Coming "Marine Heat Wave" Will Break Records And Cause Misery Throughout The West

 

Marine heat wave will spawn record heat dome in West

As if we didn't have enough to worry about - with spiking gas prices from Trump's ill-conceived war on Iran - we are now facing a natural disaster. At least here in the West.  A record-breaking heat dome will develop near the West Coast late this week, smashing records and sending temperatures into the triple digits through next week. The 'marine heat wave' spawning it will make it feel like summer during the final days of winter. Or so we've been informed by the Washington Post.  I have no reason to dispute it as I've seen the drought and warming trend over the past few weeks here in Colorado.

But how bad will this one get? Bad, according the Post:

"It could reach 100 degrees in Los Angeles next week, after record-breaking 95-degree heat on Thursday and Friday. In Phoenix next week, temperatures could exceed 100 degrees several times. It could also reach the century mark in Las Vegas."

The image below- snipped from a video portrayal - graphically shows the extent of the coming misery, especially given a majority of Coloradans don't have a/c and many others can't afford the costs of cooling:

And this will have been spawned by what's called a "Marine heat wave" - see top image.  We are informed: 

"Sea surface temperatures off the coast of Southern California have risen as much as five degrees above average for the time of year, causing a strong, Category 2 marine heat wave to develop. These unusually warm waters will provide a boost to air temperatures near the coast, especially at night, preventing them from dropping off as much as they otherwise would.

The heat dome will bring light winds, plentiful sunshine and unseasonably high temperatures, which will prevent cooler, deeper waters from churning up. The sea surface will warm, further intensifying the marine heat wave. This can contribute to a feedback loop, by which extra warmth in the sea adds to warmth on land and vice versa."

This will be a nightmare for those in the already parched West as it will remove even more badly needed snowpack. That snowpack is essential - when it melts- to help supply water needs including for agriculture, industry as well as household use.

Worse, as the climate warms, marine heat waves are becoming more frequent, severe and long-lasting. According to Colin McCarthy, a storm chaser affiliated with the University of California at Davis:

“A strong to severe marine heatwave is ongoing off the coast of California. In early March, ocean temperatures reached the mid- to upper 60s at Scripps Pier in La Jolla, California. That’s the average ocean temperature for mid-June."

Global average sea surface temperatures already set a record for April, 2024 at 60.8 degrees, which was 1.55 degrees above the long-term average and just 0.02 degree below the all-time record month of January 2016. On land, March 2024's global average surface temperature was 1.80 degrees above the 20th century average of 56.7 degrees, the fourth warmest over a 174-year record.. The Southern Hemisphere, meanwhile, had its warmest month ever, beating March by 0.10 degree. 

These stats, make no mistake, are enough to fill the sentient citizen with trepidation. All we can do is buckle up and hope the coming heat dome and record heat will not spawn more devastating fires.

See Also:

UN Climate Framework Withdrawal By Trumpers Puts The Planet On Path To Runaway Greenhouse Effect

And:

An Earth Day Warning: Climate Hell On Its Way No Thanks To Dotard Trump

And:

Colorado River projected to deliver a third of normal water supplies

And:

Xcel Energy tells Front Range to prepare for power outages due to hot, dry weather

Using D.E. Littlewood's Euclidean Algorithm Approach To Obtain The Best Rational Approximations

 Mathematics legend Dudley E. Littlewood developed an interesting approach to obtain the best rational approximation, say for the value of a fraction. As he puts it in his timeless monograph 'The Skeleton Key Of Mathematics' (p. 27, Euclid's Algorithm):

"Clearly the fraction 1/3 is simpler than the corresponding decimal, 0.33333.... therefore it is of interest to study the best rational approximations. There will be a series of best approximations according to the degree of accuracy required."

He then starts with the rational approximation p/q, with the intent of finding a simpler fraction - call it p'/ q' - which will give as close an approximation as possible to p/q.  In this respect, the denominator of the difference, i.e.

p/q - p'/q  can be no greater than the product q q'. So the difference can't be less than 1/ qq'.  In effect one is seeking a simpler fraction p'/q'  such that:

p/q - p'/q' =   +  1/qq'

This gives: q' p  - p'q =    + 1   

The numbers p', q' are just those that can be obtained in Euclid's algorithm, which we've encountered in previous posts, e.g.

