Home » Open thread 3/3/2026

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Open thread 3/3/2026 — 37 Comments

  1. Watch the whole second clip!

    I had to look up the program “I’ve Got a Secret”. And I noticed that Wikipedia is touting Ramadan with a banner notice.

    Anyway, thanks, Neo, for this morning pick-me-up.

  2. After the Stealth bombing of the Iranian nuclear program last June, I read comments that the Iranians were still only weeks away from enriching uranium to weapon-grade. I wasn’t sure what that meant. Here’s the answer according to Steve Witkoff one of the chief negotiator in the Iran talks:
    __________________________________________

    Sean Hannitty: You made a statement last week — when I heard it, and I’ve known you for a long time, you’re a friend — when you made the statement that they may be a week away from possibly having capability, at that moment I interpreted that to mean it’s go time, it’s over.

    Was I wrong? Was that the moment it was over?

    Steve Witkoff: I don’t know if it was that exact moment it was over, but I know this: They have roughly 10,000 kilograms of material. That is broken up into:

    Roughly 460 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium. Another 1,000 kilograms of 20% enriched uranium. The balance at 3.67%.

    They manufacture their own centrifuges to enrich this material. There is almost no stopping them. They have an endless supply.

    The 60% material, Sean, can be brought to 90% — that is weapon grade — in roughly one week, maybe ten days. The 20% material can be brought to weapons grade inside of three to four weeks.

    Let me say this, because I forgot this small detail:

    In that first meeting, both of the Iranian negotiators said to us directly, with no shame, that they controlled 160 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium — and they were aware that could make 11 nuclear bombs.

    That was the beginning of the negotiating stance. So they were proud of it. They were proud they had evaded all sorts of protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs.

    –Fox News, “Iran thought they could strong-arm us: Steve Witkoff”
    https://youtu.be/UxoVFhzMn4A?t=174

  3. Another changer:

    AOC’s Former Climate Change Activist, Changes Tune Distances Herself from Climate Alarmism

    A former climate change activist, who was once an outspoken advocate for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, is walking back her support of strict environmentalism and alarmism.

    Lucy Biggers, in an interview with Maya Sulkin for The Free Press, recounted her efforts as a climate change activist and explained why she began questioning the mainstream climate narrative after noticing that catastrophic predictions of climate change-fueled destruction from extreme weather were not happening as predicted.

    Biggers told Sulkin that her first doubts about the movement she helped to amplify came during the COVID-19 pandemic, when she saw the effect of lockdowns on lowering society’s amount of carbon emissions, which were reduced by nearly 5 percent.

    The prospect of society living locked away in their homes, suffering depression and loss of freedom, for such a small amount of carbon reduction caused Biggers to begin questioning what life would look like with a 100 percent reduction in carbon emissions.

    AOC’s Former climate activist reflects on the moment she realised climate activism was bullsh*t

    “I was very anti-plastic. Then all of a sudden, all the PPE came; you had the masks, the plastic barriers between everything — I was like, wait a minute, I’ve been sweating about… pic.twitter.com/S2Llvc09ZZ

    — American AF ?? (@iAnonPatriot) March 2, 2026

    Biggers also recalled how anti-plastic she had been for the previous six years and said that the proliferation of personal protective equipment (PPE), including masks and plastic barriers, caused her to rethink her previous hard stance.

    Biggers told Sulkin, “I was like, wait a minute, I’ve been sweating about single use plastic straws for the past five years, and now we’ve proliferated more plastic in the past few months than I’ve seen in my lifetime and looking around, it seems like we’re fine. It looks like society was able to absorb that plastic and the world has not ended.”

    During the interview, Biggers described how her worldview shifted from being an alarmist to a “realist” perspective, which acknowledges that climate change is happening but that it is not the existential threat that it has been portrayed as being.

    She also talked about how she used her identity as a climate change activist in order to feel like a “good person” and how her pivot away from the alarmism required her to come to terms with her fear of losing that moral self-image.

    Biggers’s example of identity being tied to showing the proper amount of outrage over a particular issue isn’t limited to climate change alone.

    It’s a common tactic in how the Left works to recruit, radicalize, and capture the moral energy of activists by tying their individual identity to how rabidly adherent they are to what they are told.

    Once Biggers began thinking critically about what she was seeing, her intellectual chains fell off.

    https://amgreatness.com/2026/03/02/aocs-former-climate-change-activist-changes-tune-distances-herself-from-climate-alarmism/

  4. This is a must read – on instapundit.

    https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2026/03/03/this-detail-about-the-negotiations-with-iran-changes-everything-n4950179

    A new CNN poll shows that 59% of Americans disapprove of the U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran. That number shocks me.

    Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. The regime has funded proxy wars, armed Hezbollah, backed Hamas, and spent decades chanting for the destruction of Israel and the United States.

    I can easily explain it to you Matt Margolis. 49% of the country is just fine with that last part. But seriously folks:

    Witkoff said Iranian negotiators opened by declaring their “undeniable right to enrich all of their nuclear fuel” — and then dropped a bombshell. “In that first meeting, both the Iranian negotiators said to us directly, with no shame, that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60% [enrichment] and they’re aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs, and that was the beginning of their negotiating stance. So that’s — they were proud of it.”

  5. [ Matt Plaiss slipped. ]

    I see that Witkoff quote caught Matt Margolis’s attention here:
    ________________________________

    –Matt Margolis: “This Bombshell About the Negotiations With Iran Changes Everything”
    https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2026/03/03/this-detail-about-the-negotiations-with-iran-changes-everything-n4950179

    ________________________________

    It does change everything. So the rumors of that big Iranian cache of enriched uranium were true.

    That means that once the Iranians got some centrifuges spinning again — maybe they already have — they were on their way to putting a bomb onto a ballistic missile which could threaten Israel.

    So this was the mullahs’ ace in the hole. Why they were willing to risk the all-out attack they are experiencing now.

    Why they won’t let go until every link in the chain to a nuclear weapon is broken, all those mullahs are dead and the Islamic Republic is dumped onto the ash heap of history.

  6. @Mike Plaiss:Oh no! Not the Federalist!

    I think you mean “Oh no! Not Marc Rubio!” because he was the one who literally said it. I quoted it yesterday.

    We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed, and then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn’t act.

    Speaker Johnson said much the same thing:

    “Israel was determined to act in their own defense here, with or without American support. Why? Because Israel faced what they deemed to be an existential threat. Iran was building missiles at a rapid clip to the point where our allies in the region could not keep up,” Johnson said.

    “Because Israel was determined to act with or without the U.S., our commander in chief and the administration and the officials [in the Cabinet] had a very difficult decision to make. They had to evaluate the threats to the U.S., to our troops, to our installations, to our assets in the region in beyond,” Johnson said.

    Why, is that bad? Should Israel not have planned to attack Iran? Given that they were going to should we not have helped? I’m not sure what the problem is here, if it’s factually correct that Israel took the lead and the initiative. Why shouldn’t they, aren’t they the most affected, aren’t they the one facing an existential threat, and aren’t they such a good ally of the US?

    Yeah, anti-semites will make something of it. That doesn’t change what was true or what was right. What WON’T they make something of? You can’t just not do something because Tucker Carlson might lie about it later.

    Neither of them said Israel gave us an order or ultimatum or anything, sounds like close cooperation as usual.

  7. Art Deco:

    Essentially, both were true. Allen was 6’3″ and Sedaka was 5’5″, according to Google.

  8. In the Netanyahu interview on Fox last night, Netanyahu said that the first time he met President Trump, the first thing Trump said to him was, “Iran can’t have nuclear weapons.”

    I don’t care whether anyone likes Israel or not, Iran can’t have nuclear weapons. Full stop.

    It’s important to the whole world to stop that. Nuclear-armed, half-mad mullahs are the shortest route to a full-on nuclear war.

  9. Talking Turkey…

    “NATO’s Islamist ally chose Tehran over Washington;
    “Erdogan mourns Khamenei while blocking US bases. His behavior is that of a state sponsor of terrorism.”—
    https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/423318

    General idea:

    …For years, Western diplomats have bent over backward to excuse Ankara’s transgressions, clinging to the outdated belief that Turkey is an indispensable bridge between East and West. Today, that bridge clearly leads straight to Tehran….

  10. J’accuse (continued)…

    “Christopher Wray and his deputy Paul Abbate stuffed Hillary Plan emails from the Durham Appendix, and Comey’s handwritten notes about the Hillary Plan into the burn bags to be destroyed after President Trump won in 2024 before the new team came in.”—
    https://instapundit.com/780120/

    “Perhaps you didn’t hear, crazy lady. Iran bombed their own school. By mistake. They would have rather killed Jewish children with it. I am pretty sure you would have been okay with that too.”—
    https://instapundit.com/780061/

    Etc., etc.

