A financial comparison between the current 2026 conflict and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) highlights a massive disparity between the costs of diplomacy and the costs of active warfare. The $1.7 billion settlement that was a major point of contention during the Trump administration's termination of the 2015 JCPOA negotiated by the Obama administration, is now roughly equivalent to just 28 hours of current combat operations in 2026. If the $200 billion funding request is approved, the direct military cost of this conflict will be four times larger than the most generous estimates of the liquid assets Iran gained access to under the nuclear deal.

From FB account: The Other 98% French General Michel Yakovleff just compared joining Trump's Iran war to "buying cheap tickets for the Titanic" after it already hit the iceberg. And then it got even worse for Trump. Yakovleff is no random talking head. He's a three-star general, former commander of the legendary French Foreign Legion, and held senior positions within NATO itself. He is one of the most respected military voices in France and regularly weighs in on matters of international security. So when he was asked about Trump's desperate pleas for Europe to join his Iran catastrophe, his answer carried serious weight. He didn't mince words. He laid out five distinct reasons why every European nation should flatly refuse. And each one is more damaging than the last. First, Trump doesn't understand how NATO actually works. You don't get to launch your own unilateral bombing campaign and then invite allies to run a separate operation underneath you. That's not how alliances function. If Trump wants NATO involved, NATO takes command. One operation, one flag, one chain of command. "I don't think he understood that," Yakovleff said. That alone is a devastating indictment of a man who claims to be the greatest dealmaker on earth . Second, nobody knows what the actual strategic goals are. Beyond forcing open the Strait of Hormuz, what is the endgame? Regime change? Containment? A negotiated settlement? Trump hasn't said. He apparently can't say, because he doesn't know himself. Third, and this one is particularly brutal, you can't coordinate a multinational military campaign through tweets that change every two minutes. If allied nations are going to put their soldiers in harm's way, they need explicit, written objectives from the United States. As Yakovleff put it, "It's going to be necessary for Trump himself to know what he wants." The quiet contempt in that sentence could strip paint off a wall. Fourth, there is the fundamental issue of trust. Trump has abandoned allies before and everyone knows he would do it again without hesitation the moment it became politically useful. The Kurds know it. The Afghans know it. Europe knows it. "He would let us down whenever it suited him," the general said. Why would any nation put troops on the line for a leader with that track record? And fifth, the knockout punch. Yakovleff cited a principle he said he learned at the U.S. Army War College: "You don't reinforce failure. You move on. You find something else." A decorated French general is using American military doctrine, taught in American war colleges, to explain to the world why following this American president into battle would be strategic malpractice. The global response has been just as damning. Japan said no. Australia said no. The United Kingdom said no. The European Union said no. Meanwhile, Iranian missiles and drones have made the Strait of Hormuz so dangerous that insurance companies won't cover oil tankers passing through it. Twenty percent of the world's petroleum normally flows through that strait. Oil prices are skyrocketing and consumers everywhere are feeling it. Trump started this. He escalated it. He isolated America from its allies in the process.

Forwarded from a different author. Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about Melania trying on shoes at the Oscars. The White House communications director responded by attacking his family from a government account. These people are running a war and they can't even take a shoe joke. Kimmel took the stage last night to present the documentary awards and immediately went for the jugular. Praising filmmakers who risk their lives to tell important stories, he paused and added: "There are also documentaries where you walk around the White House trying on shoes." The crowd roared. Then he twisted the knife while opening the Best Documentary envelope: "Oh man, is he going to be mad his wife wasn't nominated for this." He also got in a devastating shot at the state of free speech in America. "There are some countries whose leaders don't support free speech. I'm not at liberty to say which. Let's just leave it at North Korea and CBS." That CBS line was a direct reference to the network's decision to pull guests critical of Trump from Stephen Colbert's show after FCC threats. CBS has skewed increasingly pro-Trump since being taken over by David Ellison's Skydance, which quickly installed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief. Within hours, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung posted a rant calling Kimmel "a classless hack who is self-projecting his depression and sadness onto others." He added that Kimmel "lives a pathetic existence where nobody, not even his family, enjoys his miserable company." That's the official White House communications director. Posting that. From his government account. About a comedian who made a shoe joke. As one person on X put it: "Incredible that someone who allegedly speaks for the most powerful man in the world spent their afternoon writing a Yelp review about Jimmy Kimmel's home life." This is a president who spent the same day calling for treason charges against journalists, threatening broadcast licenses, and sending 5,000 Marines to the Middle East. But a few jokes about a vanity documentary that bombed so badly it fell well short of its reported $75 million budget? That's what broke them. The tell is always in the reaction. When the White House deploys its communications director to personally attack a late-night host for making fun of a shoe documentary, it's not because the jokes were unfair. It's because they landed.

Know the future: Among major world religions, **Islam** most readily facilitates a woman (regardless of prior faith) in building a large family. Global demographic data, including Pew Research reports, consistently show Muslims have the highest average fertility rate (around 2.9–3.1 children per woman in recent estimates), driven by cultural and religious norms that strongly value marriage, procreation, and large families. Islamic teachings generally encourage having children, view them as blessings, and often discourage or limit contraception in many interpretations/communities. Other religions rank lower: Christians average ~2.6 globally (with subgroups like certain conservative Protestants, Catholics, or Mormons higher in specific contexts), Hindus ~2.3, and Jews similar. Atheism and agnosticism (the religiously unaffiliated) show the lowest rates, typically 1.6–1.8 children per woman in surveys, reflecting secular individualism, delayed marriage, career priorities, and acceptance of family planning without doctrinal pressure to reproduce. For a woman switching faiths, Islam's emphasis on early marriage, family centrality, and community support most directly promotes and normalizes having many children.