> Second, actual appropriations language was stripped. The combined bill authorizes appropriations but does not fund them
I will vote for any candidate who pledges to eliminate the idea of "authorization" from Congress. They use this to suck up all the oxygen from a hotly-debated and -discussed issue without actually doing anything. When it comes time for appropriations, all of these lofty goals are inevitably forgotten. The entire appropriations process frankly needs deep, serious reform. (In case you're looking for new article topics, Halina...)
I agree that provision is bad, so why not, you know, remove it? How difficult could that possibly be? Congress may not be the world‘s most dysfunctional legislature, but it has to be up right there.
Remove the provision? If you don't stop a 350 home owning PE from owning a home in areas where other PE already own 5% of the home, unless they sell it in 7 years, how will you save the American Dream??
Thank you, Halina! I had seen objections to the BTR restrictions on Twitter, but I hadn't had enough time to figure out what exactly was going on. This is the summary I wanted! Continued great work on your part.
My theory is that as our legislators increasingly focus on comms and fundraising, they are giving short shrift to professional staff legislative experts. And the result is flawed bills with errors that should have been caught.
Today’s episode of the Politix podcast was maddening. Brian Beutler really needs to put up or shut up when it comes to criticizing commodities traders. “I can’t Google it,” oh my god, just ask Claude how to do it if you feel so passionately about that they’re wrong. In the 37 minutes you spent talking about it you could have set up an account on Interactive Brokers and submitted an application to trade options and you’d hear back in a couple of days. Or if not, at least do what Matt said and write about what you would buy/sell at the current market price.
You're making a fair point. Of course, the whole point of being on the far right is that you reject questions like these as meaningless because we don't owe any moral obligations to anyone outside our tribe/nation/community/gemeinschaft. If we decide we're at odds with some other people, then no holds are barred. So it's not like they would even accept the terms of a debate on this question. By what set of rules or principles do you purport to judge their conduct? International law? The brotherhood of man? All humanity being created in God's image? They think all that is fake.
For all of Trump's idiotic decision-making in the last few weeks, Iran of early 2026 is Bad Actually, and the US of 1941 was flawed but at least making a good faith effort. We smile when bad things happen to bad people.
I don't find that answer super duper satisfying, but there it is.
That's a good distinction but the argument for it being a date which will live in infamy wasn't 'they dared attack us' it was 'they launched a sneak attack without declaring war!'
Like, maybe I'm overdrawing from a single source, but hearing whatshernane explain to Ezra Klein that we couldn't declare war or talk to Congress/the American people beforehand because it would have warned the Iranians we were coming...well, doesn't seem great?
I don’t even understand which side is supposed to be which. Is October 7 supposed to be Pearl Harbor? Or us bombing their nuclear sites a few months back? Or is killing Khamanei supposed to be analogous to destroying aircraft carriers?
The analogy is, we launched an unannounced attack on their military and nation under our own colors, not using proxies, aspparently intended to destroy their navy...without, you know, declaring war?
Or you could go back to Praying Mantis, or any number of events. The key difference is that Iran has been deliberately hostile for 45 years and the relationship has been far different than it was with Japan prior to their attack.
If you only look at the similarities and ignore the differences, then I can see how one might find them comparable. But only comparing similarities gives a pretty incomplete picture.
"We need to stop individual owner-occupants from deploying the private equity playbook of buying homes with subsidized leverage, saddling them with debt, and then using the payments to get a tax break."
"B.T.R. investment depends on long-term rental-income streams, so a mandatory seven-year sell-off eliminates the planning horizon investors need to commit capital at all. If a developer cannot know whether the investment will survive past year seven, it is absolutely not worth it."
Of the many socialist moves made by the current occupant of the White House, this may take the cake. Particularly from someone who cut his teeth being a slumlord living off daddy's money. If this bill fails passage, Dems should 100 percent run with this in '26 and '28.
Today’s Iran war news is… really grim. The Iranians managed to hit at least five commercial ships in the Persian Gulf. They or their Houthi allies somehow managed to hit and paralyze Salalah on the south coast of Oman— the only big deep water transshipment port between the Indian Subcontinent and the Cape of Good Hope that’s not blocked by the Bab Al Mandeb or Strait of Hormuz chokepoints. They also have started to mine the Strait. After a sharp uptick in interception failures yesterday, the UAE defense ministry suddenly stopped publishing interception stats. The US Navy is reportedly turning down escort requests because they currently deem it too risky to send large combat vessels into the Persian Gulf (before the start of the war the Fifth Fleet retreated from Bahrain to the Arabian Sea.) Small and cheap SAM systems in Iran have prevented the US from achieving complete air supremacy there as expected.
