the Strait of Hormuz that was attacked on Wednesday. Iran claimed responsibility. Credit…Royal Thai Navy, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Iran appeared to claim responsibility for at least one of the attacks. Alireza Tangsiri, the naval commander in Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards Corps, named one of the ships that was struck, the Mayuree Naree, in a post on social media, saying they had “ignored the warnings” from Iran, and “ended up getting caught.”
He added: “Any vessel that intends to pass must obtain permission from Iran.”
The incidents came after the U.S. military said it struck 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels near the Strait of Hormuz — though it remained unclear whether any Iranian mines had actually been deployed there.
There were three separate reports, according to United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, a British monitoring agency. Iran fired at targets across the Middle East on Wednesday, but did not explicitly claim responsibility for the strikes on the ships.
Three strikes on ships in a single morning appeared to represent an unusual uptick: The U.K.M.T.O. said it had received reports of 13 attacks in total since the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran began on Feb. 28.
One cargo vessel was struck “by an unknown projectile” north of Oman in the Straits of Hormuz, resulting in a fire onboard, the agency said. The Oman News Agency said the country’s Maritime Security Center received a report indicating that the Mayuree Naree, a commercial vessel flying the flag of Thailand, was hit off the Omani coast.
Mark Mazzetti, Tyler Pager, and Edward Wong at The New York Times: How Trump and His Advisers Miscalculated Iran’s Response to War.
On Feb. 18, as President Trump weighed whether to launch military attacks on Iran, Chris Wright, the energy secretary, told an interviewer he was not concerned that the looming war might disrupt oil supplies in the Middle East and wreak havoc in energy markets.
Even during the Israeli and U.S. strikes against Iran last June, Mr. Wright said, there had been little disruption in the markets. “Oil prices blipped up and then went back down,” he said. Some of Mr. Trump’s other advisers shared similar views in private, dismissing warnings that — the second time around — Iran might wage economic warfare by closing shipping lanes carrying roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil supply.
The extent of that miscalculation was laid bare in recent days, as Iran threatened to fire at commercial oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic choke point through which all ships must pass on their way out of the Persian Gulf. In response to the Iranian threats, commercial shipping has come to a standstill in the Gulf, oil prices have spiked, and the Trump administration has scrambled to find ways to tamp down an economic crisis that has triggered higher gasoline prices for Americans.
The episode is emblematic of how much Mr. Trump and his advisers misjudged how Iran would respond to a conflict that the government in Tehran sees as an existential threat. Iran has responded far more aggressively than it did during last June’s 12-day war, firing barrages of missiles and drones at U.S. military bases, cities in Arab nations across the Middle East, and on Israeli population centers.
U.S. officials have had to adjust plans on the fly, from hastily ordering the evacuation of embassies to developing policy proposals to reduce gas prices.
The Daily Beast: Senator Torches Trump’s ‘Incoherent’ War Plans After Secret Briefing.
President Trump’s closed-door meeting about his long-term plan in Iran and overall justification for the war has been blasted as “incoherent” by a senator who attended.
Chris Murphy, a Democrat representing Connecticut, unloaded on the White House in a troubling X thread after the secret briefing on “Operation Epic Fury.”
Sen. Chris Murphy warned about the lack of a plan in a worrying X thread.
He said there doesn’t seem to be a clear goal apart from “destroying lots of missiles and boats and drone factories.”
“I obviously can’t disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are,” he said.
Several of the White House’s stated reasons for the war didn’t even come up, Murphy said, with not a single mention of plans to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. “This is, uh…surprising…since Trump says over and over this is a key goal,” he said.
The Trump administration also now claims that regime change is not the goal of the operation, despite the president initially framing it that way for the public.
Barak Ravid at Axios: Trump tells Axios there’s “practically nothing left” to target in Iran.
President Trump told Axios in a brief phone interview Wednesday that the war with Iran will end “soon” because there is “practically nothing left to target.”
“Little this and that… Any time I want it to end, it will end,” Trump said during the five-minute call.
Why it matters: Even as Trump publicly signals his operation has largely accomplished its objectives, U.S. and Israeli officials say there has been no internal directive on when fighting might stop.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday the war will continue “without any time limit, for as long as necessary, until we achieve all the objectives and decisively win the campaign.”Israeli and
U.S. officials say they are preparing for at least two more weeks of strikes in Iran.