Brane Space: The Euclidean Algorithm and the Path to Continued Fractions

Following the use of continued fractions in that post, consecutive quotients can be used in executing the algorithm to find the best approximation too p/q.

And so one may write, following Littlewood:

where:

is usually used for more concise notation,

In the words of Littlewood(ibid.)

"It can then be shown that the remainder of the fraction, when reduced to the form of an ordinary fraction, gives the first approximation p'/q' as obtained from Euclid's Algorithm.

In this sense, the fraction:

a₁   +  1/+ a₂  + a₃ +........+ a_r

is called the rth convergent of the continued fraction."

  The continued fractions and approximations for  p  hold particular interest for Littlewood. For example. Littlewood gives the first twelve terms for the continued fraction as:

Littlewood notes the continued fraction will converge more rapidly if:

 "in the consecutive divisions the nearest integer is taken instead of the greatest integer less than the remainder of the fraction. Some of the remainders thus become negative, but the denominator 1 never appears. This has the effect of cutting off the comparatively inaccurate convergents.  Following this practice the first 12 terms given above for   p may be compressed into 7 in the form":

                                                    

 Littlewood also developed an approach to congruences using the Euclidean Algorithm.  This will be examined in another future post.

Why The DART Asteroid Deflection (In 2022) Didn't Prove We Could Escape The Fate Of The Dinosaurs.

                             T-Rex observes as Chicxulub asteroid is about to strike.

                                Dinosaurs confused after blast impact -explosion

                                  Artist's conception of DART & Dimorphos' deflection

              One of erroneous headlines in aftermath of DART -asteroid collision

Once more, in the March 9 Wall Street Journal (NASA's Asteroid- Defense Skills Draw Plaudits', p. A3), we were treated to the premature exuberance and optimism of a major media outlet, rivalling even the 2022 NY Times codswallop that 'NASA Can Spare Us From The Dinosaur's Fate').  But in either media's eagerness, insufficient account was taken of the difference in size and mass.

To wit, the DART mission evidently deflected the path of one asteroid (Dimorphos) of a pair (Dimorphos, Didymos) which came in at a mass of  4.4 x  10 ⁹   kg and widths of 525 ft. to 2,300 ft.  The end result of 3 years' worth of analysis - published March 6 in the Journal Science Advances, i.e.

Direct detection of an asteroid’s heliocentric deflection: The Didymos system after DART | Science Advances

disclosed the impact by the 1,300 lb. DART 'bus' changed the orbit by 11.7 microns (about 1/10th the width of a human hair).  Translating that to the change  over a period of 1 year resulted in a 2/10ths of a mile difference. As the WSJ piece gushed: 

 "Despite doomsday movie plots about Earth-ending collisions, this key test of NASA's planetary defense capabilities successfully changed the path of a two-asteroid pair"

So there is no doubt that if this DART mission were a genuine physically realistic test of an asteroid deflection it would be of immense relevance and importance. Indeed, on the Torino scale for potential asteroid impacts, the Dimorphos-Didymos system would fall into the category of a 'mass- extinction impact' - applicable to asteroid dimensions 330'- - 3300' diameter.   The resulting explosive release between 100 and 100,000 megatons.  

But impressive though it is, it isn't in the same Torino class as the Chicxulub impactor which took out the dinosaurs in the KT boundary event.  That object was estimated to be between six and nine miles across with a mass of between   1  x  10 ¹⁵   kg and  5  x  10 ¹⁶   kg. Or a mass of roughly 10 million times that of the Dimorphos-Didymos pair. (In more concrete terrestrial terms this would be about 1,000 times more than the mass of a small car to a bumble bee.)

Could a bumble bee, no matter how fast it flew, displace a small car - say a Volks? Nope, not even by a micron.  Which is why the DART media cheerleaders would do well not to conflate the two cases of radically different magnitudes, including of explosive energy released. In the case of the Chicxulub impactor case we are looking at an explosive equivalent of 100 million megatons, rightly termed a "planet killer".  Fortunately such objects are believed to strike only every 15 million years or so.

In 2009, I attended a conference sponsored by the Dynamical  Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society that featured a paper entitled; ‘Analytic Theory of the YORP Effect for Near –Spherical Objects. At that time torques of the form:

dt  = r x F dS

were considered, where r is the radius vector and F the force supplied. The element of asteroid surface area is dS.  The research condition was confined to the special case where the impinging solar radiation was at right angles to the asteroid’s spin axis.  Three separate detections of the effect were announced, including for  a nearly spherical object (1998 KY), and on two more irregular objects, (1862 Apollo, and 25143 Itokawa).

