Literally, that is...

JUMBO speculation.

and since, has joyfully announced to the world our shared pride in the absolute rejection of education, science, democratic ideals and rational thought. This administration is Moscow's best result... and I gotta admit, Putin played the conservatives and sealions on this one with the deftness of a classical maestro.

...impact.

Cold warrior Kennedy's acts on Vietnam and Johnson's escalation based on the input of the Kennedy cabinet has a greater impact in terms of damage to the United States in human and other costs, but they were rational acts in context.

The moral stain of the trail of tears is larger, but was again, not without a reason, if pernicious.

The Civil War was almost certainly the worst disaster in American history but the increasingly likely collapse of the United States under the orange pedophile may exceed it in tragic consequences for Americans.

The foolish Iranian war without any articulated reason however surely stands as the most stupid of all Presidential acts in history. Its only redeeming feature is that it apparently obviate for many Magats just how invisible their Emporer's new clothes actually are. They are cultists of course, but even cultists can become apostates.

politician of either party had to be bellicose toward the Russians if they wanted to be elected.

In June of 1961 Kennedy botched the Vienna Summit. Khrushchev viewed Kennedy as inexperienced and weak. This emboldened the Russians to built the Berlin Wall. To his credit Kennedy did not try to retrieve his mistake with military force.

The Bay of Pigs was a CIA plan which Kennedy inherited from the Eisenhower administration. He was dubious about it but, he felt that if he called it off, he would again be labeled weak. He had the foresight not to send in the U.S. Air Force to support the invasion knowing it would draw us into an extended conflict.

When it was discovered that the U.S.S.R. was about to introduce nuclear weapons into Cuba, he had no choice but to prevent that. Curtis LeMay, U.S.A.F. Chief of Staff, was foaming at the mouth to blast Cuba into the stone age, with nukes if necessary. Kennedy was wise enough to tell LeMay no. Through courage and adroit negotiations, he persuaded the Kremlin to remove the missiles using a sea blockade (which is generally considered an act of war) without blowing up the world. Even after the Missile Crisis was resolved, LeMay continued to advocate for an invasion. Kennedy again had to tell him no. As an aside, in 1962 I was 13 and lived in Miami. I remember anti-aircraft missile batteries all around the city. I knew from the adults around me that something was going on that stressed them out.

The Vietnam fiasco was something else he inherited from the Eisenhower administration. Early on Kennedy saw the situation as "a brush fire war" of little consequence, but he felt, after the Berlin Wall mistake, he couldn't give the communists a free hand. He was opposed to committing combat forces, as was the Pentagon. He went with a half measure of sending advisors to train the incompetent Army of South Vietnam. He increased the number of advisors, but refused to sent combat troops. He was appalled by the assassination of Diem. We know he thought Vietnam was a lost cause. He was told by advisors that if we became embroiled in a hot war, the effort would fail for the same reasons the French had failed. Various memoirs and biographies indicate that he was planning to pull the plug on the whole misadventure. However, the CIA, it being their nature, wanted war. His desire to end our involvement may very well have been at least a contributing factor to his assassination.

All in all, in three years Kennedy had the opportunity to involve up in several major conflagrations. To his credit he avoided wars of choice.

...to be the initiating cause of almost stumbling into nuclear war. Ironically, just as the real cause of the Iran war was the Epstein Files the case has been made that the disaster at Vienna was Kennedy's exhaustion from the well known exercise of his sexual pecadillos. That may or may not be true.

I consider Kennedy to be the worst Democratic President of the 20th century other than Woodrow Wilson. A saving grace, the only saving grace, was that he was not Richard Nixon.

I put no credit at all in the argument that Vietnam was something of Eisenhower's creation. The people who ruined Johnson's superior Presidency were Kennedy's "Best and Brightest" to steal Halberstom's famous and accurate sarcastic locution. Most people are unaware that the Ford executive Kennedy hired to run the Defense Department, the infamous Robert McNamara, derived his total military experience as a desk bound aid to none other than Curtis Lemay, where he worked to plan bombing strategy in the war against Japan.

I note that Eisenhower did nothing to prevent the French defeat at Dien Bein Phu, because he was a distinctly anti-Imperialist President, shown by his actions in the Suez crisis.

Kennedy sought Eisenhower's views on the Bay of Pigs after it went bad, and I can imagine Eisenhower shaking his head and agreeing with none other than Eleanor Roosevelt that "that boy" was a rube in over his head, albeit for very different reasons.