It sounds like Israel is actually going to decide when the war ends.
On Tuesday, the U.S. received intelligence that suggested Iran has started laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz — one of the world’s most critical chokepoints for oil supply.
Officials say it’s unclear how many mines Iran has deployed, but the assessment is that the number is very small.
Trump confirmed to Axios that U.S. strikes on Tuesday destroyed 16 mine-laying boats and disrupted Iranian plans….
What he’s [Trump] saying: “The war is going great. We are way ahead of the timetable. We have done more damage than we thought possible, even in the original six-week period,” Trump told Axios.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
One more on Iran from Judd Legum at Popular Information: UPDATE: Trump says Kushner helped convince him to go to war with Iran. The disclosure highlights Kushner’s massive financial conflicts.
At a press conference on Monday evening, President Trump said his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was one of a handful of top advisers who convinced him to launch major combat operations in Iran. The disclosure raises additional questions about the role of Kushner, who is being paid tens of millions of dollars annually by Middle Eastern governments that were reportedly lobbying Trump to attack Iran.
Jared Kushner is acknowledged during the State of the Union on February 24, 2026, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee,Getty Images)
“The situation was very quickly approaching the point of no return… based on what Steve and Jared and Pete and others were telling me, Marco is so involved, I thought they were going to attack us,” Trump said, referring to Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Kushner, who has no formal title.
“Within a week, [Iran was] going to attack us, 100 percent. They were ready,” Trump said at a different event Monday. “They had all these missiles, far more than anyone thought, and they were going to attack us.”
Witkoff and Kushner were dispatched by Trump to Geneva to participate in mediation with their Iranian counterparts, in what was described as a last-ditch effort to avoid war. Kushner’s participation violated his pledge not to be involved in foreign policy in a second Trump administration. Instead, Kushner had said he was focused on running his private equity fund, Affinity Partners, which has raised billions of dollars from foreign governments.
Kushner’s largest investor is the Saudi Arabian government, which provided Kushner with $2 billion in funding in 2021. Each year, Saudi Arabia pays Kushner 1.25% of its investment, $25 million, as a “management fee.” Meaning he has received in excess of $100 million from the Saudi government over the last few years.
And Witkoff is a Russian asset. I will never forgive the idiots who voted for Trump because they just didn’t want a Black woman to be president.
Trump’s fear of the Epstein files is behind this idiotic war. No one will ever convince me otherwise. Here’s the latest on the Epstein story.
NBC News: Jeffrey Epstein’s New Mexico ranch searched by state investigators.
State investigators in New Mexico on Monday searched a 7,600-acre property that once belonged to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The search came after documents released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act showed no record of federal investigators ever searching the property, known as Zorro Ranch, despite a number of years-old civil suits that accused Epstein of sexually assaulting girls there — allegations over which he was never charged.
“This search is part of the criminal investigation announced by the New Mexico Department of Justice on February 19th into allegations of illegal activity at Epstein’s ranch prior to Epstein’s 2019 death,” the state agency said in a statement.
“The New Mexico Department of Justice appreciates the cooperation of the current property owners in granting access for the search and extends its thanks to the ranch staff for their professionalism,” the statement said, and will “continue to keep the public appropriately informed, support the survivors, and follow the facts wherever they lead.”
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a Democrat, ordered the search. His office announced its probe into Epstein last month, days after state lawmakers passed legislation to begin their own investigation into Epstein’s activities in the state.
The Legislature’s $2.5 million investigation, which has subpoena power, aims to close gaps in state law that may have allowed Epstein to operate in New Mexico with impunity. The committee is expected to release interim findings in July and a final report by the end of the year.
The bill’s co-sponsor, Democratic state Rep. Andrea Romero, said when the legislation passed last month that Epstein “was basically doing anything he wanted in this state without any accountability whatsoever.”
From Epstein expert Julie K. Brown at The Epstein files: Dead bodies and a long missing 300-year-old church bell: What will they find on Zorro Ranch?
