Author: philg

What could make us look weaker than going to Pakistan and negotiating with Iran as a peer?

by philg

Wall Street Journal, yesterday, “Iran Has Strong Cards Going Into U.S. Talks but Risks Overplaying Its Hand”:

The question now is whether Iranian leaders will overplay this critical lever at the planned meeting in Islamabad, Pakistan, with Vice President JD Vance by insisting on maximalist demands despite losing much of Iran’s military and industrial base during the war. This is something that President Trump, despite all his apparent eagerness to wind down the conflict, will likely find impossible to accept.

“From Tehran’s point of view, they think that they have Trump over a barrel. They think they have weaponized the world economy, have taken everything that America can throw at them, and came out standing,” said William Wechsler, director of Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council and a former senior Pentagon official. “Trump blinked first. Now, the Iranians won’t take a deal unless it is a deal in which Trump and Vance completely abandon U.S. national security interests in the Middle East.”

The playing field is clearly stacked in Iran’s favor after more than a month of warfare that involved a dozen nations in the region. This is largely because the crucial component of any negotiation—the time factor—now works for Tehran.

What could possibly make us look weaker and more pathetic than this? Maybe if the negotiations were held in the house in Pakistan where Osama bin-Laden resided and which at least some people in Pakistan had to know about?

I can’t figure out why we wouldn’t just keep disabling or destroying more assets of the Islamic Republic regime, e.g., oil production and electricity generation until either (1) they surrendered, or (2) they had so little industrial capability left that they couldn’t maintain significant military power. If we didn’t like high domestic oil prices we could simply reduce the U.S. oil market’s exposure to the world oil market, e.g., by limiting exports to whatever they were in January 2026. If the Europeans and Asians were unhappy about not being able to get oil through the Strait of Hormuz they would have been free to do something about that, e.g., send their own warships.

Until they started to decline, Rome never surrendered even after grievous battlefield losses, e.g., to Hannibal, and Rome wouldn’t negotiate with another power as a peer. They sent some low-level guys to Carthage to dictate terms for Carthage’s ultimate surrender, for example, not the equivalent of a vice president. And they didn’t call it a “negotiation”. Carthage was not their peer, nor their partner in peace, etc. Speaking of Rome… on the very day that J.D. Vance headed to Pakistan to surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran, plans for a triumphal arch in D.C. are unveiled:

Maybe we need a more muscular president? The NYT says that Kamala Harris remains available:

Loosely related…

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Why do Iranians who support the Islamic Republic regime stay in the U.S. and pay taxes to fund our military?

by philg

Here’s a guy whose profile says that he lives in San Francisco and works at Google. In other words, Iman Rahmati pays taxes to fund the U.S. military.

Iman Rahmati says “Every piece of international law, every moral code, every sign of dignity in a nation, in an army, has been broken by Trump, Netanyahu, and their minions. Bombing hospitals, schools, civilians, universities, infrastructure, factories, etc. The west has zero moral superiority from now on. International order is fractured and no nation has the guts standing up to them, well except the one that is right now.”

Iman (note that this means “faith in Allah” according to ChatGPT and is distinct from “Imam”) is upset that his alma mater was bombed, blaming Israel (the basis for saying that Israel did this vs. the U.S. is unclear):

As it happens, this university has been under EU sanctions since 2014 for its work in “ballistic missile production”:

Obviously, this isn’t going to change the opinion of the righteous Iranian immigrant to the U.S. regarding the legitimacy of the attack on his alma mater. Therefore, the question of why he would want to stay in the U.S. and pay taxes to support the bombing of his alma mater, as well as other targets in the Islamic Republic of Iran, remains a live one. If he is smart and productive enough to work at Google he could presumably transfer to a Google office in Canada (follow Barbra Streisand), the Islamic Republic of Great Britain, pro-Hamas Al-Andalus (Spain), or even work from home after returning to help defend his beloved home country.

There have to be tons more Iranians who are in a similar position. They support the Islamic Republic regime and live in the U.S. and thus pay taxes to help the U.S. military either (1) bring down the regime that they support, or (2) militarily cripple the regime that they support.