Overall, it seems increasingly likely that the US is not capable of protecting shipping through Hormuz and has no clear and actionable plan for making it safe, and that the air defense of the Gulf States’ fragile and economically important infrastructure is failing. The current moment feels a bit like the explosive spread of COVID outside of China in February 2020– the brutal constraints of the situation are very clear to people paying sufficient attention, things are potentially going to get very rough for much of the world very quickly, and the reality hasn’t sunk in.
None of this should have surprised the administration. When I was working on the Iran problem in the 1990's, the SOH scenarios were well known, and Iran's capabilities were much lower than they are today.
Iran has now come out and laid out its strategy - it sees its path to victory in terms of economic pressure on the global economy by interdicting petroleum supplies. That's why they are attacking neighbors, including Oman (which hosts no US forces and is one of the Gulf states most friendly to Iran) and civilian shipping.
So this conflict now hinges on our ability to prevent Iran from keeping the SOH closed against the mounting pressure of the economic effects of its closure. Iran is also allowing some ships to pass unmolested from countries that meet their demands, knowing that we won't do what they do and attack civilian merchant ships (a war crime), or otherwise prevent that from happening.
Again, not surprising. The only way the US can stop this (short of a diplomatic agreement terminating the war, which Iran doesn't want right now), is to further attrit Iran's drones (both air and sea drones), and fleet of small boats that can carry out attacks, plus any remaining shore-based missile/artillery assets.
Re: surprise— my mental model of how DC works makes me think that some smart people at the Pentagon who spend a lot of time thinking about the problem brought the issue up but got steamrolled by political appointees engaging in motivated reasoning (sort of like what happened with Eric Shinseki before the Iraq War). Is that consistent with your view as a former insider?
I was more a "cog in the machine" than an insider - a mainline analyst who rose to lead small and medium-sized teams, but without any real influence.
But yes, I think steamrolling is part of it. The other two parts related to interagency coordination, and we've seen good evidence that they aren't working well. There is DNI Gabbard, who no one respects, and it seems Trumps and others on the cabinet deliberately cut her out on some things - not good when you need the intelligence and military components working together for a major war.
The final piece is just skilled bureaucratic management. The DoD and the intel community, even leaving aside the other parts of government, are huge, complex bureaucracies with many moving parts, and it takes someone skilled at the top to understand that and ensure all the pieces are rowing together. Based on what I see from the outside, and what my friends still working tell me, this is not something Hegseth and Gabbard are good at.
I had always assumed that Hegseth and Gabbard were “for TV purposes” appointees who each had some competent subordinate who was actually in charge. Concerning that they’re allowed to actually make decisions.
Interesting overall commentary split: macro and equity market generalists are still sanguine, but the energy and logistics specialists are freaking out.
When this started, I went back and looked at the course of the events in Gaza from the perspective of how long they kept going. While I think the beat down has been significant, the idea that the Iranians are somehow close to losing the asymmetric ability to inflict significant losses is a complete misread. The lack of a real recession has made them believe that line always goes up.
The only thing short of ground troops that “we” can really do is just keep hammering their short range weapons, but that’s a game of whack-a-mole.
I would never root for harm to our armed forces.
But an embarrassing, bloodless-as-possible strategic defeat in the illest-advised war since Operation Barbarossa just so happening to be the thing that breaks Trump’s cult and makes America safe for democracy again? It’s a stretch. But I am no longer just going to assume that Trump can TACO, declare fake victory, and wriggle out of this one again.
The sooner the Hamburger From Heaven sends him to join his friend Khamenei in Hell, the better we’ll all be.
I am pretty concerned that Trump won't be willing to go through that and will instead drop a nuke. I think the probability of that happening is very low - but it isn't zero, and the horribleness of the outcome is so bad that it's worth being concerned about.
I think this is likely to be “Afghanistan withdrawal, but worse” damaging to Trump’s political standing, but a lot of people in the Middle East have already paid with their lives, and the downstream economic damage is going to affect a lot of the world’s population. And as an American I also don’t want to see us take a serious strategic defeat.
If this were actually true it would mean that anyone sensible should be applauding the attack as, on net, reducing the loss of life inherent in Republican misgovernance. (E.g. the OBBB alone will kill hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Americans by the inexorable logic of depriving them of healthcare.)