I do not credit the exculpation of Kennedy in the Diem assassination either. There are tapes of him ruminating on the subject. The effort by historians to pawn off responsibility on Henry Cabot Lodge and others strikes me as disingenuous. The fact is that he had his fingers all over Vietnam and was perfectly willing as a highly politicized person and an unrepentant cold warrior, to not repeat the onus wrongly attached to Truman for "losing China" as if China were an American colony.

To my mind Kennedy holds the onus for almost stumbling into nuclear war. While he reaped all kinds of praise for narrowly avoiding it, reaping praise for "winning," the reality is that credit really belongs more to Khrushchev for being the bigger man, who did not publicize the American concessions on the Turkish missiles.

The Cuban Missile Crisis cost Khrushchev his job ultimately. I consider that somewhat nobler than Kennedy's willingness to do nothing that threatened his job. (He watched the "I have a dream" speech on television even though he was blocks away, worrying that the whole affair would cost him votes. No Lyndon Johnson, he.)

Khrushev was a rough hewn bird, a survivor of Stalin, with bloody hands, but he strikes me a greater man than Kennedy in some ways.

The case can me made that the crisis, into which Kennedy stumbled, the missile crisis, drove the nuclear arms race that Brezhnev ramped up.

That Kennedy avoided some wars of opportunity is weak sauce. Every responsible President does that, a demonstration of course, that the orange pedophile is irresponsible. To say that Kennedy is better than Nixon or the orange pedophile is obvious but couldn't possibly be fainted praise.

Last edited Thu Apr 9, 2026, 04:46 PM - Edit history (2)

I wasn't around in the 19th century, so can't compare.

This war is a war that we can't win and it started that way out of the gates. I can understand wanting a regime change, but there are other ways of doing it.

Maybe a reduction in weapons is a worthwhile cause, if he would have cut and run after a few days. There would have been no winners or losers and arms would have been reduced a bit. Now he's in a hot mess with a closed Strait of Hormuz, Israel is doing it's thing and is controlling the war. It's basically a brick wall. He really can't walk away from it either because now Iran has the upper hand!

Can't believe he started a war with big bad Iran and now we're losing.......

I think Trump under estimated the big in big bad Iran....

I read that Netanyahu made it sound it was gonna be fairly easy and they had the Shahs' son waiting in the wings!
That's just crazy. Reza Pahlavi would be executed in 10 minutes if he tried to enter Iran.

And this vile occupation of Iran apparently was caused by Fox News reporters speaking direct to Trump, if I read that NYT article a couple of weeks ago correctly. Fox is so fucking vile, they have killed so many people through their lies, hatred and venom. When are we going to do something about them?

Considering his micropenis, he’d have to contort himself quite a bit to step on it…

Oh, wait, you didn’t mean literally.

Never Mind.

Thanks for the thread Ocelot

want the oil and rare earth minerals in Iran. They miscalculated badly: they didn't expect Iran and her people to fight back. They expected to waltz in, force a treaty of some sort where t and his buddies got to take everything they wanted, and then waltz out in a few days. Only it didn't work out that way, did it, t?

because he knew that people would object to the attack based on getting oil that we, as a country, don't need. He could not openly admit that he wanted it for himself. So he made up a bunch of reasons at first.

There was another reason for the war that he is not talking about. It coincides with Netanyahu's M.E. plans. Trump wants a luxury resort in Gaza. So he was willing to give Netanyahu a green light to completely raze Gaza. But, since Hamas was supported by Iran and Hezbollah, Trump's Gaza resort would always be threatened by terrorism from both. Israel would always be threatened by both.

So Trump and Netanyahu teamed up to eliminate Iran and Hezbollah as threats. You are right about Trump's attitude. In his usual arrogance, Trump thought that an attack on Iran would be a cake walk.

Iran is a bad actor on the world stage, to its own people and its neighbors. But trying to take over the country the way that Trump and Hegseth are doing is insane. If they genuinely wanted to stop Iran from getting nukes, and wanted regime change for the Iranian people, they should have consulted allies and developed a coalition. They should also have consulted intel agencies and developed a. better strategy based on intel about Iran's capabilities.

But, by going it alone, Trump felt that he could have sole claim to the oil. Maybe that was a deal between him and Netanyahu. Trump would help him in return for getting the oil for himself.

