The New Coffee Room

@Tom-K said:

The Middle eastern neighbors are not unhappy with what Trump is doing.

I think this was true until Tuesday night. He’s left them sorta fucked.

And where are you?

@Tom-K said:

Now, if that was really going to happen, I haven't a clue. (And no one is even coming close to telling the truth about it.)

I'm confident it was happening. I think people misunderstand when Trump or Bibi say 'they were 2 weeks away from a bomb'. That doesn't mean they would have had a bomb in mid-march had we not attacked 2/28. It means they have enough enriched uranium at 60% that, whenever they made the decision to do so, they could further enrich it to 90% in two weeks time. (or however many weeks it was). I think that was generally true and had been for some time, and may still be true. Whatever damage the GBU-57 MOPs did last June, it didn't take out all their stockpiles.

@Tom-K said:

We are forgetting that the reason all of this is happening is to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear threat. Now, if that was really going to happen, I haven't a clue. (And no one is even coming close to telling the truth about it.) But if it actually was than this closing of the Strait of Hormuz is just a blip.

It's not clear we've done much about that other than delay it and make them even more determined. Solving that problem requires true regime change (you have to kill the king, not wound him). Trump clearly thought they'd do that, announced that as his goal even on the first day of the attacks. The problem is Trump doesn't seem to be wiling to pay the price required to do it, at least once he found out it wasn't going to come cheap.

@LuFins-Dad My take is a little different. I look at it more as Executive vs Legislative rather than Executive+Legislative vs individuals. Well before Trump I lamented that Congress long ago quit doing its job and deferred too much to the executive. The Trump years, especially now in the second term with lickspittle House leadership, have drilled that home to lots of people.

It's not clear anyone has or will learn from it. The GOP seems fine piling this much power onto Trump and even wishing he had more, and lamenting it when the courts rein him in. The left recognizes he has too much power, but I'm sure they will forget that lesson about 12:01 on January 20th of whatever year they take back the presidency.

Case in point, I made a similar point to this next door, trolling a bit no doubt, saying 'thank god Elizabeth Warren failed in her attempts to give the executive branch even more power'. I was referring to her attempt to require that all companies over $1B in revenue be licensed by a new department under Treasury and have that license be reviewable yearly. The legislation was going to loosely define that the license would require the company to take into account interests of 'all stakeholders', not just shareholders. Of course she envisioned someone like her wielding that power to make companies do what she wanted with pay, time off, abject discrimination (equity), environment, whatever. But imagine what the Trump administration (and crime family) would have done with such a lever?

The response was interesting... 'you can't blame Warren or what she tried to do for what Trump does or might have done'. I responded that yes, you must indeed evaluate all proposals to give the executive more power based on what some president you don't like might do with such power.

What the second Trump administration has brought home to me is how much our system of government assumes (and really requires) we have someone more mature and trustworthy in the office when it comes to emergency powers. I do believe we have too many emergency powers embedded in legislation, but be that as it may, our system of government will always require some such powers, since congress can't act quickly and sometimes we need to. The problem is the Executive has sole authority to decide whether the emergency condition obtains and such a decision doesn't seem to be reviewable by the courts. I suppose the answer is to require congress to affirm and reaffirm the emergency and the granting of powers every X days. But a lot of mischief can be done in those X days. A fine case in point was when Trump triggered tariffs on Switzerland based on a 'national emergency' because he didn't like the tone that one of their officials used with him.

@AndyD said:

Trump's started this war, he'd better have the guts to finish it.

I think that’s ultimately the problem. Bibi, for his own reasons, convinced Trump it would be easy and quick. Trump signed up for easy and quick and the pentagons plans for reopening the straight are probably complicated and long.

Not that the UK or USA actually need much oil from the area, but I feel very strongly about this defence of the free seas.

“Energy independence” is something of a myth (except in a blockade scenario). It’s not like we get to live in a world of $40 oil when the strait is closed. And the fact that a few American oil companies are raking it in is small consolation to your average Joe paying $5 at the gas pump.

That’s Mr. Bitch to you, pal.

@Doctor-Phibes said:

Scroll to 11:21 am...

That’s lame, she just feeds them. I was hoping she’d eat one or throw one out of the nest.

I think my son is in a really bad age group for this. He’s needing to choose a college major knowing that AI is about to change everything but only able to speculate as to how. But by the time he graduates college those changes will be in full swing.

Trump floats the idea of the US and Iran forming a ‘joint venture’ to collect the tolls together.

“We’re thinking of doing it as a joint venture,” the president told Karl, who shared Trump’s response on the social platform X. “It’s a way of securing it — also securing it from lots of other people. It’s a beautiful thing.”

https://thehill.com/policy/international/5821343-trump-us-iran-ceasefire-deal-joint-venture-strait-of-hormuz/

Land acknowledgements - we were spared these at UCSD and USC. UCLA was a short verbal one, Berkeley had a slide about it, and UBC is a giant continuous land acknowledgment with a small side business in education. O Canada!

They even had a segregated building just for natives that was a modern take on first (sic) nation design. And they had street signs in English and - not French - some lab-grown transliterated native language made up of Latin letters, typewriter symbols , and child-like drawings. It was all I could do not to ask ‘is this purely performative or is there even a single non-academic that uses this’. But I already knew the answer so I spared the boy the embarrassment. .

Jesus the mind virus is in full effect. I hope the boy doesn't choose to go there, I don't want to support this sort of discrimination financially.