The reach of the mysteries involving Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in New Mexico now span several centuries — as new documents reveal that the FBI’s Albuquerque office was investigating whether Epstein had a stolen historical artifact that dates back hundreds of years stored on his sprawling NM property.
Zorro Ranch
The artifact was a “death bell” that was once housed at the San Jose de Gracia Mission Church in Las Trampas, a village in Northern New Mexico between Sante Fe and Taos. The church was built in 1760 and is considered one of the best examples of Spanish Colonial architecture in the Southwest U.S. It is also a National Historic Landmark.
The lore about the missing church bell only adds to the questions about why the Justice Department never searched Epstein’s ranch back in 2019 — when at least two victims alleged they were sexually assaulted there, and another tipster claimed that two girls’ bodies are possibly buried there….
The “Death bell,” as it came to be called, was smaller than the other bell. During the church’s restoration in the 1930s, the bell was stolen.
In November 2019, Timothy Lopez told the FBI in Albuquerque, New Mexico that he recalled seeing Epstein’s ranch featured in a local real estate magazine in 2014 or 2015. In the photos accompanying the article, he said he noticed a room filed with Spanish Colonial art — and noticed a bell he thought might be the Death bell that had been stolen more than 80 years earlier.
The 7,400-ace property, which Epstein called “Zorro Ranch,” was purchased by Epstein from former New Mexico Governor Bruce King in 1993. The disgraced financier built a hilltop mansion with a private runway on the property, which was sold after Epstein’s death to the family of former Texas state Sen. Don Huffines, who won the Republican primary for Texas state comptroller last week.
After Epstein’s arrest in July 2019, the FBI search Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse, but did not immediately search Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean until after his August 2019 death. They never searched his New Mexico compound, despite having evidence of crimes that occurred there, including the tip about the stolen church bell….
the documents about the sexual assaults that were reported to have occurred on the property led to public outcry in recent weeks. That that led to New Mexico authorities finally on Monday beginning a long overdue search of the property. Of course, by now, any evidence of any sex crimes committed there has likely disappeared just like the long-vanished death bell.
The FBI claimed they abandoned the investigation of Zorro Ranch because they lacked enough evidence to get a search warrant. It will be interesting to see what New Mexico authorities find.
Two more significant stories:
The Washington Post (gift link): Whistleblower claims ex-DOGE member says he took Social Security data to new job.
The Social Security Administration’s internal watchdog is investigating a complaint that alleges a former U.S. DOGE Service employee claimed he had access to two highly sensitive agency databases and planned to share the information with his private employer — a claim that, if true, would constitute an unprecedented breach of security protocols at an agency that serves more than 70 million Americans.
The agency’s inspector general is investigating the disclosure and has alerted members of Congress of its existence, according to a letter by the acting inspector general to top members of four congressional committees reviewed by The Washington Post and two people familiar with the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive deliberations. The inspector general’s office has also shared the disclosure with the Government Accountability Office, which has been conducting its own audit of DOGE’s access to data, according to one of the people. The Post has reviewed the complaint and spoken with the whistleblower, who issued the complaint anonymously for fear of retaliation.
According to the disclosure, the former DOGE software engineer, who worked at the Social Security Administration last year before starting a job at a government contractor in October, allegedly told several co-workers that he possessed two tightly restricted databases of U.S. citizens’ information, and had at least one on a thumb drive. The databases, called “Numident” and the “Master Death File,” include records for more than 500 million living and dead Americans, including Social Security numbers, places and dates of birth, citizenship, race and ethnicity, and parents’ names. The complaint does not include specific dates of when he is said to have told colleagues this information, but at least one of the alleged events unfolded around early January, according to the complaint. While working at DOGE, the engineer had approved access to Social Security data.
According to the complaint, he allegedly told the whistleblower that he needed help transferring data from a thumb drive “to his personal computer so that he could ‘sanitize’ the data before using it at [the company.]” The engineer told colleagues that once he had removed personal details from the data, he wanted to upload it into the company’s systems. He told another colleague, who refused to help him upload the data because of legal concerns, that he expected to receive a presidential pardon if his actions were deemed to be illegal, according to the complaint.
The complaint does not allege that the engineer was successful in uploading the data to the company’s system.
