Monday June 8, 2026
By Marc Cooper
(This is being written Sunday night so the war situation may change by the time you get this).
As Donald Trump was trying to decide which Neanderthal to support in next week’s grotesque UFC cage fight on the White House lawn to celebrate his 80th birthday, Iran decided to celebrate the 100th day of Trump and Netanyahu’s war against them on Sunday by firing multiple missiles and rockets into Israel.
This is Iran’s first attack on Israel since the mostly phantom US-backed cease fire of two months ago (which in any case has seen some 81 prior violations and little momentum toward peace).
Though dramatic in its impact and scope, the Iranian attack was no great surprise. As Israel continues to push forward with its umpteenth war against Lebanon-based Hezbollah, Iran warned that an attack on the capital of Beirut would bring a serious reprisal. Predictably, Israel fired at least two missiles into a Shia neighborhood in southern Beirut and Iran held to its word and immediately responded with its ballistic missiles launched into Israel. (Israel’s current campaign against Hezbollah has already displaced more than a million Lebanese from their homes).
The Iranian foreign minister then anounced that any armed Israeli response to the Sunday missile attack would trigger more missile attacks on U.S. military bases planted around Iran as well as more targeting of the pro-American Gulf Sheikdoms.
This is a deeply serious escalation of Trump’s splendid little war and could easily spiral into a massive regional conflict while already highlighting the strategic gulf between Trump and Netanyahu. Only a week ago Trump had a heated phone conversation with Netanyahu pleading with him to halt or scale back the Israeli attack on Lebanon.
Iran has made it clear that it will not participate in any peace talks so long as that attack continues and the US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz persists.
Bibi’s response to Trump’s plea was as they say in Israel “kish mir en tuchas” – kiss my ass. Netanyahu has no desire to let up the pressure on Iran nor its surrogates like Hezbolllah, while Trump has made it clear he wants this whole pointless spectacle that he helped start to end ASAP. He shows no desire other than to get the hell out of the quicksand he jumped into as the midterms approach and any face saving way out of this monumental blunder seems to fade.
Trump is also aware that MAGA stooges in the cesspool of the U.S. congress are not exactly gung ho on more war as their constutuents actually believed their isolationist campaign bullshit.
It wasn’t a whole lot of them, but enough Republican house members a few day ago joined with Democrats to pass the war powers act and while it faces an uncertain fate in the senate, there’s no doubt that Trump would veto it. The American electorate dissents with only 11 per cent supporting a US escalation of the war.
Iran clearly has the strategic edge now in the conflict because it is the ruling Iranian Revolutionary Guard that is holding the cards to escalate or not while Trump’s chip stack increases to dwindle. It’s not too early to declare Trump’s war in Iran as a total failure, if not a victory for the Mullahs who were supposedly wiped out months ago.
It’s generally thought this week’s move by Iran was most probably just a warning shot, not an invitation to a wider war.
Iran’s major goal with Sunday’s missile strike was to drive a wedge deeper into the US-Israeli split and it has done so rather efficiently. The US once again pleaded with Israel on Sunday to not retaliate. But Israeli politics is built on several rigid clichés, foremost among them that Israel has the right and the duty to respond to any attacks on its territory or security. We’ll see soon enough. (BREAKING NOW AS I WRITE. A BULLETIN COMES IN THAT ISRAEL JUST RETALIATED WITH A BARRAGE OF MISSILES SENT INTO IRAN).
Not only does this weekend’s events radically destabilize the entire middle east tinderbox, it has no doubt roiled and distracted Trump’s concentration on the pressing question of whether the DC reflecting pool floor should be cerulean, aqua, or royal blue. Not to mention if Kash Patel’s fifth rate country singer gal pal could hold a tune long enough to headline Trump’s all but collapsed 250th American Anniversary celebration on July 4th from which even second and third tier talent once in the lineup have since bailed. Republican legislators (except the bottom rung of the brain dead) secretly wish Trump will get hit by a lightning strike as they would rather not have to go out and campaign in the next few months in support of a new endless war, once-again rising inflation and a muddled immigration policy not to mention a sleep walking mummy of a president who continues to spend his nights madly tweeting out insults rather than, um, sleeping.
