Jamie Workman @DroughtDoctor

Things most Americans agree on: Groceries cost too much. Tariffs suck and make no sense. Congress and Presidents shouldn’t trade stocks. The debt is a mess. The border should be secure, but legal immigration is good. Endless wars are stupid, especially ones that nobody wants and have never been explained. Americans are exhausted. AI is like my new best friend that also might be trying to take my job, my ability to think for myself, and my humanity in the process. Yo like I love you, but WTF, but I still love you. Diversity is actually awesome! The opposite is boring AF. Canadians are super fucking cool. Mexicans are chill. Putin isn’t a good guy looking out for America’s best interest. Rocky IV and Miracle are great movies. Good neighbors are a blessing. Freedom of religion and coexistence without having to blow each other up is probably a good idea. We all question, are we alone in the universe? We all fuck up along the way. Epstein didn’t hang himself. The Trumps and Epstein were best friends for decades. It’s like Bert trying to tell us Ernie was just an acquaintance in the same social scene on Sesame Street back in the day. The Cowboys suck. Go Birds! Things we’re told to fight about: Me. Laptop. Vaccines. Transgenders in sports. Pronouns. That’s the joke.

@MCCCANM Agree. 💯 Pete Hegseth is a clear and present danger to our troops and an embarrassment to our country.

Trump now finds himself in an entirely new situation with the War in Iran. He doesn't hold the cards. He has no notable leverage. And he can't simply declare bankruptcy for the seventh time and move on. And it shows. Donald Trump is not a statesman. He is not a diplomat. And I think, in many ways, this is what endeared him initially to many of his voters. He was businessman that accumulated billions of dollars of personal wealth through casino's, real estate, television, golf courses, and a multitude of endeavors. You can say what you will, but at the end of the day, you don't accrue a net worth well beyond a billion, or even hundreds of millions of dollars, without being "successful", so let's put that partisan argument to the side for now. But all throughout Trump's life, he's held the upper hand. He grew up wealthy. He received significant financial assistance from his father. And he had an effectively unlimited financial safety net in the event of failure. These are not points meant to be political hits, nor are they able to be refuted. They are simply the facts. Reality. As a result, Donald Trump always had the leverage. He was a trust fund baby. Again, this is simply the truth. It is reported that Fred Trump left his children around a billion dollars when he passed away in 1999. Trust me, if you know beyond a shadow of a doubt you are set for life regardless, you live life differently. What this means is that Donald Trump, throughout his business career which WAS hyper-successful, never HAD to succeed. He could also walk away if a deal was not in his favor. He, by definition, always held the cards. Generational wealth. And don't get me wrong, President Trump was savvy in his exploitation of this reality. You'd be a fool to enter a deal you didn't think was highly beneficial to you if you didn't have to make a gamble. That'd be stupid. In every transaction, every business dealing, it was either in his favor, or he walked. Because. He. Could. And when business endeavors failed to pan out? Bankruptcy could be declared. Again, save me the partisan takes, Donald Trump declared bankruptcies on his businesses six times. And he was RIGHT to do so. That's the correct financial decision... but it's an off-ramp. A quick fix. These same realities - holding all the cards, being able to walk away, having a legal escape valve - do not exist in the quagmire he finds himself in with the Iran War. The reality facing Donald Trump is one that he has never had to navigate before. Iran does not care that he is wealthy. It's irrelevant. Trump can't simply walk away because Iran would retain control of the Strait of Hormuz and it would destroy Trump's legacy. There is no emergency "bankruptcy-equivalent" escape valve here. Now, Donald Trump has to sit on the other side of the table at a time when the stakes are the highest they have ever been in his entire life. No training wheels. No safety net. Trump's been thrown right into the deep end with perhaps the most savvy negotiators in the world. President Trump holds effectively zero leverage with Iran. There is not a modicum of domestic American support for this war. It was never sold to the American people. Many see this as Israel's war that is not "putting America first". The goals and objectives have changed by the day. For this reason, alongside the unlikely chance of success in the first place, a large-scale ground invasion is not a serious suggestion being put for by anyone with an above room temperature IQ. Iran holds insurmountable "escalation dominance". If the United States targets Iran's energy infrastructure? Iran will retaliate massively across the Gulf. GCC countries have already made it abundantly clear to Trump that they fear Iran. That they don't trust the US-bought military equipment to protect their infrastructure or civilians. Iran can cut undersea cables. Iran could close the Bab al-Mandeb Strait and further cripple maritime shipping. Anything the US can do to hurt Iran, Iran can do tenfold to hurt the global economy. Reopen the Strait of Hormuz by force? We tried that under Operation Freedom, and it was so ridiculous and stupid that it was canceled within 48 hours. Some are suggesting we try again, but seem to entirely misunderstand reality (as they have throughout the entire conflict). What? Is the United States supposed to effectively occupy the Strait of Hormuz until the end of time? How many vessels per day would be able to navigate the Strait of Hormuz with US naval escorts? What would the costs of this be? Can we adequately protect our sailors? Why wouldn't Iran, again, utilize their escalation dominance and shut down the Bab al-Mandeb or strike Gulf infrastructure? It. Doesn't Work. The unfortunate reality is that President Trump holds no cards. He has no meaningful leverage. His ONLY option is making concessions at the negotiating table... Is this something Trump is even capable of navigating in the first place though? A President, one who has made perhaps the gravest mistake in the history of American foreign policy, one who has never experienced these constraints before, one who has a litany of allies ready to turn their backs on him the second he capitulates... A man who's entire legacy will not be, "Trump the Businessman", nor will it be "Trump the President". It will eternally become, "Trump the Failure". But it's his only choice. The Iran Hawks and Israeli Lobby that surrounds him, and they do, are prepared to claw him to shreds on Fox News and Newsmax. We saw this exact situation play out just this past weekend when initial terms of a potential Memorandum of Understanding was leaked. His so called "allies" in the United States turned their back on him immediately, leaving him with almost nobody remaining. Not after the Epstein Files. Not after this Iran War debacle. Donald Trump now finds himself in an entirely unfamiliar situation. He doesn't hold the cards. He has no escape valve. And there is no realistic scenario where he can credibly claim victory... The only path forward is the one that will permanently destroy his legacy. But it's the only way to end this war.