From the New York Post… “Niece, grandniece of slain notorious Iranian Gen. Soleimani arrested by ICE while enjoying lavish lifestyles in LA”:

The niece of slain Iranian terror mastermind Gen. Qasem Soleimani – who showcased her luxe LA lifestyle on Instagram while bashing the US as the “Great Satan” – and her daughter have been arrested by ICE agents, the State Department announced Saturday.

Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, who allegedly celebrated attacks on US soldiers and military bases, and her daughter Sarinasadat Hosseiny, have had their green cards revoked over their ties to the Iranian regime.

“While living in the United States, she promoted Iranian regime propaganda, celebrated attacks against American soldiers and military facilities in the Middle East, praised the new Iranian Supreme Leader, denounced America as the ‘Great Satan,’ and voiced her unflinching support for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designated terror organization,” according to a State Department letter confirming the Friday arrests.

Afshar, 47, entered the US in 2015 on a tourist visa, was granted asylum in 2019 and secured a green card in 2021 from the Biden administration.

She made at least four trips back to Iran since receiving her green card, the Department of Homeland Security said.

(This is a great argument for eliminating asylum-based immigration in the U.S. Our government bureaucrats aren’t capable of distinguishing between members of a purportedly oppressive government and those who are actually opponents of said government. This makes sense since few government workers speak or read Farsi, Arabic, or the other languages prevalent in countries from which migrants claim asylum. And none of our government workers have first-hand experience with current events in all of the world’s most violent and dysfunctional societies from which, bizarrely, we have decided to prioritize immigration (the door is closed, however, to folks from Japan, Switzerland, and Taiwan!).)

I can understand why someone would hate what the U.S. government, including the U.S. military, does. And I can understand why someone who was born in the U.S. would stay in the U.S. under those conditions (few other countries will accept migrants as we do). But I can’t understand why someone who is at least a dual citizen and who has the right to leave the U.S. at any time would choose instead to stay and help fund the U.S. government.

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Tiger Woods and Tesla

by philg

Our sort-of-neighbor Tiger Woods (he’s about 15 minutes from Abacoa (in Jupiter) on Jupiter Island (not in Jupiter)) is in the news lately for having come to grief in a Range Rover.

This reminds me of Why don’t heavy drinkers get Tesla FSD? (Tiger was charged with DUI, but denies having been drinking.)

The leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran preferred to gather in person and take the risk of being killed by a bomb (which they were, on February 28, 2026) rather than use Microsoft Teams. Maybe the same logic can be used to explain Tiger Woods and Britney Spears refusing to adopt the Tesla FSD lifestyle. I.e., Teslas are so ugly and uncool (because of the insufferable people who’ve historically owned them) that people would rather be arrested for DUI than be seen in a Tesla.

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Jeffrey Epstein was at the heart of the decision to fight Iran and also at the heart of the decision to stop fighting Iran?

by philg

“AOC says Trump is willing to ‘risk world war’ by using Iran attack as Epstein files distraction” (Independent, March 5, 2026):

New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has slammed President Donald Trump over the joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran, accusing him of “risking world war” to distract from the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

“And every time he’s [used the U.S. military], it has been consistent with a spike or a revelation in what is happening with the Epstein files. I don’t think that that coincidence is something to dismiss off the cuff. I think that he feels existentially tied to it.”

Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who spearheaded the passage of the Act last year, posted on X Sunday afternoon: “PSA: Bombing a country on the other side of the globe won’t make the Epstein files go away, any more than the Dow going above 50,000 will.”

A Democrat from Oregon:

If bombing Iran distracted people from digging into the Epstein files, how does walking away and leaving the Islamic Republic of Iran with intact oil industry, electric power plants, and everything else it needs to rebuild its weapons factories and military help distract people from digging into the Emmanuel Goldstein-Trump connection?

Separately, I’ve lost track of how people explain that the Biden-Harris administration, with exclusive and complete access to all Epstein files for four years, wasn’t able to find anything regarding Donald Trump that was worth leaking to the press. Friends from and in Maskachusetts believe, as a matter of established and verified fact, that Donald Trump, as part of his association with Jeffrey Epstein, either (1) raped a 13-year-old girl, (2) killed a 12- or 13-year-old girl, or some combination of the two. Why wouldn’t the Democrat-run Biden administration have been motivated to release all of the evidence related to these kinds of crimes by a political opponent?

