There are certainly examples where new technology has replaced jobs. The US had 350,000 telephone switchboard operators in 1950, and the job just went away. The tractor played a big role in reducing the number of US farmers in the first half of the 20th century. Almost every village of any size had a blacksmith though much of the 19th century, but with the rise of industrial production, there weren’t enough of them left to be counted as a separate employment category in the 1900 census. And now here we are with the new artificial intelligence tools, and warnings that all manner of jobs that use computers–across a wide array of industries–could be at risk.

It seems obvious to me that many jobs will change as new technologies appear. Many of the tasks involved in my own job, running an academic economics journal since the late 1980s, changed substantially with the arrival of the internet, for example. But the job itself didn’t go away; indeed, the internet probably made me better at my job. For example, it’s a lot easier for me to look up cited articles from my desk than it was to walk over into the library stacks to find the article–and so I check many more articles as a result.

Thus, a key issue here is the extent to which the new AI tools replace workers outright, like telephone switchboard operators, or whether they allow workers to be more productive and effect–or even create the possibility for new and previously unimagined jobs. Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, and Simon Johnson work through these distinctions in “Building pro-worker artificial intelligence” (Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, February 2026). They write: “We define pro-worker technologies—including AI—as technologies that make human skills and expertise more valuable by expanding worker capabilities.”

They emphasize a key point about AI tools: such tools may actually be more useful when collaborating with humans. They write:

A modern AI system can ingest drone imagery and soil sensor data from a farm’s every acre, the complete sensor logs from a building’s HVAC system, or the detailed vital signs of a single patient observed over many months to support workers making high-stakes decisions. Drawing on this pretraining, AI tools can think alongside workers, identify relevant context, generate well-informed responses to questions, and present lucid, well-structured data to support decisionmaking. This is collaboration.

You may object: “If AI can behave like an expert, can’t it simply replace experts, thus automating their expertise into irrelevance?” In some cases, the answer is yes. But in many more cases, we think the answer is no: AI will prove more effective at collaboration than
at automation. Precisely because AI is not rule-bound, it is less trustworthy as an autonomous actor than a conventional computer system, and more valuable as a collaborator (Narayanan and Kapoor 2025).

To be useful, an automation tool must deliver near-flawless performance almost all the time. You would not tolerate a spreadsheet that hallucinated values, a robotic surgeon that glitched-out during bypass surgery, an agentic investing tool that squandered your money while you were not paying attention, or an AI-powered vending machine that gave away PlayStations and stocked live fish at the behest of persuasive customers (Stern 2025). For most of these tasks, the stakes are too consequential and the decisions too nuanced to be fully delegated to an automatic system that acts on its own discretion. The AI needs human expertise.

A collaboration tool does not need to be anywhere close to infallible to be useful. A doctor with a stethoscope can better diagnose a patient than the same doctor without one, and a contractor can pitch a squarer house frame with a laser level than they could by eyeballing it. These tools do not need to work flawlessly, because they do not promise to replace the expertise of their user. They make experts better at what they do—and extend their expertise to places it could not go unassisted. Rather than making expertise unnecessary, they render expertise more valuable by extending its efficacy and scope. It is this complementarity between machine capacity and human expertise that we believe imbues AI with vast pro-worker potential.

The authors provide concrete examples of pro-worker uses of AI for teachers, electricians’ assistants, patent examiners and others. They point out that the use of AI-assisted hearing aids might enable some workers to expand their on-the-job capabilities. However, they also worry that economic incentives and business habits may tend to emphasize AI applications that substitute for current jobs, rather than complement them. Thus, they argue for the public sector to nudge the incentives for pro-worker AI tools where possible. One of their examples stuck with me:

Indeed, the public sector already heavily shapes the path of technology in health care and education. For example, the federal Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009 dramatically accelerated electronic health record adoption in U.S. hospitals through financial incentives and penalties. Within less than a decade, the
United States went from approximately 10 percent of hospitals with electronic health records to near-universal adoption (Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology 2017). In a similar vein, the federal schools and libraries universal support (E-Rate) program, established by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, provides ongoing subsidies to schools and libraries for Internet connectivity. As of 2021, 95 percent of U.S. public school classrooms had WiFi (Munson 2023).

