The Power Of Positive Thinking

Other Places Aren't Real

Awhile back I spent a month in Sicily. I'm not completely stupid. I travel a fair amount. I look at maps a lot (many people never do anymore). I have seen that big blob at the toe of the boot. Still, stuck in my mind was the idea that "Sicily is an island off the coast of mainland Italy." And islands are pretty small, right?

Sicily is actually quite big! It's bigger than New Jersey!

Generally, no matter how much I consult maps, I have a hard time getting the sense of the scale of a place before I actually visit. The consistent thing is everywhere is bigger than I expect.

Iran is very big.

Will Hopefully Will

 Okay then

At Least The War Is Over

I used to "joke" that the plan was to occupy Iraq until we had killed everyone who wanted us to leave. Then we would leave.

That was a lot more coherent than whatever the plan is with Iran.

Droney

I am mildly curious about when the brain geniuses in the Pentagon - I am sure there are some - started planning for a future in which everybody had access to cheap military drones.

Morning

Slacker Saturday

Friday Night

Rock on.

Afternoon

I got nothin'

Lunch

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

Not book smart or street smart or brain smart, but...somethin'

Can't argue with that, chief.

The Strait of Hormuz is open for transit, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. “The only thing prohibiting transit in the straits right now is Iran shooting at shipping,” he said. “It is open for transit should Iran not do that.”

Mommy He Hit Me Back

"War with Iran is tricky because of the importance of the Strait of Hormuz" is something a precocious 9-year-old could tell you.

Top Trump officials acknowledged to lawmakers during recent classified briefings that they did not plan for the possibility of Iran closing the strait in response to strikes, according to three sources familiar with the closed-door session.

 

It Started A Little Earlier

I think 'freedom of the seas' began its erosion when Hegseth started playing pew pew pew with boats in the Caribbean.

Freedom of the seas changed the world. Now, the world is changing in ways that threaten to make the global waters less free. The ability of people, goods and money to safely traverse the oceans turbocharged trade and underpinned global prosperity. American naval dominance has long kept the maritime commons secure.

But the current mess in the Middle East — especially Iran’s assault on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz — is indicative of an era in which threats to freedom of the seas are increasing, chokepoints are growing more contested, and America’s ability to patrol the waves is in doubt.

I think we were doing a bit too much patrolling. 

Morning

Funky Friday

Thursday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

Get happy

Of The Willing?

Sure why not.

Speaking to Sky News' Wilfred Frost, Scott Bessent said: "My belief that as soon as it is militarily possible, the US Navy, perhaps with an international coalition, will be escorting vessels through."

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.

Surprise

Daniel Pipes will keep going until he finds a country that will greet us as liberators.

 

Iran is almost 4 times the size of California, is very mountainous, and has 90 million people. Even in the best possible "and then the people rose up!" fantasy, violent civil war follows (that would be fine with Pipes, probably, but that's not what he conveys here).

I think my general of theory of "American suburban brain has eroded any concept of place and distance" contributes to this. There could be a major riot half a mile from my house in Philadelphia and I likely would have no idea. If the people rise up and take Lancaster (80 miles away) it would mean nothing to me.

True

You don't have to hand it to her, of course, but Lindsey (like many who seek powerful positions in government) is basically a cowardly serial killer.

Also applies to that person whose brand is "genocide is bad" but who seems to like genocide, actually.

Morning

 TACO Tuesday

Happy Hour

Get happy

For what, we ask, is life without a touch of Poetry in it?

Unlikely

I suspect it will be easier to pry Trump out of office than Miller, but we can hope!

Most personnel don't matter all that much, but Miller, sadly, does. 

Endgame

I'd like to propose that Iran agrees to not building nukes, and in exchange we give them Lindsey Graham to bring to justice.

And I'd Gladly Stand Up

These fucking people.

Oh No Is Biden Trump Very Disappointed In Israel

This is bullshit, of course. I am sure Israel has done everything with the US's blessing.

Israel's strikes on 30 Iranian fuel depots Saturday went far beyond what the U.S. expected when Israel notified it in advance, sparking the first significant disagreement between the allies since the war began eight days ago, according to a U.S. official, Israeli official and a source with knowledge.

It's mildly notable, if not very important, that they think that message should be out there.

