June 2025: THE DEDICATED BLOGGER has been forced to accept the bitter truth. Keeping up with Donald Trump (a.k.a. “Donald Dumpling”) during his second term has been a herculean task. This has much to do with the fact that anyone with scruples is gone from the White House, under Trump 47.
Only the
soulless and the sycophants remain – some of Trump’s most loyal aides being one
and the same.
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November 1, 1952: The United States explodes the first hydrogen bomb. |
Once
again, we will default to the HOT/NOT HOT format to bring what order out of
chaos we may.
***
A chronology of Iran and other nuclear nations.
THERMONUCLEAR HOT – Bombs and missiles: First, Israel attacks Iran, claiming the Iranians are weeks or days away from having enough enriched uranium to produce their own atomic bomb. Iranian defenses are quickly crippled; but they strike back at targets in Tel Aviv and across the tiny Jewish nation.
Here, it might be wise to remind ourselves that Bibi Netanyahu has long been warning everyone that Iran is just minutes – days – weeks – months – years – from getting a nuclear weapon:
1992: He claims Iran is “three to five years” away from having the bomb.
1995: Iran is “three to five years” away, he says, again.
1996: Iran, says Bibi, is “extremely close” to having nukes, and “catastrophic consequences” will result, if the Iranians achieve their goal.
(The U.S. government believes Israel has possessed nuclear weapons for fifty years.)
1998: In related news, Pakistan explodes its first nuclear weapon – to offset what it sees as a threat from India.
(India explodes its first atomic bomb in 1974).
2003: President George W. Bush warns the world that Iraq is in possession of weapons of mass destruction, and that claim is used to justify a U.S. invasion. No such weapons are ever found.
(We all remember how that worked out.)
2006: In an interview with Glenn Beck, Netanyahu tells listeners that Iran is like Germany under Hitler. Or like David Koresh, the cult leader who died with dozens of his followers at Waco, Texas. The Iranians, he says, want “to obliterate America,” want “to obliterate America’s allies,” want “to take over the world’s oil supply.” He warns that the Iranians want nuclear weapons “with which they can dominate the world.”
At the time, the U.S. government is cutting back its stockpile of nuclear weapons but still has 7,853.
(It would seem unlikely that Iran could ever “dominate the
world.”)
2006: North Korea tests its first nuclear weapon.
2012: Netanyahu cries wolf again, insisting that Iran is just “a few months away” from having its own weapons of mass destruction.
2015: President Obama agrees to a deal with Iran to halt enrichment of uranium to levels necessary to make an atomic weapon. Netanyahu claims this has “opened a pathway to the bomb.”
(Did we mention that Iran was “a few months away,” three years
ago?)
2017: Obama
leaves office. Iran still has no bomb. Trump takes over. North Korea keeps
firing missiles to prove that it could hit the continental United States, if it
wanted. Donald promises “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if the North
keeps threatening the U.S. with attack.
May 2018: President Trump withdraws from the deal with Iran. “The Iran Deal,” he grumbles “was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.”
(He promises to work out a better deal!)
June 2018: Mr. Trump meets with Kim Jong-un, the homicidal North Korea leader. The president claims the meeting went great. In an interview with Greta Von Susteren, he gushes in describing Kim: “He’s got a great personality. He’s a funny guy, he’s very smart, he’s a great negotiator. He loves his people, not that I’m surprised by that. I think that we have the start of an amazing deal. We’re going to denuke North Korea.”
September 2018: Trump says he and Kim “fell in love” and North Korea is going to hand over all its nukes.
February
2019: Mr. Trump claims that he has worked out a deal with North Korea – and he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
January 2020: Standing beside Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump reveals his Middle East Peace Plan, which he calls “the deal of the century.”
(It’s a Neville Chamberlain “peace for our time” kind of moment.)
September 2020: Trump, Netanyahu, and the leaders of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, sit down to sign the Abraham Accords. “We’re here this afternoon to change the course of history,” Donald says. “After decades of division and conflict, we mark the dawn of a new Middle East.”
“Thanks to the great courage of the leaders of these three countries, we take a major stride toward a future in which people of all faiths and backgrounds live together in peace and prosperity,” the president insists. The accords “will serve as the foundation for a comprehensive peace across the entire region.”
(Trump presents the Israeli leader with a golden key to the
White House.)
2021: Donald leaves office (albeit not without first helping stir up a devastating attack on democracy).
