"I got him before he got me. I got him first."

Said President Trump, quoted in "How Trump assassination attempts played into his decision to attack Iran" (WaPo)(gift link).

At a briefing on the threats in September 2024, U.S. officials told the Trump campaign that Iran had multiple kill teams inside the country. Trump repeatedly asked whether Iran was behind the Butler shooting, and investigators said they could not rule it out.... The would-be assassin at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida... represented himself at trial and was sentenced last month to life in prison.... 

No evidence has connected Iran with the two assassination attempts against Trump in 2024. Trump suggested he sees a connection, telling ABC, “They tried twice.” The White House did not provide evidence to support a connection....

A trial began last week for a Pakistani man, Asif Merchant, arrested in July 2024 and accused of trying to hire hit men to kill a political figure. Last month, a Brooklyn man was sentenced to 15 years in prison for planning to murder an Iranian dissident, working for an Iranian who prosecutors said was plotting to assassinate Trump....

Classic comments from WaPo readers: "And once again, he has an inability to see beyond himself." And: "Of course it’s about him. It’s always about him."

"Walking hand in hand with the one I love/Ooh, how I love the rainy days."

Neil and his Grandson sing. You can tell Neil is so proud of him! Looks like it they enjoyed it! pic.twitter.com/ur4rvKe7iN

— Johnny Midnight ⚡️ (@its_The_Dr) March 3, 2026

At the time of his death (last week), Neil Sedaka was still married to that grandson's grandmother. They'd been married for 64 years. I thought Neil Sedaka was gay, but I see that he was one of those heterosexual men who seem gay to a lot of people. I think it's good for heterosexual men to see that it's fine to be... whatever it was that made people think Neil Sedaka was a gay man. 

Lovely grandparenting! 

"Do flight attendants typically wear tank tops and jeans?"

Bill Clinton says he thought the victims on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane were flight attendants.

Q: “Do flight attendants typically wear tank tops and jeans?”

*Long pause*

CLINTON: “They don’t all wear uniforms on private planes.” pic.twitter.com/w1vgHOAfF8

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 3, 2026

Full context:

Milestones in Feminism: The question is not what did the woman do, but what did the woman wear.

The retrogression is not really Trump's. It's Breitbart's. Trump is just passing along the publicity received by his wife:

Breitbart's opinion on aesthetics is worthless. Look what an ugly mess it is:

That's my screenshot from the Breitbart article.

Readers are expected to look past the drink this/don't drink this/robot puppy/robot bunny advertising and read what looks like a press release: "Melania Trump chose a gray textured wool bar jacket from Dior for the historic occasion, pairing it with a matching gray textured wool skirt, as well as a thin black leather belt from Dior and patent leather stilettos from Christian Louboutin."

A "bar jacket," I was curious enough to learn, is the kind of jacket Christian Dior thought perfect for women drinking cocktails in the afternoon at the bar at the Plaza Athénée hotel in in 1947. Did they have "bladder issues"? Did they dream of electric rabbits?

How dare they put a stereotypically old woman sitting on a toilet right next to the news of the First Lady's appearance at the U.N. doing whatever it was she was doing while wearing some very specific items of clothing!

Sunrise — 6:00, 6:38.

That's the sunrise.

Tonight is the full moon — the blood moon. Meade was out just after nightfall, getting moon video, with the hooting of barred owls:

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

UPDATE, 6:09 a.m.: That wasn't the blood moon back when Meade made that video. The blood moon was a moon eclipse that happened, I'm told, over the past hour. We were up and ready to catch it, but the cloud cover was 100%. So, as usual, it all depends on the clouds. The celestial orbs do their thing, and it's powerful, but the mere clouds decide what will filter through to us Earthlings. It's raining too, just in this one hour, the sunrise hour. Such is our fate, in the clouds.

"Iran’s democratic opposition groups — monarchists and republicans, secular and religious minorities, leftists, liberals, and every ethnicity — are united..."

"... on four foundational principles: Iran’s territorial integrity; individual liberties and equality of all citizens; separation of religion and state; and the Iranian people’s right to decide a democratic form of government. Many Iranians, often despite facing bullets, have called on me to lead this transition. I am in awe of their courage, and I have answered their call. Our path forward will be transparent: a new constitution drafted and ratified by referendum, followed by free elections under international oversight. When Iranians vote, the transitional government dissolves.... A free Iran would extend [the Abraham Accords] by immediately recognizing Israel and pursuing a broader regional peace framework linking Iran, Israel and our Arab neighbors in cooperation rather than conflict. I suggest calling the agreement the Cyrus Accords, for Cyrus the Great, the benevolent ancient Persian ruler whom Thomas Jefferson cited as an inspiration...."

Writes Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the last shah of Iran, in "Thanks to President Trump, the hour of Iran’s freedom is at hand/Our path forward is a new constitution followed by free elections under international oversight" (WaPo).

"Mr. Clean was first devised in the mid-1950s, when Procter & Gamble commissioned a commercial artist, Richard Black, to create a marketing character..."

"... for a new detergent-based household cleaner. The company envisioned a bald man with a nose ring, a nod to the genie-like powers of a product that cleaned 'like magic.' Mr. Black, who died in 2014, drafted two sketches of a strong, smiling genie: one with a nose ring, and one with an earring. Procter & Gamble chose the second one...."

