Trump’s opening move was to obliterate a vast swathe of the clerical leadership. His stupidity was the belief that this is all it would take. Meanwhile back in reality a new even more deeply fanatical hardcore cleric is appointed, one that is deeply motivated by the slaughter of his family and his wife. He might not have the ability to directly engage the entire US military, but he does have options, and has now started to pull the very obvious oil lever to the “off” position.
Tehran will allow oil tankers through the Strait again, but only if the cargo is traded in Chinese Yuan. This is a financial move designed to obliterate the Dollar as the currency of choice of all oil trades. This is how we borrow cheaply, fund the deficit, and enforce sanctions globally. The threat here is real and stark.
Trump believed Iran would not close the Strait of Hormuz – He was wrong and he has no viable plan to sort that out. Before you leap in to suggest we just put naval escorts for tankers in place you need to understand that the volume of traffic is roughly 100 tankers per day. We don’t have the resources for that.
We can destroy Iran’s missiles but not all their drones, and war today is drone war. Iran can hit oil sites in the region indefinitely because they posses so many cheap, weaponized drones. Worse, the Gulf states are running out of interceptors to stop Iranian missiles and drones – meaning that soon more oil sites will be vulnerable.
A broader, regional war is breaking out as Iranian proxies in Lebanon hit Israel and those in Iraq target the U.S.. Israel is now threatening a massive ground invasion of Lebanon, which could become its own new crisis.
So far, the Houthis in Yemen have been relatively quiet. Probably not for long. They can project power into the Red Sea. For Syria, this is the worst time for Trump to strike Iran. Syria could explode again.
Trump has no endgame.
Iran and its proxies can create chaos indefinitely.
All of this was totally foreseeable. Frankly, it’s why previous presidents weren’t so stupid to start a war like this.
Trump started this utterly pointless war with no real strategy or plan, and also no clean exit, and like everything else he touches, it has very rapidly spiralled out of control and turned to shit …
Wargames
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani to Trump:
Make no mistake, the Iranian regime are utterly obnoxious. However, what Trump has been doing does not weaken them, but instead bolsters them by inspiring popular support. Being the guys who burned alive 176 young kids, most of them aged under 12, tends to do that.
Think of it this way. If you are reading this then you are most probably not a fan of the Trump administration. If that school slaughter had happened in the US, how would you now feel about the aggressor, and how would you now feel about an administration that promised revenge?
“But that was just an accident of war“, some might quip.
Beyond this being an utterly pointless war of choice there is also further utterly crass stupidity and utter incompetence that explains how we managed to target a school …
Dennis Goris – Everything’s fine. #IranWar
Nick Anderson – How the War Ends
We are now the bad guys – the empire of evil that everybody will hate
- Link here
- Quote: “Parents wept over their children’s bodies. Crushed desks and blood-stained backpacks poked through the rubble. The death toll from the attack on an elementary school in Minab climbed past 165, most of them under age 12, with nearly 100 others wounded, according to Iranian health officials. Photos of small coffins and rows of fresh graves went viral, a devastating emblem of Day 1 in the open-ended U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.“
- Quote: “Trump and his aides lowered the authorization level for lethal force, broadened target categories, inflated threat assessments and fired inspectors general, according to more than a dozen current and former national security personnel. Nearly all spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. We’re departing from the rules and norms that we’ve tried to establish as a global community since at least World War II,” Bryant said. “There’s zero accountability.”
“War Crimes” is the official agenda …
- Link to article
- The fact that we have partnered up with a war criminal for this reveals a lot
- Quote: “The international rules of armed conflict, codified by the Geneva Conventions, which the United States has ratified, state that combatants who offer to surrender shall be taken prisoner. “No quarter” means they are killed instead. “Denying quarter is a war crime and recognized as such by the United States,” said Brian Finucane, a lawyer who spent a decade in the State Department.
Iran’s Not so secret weapon – OIL
Wow, is that the reason? I never wouldn’t have known that.
- We have a plan for every option… (Except for getting shot at).
Grace and Dignity – For Trump, an unexplored concept
Dennis Goris – Grifter gonna grift #monitize #war
It’s Just a Game for some
How not to Negotiate
Trump on Iran: “Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today…I, as the 47th President of the United States of America, am killing them. What a great honor it is to do so!”
Priorities
Epstein Distractions
Nick Anderson – Exit Strategy
Corruption on a truly epic scale
The New Golden age
When Trump said he would bring on a “New Golden Age,” he was talking about his wallet …
When Trump says “we make a lot of money,” he’s talking about his Big Oil donors. They spent spent nearly $100M to get Trump elected in 2024, and the investment is paying off quite well for them. Oligarchy in action.