Over at Substack, @JoshEakle asks: "It's 2026, and I have yet to see an anti-almond farm protest."

x.com/i/article/2056…

@Scaramucci “They voted Biden out.” They did? When? Who’s “they”? And you’re talking politics on Bloomberg? I get the sentiment but please keep some accuracy…

@SketchesbyBoze Blazes, that’s a good idea, and if we say yes you will want to say yes and he said yes and I want yes.

This is by far the smartest , and most honest take I have seen coming out from our elected officials in Congress. Kudos to Senator @timkaine for telling the truth:

There’s no overstating how extraordinary this Atlantic article is, given the author and the outlet. As a reminder Bob Kagan is: - The co-founder of Project for the New American Century, probably the single most imperialist Think Tank in Washington (which is quite a feat) - A man who spent his entire life advocating for American military interventions, especially in the Middle East, and a vocal advocate of the Iraq war. He started advocating for intervention in Iraq before 9/11, which speaks for itself... - The husband of Victoria Nuland, an extremely hawkish former senior U.S. official (a key architect of U.S. policy in Ukraine, with the consequences we all witness today) - The brother of Frederick Kagan, one of the key architects of the Iraq surge In other words, we ain’t exactly looking at some sort of anti-imperialist peacenik. This is quite literally the guy Dick Cheney called when he needed a pep talk. And the man is writing in The Atlantic, the most reliably pro-war mainstream media outlet in the U.S. (also quite a feat). So when HE writes that the U.S. “suffered a total defeat” in Iran that has no precedent in U.S. history and can “neither be repaired nor ignored,” it’s the functional equivalent of Ronald McDonald telling you the burgers aren’t great: it means the burgers really, really aren't great. Extraordinarily (and somewhat worryingly, for me), his arguments for why this is such a defeat are virtually the same as those I laid out in my article “The First Multipolar War” last month (open.substack.com/pub/arnaudbert…). Here they are 👇 1) Vietnam/Afghanistan were survivable, this isn't He agrees that this war - and the U.S. defeat - is fundamentally different in nature from previous U.S. interventions. Where I wrote that the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan didn’t change the equation much in terms of power dynamics (“in the grand scheme of things, the giant walked away with little more than a bruised ego”), Kagan writes that “the defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly but did not do lasting damage to America's overall position in the world.” And when I wrote that “it’s painfully obvious that the Iran war is of a qualitatively different nature” from these, he writes that “defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character.” Same point. 2) Iran will never relinquish Hormuz and uses it as selective leverage When I wrote that Iran has turned “freedom of navigation” on its head by establishing “a permission-based regime” through the Strait of Hormuz, Kagan arrives at the same conclusion: “Iran will be able not only to demand tolls for passage, but to limit transit to those nations with which it has good relations.” He also agrees that “Iran has no interest in returning to the status quo ante,” when I myself cited Iran’s parliament speaker Ghalibaf in my article, saying: “The Strait of Hormuz situation won’t return to its pre-war status.” Same point and virtually the same words. 3) Gulf states will have to accommodate Iran He agrees that most Gulf states will have no choice but to accommodate Iran, effectively making Iran into a, if not THE, dominant regional power. Kagan writes “the United States will have proved itself a paper tiger, forcing the Gulf and other Arab states to accommodate Iran.” On my end, I wrote that “the Gulf monarchies will eventually have to choose between two security propositions. One where they stay aligned with a distant superpower that [can’t protect them]. The other proposition being: make peace with the regional power that just proved it can hit [them] whenever it wants.” Which is not much of a choice… 4) Military impossibility to reopen Hormuz Kagan writes that “if the United States with its mighty Navy can't or won't open the strait, no coalition of forces with just a fraction of the Americans' capability will be able to, either.” On my end, in my article I cited Germany’s defense minister Boris Pistorius: “What does Trump expect a handful of European frigates to do that the powerful US Navy cannot?” The exact same argument. 