The only way it might be slightly true is that Mr. Deals and the gang do have a problem with basic cause and effect, because they are idiots who understand nothing. I am sure it never occurred to them hat blowing up a bunch of oil assets might cause a toxic hell rain. Or lead to an oil price spike.

Not that I think they care about the toxic hell rain and its consequences, precisely, but the optics aren't great!

Line Go Down

I've said from the beginning of Trump II that I root for stock market crashes. It's one of the few things that causes him to change course (not always for the better). As stock prices partially reflect expectations (right or wrong), it's also a line that can go down and then go back up again without causing/reflecting too much long-term damage.

Morning

Magical Monday.

Seems Bad

We regularly have various local water near-emergencies which never quite come to pass. Maybe this will be the one!

Don't Invite The Vampire In

The complex relationships that diaspora communities have with countries they have fled are above my pay grade, but "don't ask Donald Trump to liberate your country" is a pretty good rule of thumb.

Pressure

Repeating myself, as I do occasionally, but members of Congress receive constant pressure from bad people who write big checks, along with the general constant hum of the malign groupthink of DC professional Dems (foreign policy wing, especially). I don’t think yelling at them on my blog achieves all that much, but nor should you worry that my criticisms are going to swing elections the wrong way.

And quite often I think they are wrong both on policy and politics. Other people will see them supporting Donald Trump's catastrophic slaughter whether or not I point it out.

I didn’t make Jack Reed say that shit on CNN. If they don't want anyone to know about it, they can stop saying it. Maybe even stop doing it!

And Now

Several prominent Democrats went with "well this isn't good but we probably have no choice but to give our Troops more money now" last week and I am wondering is anything will dissuade them.

Nobody forced that out of them, either. They were eager to say it.

Even including this:

SIDNER: Will you vote to authorize this war?

REED: I will vote to invoke the War Powers Act, which would give the president 30 days to terminate the operation, except for activities defending the state of Israel, which is critical to our reliance and alliance on Israel.

Israel is a partner (senior or junior, you can argue) in this! This is their "defense" strategy!

Morning

Sunday funday

How Are Things In Venezuela

The usual suspects have been agitating for "regime change" in Venezuela for years. Now that it's happened, have any of them followed up? Checked in to see if Venezuela has achieved greater freeance and peeance? Or anything?

My broader point is that all of the "humanitarian interventionists," who always have a little list of "bad guys" who need to go, but not these other bad guys for some reason (they fund the think tank, usually), push for these things to happen. Then, when they do, they just stop caring.

Sure Why Not

Maybe it stops as soon as everybody agrees Trump WINS and Iran LOSES because they are LOSERS.

Life In The Cuck Chair

It takes all kinds.

WASHINGTON — Bryon Noem‘s family members are hoping he finally leaves his wife, embattled Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, after the ultimate “humiliation” from her alleged affair with a top adviser — but fear he’ll continue to stay in his marriage due to his Christian faith and commitment to his vows.

Members of the extended family of Bryon Noem told The Post on Friday that the South Dakota businessman has long felt it was his religious duty to stand behind his wife — even as the very public scandal rocks their marriage.

Insurance

The thing about insurance is it doesn't actually bring people back from the dead, though I understand why this wouldn't occur to the Trumpers.

I don't doubt that some shipping Cos might be thrilled to take that "risk" for a guaranteed payoff for themselves, but that doesn't mean they'll find many takers.

For commercial seafarers like Salgado, there’s little President Donald Trump could say right now that would convince them to sail through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump has promised to provide government-backed insurance policies and naval escorts to keep ships moving. But threats from Iran to attack any ships in the region outweigh the promises of support.

“As long as they keep firing rockets or drones to merchant vessels, this unsafe feeling will remain there,” he told CNN from a tanker in the Persian Gulf.

Morning

Slacker Saturday

Sure Why Not

If there wasn't so much death involved, we could laugh at Trump's habit of creating problems and then trying to fix them. T

he Trump administration on Friday announced a $20 billion reinsurance program for oil tankers and other maritime traffic in an effort to get vessels moving through the Strait of Hormuz.

Seems Bad

Especially with Hegseth's view that logistics planning is for pussies.

SCOOP: The Army in recent days canceled a training exercise for the headquarters element of the 82nd Airborne Division, fueling speculation among soldiers that they may be called upon for a still undefined mission as the war with Iran widens.

