yunyun333
12hr ago
Only if you have a valuable resource and have pissed off Trump in the past. The rulers of Eritrea, Laos, and Angola can sleep soundly.
yunyun333
1d ago
How Trump Took the US to War in Iran
Netanyahu claimed it would be possible to effect quick regime change via Mossad-aided protests and even arming the Kurds (who apparently just kept the guns, having learned from past American 'support').
Mr. Netanyahu and his team outlined conditions they portrayed as pointing to near-certain victory: Iran’s ballistic missile program could be destroyed in a few weeks. The regime would be so weakened that it could not choke off the Strait of Hormuz, and the likelihood that Iran would land blows against U.S. interests in neighboring countries was assessed as minimal.
Mossad is obviously too smart for this to have been their true assessment. The CIA quickly realized it was BS:
The intelligence officials had deep expertise in U.S. military capabilities, and they knew the Iranian system and its players inside out. They had broken down Mr. Netanyahu’s presentation into four parts. First was decapitation — killing the ayatollah. Second was crippling Iran’s capacity to project power and threaten its neighbors. Third was a popular uprising inside Iran. And fourth was regime change, with a secular leader installed to govern the country.
The U.S. officials assessed that the first two objectives were achievable with American intelligence and military power. They assessed that the third and fourth parts of Mr. Netanyahu’s pitch, which included the possibility of the Kurds mounting a ground invasion of Iran, were detached from reality. The C.I.A. director used one word to describe the Israeli prime minister’s regime change scenarios: “farcical.” At that point, Mr. Rubio cut in. “In other words, it’s bullshit,” he said.
The president then turned to General Caine. “General, what do you think?” General Caine replied: “Sir, this is, in my experience, standard operating procedure for the Israelis. They oversell, and their plans are not always well-developed. They know they need us, and that’s why they’re hard-selling.”
So, Trump's team at least was not snookered by claims of easy victory. But as chairman of the JCS, Caine had to walk the fine line between giving military advice and administering politics.
He also flagged the enormous difficulty of securing the Strait of Hormuz and the risks of Iran blocking it. Mr. Trump had dismissed that possibility on the assumption that the regime would capitulate before it came to that. The president appeared to think it would be a very quick war — an impression that had been reinforced by the tepid response to the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June. General Caine’s role in the lead-up to the war captured a classic tension between military counsel and presidential decision-making. So persistent was the chairman in not taking a stand — repeating that it was not his role to tell the president what to do, but rather to present options along with potential risks and possible second- and third-order consequences — that he could appear to some of those listening to be arguing all sides of an issue simultaneously. At no point during the deliberations did the chairman directly tell the president that war with Iran was a terrible idea — though some of General Caine’s colleagues believed that was exactly what he thought.
It's reminiscent of the bind that the JCS was in back in 1964-65, when LBJ played them against each other and silenced their belief in a full military commitment so that he could tiptoe into the Vietnam War without anyone noticing. Meanwhile Vance was the most dovish of his advisors.
In January, when Mr. Trump publicly warned Iran to stop killing protesters and promised that help was on its way, Mr. Vance had privately encouraged the president to enforce his red line. But what the vice president pushed for was a limited, punitive strike, something closer to the model of Mr. Trump’s missile attack against Syria in 2017 over the use of chemical weapons against civilians. The vice president thought a regime-change war with Iran would be a disaster. His preference was for no strikes at all. But knowing that Mr. Trump was likely to intervene in some fashion, he tried to steer toward more limited action. Later, when it seemed certain that the president was set on a large-scale campaign, Mr. Vance argued that he should do so with overwhelming force, in the hope of achieving his objectives quickly.
The deciding factor against negotiations was, apparently, really stupid. Why on earth would the Iranians want to be taking handouts from the US like this?
That same week, Mr. Kushner and Mr. Witkoff called from Geneva after the latest talks with Iranian officials. Over three rounds of negotiations in Oman and Switzerland, the two had tested Iran’s willingness to make a deal. At one point, they offered the Iranians free nuclear fuel for the life of their program — a test of whether Tehran’s insistence on enrichment was truly about civilian energy or about preserving the ability to build a bomb. The Iranians rejected the offer, calling it an assault on their dignity.
It seems like his team would have decided against intervention if the choice was up to them. Ultimately the buck stops with Trump, and everyone else who's come this far is willing to live with his decisions.
yunyun333
1d ago
What equipment does Iran have from China? There was a report that they were going to sell them anti ship missiles but that was before the war. It's possible that radars were smuggled in as a test, but you can't hide those things, they have to be sitting out in the open to do their job.
yunyun333
2d ago
If you disagree, show your work, show your plan to protect solar plant or offshore wind farm from attack by drone swarms that are now common in Eastern Europe.
