So, were they detained or not? And if they were detained how long were they detained for? Where are all the 2nd amendment 'federal overreach' guys at? Is federal overreach and constitutional protections not a thing when you have a funny last name? No big deal if the government is lying to us about detaining citizens without a charge I guess.

Trump is so busy handing out pardons to war criminals that he wouldn't think twice about flattening a temple.

@2 -- or Offing a Planet.*

Who knew Fake "Prez" would resort to
starting a War, just to keep from going to Jail?!

B. Thinking people.

Good thing (for Martians, also those from Uranus) The Space Force doesn't (yet) have a Death Star -- stupid Fake illegitimate so-called 'Prez' 'd aim it at Iran and

I'm glad the Hawks won because everything else is shit.

Finally, some good news. Expect this sum to triple as worldwide donations begin flooding in, and if the bounty goes higher, then hopefully they’ll give Uday and Qusay a cruise missile kiss as well.

“Iran state TV places $80 million bounty on the head of President Trump”

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/01/iran-state-tv-places-80-million-bounty-on-the-head-of-president-trump-after-the-killing-of-top-general/

It's nice the seahawks won but I'm more thrilled about the patriots losing. Also, there's a chance of snow next week so expect everyone in Seattle to descend on grocery stores with reckless abandon.

Okay. I'll go out on this limb. I suspect that Boeing will inevitably be forced to scrap the 737 Max. I mean, there's only so much re-engineering that can be done to a defective design.

I also suspect this isn't the last "oops" about the MAX we'll hear about. Sigh.

Every time I go to Canada, I have to park, get out of my car, Wait, and explain why I'm going to Canada and what my relationship with each person in my car is. If I didn't know the distinction, I could complain I was being detained, but in reality, I've only been delayed. I imagine that's what happened, and it's the misuse of "detained" that the Border Patrol are denying.

If Iran had the power to do anything about the US killing their terrorist superstars and murderous despots, they would be doing that instead of making threats from their mosques and spreading state propaganda all over Twitter. Not to mention putting out that laughable "bounty" on the US president.

They can't even do dick about little Israel right on their doorstep. Iran is a kingdom of loud dogs with no teeth, unless it comes to murdering gays and torturing women, of course.

@12 So are you saying that they're not a threat and that the strike was unnecessary?

There is a difference between "no comment" and straight up lying. People used to care about what the government could do to its citizens. Get yer tea bag hats out of the closet boys!

@11: For six hours?

12: your comment, like all chickenhawk comments, is going to look hilariously stupid in 5 years. "What can possibly go wrong?" Is the cry of the chickenhawk.

Also, why are so many Americans so bad at considering second and third-order consequences? If Iran doesn't do anything to American citizens in the US within 6 months, Americans will literally think there was no long-term consequence. You have to kill Americans in the streets for anything to actually matter, and even then the reaction is "well it's not my street."

You take Zuckerberg's trashing at the Golden Globes that he's spreading "Nazi propaganda" and pair it with the Australian wildfires spurring Facebook's biggest fundraiser ever (dial up NBC) and now that joke falls flat.

@19: Americans like Bernie Sanders?

@12 HAHAHA. Right. So bombing a crowded airport in another nation to kill a general of a country that poses no threat what-so-ever was clearly immoral, illegal and insane.

@11, What did you do to get hassled at the border every time? When I go I just roll up, show my ID, make some small talk, and get waved on through...oh yeah...I'm a white guy.

@1, They were clearly singled out for additional screening (with six hour delays) based solely on their country of birth which is actually against CBP rules. Technically that may not meet the legal definition of detained but it doesn't pass the smell test.
It should also be noted that other Iranian Americans were told to come back tomorrow as they couldn't interview and additionally screen them. Also a violation of the CBP rules and your rights as a US citizen.

I am not saying that Iran does not have the power to engage in terrorism, I am saying that despite all your terrorist ball-licking that they are no existential threat to America, their propaganda simply wants you to believe it, and you are dumb enough to do so. But I am sure they will be yelling "Death to America" a little more loudly for the next few weeks before going back to stoning women, raping children, and hanging gay people from cranes for days for all to see.

Also, if you think this bombing was to protect America against Iran, you are too uneducated to talk about the subject and should just stop. None of you had ever heard of Soleimani before this happened, and none of you even know all the terrorist activity he oversaw and funded, the thousands of innocent protestors he ordered gunned down, what the Hashd has done under his reign, or the regions his terrorist groups control and oppress.

Stop pretending you know anything about the situation, and stop pretending that you care an iota past being able to yell that Trump Bad on Twitter.

Iran will continue their atrocities, all we've done is handed them a martyr and a void to be filled with someone who may be even more ruthless and anti-american. We'll never achieve peace with assassinations.