— Dan Lamothe (@DanLamothe) March 6, 2026

Not just for that reason, of course.

The Art Of War

It's all about logistics (both for the actual military and at home).

Donald Trump’s decision not to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve drained by his predecessor Joe Biden has left consumers exposed to an oil price shock following US and Israeli attacks on Iran, analysts have warned.   

... 

The reserve currently contains 415mn barrels of oil, or about 20 days of total US consumption — well below its 714mn-barrel capacity. Drawing down too much of the oil too quickly could damage the salt caverns holding it, say experts. It would cost more than $20bn to refill, according to the US Department of Energy.

Reassuring

At least there is a lot of clarity about why this is necessary.

Asked whether Americans should be worried about retaliatory attacks at home, Trump acknowledges the possibility. “I guess,” he says. “But I think they’re worried about that all the time. We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die."

Later, Assholes

Never posted about this positive news from Tuesday.

North Carolina Democrats who’ve crossed the aisle to vote with Republicans since Donald Trump returned to office were handed resounding defeats last night in the state’s early, benchmark primary, the Charlotte Observer reports.

At least four Democrats who supported measures to ban trans student-athletes from play, support ICE, and declare a gender binary in line with the president’s demonization of the LGBTQ+ community went down to defeat, some by extraordinary margins for incumbent lawmakers.

These are state, not national, Dems, but I do think the incredibly disheartening thing about 2025 versus 2017 was that "siding with Donald Trump is bad, probably" was the CW in 2017, while "the American people are demanding that we be more like Donald Trump and try to work with him" was the initial consensus in 2025.

Sure he won the popular vote this time but, my brothers in Christ, could you not understand that he was historically unpopular when he started office? And that likelihood of Donald Trump becoming more popular was not very high?

(Gallup approval ratings)

Says It All

The interview captures that Congressman Greg Landsman (D-OH) is too stupid to tie his shoes, but he is just expressing badly the basic reasoning of decades of justifications for every stupid Middle-East-and-adjacent (Libya) military adventure.

And the subheading is nicely done.

The other part (in the interview) is a repeat of the basic Sensible pundit view from the Bush era which was,  "Do I trust George Bush not to fuck this up? Certainly. not. But we should do it anyway, you traitorous hippie."  Applied to Trump now, of course.

I don't think the too much Dem support (any support is too much, you can argue about how much there is, actual and obscured) for this has much to do with electoral considerations. But, as was the case in the Iraq era, the independents and Republicans who might vote for Democrats are the ones who are against this shit.

And, unlike then, this shit is already not popular.

Sure Why Not

 This is what you do on the school bus when you are 9.

“We were in the clothes we’d been wearing for like 24 hours,” Kappy says. “We get on this bus, and it’s a couple-hour bus ride and people were kind of leaning on their spouse’s shoulder and falling asleep. And this idiot starts walking up and down the bus with his camera and anyone who fell asleep, he would put his finger in their nose and take a picture.”

“I said [to myself, ‘If] that idiot comes near me when I fall asleep, I’m going to punch him,’” Kappy told us. “And I said to Dave: ‘This is a U.S. congressman?’”

That congressman? Markwayne Mullin.

An annoying 9. 

Morning

Funky Fridays.

Happy Hour

Get happy

Director Of Homeland Security

Markwayne flashback.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said he does not wear a seatbelt while driving in Washington, D.C., lest doing so prevent him from acting quickly in case he’s carjacked.

Why are these tough guys always so scared, and what does he imagine "acting quickly" would involve (brave Sir Mullin, I expect).

Does She Get Her Old Face Back

The replacements are almost always worse, but at least we can laugh for 5 minutes.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, already frustrated with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, was incensed by her performance this week during congressional hearings and is considering firing her, lawmakers and people familiar with the discussions tell NBC News.

Never blame The Boss.

 

Sen. John Kennedy tells us President Trump called him after DHS Sec Noem testified that the President signed off on her $200 million ad campaign in her contentious hearing. “Put it this way, his recollection and her recollection are different.”

— Ryan Nobles (@ryanobles.bsky.social) March 5, 2026 at 3:38 PM

...already!

A Perfect Job For Kid Rock

I actually appreciate the directness. "We" usually obscure this stuff.

