The Opinionated Ogre is a Stay-at-Home parent first, foul-mouthed hater of fascist Republicans second. He’s been making the most horrible people in the country miserable for over 15 years, and the hate he feels for American Nazis is eternal and without limits. He plans to stop torturing right-wing trash the day the last fascist dies. So, you know, never. Please help support this potty-mouthed newsletter for just $5/month or $50/year (Almost 17% less!)

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It’s been a little over a week since we started to bomb Iran for “reasons.” Maybe it was because Trump had a “gut feeling.” Maybe because several Gulf states poured literally billions in bribes into the pockets of Trump, his family, and various members of the regime. Maybe because Russia ordered its favorite puppet to start a war. Maybe because Stephen Miller and Trump thought they would be able to use the war to finish their authoritarian schemes on America.

It’s becoming clear to the regime that they’ve made an enormous mistake. An enormous and fatal mistake, and they’re not quite sure what to do about it.

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

The regime would pay back all of the bribes it’s received. Jared Kushner, alone, got $2 billion. The Trump family has been paid so much in crypto, we’re not even sure how much they’ve sold our military for at this point.

Russia would get an enormous boost in oil profits and, gee whiz!, would you look at that? We’re lifting sanctions so countries can buy Russian oil! Boy! That sure is convenient for a country whose economy was on the brink of collapse just a few weeks ago.

The Evangelicals are thrilled, of course. This just might be the End Times! March on, Holy Crusaders!!!

This was going to be a quick and easy war. We would go in, blow everything up, kill the Supreme Leader, topple the government, and make Donald Trump look like a manly war hero! Iran, of course, would fight back just long enough that we would have to declare a “national emergency” and federalize the elections ahead of the midterms. Very sad. Hate to do it, but it’s for the best.

But it’s nine days later, and Iran hasn’t surrendered. Those fuckers selected a new Supreme Leader! They’re still fighting back! They’re killing people all across the Middle East and wreaking havoc! What the fuck?!

This was supposed to be over already! Trump was supposed to be rolling down Pennsylvania Ave. by now, enjoying his awesome victory parade and the praise of the people!

Instead, most of the country is furious with him, including a growing part of his own base. What? Did those fucking imbeciles really believe Trump when he said, “No more foreign wars?!” He’s lied about everything else, and NOW they’re surprised he lied about that, too?! WhatEVER!

And what is all this bullshit about running out of missiles?!

In a closed-door meeting with lawmakers Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine reportedly said that Iran’s Shahed attack drones had proved a more difficult problem than initially predicted.

One source told CNN that the U.S. has been “burning” through long-range precision-guided missiles.

You mean we can’t make expensive, complicated missiles as quickly as cheap and relatively low-tech drones?! Drones that Iran has been stockpiling explicitly for this exact moment? How could anyone have foreseen such a thing? Except maybe the experts who warned that this is exactly the war Iran would fight?

A quick aside here: It’s important to understand that Iran is not fighting to win. It can’t, and they know it. This is a war of survival. What does that look like for Iran? Causing so much pain and suffering and damage to every hostile country in the Gulf that they demand the United States and Israel stop the attack. If we run out of interceptors and Iran can start launching drones that we can’t stop, the damage will be extreme. Ask Ukraine. The Gulf states will not put up with that crap for long. They wanted us to do their dirty work for them, not have death rain on their countries for weeks on end.

A second consideration for the regime is what happens if we DO run out of munitions. We’re the United States. The most fearsome and dangerous war machine ever to exist yadayadayada. If we literally run out of missiles, we suddenly look a whole lot less fearsome and dangerous. Ask Russia what it’s like to have your reputation as a military superpower evaporate.

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Meanwhile, Trump is ordering the peasants to stop paying attention to the price of gas. No, really.

What’s the price of oil looking like right now? Well, it’s 3:20 in the morning EST1

That drop from $115 a barrel is, if I understand it correctly, because countries are talking about releasing oil from their strategic petroleum reserves. That, however, is a stopgap measure. If the war drags on and oil production continues to be strangled in the Gulf, prices will skyrocket well past $100 and stay there.

And since Israel will not stop until Iran is crippled, permanently, this war is only just beginning. There’s a reason Trump is talking about sending troops in. If he backs out now, without toppling the regime, he’ll look weaker than ever. Of course, toppling the regime will be almost impossible according to our own intelligence experts:

Israel, of course, doesn’t really care, and they’re destroying everything: Schools, hospitals, desalination plants in a country suffering from acute drought. Israel is also blowing up oil infrastructure, which is causing widespread ecological damage, essentially waging chemical warfare by proxy. It’s also ensuring that the price of oil will spike further as the markets panic over the destruction of a major oil supplier. It’s also very likely to make the Iranian people turn towards their repressive government to protect them from the violently insane invaders attacking them. Remember “Hearts and Minds?” This is what the opposite of that looks like.

What could possibly go wrong?

So we’re stuck fighting a war we can’t get out of with objectives we cannot complete, and the longer we fight, the more damage to our own economy we do. An economy that is already teetering on the edge of collapse, just waiting for one or two more pushes to go over the edge.

We lost jobs in December and February. Unemployment is up. A sharp spike in gas and oil prices will push inflation way back up and drag the economy down like an anchor.

Here’s another terrible indicator that no one is really paying attention to (which is why you have me). I’ve been talking for a while now about two different bubbles, AI and the fucking banks AGAIN!!!!

In 2008-2009, the banks collapsed because they had hundreds of billions in bets tied up in mortgages that went bad. Did they learn their lesson? Fuuuuuuck no.

Well, sort of. Now they’re not just betting on mortgages. They’re betting on all kinds of debt. Credit cards, auto loans, grocery loans. Anything you can borrow money to pay for, they’re betting money on it. What happens when the economy sours and those loans default? The same goddamn thing that happened in 2008-2009. The banks can’t pay their debts, and the bubble pops. Boom goes the economy.

And look at that, rich people are starting to panic about their money:

Sentiment has soured around private credit in recent months, and retail investors are increasingly asking for their money back from funds like BlackRock’s $26 billion HPS Corporate Lending Fund (HLEND), which were designed to be open to wealthy ​individuals.

“It should serve as a warning sign for the industry and the rulemakers about the downside of illiquid funds for retail investors,” ​said Greggory Warren, senior stock analyst at Morningstar.

Last year’s bankruptcies of a U.S. auto parts supplier and a subprime auto ⁠lender, along with the collapse of a UK mortgage lender last week, have raised questions about lending standards.

“Subprime auto lender.” That’s literally the same scummy thing the banks did with mortgages, and for the exact same reason. More loans mean they can be bundled into “financial instruments” and used to place bets. Bets that are starting to go bad with predictable results. Fuck these people with a red-hot poker.

What’s an aspiring dictator to do when his quick and easy war turns out to be a quagmire that will make it impossible to win an election he cannot afford to lose? Worse, Trump’s dreams of riding high as a warhero and/or declaring a national emergency are dependent on public support. He’s so reviled, no matter how hard the regime tries to terrorize the country into submission, we are not going to play along.

Whether Iran manages to land a real terrorist attack or the regime (or Russia or American Nazis) stages a false flag attack, it won’t matter. The public is going to blame Trump and his stupid fucking war. The LAST thing we’re going to do is give him more power. “Please protect us from the fucking mess YOU made!” Yeah, that is not going to happen, no matter how much Stephen Miller masturbates himself to sleep dreaming of his own personal Reichstag Fire.

By attacking Iran in such a sloppy, stupid, and thoughtless way with no goals and no exit strategy, Trump has guaranteed the blue wave that was already coming will be an unstoppable flood washing away hundreds of corrupt Republicans up and down the ticket across the country. The House is lost. The Senate, once seen as a heavy lift, is now slipping out of the reach of the GOP. State legislatures and governorships are threatened. All of this two years before an election that will determine the fate of hundreds of Republicans facing life sentences in prison under a Democratic president with a real Attorney General.

If you thought Trump was desperate already, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet as the full realization sets in of just how much he’s fucked himself. I’d be more worried if there was a single competent fascist in the White House, but it’s a fucking clown show through and through. They’ll hurt a lot of people as they flail and sink. Our job is to keep them from pulling us under with them. Or rather, push them under and hold them there until they stop moving. Just to be safe. 😜

I write to help you cope with the fear and anger threatening to overwhelm you every day. If this newsletter gets you through these dark times, please consider becoming a contributing supporter for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!). Thank you for everything!

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There are only 277 days until the midterms, and the regime is panicking. They’re afraid of us. Keep making them afraid every single day. Remember, you are never alone. We beat the fascists once. We will fucking do it again.

Cynicism About News Helps Our Dictator

DCReport Readers, I want to strongly encourage you to look at the front page of The New York Times for Sunday, March 8, 2026. There are six stories, any one of which I would have been proud to author, and all of which upend any claim that The Times is no longer worth your time.

The great Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Charlie Savage leads the page with a news analysis headlined “Trump Tramples a Line, Worn Faint, on War. He describes how, since the Cold War began, the Constitutional principle that only Congress can declare war has been progressively eroded.

As commander-in-chief, the President only has inherent authority to defend against a current or imminent attack. Trump’s war on Iran finishes wiping out that bedrock Constitutional standard, while the leadership on Capitol Hill, where Republicans control both chambers, does nothing.

Immediately below that piece, but still above the fold, is a Kenneth P. Vogel piece headlined “Pardon Industry Offers the Rich A Path to Trump.”

Selling Pardons

Vogel, a dogged investigative reporter, devotes an entire inside page to showing how Donald Trump is selling clemency and pardons to the rich. If that sounds like an impeachable offense, it is. Among those pardoned are some of the world’s biggest cocaine traffickers, child sexual abusers, and white-collar criminals who will now get to keep their ill-gotten billions with no restitution to their victims.

This was an exceptionally difficult story to ferret out because public records are scant, and conspirators in these pardons-and-clemency-for-sale schemes aren’t eager to implicate themselves or Trump.

It’s also criminal in my view, as someone who both knows Trump and has taught law for the last 17 years, although I’m not a lawyer.

Taking money to let people out of prison or wipe their slates clean, even when it’s done through intermediaries or ancillary characters, is a crime, not an “official act.” That distinction matters because of a cockamamie 2023 Supreme Court decision that former presidents may not be prosecuted for any “official act” performed while in office.

Issuing clemency and pardons is an official act. Taking money isn’t, even if the money goes to confederates.

Also above the fold: “Colleges Respond to Upswing in Disability Diagnoses,” in which reporters Mark Arsenault and Steven Rich dive into the reasons for the last decade’s 50% jump in the number of students receiving special treatment for diagnosed disabilities. They found that some of these reflect refined techniques to identify disabilities and related physical and intellectual limitations. However, some of it reflects students gaming the system for a range of accommodations, such as extra time to complete quizzes, midterms, and finals.

Billionaire Boom

Right at the fold, a four-column headline suggests a threatening scenario: “Torrent of Money Transforms A Slice of Wyoming” This story documents America’s billionaire boom and how wealth is increasingly concentrated at the very top, a story I started making a kitchen-table topic in 1995 when I became a reporter for The Times, and I continued to pursue it for the next 13 years.

Back then, a small army of critics blamed me for, in their view, abusing income statistics to fabricate an issue. Those critics were never able to point to any conceptual or factual error, but that didn’t stop their attacks until the Obama era, when widening income inequality became so obvious that denial no longer resonated with anyone except cranks and the willfully blind.

Times reporters Katie Benner, Steven Rich, Mike Baker, and John Branch did a fabulous job of updating the economic data to show that the top 1 in 1,000 families is experiencing skyrocketing wealth, while the bottom half of Americans have merely doubled their minuscule wealth in the last 35 years.

The sixth story is about retirees who chose to stay in Gotham rather than go to Florida. As Kiplinger’s, the personal finance magazine, pointed out years ago, if you have your housing costs solved (own, rent-controlled, or rent-stabilized), then the big city is one of the cheapest and most culturally enriching places in America for those with a modest income. No surprise, but a sound reminder.

Unique Workplace Principles

It’s easy to fault The New York Times. Indeed, few people are more critical of the paper than those who work in its newsrooms.

That’s because newsrooms operate on principles different from any other commercial enterprise. There’s an old journalistic saying that “a healthy newsroom is a newsroom with lots of bitching” about what is and is not in the daily report, as the mix of news stories is known among reporters and editors.

Newspapers make mistakes just like every other institution. But they are virtually unique in owning up to those mistakes and ensuring the public is aware of them.

There’s another old saying in newsrooms: “Doctors bury their mistakes, lawyers see theirs off to jail, only reporters sign theirs on the front page for everyone to read.”

Standing Up

I once spent money on researchers to find out who originated that phrase. The oldest verifiable use was under my byline. But I did not originate it. If you know who did, please write to us via the DCReport Tipline.

Few institutions in America have the resources, the talent, and the institutional imperatives to stand fast against Trump. For a long time, The Washington Post stood for our Constitution and the liberties of the people. But then its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, decided his fortune mattered more than America’s future as a democracy of free peoples.

Now and then, Rupert Murdoch’s The Wall Street Journal breaks a big story that infuriates Trump. But Donald can rely on the WSJ opinion pages to, for the most part, give cover for his anti-democratic moves. The American edition of The Guardian, a British newspaper, is solid, as are many independent news websites.

If you want to live free. If you want your progeny and the progeny of others to enjoy our liberties, then one key thing you can do is start every morning by reading The New York Times.

That doesn’t mean you should concur with or believe everything you read. Read the first rough draft of history with a grain of salt, as I do. Recognize that some reporters are great and many are merely good, and that, overall, the news is a highly accurate recounting of the official version of events and the official criticisms of those events.

Or be cynical. Close your eyes. Donald Trump will exploit your ignorance, but he’ll never thank you.

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Where do you start? With the planning that left out the whole thing about Iran shooting back? With the use of an insecure curtained-off ballroom in Mar a Lago as the Iran war room? With the White House turning a real shooting war that is killing hundreds of Iranians each day into a macho meme campaign that features clips from video games mixed with real-world strikes on targets in Iran? With Russia providing targeting information to the Iranian military, and that causing our Treasury Secretary to relax sanctions on Russian oil because…well, we haven’t been told why, but gas prices headed ever skyward might have something to do with it.

You can’t keep up with the madness, because there is so much of it. The House and the Senate rejected a war powers resolution that would have ended military action in Iran and required Trump to get congressional approval before proceeding with his war. Republicans said Trump was justified in unilaterally attacking Iran because of the “imminent threat” posed by Iran. When Democrats pointed out that the word “imminent” does not appear even once in the notification and justification the White House provided Congress for the war, Republicans turned to something new…or is it old?...a charge that “Iran has waged a 47-year war against the United States,” so Trump was justified in attacking Iran because it has been our enemy for so long.

Who knew we have been at war with Iran for so long? This is the first we’ve heard of this 47-year war. Should it matter that Republicans can’t agree on why Trump must have the power to take this country to war on a whim, immediately after he walked out of a party in Mar a Lago? The White House itself can’t come up with a coherent reason for the war. Is it about regime change? “Imminent” nuclear weapons? Eliminating Iran’s ability to fund proxies that can strike U.S. “interests” in the Middle East? Eliminating or damaging Iran’s ballistic missile program?

See what I mean? When they’re caught out for contradicting themselves, for lying, for exaggerating, for denying that the war Trump and Hegseth talk about every day as, in fact, a “war,” they just keep babbling more nonsense, secure in the idea that if Donald Trump wants a war on Iran that it must be right.

Meanwhile, Trump has so far refused to interrupt his weekly flights on Air Force One to Palm Beach, where he spends time at Mar a Lago and goes golfing with his pals. The fact that there is an all-out war being fought against Iran – not because the Congress ordered the nation to war, or because anyone else thought bombing Iran was a good idea – but solely at his behest seems not to matter to him, or to anyone else in the Republican Party for that matter.

But now comes the piper insisting on being paid. Trade in oil has been severely interrupted, sending gas prices up everywhere, including the U.S., where the price of regular gas has increased fifty cents a gallon in a week. The price of diesel fuel has gone up even more, making the cost of shipping goods more expensive, and this on top of Trump’s insane tariffs that had already pushed the price of imported goods higher and then higher again, the ones everyone buys at Walmart and the corner store, forced small businesses to go out of business, including restaurants and family-owned firms distributing imported goods. And now we are told that this war that Donald Trump started just over a week ago has cost the United States one billion of our tax dollars each day.

Coming as I do from a military family, I must insist that we treat all this as background noise, because the United States is at war, and that has already caused soldiers to be killed and means that soldiers will likely continue to be killed, with Trump beginning to make noises about committing troops to combat on the ground in Iran.

I realized over the last couple of days that too much of what I have written about this war has been like what I have written above about Trump and the Congress and the justifications for the war and its effect on prices and all the rest. It is automatic to treat this war as if it is a gigantic and complex series of decisions and effects: if we attack this, how will Iran respond? If we use these munitions, what will that mean? Will we run out of those bombs before we can accomplish this goal? And what are the goals of this war, anyway?

The reality of this war and every war for that matter is death. We are told that more than 1,300 Iranians have been killed. The total killed on “our” side is much less. The CENTCOM “Live Tracker” of casualties as of this morning shows that missile and drone strikes by Iran have killed one person in Bahrain, three in the United Arab Emirates, one in Oman, six in Kuwait, 11 in Israel, with injuries around the region in the hundreds. CENTCOM also lists the six American soldiers who have been killed so far.

This is what those cold statistics mean: Most of those people were living and breathing and sitting down to eat dinner with their families one week ago. They tucked their children in bed, or they wrote emails home, or they chatted with their friends on the phone and at work.

And then they didn’t, because this war started by Donald Trump killed them. This is what happens when someone is killed: A death in this war takes a son or a daughter from a mother and father; a husband from a wife, or a wife from a husband; a father or a mother from their children; a brother or a sister from their siblings; a friend from his or her friends.

When a life ends, possibilities end with it. This war has taken from the world the contributions the dead may have made to their families, to their communities, to their countries. The contributions of the people who have been killed need not have been the invention of a new technology or the cure for a disease or a solution to a shortage of food or water. All they might have done was to make others happy, their friends or their families or their children or the people they work with.

But now that has been taken from them, and from us. It is the most profound loss there can be, because their deaths did not occur naturally as part of the wrinkling of time. Their deaths did not have to happen. They died because of the decisions of one man.

The man who sent the nation’s military to war has no idea what the consequences are. Last week, speaking of the soldiers who were killed in a drone strike in Kuwait, Trump told NBC News, “We have three, but we expect casualties, but in the end it’s going to be a great deal for the world. And sadly, there will likely be more before it ends. That’s the way it is. Likely be more.”

A great deal for the world.

Trump attended the ceremony at Dover Air Force Base when the bodies of the six American service members were returned to U.S. soil. He wore one of his baseball-style caps, a white one with the letters USA on the front, at the ceremony. The same cap is for sale as a souvenir on his website where he sells other gimcrackery with his name and image and MAGA emblazoned on them. After the Dover ceremony, Trump and his Secretary of War and his other guests got on Air Force One and flew to his hotel/residence/club, Mar a Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida.

I have written before about my grandfather, General Lucian K. Truscott Jr., and the remarks he made on Memorial Day in 1945 at the dedication of the American Cemetery in Nettuno, Italy. I grew up as the son of an army officer and the grandson of two army officers. I can remember attending Memorial Day ceremonies at army posts in Georgia and Kansas and Pennsylvania and Kentucky and at West Point. I can remember my father stepping out on the balcony of our apartment in Oberammergau, Germany, on Memorial Day in 1956 and 1957 and 1958 to blow the trumpet he was given in the Boy Scouts at Fort Myer, Virginia, the mournful tones of Taps sounding across the army post grandpa had seized from the German army when he was military governor of Bavaria in 1945.

And I remember what my father told me about the night before he left on his assignment to the war in Korea when he asked grandpa what it was like to command troops in combat. Dad said they were standing along a wooden fence behind the farmhouse grandpa and grandma bought in Virginia after the war. He said grandpa listened to his question, and then he just broke down crying, sobbing so hard he had to lean against the fence to remain standing. Dad said all grandpa managed to say was, “The bodies, son, all those bodies, those bodies, all those bodies.” He said it was the only time he ever saw his father cry in his life, and he said they never again talked about war.

There is no official record of grandpa’s remarks at Nettuno in 1945, but Bill Mauldin, the cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, who was part of grandpa’s army in Italy during the war, wrote this in his memoir, “The Brass Ring,” in 1971:

“There were about twenty thousand American graves. Families hadn’t started digging up the bodies and bringing them home.”

“Before the stand were spectator benches, with a number of camp chairs down front for VIPs, including several members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. When Truscott spoke he turned away from the visitors and addressed himself to the corpses he had commanded here. It was the most moving gesture I ever saw. It came from a hard-boiled old man who was incapable of planned dramatics.”

“The general’s remarks were brief and extemporaneous. He apologized to the dead men for their presence here. He said everybody tells leaders it is not their fault that men get killed in war, but that every leader knows in his heart this is not altogether true.

“He said he hoped anybody here through any mistake of his would forgive him, but he realized that was asking a hell of a lot under the circumstances. He would not speak about the glorious dead because he didn’t see much glory in getting killed if you were in your late teens or early twenties. He promised that if in the future he ran into anybody, especially old men, who thought death in battle was glorious, he would straighten them out. He said he thought that was the least he could do.”

That “hard-boiled old man” Mauldin describes was 50 years old. Bill Mauldin was 23. Neither of them could have foreseen the day that the President of the United States would attempt to popularize his war with video game meme images.

I will be 79 years old next month, and I do not consider myself either old or hardboiled, but I come from an army family, and I can assure you that after this war, as it has been true after every war, the dead will speak louder than any of the noise we hear from the man who ordered them into a war nobody wanted and that neither they, nor the world deserved.

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A whirlwind of a week in Donald Trump’s world has swirled expectations in global relationships, in economics, in politics and in any sense of personal security. Every conversation now is filled with public dread over uncertainty and private desire to shut the noise.

Apart from watching a war develop seemingly uncontrollably, we’re seeing prices rise yet more, jobs and immigrants disappearing before us, health care and social services being declared optional at best, and Americans fleeing late from the Middle East.

We are getting a constant barrage of messaging that if we complain, we’re being told we are  unpatriotic, even if those messages change by the day or hour. As an example, Trump’s call for “unconditional surrender” by Iran faded after a day to “when Iran can fight no longer,” just as quickly as “war” was being described as a “limited combat opportunity.”

Iran’s president said Iran would halt unprovoked attacks on neighbors except Israel, only to have reports in the hours that followed of more Iranian missiles landing.

At his recent State of the Union, Trump demanded that people stand if they agree that “The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”  It prompted Republican legislators to rise while Democrats, who see that statement riddled with illegal tactics and randomly unwarranted deportations remaining seated and expressionless.

Even in the moment, it smacked of political grandstanding for partisan gain. But a week or more later, it feels an empty gimmick worth re-applying.

In the name of “protecting American citizens,” Trump has launched a preemptive strike against Iran, acting apart from all allies but Israel, and leaving many believing that Trump remains under the sway of Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu towards an expensive, open-ended conflict towards ends that even the administration has trouble encapsulating.

When War/Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the military objectives are clear, he’s probably right. The U.S. and Israeli military commands have long-established lists of specific targets to wipe out nuclear and missile capacity, weapons manufacture, Islamic Revolutionary Guard command and control and the like. More than a week after the launch of daily sorties against hundreds of targets a day – and on the brink of committing some “limited” ground forces — the ultimate political, economic, security goals remain uncharted, and unaddressed.

All week, there was continuing talk of one Trump move trying to distract from the previous one, whether the war was a “wag the dog” move about slumping polls and election setbacks, the ever-present Epstein mess or immigration roundups seen as gone out of control. It feels as if there always is something from which we need distraction.

War-Torn Week That Was

In this single week, the Congress has sought, and failed, to pass resolutions to assert its Constitutional right to declare war amid arguments from Republicans who avoid the use of the word “war” to elude the requirement. By the day, Iran shows no sign of concession and is bombing – and drawing response from Israel and a growing number of Gulf nations – in ever-widening circles to make this conflict much wider.

Rather than American dominance, what we are witnessing is a flailing America working out of sync with allies to demand obedience from a world that is growing increasingly uneasy with the U.S. and its promises, and with Trump’s government. Using brute force is usually not the best way to win hearts and minds, whether in Iran or in the many historical cases that have proceeded it.

None of this has to do with the “rightness” of acting against Iran’s bad behavior over five decades, but everything to do with the ham-handedness and egocentricity with which Trump seems to have blown a unique chance to build and lead a coalition of nations towards a common goal.

As a result, even within a first week of war by whatever name, we are already seeing ill economic effects building, further undercutting the Trump arguments that he is presiding over an American “golden age.” The week was concluding with unexpected downturns in job numbers, oil and energy prices rocketing around the world as shipping through the Gulf is halted, and even questions about available weaponry for a sustained conflict.

It was a week that opened the U.S. election season, amid solid gains and enthusiasm for Trump opponents even in deep-red Texas, scandals that further threaten the thin Republican Congressional majorities, and the firing of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem over her botched public relations handling of a $220 million ad campaign at a time when Homeland Security is threatened by possible Iranian cells.

Court rulings continue to declare Trump policies illegal over tariffs and the proposed prosecution of political foes, while federal agencies are focusing on control over what comedians can say on television and what merit badges earned by Scouts may violate Trump’s sense of horror at diversity and inclusion concerns.

Trump and Hegseth were taking heat for dismissive comments about the first troop deaths as something to expect, and saying Americans should expect there will be more to come. Those fleeing the Middle East only after the start of these preemptive strikes are hearing from the White House that they should have known the area was dangerous from its previous travel warnings.

Trump and Hegseth insist that U.S. weapons supplies are ample enough for multiple global military deployments but had defense contractors meet in the White House to agree to speed production of replacement missiles, drones and explosives.

Trump is making a point of greeting the coffins of six U.S. soldiers killed, but has dismissed casualties as something that happens in war.

Who is ‘Crazy’?

Together, it makes one question whether Trump is rising this week to say that his primary mission is to “protect American citizens.”

He’s not protecting against increasing prices or war-fueled inflation. He is not protecting against a diminishing respect abroad from international institutions and our expected allies. He is not protecting in any systematic manner against the sexual abuse exposed by the Epstein Files, and there are serious questions about whether his anti-drug campaign is effective by any practical measure.

He is protecting Americans against his “feelings based on fact” belief, as the White House tells it, that Iran wants to reconstitute its nuclear weapons development and continue to harass Israel and the Gulf with missiles. But we have yet to see that there was anything “imminent” about those plans. The Omani go-between official who was shuttling between Iranian and U.S. negotiators said Iran was ready to accept most terms that Trump had wanted about nukes, but that other missiles were not discussed.

On the other hand, we have seen much reporting this week saying that the Israelis wanted to strike Iran while it was down after the previous U.S.-Israeli bombing run on nuclear labs and setbacks for Hezbollah and Hamas, Iranian proxies. The “imminent” danger seemed concern for U.S. personnel in the region being endangered by expected Iranian response to an Israeli strike.

Now that the political season is open, we can expect to see Republican ads about who was standing and who was not at the State of the Union, as if that showed who is loyal to Trump and who is “crazy,” in Trump’s label.

Trump now argues that Democrats back both unending illegal immigration and a nuclear-armed Iran.

Who is “protected” in all this. It feels as if it is Team Trump that is protected, not Americans, citizen or not.

Just who is crazy here? If backing the Constitution for its process guarantees for individual rights for citizens and migrants alike and a belief that we ought to know what the goal is before sending thousands of U.S. airmen, sailors and troops at Iran, count me as one of the loons.

This week was not about disagreement. It was about trying to stuff “crazy” into political packaging.

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The post Trump’s War Week Raises Questions About Who Is Really Being “Protected” appeared first on DCReport.org.

It’s a truism that every child should be wanted. While there are plenty of exceptions, the birth of an unwanted child often turns out badly for both mother and child (and father, if they are present). Sometimes, once a child is born, the fact that they were initially unwanted fades into irrelevance, and the bond between parents and child is as strong as with a planned birth. But this isn’t true on average: children born after their mother was denied an abortion (due to time limits) experience, on average, more poverty and poorer maternal bonding The extreme case is that of Ceausescu’s Romania, where abortions were banned, and the resuling unwanted children received miserable upbringings in orphanages.

The birth of an unwanted child can be an economic as well as a personal catastrophe. This is crucial to understand when we are assessing claims that “the economy” would benefit if families had more children than they currently choose.

Raising a child from birth to adulthood requires huge inputs of labour, time and money. In the context of a loving family, these parental inputs are more than offset by the joy of having children. Because this context is assumed, most estimates of the costs of raising children typically focus on the financial costs incurred by their parents. That’s been estimated at 13 per cent of a family’s disposable income on the first child and a further ten percentage points for each child after that. For median couples, that amounts to about $300,000 over 18 years for the first child. Subsequent children would be about $230,000 each.

That’s a lot of money. But if the main work of parental care is replaced by paid workers unrelated to the child the cost is stupendous – in Australia $100 000 a year for foster care and as much as $1 million a year for high-needs children. And in the case of an unwanted child raised by their parents, the same work must be carried out without pay.

On top of that, there is public expenditure on schooling and childcare, around $20 000 per school-age child per year or another $ 300 000 by the time high school is completed. On average, this a good investment for society considered purely in financial terms. The extra earnings of more educated workers are shared with society as a whole through the tax system and are sufficient to cover the costs of schooling with a surplus left over. But that surplus is tiny compared to the public and private costs of raising a child.

The policy implication here is that there is no point in trying to induce women, and their partners, to have more children than they currently want. However the economic costs of raising unwanted children are divided between parents and the states they far exceed the benefits accruing to society as a whole [1]

The only way to increase birth rates is to remove obstacles to childbearing for those who want more children than they already have. Those obstacles include infertility, the lack of a suitable partner and economic insecurity. We could probably do more on infertility (including options like surrogacy) but addressing the other big obstacles would require huge social changes. Many of these, such as a reduction in the time demands of paid work, would not be welcome to some of the advocates of higher birth rates.

fn1. Of course, once a child is born their interests count just as much as anyone else’s. But we do no harm to any of the uncountable trillions of possible children by not bringing them into existence in the first place.

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Here we are, beginning Week Two of what will either be a short war as Trump gets bored and sees how much attacking Iran threatens to topple his regime. Or we’re in for a years-long quagmire as Trump’s bloodlust intensifies and he commits tens of thousands of American troops to a suicidal course of action.

Either way, this will be yet another Republican military disaster that we’ll have to clean up. Except this time, I refuse to take the fucking blame for it, no matter how hard the legacy press tries to absolve Republicans of their culpability.

They broke it, they fucking own it.

Now let’s see what other news you missed this week, yes?

Monday: It’s all going to shit in record time. Bravo!

Tuesday: Christian Nationalist death cultists have infested out government and military.

Wednesday: Recording and editing!

Thursday: Podcast!

Friday: I did an interview!

Also Friday: They could have stopped this a decade ago but they didn’t. Too fucking late now.

5 Interesting Things I Read This Week

1. MAGA Stole Obama’s Playbook - How the right learned Obama’s game—and what Mamdani and Indivisible show about taking it back from the mucky mucks LIKE RAHM EMMANUEL who tossed it aside. by LOLGOP at The Cause

2. Anti-Trans Democrats Blown Out In North Carolina Primary Election - Anti-trans Democrat Nasif Majeed lost to Veleria Levy, who ran on a pro-LGBTQ+ platform. Other conservative Democrats lost as well on primary day. by Erin Reed at Erin in the Morning

3. Trump CANNOT regulate elections by executive order by Mike Brock at Notes from the Circus

4. Trump Has No Plan for Iran’s Future - Just bombing Iran will not create a stable regime by Anne Applebaum at Open Letters

5. The Future is War Crimes: AI and the Authoritarian Threat - The war in Iran and all its atrocities is a baptism into a dangerous new world by Jared Yates Sexton at Dispatches From A Collapsing State