Iran Isn't Going To Back Down

 Krugman has a cryptic post about a security briefing that left him depressed. My guess is that Trump's latest movements bringing Marines and the 82 Airborne "online" has people more or less assuming that we will commit ground troops at some point. We know that Trump's war and his deployment of ICE to airports is not popular, but with the latter, how much of that is simply disgust with Trump personally? What could Trump do that would make 55% of the country approve of his actions (besides resigning and fleeing the country).?

Trump seems to realize that he's shitting the bed in Iran or at least that the oil markets are giving him feedback that he knows will be painful for him politically. What's also clear is that Iran understands this, too. Trump can ask for a ceasefire or a peace plan, but Iran has no incentive right now to give him anything. In fact, Iran has denied any talks with the US and has only engaged - it seems - with other regional powers. We have reports that Saudi Arabia wants to keep the war going and is basically on the same page with Israel in that regards, but other Gulf states may want an off ramp and might be willing to negotiate separate deals with Iran.

Right now, Iran's chokehold is on the Straits of Hormuz. That is going to be painful for months maybe years even after it opens. It's not a faucet that you simply turn on and off. At some point, I would expect some sort of terrorist attack on a military or political target in the US. Iran basically has nothing left to lose. Even if they are wiped out tactically, strategically they have some very powerful cards and are playing them. 

The US military under Trump has been a series of tactical triumphs without any coherent strategic goals, beyond "make things go boom" and "exploit the chaos to make money." Iran's strategic goals would include any pain that they can inflict on the US plus keeping their regime basically intact. If they do so, their prestige would rise in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein got his ass kicked in 1991, but because he survived, he actually improved his reputation. That's where Iran is right now and there is no amount of shitposting that Trump can do to alter that fact.  

The Polls That Matter

Special elections are just that: special. Still, the Democrats have been crushing special elections since Trump took office, and last night they flipped two seats in Florida's legislature. One of the districts includes Mar A Lago. Trump, of course, voted by mail, which he's trying to kill with the SAVE Act. 

There are examples of interviews and posts of people decrying their vote for Trump. Anecdotes, though, are not data. The elections we have seen with Democrats overperforming by around 10-15 points, suggest that those anecdotes represent something real. Reuters has his polling collapsing even further and there's clearly some flop sweat in the GOP today.

Ideally what we see in November is that Democrats are prepared to crawl over broken glass and swim through lemon juice to vote whereas many MAGA and non-MAGA Republicans just stay home, dispirited by the shitshow their orange god has unleashed on America and the world.

I really think there will be competitive Senate races in Ohio, Iowa, Alaska and even Kansas. There is going to be a Senate seat that flips Blue that will have people surprised. Not because MAGA is abandoning Trump personally, but because they have soured on politics althogether. 

Not Brilliant

 The Times runs down how RFK has gutted public health.

Brilliant

 Read this on Iran. 

It's all just insane.

Corruption: Once More With Feeling

 It has been my position that the single most consistent line of attack against Trump should be his corruption. Everything that he does can likely be tied back to some interest - usually including himself - that profits from his actions. Recently, he decided to pay a French company $1,000,000,000 to cede their lease to a wind farm off the East Coast. Why? Why would the US government deprive a private company the opportunity to build a wind farm? There is the usual Republican friendliness to petrochemical companies, but this seems so obviously self-defeating. When it all comes out, I would bet dollars to doughnuts that there is money changing hands under the table.

In Iran, we now have pretty compelling circumstantial evidence that Trump and the people around him are conducting insider trading around futures markets. Krugman is being little - it has to be said - shrill in calling this treason, but it sure as hell seems like a crime. I don't think he engaged in this very unpopular war simply to make a buck, but once begun and especially since it started going poorly, he has done what he always does, which is to find a way to personally benefit from the destruction that he and his policies caused.

Perhaps the reason why the oil shock from Trump's War has been somewhat muted is because markets aren't necessarily following the TACO rule so much as not wanting to invest in an obviously rigged market. Trump has now said we are negotiating with Iran. Iran says this is bullshit. There is some evidence that Trump's new timeline of five days is just to get Marines in theater, but not attack until markets close on Friday. 