5) Global chain reaction Kagan agrees that this is a global strategic failure that fundamentally changes the U.S.’s position in the world. As he puts it: “America's once-dominant position in the Gulf is just the first of many casualties… America's allies in East Asia and Europe must wonder about American staying power in the event of future conflicts.” You’ll have guessed it, I wrote essentially the same thing: “Think about what it says if you’re Saudi Arabia, quietly watching your American-built defenses fail to protect your own refineries. Or any European country now facing the worst energy shock since 1973, caused not by your enemy but by your ally, and realizing that said ‘ally,’ supposedly in charge of ‘protecting’ you, couldn’t even protect Israel’s most strategic sites - when it’s the country with which it’s joined at the hip. I’m not even speaking about China or Russia who are seeing their worldview being validated on almost every axis simultaneously.” 6) Weapons stocks depleted, credibility shattered Kagan: “just a few weeks of war with a second-rank power have reduced American weapons stocks to perilously low levels, with no quick remedy in sight.” Me: “America’s most advanced weapons systems are much more vulnerable than previously thought - not theoretically, but in actual combat.” Kagan: “America's allies… must wonder about American staying power in the event of future conflicts.” Me: “The U.S. security guarantee has been empirically falsified in real time.” ----------- So, yup, Bob Kagan and I agree on nearly everything. I need a shower 🤢 Reassuringly though, we still differ on a few fundamental aspects. First of all, arguably the most important one, the moral aspect. In typical neocon fashion, his article contains not a word about the human cost of this war - not the 165 schoolgirls, not the devastation inflicted on Iranians during 37 days of bombing, not the toll this war is taking on the entire world through its devastating economic consequences (the economic devastation on ordinary people worldwide is referenced only as a political problem for Trump). For him, this is purely a strategic chess problem, morality and people don’t figure in his mental map. For me, the moral bankruptcy of this war isn't separate from the strategic failure - it is the strategic failure. Much like Gaza can only be a failure because of its sheer abjectness. Secondly, there is not an instant of reflection in the article on how we got there. Which is unsurprising because he personally, alongside his wife, his brother, and every co-signatory of every PNAC letter, spent a generation pushing for exactly this kind of confrontation. The man spend 30 years advocating for military dominance in the Middle East and hostility towards Iran, thereby forging them as an adversary and facilitating this very war that he now says has “checkmated” America. I know introspection has never been the neocon forte but at some point you have to stop setting houses on fire and then writing op-eds about how surprising the smoke is. Last but not least, we differ on what should be done. This is the funniest part of Kagan’s article - showing that the man is decidedly beyond salvation. On one hand he calls this a “checkmate” by Iran, and a U.S. defeat that can “neither be repaired nor ignored,” yet an the other hand his solution for it is… surprise, surprise… a bigger war still! He writes that what’s to be done is “engage in a full-scale ground and naval war to remove the current Iranian regime, and then to occupy Iran until a new government can take hold.” The arsonist's solution to the fire is a bigger fire ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ For my end, this was the conclusion of my previous article: "There is almost a Greek tragedy quality to U.S. actions lately where every move taken to escape one’s fate becomes the mechanism that delivers it. The U.S. went to war to reassert dominance - and proved it could no longer dominate. It demanded allies send warships - and revealed it had no real allies. It waged forty years of maximum pressure to break Iran before this moment came - and instead forged the very adversary now capable of meeting it. It started the war in part to have additional leverage over China - and handed the world the spectacle of begging China for help. The prophecy was multipolarity. Every American action to prevent it reveals it instead." I wouldn’t change a word. The only thing that's changed since I wrote it is that even the arsonists now smell the smoke. Src for the Atlantic article: theatlantic.com/international/…