Regrettably, I do not believe that it will be anything like that damaging to Trump or Republicans, because American voters have the memories of goldfish when it comes to Republican misadventures.
IMO we took a serious strategic defeat when a buffoon got elected on the back of a previous strategic defeat.
That defeat is going to resonate for centuries after we’re dead.
I just want things to be as good as they can be for the rest of the time before I myself die. Which means this fucking buffoon suffering a strategic defeat that is so embarrassing that our nation either pulls its head out of its ass or finally gives me a good reason to become a Brazilian.
I aesthetically and spiritually loathe Dubai and think the rulers of the Gulf monarchies are evil, but a lot of the people who are going to directly suffer there are poor migrant workers who just wanted to make a buck for their families back in South Asia.
And of course, there are big negative consequences for everyone who consumes oil, natural gas, fertilizer, helium, aluminum, chemicals, etc.
They’re evil bc they have a higher standard of living than Americans do and we shouldn’t tolerate anyone living better than us (I’m also for getting rid of the Swiss while we’re at it)
The Saudis seeded Salafist militancy globally, the UAE sponsors the RSF in Sudan, and all of these states’ elites routinely trick South Asian economic migrants into de facto slavery, so yes, I feel pretty comfortable saying this.
Clavicular for Supreme Leader. It'll be a marked improvement for all parties—the IRGC will be too busy bonesmashing to repress anyone and the dress code is gonna be... pretty different, anyway.
That's just not plausible. The US has nowhere near enough manpower to try to occupy any meaningful part of Iran and where/how would they be marshalled and deployed to the country even if the US did have enough? And a draft isn't happening -- even if it was officially announced starting today, there's no real infrastructure in place to implement it and would take months at least before the first draftees could plausibly be deployed overseas. (People forget that in WW2, the first lottery for the US draft was actually held in October ***1940***.)
Here's my thing- why don't the Israelis just go in themselves? It's their neighborhood, they were the ones who were so gung-ho about attacking Iran. They have a fairly competent military. We can provide the air support, intelligence, and maybe even transportation to the the battlefield if they don't have the capabilities. They can do the fighting & dying of seizing key objectives, nuclear sites, etc.
Sounds like a great job for the country who apparently really, really wanted this!
Israel lacks any real logistics to be able to put anything besides a small raid into Iran. There's no way they could get more than a thousand or so troops in the country and keep them supplied and even that is doubtful.
The thing that America does impressively well more than any other country is military logistics.
There's gotta be a middle ground between 'occupying a whole country of 90 million people' and 'zero boots on the ground whatsoever'. Can't some special forces teams seize nuclear sites? Can't they take out leadership posts and engage Guard forces where they're massed? Seizing & holding Kharg Island?
Don't get me wrong- I'm strongly against this whole war. I'm just saying, to the extent that ground troops are needed at all- that sounds like a great job for the warmongering country behind this idea. Are there going to be some heavy casualties for the Israelis? Sure- that's the price they need to pay if they wanted to change the Iranian regime
To give the Israelis some credit, they have taken real risks putting their SOF on the ground in Lebanon, Syria, probably Yemen and Iraq, but to do something like this (https://www.twz.com/nuclear/special-operations-raid-to-secure-irans-enriched-uranium-may-become-a-very-risky-necessity) in central Iran, especially unilaterally, would be orders of magnitude more dangerous, and could plausibly end with 100+ Israeli SOF captured or killed (hence why they didn't do it last year, and focused on getting Trump to bomb instead). So yes, I would have been literally breaking out the popcorn if Bibi had decided to bring the 12 Day War Part 2 to theaters near you this summer, PROVIDED that the US stayed completely out of it.
But in that scenario I doubt Bibi would have rolled the dice, let alone with a major ground operation and, apparently thanks to Lady Graham's openly treasonous collusion and our cottage-cheese brained sundowner in chief, he was able to get us to do most of his dirty work instead.
There's a substantial evidence that the Israelis were planning to attack again later this year, but it was either going to be relatively ineffective against the overall BMD program, just like their surprise attack in 2025 (and, if we didn't support, with a higher risk of casualties), partly because this time it would be much less surprising, or else we'd be deeply implicated if we provided aerial refueling support and/or billions of dollars worth of IAMD coverage (like in 2025 and twice in 2024). In the latter scenario, Rubio's argument (loathsome, vicious, and dishonest as he is) about risks to American personnel would very likely have proven correct (albeit probably with much more targeted strikes against a subset of US assets in the region).
