Market Wisdom

Stocks are down but not all that much. Clearly the money boys think that there's a floor, that if the line goes too far down then Trump will step in and fix whatever he broke. But what if he can't?

Seems Bad

I'm sure Jared and the gang were aware of this issue and have a plan.

The Gulf region is a key producer not only of liquified natural gas (LNG) and oil products but also of fertilizer. About one-third of global seaborne trade in fertilizers typically passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been nearly entirely closed since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. In particular, Gulf countries are important producers of nitrogen fertilizers, which depend primarily on natural gas burned at high pressure in the presence of hydrogen to synthesize ammonia. (The hydrogen usually comes from natural gas as well.)

But it’s not just that Gulf fertilizer can’t make it to export markets such as Sudan, Brazil, or Sri Lanka. It’s also that fertilizer producers elsewhere lack key ingredients. This is where the second-order effects of a supply chain crisis appear, just as they did during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which sent fertilizer prices soaring.

Just Buy Some Insurance

Trump is Trump, but clearly the people around him pushed this idea before having any clue what it would entail (or if it would be workable at all).

Another reality is that the insurance safety net doesn’t address the core reason ships aren’t sailing, according to shipowners and insurance brokers.

“It’s more about the safety of the crews rather than taking on insurance for damages,” said Jerry Kalogiratos, Chief Executive of Capital Clean Energy Carriers, which runs more than 20 LNG carriers.

Insurance for ships in the region is readily available, with offers being made but not taken up, according to brokers. “Lloyd’s is open for business,” said Marcus Baker, global head of marine and cargo at insurance broker Marsh.

Maybe the Fox News crew will volunteer for this mission.

Welp

I haven't yet seen how this is all the fault of people trying to move us off fossil fuels, but I'm sure it's coming. Probably Yglesias will provide.

Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has said all U.S. military bases in the Middle East should close immediately as those bases will be attacked, in his first public statement since being appointed.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz maritime passage should be continued as a “tool to pressure the enemy,” he said, in televised comments translated by Reuters. Oil prices extended gains following the comments.

Iran Expert Signing On

I am not, obviously, but unlike most of the Trumpers, I probably could point to Iran on an unlabeled map.

You know Hegseth fired or sidelined anybody competent (or they extracted themselves), anybody who said anything other than, "boom boom kill kill win win."

"Real men go to Tehran" was long the mantra of the real nutters, none of whom would ever actually go to Tehran, of course.

I don't claim to have any insight about what will happen. My opinion on this stuff is of equivalent value to any random guy down at the bar. But it doesn't seem to be certain that Iran will offer any kind of face-saving (for Trump) "surrender" that he will demand.

They know very well that you can't make any deals with President Deals.

Morning

Thirsty Thursday

Wednesday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

Get happy

Beta Cucks

The insecure vanity of all these weirdos.

The Defense Department has barred press photographers from briefings on the ongoing U.S.-Israeli military conflict with Iran after they published photos of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that his staff deemed “unflattering,” according to two people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

Real men don't care about stupid pictures.

@Grok, Is This A Good Target

War is hell, and I don't mean that glibly. Kids die.

The Feb. 28 strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building was the result of a targeting mistake by the U.S. military, which was conducting strikes on an adjacent Iranian base of which the school building was formerly a part, the preliminary investigation found. Officers at U.S. Central Command created the target coordinates for the strike using outdated data provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency, people briefed on the investigation said.

Officials emphasized that the findings are preliminary and that there are important unanswered questions about why the outdated information had not been double checked.

Someone forgot to type, "@Grok are you sure?"

Lunch

Shop while you eat! (Ad, I get a commission).

Monologuing

I think about this quote from America's Worst Senate Minority Leader quite a lot:

For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two... three... moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia. And you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.

Not because it was wrong (narrator: but it was wrong), but because he said it loudly and proudly to an audience of journalists.  It was a lot worse and more destructive than Clinton's "basket of deplorables" comment, which in context was fine. 

He basically said, "fuck you, don't vote for us, longtime voters, because we prefer these fancy suburban Republicans." With a big smile on his face! He was very impressed with himself!

And he did it, as Democrats do, to impress DC political journalists with his "courting the center right" strategy.

Her Brand Is Genocide

I get that some people don't have the luxury of resigning in protest. Not everyone has money! Samantha Power has plenty of money. 

Samantha Power, at last, addresses Gaza's Problem from Hell

"I don't just get up and decide today what US foreign policy is," she told the University of Notre Dame this week. "That is the price of being in government."

The comments were perhaps the most in-depth to date on why… pic.twitter.com/TdIhku1y1C

— Jonathan Guyer (@mideastXmidwest) March 10, 2026

You don't have to be in government! No one flapping butterfly can necessarily change the world, but "Samantha Power, anti-genocide author and activist, resigns in protest, leveling blistering criticism of the Biden administration's support of genocide" had a lot more chance of doing good than "Samantha Power, boring replaceable bureaucrat, is doing boring replaceable bureaucrat things."

That was the moment that "Samantha Power, anti-genocide author and activist" had positioned herself for (supposedly)! And she said, "nah."

Easiest call in the world, and she has the fucking nerve to pretend it's all very nuanced and complicated.

Well This Isn't Any Fun At All

Half the commentariat loves nothing more than screaming at hippies for opposing war, and using it as an opportunity to drive them even further out of public life. Extra thrills when Israel is involved, because then they get to posture about who the real bigots are.

This war isn't any fun at all! Maybe the hippies were right! For the wrong reasons, of course, but still!

Morning

Wingnut Wednesday

Welp

You might not agree with my implicit and explicit criticisms, but something isn't working.

Sounds Bad

.@SenBlumenthal remarks after Iran briefing: "I emerged from this briefing dissatisfied and angry frankly that I have for any past briefing in my 15 years in the Senate.. We seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran." pic.twitter.com/e2qv0dcAds

— CSPAN (@cspan) March 10, 2026

Small Pleasures

I think he is very guilty, sir, and it's almost as if he stole YOUR money, if you think about it.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has peppered aides in recent days about whether longtime adviser Corey Lewandowski profited personally from a $220 million federal advertising campaign featuring Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was fired last week, according to three people familiar with his conversations.

America's Worst Way

The Third Way.

Vibe Coding

I am sure that AI tools are genuinely useful for coding.  I needed about 12 lines of code to replace a widget on this site that broke for some reason, and it took me 90 seconds and two prompts with one of the tools (forget which). I couldn't have done it myself.

But the problems of setting things loose without careful oversight, and the snowballing that can happen when nobody actually looks too carefully at what it is doing as it iterates, are obvious. 

Amazon’s ecommerce business has summoned a large group of engineers to a meeting on Tuesday for a “deep dive” into a spate of outages, including incidents tied to the use of AI coding tools.

The online retail giant said there had been a “trend of incidents” in recent months, characterised by a “high blast radius” and “Gen-AI assisted changes” among other factors, according to a briefing note for the meeting seen by the FT.