I remain guardedly optimistic that Trump's corruption and incompetence will undo him. Fraud doesn't work in the long run, and the man is the walking personification of fraud. When his hold on power is wrested away from him, the creatures that have gorged themselves at this trough of corruption and self-dealing might be surprised that he did not pardon them on the way out. 

The challenge for whomever restores American democracy will be to hold those who have violated the public trust accountable, despite the inevitable caterwauling about "lawfare" from Fox and Fiends. Trump was prosecuted because he's broken the law. This has given Republicans cover for when Trump demands spurious investigations into his opponents, based on political malice. There needs to be a Truth and Reconciliation committee, only without the reconciliation. 

Someone said that the 48th president of the United States (unless it's Vance because of the actuarial table) will spend an entire term cleaning up Trump's mess. That process has to start by driving the money changers from the temple. 

The Fictive Nexus

 Trump's war with Iran is only his second most important war. The war with the truth is one that he has been waging for his entire life. As a malignant narcissist, Trump cannot be wrong. He is always right, always winning. The realities of the Iran War are intruding upon that cocoon of lies. Today, Trump said that he was close to a negotiated deal with Iran; Iran said, "Bullshit." 

The question some have asked is whether Trump's lies about the war are 
A) Part of an effort to manipulate markets.
B) A fundamental disconnect with reality.
C) Just who he is: a liar.

Reality really does get the last say. Trump, however, has created a public career where his lying has not been nearly the disqualifying character flaw that we would have hoped it would be. Trump's congenital contempt for the truth has somehow not become the defining trait when the new media reports on his utterances. When Trump says anything at this point, it should be treated as false until otherwise verified. The continuing, persistent treatment of Trump as if he were a normal human being - much less a normal president - is the height of the sanewashing that routinely occurs.

This is why Trump could only have risen to prominence in the Republican Party. The reason is because of Fox News. Fox has primed a generation or two of "conservatives" to respond in a Pavlovian way to the red meat and lies of Republican politicians. We have certified morons like Senator Tommy Tuberville decrying Sharia law in the US...which isn't a thing. But if you've marinated in Fox for decades, it might be. 

One of the theories behind John Fetterman's complete abandonment of Democratic partisanship is that after his stroke, he's become closer to his Fox News addicted brother. That would absolutely track. 

Trump is a uniquely awful human being - among the worst public figures this or any other country has produced. 

He could not have become president without Fox News.

MAGA Is A Cult

 Morris looks at the viral poll from CNN that says that 100% of MAGA supports Trump's war in Iran. Of course, MAGA supports the war, because Trump could literally give their kid measles, the kid could die and they would eat that tragedy up with a spoon. It is absolutely a cult, and trying to care about MAGA is pointless, unless you're Trump.

The critical numbers to look at are who is self-identifying as MAGA and self-identifying as Republican. MAGA has slipped from 36% to 30%. That's significant. We need to keep an eye on people moving from Republican to independent, as well. Typically, people don't identify as Republican and vote from Democrats. They stop identifying as Republicans first.

Trump is such a uniquely awful human being that he continually repels people. Many Republicans keep returning to him like an abused dog hoping this time will be different. Some, though, start to fall away. As they fall away, it really doesn't matter in November if they vote for Democrats or just stay home. Either one works.

Oil Vey

 Oil markets are experiencing real pain right now. Krugman tries to contextualize them, but when he makes a video on Thursday, the situation changes by Saturday.

Gas prices - as distinct from oil prices - have already exploded. Before the war, local gas was about $2.85, not it's $3.99. I've already felt that there is a fair amount of skullduggery in oil markets, but this all seems to make sense. Markets are beginning to realize that Trump can't simply TACO his way out of this mess, as critical facilities are simply gone and will take years to replace. Farmers may not be able to fertilize their fields.