In the case of the Apollo object the observed effect was approximately 3.0 x 10 ^-4 deg/day, vs. the theoretically –predicted YORP effect magnitude of 2.6 x 10 ^-4 deg/day.  This constitutes a real measurable magnitude and deflection for a serious asteroid – given Apollo objects are the most likely to inflict serious devastation on Earth since their orbits intersect Earth's. (Note: The DART deflection cannot be measured in deg/day given the interaction is not of sufficient magnitude.)

More than 90% of potentially hazardous "mountain-size" asteroids have been identified, according to NASA. But only about 40% of potentially hazardous asteroids with diameters of 460 feet or more are believed to have been identified. There may be as many as 25,000 of these smaller asteroids, each of which might lay waste to an entire region - say like Siberia  - if it were to strike our planet. In order for even a smaller asteroid - or pair (like Dimorphos-Didymos) to be theoretically taken out would likely require at least a year of advanced warning to get a deflector spacecraft in position to do its job. Even then, there is no certainty it would succeed - a) hitting the intruder, and b) deflecting it enough to change its path to avoid striking Earth.

In other words, one DART mission success with a lesser asteroid pair (in deflecting them), only shows a well-prepared in advance project could succeed. It doesn't prove any and every such attempt would, especially if the craft has to be designed and built from scratch and the threatening asteroid orbit still must be correctly computed.

  These points ought to be considered before the media again goes 'gah gah' over a space effort like DART, concluding it "saved us" from the fate of the dinosaurs. Granted, there is a temptation to put out 'clickbait' these days, but it's best to temper headlines and content before making exaggerated claims

See Also:

• Asteroids: The Celestial 'Swords of Damocles'
• And:
• NASA’s DART Mission Changed Orbit of Asteroid Didymos Around Sun - NASA
• And:
• After Last Week We Can Truly Say The Asteroid Peril Isn't just Science Fiction

• 
  
• And:

• Russian Asteroid Interception: Good Idea or Bad?

Colorado Scoffs At Trump Election Threats By Passing Expanded Mail Ballot Law

 

              "Hey! You can't pass a new mail bill to stop me from cheating in the midterms!"

Colorado lawmakers advanced a bill 2 weeks ago that would give voters more time to vote and drop off their ballots amid President Donald Trump’s threats to buck the Constitution by trying to nationalize elections.

Democrats in the state House passed House Bill 1113 in a 41-22 vote, sending the measure to the Senate over Republican opposition.

Lawmakers typically undertake election reforms just about every year, largely to adopt technical changes sought by county clerks and the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office. This year’s version includes similar tweaks.

But HB-1113 would also extend several key voting deadlines. The bill would require that drop boxes accept ballots for 22 days before an election, rather than the current law’s 15-day window. Ballots could be mailed to voters up to 29 days ahead of Election Day, up from 22 days now.

At a minimum, clerks would have to mail ballots out at least 25 days ahead of time, up from 18 days in the current law.

“Colorado’s elections are the gold standard in part because we continuously update our laws to guard against new threats to our democracy,” Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat, said in a statement. She’s sponsoring the bill with Rep. Jenny Willford. “Coloradans deserve to cast their ballot without barriers, and this bill safeguards against federal interference in our elections and makes it easier to vote.”

The changes come ahead of the 2026 midterm elections and follow Trump’s escalating calls for the federal government and Republicans to “take over” and “nationalize” elections. Trump allies — including Peter Ticktin, the lawyer for incarcerated former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters — have circulated a draft executive order that would attempt to give Trump unprecedented control over elections, according to the Washington Post.

The U.S. Constitution grants control over elections to state legislatures, with oversight authority granted to Congress.

Colorado officials have criticized Trump’s rhetoric in the past and defended Colorado as a model for election administration nationwide. In a statement about the Washington Post’s report last week, Secretary of State Jena Griswold criticized the president as “one of the greatest threats to American elections.”

In addition to expanding various voting timelines, HB-1113 would also allow people who live in transitional housing — like halfway houses — to vote.

