VILenin

“Concepts of a plan” encore

“I have ideas as to what to do,” Mr. Trump said during an Oval Office event. He added, “I like to make a final decision one second before it’s due, you know, because things change.”

https://archive.ph/U1xw0

You forgot to append “thank you for your consideration on this matter!” to the end

See this NYT update for a glimpse into the genocidal glee of the average “civilian” Israeli. You’ll have to put up with the regurgitation of state propaganda. NYT tries so hard to make the most privileged and sheltered people on earth into victims it would be funny if it wasn’t part of their genocidal propaganda campaign

The greatest “suffering” these genocidal fucks have ever experienced is being deprived of their fucking lattes for a few days, and the NYT is already doing wall-to-wall coverage about the poor widdle genocidal land thieves, waaaaaaahhhhh

https://archive.ph/dZ55n

An Israeli woman who returned from abroad on Wednesday grinned for the television cameras as she knelt and kissed the floor of the airport terminal. Sidewalk cafes in Jerusalem were filled with people excused from work because of the war, sipping lattes in the sunshine.

Even Benjamin Netanyahu, the beleaguered prime minister who was fighting for his political survival just a week ago, was getting a break. Some of his fiercest critics were giving him full credit for daring to take on Iran, Israel’s most feared enemy. The danger from Iran’s retaliatory ballistic missile strikes aside, morale among Jewish Israelis, at least, appeared to be soaring on the sixth day of the war.

Israeli warplanes continued to operate at will in Iranian airspace, pummeling targets, and many Israelis were getting their hopes up that the United States would join the bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear program, long viewed by Israelis as a threat to their future.

The war with Iran is far from over and the outcome is unclear. But with Israel’s initial successes, the sense of unity and national pride represented a sharp turnaround for a country that was deeply traumatized by the deadly, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that set off the war in Gaza.

Mr. Netanyahu, a conservative and a political phoenix, has risen again, seemingly imbued with a renewed confidence and a sense of his historical significance.

“We are getting rid of the evil Iranian empire that threatens our existence,” he said in a television interview on Israel’s right-wing Channel 14 on Tuesday night. “Within five days we’ve turned the tables,” he said, having opened what he called “an aerial expressway to Iran.”

“This is an enormous moment, a moment of pride for the nation of Israel,” he added.

Matan Kahana, a centrist lawmaker in the opposition and a former fighter pilot, said, “There is unity from wall to wall in Israel over the campaign to remove the Iranian nuclear threat.”

“Now people are asking ‘Why didn’t we do it earlier?’” he said, adding that Israelis see this as “a war of no choice” and that so far, Iran is enduring the worst of it.

The newfound unity has not erased older political and social rifts that have plagued Israel, including over exemptions from military service for ultra-Orthodox religious seminary students, the security lapses that enabled the October 2023 attack, and the fate of hostages still held in Gaza.

But some of Mr. Netanyahu’s veteran detractors are reassessing him.

“The decision to go to war was entirely Netanyahu’s,” wrote Nahum Barnea, a leading political columnist, in the popular Yediot Ahronot newspaper this week. He noted that Mr. Netanyahu had become known as risk-averse over the years.

“We shouldn’t downplay the importance of the decision,” Mr. Barnea added, comparing it to the kind of decision that Israel’s revered founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, might have made.

“Maybe we misread him; maybe he’s changed,” Mr. Barnea wrote of Mr. Netanyahu.

To be sure, many Israelis are sleep deprived. Air raid sirens have sent millions of people rushing for protected spaces and bomb shelters in the middle of the night day after day. At least two dozen people have been killed so far by Iranian missiles that evaded Israel’s air defenses.

Some people are spending the night in approved underground parking lots and train stations.

Many citizens are anxious. Sales of tranquilizers are up by a third, Israel’s Channel 12 television reported.

And before ordering their coffee, customers can be heard asking shop staff members where the nearest fortified shelter is. Israelis generally get a 10-minute warning for incoming missile fire.

Still, Israeli television pundits brag that whereas residents of Tehran are fleeing their city, tens of thousands of Israelis who were stranded abroad after Israel abruptly closed its airspace on Friday have been clamoring for seats on the special flights arranged to bring them home.

The intensity of the Iranian missile strikes has waned in recent days and the Israeli authorities slightly relaxed restrictions on Wednesday evening, permitting small gatherings and allowing people to go back to work — so long as their workplace provides easy access to a bomb shelter.

The people who boasted about lying about wanting to negotiate to buy time for a terrorist attack want to negotiate again?

has had to change his pants 10 times in the last hour

Reading tea leaves is more accurate than trying to analyze Trump statements

Shit was (is?) boring as hell, it’s legitimately more entertaining to watch the washing machine go swish.

I don’t imagine the birthday boy is too happy about his special day getting overshadowed by Tel-Aviv eating shit, those dems in Minnesota getting clapped, and the lib protests.

Or the fact that his toy soldiers can’t march. Hopefully we get another “losers and suckers” quote out of this.

I’d say it’s less of a parade, and more of a collective walking event.