Desert Tortoise comments

Should just setup a JAUKUS

Um, say that name out loud and see if you still really want to give a multinational defense pact that name /:

i’d like to see the costs borne by taxpayers of the millions who aren’t in the labor force compared to the benefits to companies.

You might have an argument if the unemployment rate was high but it isn't. Unemployment is currently near or at record lows depending on which state you are in. Firms can't find enough workers to fill available job openings. The US Navy can't get ships built or the ones they have overhauled on time due to a lack of shipyard workers. All aspects of the transportation industry from airlines to maritime shipping to trucking are experiencing labor shortages.

The fact that everyone new the planned course in advance, drones were shot down by other countries makes it quite clear this was a PR stunt arranged in advance so Iran saved face!

The sensor range of something like an E-3A, RC-135 or E-8 is such that US forces probably detected the drones and missiles being prepared for launch and tracked them in real time. Some of the engagements were conducted by US destroyers operating in the Mediterranean Sea. The radars on modern US DDGs can track targets far inland.

I think what keeps the US from attacking Iran is the strong belief that China will make a move on Taiwan soon and the US will need every missile in their inventory to defeat the Chinese attack. Some of the models of such a conflict predict the US could burn through all of its inventory of certain expensive cruise missiles and possibly some anti aircraft missiles. The US has to weigh what is more vital to US interests. Nobody wants to be in a position of having just beaten Iran using up hard to replace ordnance in the process and the next week China attacks Taiwan, with maybe DPRK tag teaming on China by attacking South Korea.

This is a serious possibility.

 If he was capable he would have stopped the attack from the beginning 

Congress declares war, not the President.

This was not a surprise attack, IF it was the outcome would have been completely DIFFRENT.

With the sensors and platforms like AWACS available to the Israelis and the distance between Iran and Israel, it's doubtful that Iran could mount a surprise attack. Now Hezbollah is a different story due to the shared border.

RichardPearce - it's not hard to shoot down the slow moving drones and even cruise missiles once they are detected. Ballistics are a bit harder.

Low flying cruise missiles can be much harder to detect that ballistic missiles.

One unknown is which of Israel’s neighbors participated in the shooting down of the vast majority of about 350 drones and missiles Iran launched. Israeli military officials and a key War Cabinet member noted additional “partners” without naming them.

It is attributed to Jordan.

Trump will indeed stop this or pull it back. And he would be right to do so. But first the deal stil has to get regulatory approval.

So to heck with the shareholders who will get nothing if the sale is blocked. I guess they don't matter? Nippon Steel has operated in the US for decades. They are no threat to the US economy. In fact they bring value as every kilogram of steel they make in the US counts towards the US GDP.

Another failure in which the Biden Administration proved useless.

So the decades long failure of US Steel to invest in the latest steel making technologies and remain internationally competitive is somehow the fault of a US President? The Boards of Directors and lack of vision on the part of their management are not at fault?

Make sense, should be by American from American, for American!

Make America Great Again!

Nippon Steel will keep the company whole and probably invest in it to make more steel. If private equity buys US Steel they will load it up with debt and sell off the good assets then file bankruptcy. Pay attention to what happened to Sears, K-Mart, Oreck and 99Cents Only for examples of what I mean. That isn't making America great again.

The motivation for such laws are that newspapers are failing for lack of revenue. Readers are able to circumvent their paywalls and read their content for free when Google or Yahoo places the same articles on their news sites. It's not about controlling content but about saving newspapers and by extension a free press.

A liberal State wanting to control the narrative. Who'd a thought?

Not at all. Like Australia and Canada California wants local newspapers to get paid for the stories that are normally behind their pay walls. If you want to read stories on the LA Times or the Bakersfield Californian you should buy a subscription for them instead of basically stealing the same paywall protected content using Google or Yahoo.

I don't understand this either. Most companies want their product to come up in a Google search. The underlying issue wasn't properly explained in the article.

What happens is that Google hosting their new allows readers to get around pay walls erected by the news sites. That deprives the news sites of revenue. Yahoo News lets you read news on lots of sites that are normally behind pay walls.

Strange Japan government buy many old subsonic cruise missiles despite already hypersonic missile era or advance of missile defense system.

Not strange at all. Subsonic cruise missiles persist because they hit their targets more reliably, can fly much lower and thus are often harder to detect and engage than the high diving screamers. They also cost a lot less than the screamers, and when salvo size matter being able to afford more missiles with a higher probability of hit is important.

The Iranian attack wasn't very effective. The great majority of their missiles and drones were shot down and those that did hit something did very little damage. Some pundits are speculating Iran deliberately pulled punches to avoid a massive Israeli response. Hard to say if that is true or not. Apparently Jordan shot some Iranian drones and missiles down, as did US forces though the bulk of the raid was dealt with by Israeli forces.

Now we wait and see what Israel does in retaliation.

Why didn't US and EU also condemn the Israeli attack on Iranian diplomatic mission in Syria? The usual hypocrisy and double standards.

Probably because it wasn't a diplomatic mission. It was a military headquarters being used by Iran's Quds Force to lead and supply their Shiite proxy forces in Lebanon and Syria who were deployed against Israel.

@Donald Taylor, General Mattis was no coward and has plenty of successful combat experience, but he might just understand something very basic that you miss and this quote sums it up.

"If in order to kill the enemy you have to kill an innocent, don't take the shot. Don't create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act."