What's the plan to defend refineries and fuel plants? Solar farms are at least widely dispersed. A drone can only knock out a few panels, or a single turbine, at a time.
Russia's invasion didn't save coal and this won't either.
yunyun333
3d ago
yunyun333
3d ago
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids renewable and coal alike to produce lung-killing particulates, heavy metals, and excess CO2".
The EPA has rolled back a bunch of these measures but it won't change the trendline. The last coal plant started was in 2013 and it still hasn't come online.
yunyun333
3d ago
The amount of energy that goes into both making and maintaining solar panels is so enormous, that the net gain we get back from those panels before they expire is paltry.
Nuclear does have the best EROI, but that doesn't really matter in a comparison if both sources manage to stay above the required threshold of 3 or 7 or whatever. The additional energy costs will be subsumed into LCOE anyways. Which also incorporates all those maintenance and construction costs. Batteries obviously add cost and reduce EROI but it's also getting better every year.
China's doing some interesting work with pebble bed/molten salt reactors, but it's still going to be years before large scale deployment and renewables just keep getting better in the meantime.
yunyun333
3d ago
Datacenters use gas turbines because it's the fastest way to bring online a shit ton of reliable power. The goal is first to AGI, costs (and disruption to neighbors) be damned. That being said, some companies have already signed contracts with renewable farms for next year.
yunyun333
3d ago
Even with the subsidy phase out, >50% of new power generation will be solar this year. Seems like good evidence that green energy isn't more expensive.
yunyun333
3d ago
Coal miners: "This job is hell on earth"
Politicians: More coal mines, gotcha
yunyun333
3d ago
Why are Americans becoming more anti-renewable?
The share of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who say the country should prioritize oil, coal and natural gas over wind and solar power has doubled to 71% over the last six years. Majorities of Republicans see wind and solar power as less reliable than other energy sources, and decreasing shares of Republicans say wind and solar energy is better for the environment.
With rising energy costs and increased demand, Americans are still more likely to say that renewable energy should be prioritized over fossil fuels. But that share continues to drop: 57% say this today, down from 79% in 2020. About eight-in-ten Democrats and Democratic leaners (83%) say the country should give priority to developing wind and solar production, but this share has also ticked downward in the last few years.
Wind and solar attract the most support, with about two-thirds (65%) calling for policies to expand production from these sources. And coal mining attracts the least support, with more saying the government should discourage (36%) this activity than encourage it (27%). Americans have more mixed views of other sources, with none attracting majority support, but also none facing large opposition.
Republicans have long been less supportive of wind and solar production than Democrats. In 2022, a slim majority (54%) of Republicans supported government policies to encourage production of these renewable sources. In four years, that has dropped 10 percentage points to 44%. This is consistent with past Center surveys, which found that the shares of Republicans who say they support more wind power and solar power both dropped by more than 20 points from 2020 to 2025. An overwhelming majority of Democrats (85%) continue to say the federal government should encourage the production of wind and solar power.
The opposite pattern emerges with fossil fuel sources: Republicans have been more supportive than Democrats of federal programs to encourage these sources, and the share in favor of such programs has grown. 62% of Republicans now say the federal government should encourage oil and gas drilling, up 11 percentage points since January 2022. 45% of Republicans say the federal government should encourage coal mining, up 13 points in four years. Much smaller shares of Republicans say the federal government should discourage oil and gas drilling (8%) or coal mining (14%). Just as in the Biden years, Democrats are far more likely to say the federal government should discourage rather than encourage oil and gas drilling and coal mining.
As with other attitudes around renewable energy, Republicans are less likely than they were five years ago to say solar and wind power are better for the environment. Republicans are 14 percentage points less likely now to say that solar power is better for the environment than most other energy sources. Similarly, there has been a 12-point drop in the share of Republicans who say that wind power is better for the environment than most other energy sources. About three-in-ten Republicans (29%) now say wind power is worse for the environment, up 12 points from five years ago. More Republicans say wind (44%) and solar (43%) cost consumers more than other energy sources than say these cost less than other sources (19% and 24%, respectively).
Americans view both solar and wind power as less reliable than other energy sources (though more Americans say wind is less reliable than say the same about solar). Republicans are especially negative about these sources’ reliability. This year, Republicans are far more likely to say solar and wind power are less reliable rather than more reliable compared with other energy sources, while Democrats are more mixed. Democrats are split on the reliability of wind power, and they’re more likely to think solar power is more reliable than less reliable.
