With Trump a failure in the Red Sea in 2025 and now in the Persian Gulf in 2026, it's easy to imagine China pulling the trigger in Taiwan

China's Navy Tightening the Noose on Taiwan...

Good energy news

Russia Faces Spreading Fuel Shortages After Drones Pummel Refineries...

How do you spell Mamdani?

DC's Mandami Moment? Frontrunner for mayor is avowed Socialist...

 

... Janeese Lewis George, proudly affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America ...

Powell is still Fed chair

 

Study finds that female liberals believe words can harm, tend to be emotionally less stable, see themselves as victims, experience higher levels of anxiety and depression, support laws which make you stfu

... “People higher in the belief that words can harm tended to be younger, female, non-White, and politically liberal.”

... restricting speech feels like protection as opposed to censorship.

... mental health appears to influence political ideology more than political ideology influences mental health, with increases in psychological distress predicting a subsequent shift toward political liberalism. 

... the most empathic people support the least tolerant policies. ... 

More.

Dumbass Trump, who never paid the slightest attention to what's been happening in and to Ukraine, is surprised how easily Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz with drones

 

The Wall Street Journal, here:

... The strait has been a particular source of frustration. Before the U.S. went to war, Trump told his team that Iran’s government would likely capitulate before closing the strait, and that even if Tehran tried, the U.S. military could handle it, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Some of the president’s advisers were caught off guard that tanker traffic would grind to a halt so quickly after the bombing began, according to a person in contact with the White House. 

Trump has since marveled at the ease with which the strait was closed. A guy with a drone can shut it down, Trump has said to people, expressing belated irritation that the key waterway was so vulnerable. He has publicly oscillated between demanding support from allies to help open it and insisting that the U.S. doesn’t need or want military assistance. ... 

White House concerns about security threats have been heightened, aides said.

In recent weeks, for example, Trump and his team have noticed an increase in security. On a cloudless night in April at Mar-a-Lago, every umbrella was up on the patio in an unusual arrangement, guests said. Club members were told that there was an effort to limit drone visibility, a Mar-a-Lago member said. 

Rubio told others about standing outside his home at the military compound where he lives and watching a suspicious drone, administration officials said. Secret Service protection teams have expanded to carry weapons White House officials had never seen before. ...

 

In other words, this would mean Trump is going to cut and run from the Persian Gulf just like he cut and ran from the Red Sea on May 6, 2025

 Trump Tells Aides He’s Willing to End War Without Reopening Hormuz: Administration officials assess that forcing the waterway back open would mean extending the military mission

WASHINGTON—President Trump told aides he’s willing to end the U.S. military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, administration officials said, likely extending Tehran’s firm grip on the waterway and leaving a complex operation to reopen it for a later date.

In recent days, Trump and his aides assessed that a mission to pry open the chokepoint would push the conflict beyond his timeline of four to six weeks. He decided that the U.S. should achieve its main goals of hobbling Iran’s navy and its missile stocks and wind down current hostilities while pressuring Tehran diplomatically to resume the free flow of trade. If that fails, Washington would press allies in Europe and the Gulf to take the lead on reopening the strait, the officials said. ...

 

If we already won in Iran why is this still happening?

 

Iran Resumes Hanging Protesters

Wall Street Journal

The Trump administration learned nothing from its fight to a draw with the Houthis last year

... Iran is still believed to have a vast stockpile of mines, cruise missiles on trucks and hundreds of undamaged boats in hidden facilities with deeply dug tunnels along the coast and on islands, said Farzin Nadimi, an expert on Iranian defenses at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“I think it will take weeks to reach a point where there can be safe operations in the strait,” he said. “Even then, a lot of the Iranian assets will survive.” ...

Houthi militants in Yemen, who are aligned with Iran, waged a two-month campaign last year with missiles, drones and unmanned boats against international shipping that parallels Iran’s closure of the strait. The U.S. struck more than 1,000 targets in Yemen, but never succeeded in halting Houthi attacks fully until the two sides declared a truce in May. ...

More. 

