WARGAMES ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

🚀 🚀🚀:  Saturday night Middle East time, Iran launched 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles, and 120 ballistic missiles at Israel.  All of the drones which took several hours to reach their destination and the cruise missiles which took about an hour were downed outside of Israel’s airspace by Israel, the US, the UK, Jordan (!), and maybe France. Israel’s Iron Dome and Arrow air defense systems destroyed most of the ballistic missiles that made it past the various ally flyers though a few made it to their target, Israel’s Nevatim Air base, where they did minimal damage.  Unfortunately, shrapnel from one of the destroyed missiles struck a 7-year-old Israeli Bedouin girl who remains in critical condition.  The Iranian attack was in retaliation for Israel’s targeted strike of an Iran consulate building in Syria. That strike killed 2 Iranian Generals and 5 additional officers, all of whom were targeted because of their critical roles in aiding and abetting militant groups in Gaza and Lebanon, Iran’s anti-Israel surrogates.  The retaliation for the consulate strike was expected, the scope of the retaliation and that Iran didn’t employ one of its nefarious surrogates was not.  Israel is now expected to respond with a retaliatory strike of its own though President Biden has warned Israel Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu that his response should be measured because Biden doesn’t want to be pulled into a full-fledged Middle East war, not an irrational concern since prior experience indicates that nothing good comes of that.  Not that a bigly war is a concern for former Trump advisor John Bolton, who to the extent anyone cares says that he won’t be voting for either Trump or Biden.  He’s pushing for a full-on attack as are a few others among the House and Senate neo-con set who think we should egg Israel on to directly attack Iran regardless of the outcome. For their part, the UN spent yesterday playing with their fidget spinners.

Fog: During the hours when the hundreds of drones were still enroute to Israel and well before any of the quicker moving missiles had even been launched, social media was aglow with messages from members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, most expressing concern and support to the Israeli people but others very political in nature, including a few from the usual Republican suspects, attacking Biden for his “weakness” and inability to “control” the Iranians, particularly ironic because despite a slew of carrot and stick attempts, a nuclear deal and an undone nuke deal no one, including their hero Trump has managed to control Iran’s leaders for decades. Speaker for now Mike Johnson who’d spent his Saturday at Mar a Lago cozying up to Trump and promising to ban non-citizens who’ve never been allowed to vote in Federal elections from doing what they already can’t do, promised to divert this week’s House agenda away from messaging legislation advancing water guzzling dishwashers and power hogging refrigerators to the passage of an Israel military aid package.  Democratic leadership also promised to advance aid for Israel, but their priority continues to be pushing through the already passed Senate legislation which also includes military aid for Ukraine and Taiwan as well as humanitarian aid for Gaza. So basically, the Ukraine stalemate continues to loom over passing any military aid because the Orange guy, MAGA Margie and a slew of other Republicans remain set against helping those “corrupt”  Ukrainian “Nazis,” their adjectives, not mine, and Speaker Mike lives in fear of losing his job.  To further complicate the military aid vote, a contingent of Democrats, mostly Squad members, who well before the Gaza mess, voted against funding Israel’s lifesaving Iron Dome missile defense system, remain dead set against providing any kind of military aid to Israel.  It shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that while the 300 plus drones and missiles were enroute to Israel, none of those Squad members were among those expressing concern for Israel though yesterday a few of them emerged from their bunkers with word salad posts that blamed all the region’s ills on Israel.  Oddly enough two of the longest, weirdest X posts came from Missouri’s Cori Bush and New York’s Jamaal Bowman, both of whom are facing very competitive primary challenges.        

Legal Morass: Despite another late Friday attempt by his lawyers to push off his New York trial, jury selection begins today which means we New Yorkers, particularly the downtown set will be subjected to weeks of Trump and his antics in the Big 🍎.  Though the press mostly talks about the salacious parts of this case, the hushing of porn star Stormy Daniels (AKA Stephanie Clifford) to keep her from publicly disclosing her very short “affair” with Trump, it’s really about his efforts to engage in election interference so Trump is facing 34 felony accounts alleging that he falsified New York business records to conceal damaging information that could have affected the outcome of the 2016 election. Not too long ago the legal pundits advised us that this was the weakest case against Trump but with the other ones mired in the Everglades, the Supreme Court, and a bedroom in Atlanta, it’s the one we’ve got, so here we go.  Will it matter if Trump is found guilty, maybe on the fringes and maybe that’s all that matters but it certainly doesn’t help that New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu who is supposedly a “normie” “moderate” Republican told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos yesterday that though he believes that Trump “absolutely contributed” to an insurrection and that his efforts to overturn the 2020 election were “absolutely terrible,” nothing, not even felony convictions, would stop him from voting for him. That’s Trump who calls the insurrectionists patriots, who begins his rallies by glorifying their prison choir and who adores Robert E Lee, not to mention his incoherent babble and worsening aphasia. Calling Nikki Haley and Chris Christie, it’s time to speak up and by speak up, I mean say you are voting for Biden.  😱 

Good luck Boston 🏃 🏃🏃 

Let’s not forget the hostages!  @BringThemAllHomeNow