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Compare estimates of white male economic importance from TV viewers, streamers, and readers?

by philg

I often ask folks outside of Florida whose primary source of news is from New York-based media for their estimate of how often a typical house in coastal South Florida is hit by a major hurricane. The estimates range from between 1 and 5 years. (The historical prevalence if more like every 50+ years; Palm Beach County was last hit in 1949 and Tampa has gone more than 100 years (since 1921).)

While watching an NCAA Final Four game with our local basketball fans I observed almost no white males in the commercials. There was an occasional white female with a Black sex partner (spouse or “date”). There was an NCAA house ad in which a fictitious college classroom was presented and there were a few white male students learning from the wise (Black) professor. The overwhelming number of people presented as business executives or valuable consumers, however, appeared to be either Black or Hispanic. A viewer might easily imagine that a restaurant, for example, would be able to prosper without any white male customers and, certainly, any business could be run without any white male employees.

I wonder if this suggests a good subject for a sociology or social psychology master’s thesis:

Compare the estimates of white male economic importance in the U.S. made by the following groups of people: (1) those who watch broadcast TV with commercials, (2) those who watch streaming services such as Netflix, and (3) those who neither watch TV nor stream (all four of them in the U.S. who actually read books?).

What actually is the importance of non-Hispanic white males in the U.S.? ChatGPT says that white males are 30% of population, pay 37-40% of all federal receipts, and receive only 10-15% of welfare. In other words, they’re perfect “tax cattle”. How about in driving the S&P 500’s apparently unstoppable rise? ChatGPT says white males are 72 percent of Fortune 500 senior executives.

(What about white women who do appear in the TV commercials that I saw, but at low levels of representation? ChatGPT says “as a group, women almost certainly receive more in government benefits than they pay in taxes, especially if you include benefits tied to children” (the “single mom” cheat code for 18+ years of taxpayer-funded life) and “White women, as a group, likely receive slightly more in government benefits than they pay in taxes over their lifetimes—but they are much closer to balance than women overall.”)

Some examples of a white-male-free U.S.:

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Won’t Iran use the two-week ceasefire to regroup, rearm, and raise money by exporting oil?

by philg

How does the U.S. benefit from a two-week ceasefire in the war against Iran? I’m sure that some of our pilots could use a rest, but otherwise isn’t the main beneficiary our adversary? Iran’s oil industry wasn’t damaged so the regime can keep loading up tankers with crude and shipping it out to customers via the Strait of Hormuz. Thus, the Islamic Republic’s stockpile of cash will soon be back where it was. Iran can dig any buried missiles out of damaged buildings and bunkers and set them up on launchers ready to go on April 21. Iran should be able to get many of its weapons factories back into production as well since the U.S. didn’t damage Iran’s electric power grid or generating stations. Every Islamic Republic military officer or political leader who was busy running from bunker to bunker and fearful that a traitor would rat out his GPS coordinates to Israel or the U.S. can go home, shower, and relax.

Iran has already said that it isn’t going to do any of the things that the U.S. has demanded, e.g., give up making ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. Is there a realistic chance that the Islamic Republic will change its mind during the two weeks of this ceasefire?

The pro-Iran/anti-Israel in DC featured by the WSJ:

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Wall Street Journal upset that a place at Duke opens up for an American

by philg

As 18-year-olds and their parents manage their grief over the stack of rejections received from elite colleges, here’s a Wall Street Journal article for those who were rejected by Duke (95 percent rejection rate): “He Had a Full Ride at Duke—Until America Cut Him Off”.

(This article could also be inspiring to Americans graduating next month from Duke with crushing student loan debt. They can sleep easier knowing that some of the money they borrowed and must pay back (unless Kamala Harris is defrosted and elected?) was used to give “a full ride” to a migrant.)