Landman really is that popular, huh? Battery tech has only gotten better and cheaper, and the LCOE of renewables even with storage added is competitive with or better than fossil fuels, yet public opinion is backsliding. Gas is still great because the US has so much of it, but the DoE is even trying to force coal plants to keep running at cost to consumers, even when states and operators want them retired. Coal miners can't be that large of a constituency, surely, so what's driving this obsession in particular?
yunyun333
4d ago
Biden begged Zelensky to take the threat of invasion seriously and Zelensky refused. It was almost pure luck that Ukraine happened to have troops in the right area to blunt the initial thrust.
yunyun333
4d ago
There was a fear that the massive number of returning GIs would flood the labor market and restart the depression. This was deftly avoided by sending them off to college.
yunyun333
5d ago
How did the EU 'lose' over Greenland? Trump backed down, no tariffs, no annexation, nothing. SCOTUS struck down his tariffs and the only thing he can do is emergency section 122 tariffs capped at 15% that expire in July.
The Trump cabinet shakeup continues
After Pam Bondi’s ouster today, which followed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s firing last month, Cabinet secretaries and other senior administration officials were anxiously eyeing their phones, wondering whether they’d be next. One top official didn’t have to wait long: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth removed the chief of staff of the Army, General Randy George. Several people familiar with the White House’s plans told us there are active discussions about others leaving the administration, including FBI Director Kash Patel, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters, said that the timing was uncertain and that President Trump had not yet made up his mind. But what was once an unofficial motto of the second Trump term—“no scalps”—no longer applies.
Trump had been reluctant to get rid of any of his top lieutenants, viewing firings as a concession to the Democrats and the media. Even in the past few months, there had been an edict that no Cabinet officials would be removed prior to the midterms, though a series of dismissals were planned for after Election Day. But the president’s declining support since he launched the Iran war has changed the political calculus. The odds of confirming replacements, advisers know, are only growing longer. One person close to the White House told us that Trump was buoyed by the reaction to his decision to oust Noem, and that made him more likely to move ahead with Bondi. (Still, an administration official cautioned that after pushing out Noem, optics were a concern; officials worried that getting rid of Bondi would be viewed as jettisoning only the most “attractive” women, while keeping the men).
Some Trump allies (and many of his critics) believe that he had asked Bondi for the nearly impossible—to win convictions for seemingly unwinnable cases. But other members of the Cabinet and administration have expressed frustration that Bondi’s apparent lack of involvement in the details of managing the Justice Department resulted in basic mistakes. “They are sending in idiots” to defend the Trump administration in court without sufficient experience, one official from another agency told us. The president’s demand for absolute loyalty among the department’s rank and file resulted in a profound loss of institutional expertise and a sharply reduced talent pool. Multiple prominent Republican attorneys told us that they considered joining the second Trump DOJ. But the requirement to take what they viewed as an oath of loyalty to the president—not the Constitution—was a step too far.
Officials in other departments said they regarded the Justice Department’s errors as harmful to the administration’s credibility with judges, blowing up what should have been easy wins for the president. “This has been festering across the administration for a while,” said a second person close to the administration. “It’s the Epstein stuff, partly. It’s also the critiques of the indictments, like Comey. It’s a general sense of WTF—she’s not logging a lot of wins, not clocking a lot of good media.”
In Trump I, many of the early firings were because of insufficient loyalty. Trump adapted and overcame by ensuring personal loyalty at the apparent cost of competence. A junior law student could have told you his vengeance lawsuits would be laughed out of court. And it seems like the Iran SMO will snatch a few more scalps that would have delayed until after the midterms - poor Kash, he just wanted to party with the hockey chads. It's already claimed the Army Chief of Staff's, although it's not clear what exactly was wrong with Randy George's performance (the Army isn't even particularly involved in this op), or that of the Transformation and Training Command leader and the head of the Chaplain Corps.
Bondi is vulnerable as Republican frustrations grow over DOJ Epstein handling
Like a radio built to pick only one channel — tuned to Mr. Trump’s demands — Ms. Bondi has gained and maintained her position through her attentiveness, loyalty and obedience. That makes her uniquely vulnerable to shifts in Mr. Trump’s opinion. In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has privately sent mixed signals. He has discussed firing Ms. Bondi, according to four people familiar with the conversations, and replacing her with Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. He has complained about her shortcomings as a communicator and vented about what he sees as the department’s lack of aggressiveness in going after his foes, according to people who have spoken to him recently, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. But he has also praised her loyalty in public, and he speaks with her several times a week, sometimes to seek advice or temperature-test ideas, a person close to Ms. Bondi said. And on Wednesday, she accompanied the president to the Supreme Court to watch arguments in the birthright citizenship case.