@26: Hmm. Then you don't regret that briefcase bomb under the table wasn't close enough to kill Hitler?

RE: Open floor plans

Not sure I believe the love of open floor plans is to try to get men to watch hgtv. I always assumed it was so parents could see their kids at all times instead of letting them play in a room by themselves.

Speaking for myself, I currently live in a house with an open plan and I don't like it. Since I'm an introvert (some say troglodyte), I like being by myself and the way things are now, I never get out of the sight of Mrs. Forka. I have to lock myself in the bathroom to jerk off like I'm a 13 year old.

25: don't tell what I don't know. My academic background is in US foreign policy, and I read more on US policy in the Mideast in a week than you likely do in a year. I know exactly who he is and don't need some rando Internet conservative to school me.

@23, Also a white male, and they don't tell me why they are hassling me. But if I had to guess, it's because I look like a stereotypical ne'er-do-well, with head and hand tattoos (no face though). So I don't complain. I have never had to wait for more than 2 hrs, but the more people they screen the longer it takes.

The appeal of open floor plans comes from well before HGTV or even cable existed. Architects talk about it being recent because it comes from the seventies. I don't think I've lived in a house or apartment without an open floor plan. Or even encountered one over several rounds of house hunting through the decades.

I have encountered some houses without open floor plans... I'm remembering a few now. Although they tended to have unique quirks like the refrigerator being located outside of the kitchen or an actual root cellar.

"Stop pretending you know anything about the situation, and stop pretending that you care an iota past being able to yell that Trump Bad on Twitter."

Oh. Jesus Christ. Dude. You just selectively goggled that bullshit like everyone else you jackass. You're no fucking Iran expert.

You just previously went on about how Iran was inert and now you're trying to back track a lame false equivalence justification for starting a god damned war with hem. So, shut the fuck up you loud mouth moron.

@3 kristofarian, @5 Original Andrew, and @29 German Sausage: Thank you.
A bounty on Trumpty Dumpty's head. I knew it--the only way to effectively remove the current shit from the Oval Outhouse is to kill it. Let the bloody Revolution begin. ITMFA!!!
Jesus please-us, Griz is going to watch It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World again for the umptieth time. Who knew film director Stanley Kramer, cast, and crew were among the SANE ones in 1963? Remember, folks, former U.S. General and 34th President Dwight David ("Ike") Eisenhower (1953-1961) WARNED us not to become involved with foreign governments. Did we listen? And Ike was a Republican with Tricky Dicky serving as his VEEP!!!!
And now, a tribute to UB40: Red, red wiiiiiiiiine...........stay close to meeeeeeeeee........

Thank heavens that Australia is now seeing some rain. I hope the rainfall lasts long enough to extinguish the fires. LavaGirl, family and loved ones, and fellow Aussies, you're in my thoughts and prayers. May you all remain safe and out of harm's way, and that damage and loss are minimal. WOW--that is one eerily spot on magpie!

Will the last person to leave Boeing turn out the lights?

PS. You know who else didn't know who Qassem Suleimani was? Donald fucking Trump. They guy who ordered his murdered.

He didn't know the difference between "Quds" and "Kurds."

Here is the Stable Genius in radio interview he did with Hugh Hewitt during the election:

"Hugh Hewitt: Are you familiar with General Soleimani?

Trump: Yes, go ahead, give me a little, go ahead, tell me.

Hewitt: He runs the Quds Forces.

Trump: Yes, okay, right. The Kurds, by the way, have been horribly mistreated by…

Hewitt: No, not the Kurds, the Quds Forces, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Forces."
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a30389099/iran-qasem-soleimani-assassinated-trump/

Jesus. Yes. Orange man BAD. You fucking moron.

I just hope that when Iran strikes back in revenge for Soleimani's killing they pick an appropriate target. I'd suggest one of Trump's hotels or golf courses. Hit where it will hurt Trump and innocent casualties will be low. (if you staying at a Trump hotel or playing at one of his golf courses you are not likely to be innocent.)

Say what you like, it's pretty impressive that we can put a rocket up this man's ass and the pilot can be home in Colorado Springs in time for dinner to watch the game with their family.

@44,

That could be the campaign slogan for most any republican politician.

@29 - The perils of free speech includes evil speech. Just deal with it.

43: No, please take it from me: Nothing good is going to come of what Trump did. With that one act, he essentially burned the trillions of dollars we've spent in Iraq, Syria and the rest of the region, and rendered pretty much any of the US's successes in Iraq moot. It's a sharp escalation in the US/Saudi Arabia and Iran's proxy war that will spill out and kill lots of Arabs, Sunnis, Persians, and Americans. Iran has tendrils across the entire region and can make things hurt for US soldiers, civilians, and allies, no problem (not that that matters to Americans who seemed to lose interest in Arab lives when they realized Iraq wasn't going to be a cakewalk). With the beginning of the end of the US's military presence of Iraq all but guaranteed, you can expect Iran-backed Shia control of Iraq to deepen. And you can also expect a nuclear-armed Iran (or if the US doesn't want that, a war with Iran)--and before you pretend such a scenario is a desirable cakewalk, take time to consider the cost and duration of the other two wars we've endlessly fought. I can go on and on with this shit, but the reality is this country loves sleepwalking into conflicts in regions they ostensibly don't give a shit about.