Israel has created enemies it didn't have to create by its own callous and barbarous treatment of the Palestinian people since occupying their land in 1967. The US, by comparison, was magnanimous to its former enemies after WWII, even helped them rebuild their economies and their governments and as a result can count both Japan and Germany as friends and allies.

General Mattis was adamant that his Marines treat the locals with respect and only go after the bad guys. Later on when the US had to help the Iraqi government fight IS in Iraq, it was the US effort to cultivate the leaders of Sunni tribes and make them allies in the fight against IS when IS was courting them as enemies against the Shiites governing Iran that allowed IS to be defeated there. Just flattening towns and treating everyone as an enemy only guarantees there will never be peace.

Many, perhaps most of the residents of Gaze are sick and tired of Hamas. Yes they voted for them once because the PA is corrupt and seen as nothing more than an adjunct of the Israeli government. But that was a long time ago and the residents of Gaza have not had an opportunity to vote since then. Israel could have probably found some allies against Hamas if they had gone that route early in their campaign before they destroyed so much. Now that possibility is probably, sadly, foreclosed.

Israel is not going to win this war just as it failed to win its 2006 war against Hezbollah. Israel might be lucky to survive this as an intact nation.

Find out who Abram Vereide was and who Doug Coe is and what those two represent to understand what I tell you is true.

That sure is some off the wall twisted thinking, trying to justify supporting the Gaza genocide by this interpretation. As you say its also insane this interpretation influences US foreign policy on this.

Please read a book by titled "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power" if you want to further your understanding of what drives many aspects of us domestic and foreign policy. It is an eye opener.

How many people in the U.S. hold that belief?

I've been hearing this from so-called "born again" Christians since I was a kid. Pentacostles most definitely preach this (they also teach that the idea the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed to be "rebellion against god"). If you haven't lived among Americans in the south east these ideas might seem ridiculous but in the south, the Midwest and parts of the west these ideas predominate.

Apple's human rights and environmental policies are empty public relations verbiage meant to impress a gullible public. The reality is that money talks and everything else is a distant second place. Apple could care less about human rights in Vietnam. They only care that their stuff is built cheaply with no labor disruptions.

Mexico was out of line offering refuge to a wanted criminal in their embassy. No beauty queens in this pageant.

Really need some new thinking from US leadership.

The problem for the US body politic is that so many christians in the US think Israel starting Armageddon is necessary for the second coming of christ. Any barbarity on the part of the government of Israel is not just forgiven but encouraged as in their twisted minds it hastens the end days and their salvation.

So not all US politicians believe this tripe but enough of them do to basically chain US foreign policy to this ridiculous religious vision. Politicians ignore or openly challenge this at great peril as doing so will alienate a lot of voters.

It could be said that the US set the precedent by bombing the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, although no mention of that here.

Ignoring the 1983 Beirut embassy bombing and the 1988 bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya? How about more recent Iranian militia rocket attacks on the US embassy in Baghdad? The Arabs/Muslims made embassies targets all around the world.

China had picked up pieces of the F-117 the Serbs shot down and took the parts to their embassy. Considering how classified the materials were the US Gov at the time apparently chose to bomb the embassy to prevent those materials from being compromised. The Chinese knew the game they were playing.

Iran turned their so called consulate into a military command headquarters. That might be ok if they were not simultaneously using it as a base from which to attack Israel via their proxies in Syria and southern Lebanon. I have almost nothing nice to say about Israel but Iran made their consulate a legitimate target by using it as a command post for operations against Israel.

As for Mexico, they stuck their nose into the internal business of a sovereign nation. Maybe the Ecuadorans should not have forced their way into the Mexican embassy but they sure as heck could have declared their diplomats persona non grates and force them all to leave in 48 hours so they could arrest the convict holed up inside. Mexico had no business taking that guy in and protecting him.

"Biden made a LGBTQIXTRV++- holiday on Easter!"

No. Please. The Transgender Day of Visibility has been held on 31 March since 2021. Easter just happened to be on the same day in 2024. Next year Easter will be on 20 April, but the Transgender Day of Visibility will still be on 31 March.

Trump is scraping the barrel.

Yes, but that barrel happens to be very very deep.

Mike Johnson quote "What, me worry?"

It just reinforces the fact that all these self-professed Christians are nothing but CINOs - Christians in Name Only...and are playing the religious flock for fools...

I think it reinforces the idea that in a multi ethnic society where every imaginable religion exists it is not possible to base the laws of such a nation on the narrow dogmas of a single faction of one religion. To do so automatically alienates all of those who do not subscribe to the dogmas of that sect or religious faction and creates opposition to such policy proposals. It also reinforces how essential deal making and compromise are to the smooth functioning of an elected representative government. Nothing gets done when one faction wants everything there way, especially when they do not wield power in both houses of Congress and the Executive Branch. MTG and some of her colleagues need to learn these lessons but they seem to view necessary compromise and deal making as weaknesses rather than try to learn the art themselves and do some actual good for their country.

House Speaker Mike Johnson will meet on Friday with Donald Trump for a press conference on election integrity 

I have been musing about what would happen if, in the event there was again a Republican majority in the House of Representatives when a new Congress convenes on 3 Jan 25 and they have not succeeded in choosing a Speaker by the 6 January certification of Electoral College votes? It's that "election integrity" thing you know ...................