“When people stop reading carefully, stop doing their own research, stop arguing things out, the skills that produce knowledge in the first place start to atrophy.” True. I hope this was written by Adriano, not his co-author!

AdrianoFeria.eth 🦇🔊 🛡️ @AdrianoFeria

a month ago

medium.com/@adriano.feria…

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Harvard, apparently, is about to adopt a new policy to combat grade inflation. I devised my own anti–grade inflation policy 25 years ago. I’ve shared it with provosts and deans, to no avail. Here it is: The Muñoz Plan Against Grade Inflation The plan has three key components:

@JayLund113 @StatisticUrban After that the law of diminishing ROI kicks in.

A River Runs Through It is a cinematic masterpiece. The older I get, the more I appreciate this scene. “And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding.” x.com/Sergiofordy/st…

Tim Heidecker’s first Infowars Parody for The Onion is too good. 10/10

@_The_Prophet__ Here’s the deeper truth: the argument in your post could have been written at any time between 1865 and 1965.

One of those rare posts that rocks your world because it’s so quietly true that you wonder how you and all your teachers could have ignored it so long.

Sama Hoole @SamaHoole

2 months ago

The school textbooks tell you the settlers crossed the Atlantic for religious freedom. Some of them did, partly. What the textbooks leave out is the thing that sits in the actual letters, in the sailors' accounts, in the merchant pamphlets circulating in English ports from the

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@TerryMoran Terry, This is all wonderful and accurate, but I remember a young legal journalist who helped Thomas ascend to his by praising him and insulating him from criticism arguing: “He’s no shill.” We live and learn, hey?

Joe Rogan has brought conspiracy thinking to scale perhaps more than anyone. It's totally unprincipled. It's getting people killed. And yet he thinks he's just playing a game.

@SketchesbyBoze Go read Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall and Bring out the Bodies if you haven’t already