Even the conservative Wall Street Journal understands the havoc wealth inequality is wreaking on our economy and society. It’s far past time to unrig the system. www.wsj.com/finance/bill…
Multiple layers of Lunacy and utter incompetence
Jaw dropping stupidity when it comes to thinking ahead and planning …
From the promoters of “Free Speech”, you have … strict censorship of anybody who dares to criticise the orange tyrant…
“Honesty” is an undiscovered country
ICE Gestapo updates
- Link here
- Quote: “In March, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested a woman they accused of drug trafficking and entering the country illegally. Standing in a parking lot, they photographed her, weeping, eyes half-closed in anguish, her arms cuffed behind her back. And then—in a cruel innovation specific to the Trump administration—the White House’s official Twitter account used an AI tool to make a cartoon illustration of her crying and handcuffed, in the style of the beloved Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli. The tweet got 155,000 likes, a mix of outraged and delighted responses, and, as it was designed to, a lot of attention: it’s so far been viewed 76 million times. On Twitter, many users posted positive responses declaring that the image was exactly what they had voted for. “
Rob Rogers – Kristi Noem is out at DHS, but the reason is weird. Killing citizens on the streets of Minneapolis? No problem. Riding a horse in front of Mount Rushmore? Too far. Sadly, it won’t change ICE’s behavior. #KristiNoem #DHS #ICE #Trump #StephenMiller #Minneapolis #Pretti #Goode
Healthcare? – The GOP does not care
Election Chaos
Nick Anderson – Texas Election Chaos
MAGA Christian Cranks
The nuttier right-wing religious fanatics within the MAGA cult are as always doing their thing, and so here are a few samples from the past week that are truly wild …
Sean Feucht defends spending a million dollars of ministry money on a townhome near the Capitol in Washington, DC by likening it to when Jesus was anointed with costly perfume in the Gospels: “He’s worthy of extravagance.“
- In the Gospels the expensive perfume was poured out for Jesus as an anointing, not invested in a Capitol Hill townhouse for the disciples to bask in luxury.
What is however the wildest self-own was finding that the Senate Republican Twitter account quoted and promoted Talarico because they believed he was saying something controversial …
- Did they really tweet this out thinking it would make him look bad, or is it a parody? Nope, it is quite real, they really did.
- Kind of on the nose for republicans to not recognize a bible reference applied to real life.
- Hey Senate Republicans, you really owned him, you should keep posting this clip over and over.
David Barton throws his support behind the religious-right effort to overturn Obergefell by arguing that children deserve to have a mother and a father: “A lot of kids today don’t get to choose their parents.”
- Um, was there ever a time where kids got to choose their parents?
- That is probably because Trump did no such thing.
- Fact Check: In February 2026, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that the U.S. was sending a “great hospital boat to Greenland” to treat people he claimed were “not being taken care of.”. Leaders in Greenland and Denmark immediately rejected the proposal, saying the island already has a free public healthcare system and does not need a U.S. hospital ship. For any reporters who actually bothered to check, the Pentagon also confirmed that it had received no order to deploy any hospital ship, and both U.S. Navy hospital ships were in U.S. shipyards.
Mask-off racism … www.nbcnews.com/politics/con…
Media mark of distinction – Being called a “Rotten Reporter” by the orange tyrant
Every reporter needs to do this. Challenge Trump with facts.
- Reminder: The Cyber Ninjas did a full audit at the request of the Arizona Republicans on the taxpayer’s dime and they found … (insert your own drum roll here) … Nothing, except more votes for Biden that had not been counted.
We really do need lots more “rotten reporting”.
Even More Political Cartoons from the past week
As always, there are many excellent cartoons.
Nick Anderson – Russian Intelligence
Clay Jones – Meow Meow! Whose hands are up Donald Trump’s ass today? Meow Meow! #Trump #Putin #PutinsPuppet #Netanyahu #Iran #IranWar #TrumpWar
Finally
.Jon Sniffs Out GOP’s Hypocrisy on War, Free Speech, Gun Violence & Disaster Relief | The Daily Show
2,792,348 views 9 Mar 2026 #DailyShow#JonStewart#Iran
Jon Stewart dives into new depths of Republican hypocrisy: Anti-war MAGA embraces Trump’s war on Iran, Team Trump fetishizes free speech while cracking down on it, gun violence gets shrugged off unless it’s from an immigrant, and the GOP won’t support disaster relief for California without strings attached. #DailyShow#Trump#Iran#JonStewart