The Post is not naming the former DOGE member or company because it has not independently confirmed the accusations in the complaint.
Use the gift link to read more.
Kristi Noem in one of her cosplay costumes
The Daily Beast: Insiders Reveal ICE Barbie Is Leaving DHS With a Major Problem.
Kristi Noem is apparently leaving the Department of Homeland Security with dozens of unsigned contracts on her desk—including payments owed to a facility holding migrant children.
The backlog is the fallout from a policy Noem, 54, imposed that required every DHS contract worth $100,000 or more—which covers nearly all of the agency’s agreements—to receive her personal sign-off before taking effect. The rule proved so disruptive that some vendors began billing the department in chunks of $99,999 each just to get paid.
“There’s a mountain of backed-up contracts and invoices on her desk that the new guy will just have to deal with,” a source familiar with the situation at DHS told Axios.
“From everything that I’ve heard, it’s still a giant s–t show up there,” a source familiar with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) delays told the outlet, referring to DHS leadership.
“The ramifications of her tenure are going to be felt for years and years and years and years,” the source added. “We’re not really going to know exactly how bad it is until we have a major hurricane that unfortunately impacts someplace in the United States.”
The disruption, Axios says, is already reaching real facilities. At the family detention center in Dilley, Texas—the only long-term immigration facility in the country holding migrants’ children—government payments lapsed in early March, with roughly 700 people detained there as of mid-February.
That’s it for me today. As you can tell, the Iran situation is freezing out other stories.
Take care, everyone.
Tuesday Political Cartoons: 6 Year Old
Posted: March 10, 2026 Filed under: just because 7 Comments
If you are wondering what the above cartoon is about…here is the explanation:
And here is the video of this fucking…whatever this is:
Trump is so disgusting.
Cartoons via Cagle:
Stay safe out there…
Mostly Monday Reads: War is Hell
Posted: March 9, 2026 Filed under: "Der Fuehrer's Face", #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, #We are so Fucked, Iran, Israel/Iran War | Tags: Cadet Bonespur's Iran War, Iran War, Oil Prices Surge, Rationale for Iran War 7 Comments
“The Pieces President” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The one thing holding inflation prices down in this country was the price of oil. It peaked in 2023 and began a decline until Orange Caligula launched a full-on attack on Iran and disrupted traffic in the Straight of Hormuz. Such is the result of a madman’s insane policy choices based on revenge, power-grabbing, and greed. It’s like giving a toddler the driving wheel and letting him take you down from a very tall mountain.
It’s not like I didn’t warn everyone to clear out of the stock market and hunker down about a year ago. It’s also just going to get worse. I fortunately cleared out the last of one of my 403(b)s last week to use it to improve the house before it gets any more expensive. I managed to lose only a bit of it, and I’m glad to know the check got cut before the worst hit so far. I can’t promise you that it’s going to get any better either. We’re worse than a Banana Republic. We’ve gone back to something akin to the dark ages with plagues of measles and armed thugs wandering the streets, looking to harm and jail workers and poor people. We can’t even put a bunch of pedophiles in suits into the justice system. What good is our Constitution for if money means you can ignore it
I’m going to start with AXIOS because they always get straight to the point. This analysis is by Neil Irwin, and this absolutely stunning chart provides some visuals. That line covering the first few months of 2026 screams outlier with a discernible reason. To the moon and beyond! It’s also obvious that none of it was Joe Biden’s fault, given the dates accompanying the data points. Okay, I’ll step down from the professor’s podium. I’ll just say economics students will be studying this for as long as universities stand.
In the first week of the American and Israeli attack on Iran, the economic ripples were looking pretty minimal. But as Week 2 begins, the risks to the global economy are growing much more serious.
The big picture: You can’t decapitate the leadership of a country of 90 million people, with expansive military and intelligence capabilities, in the heart of some of the world’s most economically important supply chains, without a huge cost.
- The hours and days and weeks ahead are all about quantifying that cost.
Zoom in: Oil skyrocketed 25% overnight, to just under $120 a barrel, fueling worries that higher energy costs will stoke inflation and curb spending by U.S. consumers. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index plunged more than 5%.