President Trump told Axios in an interview Thursday that he needs to be personally involved in selecting Iran's next leader — just as he was in Venezuela.

Sure Why Not

I think #5 makes him more pro-trans rights than Gavin Newsom.

Not Just Being Snarky

You cannot get the Dems to actually oppose a war in a way that matters. And they truly believe that "the war is bad, but we gotta support droney I mean the troops" is very clever stuff.

The Schumer Special

Give Dem senators a vote to oppose the war then have a bunch of them support paying for the war they pretend not to support.

Not sure who is impressed by "I voted against it before I voted for it."

Morning

Once again

Happy Hour

Get happy

Eeeny Meeny Miny

Lunch

Very busy with things. Life is complicated sometimes.

21%

MAHA

Spartanburg County in South Carolina is ground zero for the largest measles outbreak since 2000. One school has a vaccination rate of 21 percent.

There Is No Place For Fringe Extremists In The Democratic Party

Anyone who doesn’t support abolishing ICE is bringing the party down 

Morning

Wacky Wednesday

Happy Hour

Get happy

Afternoon

Busy with life stuff (actually, driving, which you know how much I love).

Forever War

I am not going to pretend to know anything about this stuff, but shooting down $20K drines with $5 million missiles probably can't keep going for ever.

Today Is The Day Donald Trump Became President

This disaster is, in part, because every time Donald Trump has blown something up, hebhas turned on the TV and received little but praise.

Surrender

It is important to understand that all of the big institutions that caved to Trump's absurd demands instantly did so because they were happy to.

And because they did, things got as bad as they have (in part).

Use Your Power

Good to see.

The New York attorney general’s office has ordered a major Manhattan hospital to resume providing puberty-blocking medication and hormone treatments to transgender adolescents, just two weeks after the hospital had stopped doing so.

The hospital, NYU Langone Health, had closed its Transgender Youth Health Program after the federal government threatened to pull federal funding from hospitals that provided gender-transition treatments for adolescents. For more than a year, the Trump administration has sought to prevent hospitals from helping adolescents transition, asserting that many of the children are impressionable and confused and that the medical treatments maim and sterilize them. In response, many clinics and hospitals in the United States have scaled back or stopped providing gender-related treatments to children.

Morning

Taco Tuesday

Happy Hour

Get happy

Your Boss Is Already Bored

Good luck! To the rest of us, too.

Inside the Pentagon, and among some members of the Trump administration, there was deepening concern Sunday that the Iran conflict could spiral out of control, said people familiar with the situation.

“The mood here is intense and paranoid,” one person said.

There is anxiety among senior leaders that the fighting will extend for weeks, further stressing limited U.S. air defense stockpiles, people familiar with the situation said.

Bored Now

Donald must read this very fine blog

Humiliation Kink

Probably the most pathetic major country leader.

Whatever, Man

The Iraq war rationale shifted - and pundits made up their own - but not hourly.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said today that the US strikes on Iran is not meant to be “regime change,” while he acknowledged that the leadership in the country has changed.

“This is not a so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change and the world is better off for it,” Hegseth said.

President Donald Trump has, however, pushed for regime change.

Bored Now

Trump will get increasing frustrated about all of this as it spirals out of control and get very mad that he can't unshit the bed .

I don’t know what happens next.

Is Mick Shrimpton Available

Morning

Merry Monday

Sunday Night

Enjoy

Sunny Sunday Afternoon

21%

You can - and we have, somewhat, lately - get more than 21% on the side of infectious diseases. 

I suspect the view of the 21% will be disproportionately represented in our finest news outlets, though perhaps not quite as much as usual.

Pew Pew Pew

War does, of course, have serious consequences.

Few pretend they think of Palestinians as anything other than subhuman, but now that we are back, sort of, sometimes, in the peeance and freeance game...

Gravitas

The entire Discourse leading up to the Iraq war was just theater, of course. The war was inevitable and the Decider had already Decided.

Still "we" at least took, or pretended to take, the view that going to war was a serious endeavor with serious consequences.

 

A lot of that was, in part, self-important people imagining that newspaper columnists were the real protagonists of history. This was serious because they were serious people writing serious columns about serious things. 

Still it was seen as serious.

Decades later, it is all just pew pew pew.

Morning

Sunday funday