BLUF, if you're almost completely unwilling to conduct (and subsequently honor) meaningful negotiations with the Iranian regime, then it could be "logical" to attack while they're weak, but in that case you should make an effort to get domestic and international allies on board (and at least fucking coordinate/prepare across your own government thru the interagency process), plus coordinate minesweeping assets for the SoH. Or just stop spending tens of billions annually to defend the corrupt, brutal, racist regime of an apartheid state...but who am I kidding? Forget it, Jake, it's [the mostly self-inflicted and self-destructive US attachment to] the Middle East
So, Israel decides it's going to attack, we could have drawn down our forces to a minimum, and then devoted all our air defense weaponry to protecting them. We would then have not shot off billions of high tech weapons we now need to replace at 2026 prices, and there's at least some chance the Iranians decide this is mostly between them and Israel, don't drag in their neighbors, and don't close the Strait.
As always, the government tries to close the barn door long after the horses have run off. According to Gemini:
As of the latest data from February 2026, the inventory of unsold homes in the U.S. has experienced sustained year-over-year increases, with active listings marking over two years of consistent growth (27 consecutive months as of January 2026).
Key Findings on Unsold Home Inventory (Early 2026):
February 2026 Trend: There were 1.29 million unsold homes at the end of February 2026, a 4.9% increase from February 2025.
Consecutive Growth: The number of for-sale listings has risen consecutively for roughly 26-27 months, according to Realtor.com reports, with January 2026 marking the 27th straight month of year-over-year gains.
Active Inventory Rise: Active inventory increased 10% year-over-year in January 2026, although the pace of growth has slowed compared to the 32% peak in mid-2025.
Supply Levels: The February 2026 data shows a 3.8-month supply of unsold inventory, still below the 5-to-6-month range considered a balanced market.
The problem of "not enough homes" is gone. Now the problem is that housing is still way overpriced. At a certain crisis point in the future people selling homes will have "race to the bottom" in order for their home to sell. That price destruction will probably cause the next recession/GFC. We could see home values drop 50-60%. Sounds like 2008 all over again except instead of a debt crisis it will be a consumer crisis. They will be losing a large chunk of their net worth and will stop spending like drunken sailors.
If seven years isn't long enough to recupe expenses and turn a profit with average rental rates, what timeframe would do that?
It seems like Congress should have enough votes to override the veto, no?
> Second, actual appropriations language was stripped. The combined bill authorizes appropriations but does not fund them
I will vote for any candidate who pledges to eliminate the idea of "authorization" from Congress. They use this to suck up all the oxygen from a hotly-debated and -discussed issue without actually doing anything. When it comes time for appropriations, all of these lofty goals are inevitably forgotten. The entire appropriations process frankly needs deep, serious reform. (In case you're looking for new article topics, Halina...)
I agree that provision is bad, so why not, you know, remove it? How difficult could that possibly be? Congress may not be the world‘s most dysfunctional legislature, but it has to be up right there.
The problem is that a lot of Congress is deeply committed to this provision.
Remove the provision? If you don't stop a 350 home owning PE from owning a home in areas where other PE already own 5% of the home, unless they sell it in 7 years, how will you save the American Dream??
Thank you, Halina! I had seen objections to the BTR restrictions on Twitter, but I hadn't had enough time to figure out what exactly was going on. This is the summary I wanted! Continued great work on your part.
My theory is that as our legislators increasingly focus on comms and fundraising, they are giving short shrift to professional staff legislative experts. And the result is flawed bills with errors that should have been caught.
Today’s episode of the Politix podcast was maddening. Brian Beutler really needs to put up or shut up when it comes to criticizing commodities traders. “I can’t Google it,” oh my god, just ask Claude how to do it if you feel so passionately about that they’re wrong. In the 37 minutes you spent talking about it you could have set up an account on Interactive Brokers and submitted an application to trade options and you’d hear back in a couple of days. Or if not, at least do what Matt said and write about what you would buy/sell at the current market price.
Wouldn’t it still be better for a flawed bill to pass than no bill?
Particularly so where-- as here-- the flaw is essentially a standalone section that can later be cut out when it demonstrably fails.
It's a bigger problem when the fundamental flaw has the whole rest of the law structured around it.
Dumb question...what distinguishes what we're doing in Iran from 'a date which will live in infamy'?