They also point out that the US corporate tax code treats investment in machinery more favorably than investment in, say, worker training and skills. That policy difference could be at least equalized. In this and other ways, the future uses of AI are not purely determined by technological advance, but instead by the incentives and beliefs of economic players–firms that develop AI technologies, firms that use them, managers thinking about how work should evolve, the the willingness of workers to build new skills.

The post Can AI Tools Be Pro-Worker? first appeared on Conversable Economist.

Every election season brings a familiar sight of bright placards dotting the neighborhood landscapes. These signs represent the voices of residents who want to share their support for specific candidates. It is a tradition that allows for a vibrant display of civic engagement.

Unfortunately, this period also marks a rise in frustration as many of these displays start to vanish overnight. Finding a bare lawn where a message once stood feels like a personal attack. This interference is a common and very aggravating hurdle for many local people.

Theft of political yard signs is a criminal act that carries significant legal weight and penalties. Authorities take these reports seriously because they involve the removal of private property. Respecting these boundaries is essential for a healthy and truly functional local democracy.

First Amendment Friction and Protected Speech

Stealing a campaign sign is much more than a simple act of petty theft or a neighborhood prank. It represents a direct attempt to suppress the protected political speech of a fellow citizen. This interference strikes at the very heart of the freedom of expression.

When someone removes a sign, they are essentially trying to silence a specific viewpoint they find disagreeable. This behavior creates a hostile environment that discourages others from participating in the public square. It undermines the open exchange of ideas that is necessary for a community.

Legal systems recognize that these physical markers are vital tools for political communication and awareness during an election. Protecting these displays ensures that every voice has a fair chance to be heard by the public. Sabotage is never an acceptable response to a different opinion.

Property Lines and Public Rights

Confusion often arises regarding the exact rules of where a sign is legally allowed to stand. Most residents assume that any spot near the street is fair game for their displays. However, public right of way laws vary significantly between different cities and counties.

Code enforcement officers have the legal authority to remove signs that block traffic visibility or violate local ordinances. This type of official removal is not considered theft, even if it happens without a warning. Understanding these local regulations prevents unnecessary conflict and loss of materials.

Property owners should ensure their signs are placed well within their own boundaries to avoid any legal ambiguity. When a sign is on private land, its removal by an unauthorized person is a clear violation of the law. Clarity in placement protects the owner.

Surveillance and Identifying Saboteurs

The rise of doorbell cameras and affordable home security systems has changed how these crimes are prosecuted. Neighbors are now much more likely to capture high quality video of individuals removing signs under the cover of night. These recordings provide the evidence needed for charges.

Police departments use this footage to identify repeat offenders and bring them to justice in a local court. Having a digital witness makes it much harder for saboteurs to claim they were just joking around. The threat of being caught on camera is a powerful deterrent.

Publicly sharing these videos also helps to hold individuals accountable for their actions within the local community. It sends a clear message that the neighborhood will not tolerate the suppression of anyone’s political views. Technology is helping to preserve the integrity of the yard.

Strategies for Effective Deterrence

Taking a proactive approach to security can help prevent a sign from becoming a target for theft. Many residents choose to move their displays further back from the sidewalk to make them harder to reach. This simple change can discourage casual vandals who want a quick exit.

Some high stakes campaigns even use small GPS trackers to locate and recover stolen property in real time. Others use defensive placement techniques like coating the edges with sticky substances to deter anyone from grabbing them. These methods make the act of theft much more difficult.

Working with neighbors to keep an eye on each other’s property is another effective way to stay safe. A vigilant community is the best defense against those who wish to disrupt the democratic process. Sharing information quickly helps everyone keep their signs standing until the very end.

