So no mention of ground forces in spite of the leaks all day on it. Which means it’s more likely. Still believe all of this is for show, the strikes today and the increase in forces tell the real story. Back to waiting and watching.

I would as well Also an underappreciated aspect of this in terms of public perception is that this isn't really an integrated campaign; the IAF bombs some stuff, the US also bombs some other stuff and generally tries to deconflict and maybe give them gas, but there's no common planning

Oil market verdict on Trump’s Iran War address:

It’s kinda funny that Canada has a left-NIMBY Green Party that gets 1% of the vote and is tied with the conservatives for being the least supportive of high speed rail. very cool

As far as I can tell, the theory of victory here is that if you drop a certain number of bombs, you win the game and go to the victory screen where confetti drops. If there is anything more sophisticated than that, I haven't detected it.

I really do not think people understand that the *explicit theory of victory* as openly articulated by the United States government is that we are just going to remain on a wartime footing in the Persian Gulf and Levant for the foreseeable future.

I feel like Frederick Douglass and MLK Jr probably were woke pocket constitution guys

welp, this is gonna be a long year

yeah this really is covid redux

Also: does anyone have an explanation for the “two weeks” fixation? They must know it’s a joke now. Did one of them read an article that says “persuade people by predicting action in two weeks”? Did Trump write about it? It’s bizarre.

Anyone watching that speech has no idea whether Trump is escalating or deescalating the war with Iran. But to be fair, neither does he so🤷‍♂️.

i've used the metaphor of the global economy as a plane before. the engines have been out for a while now and the houses through the windows are getting pretty large. we could still pull out of the dive, if we had skilled pilots at the controls. personally? I'd grab a parachute.

And of course the grim truth is we're all trapped in that same speeding car with Trump at the wheel too. Because 77.3m Americans, at the height of immature, decadent folly, decided it would be funny or perhaps profitable, to put a mad man at the wheel of the world's most powerful country, ever.

So if anything, I imagine there reaction is not, "LOL at this fool" but some degree of horror in realizing that they are crashing the global economy but the senile fool taking potshots at their house is too addled to even know that he is destroying himself. Trapped in a car with a madman.

Continue "until all objectives achieved" in the next "two to three weeks." So, suck on that wallstreet

"go to the strait and just take it!" [while my own, much larger navy cowers in the Indian Ocean because unlike me, my CNO knows what an anti-ship missile is]

Always hilarious that he thinks the 'millions' of barrels coming from Venezuela matter at all, blissfully unaware that this is a commodity regularly counted (in terms of annual consumption) in *billions* of barrels.

Bold choice with the war this badly underwater to go with, "I was proud to do it" about ripping up the Iran deal. Just charging in to take 100% ownership of this debacle.

I mean, I think the truth is worse and darker: Iran's leaders and the Iranian people find themselves essentially in the vice-grip of a mad god: Trump acts without reason or sense or moral concept, but he can at a whim inflict terrible death and suffering upon them and does so. More or less at random

Makes sense that this would be the legacy of Erik Kurilla, the recently departed CENTCOM commander who lashed CENTCOM up with Israel to an unprecedented degree—the whole second half of his career was about mowing the grass in a CT context in Iraq and Afghanistan

I'm not joking when I say CC is now an extension of the IDF worth noting this was done under Biden btw, not so much as a Biden/NSC directed initiative as it was CENTCOM doing Kwantung Army things while Lloyd Austin cluelessly stumbled through life

Kurt Gödel, in a draft letter from 1961: "A completely unfree society (i.e., one proceeding in everything by strict rules of "conformity") will, in its behavior, be either inconsistent or incomplete, i.e., unable to solve certain problems, perhaps of vital importance. ...

It’s actually possible to write headlines that don’t obscure who did what. Thanks, AP.

Over 70 percent reproduction is genuinely good for a social science. Econ has come leaps and bounds.

I learned two things tonight: President Trump has embraced the long definition of the US in the Vietnam War (19 years, not just 1965-1973) The President and the SecrWar are paraphrasing Curtis LeMay. I am no clearer about our true objectives or policies toward Iran.

This is truly what you get when you make a pea-brained Fox News host the Secretary of Defense.

Energy market so bad we're going to need to rediscover fire.

This is one of the things that really cries for a constitutional rebirth. Congress makes laws and the president executes them. He cannot have the power to assert discretion to just not. The whole system collapses into elected monarchy at that point.

Trump is dismantling the forest service, exempting projects from the endangered species act, destroying the department of education. These are based in statutes duly passed by Congress. If Trump has the right to unilaterally do this then “executive” means nothing.

Chinese elites do not agree on who may win from the war in Iran: econ.st/4dWCBvW Illustration: Chloe Cushman

ex army CI buddy of mine was literally like "oh yeah every time we have a meeting with israeli officials our security people would come in and sweep the place after cus they'd usually try to leave stuff, particularly if it was an unclass space"

These are not mutually exclusive outcomes. He can declare whatever and then invade Kharg. None of this is rational policy, after all. Hell, it's not even rational politics, or rational anything whatsoever.

only thing funnier than this being true is if politico is totally wrong and he actually invades Kharg

Two Iranian officials said Kharazi had been overseeing engagement with Pakistan for a possible meeting between Iranian officials and Vice President JD Vance. The officials said the targeting of Kharazi is being viewed as an attempt to derail diplomacy.-NYT

israel is intentionally doing whatever it can to frustrate american diplomacy

Maybe if the US basically does a purge of its political system or Europe becomes a nation state.

It’s the time of monsters and there’s no hero on the horizon.

So spare me the story that this isn’t just the same play as always which isn’t really hegemon behavior but more like potential rouge superpower but not led by overt idiots.

I’m not sure China wants hegemony rather than a sphere of influence or something else.

As Tooze pointed out in his own work, hegemony is something relatively new. Before we had the worlds Johnathan Schroeder described of free for all realism flowed by the imperial spheres of influence post Vienna.

@adamtooze.bsky.social has a list of five things China should do to gain hegemony. I agree with all of them and ideally would add a pledge to not use force against Taiwan. The problem is I’m not sure China wants to be a hegemon.

this continues Tooze's general thing of preferring the China in his head to the China of reality.

The thing about China is that it is the world's largest and most powerful dictatorship, and we should never forget that part.

The US removes sanctions on Venezuela’s Delcy Rodriguez ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actio...

This does have a "do as I say, or I'm going to shoot your dog" quality to it. www.ft.com/content/d304...

Doing the “Mission Accomplished” thing when you have literally accomplished nothing but delivering control of the world’s most important economy economic chokepoint to the country you just enraged

This is a defeat in a war we started! For no reason! Defeat doesn't even come close to describing this abject, abominable failure that has resulted in a ton of death and made the world a significantly worse place.

Hong Xiuquan, Heavenly King of the Kingdom of Great Peace, ca. 1850:

so again, while this more closely aligns with my thoughts and feelings, you have to question how deeply Graham holds any of his beliefs given last week he was talking genocide and a hard line on Israel, just says whatever, whenever energy