You're making a fair point. Of course, the whole point of being on the far right is that you reject questions like these as meaningless because we don't owe any moral obligations to anyone outside our tribe/nation/community/gemeinschaft. If we decide we're at odds with some other people, then no holds are barred. So it's not like they would even accept the terms of a debate on this question. By what set of rules or principles do you purport to judge their conduct? International law? The brotherhood of man? All humanity being created in God's image? They think all that is fake.
For all of Trump's idiotic decision-making in the last few weeks, Iran of early 2026 is Bad Actually, and the US of 1941 was flawed but at least making a good faith effort. We smile when bad things happen to bad people.
I don't find that answer super duper satisfying, but there it is.
That's a good distinction but the argument for it being a date which will live in infamy wasn't 'they dared attack us' it was 'they launched a sneak attack without declaring war!'
Like, maybe I'm overdrawing from a single source, but hearing whatshernane explain to Ezra Klein that we couldn't declare war or talk to Congress/the American people beforehand because it would have warned the Iranians we were coming...well, doesn't seem great?
I think it is a bad war!
I guess if we forget about all the previous kinetic actions between us and Iran over the last few decades, and you squint, there's a comparison.
I don’t even understand which side is supposed to be which. Is October 7 supposed to be Pearl Harbor? Or us bombing their nuclear sites a few months back? Or is killing Khamanei supposed to be analogous to destroying aircraft carriers?
The analogy is, we launched an unannounced attack on their military and nation under our own colors, not using proxies, aspparently intended to destroy their navy...without, you know, declaring war?
I mean, we also did this with Venezuela a few weeks back. That's just a surprise attack; the Pearl Harbor analogy adds nothing.
Or you could go back to Praying Mantis, or any number of events. The key difference is that Iran has been deliberately hostile for 45 years and the relationship has been far different than it was with Japan prior to their attack.
I mean, we had an oil embargo and we're sending arms and men to a party they were at war with?
If you only look at the similarities and ignore the differences, then I can see how one might find them comparable. But only comparing similarities gives a pretty incomplete picture.
The opposite disparity in relative military and economic might.
Japan could hope we'd quit in the face of a quick early victory, they couldn't expect to win in an full effort war.
Okay, but that makes it...worse, right?
Japan had a more plausible cassus belli
The OG war for oil.
...and scrap metal.
The taxation of trade routes was in dispute!
Now there’s a quote I’ve not heard in a long time… a long time.
Live look at C-SPAN coverage of the Road to Housing Act debate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xop8QLIJCpY
Looks like those clowns in Congress have done it again. What a bunch of clowns.
How does it keep up with the news like that?
https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/2031878278324051982
"We need to stop individual owner-occupants from deploying the private equity playbook of buying homes with subsidized leverage, saddling them with debt, and then using the payments to get a tax break."
Matt was trolling Twitter so hard today that I think he crossed over into gillnetting.
"B.T.R. investment depends on long-term rental-income streams, so a mandatory seven-year sell-off eliminates the planning horizon investors need to commit capital at all. If a developer cannot know whether the investment will survive past year seven, it is absolutely not worth it."
Of the many socialist moves made by the current occupant of the White House, this may take the cake. Particularly from someone who cut his teeth being a slumlord living off daddy's money. If this bill fails passage, Dems should 100 percent run with this in '26 and '28.
Today’s Iran war news is… really grim. The Iranians managed to hit at least five commercial ships in the Persian Gulf. They or their Houthi allies somehow managed to hit and paralyze Salalah on the south coast of Oman— the only big deep water transshipment port between the Indian Subcontinent and the Cape of Good Hope that’s not blocked by the Bab Al Mandeb or Strait of Hormuz chokepoints. They also have started to mine the Strait. After a sharp uptick in interception failures yesterday, the UAE defense ministry suddenly stopped publishing interception stats. The US Navy is reportedly turning down escort requests because they currently deem it too risky to send large combat vessels into the Persian Gulf (before the start of the war the Fifth Fleet retreated from Bahrain to the Arabian Sea.) Small and cheap SAM systems in Iran have prevented the US from achieving complete air supremacy there as expected.
Overall, it seems increasingly likely that the US is not capable of protecting shipping through Hormuz and has no clear and actionable plan for making it safe, and that the air defense of the Gulf States’ fragile and economically important infrastructure is failing. The current moment feels a bit like the explosive spread of COVID outside of China in February 2020– the brutal constraints of the situation are very clear to people paying sufficient attention, things are potentially going to get very rough for much of the world very quickly, and the reality hasn’t sunk in.
Simple solution the other gulf states should band together and send ground troops in against iran
None of this should have surprised the administration. When I was working on the Iran problem in the 1990's, the SOH scenarios were well known, and Iran's capabilities were much lower than they are today.