    + Bonus:

    “DEMAGOGUES AND SIMPLETONS DON’T CARE ABOUT EVIDENCE”—
    https://instapundit.com/780131/

  11. yes that was pretty sloppy on davidson’s part, from betraying the green revolution to allowing a drone and it’s pilot, nurges wittes, to defect (we didn’t know about it till 2019, the influence of niac, and other sources on the administration, there was even the Cafe Milano attempt on the Saudi Ambassador, that had virtually no pushback

    the JCPOA essentially Robert Malley’s etch a sketch, plan handed to Kerry and Sherman, the latter gifted the Kim Dynast with enough weapons grade uranium along with AQ Khan’s starter kit, this was furthered by the direct monies that sanctions relief, gave the regime, after Trump had bottled it up, taking out Suleimani

    the redux of Fordow doesn’t surprise me as the IAEA, allowed the Iraqis to continue enriching uranium after Osirak, Tammuz 16 bombing

    it is said that Aznar the former prime minister met Khamenei, in 2003, and the latter expressed the behavior that the annihilation of the Jews, was his mission,

  12. These people may know what they’re saying. Their assessment of the next 3days of the war. See the whole article

    https://www.hudson.org/missile-defense/next-72-hours-iran-post-khamenei-order-command-continuity-targeting-strategy-can-kasapoglu

    A summary

    What to Monitor in the Next 72 Hours
    The next three days will be crucial in this latest war with Iran. In particular, analysts should monitor the following:
    * The IRGC’s operational tempo in missile and drone salvos
    * Senior political-military figures whom the United States and Israel spare
    * The Iranian missile forces’ launcher density and survivability, reload intervals, mobility, and usage of underground facilities
    * Any signs of defiance, fragmentation, or non-compliance within Artesh combat formations or among its senior commanders, as well as any drift between the IRGC and Artesh
    * Tanker flows through the Strait of Hormuz, disruptions in automatic identification systems, and insurance spikes
    * Any large-scale Hezbollah mobilization, which could indicate that Tehran intends to open a second front from Lebanon

  13. Iran has a small fleet of submarines: 3 Russian Kilo class boats, 1 to 3 (indigenous?) half the displacement of the Kilo, and a handful of very small 1-2 man subs. All told they are numbered at 19-30, depending on sources.

    It would be pleasing to hear that the USN has put every one of them on the bottom, yet no such news as yet.

  14. Fuentes is a plant

    I don’t know about that, but my first impression was that he was an a$$hole. I had an instant dislike for the guy.

  15. @bobwilson

    Some of that list is already out of date.

    *Missile/drone operational tempo has already decreased by about 6x.
    *Hezbollah has been outlawed in Lebanon, arrests have been made.
    *The US will issue ship insurance. LLoyd’s of London hardest hit.

    For the rest, no one is talking.

  16. I wrote yesterday that our forces should “retire” the 80 plus Mullas who were reported to be meeting to elect the new Muslim religious leader of Iran and, lo and behold, comes the news that while this “council of experts” was gathered together to deliberate, the Israelis flattened the building they were deliberating in, apparently experts and all.

    Too bad, so sad.

  17. While normal people spent the weekend chasing media and internet updates trying to understand what was going on with Operation Epic Fury an ex-Google PM built a 4D God’s eye interactive view of air, sea and space systems in action over and around Iran using OSINT data. The scary thing is it doesn’t sound like the USG has anything close to it. Somebody needs to talk to him.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p8o7AeHDzg

    This is how he built WorldView:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXvU7bPJ8n4

  18. Sdferr,
    Yes, I have been wondering about the Iranian subs. Where are they ?

  19. Primaries today in Arkansas, North Carolina and Texas.

    I don’t know anything about Arkansas. I got a fundraising letter from Michael Whatley in the North Carolina senate primary. I seem to recall that Whatley was in the 2024 Trump campaign apparatus. Hope they select someone who can beat Cooper.

    I actually know some candidates in Texas for the Senate. Go Paxton. Go Jasmine.

  20. I’m surprised the video left out “Solitaire.” But you can’t get much catchier than “Breaking up Is Hard to Do.” I have both of those on playlists I turn to often.

  21. ”Michael Whatley won the NC nomination handily.”

    Kate, is that good? Bad? Does it matter?

  22. mkent, Michael Whatley was very successful running the NC GOP before going to the RNC, which he chaired in 2024-2025. I think he was preferable to any other R candidate. I am hopeful of his defeating Roy Cooper. They are going to hit Cooper hard on crime (recent atrocities in Charlotte committed by people released under a leniency program he signed into law) and on ineffective responses to two hurricanes, one a few years ago in East Carolina, and Helene in the western counties.

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