- That’s the highest oil price since about four years ago, when energy prices surged due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
- Patrick De Haan — a widely cited gas price expert and an analyst for GasBuddy — estimates there’s an 80% chance the national average gas price will hit $4 per gallon in the next month.
The latest: As of 5am ET, a barrel of the global crude oil benchmark was going for about $107 on futures markets, up 15% from Friday and 47% from 10 days ago, before the Iran attack. Brent crude prices approached $120 overnight before receding on reports of coordinated global action to release oil reserves.
- The oil price rise is poised to translate into a rapid increase in the cost of retail gasoline, which was already up about 51 cents per gallon before the weekend run-up in oil prices.
The risk of a broader economic slump is rising with the disruption to oil supplies. S&P 500 futures are down 1.3% overnight, setting Wall Street up for its third consecutive day of losses.
- Japan’s Nikkei index was down 5.2% and South Korea’s KOSPI down 6%, reflecting those economies’ more direct dependence on Middle Eastern oil now at risk of a protracted blockade.
Of note: The odds of a U.S. recession this year spiked to 38% in overnight trading on Polymarket, from 24% at the start of the month.
State of play: Iran is seeking to block the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Persian Gulf with the rest of the world, and is threatening to attack ships that seek to pass through.
- The war has already caused the largest oil disruption in history, taking out roughly 20% of the world’s supply, according to Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy and a former George W. Bush energy adviser.
- That’s double the previous record set during the Suez Crisis in the 1950s, which disrupted just under 10% of global supply.
- The weekend also brought apparently successful Iranian attacks on desalination plants in the Gulf region that are critical for drinking water.
- President Trump has raised the possibility of U.S. ground forces in Iran.
More at the link. CNBC shows the data with more analysis. “Oil prices topped $100 per barrel on record supply disruption, but are off session highs.” We’ll see if that lasts until the markets close this afternoon.
Shortly after oil blasted past $100 at the open of trading Sunday evening, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that a gain in “short term oil prices” was a “very small price to pay” for destroying Iran’s nuclear threat.
“Only fools would think differently!” Trump added.
Gulf Arab states are cutting production because they are running out of storage space, as crude piles up with nowhere to go due to the closure of the Strait. Tankers are unwilling transit the narrow waterway because they are worried Iran will attack them.
The closure of the Strait has triggered the biggest oil supply disruption history, according to an analysis by consulting firm Rapidan Energy. About 20% of the world’s oil consumption is exported through the Strait.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman warned Monday that oil tankers “must be very careful.”
“As long as the situation is insecure, I think all tankers, all maritime navigation, must be very careful,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told CNBC in an interview.
Kuwait, the fifth-biggest producer in OPEC, announced precautionary cuts Saturday to its oil production and refinery output due to “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. did not detail the size of the cuts.
Output in Iraq, the second-biggest OPEC producer, has effectively collapsed. Production from its three main southern oilfields has fallen 70% to 1.3 million barrels per day, three industry officials told Reuters on Sunday. Those fields produced 4.3 million bpd before Iran war.
And the United Arab Emirates, the third-biggest producer in OPEC, said Saturday that it is “carefully managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements.” The Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., or ADNOC, said its onshore operations are continuing normally.
The war showed little signs of easing despite Trump’s claim it was “already won.” Iran named Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, as its new supreme leader, according to reports. The U.S. and Israel killed Khamenei in the opening days of the war.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sunday that traffic through the Strait will resume after the U.S. has destroyed Iran’s ability to threaten tankers.
It’s really odd to think that I started my career as an economist during the OPEC maneuvers and I’m winding down my career as one with the US maneuvers. Frankly, I think China is sitting pretty right now. They’ve been doing a lot with alternative energy and have the entire Pacific Region — including many Latin American Countries with oil — undoubtedly rooting for them right now.
Alex Harring at CNBC analyzes the market activity. This is fresh off the ticker today. “Stocks pare losses as oil falls back below $100; Dow is down 300 points: Live updates.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell to start the week as U.S. oil topped $100 a barrel, raising concerns about a stagflationary environment for the U.S. economy of rising inflation and slowing growth.