Iran has now come out and laid out its strategy - it sees its path to victory in terms of economic pressure on the global economy by interdicting petroleum supplies. That's why they are attacking neighbors, including Oman (which hosts no US forces and is one of the Gulf states most friendly to Iran) and civilian shipping.
So this conflict now hinges on our ability to prevent Iran from keeping the SOH closed against the mounting pressure of the economic effects of its closure. Iran is also allowing some ships to pass unmolested from countries that meet their demands, knowing that we won't do what they do and attack civilian merchant ships (a war crime), or otherwise prevent that from happening.
Again, not surprising. The only way the US can stop this (short of a diplomatic agreement terminating the war, which Iran doesn't want right now), is to further attrit Iran's drones (both air and sea drones), and fleet of small boats that can carry out attacks, plus any remaining shore-based missile/artillery assets.
Re: surprise— my mental model of how DC works makes me think that some smart people at the Pentagon who spend a lot of time thinking about the problem brought the issue up but got steamrolled by political appointees engaging in motivated reasoning (sort of like what happened with Eric Shinseki before the Iraq War). Is that consistent with your view as a former insider?
I was more a "cog in the machine" than an insider - a mainline analyst who rose to lead small and medium-sized teams, but without any real influence.
But yes, I think steamrolling is part of it. The other two parts related to interagency coordination, and we've seen good evidence that they aren't working well. There is DNI Gabbard, who no one respects, and it seems Trumps and others on the cabinet deliberately cut her out on some things - not good when you need the intelligence and military components working together for a major war.
The final piece is just skilled bureaucratic management. The DoD and the intel community, even leaving aside the other parts of government, are huge, complex bureaucracies with many moving parts, and it takes someone skilled at the top to understand that and ensure all the pieces are rowing together. Based on what I see from the outside, and what my friends still working tell me, this is not something Hegseth and Gabbard are good at.
I had always assumed that Hegseth and Gabbard were “for TV purposes” appointees who each had some competent subordinate who was actually in charge. Concerning that they’re allowed to actually make decisions.
As the old military expression goes, "the enemy gets a vote."
Main character syndrome hits hard.
Interesting overall commentary split: macro and equity market generalists are still sanguine, but the energy and logistics specialists are freaking out.
When this started, I went back and looked at the course of the events in Gaza from the perspective of how long they kept going. While I think the beat down has been significant, the idea that the Iranians are somehow close to losing the asymmetric ability to inflict significant losses is a complete misread. The lack of a real recession has made them believe that line always goes up.
The only thing short of ground troops that “we” can really do is just keep hammering their short range weapons, but that’s a game of whack-a-mole.
I would never root for harm to our armed forces.
But an embarrassing, bloodless-as-possible strategic defeat in the illest-advised war since Operation Barbarossa just so happening to be the thing that breaks Trump’s cult and makes America safe for democracy again? It’s a stretch. But I am no longer just going to assume that Trump can TACO, declare fake victory, and wriggle out of this one again.
The sooner the Hamburger From Heaven sends him to join his friend Khamenei in Hell, the better we’ll all be.
I am pretty concerned that Trump won't be willing to go through that and will instead drop a nuke. I think the probability of that happening is very low - but it isn't zero, and the horribleness of the outcome is so bad that it's worth being concerned about.
The problem there is what could you plausibly nuke that would even temporarily pause the remnants of the regime from taking counteractions?
If you're telling me you don't think it would be a smart plan, then we are in agreement on that.
Well, yes . . . .
It’d be kinda hard to nuke his way to forcing them into submission.
I think this is likely to be “Afghanistan withdrawal, but worse” damaging to Trump’s political standing, but a lot of people in the Middle East have already paid with their lives, and the downstream economic damage is going to affect a lot of the world’s population. And as an American I also don’t want to see us take a serious strategic defeat.
If this were actually true it would mean that anyone sensible should be applauding the attack as, on net, reducing the loss of life inherent in Republican misgovernance. (E.g. the OBBB alone will kill hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Americans by the inexorable logic of depriving them of healthcare.)
Regrettably, I do not believe that it will be anything like that damaging to Trump or Republicans, because American voters have the memories of goldfish when it comes to Republican misadventures.
IMO we took a serious strategic defeat when a buffoon got elected on the back of a previous strategic defeat.
That defeat is going to resonate for centuries after we’re dead.