The appalling decision by Trump to open the spigots to Russian and Iranian oil is because he's legitimately and properly concerned by the spike in oil prices, but with so many other critical commodities passing through the Straits of Hormuz, all he's really doing is putting money in Iran and Russian coffers.

Fucking lunacy.

Strategic Incoherence

 If you are thinking either tactically or especially strategically about something, you have to consider multiple outcomes of every action you take. If you do X, what are the potential outcomes? Which of those outcomes is particularly catastrophic, and are there factors that can remove those catastrophic outcomes? 

You absolutely cannot "wing it" or go with your gut.

Unless you're Donald Trump and the gaggle of sycophants and fools that constitute his inner (and outer) circle.

The goal - such as it is - was apparently regime change. The best opportunity for that was when the people of Iran were being gunned down in the streets in early January. Even then, it was primarily wishful thinking, even magical thinking. The ease of Venezuela clearly influenced Trump, as did the need to reassert dominance domestically and internationally.

The result, so far, has been pretty catastrophic. Apparently, no one really expected Iran to do the thing that we all knew Iran would do: throttle oil supplies. For someone so locked into the world view of the 1970s, Trump's ignorance on this is striking. 

To be clear, this is not about national security. Iran did not pose an immediate threat to the US. We've been mostly containing them for half a century. By threatening regime change, we've removed any constraints on Iranian behavior, as this is an existential conflict for them. Yet, apparently, we went into a war with our goals - regime change on the cheap - completely inadequate to the ability to influence events in Iran.

The final expression of just how unbelievably fucked up the "thinking" is on Iran is this: We are letting Iran export oil and reducing sanctions. We are bombing their country, but we absolutely cannot allow them to stop selling oil to China or China might fuck with us and our plate is kinda full right now. Allowing Iran to sell their oil - hell, allowing Russia to sell their oil - is not in America's national security interest. When you are in a conflict - directly or indirectly in Russia's case - you throttle their economy. You have a PLAN to throttle their economy. 

In World War II, America flew a dangerous and costly mission to bomb the oil facilities in Ploesti, Romania. It was the primary oil facility in Nazi occupied Europe, and it was critical that we use oil as a weapon to deprive their military of a critical resource. Today, we are letting Iranian and Russian oil on the market because Trump knows that rising oil prices are politically perilous for him. The war started out unpopular and it will only get more unpopular as the cost of the war and the price of oil soars ever upwards. 

Turns out having imbeciles running your government is a bad idea.

It's Not The Crime, It's The Cover Up

 The refrain of "it's not the crime, it's the cover up" from the Watergate Era, refers to Nixon's role in covering up the White House involvement in the Watergate Break In. In order to protect the White House in general, Nixon authorized criminal actions to thwart the investigation.

Today, we have something that in many ways is far worse than Watergate, with the Epstein saga. Here, again, we have a clear cover up that creates a visible effect without actually being visible. We don't know what was in the investigation that Senator Wyden uncovered (that Richardson references at the link). What we do know is that there are only two possible explanations for the DOJ's contempt of Congress.

The first and most obvious one is that Trump and/or other members of his administration are all over the files. Wyden's discoveries relate to drug trafficking and money laundering (in addition to the human trafficking that we have been discussing). We know how Trump was always kind of short of money. We know that Trump laundered bribes through his properties - renting or selling above market prices to Russians and others. 

The second, but still plausible explanation is simply that Trump and Bondi and others obstruct for the sake of obstructing. Deny, attack, deny, attack. That's pretty much the single playbook that they use. Never admit weakness, never admit you were wrong. Know that Fox and similar organizations will smooth out the rough edges of your lies. If you cave into Wyden on the money laundering and drug trafficking issue, then you might have to cave on other redacted files.

The problem is that by constantly covering up whatever is in the files, you're allowed for the worst possible information to become plausible. The cover up becomes confirmation of the crimes.