The greatest danger Ms. Bondi now faces, in the view of current and former officials, is the possibility that she has become expendable to Mr. Trump, who was able to quell Republican criticism of his hard-line immigration policy by removing Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary. Some of the protection Ms. Bondi enjoyed from G.O.P. lawmakers in the wake of Mr. Trump’s unifying victory in 2024 appears to be eroding ahead of the midterm elections, with congressional Republicans increasingly willing to call out the attorney general over what they see as her mishandling of the investigative files.
Ms. Bondi had no one else to blame for the major mistake she committed after being sworn in early last year. In February 2025, she appeared on Fox News to hype “breaking news” on the Epstein case, while also claiming that she had key documents, including Mr. Epstein’s client list, sitting on her desk. Soon after, she showed up at a gathering of far-right influencers at the White House, where she handed out half-filled white binders labeled “Epstein Files: Phase 1” that contained virtually no new information, prompting accusations of a cover-up. Her team suggested there might not be a Phase 2. Several of Ms. Bondi’s friends now describe that episode as a catastrophic miscalculation from which she might never recover.
Last July, she issued a joint statement with the F.B.I. concluding that there was no basis for new charges, no “client list,” no evidence that Mr. Epstein had blackmailed “prominent individuals,” and that releasing sealed investigative files from Mr. Epstein’s trial would only endanger the victims. The backlash among far-right influencers was instant and threatened to sap the president’s support with his base. Ms. Bondi reversed course and reopened the inquiry. Around that time, Ms. Bondi told Mr. Jordan and other members of the Judiciary Committee that “all that’s left in there is child pornography, and nobody wants to see that,” according to Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky.
The two top F.B.I. officials, Kash Patel, the bureau’s director, and his deputy, Dan Bongino, had been pushing for a much broader release of the Epstein material after finding little in the files that added to what was already widely known about the president’s interactions with Mr. Epstein. Behind the scenes, Ms. Bondi began butting heads with Mr. Bongino, who repeatedly urged her to release as many documents as possible to stave off a political disaster. Ms. Bondi was considerably more cautious, citing her previous experience as a local prosecutor in Tampa handling trafficking cases, saying that releasing a trove of unredacted documents could reveal details about Mr. Epstein’s victims, including children. Her conflict with Mr. Bongino escalated into an angry confrontation at the White House last July, when an irate Ms. Bondi accused Mr. Bongino of leaking unflattering information about her to the news media.
But the main source of stress on Ms. Bondi appears to be Mr. Trump himself. He has relentlessly pressured Ms. Bondi and her deputy, Todd Blanche, to go after targets of his choosing even after the failure of cases brought against the former F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, and the New York attorney general, Letitia James, which were brought over the objections of U.S. attorneys appointed by Mr. Trump. At a reception for U.S. attorneys last December, Mr. Trump berated the top federal prosecutor in Maryland, Kelly O. Hayes, for not indicting Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and an outspoken critic, for mortgage fraud, as Ms. Bondi and stunned officials looked on, according to a person who attended the event. Ms. Bondi and Mr. Blanche have gotten the president’s message. They have stepped up efforts to investigate several other Trump targets, including the Democratic fund-raising group ActBlue and John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director. They have also pushed prosecutors to investigate a former White House aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, whom the president has accused of lying about his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, according to two officials briefed on the effort.
So, republicans are mad that the epstein files are being slow-walked, and Trump is mad that she isn't successfully destroying his enemies with lawsuits. The interesting detail is that Patel and Bongino were pushing for more releases, presumably believing that it wouldn't incriminate Trump. In the end, they managed to piss off everyone and accidentally release personal photos of victims.
There hasn't been as much turnover in Trump's 'A' department as in his first administration (although still more than the last six presidents), because Trump took a more active role in selecting loyalists. We'll see how that continues over the next year with the Iran war and more unfriendly SCOTUS rulings.
Edit: And she's gone
yunyun333
7d ago
They want to leave, but not if it makes them poorer, which it obviously will. So the status quo will continue. And they certainly don't want to join the US.
A 2025 poll showed that a majority 84% of Greenlanders would support independence from Denmark, with 9% opposing. 61% opposed independence if it meant a lower standard of living, with 39% in favour. When asked in a binary choice between the USA and Denmark, 85% preferred to be part of Denmark with only 6% preferring the USA.
yunyun333
7d ago
There are only 1-3 non-autocracies in the middle east, depending on how you categorize Turkey and Lebanon, so that's not the problem.
yunyun333
8d ago
From a Bayesian perspective, there is strong evidence that Trump really likes Jews and is not a great long term thinker. Hegseth's record does not inspire confidence either.
Poland also refused to transfer two patriot batteries over, and France refused a request from Israel to use its airspace for weapons transfer. This is the logical conclusion of the boiling, seething contempt that the administration has for Europe (which is of course mutual).
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