I just want things to be as good as they can be for the rest of the time before I myself die. Which means this fucking buffoon suffering a strategic defeat that is so embarrassing that our nation either pulls its head out of its ass or finally gives me a good reason to become a Brazilian.
It is good to see the Gulf States suffer, at least. Sucks that has to be Pyrrhic
I aesthetically and spiritually loathe Dubai and think the rulers of the Gulf monarchies are evil, but a lot of the people who are going to directly suffer there are poor migrant workers who just wanted to make a buck for their families back in South Asia.
And of course, there are big negative consequences for everyone who consumes oil, natural gas, fertilizer, helium, aluminum, chemicals, etc.
"Gulf monarchies are evil,"
Their citizens live in lavish glittering luxury with the government providing the best of everything - and that's evil?
Are you Richard Hanania?
I don’t see what that has to do with anything. They are pushing genocide in Sudan after many decades of pushing Islamist terrorism everywhere.
They’re evil bc they have a higher standard of living than Americans do and we shouldn’t tolerate anyone living better than us (I’m also for getting rid of the Swiss while we’re at it)
Also they’re supporting the war in Sudan, etc
Their citizens are, what, 10% of the population?
(I'm not looking it up; it's just a small percentage.)
I believe so. Most countries in Europe also don't have birth right citizenship. Are they evil as well?
No.
I didn't say they were evil.
I just said that basing your take on the quality of life of *citizens* there misestimates the quality of life of the *population.*
Non-citizens' lives are far less pampered.
The Saudis seeded Salafist militancy globally, the UAE sponsors the RSF in Sudan, and all of these states’ elites routinely trick South Asian economic migrants into de facto slavery, so yes, I feel pretty comfortable saying this.
Can't say I was expecting to see pro-Gulf-monarch discourse in the comments today.
These fucking bingo cards are getting worse every year.
Drunken Pete and his dipshit boss have “no clear and actionable plan”? I’m shocked, shocked!
Hey, pete has only had a few drinks to steady his thinking. He’ll sort this one out
It’s only a matter of time until Pete Hegseth deploys the ASU Frat Leader to frame mog Mojtaba Khamenei into submission
Clavicular for Supreme Leader. It'll be a marked improvement for all parties—the IRGC will be too busy bonesmashing to repress anyone and the dress code is gonna be... pretty different, anyway.
And I just saw gas at $5.29/gal
I can see the ads now, "A small price to pay."
Ground troops? Is the answer ground troop?
It almost certainly is... Explaining that to fathers and mothers might be "fun".
That's just not plausible. The US has nowhere near enough manpower to try to occupy any meaningful part of Iran and where/how would they be marshalled and deployed to the country even if the US did have enough? And a draft isn't happening -- even if it was officially announced starting today, there's no real infrastructure in place to implement it and would take months at least before the first draftees could plausibly be deployed overseas. (People forget that in WW2, the first lottery for the US draft was actually held in October ***1940***.)
Not saying it's plausible, just what's necessary if the objective is anything other than "blow shit up".
Here's my thing- why don't the Israelis just go in themselves? It's their neighborhood, they were the ones who were so gung-ho about attacking Iran. They have a fairly competent military. We can provide the air support, intelligence, and maybe even transportation to the the battlefield if they don't have the capabilities. They can do the fighting & dying of seizing key objectives, nuclear sites, etc.
Sounds like a great job for the country who apparently really, really wanted this!
Israel lacks any real logistics to be able to put anything besides a small raid into Iran. There's no way they could get more than a thousand or so troops in the country and keep them supplied and even that is doubtful.
The thing that America does impressively well more than any other country is military logistics.
A serious occupation of Iran would likely require over a million troops, which would be… about a tenth of Israel’s whole population.
There's gotta be a middle ground between 'occupying a whole country of 90 million people' and 'zero boots on the ground whatsoever'. Can't some special forces teams seize nuclear sites? Can't they take out leadership posts and engage Guard forces where they're massed? Seizing & holding Kharg Island?
Don't get me wrong- I'm strongly against this whole war. I'm just saying, to the extent that ground troops are needed at all- that sounds like a great job for the warmongering country behind this idea. Are there going to be some heavy casualties for the Israelis? Sure- that's the price they need to pay if they wanted to change the Iranian regime
To give the Israelis some credit, they have taken real risks putting their SOF on the ground in Lebanon, Syria, probably Yemen and Iraq, but to do something like this (https://www.twz.com/nuclear/special-operations-raid-to-secure-irans-enriched-uranium-may-become-a-very-risky-necessity) in central Iran, especially unilaterally, would be orders of magnitude more dangerous, and could plausibly end with 100+ Israeli SOF captured or killed (hence why they didn't do it last year, and focused on getting Trump to bomb instead). So yes, I would have been literally breaking out the popcorn if Bibi had decided to bring the 12 Day War Part 2 to theaters near you this summer, PROVIDED that the US stayed completely out of it.