The villain of the article is Donald Trump, of course, referenced 6 times. Here’s a peculiar Trump reference. The South Sudanese are so smart that they thrive at Duke, but they aren’t smart enough to realize that any migrant is an enricher. They refused to accept a migrant on the grounds that he was Congolese rather than South Sudanese:

Trump’s displeasure with South Sudan began when it refused to accept a man being deported by the U.S. The man was Congolese, South Sudanese officials said, but the administration didn’t want to take no for an answer.

South Sudan has a GDP per capita of less than $400. We’re informed that migrants are an economic boon to any nation. Why doesn’t South Sudan want to become richer by accepting migrants from Congo?

A separate question: if migrants enrich the U.S. as a whole, why are migrants at Duke being funded by American students paying tuition at Duke? Shouldn’t full tuition for migrants be paid with federal tax dollars on the grounds that every migrant makes the U.S. better off?

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Cost of attending the NCAA Final Four games

by philg

Does anyone have a favorite in tonight’s NCAA basketball final?

A friend who works in finance went to the NCAA Final Four games on Saturday. It’s about three hours round-trip from NYC in a two-decade-old mid-sized business jet, which he chartered for about $40,000 plus $2,500 for Signature Indianapolis’s event fee (over $13,000 per flight hour, in other words). The black car service was $900 round-trip to the stadium, normally an 11-minute drive from Signature IND. “Rental cars were $1,000,” he said, “and due to terrorism concerns you supposedly can’t park anywhere near the stadium.” How much were the tickets? One of his companions is so elite that he got prime seats for free as a donor to one of the universities (it’s the same ticket/seat for two back-to-beack games).

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Shout-out to Igor Sikorsky after the F-15 pilot/WSO rescue in Iran

by philg

Let’s have a shout-out for Igor Sikorsky, the pioneer in mass-production of helicopters, in honor of the recent successful rescue of an F-15 crew (pilot + WSO/”Wizzo” (also a competent pilot)) in Iran. Sikorsky’s perspective:

If a man is in need of rescue, an airplane can come in and throw flowers on him, and that’s just about all. But a direct lift aircraft could come in and save his life.

[later] For me, the greatest source of comfort and satisfaction is the fact that our helicopters have saved up to the present time (1969) over fifty thousand lives and still continue with their rescue missions. I consider this to be the most glorious page in the history of aviation.

I guess we should also thank the Soviet revolutionaries who drove Sikorsky, already a successful aircraft designer and industrialist, out of Russia and into Connecticut in 1919.

Finally, of course, let’s celebrate the tough-to-imagine bravery of U.S. military helicopter crews. Just in time for Easter, they enabled a man to rise from being presumed dead.

Who wants to place bets on the forthcoming Netflix movie? The helicopter door gunners will be female, Black, trans, gay, or all four?

Separately, foreign haters seem to concentrating on the cost of the mission. Here’s a white flag waver (Frenchman) showing photos of aircraft costing less than one day of tax revenue from NVIDIA employees and investors and implying that the cost of the rescue was too high:

From the Islamic Republic of Great Britain: “The MC-130J aircraft used to rescue the second US airmen cost more than $100 million (£77 million) each”

No mention of the fact that a Minnesota day care could burn through $100 million of tax money without ever having even a single child come through the front door.

Our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters across the Atlantic seem to have some difficulty understanding the productivity of the U.S. economy. Separately, since hardly any of NATO members will let us use their airspace or bases (Germany and the UK are exceptions?) what is the value of continuing to spend U.S. tax money on NATO? We don’t have a dog in the Europe-Russia tension. If when we’re actually at war our European bases become useless due to airspace closures by purported allies, e.g., France, Spain, and Italy, what value does the U.S. get out of NATO?

Related:

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Happy Easter from the Obesity Bunny

by philg

Costco wants to make sure that everyone has a very happy Easter indeed. Behold, a 10 lb. chocolate bunny at $140:

It’s from Maud Borup, a company in the Islamic Republic of Minnesota that claims to be both “Women Owned” and “Veteran Owned”.

What will Costco do if they have any of these left? Sell them for kids’ birthday parties? What is the practical occasion on which 10 lbs. of chocolate is useful?

(I searched to see who is supplying them with the actual chocolate and came up empty. They definitely don’t start with beans.)

Separately, some tasteful Easter decorations in the Canterbury Place neighborhood of Abacoa.

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