Respecting the physical presence of opposing views is a fundamental component of the democratic process in any country. It requires a level of maturity and restraint that allows for a peaceful coexistence of different ideas. We must protect the rights of others to speak.

While it is tempting to lash out at a message that feels wrong, the law is very clear about the consequences. Stealing property only serves to deepen the divide and foster a culture of resentment. True progress happens through debate and voting rather than through silent sabotage.

The quality of our local political climate depends on our collective ability to respect the rules of the game. Keeping the conversation civil and the signs standing is a shared responsibility for every resident. Excellence in democracy is found in our respect for the process.

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The post The Vanishing Vote and the Legal Reality of Yard Sign Sabotage appeared first on DCReport.org.

No Vote, No Plan, No Endgame.

Deepening fissures underscoring Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to go to war with Iran are evident even as the military story continues to unfold.

Indeed, we learned of the first U.S. casualties, amid more Gulf nations taking hits from Iranian drones and missiles. U.S.-Israeli bombs were hitting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard headquarters, targets in central Tehran and other cities without a full assessment of what has been destroyed or determination of who besides the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been killed. Temporary government fill-ins in Iran called Trump to say they should talk.

There is plenty of outright worry in Israel and throughout the region from Iranian missiles hitting hotels, fields, airports, three oil tankers, and other non-military targets at random. People in Europe and the U.S. remain on alert about the lone Iranian rebel cell that can seek revenge.

The fissures cross diplomatic, political, even moral lines, standing in for the debate that never happened before missiles were fired and jets launched.

They question the why, as separable from any issues of military efficiency and expertise, which all, friend and foe alike, praise as well an initial strike carried out by a military that clearly had spent time and practice to hone the attack plans. The sole military questions remaining involve degrading Iran’s ability to launch its own retributive missiles and when to halt the bombing.

The key arguments remain over a U.S. president seen eluding of legal, Constitutional restraints and the lack of any understandable, measurable goals. Are all of us subject to more Trump announcements of “obliteration” only to find ourselves once again “days away” from an Iranian threat?

The undercurrent of alarm says that Trump – pushed by Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu – wanted the attack all along and any negotiations with Iran were all but pretense. For his part, Trump continued to confuse, offering in the same day to “immunize” Iranian troops who turn on the country and to threaten them for having killed three U.S. troops in retaliation.

Iran is Bad, Trump is Good

Team Trump’s over simplistic argument is that Iran has been and remains a bad international player, therefore it should be punished. That’s it. Any other reasons offered to start a war now keep changing, but they are subordinate to Iran is Bad.

The array of those in the U,S., the Gulf or around the world who do not line up daily to defend whatever comes out of Trump’s mouth push a lack of congressional authority, critique what constituted an immediate need for this war amid ongoing  “negotiations” towards limiting nuclear weapons development, and the lack of any plan for what comes next.

In fact, as with Trump policies about elections, Epstein, Venezuela, the “Donroe Doctrine,” or immigration concerns, it is past grievances rather than immediately demonstrable problems that get his attention. Even Trump’s biggest Republican defenders used television appearances to scoff over any lack of “immediate threat” when we have four decades of ire with Iran to settle.

If Democrats push this week for a too-late vote on allowing this Trump war, it’s not going to be a simply Republican-Democratic split. Too many MAGA fans backed Trump to stay out of open-ended war to gauge the outcome, except that it will be legislators voting about “Iran is Bad” against those who want separation of powers, even from a Congress that might support war with Iran on a less-hurried basis.

That concern is only heightened by having a Department of Homeland Security that has dismissed many of its anti-terrorism officials who had been assigned to Trump investigations to build up Homeland’s deportation campaign — all at a time when Congress has shut down non-deportation money to put limits on ICE enforcement.

Trump always seems to need to strike back at someone who has caused him harm in the past.

Where’s the SitRep?