But in that scenario I doubt Bibi would have rolled the dice, let alone with a major ground operation and, apparently thanks to Lady Graham's openly treasonous collusion and our cottage-cheese brained sundowner in chief, he was able to get us to do most of his dirty work instead.
There's a substantial evidence that the Israelis were planning to attack again later this year, but it was either going to be relatively ineffective against the overall BMD program, just like their surprise attack in 2025 (and, if we didn't support, with a higher risk of casualties), partly because this time it would be much less surprising, or else we'd be deeply implicated if we provided aerial refueling support and/or billions of dollars worth of IAMD coverage (like in 2025 and twice in 2024). In the latter scenario, Rubio's argument (loathsome, vicious, and dishonest as he is) about risks to American personnel would very likely have proven correct (albeit probably with much more targeted strikes against a subset of US assets in the region).
BLUF, if you're almost completely unwilling to conduct (and subsequently honor) meaningful negotiations with the Iranian regime, then it could be "logical" to attack while they're weak, but in that case you should make an effort to get domestic and international allies on board (and at least fucking coordinate/prepare across your own government thru the interagency process), plus coordinate minesweeping assets for the SoH. Or just stop spending tens of billions annually to defend the corrupt, brutal, racist regime of an apartheid state...but who am I kidding? Forget it, Jake, it's [the mostly self-inflicted and self-destructive US attachment to] the Middle East
To be clear, do you mean there was evidence they were going to invade, or just do the air war?
Mostly air war, probably SOF and Mossad on the ground in Syria/Iraq and Iran, respectively, just like last time.
Potentially re-invade Lebanon (even more, that is, since they never withdrew after the last "ceasefire") like they're doing now
So, Israel decides it's going to attack, we could have drawn down our forces to a minimum, and then devoted all our air defense weaponry to protecting them. We would then have not shot off billions of high tech weapons we now need to replace at 2026 prices, and there's at least some chance the Iranians decide this is mostly between them and Israel, don't drag in their neighbors, and don't close the Strait.
Tell me why this plan is better?
I mean, that could work, but at like, incredible cost
At least Bibi's happy!
While i also agree it's a bad provision at least in principle, can someone point to analysis of how bad it would actually be in practice?
Step 0: On any housing matter read Erdmann
https://kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/observations-on-the-single-family
tl;dr
The ban is silly and counter productive.
Institutional investors own an insignificant fraction of total SFH housing stock, but ~10% of new homes being built for rentals.
As always, the government tries to close the barn door long after the horses have run off. According to Gemini:
As of the latest data from February 2026, the inventory of unsold homes in the U.S. has experienced sustained year-over-year increases, with active listings marking over two years of consistent growth (27 consecutive months as of January 2026).
Key Findings on Unsold Home Inventory (Early 2026):
February 2026 Trend: There were 1.29 million unsold homes at the end of February 2026, a 4.9% increase from February 2025.
Consecutive Growth: The number of for-sale listings has risen consecutively for roughly 26-27 months, according to Realtor.com reports, with January 2026 marking the 27th straight month of year-over-year gains.
Active Inventory Rise: Active inventory increased 10% year-over-year in January 2026, although the pace of growth has slowed compared to the 32% peak in mid-2025.
Supply Levels: The February 2026 data shows a 3.8-month supply of unsold inventory, still below the 5-to-6-month range considered a balanced market.
The problem of "not enough homes" is gone. Now the problem is that housing is still way overpriced. At a certain crisis point in the future people selling homes will have "race to the bottom" in order for their home to sell. That price destruction will probably cause the next recession/GFC. We could see home values drop 50-60%. Sounds like 2008 all over again except instead of a debt crisis it will be a consumer crisis. They will be losing a large chunk of their net worth and will stop spending like drunken sailors.
So you’re saying that with interest rates having fallen several times over the past several months, the problem of high interest rates is now gone?
Oh fucking PUHLEASE.
The problem is NOT gone. We are 15-20M units short.
Yeah, we will need the federal government to stabilize home prices, of course
RE my criticism from last week, I think this is much improved! Cheers.