It's The Corruption - An Ongoing Series

 It is a daunting task to try and create a singular line of attack on Donald Trump and MAGA. There is just so much that they do that is transgressive, incompetent, cruel and self-defeating that finding a single tack to take - a central narrative - can be really hard. You can focus on ICE's murderous behavior...but here comes Epstein. Focusing on Epstein? Here comes some racism!

I've argued that corruption needs to be a powerful unifying thread in attacks on Trump. First, because he's easily - and I mean by far - the most corrupt president in the history of the Republic. Harding, Grant, Nixon...they didn't really personally enrich themselves. Trump is making money for himself and his crime family. 

As Krugman points out, there are very, very extensive ties between Trump and the petrostates of the Persian Gulf. There has been a lot written about whether Israel forced us into war, with a lot of that discussion veering quickly into antisemitism. However, the role that Saudi Arabia played has been less focused upon. 

"We went to war for Israel and Saudi Arabia, and the result is that oil companies and oil producing states are going to reap a massive windfall" is a decent line of attack. The "forever wars" rhetoric could founder on the fact that at some point Trump will simply declare victory and go home. I don't think Iran is a "forever war"; it's the expenditure of tens of billions of US taxpayer dollars to make oil producers rich - just like his ban on renewable energy is to make oil producers rich.

Anger at rising gas prices will translate into anger at Exxon and Shell and Gulf. Link that to Trump via the corrupt self-dealing that is exemplified in everything that orange fucker does.

Does Trump Meet The Qualifications For Psychosis?

 It's not exactly a specious question. He seems so incredibly detached from reality.

However, Trump's manifest and repeated lying is a personality trait. He simply cannot tell a truth that might reflect poorly on himself. The Iran war is pretty much already won, but Europe needs to send help immediately to reopen the Straits of Hormuz, which are open anyway. Tell me how that is the utterings of a sane person. Then again, he has always simply lied about everything. Prices are down! He won in a landslide! The world respects us!

At what point does his repeated inability to tell the truth reach the level of psychosis? Particularly since he has absolutely no one around him who will tell him the truth.

There has been reams written about the sanewashing that the media does for Trump. They treat his utterances as somehow true or they frame them in a way that might make sense. Trump can say something that sure seems false, but it is accorded the weight that we normally give presidential statements. Then, inevitably, the truth is different than what Trump said, but the media has already moved on. Then he says something else that, again, is treated as true.

Trump's ramblings - if not filtered through this media screen - would seem to be so detached from actual reality that it would call into question whether Trump understands what is actually real. You know. Psychosis.

We've typically understood Trump as being a liar, a profoundly ignorant even stupid man and a man clearly slipping into cognitive decline, perhaps full on dementia. I have to wonder if all those dementia tests that he passed - but that his doctors feel the need to repeatedly administer - are perhaps something that needs to be a screen for actual psychosis.

We have reached the point where we don't know if the President of the United States is capable of interacting with reality.

Back Home

 Anyone volunteer to help Donny Small Fingers out of his jam in the Straits of Hormuz?

The Board of Peace?

His friend Putin?

Anyone?

Bueller?

Maybe shitting on all our allies and then launching a war of choice was a bad idea, actually.

Healthy Lifestyle

 There are a lot of heath benefits to living in Europe/Spain. Certainly, we have walked A LOT. We eat smaller meals. The food is less processed.

But I've also been consuming less news, and that's been a blessing.

Of course, come tomorrow or Tuesday, I'll be back at it. I do wonder about the Ariana Grande Voter - that lump of barely sentient clay who tunes into elections every four years and votes their feelings. These are people who are going to be surprised when food prices rise because the Strait of Hormuz are closed and that will have a massive impact of fertilizer prices which will be passed on to consumers by the fall.

Everything is a genuine surprise to these people, but even in my relative cocoon the war is on the background.

Greeting From Spain

 Once again, it is striking how much more beautiful Europe's urban public spaces are than ours are in the United States. I'm not 100% sure if this is a legacy of imperial grandeur and therefore inherently anti-democratic or a values system that prioritizes public goods that is inherently very democratic.

Anyway, Spain is beautiful even in March.