As Colorado’s ballots grow longer and longer, the legislation would also allow voters to take written materials into polling places for their own reference. Voting centers that run out of supplies would be required to stay open past the 7 p.m. poll closing time. Colleges would be required to provide more information about voting to their students in the days before Election Day.

HB-1113 would repeal a provision of state law that allows a registered voter to challenge the eligibility of other voters. During a committee hearing last month, Sirota told fellow lawmakers that people who’d bought into misinformation about ineligible voters were sending lengthy lists of challenges to county clerks.

She said she was open to reforms, rather than a full repeal of that provision, but added that lawmakers were moving forward with stripping it for the time being.

House Republicans unanimously opposed the bill, citing various reasons. Rep. Stephanie Luck attempted to amend the bill to make it easier for political parties to close their primaries to unaffiliated voters, long a goal of some in the Colorado GOP. Rep. Ken DeGraaf, who last year questioned the results of the 2024 election that sent him and the rest of the House to the Capitol, defended Peters and sought to add more election security controls to the bill.

Other Republicans said some of the bill’s provisions would add burdensome new costs for small counties.

More Reepo bunkum and excuses to compromise elections, what else would you expect?

 See Also:

 If Trump's Reign Of Terror On The Postal Service Succeeds You Can Kiss The Rest Of This Country Goodbye Too

And:

Swatting Down More Nonsense About Mail Ballots - Including Trump Legal Goons' Claims About Absentee Ballot Fraud In Nevada 

And:

Brane Space: Trump Now Poses Greatest Security Threat To Election And Cannot Be Allowed To Carry Out A Coup

All Experts Redux: Origin Of Saturn's Ring System

 Question:  I've read somewhere Saturn's rings are the result of one of its Moons coming apart and orbiting it. Can this be true?

ANSWER:

For decades planetary astronomers have tried to solve the mystery of the origin for Saturn's rings. A paper in the Sept. 15, 2022 issue of Science, provided a coherent theory that an ancient Saturnian moon named Chrysalis had become the rings. Jack Wisdom (MIT Professor of Planetary Science) and his colleagues proposed that tidal forces tore apart the unfortunate moon a mere 100 to 200 million years ago or so. The scenario could also explain Saturn’s axial tilt, and the somewhat elongated orbit of the planet’s largest moon, Titan.   '

  A 2022 paper proposed breakup of moon Chrysalis to explain rings

Cassini mission Image of Saturn looking down at Saturn's  N. Pole

In the words of Tracy Becker, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado:

 "It's always nice to find solutions that can elegantly explain multiple different observations."

Which is an understatement, and which lends Wisdom et al's  theory enormous ballast.

Wisdom and his collaborators note that Saturn’s precession — the slow wobble of its spin axis — has almost, but not quite the same period as the precession of the orbit of Neptune. The researchers thus suggest there was once a true spin-orbit resonance between the two planets. Currently, that no longer exists given that there is roughly a 1 percent divergence. But the closeness suggested a hitherto unknown factor might account for the difference. And this turned out to be the moon Chrysalis, for which simulations disclosed that a Titan-Chrysalis resonance made the latter's orbit chaotic.  That orbit was then "pumped" to higher and higher eccentricity drastically altering Chrysalis' distance from Saturn creating closer and closer encounters with the moons Titan and Iapetus.

Then about 100 My ago the exaggerated eccentricity caused Chrysalis to be ejected from the immediate original system causing it to get so close to Saturn that tidal forces ripped it apart - thereby forming the ring system we see today.  Not surprisingly, as Chrysalis disintegrated and became the rings the once fine tuned resonance diminished until there is a one percent difference today - in the resonance between Neptune and Saturn.

Additionally, the relatively rapid drifting-away of Titan (which currently spirals outward at about 11 centimeters per year) might have lowered Saturn’s axial precession period until the resonance locked in hundreds of millions of years ago. That’s when Saturn’s spin axis started to tilt, possibly up to 36° at that time, according to the team’s calculations.  Thus, the disintegration of the hypothesized moon Chrysalis to become the rings also led to the extraordinary tilt of Saturn's spin axis.

We need here to go a tad more "into the weeds":  When Titan drifted outward, Chrysalis became trapped in a 3:1 resonance with Titan, orbiting Saturn once for every three times Titan swung around. But the resonance didn’t last: Computer simulations by the Wisdom et al team show that the orbit of Chrysalis would have become chaotic, with the moon experiencing a couple of close encounters with both Titan and Iapetus before being ejected out of the Saturnian system, or ending up so close to the planet that it was torn asunder by tidal forces.  As was noted earlier.

