Lukas Dufka

What a perfect metaphor for this administration. An ignorant narcissist, having declined help from experts, breaks the world in vain pursuit of self-aggrandizement.

Lemme be really clear about one thing: Pete didn't fight in Afghanistan. He was assigned as a counterinsurgency instructor in Kabul. He never led or commanded a single soldier in combat there. So when he jokes about ISAF as "I Saw Americans Fighting," he's talking about himself.

For Ukraine to survive it’s got to face down not only Russia, supported by China and North Korea, but now the United States as well. And its strongest European ally, Germany, is one election away from possibly joining the list of Ukraine’s enemies as well. I like their odds.

The emergence of Black Plague in Russia can be blamed on the provocative good health of neighboring European societies. by John Mearsheimer

It's not a 'gift' to Putin. It's an advance payment. As to what for, we will see that on November 3rd.

Made my day.

Better late than never.

Let's hope that Zelensky will again prove amenable to public pressure. He's done it in the case of Yermak, kicking and screaming though he was, and given enough outcry over Fedorov, we might at last see the end of Syrskiy, too.

Pochettino has a chance to be a hero and actually not put Balogun in the lineup tonight.

Turns out being a former Portuguese colony significantly improves your chances of beating Argentina. Damn, Cabo Verde!

We may be entering a feedback loop that inevitably deepens every crisis in an autocratic system. As things get worse, it becomes less palatable to report facts up the chain of command, in turn making a bad situation deteriorate faster, until it unravels completely.

We’re now in that part of the disaster movie when the increasingly worrying news reports run in the background while the characters ignore them because they’re arguing about the school run.

Russian fuel truck drivers just posted a new video from the road to Crimea.

As the scale of the UA mid-range campaign against the critical logistics infrastructure in the south increases, it’s looking less like its goal is to just interdict the Russian supply lines, and more like a battlefield shaping effort. Mark your calendar. September could be interesting this year.

The relatively good thing about the absolutely terrible Iran deal is that Trump presumably signed it with the full intention of not sticking to it. Unfortunately, this won't be as easy as when he used to stiff his creditors. A president of a country can only operate like a grifter for so long.

These are bad times, but watching Putin and Trump get royally humiliated in the same week does buoy the mood somewhat.

This is not peace, this is an armistice for 20 weeks.

2014: Crimea was the weakest spot of the weakened Ukraine. 2026: Crimea is quickly becoming an Achilles heel for the Russian war effort. A mass exodus from Crimea will not only cause chaos in the Russian rear, it will damage the morale of frontline troops (already low) and make Putin look weak.

"Let us not call this peace. Peace is not the absence of war. Peace is a positive condition — the rule of law." Dorothy Thompson, writing in 1938 on the Munich Agreement.

SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic all rushing to get their IPOs done before the money runs out is essentially the biggest bank run in financial history.

Imagine if Steve Job's name was included with every mention of the iPhone. As in, "Steve Job's iPhone". That's how weird it is when people insist on endlessly saying "Elon Musk's Starlink" or "Elon Musk's SpaceX". Yes, I know who the CEO/owner of these companies is. Can we stop glorifying him?

Starmer should immediately order the Royal Navy to board every Russian shadow tanker that sails into the Channel and use the confiscated oil to keep the fuel prices low in Britain. He won't do it, of course, because it would be a couragous decision.

Talking about presidential security and assassination attempts, we should not forget to mention that if the Ayatollah Khomeini had built a ballroom, he would still be alive today.

Even Sting believes this one is winnable.

Now that should open the Hormuz strait in a jiffy.

SS says camp guards showed poor judgment, Reichsführer Himmler's spokesperson: "a full and impartial inquiry will begin immediately".

There probably are some lessons to be learned by democrats around the world about defeating autocrats from Hungary’s Tisza victory over Orbán. But what we have really learned was how to defeat Viktor Orbán in Hungary in 2026. We haven’t suddenly obtained a template for defeating all autocrats.

Let’s hope that Magyar isn’t going to pull a Biden, being lenient on a clearly criminal regime and hoping that good governance alone is going to convince people who are living in a fact-free reality.

Let me get this straight: the Strait is now being blocked by Iran *and* the US? What is this, a competition in piracy? Who takes or sinks more ships gets the right to pass?

I guess the Iranians didn’t say thank you.

These wartime talks with Iran are just as unserious as the prewar talks. This war isn’t anywhere near over yet.

Trump’s claim of a successful regime change may eventually turn out correct. But it’s a bit like washing your car by drowning it in the river. A moribund theocracy led by a frail octogenarian has been transformed into a junta of hardline generals who prefer martyrdom to defeat.

My brain before the first cup of coffee: "Is it a coincidence that Trump's gaslighting could fail him at last just as there's a global LNG shortage?"

If you elect a laughing stock as your president, your country will become a laughing stock also. It happens more quickly if you’re a Moldova or a Kyrgyzstan, because nobody owes you respect. But even the world’s dominant superpower eventually succumbs. We’re all witnessing that moment now.

Netanyahu: “Nice ceasefire you got there, would be a shame if something happened to it.”

Once Trump chickens out, which he will, and even if he promptly goes for a ceasefire and the war ends, his genocidal threat will not go away. The fact that the president of the most powerful country on Earth has used such language will have consequences.

Refusing to be triggered by Trump's Easter ultimatum just because he appears to have gone nuts (yet again). Yes, it is pushing the boundaries of his own breathtakingly callous and criminal standards. But hasn't this literally been our daily bread since 2016? Keep calm and pass the salsa.

Now that the Iranians have tested their weapon of mass economic destruction and discovered the extent of its power, perhaps they’ll conclude that wasting more resources on a nuke actually isn’t necessary. Perhaps.

Came across another case of "whatever you think of him, Charlie Kirk was doing it the right way, he was standing up and talking to peope." So was Adolf Hitler. Really, people, it's not condoning political violence if you criticize its targets.

There’s nothing to redefine, though. If a few people inside of a regime are replaced, it’s no more a regime change than people getting off the bus are a bus change. It’s still the same bus, just different people. Might pose a challenge to a three year old to grasp this, but surely the NYT gets it.

Not a good sign that Trump’s listing how much longer other US wars have lasted. As if to say: “come on, we fought in Vietnam for so many years, surely we can do this for a couple more months.”

Damn. Instead of a forever war we got a “two to three weeks war”

Trump’s sounding as if he doesn’t care anymore if anyone believes his lies, including himself.

If I was a Ukrainian diplomat, I’d really be itching to say a few very carefully chosen words to the Americans just about now.

When your neighbor asked to borrow an old bucket to save his burning house, you offered to SELL it to him, and then, having accidentally shot up your water tank fooling around with your AR-15, you demand the neighbor goes easy on the water, because you're trying to fill your swimming pool.