(The Palestinians never sign the Abraham Accords.)
(Trump never gets a deal done with Iran.)
(North Korea never surrenders a single nuke.)
(Trump never does win a Nobel.)
January 20, 2021: President Biden takes office. Four years later, when he leaves the White House, Iran still has no nuclear weapons.
2023: Hamas launches a surprise attack on Israel, killing 1,195. Israel responds by pulverizing the Gaza Strip, killing an estimated 57,000 Palestinians.
2024:
Candidate Trump runs for a second term on the promise to keep the U.S. out of
any Middle East wars.
January 20, 2025: In his Inaugural Address, Trump announces, “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”
FUN FACTS:
The first atomic bomb, dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killed 78,000 Japanese. That bomb had an explosive power estimated to be 15 kilotons (a kiloton being equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT.)
The
second atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki on August 9, and another estimated 60,000
to 80,000 people were killed.
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Two badly burned survivors of the attack on Hiroshima. |
Modern hydrogen bombs have an explosive power measured in megatons – that is 1,000,000 tons of TNT.
No nation, in the last eighty years, has deployed an atomic bomb – for painfully obvious reasons.
It is
estimated that at the very moment Donald delivered his second Inaugural Address,
the nine nuclear powers possessed more than 12,000
atomic weapons.
The United States and Russia both have more than 5,000 nuclear weapons. China is in third place with 600. France had 290, the United Kingdom has 225, India has 180, Pakistan has 170, and North Korea has 50.
It is estimated that Israel possesses 90 nuclear weapons, with at least 50 designed to be delivered by land-based Jericho missiles.
Five other members of NATO are believed to be “hosting” nuclear weapons, which is kind of wild.
Both Russia and the United States possess additional “tactical nuclear weapons” for battlefield uses. Some are estimated to have an explosive power as high as 300 kilotons – which is kind of nutty, if you think it over.
A single atomic bomb exploded over New York City (it is better to explode bombs above a city and not let the ground absorb any of the power of the blast) would kill an estimated 583,160 people.
Even if an atomic blast didn’t kill you, the electromagnetic pulse created would fry your car’s computers; and you and millions of others would be hoofing it to work every day.
According to one estimate:
A 1.4
Megaton bomb launched about 250 miles above Kansas would destroy most of the
electronics that were not protected in the entire Continental United States.
During the brief return to atmospheric testing in 1962, a 1.4 megaton nuclear
weapon was detonated over Johnston Island at an altitude of about 250 miles.
The effects of EMP were observed in Hawaii, 800 miles east of the detonation.
Streetlights and fuses failed on Oahu and telephone service was disrupted on
the Island of Kauai.
Scientists
believe that an all-out nuclear war would lead to a “nuclear winter,” as all the smoke, and
dust of what used to be cities, and the ashes of untold numbers of human beings,
animals, insects, trees and plants filled the sky, severely reducing the amount
of light that reached the Earth’s surface.
Russia
could, if it desired, hit every town and city in the United
States, with a population of more than 5,000, and still have several hundred atomic
weapons left over, maybe to strike Disney World.
BLOGGER’S
NOTE:
The humble gentleman who resides in Glendale, Ohio would not normally fault a U.S.
president for whatever other nations do – since a president is often no more
than a powerful spectator, when it comes to what other nations do.
Yet, Trump,
himself, has always been quick to blame his predecessors, while oddly unwilling
to accept even a wisp of blame if bloodshed does erupt.
He has
said repeatedly that the war in Ukraine would not have started if he had been president
in 2022. By the same logic, since this war with Iran started when his lard ass
was plunked down in the Oval Office, by Trumpian logic, he merits blame.
When I
work on this post, on June 23, A grand total of 230 days had passed since
Donald was elected on November 5, 2024, at which time he promised to end the
fighting in Ukraine in one day.
100 MILLION DEGREES HOT: And that’s Celsius. According to Fox News, President Trump (when not busy golfing) had been considering using a nuclear bomb to take out Iran’s nuclear facility at Fordo, buried deep underground. But don’t worry. It would only be a “tactical nuclear weapon.”
If Donald had the urge.
NOT HOT – Working: President Trump bags his job early Friday afternoon, June 20, and heads for his private club at Bedminster, New Jersey.
Where he is expected to spend his time…playing more golf.
(Donald gives the go-ahead for a strike on Iran the next day.)
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