The elimination of an icy moon (about as massive as Iapetus) would suddenly change Saturn’s precession period, diverging the planet from its spin-orbit resonance with Neptune. Saturn’s axial tilt (or obliquity) would start to decrease again (at present, it’s 26.7°). The earlier close encounters with Titan might explain this giant moon’s relatively high orbital eccentricity. And if Chrysalis was indeed ripped apart, Saturn’s impressive ring system is composed of its icy remains.  

FYI, not all astronomers have bought into this scenario. Luke Dones (Southwest Research Institute, Boulder) insisted he was:

 “impressed that Wisdom and his colleagues can reproduce both the obliquity of Saturn and Titan's eccentricity. It’s a clever idea.” 

But, he added, 

“They take for granted that the rings are young, which is not established. We don't know the dust impact rate on the rings, and we don't understand what happens when dust hits the rings at high velocities.”

But in my opinion this is nitpicking and doesn't do service to the other observed aspects the Wisdom ring origin theory can account for. In an accompanying commentary in Science, Maryame El Moutamid (Cornell University) described the Chrysalis scenario as:

 “a plausible mechanism for explaining Saturn’s close proximity to the precession resonance with Neptune and the seemingly young age of its rings.” 

There are some details of the work that could be improved upon, of course. To estimate how much the computed moment of inertia depends on the assumptions, the Wisdom team used three additional approaches to construct models of the interior of Saturn. These models, however, only matched the gravitational moments J₂, J₄, and J₆ without invoking differential rotation.  

Wisdom admits also they "constructed interior models using four different sets of assumptions". For a range of rotation periods, the corresponding moments of inertia are shown in his paper's Fig. 1 in terms of the normalized angular momentum: the product of the moment of inertia and the rotation rate, normalized by:

M R_e ²   Ö GM/ R_e ³

where G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of Saturn, and R_e is its fiducial equatorial radius, taken to be 60,268 km

See Also:

``Loss of a satellite could explain Saturn' obliquity and young rings'' 

Trump & Cohort Predicted To Lose Their Iran War Of Choice By China's "Nostradamus" - What A Shock!

   "You dopes don't understand I'm a King and can do anything I want!

 Prof.  Jiang Xueqin (center) on why Trump will lose to Iran

"Why doesn't someone call out Trump for the unstable megalomaniac that he is. Enough of the mealy-mouthed euphemisms!” – NY Times comment

"Hegseth. Kennedy. Noem. Vance. Johnson. Bondi. Mullin. The list goes on and on. Bootlicking, ambitious amateurs. People without experience and without conscience. And a President who starts a war —yes, a WAR— to distract from his mishandling of the economy and his intimate association with Epstein. And Congress lets it happen? WHO ARE WE?"- NY Times Comment

 "The U.S. cannot run the world. It has neither the technological or political dominance to do that. Neither do other nations want that." - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, 'U.S. War Against Iran is Doomed to Fail', Youtube video

"What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time." - JFK, Juine 10, 1963, speech at American University.

"What a truly awful Presidential regime we have in place. They have no values or principles, other than bullying others, and pursuing their own lust for power and money. Their main governing effort is to divide and degrade American society, and their incompetence across the board is staggering. Everyday we wake to discover yet another outrage or disgusting action the criminals have made." - WaPO comment

“pResident” Bonespurs Trump declared on Friday that he would settle for nothing short of “unconditional surrender” by Iran, the latest and broadest expansion of his goals for the conflict, and one that could portend a much longer conflict if he persists in that aim.

Six days into the Israeli and American bombing campaign, Iran has shown no interest, at least publicly, in surrendering.  Why should it given we now know Putin’s Russia is giving Iran Intel on targeting American forces, e.g.

Russia is giving Iran intelligence to target U.S. forces, officials say - The Washington Post

Noting:

"Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East, the first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating — even indirectly — in the war, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence.

The assistance, which has not been previously reported, signals that the rapidly expanding conflict now features one of America’s chief nuclear-armed competitors with exquisite intelligence capabilities. Since the war began Saturday, Russia has passed Iran the locations of U.S. military assets, including warships and aircraft, said the three officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity."

