Spinning The Wheel Of Iran Options

Regime change-war-sanctions-war-war-sanctions-peace deal-war-sanctions-war-regime change

The Nazi Memorabilia Guy Is Big Fans Of The Pro-Israel Guy

I somehow missed this a month ago.

Draw your own conclusions.

Good Luck

Self-driving cars work better than I predicted, though not nearly as well as their boosters claimed, but navigating London is a challenge! 

Londoners are now able to hire self-driving taxis for the first time, after rides in Wayve’s autonomous vehicles were added to the Uber app on Thursday.

The chances of landing a robotaxi on request immediately are slim, with only 15 vehicles so far licensed. That contrasts with the more than 100,000 private hire vehicles in the capital – roughly the same number of Uber customers who have registered to take autonomous rides.

The cars will still come with a licensed human driver sitting in the front seat, ready to take over the controls should the need arise.

We are still not close to demonstrating the business case for these things. Drivers are cheap!

And yes, I understand the value of the fantasy personal robot car, but all of these self-driving taxis still have significant human intervention (which they obscure) whether behind the wheel or remotely.

Is It Genocide Yet

Ratko Mladić died recently. It is worth reminding yourself what exactly the Butcher of Bosnia was involved with that we called "genocide."

Israel’s defence minister has said his country is seeking Donald Trump’s support to approve plans to expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in what has widely been condemned as a potential war crime.

Has it widely been condemned? Missed that. If it happens it will get very complicated.

It is fashionable to blame voters for everything - and daring to care about genocide is one of those things -  but Dem electeds are also divided into pro- and anti-genocide camps. You can choose for yourself how many are in each.

The Center For American Progress

Centrists, man...

The history makes it easy to cast Tanden as the Democratic Establishment’s enforcer, more interested in disciplining the party’s left flank than in considering the failures of the center. What’s missing from that picture is how progressive CAP has become. Matthew Yglesias, the centrist Substacker (and former ThinkProgress blogger), points to the disjunction between Tanden’s reputation and CAP’s work. “Most people evaluate Neera on the basis of her Twitter persona,” he told me. But if you ignored the feed and simply read the organization’s policy output, “you would almost think, Well, this is the moderate wing of the Bernie Sanders movement.”

CAP’s policy positions bear that out. Among its proposals for addressing the affordability crisis is a voluntary program in which grocers who restrain price increases on staple foods would get temporary relief from credit-card swipe fees — hardly the sort of policy usually associated with the party’s corporate-friendly center. The Washington Post editorial board derided it as price controls. “That one didn’t get a ton of love, to be honest,” said Jared Bernstein, Biden’s former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and now a CAP senior fellow, who helped write the proposal. He rejects the idea that it was an attempt to reposition CAP in a way that would neutralize the left: “That’s a direct result of recognizing that the affordability crisis requires a bold policy response.”

program in which grocers who restrain price increases on staple foods would get temporary relief from credit-card swipe fees

That's almost full communism! Imagine trying to implement this! The application process! The bureaucracy!

Imagine running a little corner store and trying to prove you restrained price increases on staple foods to get your temporary swipe fee relief? 

Is this a joke? I can't even tell. Does the writer want us to understand he is laughing at this, too, or is is he marveling at this model of left wing policy, genuinely?

Morning

Thorsday

Happy Hour

Get happy

Pop Goes The Weasels

I really can't wait until the big AI bubble burst.

I Think It Is?

Benefits like, uh, growth and stuff or whatever.

Altman told the gathered ministers and representatives that countries shouldn’t overlook the improvements to daily life poised to come from AI. 

 

“I think it is non-negotiable that you have to use it,” he said. “The economic growth and benefit to people that can come from this, the value to a country, is too high to ignore.”

Memories

As a veteran of the Lieberman wars, when official Washington acted as if primarying a "respected" sitting senator was the equivalent to setting up the guillotines, I've been amused at the inconsistent application of  that view of primarying incumbents since.

It comes down to:

Primarying centrists, hawks, reliable corrupt torchbearers of the Washington Consensus: unfathomable, unforgivable violence

Primarying left-coded candidates, even if they aren't all that lefty: good, smart.

I, For One, Welcome Our New Lizard Overlords

Finally some good news.

Another giant reptile is clawing its way toward disrupting the South Florida ecosystem as an invasive species.

The Nile monitor -- a semi-aquatic lizard that can grow up to 6 feet and is equipped with razor claws -- has been establishing populations in the area since the 1980s, according to ecology experts. 

Bye Seth

The Dem party always has a few Seth Moultons, guys who are quite convinced that if only everyone else would be a bigot like he is that Dems would rule forever. More than that, it is unfair that anyone disagrees and they should shutupShutupSHUTUPSHUTUP.

Transgender rights weren’t even close to the most prominent issue in the 2024 campaign. To the extent they were, it was a 2019 video of Harris supporting gender-affirming care for people in federal prison, a much harder position to defend than young people playing sports. It was strange that Moulton singled out transgender athletes for the Democrats’ defeat, as opposed to Biden, Harris, or their campaign strategists. Even worse, he whined when he was criticized for his remarks, suggesting those rebukes showed Democrats don’t tolerate alternative views. Moulton wanted to attack transgender participation in sports without those who support transgender athletes forcefully criticizing him in response. Sorry Seth, that’s not how free speech or open discourse works.

It is one thing to be that guy. It is another to think that is the kind of guy who wins statewide primaries against incumbents in Massachusetts.

Like many blue states, Mass is not is overwhelmingly lefty as it is sometimes characterized, but the median dem primary voter is not a fan of that shit.

Morning

Welcoming Wednesday

All My Apes, Cheap

One issue with the LLM business model is that with all the apparent competiton, how do the prices not stay low?

Afternoon

travel day for me

What We Are Talking About When We Talk About Affordability

A plan to convene 5 working groups.

What @hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social told me the House agenda will be next year if Democrats win —Reverse Trump’s Medicaid cuts —Extend expired ACA tax credits —Restore Congress’s authority on tariffs —“Decisively” end the Iran war Beyond that: “We’ve established five working groups on affordability”

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— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur.bsky.social) 1 September 2026 at 12:27

A Cable News Miracle

Kaitlin Collins interviews Al-Sayed without asking about Hasan Piker or Israel.

Israel is a fair topic generally, just not in the way it's usually covered in these interviews, which involves pretending it's Al-Sayed who is obsessed with the subject as he is badgered about it, and pretending his very mainstream views about the subject are extremist.

Is Nothing Noteworthy

As far as I can find, no major US outlet covered this.

The Defense Department was forced on Monday to deny the U.S. had struck Iran’s main petroleum export facility after President Donald Trump posted a fake but very realistic AI-generated video showing a purported attack by American forces.

The video, posted to the president’s Truth Social account, appears to show oil storage tanks and refineries erupting in flames from the perspective of someone filming from inside a helicopter above the carnage, with an accompanying message describing the scene as “Kharg Island being blown to smithereens” and signed as “President DJT.”

But a U.S. official said no such attack had taken place, with Kharg Island not being among the locations targeted overnight in what has been the first exchange of fire between American and Iranian forces in weeks.

The exception being CNBC, which claims it was just a threat. 

Later Sunday, President Donald Trump threatened on social media to blow up Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil-export hub, to “smithereens.”

There really is a tacit agreement by most media outlets to ignore his truth social page most of the time. 

Morning

Tepid Tuesday.

Happy Hour

Enjoy