The thing is I would rather not be in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc., but if the US has any strategic goals there beyond extracting oil, what Trump did was very stupid. If he was serious about extracting himself from wars in Near East he never would of done that because it guarantees our further entrenchment in the region, an escalation. The very things his supporters supposedly don't want.

The thing about the right is there is no consistency. Betraying the Kurds by withdrawing troops is good, but so is increasing the chances of war with an unnecessary assassination. War is good one day, peace the next. No matter what Trumps says or does it's a total genius, 4D chess move, or just no big deal. It's the same partisan brain rot that led Republicans to abandon overnight four decades of free trade orthodoxy for 19th century tariffs and trade wars. It was like one day they believed in one kind of economics, and the next they believed in its opposite. Partisan brainrot also infects Democrats, but the Trump strain is by far the more virulent and stupefying.

Everytime anything happens, people cry "dummy you hadn't even heard of X before this"- folks did the same a few weeks ago with al Baghdadi.

Truth is, most Americans can't locate countries on a map, know nothing about the world, etc. But anyone who has followed US foreign policy in the Middle East at all in the last nearly 40 years knows what the IRGC and the Quds Force is, even if they don't know the names of individual leaders. And anyone who has been paying attention to events in Iraq in the past two years know what roles Iran has been playing there (also Syria, Yemen, etc).

And sure, Iran has been helping militias in Iraq that have committed atrocities, even against protestors, and sure also, Iran (like our great allies in the region Saudi Arabia) is a theocratic dictatorship that's shitty to women and gay people and thank god we don't have to live there.

But more importantly in my opinion, this is yet another in a long line of foreign policy actions in which the US chooses to destroy the people currently most successfully fighting salafists, and at this point, I'm a hop skip and jump away from becoming an all out conspiracy theorist and thinking we are actually intentionally spreading salafism around the region just because it destabilizes governments that aren't friendly to our markets and necessitates permanent US military occupations.

But backing away from conspiracy theories and going along with the idea that our leaders are just stupid- what could Iran actually do? Well when we shot down their civilian airliner in the 80s they did target family members of those pilots with car bombs. They blow up embassies, could attack our grid and our bases around the region. But more importantly is what's going to happen more generally in terms of alliances with others. They've been moving closer and closer to Russia and China in recent years against us, both in trade and in war. How will this affect that alliance?

As much as liberals like to think that Trump is doing Putin's bidding, we are opposite sides as Russia in most of our disputes in the region while Russia and Iran are on the same side in Syria where Putin is backing Assad. Since Trump scrapped the nuclear deal, they've been moving closer together- Iran let Russia launch an attack from their bases and just a few days before this insanity, Iran, China and Russia held joint military exercises in the region. China is Iran's biggest petrol trading partner right now. And after the failure of Europe to intervene to save the nuclear deal (despite Putin's efforts), Iran has not even sought their advice this time around but has instead met with the Chinese and the Russians.

They've abided by the nuclear deal until this moment despite Trump pulling out of it, and if they are smart, they'll develop a nuke so they don't get invaded.

Meanwhile we just made billion dollars of weapons deals with the Saudis, their main enemy and the exporter of the salafism they've been successfully fighting everywhere the US has allowed it to rise.

So what's going to happen? I predict a lot of our proxy wars in the region going hot or pushing our various enemies closer together- at a time when our allies in Europe all condemn the assassination and say they are not going to support us.

I'm reminded that in 2008, during the crash, Putin asked China to take a stance with him against the US, to call on US debt and destabilize the dollar. At the time, we weren't in a trade war with China and our CIA was not backing up a resistance against them in HK, so China said no. What would happen this time around?

Mossad once got into trouble for trying to support salafists in Iran in order to destabilize the country, will the US do the same or just let it happen?

Our proxy wars with Iran and Russia in Syria and Yemen have mostly avoided directly targeting each other- what happens if Iran starts assassinating our leaders or targeting our bases in those conflicts? They certainly have the capability. Will it draw heat between the US and Russia? Will they attack Saudi Arabia? Israel? How would we respond?

Certainly an immediate by product of the whole thing is that they will develop a nuclear weapon to prevent a US invasion. Will the US bomb them first? Use it as a pretense for preemptive strikes?