And a Chinese-Canadian Professor of Predictive History has predicted Trump’s America will ultimately lose this war to Iran.  

Professor Jiang Predicts: US WILL LOSE Iran War

Before anyone gasps in shock or disbelief he or she needs to see the full Youtube video of Prof  Jiang Xueqin' exhaustive reasoning and why he is referred to as the “Chinese Nostradamus”.  This is given he’s already gotten 2 of his three 2024 predictions right (that Trump would win in 2024 and that he’d start a war with Iran.) This war he said in his video discussion was driven by Trump's hubris after taking out Maduro in Venezuela.  Sure enough, we read in a piece in the Friday NY Times:

"Trump keeps returning to the goal of regime change. He has repeatedly cited the model of the American action in Venezuela, where U.S. forces removed Nicolás Maduro and sanctioned the ascension of his vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, saying she could run the country as long as she complied with American demands, particularly access to oil.

Trump has resisted suggestions that Iran — a country with 92 million people, nearly three times the size of Venezuela’s population, and a government run by clerics and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — differs in every respect from Venezuela. As the five time draft dodger babbled on in a brief telephone conversation Friday when he told CNN: It’s going to work very easily. It’s going to work like in Venezuela,”  

But the man is delusional and indeed, not at all well in his senile orange head. Former Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, appearing on CNN (Fareed Zakaria show) yesterday was blunt: Iran regards this war as "existential" and will pull out all the stops to preserve itself. Given Iran lacks the air power of its two primary opponents (U.S. and Israel) it will resort to a massive campaign of destruction of operations, striking oil and gas facilities, water supplies in the surrounding states.  Indeed, the lead story in yesterday's Wall Street Journal ('Attacks on Desalination Drag Water Supplies Into War With Iran')  again make clear Iran isn't playing games. And as Prof. Jiang observed, devastation of the Saudi desalination plants means the kingdom runs out of water in 2 weeks.

In other words, as Mr. Sullivan put it, Iran will escalate attacks and devastation across the whole region. This is exactly what Prof. Jiang predicted, as well as Jeffrey Sachs in his own recent take. But the Trumpers and King Orange Fungus himself were too dumb to game plan this "mosaic defense into their gung-ho fantasy. They believed it would be a 'cakewalk' like in Venezuela, just take out the top guy and it's a win.  But Iran isn't Venezuela and has the basic firepower to reduce most of the region to ashes if Israel and the Trumpkins keep up their futile bombings. (And recall Iran survived the most one-sided war it had ever fought last June).

Just since these recent Trump -incepted hostilities began, Iran has:

- Hit the U.A.E. oil hub of Jebel Ali

-Struck the alternative loading site across the peninsula at Fujeirah

- Struck the  critical Qatari liquefied natural gas site at Ras Laffan

- Attacked a number of ships trying to cross the Strait of Hormuz - where a fifth of the world' oil must pass

As for sending the Kurds or the animated anti-regime Iranian protesters in to take down the regime, David Schenker - who served as Trump's top Middle East official in his first term, said (WSJ, Saturday, p. A6):

"You have this euphoria but it will wear of quickly. There's always some irrational exuberance that has to be tempered with the bleak reality."

And what is the bleak reality?

Jake Sullivan spelled it out yesterday to Fareed Zakaria on CNN with a simple observation:  These 'irregulars' would have to contend with at least 200,000 of the well-equipped and hardened Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as 400,000 Iranian army regulars. In other words, it'd be a one-sided slaughter. But neither Dotard or his boy scout DUI former FOX blabber Hegseth is smart enough to factor it in. (I.e. WSJ Saturday: "Trump has reveled in the images and videos of Iranians celebrating after Khamenei's death")

 So will these  and the Kurds get Trump out of his "improvised, ineffective war plan"  (Zakaria's term)?  Hardly, because they're outmatched as Jake Sullivan pointed out. Besides, Trump's  bestie Putin already has his number – as per the WaPo piece – and Prof. Jiang has forecast an ignominious loss - already unfolding with spiking gas prices.   This is what happens when a major war isn't planned for, and the ones at the top managing the attacks and 'strategy' are fools, idiots, lapdogs and incompetents.