INTELLIGENCE?
The Iran war has also raised whatever the possibilities of an Islamic terror attack or two here in the U.S.
It would be a waste of time, though, to worry much about them as we would know nothing about them until after the smoke cleared.
As of this week the 18 US intelligence agencies, the so-called IC or Intelligence Community is being overseen by what his own colleagues consider one of the dumbest among them. Housing official Bill Pulte has been named the new Director of National Intelligence, sort of like naming Fredo to be a war time consilglieri. The soft handed wealthy scion of an even wealthier family has exactly zero intelligence experience and even less functional intelligence. He brought himself to Trump’s receding attention by using his housing post to rifle through private mortgage documents to ferret out alleged fraud by Trump hate objects like James Comey and NY Attorney General Letitia James among other dangerous terrorists. Their alleged crime? Declaring more than one residence as their principal home, saving them maybe $500 over a 30 year span. Some of the cases have already been laughed out of court and there isn’t a single living lawyer who believes any conviction will be had, presuming that any of the cases get through a complete trial. Old time observers estimate that 2/3 of the congress have indulged in this technicality as mortgages are complicated with a lot of fine print.
Pulte is such a laughing stock among his own Republican colleagues, Trump has vowed he is only acting DNI for a 7 month term and will not be subjected to a humiliating thumbs down in a Senate confirmation vote.
Nor does Trump apparently want him to burden himself with any real counter-terrorism duties even though the Iran War has elevated the threat level. He’s even letting him keep his federal housing gig because, you know, why would overseeing 18 spy agencies take up more than a few hours a week?
Even Fox News cops to the obvious truth: “President Trump has tasked Pulte with reducing the size of the intelligence community and overseeing a process of firing certain intelligence officials.”
This, of course, is the only remote talent that dumbkopf Pulte possesses, and in any case what could possibly go wrong in the next 7 months given that the midterms are 5 months from now and the Iran-Lebanon-Israeli war rolls on?
Platner V. Collins
If I lived in Maine, I would be voting for Graham Platner, who seems to be the best bet to unseat the insufferable and Permanently Concerned Susan Collins. Collins is a fraud and a phony. She’s a counter-balance to other oh-so-bad Republican senators like Bobby Kennedy Jr. is a blue-ribbbon physician. Yes, she’s pro-life (mostly). And yes she did vote to impeach Trump, but in reality, it’s blasphemous to call her a reasonable moderate. What’s the percentage of times she has voted with Trump in the Senate? 55%? 65%? 80%? Nope. Not even close. Try 96%. Wow, what bravery. Indeed. Her worst record is on voting rights as detailed by primo election lawyer Marc Elias here.
She just signed on as the 50th and decisive supporter of the pernicious US SAVE ACT, the most vicious of voter suppression proposals since Jim Crow. This gurantees the bill will come to the floor and will allow Comrade J.D. Vance to cast the coup de grace and get it through the Senate.
But wait, her most powerful opponent, professional NON-politician Graham Platner who has been slightly leading in the polls just got walloped by The New York Times that relied on the testimony of three women he dated. He was described by them as sometimes ”unsettling” and sometimes somewhat “toxic”
(I personally consider it a major character flaw of my own if during at least one short part of any day I am not somewhat unsettling and toxic).
This weak tea was brewed up by the New York Times as if he just might be the worst misoginist since Jack The Ripper. There were no accusations of sexual abuse nor physical aggression of any import in the Times piece and now there’s some new accusations that he might have been sexting rather recently-- like 75% of American teenage boys and God knows by how many middle-aged bored-to-death insurance agents.