Senator Ron Johnson, who is implicated in Trump's fake elector scheme, is a fake conservative

 

Move To End Filibuster Now--Before Democrats Do

Sen. Ron Johnson, Wall St. Journal

You will not be any wiser for having read it

 

FLEX? Global Elite Give Up on Spelling and Grammar..

The best part was the professor who lamented Epstein's typos while he himself misused the word disinterest:

“It was nihilistic almost in its total disinterest in communicating,” Bessner said.  

China expected to expand submarine fleet to 80 by 2035, up to half nuclear-powered, from 60 now, more than half of which are diesel-powered

 

China Building Subs That Can Strike USA From Closer to Home, Navy Warns...

... Brookes cited a Pentagon projection that China’s submarine force will reach 80 vessels by 2035, about half of them nuclear-powered—up from the current estimated fleet of more than 60 subs, most of which are less capable diesel-powered vessels that have a shorter range of movement and must surface more frequently than nuclear-powered ones. This projection has appeared in past Pentagon annual reports on China’s military power. ...

The editor at large for The Wall Street Journal recoiled at the number of falsehoods in Trump's State of the Union address

 

How much will he ask for it?

 

Trump to Sell Economy During State of the Union Address

Meredith McGraw, WSJ

The U.S. state capitalist EV boondoggle comes to an end, shape-shifting automakers take well-deserved $50 billion hit

 

 Detroit Automakers Take $50 Billion Hit as EV Bubble Bursts

... Following years of investments into EV technology, the Detroit Big Three ... have announced more than $50 billion in combined write-downs.

EV sales fell more than 30% in the fourth quarter, after a $7,500 federal tax credit that had juiced U.S. sales expired in September. ... 

Automakers’ retreats and massive write-downs have come as Republican lawmakers abolished a lucrative federal tax credit for EVs last fall, while also doing away with federal fuel-efficiency mandates. Even with federal support, EV demand was below expectations. ...

Border Czar Tom Homan is so full of shit

 Tom Homan’s Bid for Minnesota Reset Begins With Series of Demands

MINNEAPOLIS—Tom Homan, the White House border czar, arrived here with a series of demands for Minnesota’s Democratic leaders. Topping the list: an agreement from them to turn over more immigrants from the state’s prisons and jails, people familiar with the matter said. ... Walz has said the premise of the demand is false. “They’re taking credit for people that we’ve had in jail for a long time,” he told reporters Sunday. “We always hand them over.”

Oh, so that's why Border Patrol was in front of Glam Doll Donuts on Saturday. They were just looking for inmates.

 

 

OMG, Walter Russell Mead for The Wall Street Journal is ENTERTAINED by the tyrant's show

I'm told the band on the Titanic played well right to the very end. 

 

Trump Captivates the Globe

Walter Russell Mead, Wall Street Journal

... It is not merely that his high-wire act supports and intensifies the drama and excitement that made him the dominant figure in American and then global politics for the past decade. It is also that his ability, real or perceived, to change the course of world politics on a whim increases his leverage at home and abroad. When a man can make war or peace, promote or block trade, make you rich or freeze you out, other people do what they can to stay on his good side. ... 

As usual Trump puts the cart before the horse: If you don't already have total access, you're not in charge

And you don't put protective tariffs on trade when you have nothing to protect.

 

“We’re in charge,” he told reporters. “We need total access. We need access to the oil and to other things in their country that allow us to rebuild their country.”

More. 

They're licking their chops over Venezuela's $17 trillion worth of crude oil

 

U.S. in Prime Position To Unlock Venezuela's Vast Oil Reserves

Eaton, et al., WSJ

In 2018 The Wall Street Journal was still defending China's admission into the WTO, today it pretends it wasn't part of that bipartisan folly

 Then: "The U.S. properly worked for China's inclusion".

Now: "An era of folly began in the new century. Leaders of both political parties supported China's entry into the World Trade Organization".

I can't wait for the Wall Street Journal to admit that America's decline actually began under Reagan forty years ago, not twenty-five, because at this rate I'll be dead before they do.