Any television drama watcher knows we’re awaiting a Situation Report, a SitRep, to concisely update the status of this war project and to inform its key stakeholders what happens next. In this case, there won’t be one, other than a declaration of military might and a Trump-Netanyahu spotlight turn, because there is no plan for what happens next.

Personally, I’m awaiting Trump’s sure-to-come announcement that he needs to control Iran’s oil and minerals as well as its “obliterated” nuclear labs and missile factories.

What still is remarkable is that Donald Trump, who ignores populist demands about prices, immigration tactics, health policies and taxes at home, cites the empowerment of an extremely diverse Iranian public without access to arms to overturn the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran’s entrenched institutions. What still is surprising is that Trump believes an air war can deliver a fully functional replacement government structure that magically will bow to his wishes.

Amid decapitation of Iran’s leadership, we don’t even know who’s in charge of military decisions, diplomatic efforts or even who is authorizing food imports.   Iran’s top national security official, Ali Larijani, announced that an interim committee would run the country.

We do know that Trump, the iconoclast, has broken another country and once again has no idea what to do next. That should shake us.

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The post Deepening Fissures Over Iran appeared first on DCReport.org.

Iran Gave Trump A Better Deal than Obama Got in 2015

Did you know that just hours before Donald Trump launched his illegal Middle East war that Iranian negotiators offered him a better deal on nuclear materials than Barack Obama’s administration negotiated in 2015?

The Iranians agreed to lower levels of enriching nuclear fuels, keeping them far below weapons grade, and other major concessions just so Trump could boast that he was a better negotiator than Obama.

From Trump’s point of view this could have been a major win, maybe even enough to make his name as the “peace president.”

From Tehran’s perspective it supported their claim that they would never build or use nuclear weapons because they are unholy.

What happened next provided Tehran with irrefutable proof that the American government is run by incompetents and liars who cannot be trusted.

After all, if you give the Trump administration what it says publicly it wants—verifiable guarantees that Iran will not build or have the capacity to build nuclear bombs—and the response is to kill your head of state what else would any rational, or even irrational, regime conclude?

Broken Promise

The illegal war on Iran violates Trump’s endless promises on the campaign trail that if returned to the White House he would guarantee no more “endless wars” in the Middle East or anywhere else.

Trump, campaigning to get back to the White House in 2023 and 2024, declared again and again that he would never go to war with Iran. The reason, he emphasized, was that he had superior and effective negotiating skills unlike, he said, Obama, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Once again, the appallingly ignorant tyrant in the White House showed the “poor educated” MAGA who embrace him that they are fools, lacking the discernment to spot the devil in front of their faux Christian eyes.

The rest of us know that only Congress can declare war, making Trump’s attacks properly impeachable offenses. But only educated fools believe the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill will act to stop the madman from Queens.

Trump asserted that Biden, and later Harris, would bring us to “the brink of world War III.”

Indeed, in 2011 Trump declared that Obama would start a war with Iran because it was the only way he could win re-election in 2012.

Source Named

News that Iran offered Trump more than it gave Obama 11 years ago comes from the man who mediated indirect nuclear talks in Geneva between Tehran and Washington: the foreign minister of Oman, Sayyid Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi.

Badr shuttled between the Iranian delegation in one room and another, occupied by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Trump emissary Steve Witkoff with messages aimed at avoiding military action by the U.S. and Israel.

When the nuclear talks broke off Friday in Switzerland, Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr flew directly to Washington. There Badr gave interviews, informal and on camera, to David Rohde, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and my former colleague at the New York Times and later Reuters. Rohde, who spent seven months as a Taliban captive, has shown time and again how deeply and solidly he knows the Middle East. He now covers national security issues for MS Now.

Amateur Diplomats

Kushner and Witkoff are amateurs, both from real estate families with no formal training in diplomacy and no education in the centuries of mind-numbingly complex political, religious, and economic issues in the region from Egypt east to India that was largely controlled by the British in the 1800s and has been called “the Middle East” since at least 1902 (and by some since the 1850s).

Their public statements and official remarks make clear that Kushner and Witkoff aren’t equal to the best high school debaters in understanding geopolitical conflicts. Their track records in Gaza, Ukraine, and now Iran show why experience and education matter in diplomatic talks.

On Ukraine, they push a version of the Kremlin line, advancing the Trumpian credo that might makes right.

On Gaza, they talk to Israel and oil-rich Arabs—except for Palestinians, who are also Arab.

On Iran, they received valuable Iranian concessions, but didn’t persuade America’s conmander-in-chief to take the win and brag about what he got. Had Trump taken their offer, which include included allowing American oil companies to operate in Iran, it would have helped strengthen his oft-repeated 2016 claim that he would be the “peace president.”

Money Wasted

American taxpayers poured vast sums of money, especially since the end of World War II, into developing an extraordinarily sophisticated diplomatic corps that among other accomplishments got us past the Cold War without a nuclear exchange between Moscow and Washington. There’s plenty to criticize about our State Department, but the fact remains that diplomacy is always preferable, and cheaper, than war.

But from this seat-of-the-pants administration, run by amateurs and sycophants, many of them filled with hate, violence is embraced. Donald Trump has been public about how murderous desires since 1989 when he took out full page ads calling for the summary executions of five young men in a Central Park rape case. When evidence showed the five had been falsely accused—released after years in prison, the real perpetrator convicted— Trump doubled down on his call to murder the five.

Official violence is Trumpism in action, be it against American citizens shot to death or grabbed by ICE or an illegal Trump-directed war that on Saturday dropped a bomb on an Iranian school, killing more than 160 girls, teachers and staff.

We should remember that “ACTION IS CHARACTER,” as the great American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in the manuscript for his final novel, The Last Tycoon.

Trump’s lifelong actions violating the law tell you exactly who he is.

Attacking civilians, as American servicemen did this weekend, is the Russian style of warfare, a style that dates at least to the era of the boyars, as Russian aristocrats were called in the old Czarist era. Under the modern Czar, Vladimir Putin, Russia has repeatedly launched missiles against Ukrainian hospitals, schools, and other civilian facilitates that no civilized nation, no democratic nation, should or would tolerate from its leaders.

But America, for more than a year, has been not a democracy but a de facto dictatorship run by a convicted career felon who falsely claims that our Constitution empowers him to “do anything I want.”

Indeed, the question on the line now is whether America is indeed a civilized society anymore or just a land of cowards who will tolerate any injustice, any cruelty, and indulge the murderous rage flows from the addled brain of Donald Trump.

Who are we, America?

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What he actually said was, “WE WILL HIT THEM WITH A FORCE THAT HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE!” But whatever. What we should pay attention to is that he put up this all-caps threat on Truth Social right after attending a Republican fundraiser at Mar a Lago that charged billionaires and mere millionaires one million dollars a plate to party with the gold tie wearing president, while 7,000 miles away, bombs dropped, drones flew, missiles screamed, and explosions ripped through an Iranian girls’ school killing 153 and wounding 95.

Everything you need to know about how Donald Trump is managing the war on Iran is in this photo from the gold-plated gala at Mar a Lago showing Shlomi Evgi, described as a “Florida vape magnate,” posing with Trump’s real estate buddy, Steve Witkoff, who only 72 hours earlier was sitting in a room in Geneva with a representative of Iran working on a “peace deal.”

So, before we move on, let’s get this straight. The Florida vape magnate paid $1 million so he could stand in front of a bunch of décor that resembles the newly-gilded Oval Office to get his picture taken with one of Donald Trump’s amateur-hour “peace” negotiators who were actually stalling for war.

Here is a screen grab of our president attending his Mar a Lago Republican fund raiser at the same moment his war is raging:

It should be noted that Trump rents out his Mar a Lago ballroom for these events, so he pockets part of the money that is raised every time big Republican donors tune up their Botox and don their finery and limo over to spread their wings under the chandeliers and gold leaf of Trump’s hotel/club/residence/criminal headquarters on the Atlantic. You have to wonder if Trump is also the charging the government rent for what the White House has begun calling his “Mar a Lago SCIF,” or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, shown here:

See the guy peeking through the curtain in the background? He’s in the Mar a Lago ballroom where on Friday night, yet another zillionaire party was going on, which Trump is said to have visited, mixing it up with the guests on his way behind the curtains to his ultra-secure War Room, where he and Rubio and Suzie Wiles followed the action as the first bombs were dropped on Iran, which would have included the bombs that landed on the girls’ school. So, ballrooms and parties and bombs and curtained-off SCIFs is the way the Command in Chief rolls these days.

I’m going into all this detail and showing these photos to give you an idea of how the United States of America commits its soldiers, sailors, air force pilots, and Marines in service of the foreign policy aims of the Trump administration, which we learned yesterday includes regime change in Iran. Donnie killed the Big Bad Ayatollah he’s been screeching about for 11 years, or maybe it’s 12 years. I’ve lost count. The point is, Donnie needs a Bad Guy, and Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei was it for our own very Supreme Leader, Donald “Excuse me while I adjust my bone spurs” Trump.

There were reports all day about reactions around the world to Trump’s assault on Iran. The leaders of France, Germany, and Great Britain issued the following joint statement: “We will take steps to defend our interests and those of our allies in the region, potentially through enabling necessary and proportionate defensive action to destroy Iran’s capability to fire missiles and drones at their source. We have agreed to work together with the US and allies in the region on this matter.”

That sounds an awful lot like they’re willing to commit their own forces to the war on Iran, doesn’t it? What the hell is going on here? Has Donald Trump started World War III?

It’s actually a good question, because Iran certainly seems to think that a global war is underway. Iran’s second tier leaders have spent the last 48 hours throwing missiles and drones all over the Middle East, hitting Israel, of course, as well as targets in the Gulf states and Jordan and Iraq and Syria. Most of Iran’s targets are American military bases. Three American service members were killed yesterday, which Trump told the world on Truth Social was “a good deal for the world,” that we have citizens willing to sacrifice their lives so Saudi oil can find its way into world markets without the threat of being stymied by the country’s arch-rival, Iran. Meanwhile, 150 oil and gas tankers are anchored in the Arabian Sea because the Straight of Hormuz has been slammed shut by all the missiles and drones and warships that are hanging around the Gulf. Oil hit $80 a barrel today, and is expected to open tomorrow at $100, so fill up your tanks. This war is like Trump’s Greatest Tariff. It’s going to cost every single one of us higher prices for everything because it will affect world trade across the board.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that “Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made multiple private phone calls to Trump over the past month advocating a U.S. attack.” Netanyahu was also on the phone with Trump telling him now was the “time to strike,” according to the Post. But isn’t that interesting that Saudi Arabia would be so hawkish on attacking Iran, especially at the same time the Saudis were all “we want a diplomatic solution” publicly.

That sounds terribly familiar, doesn’t it? The U.S. position on Iran has been exactly the same since we and the Israelis hit Iran’s nuclear sites last year. Trump has had his boys Witkoff and Kushner flying to Switzerland so often, they probably have to put in for new diplomatic passports because theirs have so many stamps.

But then, this is Donald Trump’s New World Order. You “negotiate” with one hand, while with the other you move your warships and bombers and jet fighters and other military forces into position to attack the guys you’re negotiating with. You do the same thing with tariffs: You “negotiate” trade deals with one hand and every time you get a hair up your ass or get pissed off because a country like Denmark won’t give you Greenland, you impose a slew of tariffs new tariffs. How do you think that strategy is seen by the rest of the world? Do you think there is a single country on this planet, just one, that would listen to an alleged diplomat from the U.S. who presents them with a “deal” of any kind? Look at what Trump just did to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the “deal” he made during his first term after he threw out NAFTA. He is blowing it up and calling it “irrelevant” as he imposes a new tariff a week on Mexico and Canada because…uh, fentanyl or disrespect or the new bridge or something anyway.

In his mind, Trump is stuck somewhere back on the set of “The Apprentice” when he was the host of a reality television show and he was the one who got to make all the decisions and fire anyone he wanted. He says it practically every chance he gets: I can do anything I want. On Friday, just before he launched the attack on Iran, Trump was in Texas giving a speech and speculating, once again, that he should seek a third term in office. “Maybe we do one more term. Should we do one more term? We would actually be entitled to it,” Trump told his adoring audience. He was wearing one of his “Gulf of America” hats, because he can do anything he wants. He can rename bodies of water, and when the Associated Press refuses to use his new name in their reports, he bans them from the White House. It’s like he told the AP, “You’re fired!”

This is the flaming insanity comet we have for a president. He manages the biggest war we’re in since 2003 from what Joyce Vance cleverly called a “blanket fort” at the end of his ballroom at Mar a Lago. He hires rank amateurs to run the damn FBI like Kash Patel, who proceeds to take government jets to fly around the country every time his girlfriend is invited to sing the National Anthem at a professional wrestling show. He puts his name on every other building in Washington D.C. and hangs his photograph around town like the damn place is Pyongyang. He threatens to use his brand spanking new secret police force, ICE, to intimidate voters at polling places next November because he’s reading the polls and seeing his numbers crashing. You have to wonder what he’s going to do when he sees his latest sub-basement number from Reuters, which polled his attack on Iran and found that a great big 27 percent of Americans support it. That number is verging on blowing up his heretofore rock-solid MAGA support, the 25 percent of his voters who wouldn’t walk away if he shot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue, in his truly frightening phrase from 2016.

Well, now he’s bombing and killing little girls in Iran, and partying at Mar a Lago wearing a gold tie while he’s doing it. We’ve been wondering if there could be a new low that is even lower than the older low that Trump could reach, and ladies and gentlemen, we have our answer. Invite the vape king of Florida over to your gold plated mansion to hang out with your chief Iran negotiator, and while they’re posing for photographs, drop a shitload of bombs on innocent civilians half a world away, and then tell them, as he told The Atlantic today, “They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them.”

As soon as I kill a few more of your schoolgirls, that is.

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The only difference between the way George W. Bush got us into the war with Iraq and Donald Trump got us into the war with Iran…hell, there isn’t any difference. There was a huge build up of U.S. forces all around the Middle East with aircraft carriers and warships and jet bombers and refueling aircraft and resupply ships and cargo jets, all of this while “talks” were going on to “avoid” war if only the dictators would kowtow to American demands that they cease their production of missiles and weapons of mass destruction…

And then, BOOM. The bombs fell and we’re at war with yet another country located 7,000 miles and an ocean and a couple of seas from the nearest American civilians, who according to what Bush told us and Trump says today, are in “imminent danger” from these aggressive terrorist regimes.

They called it “shock and awe” when we attacked Iraq. This time they’re calling it “epic fury.” Boy, do they have some genius military writers in the Pentagon, huh? It’s like fuzzy-faced teenage boys sending each other exciting text messages as they play “Call of Duty” on their X-boxes, isn’t it? I mean, fucking come on! Trump was somewhere last night standing in front of a blue fabric backdrop and a couple of American flags wearing one of his childish USA hats mumbling in that sing-song voice he uses when he’s reading a teleprompter, and thousands of miles away, we learned this morning, 48 or 60 or 85 young girls, the number keeps going up, died when a bomb hit a girl’s school in Minab, an Iranian town near the Straight of Hormuz.