The 30-stock index fell 293 points, or 0.6%, and is coming off its biggest weekly slide in nearly a year. The S&P 500 lost 0.2%, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.2%. That signifies a meaningful turnaround for the three indexes, as the Dow was down nearly 900 points, or 1.9%, at its low of the day, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were each lower by around 1.5%.
The broader market was helped off its lows by a rise in semiconductor stocks, however. Broadcom jumped more than 3%, while Micron Technology and Advanced Micro Devices gained almost 2% each. Nvidia climbed more than 1%.
West Texas Intermediate crude broke above $100 per barrel in overnight trading to hit more than $119, its first time above the $100 level since 2022, when investors were reacting to the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It was last up 6% at around $96 a barrel. International benchmark Brent crude added 7% to $99 a barrel. U.S. oil prices began the year below $60 a barrel.
Oil futures jumped after major Middle East producers slashed their output due to the continued closure of the key Strait of Hormuz passageway. Kuwait announced cuts but did not say by how much, while Iraq has reportedly seen its production fall 70%.
Oil prices later came off their highest levels of the session and stocks rose from their lows following a Financial Times report that G7 officials were considering tapping their strategic reserves. But the publication also reported coordinated release was not ready yet, helping to send major indexes lower.
The Cboe Volatility index — Wall Street’s fear gauge measuring investors seeking protection in the options market — topped 30 for the first time since the market’s tariff driven sell-off in April 2025. It was last above 27.
The $100 oil level was seen by many on Wall Street as a breaking point for the economy unless the war is resolved quickly and prices retreat. Trump posted Sunday evening that a gain in “short term oil prices” was a “very small price to pay” for destroying Iran’s nuclear threat.
Trump donors are feeling this immediately. Trump voters will shortly see the impact on their budgets and gas prices. I can’t say I feel sorry for any of them, but there’s not a person who won’t feel this one way or another. The Bulwark’s Andrew Egger examines Trump’s seeming confusion over his War.
What did the White House think it was getting into in Iran? A strike against Iran’s oppressive and fanatical regime, sure. A display of America’s awesome military might, definitely. But it’s become increasingly, painfully clear: They didn’t think there was going to be a war.
The Trump administration developed no real theory of the objectives of the Iran war, because they didn’t think there was going to be a war. Instead, the administration has backfilled a dizzying array of post-hoc goals for the strikes against Iran. Judd Legum counts seventeen different rationales offered by many different officials, from the president’s “feeling, based on fact” that Iran was about to strike the United Statesto a desire to free the Iranian people to a need to destroy a nuclear program the White House had claimed was already “obliterated.”
The Trump administration made no effort to get the American people on board with war, because they didn’t think there was going to be a war. A majority of the public is already opposed to war with Iran, and what support the war does have seems to be based on the questionable assumption that the conflict will be shortly resolved: 44 percent of Americans support the strikes so far, but only 12 percentwould be in favor of sending U.S. ground troops into the country. But the White House has made no broad effort to convince the public on a bipartisan basis that they should be prepared for a long-haul conflict.
They didn’t think there was going to be a war, and so the White House seemingly gave no thought to what the economic ramifications of war would be. After several days of strikes on Iran, President Trump seemed suddenly to realize last week that the ongoing conflict was going to be terrible for energy prices. He tried to slap a band-aid on the problem by announcing risk insurance and military escorts for all oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, but it wasn’t enough: Suddenly, oil prices went through the roof, and the White House was scrambling to contain the damage—rushing to reassure consumers that the price hikes would be temporary and even waiving some sanctions on Russian oil to try to ease pressures on global supply. “Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A, and World, Safety and Peace,” Trump posted on Truth Social yesterday. “ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!”
They didn’t think there was going to be a war, and so the president assumed he’d be in charge of picking Iran’s next political leadership. This plan, admittedly, hit an unexpected snag early on: The initial round of strikes that took out Iran’s top leaders also killed a number of lower-ranking regime figures that the White House had identified as pragmatists who might be willing to negotiate. “The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,” Trump said a day after the strikes began. “It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they’re all dead. Second or third place is dead.” Still, Trump made it clear he expected to be involved in picking Iran’s next supreme leader, and absolutely ruled out Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the slain ayatollah: “They are wasting their time . . . Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me.” But this morning, Iran went ahead and proclaimed Mojtaba Khamenei their next supreme leader anyway.