And the Iraqi government itself is already demanding the US to leave- will we just overthrow it? Stay there anyway? Back warlords against the internationally recognized government like we do in Libya? What?

Maybe nothing will happen except further on-going bloodshed and instability and in a few weeks we'll be moving on to other things, but it sure does feel like the lines are being drawn for world war or the rest of the world to decide the US is too unstable and violent.

What I worry about is China choosing to destabilize the dollar and all of Western capitalism hit with a recession, I don't think most Americans realize how quickly it could happen. And would the US military ramp up the violence in response? Wouldn't it take China with them? How pissed with us are they over the trade war and Hong Kong?

Honestly I have no fucking idea, but I think those of you who are acting like it's no big whoop are being both fucking psychopathic in your nonchalance about foreign body counts and idiotic about thinking it's fine that the US executed a general of another state with whom we are not at war and who was inside, on official and legal business, a supposedly sovereign nation. So everyone can just kill leading government and military officials anywhere anytime now? Or is this just a right reserved for American reality TV stars?

Theodore dear, one man's "terrorist" is another man's "freedom fighter". Everything that is being leveld at Soleimani could be leveled at Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld. Except that they killed many more people in the middle-east (including a lot of Americans) that Soleimani ever could.

He may have been a bastard, but let's not pretend we don't have any bastards.

And let's not forget that modern-day Iran is a direct result of us messing with them.

"Say what you like, it's pretty impressive that we can put a rocket up this man's ass"

Yeah it's always "impressive" until, you know the other side does it. Then you chicken shit cowards are all "WAAAAAAAH OMG! CLOSE THE BORDERS! SAVE MEEEEEE!"

@27 - Good point. This presumably includes the Second Amendment too.

Ken dear, the US government is not "my team" . I am a law-abiding citizen, and I pay my taxes, but that is about the extent of my loyalty.

ProfessorHistory, you speak the truth. After all, 911 was "impressive", the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon was "impressive" and Pearl Harbor was "impressive". There were terrible events, but they were impressive.

Griz just finished an enjoyably therapeutic evening of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World complete with red wine. Heaven bless you, Stanley Kramer, film composer Ernest Gold, cast, and crew. I feel saner now; at least for the moment.

@55: How about that--Griz is comfortably numb and zero typos!

@50: I never said we did not have bastards, or that our generals were out of bounds for Iran to target. But they can't, because they are too weak. They are the ones who have wanted war with America since the 70s, god forbid they get a mild hand slap for it on a legit military target after storming the US embassy, easily an act of war. Look, if it was up to me, we would leave the Middle East entirely and do nothing there at all. Let them kill themselves over their silly desert gods, it is all they ever want to do anyway. I am against any action in the Middle East, I am mostly just commenting on the hilarious ignorance of the chicken littles spreading their DNC and Iranian propaganda. It's not their fault though, they are too dumb for anything else. "Useful idiots" as it were.

But special shoutout to "JMS" and "ProfessorHistory" for being especially angry and stupid this morning.

@34 -- Yeah Taking moral judgmems of his actions off the table for a sec, Qassem Soleimani was a storied, fearsome figure whose life was stacked with some pretty impressive/terrifying accomplishments.

And he got killed by the guy who played himself in Bo Derek's "Ghosts Can't Do It."

"I'm not mad, you're mad!" -- Teddy Gorath, famous not-mad mad internet guy

"Look, I'm an anti-interventionist" -- Also Teddy Gorath, famous apologist for interventionism due to piss-pig-style loyalty to pro-intervention factionalism

@59: Do I at least have an interesting job or a really hot wife in your fantasy world where you fantasize about me? I don't recall ever seeing you comment here before, you coy little devil. Just admiring from afar?

57: Yeah, DNC propaganda being spread by people like me who don't give a shit about the DNC or your partisan culture war brain rot. Don't you ever feel like a tool immediately assuming people arguing with you must be Democrats. I don't give a fuck about the DNC you silly twit. I actually don't think we should be in the Middle East. I'm just gracing you with some nuance, your partisan zombie.

57: Yeah, DNC propaganda being spread by people like me who don't give a shit about the DNC or your partisan culture war brain rot. Don't you ever feel like a tool immediately assuming people arguing with you must be Democrats. I don't give a fuck about the DNC you silly twit. I actually don't think we should be in the Middle East and don't particularly love Iran. I also don't automatically assume I'm dealing with some neocon Iran hawk (lol, my mistake, we got a real fine specimen of Iran hysteric here). Ultimately, I'm just gracing you with some nuance, you partisan zombie. How little do you have to know about international relations to think there are no consequences?

Australia is a continent the size of the contiguous 48 United States. While the well-wishes are appreciated, hoping that "the rain" in Australia will extinguish the bushfires is like expecting that cold weather at Snoqualmie Pass will lead to snowmen being rolled on the beaches of Miami.