From "Mr. Clean, the Bald, Broad-Shouldered Cleaning Mascot, Retires The character became the face of a household cleaner in 1958. It’s not clear what the brand plans for its next mascot" (NYT).

At Straight Dope, there's skepticism: "Its a marketing ploy to draw attention to a brand that has been taken for granted. He will come out of retirement"/"Yeah, like when Mr. Peanut 'died' a few years ago."

A retrospective:

 

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Another close call for Florida man.

"Missing Florida man found over a week later trapped in shoulder-deep mud/Local crews rescued Andrew Giddens, 36, near a borrow pit after he faced freezing weather without food or water" (The Guardian).

Deputy Derrick Holmes of the sheriff’s office in Florida’s Putnam county spotted Giddens’ abandoned car on 23 February relatively close to a sand plant belonging to Vulcan Materials Company.... Vulcan employees, meanwhile, had not stopped looking for signs of Giddens when one spotted him during the early evening of 25 February in shoulder-deep mud by what is known as a borrow pit.... Giddens was alert and could talk, but the worker who had found him could not get to him because he was surrounded by “unstable” ground, the sheriff’s office said.... The elaborate [rescue] operation took about three hours, with rescuers needing to be careful to not become stuck in the mud themselves....

Here's the sheriff's office video, which refers to the substance — in scare quotes — as "quick sand."

"Historical Figures as Boring Modern People."

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"In the before times, I was very wary of candidates whose quest for the presidency seemed too insistent and all-consuming..."

"... who had been nursing the dream for too long and clinging to it too tightly. I worried that such single-mindedness erased any space for subtlety, for introspection, for ambivalence, for the crucially instructive mess of an unscripted life. And would voters relate to it? Part of what drew many Democrats I know to Barack Obama was that he seemed to be working through decidedly mixed feelings about his quest for the presidency — as most well-adjusted people would be. Part of what drew many Republicans I know to George W. Bush was that he seemed less comfortable on the campaign trail than on his ranch.... Newsom seems entirely unrestrained and wholly immodest, his confession of a 960 on his SAT notwithstanding.... But Newsom’s strut is working for him.... [I]f the Newsom way is looking like the surest path to a post-Trump future, I’m happy to head in that direction."

Writes Frank Bruni, in "Will a Peacock Like Gavin Newsom Fly?" (NYT).

There's no sure "path to a post-Trump future." To pose the problem in those terms frames the real problem: Democrats have made hatred of Trump their central issue. Get some substance of your own! You still have to be something that the people want. That was true in "the before times," and it's true now.

A classic clip from "the before times":

"We are not defenders anymore. We are warriors.... We will finish this on 'America First' conditions of Trump's choosing..."

Sunrise.

"Retirement Plan."

An Oscar-nominated short, by John Kelly:

And here's David Sedaris brilliantly admiring it, in "The Dream of Finishing One’s To-Do List in 'Retirement Plan'/In John Kelly’s animated short film, narrated by Domhnall Gleeson, nothing’s off limits when it comes to thinking about the future—particularly when there’s so much left to do" (The New Yorker):

Sunrise — 6:12, 6:25, 6:33, 6:35.

We had a nice little snow yesterday afternoon, as you can see in Photo #4, the one with the sun popping. My favorite in this set though is #1. I love the "lake smoke." Photos ##2 and 3 speak for themselves with those loud colors. #2 is what I call a broiler. I like the bumpy embers. In #3, the bumps have smoothed out and cooled off.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

And here's Meade's view, with the sun really popping:

"I think that rock has been purposely dialed down in the culture.... All I know is I saw the gravity shift...."

"This gets wizard behind the curtain, right? Somebody's going to say, 'Well, how do you know who was the wizard behind the curtain?' All I know is I saw the gravity shift. Okay? If you were at MTV or around MTV in 1997–98, suddenly they decided rock was out—right when rock was still very, very high up—and it was replaced by rap. They immediately changed their standards and practices. Things that weren't allowed were suddenly allowed; people were waving guns. Okay, so some people assert that the CIA was involved in all that—again, above my pay grade—but I saw it happen. I did witness it happen. And of course great music came out of it. So it's not like a barren wasteland where something was pushed in to replace something else. Qualitative things and great artists came in, but there was this overt shift. I saw it happen. And then now... rap seems to be waning in terms of its cultural influence. Pop is completely dominant. Rock is probably the most dominant ticket-selling thing in the Western world, and yet there's almost no representation of rock in culture. So why do we have that schism? I think they purposely dialed down the ability of rock stars to have a voice in the culture...."

Says Billy Corgan:

"[Trump] said he would be willing to negotiate but that if Iran was not serious, he would order an overwhelming military attack."

"He did give diplomacy a chance, but ultimately, he was not willing to simply put a fresh coat of paint on Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal; he wanted serious indications that Iran was committing to giving up its quest for a nuclear weapon. When it was clear they were not, he followed through on his threat. Many past presidents have said that 'all options are on the table' with regard to Iran. Trump meant it...."

Writes Philip Klein in "Donald Trump Wasn’t Bluffing on Iran" (National Review).

From the comments over there: "How Barack Obama must feel now, having tried sucking up to the Ayatollah, then bribing him (as did Biden later), and now finally realizing, after mocking Trump and denouncing Trump and lying about Trump, that the president who will be remembered as being truly consequential, is Trump. Sleep well, President Obama. Trump got him."

Which causes another commenter to quote this: