Steve Osborne

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*BRITISH WRITER PENS THE BEST DESCRIPTION OF TRUMP* Someone asked "Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?" Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response: A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump's limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief. Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don't say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it's a fact. He doesn't even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn't just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It's all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don't. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He's not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He's more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege. And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless or female – and he kicks them when they are down. So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think 'Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy' is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that: • Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and most are. • You don't need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man. This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it's impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

The MAGA crowd in Washington has decided that since Europeans don’t sufficiently appreciate Trump, the American bases on the continent must go. This is the strategic reasoning of a man who burns down his own kitchen. American bases in Europe were never a favour. They are the logistical spine of every war the United States fights east of Gibraltar. Ramstein moves the cargo, Aviano launches the jets, Rota services the ships. Without them the Pentagon does not project power into the Middle East. It projects PowerPoint. The fantasy assumes the alternative is aircraft carriers gliding majestically into the Persian Gulf. That era is ending. A modern carrier is a thirteen-billion-dollar trophy that can be reduced to scrap by a couple of hundred cheap missiles fired from the Iranian coast. China noticed. The other fantasy is that America simply fights from home. Picture the alternative: twenty thousand transatlantic sorties shuttling spare parts, munitions, fuel bladders, mechanics and replacement pilots from Norfolk and Dover to wherever the war happens to be. A C-17 burns through roughly 35,000 dollars of fuel every hour it flies, and the round trip from the American east coast to the Gulf is the better part of a day. Multiply that by every bolt, every missile, every spare engine. The war becomes a sustained airborne traffic jam with the bill arriving by the second. So you need land, specifically land near the war. Modern combat aircraft are not Spitfires you fuel up and send off with a wave. An F-35 demands an entire Walmart of spare parts, a small city of technicians, climate-controlled hangars and a supply chain stretching halfway round the planet. Drones need operators, networks, satellites and a steady diet of components no carrier can store. Modern war arrives by container ship and lives in a warehouse. Close the bases, and Washington loses the warehouses. Lose the warehouses, and the next confrontation with Iran is either fought by phone or fought from Kansas with a flight schedule that bankrupts the Treasury before the first missile lands. MAGA thinks shutting Ramstein punishes Europe. It punishes America. Europe will be inconvenienced. America will be unarmed. And so, after a thousand insults, a thousand sneers, a thousand late-night posts about freeloading allies, Europe is quietly drafting the politest letter in diplomatic history. It thanks America for its service. It wishes the troops a safe journey home. It suggests, with great warmth, that Washington might now turn its attention to its neighbours in Latin America, where a fading superpower can busy itself with whatever a fading superpower busies itself with. Spain had its century. Britain had its empire. The Soviets had their parades. Each ended the same way: as a shadow of itself, with the historians left to argue, volume after volume, about precisely when the rot set in and why nobody noticed in time. America is welcome to join them on the shelf.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ If you like what you read, please follow Gandalv on Substack: @gandalv" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">substack.com/@gandalv

The Iranian navy, which has been destroyed eight times, closed the Strait of Hormuz again, because the United States for the seventh time won the war that wasn’t a war, so the United States can open the Strait of Hormuz that was open before the not war. The not war that started to get the uranium that was completely obliterated, so that the Iranians can’t build the nuclear bomb that they weren’t building for the not war that the United States started. Then the United States which has nuclear weapons threatening to use nuclear weapons to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons because having nuclear weapons is dangerous. If the United States saw what the United States is doing in the United States, the United States would invade the United States to liberate the United States from the tyranny of the United States.

@markgoldbridge Odd that United failed to control midfield but Mainoo and Casemiro had good games. #munbre

He's World Class! I'm LIVE youtube.com/live/XqzG2gowq…

In preparation for the midterm elections, Donald Trump's staged assassination attempts will be moving to a bi-weekly schedule May-October. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Q. How many fabricated assassination attempts does it take to change a lightbulb? A. Epstein files

This photo should be on the front page of every single newspaper in America today.

I’ve never seen anything more accurate

why are the boxes square when the pizzas are round? makes you think

@markgoldbridge Justice. Should’ve been a penalty for Cucurella handball. Chelsea woeful

2-0 Brighton!

@pvprakash @HannahIamthest1 Unless it’s a Bond movie, in which case it stops at 0:07

@HannahIamthest1 It’s also worth noting that the "large red readout" on a bomb will always stop at exactly 0:01 seconds remaining. Cutting the wire at 0:05 is considered unprofessional and deprives the audience of their required heart palpitations.

Things I have learned from the movies" Having watched hundreds of movies, they have taught me many things that I would like to share with you today: 1. If being chased through town, you can usually take cover in a passing St Patrick's Day parade - at any time of the year. 2. All beds have special L-shaped top sheets that reach up to armpit level on a woman but only waist level on the man lying beside her. 3. All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French bread. 4. Once applied, lipstick will never rub off - even while scuba diving. 5. The ventilation system of any building is a perfect hiding place. No one will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building without difficulty. 6. Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language. A German accent will do. 7. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window of any building in Paris. 8. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds. 9. When paying for a taxi, never look at your wallet as you take out a note - just grab one at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare. 10. If you lose a hand, it will cause the stump of your arm to grow by 15cm. 11. Mothers routinely cook eggs, bacon and waffles for their family every morning, even though the husband and children never have time to eat them. 12. Cars and trucks that crash will almost always burst into flames. 13. A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of a football stadium. 14. Medieval peasants had perfect teeth. 15. All single women have a cat. 16. Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and pant. 17. One man shooting at 20 men has a better chance of killing them all than 20 men firing at one. 18. Creepy music coming from a graveyard should always be closely investigated. 19. Most people keep a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings - especially if any of their family or friends has died in a strange boating accident. 20. It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts - your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessor. 21. During a very emotional confrontation, instead of facing the person you are speaking to, it is customary to stand behind them and talk to their back. 22. When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in your room will still be clearly visible, just slightly bluish. 23. Dogs always know who's bad and will naturally bark at them. 24. When they are alone, all foreigners prefer to speak English to each other. 25. Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their arch-enemies using complicated machinery involving fuses, pulley systems, deadly gases, lasers and man eating sharks that will allow their captives at least 20 minutes to escape. 26. Having a job of any kind will make all fathers forget their son's eighth birthday. 27. All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they're going to go off. 28. It is always possible to park directly outside the building you are visiting. 29. A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty. 30. If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will know all the steps.

I’m not an expert on bad first dates, but this might be the funniest 😂 Jay Leno went into the audience to find the most embarrassing first date that a woman ever had. The winner described her worst first date experience. There was absolutely no question as to why her tale took the prize! She said it was midwinter, snowing and quite cold... and the guy had taken her skiing in the mountains outside Salt Lake City, Utah. It was a day trip (no overnight). They were strangers, after all, and had never met before. The outing was fun but relatively uneventful until they were headed home late that afternoon. They were driving back down the mountain when she gradually began to realize that she should not have had that extra latte !! They were about an hour away from anywhere with a restroom and in the middle of nowhere! Her companion suggested she try to hold it, which she did for a while. Unfortunately, because of the heavy snow and slow going, there came a point where she told him that he had better stop and let her go beside the road, or it would be the front seat of his car. They stopped and she quickly crawled out beside the car, yanked her pants down and started. In the deep snow she didn't have good footing, so she let her butt rest against the rear fender to steady herself. Her companion stood on the side of the car watching for traffic and indeed was a real gentleman and refrained from peeking. All she could think about was the relief she felt despite the rather embarrassing nature of the situation. Upon finishing, however, she soon became aware of another sensation. As she bent to pull up her pants, the young lady discovered her buttocks were firmly glued against the car's fender. Thoughts of tongues frozen to poles immediately came to mind as she attempted to disengage her flesh from the icy metal. It was quickly apparent that she had a brand new problem, due to the extreme cold. Horrified by her plight and yet aware of the humor of the moment, she answered her date's concerns about' what is taking so long' with a reply that indeed, she was 'freezing her butt off' and in need of some assistance! He came around the car as she tried to cover herself with her sweater and then, as she looked imploringly into his eyes, he burst out laughing. She too got the giggles and when they finally managed to compose themselves, they assessed her dilemma. Obviously, as hysterical as the situation was, they also were faced with a real problem. Both agreed it would take something hot to free her chilly cheeks from the grip of the icy metal! Thinking about what had gotten her into the predicament in the first place, both quickly realized that there was only one way to get her free. So, as she looked the other way, her first-time date proceeded to unzip his pants and pee her butt off the fender. As the audience screamed in laughter, she took the Tonight Show prize hands down. Or perhaps that should be 'pants down'. And you thought your first date was embarrassing. Jay Leno's comment..... 'This gives a whole new meaning to being pissed off.' Oh, and how did the first date turn out? He became her husband and was sitting next to her on the Leno show. 😂

The first one of these I’ve actually liked. Stephen Hawking is hilarious. “Ha ha ha ha ha ha”

Surely I’m not the only one who thinks this every time they see a map of the Strait of Hormuz.

This is why we have to write 'do not eat box' on pizza packaging

Arteta when he sees he can get people sent off for pulling on players hair...

@AccidentalP "I'd say The Best of The Beatles"

This one is gonna be hilarious to me until the day they call my time of death