Somehow, the president seems to remain so confident Iran will be buttoned up in no time that he’s already openly licking his chops over the next triumphant blitzkrieg. “Cuba is gonna fall pretty soon, by the way,” Trump told CNN Friday. “I’m going to put Marco over there and we’ll see how that works out. We’re really focused on this one right now.”
Judd LeGum at Popular Information specifies not the unknowables of the attack, but the rationale and plans for the future, which are blowing in the wind. “9 days in, the most basic question about the Iran war remains unanswered. In just over a week, Trump and top administration officials have given at least 17 different responses about why the war began.” Yup. We still don’t know why they did this.
On February 28, President Trump announced that “the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.” The war has claimed the lives of more than 1500 people, including about 1300 Iranians, dozens in neighboring countries, and six U.S. troops. The Pentagon has estimated the conflict is costing U.S. taxpayers about $1 billion per day — and that figure may be too low.
And yet, nine days into the war, Trump and his administration have failed to clearly answer the most fundamental question: Why did the war begin?
Instead, the Trump administration has offered a bewildering series of shifting, contradictory, and factually incorrect answers. In just over a week, Trump and top administration officials have given at least 17 different responses about why the war began:
A brief description of each of those 17 responses is given in the article. You may read it at this fully gifted link. The New York Times reports on information from Iran’s new Supreme Leader. “Live Updates: Oil Price Surge Rattles Markets; Iran’s Choice of Leader Signals Defiance. Stocks fell on fears of the Iran war’s effects on energy prices. Top clerics selected Mojtaba Khamenei as Iran’s supreme leader, despite President Trump’s warning that he was “unacceptable.”
U.S. stocks fell at the start of trading on Monday, after markets in Asia and Europe tumbled, as a spike in oil prices reflected global fears of a prolonged U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. Meanwhile, Iran projected defiance by naming a son of its slain supreme leader as his successor.
Oil prices briefly surged early Monday to almost $120 per barrel, their highest level since the Covid pandemic, as President Trump’s plans for the next steps in the war, let alone its endgame, remained unclear and Iran showed no sign of bowing to his demand for unconditional surrender.
It still looks like the start of World War 3 to me. From the same link above.
Eleven countries have asked Ukraine for security support to help counter Shahed drones, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He said in a social media post that the requests have come from countries neighboring Iran, European nations and the United States — and that some “have already been met with concrete decisions and specific support.”
He did not provide further details, though Zelensky earlier told The New York Times that Ukraine sent interceptor drones and a team of experts to protect U.S. military bases in Jordan.
“There is clear interest in Ukraine’s experience in protecting lives, relevant interceptors, electronic warfare systems, and training,” Zelensky added in his post on social media. “Ukraine is ready to respond positively to requests from those who help us protect the lives of Ukrainians and the independence of Ukraine.
This headline is one that worries me. It’s from the Times of Israel. “Trump to Times of Israel: It’ll be a ‘mutual’ decision with Netanyahu regarding when Iran war ends. US president, in phone interview, clarifies that he’ll make final call to end operation ‘at right time’; says he and PM ‘worked together’ against Islamic Republic: ‘We’ve destroyed a country that would have destroyed Israel’.”
US President Donald Trump told The Times of Israel on Sunday that a decision on when to end the war with Iran will be a “mutual” one that he’ll make together with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump also asserted in the brief telephone interview that the Islamic Republic would have destroyed Israel if he and Netanyahu had not been around. “Iran was going to destroy Israel and everything else around it… We’ve worked together. We’ve destroyed a country that wanted to destroy Israel.”
The US president was asked whether he alone would decide when the war with Iran ends or if Netanyahu would also have a say.
“I think it’s mutual… a little bit. We’ve been talking. I’ll make a decision at the right time, but everything’s going to be taken into account,” he responded, indicating that while Netanyahu will have input, the US president will have the final say.
Asked whether Israel could continue the war against Iran even after the US decides to halt its strikes, Trump declined to entertain the theoretical possibility before adding: “I don’t think it’s going to be necessary.”
So, it’s still two megalomaniacs avoiding prison sentences running the show. Don’t you feel much better now?
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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