See Also

Trump Administration | War

Trump and Hegseth Are Writing Their Own Rules of War

by Heather Digby Parton | March 8, 2026 - 5:05am | permalink

— from Salon

One of the reasons so many Americans never believed Donald Trump’s promise to end the “forever wars” was a simple observation. To all but his most fanatical followers, it’s clear he possesses a megalomaniacal personality and violent temperament. How could someone with such characteristics resist the urge to lead a war? It seemed fundamental to his personality and his desire to go down in history.

During the 2016 campaign the country was still dealing with fairly regular terrorist attacks from followers of ISIS, and despite Trump’s professed disdain for the leadership that took the U.S. into Afghanistan and Iraq, it was clear when you listened closely to him that he was contemptuous of their apparent unwillingness to take the gloves off. He was never some kind of peacenik. After all, Trump confessed to being a big fan of torture, casually saying, “Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your a*s I would. In a heartbeat. I would approve more than that. It works. And if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway for what they do to us.”

» article continues...

And:

Donald Trump

Does Trump Have a KGB Card?

by Thom Hartmann | March 12, 2026 - 5:18am | permalink

— from The Hartmann Report

Eight of our American service members are dead and over 140 wounded because Iran’s military has suddenly gotten really good at targeting our soldiers, Airmen, and Marines. News reports say they’ve been able to hit us with such precision because Russia is using their extraordinary spy satellite, spy plane, and advanced radar capabilities to help Iran’s military.

The Washington Post, which first reported on this, quoted a Russian military expert as saying that Iran is now “making very precise hits on early-warning radars or over-the-horizon radars,” seeming to validate the concern. The article added:

“Iran possesses only a handful of military-grade satellites, and no satellite constellation of its own, which would make imagery provided by Russia’s much more advanced space capabilities highly valuable — particularly as the Kremlin has honed its own targeting after years of war in Ukraine…”

» article continues...

And:

Economic Policy

Trump’s Iran War Is an Affordability Disaster

by Brian Garvey | March 9, 2026 - 5:15am | permalink

We are one week into Trump’s war on Iran. Gas prices are already up more than 11%. The Dow Jones has erased all of its 2026 gains.

These are the real, immediate costs of a new war of choice. Wars in the Middle East are expensive, and ordinary people pay the price.

The War Tax at the Pump — and Beyond

Twenty percent of the world’s oil travels through the Strait of Hormuz. That path is now shut off. The results are predictable.

» article continues...

And:

Trump Administration | Donald Trump

Trump Team ‘Frantically’ Trying To Avoid Admitting They’re ‘A Bunch of Morons’: Expert

by Adam Lynch | March 11, 2026 - 5:23am | permalink

— from Alternet

An international policy expert says it’s no longer a matter of which direction President Donald Trump plans to take his self-started Middle Eastern war — it’s about a president desperately trying to hide the truth of his stupidity.

“… [E]ven the war supporters are realizing that this was a horrible idea,” Duss told Wajahat Ali on Ali’s “Left Hook” podcast. “And I think this is a particularly dangerous moment because now they're frantically trying to find ways not to have to admit that they're a bunch of morons, which means that they're going to argue for escalation. There's no other option.”

“I mean, the other option is admitting that they were wrong. And as we know, that is something that does not happen when you're a Washington war hawk who loves war. The only answer is more war. If the war didn't work, it's because we didn't war hard enough,” said Duss, who served as president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace and later as foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) before becoming executive vice president of the Center for International Policy.

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There are two winners in Iran. Neither one is America.

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With Iran, Trump Takes the U.S. to War Without the Public’s Support - The New York Times

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Trump likes to assert that he has accomplished things no other president has. With the opening of his military assault against Iran, he has achieved another distinction: He is the first president in the era of modern polling to take the United States to war without the support of the public.

Traditionally, Americans stand behind their president when he first orders troops into battle, generally sticking with him unless it drags on, casualties mount and victory seems increasingly elusive. With Mr. Trump’s war against Iran, the public has skipped the rally-around-the-president phase this time.

Support for his ferocious bombardment of Iran has ranged from 27 percent in a Reuters/Ipsos poll to 41 percent in a CNN survey, far below the level of public backing that Mr. Trump’s predecessors initially enjoyed when they used force overseas. Given that wars tend to grow less popular over time, the initial negative response portends political challenges for Mr. Trump and his fellow Republicans the longer the fighting continues.

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Opinion | Russian, China win as U.S. uses missiles on Iran and oil prices rise - The Washington Post