I’m not making any excuses for this guy who doesn’t seem to have ever been Ms. magazine’s Man of the Year. Yet, the guy was a hard -drinking Marine who did four combat tours in Afghanistan and freely admits to bouts of PTSD, drinking too much, and being kind of an asshole just as most twentysomething active duty war-time Marines. He also explains that the “nazi tattoo” of a death head on his chest was the result of he and some other Marines boozing it up one night and getting inked and it had nothing to do with being a Nazi.
People also grow and often change. If you had told me 10 years ago I would be looking forward to the podcasts of fierce anti-Trumper Bill Kristol (once called the Brain of Dan Quayle) I’d have said you’re bonkers. But Kristol has changed and so have I over the years.
Platner is also one of the only politicians I know of who apologized directly to those he “unsettled” and has said the Times piece about him was truthful – though he denied the parts about any “physicality” accusations that even if true fall a mile short of assault. There’s an account of his putting how hands on one of the wome’s shoulder and another incident when he “yanked” the hand of a woman to get her out of a taxi. The horror!
His program is extremely progressive and it’s little surprise he has been endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Ro Kkanna among other Democratic leftists and by a lot of people in Maine who are tired of her theater and who like a regular guy who indulges in none of the insincerity and verbal fog of most politicains.
Some of the weaker Democrats, who apparently are comfortable living on their knees in the face of a fascist president and his congressional goons, have taken the laughable position that as to Platner not his policies but rather his “character” might be unfit for the Senate and he should throw in the towel.
Is this some kind of a joke? The high character of the U.S. Senate, including Susan Collins, that mired in a sea of muck, corruption, and hatred of poor people, might be damaged by a veteran who has accepted his flaws, apologized, and spent the last number of years working with serious projects to benefit this most vulnerable of Americans. Oh, please piss off with your strings of clenched pearls. Redemption is possible.
Sadly, the Times cobbled together this hit piece using as its principal voice and victim a Republican operative who in 2018 led a Women for Kavanaugh campaign to get this guy who also drank too much and was credibly accused of rape elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court – that hot bed of ethical purity and irrefutable high character that has never demonstrated any toxicity to women.
FINAL THOUGHT:
Weiss v. Pelley
Fired CBS correspondent Scott Pelley has dropped a second bomb over the ruins of CBS, affirming that Political Commissar Bari Weiss directly intervened in a February piece by Pelley on the ICE killing of Rachel Good. After the segment was viewed and approved by all the High Priests of Fairness at the network, it was set to run that night even though its final preps were running late. Pelley said to reporters this week that many of the protesters were over the top and in his view own a share of responsibility for the bloody fracas in Minneapolis. He directed his editors to find and include some footage of some of the more egregious provocations by the protesters – an honest attempt to be honest….before Weiss stuck her schnoz into it.
But just 4 hours before air time, and after the piece had been approved, Weiss sent him messages demanding he show the protesters in a more violent light. She also asked him to rewrite part of the script that said Good, as the video showed, was turning her car away from the ICE agents right before they shot her in the head. Weiss told him to say the opposite –that Good was turning the car into the agents.
He ignored her requests because they were untruthful and the piece was re-approved 19 minutes before it would be too late to be broadcast.
While the official CBS rhetoric is Weiss has come to save and “modernize” 60 Minutes, her real task is to destroy it per order of nepo billionaire and new owner David Ellison to win favor with Trump who hates the show and who makes the final call on David’s daddy’s move to acquire Warner Brothers that owns CNN, that Trump also despises.
We have to recognize Bari’s doing a good job so far. Maybe too good as the sabotaging of 60 Minutes is impacting the entire network. And billionaires don’t like to lose money.
I suspect once she has gotten 60 Minutes done in, she will be next. The mafia often bumps off its own wet workers once the job is done. By this time next year she is likely to be tossed back into the primordial muck from which she emerged. It won’t be soon enough. ++
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