Trump tried the shock and awe method, aka "Blitzkrieg" to Nazis. If warned about Hormuz getting closed by Iran, I am betting that he assumed that other nations would step into the fight in order to free up Hormuz. That's why he is so pissed off at NATO nations. They have not reacted the way he anticipated (assumed).

Two huge errors in judgment. 1. Assuming he could conquer Iran by brute force. 2. Not making the security of Hormuz a top priority because he assumed that other nations would have to join his war in order to secure Hormuz themselves.

So he comes across as a blundering fool.

He fucked up Reconstruction royally and was the first president ever to be impeached. He definitely deserves to be on the worst of the worst list.

and ended up busting up the place with his fat arse.

Dubya had a go at it, but some of his aides had frunctioning neurons and calmed him down so things were only temporarily wrecked here and we managed to get out of his wars there eventually.

Is intended to weaken, diminish, destabilize and isolate the US, to the benefit of a hostile foreign power to whom he’s deeply indebted.

Almost.

Your subject line cracked me up and is completely spot on.



Without going through all those; some soured over history, some (Tea Pot) didn’t really affect people’s lives, some were more immediate (Civil War and Depression) but no one NO ONE stepped on it faster or anywhere near as unnecessarily as Trump did.

Some say, many say you know, this is the GREATEST dick stepping they’ve ever seen. The best ever really.

The Iraqis had nothing to do with 9/11, so it was completely unnecessary. There was no WMD either. At least 500,000 Iraqi's died (probably more) in the war. Several thousand US soldiers also died. And it cost US taxpayers trillions, while further destabilizing the Middle East. I think sometimes we all fall prey to recency bias. This may be one of those times, even as big of a monkey fuck that his Iran folly has become.

and put it on the floor to step on it.

He also desegregated the military. Props Harry.

Vanquished all our enemies, here and abroad.

Everyone focuses on how “stupid” and “crazy” these people are and not on just how vicious and calculated they are. These people are fierce class warriors who are determined to extract as much wealth as they can from the working class for their ruling class owners and themselves.

Trump is a carnival barker and a figurehead who simply wants his ego stroked and to increase his personal fortune as much as he can. The Project 2025 people, the ones really pulling the strings, are smart, ruthless class warriors and they’re doing exactly what they want to do in all of these situations they’ve created. Look who’s making all the money off of this war. They’re openly manipulating the markets and raking in billions. The crypto scams, the gutting of the government, the tariffs, the slashing of benefits and services while increasing government spending in private sectors. They’re making a killing and they’re taking it out of all of our pockets.

The constant stupid, crazy, senile or “missteps” criticisms really just let them off the hook as if they’re just bumbling along instead of doing exactly what they want to do.

They aren’t stepping on their dicks. This is deliberate thievery under the guise of chaos. This is capitalism working exactly the way it’s supposed to. We invited the vampires into the house and they’re doing what vampires do.

It’s amazing how many people can’t see what’s happening right in front of their faces.

Namely, trying to provoke an Iraqi coup without having anyone lined up to take the job. When Bush exhorted Iraqis to rise up against their dictator, he would have been fine with someone who was just like Saddam Hussein but didn't have the bad press. But instead he got a Shia uprising in the south, so he aided Saddam by letting him use attack helicopters to put the uprising down.

1. US is further disgraced
2. US has lost precarious $ resources that if had been used inside the country for benefit of us citizens, we’d be stronger
3. US is alienated from former allies
4. US has lost and will lose more US bases
5. The hollow leadership and lack of strategy is now public
6. US is now seemingly tied to the whip of Israel’s bloodlust mow the lawn foreign policy in the Middle East
7. US Dollar is being replaced by Chinese Yuan for payment of oil in the Middle East
8. …the list of all that is lost is endless

That's our tragedy.

Iraq that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, and that war ending in shambles, is a good runner-up.

But nothing beats this.

For the first time around. I know many people who thought he was a great business man and didn't realize it was all faked.

Second time I blame mostly on all the propaganda mostly against us by podcasters, news media, and FB, X and others with a ton of hype about all kinds of things from Gaza to Trans people.

They are holding off now but I expect a huge blitz of media crap coming along with any horrific thing Trump can do right before election.

As far as how bad he is truth is not truth anymore, it's what you believe it to be. I know what facts are but most don't know what to believe.