Steel yourself. This bloody disaster is being stage-managed by Trump and his pal, Bibi Netanyahu, whose bombs – every one American made – killed 68,000 Palestinians in Gaza, nearly every one of them civilian. I couldn’t find a count for the number of bombs that fell on Gaza between October of 2023 and the ceasefire in 2025, but most accounts put the total tonnage at more than 100,000. At one point early in its assault on Gaza, Israel bragged that it was dropping more than 1,200 bombs each day. Multiple accounts of the Gaza bombing say it exceeded the tonnage dropped during World War II on Dresden, Hamburg and the London Blitz combined. Most of the bombs dropped on Gaza were American made 2,000-pound Mark 84’s, shown below in one of the American factories where they are manufactured:

It is highly likely that these are the weapons raining out of the sky on targets all over Iran, shown here in a map from The Guardian:

Look at that. They’re dropping bombs all over that country.

But compare the Gaza Strip and Iran, and you get some idea of what a GIGANTIC clusterfuck is going to ensue from Trump’s boneheaded, macho, know-nothing, forget-the-Epstein-files-for-a-minute multi-billion-dollar military adventure. Gaza is 141 square miles, about 25 miles long and 7 miles wide at its widest point, and had a population of about 2 million before Israel started bombing it into non-existence. Iran is 636,400 square miles, about 1,400 miles diagonally from the northwest to the southeast and has a population of 93 million. Uhhh, that’s 91 million more people than there are, or were, in Gaza.

In two years, Israel basically leveled Gaza, destroying nearly 85 percent of its structures. It would probably take the United States and Israel until the end of this century to do that kind of damage to Iran, and both countries would bankrupt themselves in the process.

Here is a simple military truth: No war has ever been won by bombing alone. We dropped more than 30,000 bombs on Iraq during the invasion in 2003, and kept dropping bombs until the end of “military hostilities” in 2011, and where did that get us? Are we out of Iraq today? It’s 22 years later, and the answer is no. Do we know when we’ll finally pull our military forces out of Iraq? Is anyone in this country happy that we invaded Iraq in the first place? I heard there was a gas station owner in Idaho who claimed to be happy that we invaded Iraq, but I think he died, so the answer is once again, no.

Do you think Donald Trump has one fucking clue what he thinks he’s going to accomplish with his stupid bombing campaign against the world’s 17^th most populous country? Well, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Trump decided to start bombing Iran the week that the biggest story about him and the Epstein files dropped, revealing that his Department of Justice has been hiding three FBI interviews with a woman in 2019 who claimed that Trump raped her when she was 13 years old. 13 years old. Think of it. She sued the Epstein estate because Epstein raped her, too, before he turned her over to Trump, and she settled for an unknown sum of money. But she’s still out there. She didn’t commit suicide. She has a story to tell, should anyone want to find her and listen to it.

Trump claimed that he obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons program before he unobliterated it and declared that the United States is once again in danger of Iran developing a nuclear weapon and the kind of advance missile it would take to deliver such a bomb to our shores.

We don’t know why Trump decided to bomb Iran. Only two days ago, his son-in-law and real estate buddy were in Geneva talking to a representative of the Iranian government. It was announced that they were closer than they had ever been to reaching an agreement with Iran and that talks would continue next week or the week after. What is Trump going to tell us about Kushner and Witkoff now? That they’re the two biggest putzes on the planet for believing anything their Iranian fellow negotiator ever said to them?

Trump doesn’t give a shit. Neither do Kushner and Witkoff. It was all smoke and mirrors while Pete “I’m gonna depth-charge my brewski” Hegseth came up with his clever name for the attack on Iran and staged all his “assets” around the Middle East so he was ready to pull the trigger and send those bombers and cruise missiles skyward to hit the Ayatollah’s compound outside Tehran and the girls’ school down there by the Straight of Hormuz.

I hate the word performative, and I mean I really hate it, but it applies here. We haven’t gone to war with Iran. We’re bombing it. There is a big, huge, stupendous difference between dropping bombs and waging war. What Donald Trump is doing in Iran is showing off. He’s got a great big military that he brags he’s spending a trillion dollars on this year, and by God, he’s going to do something with it.

What good is a trillion-dollar distraction if you’re not going to use it, anyway? The bombs and blood and gore and death and destruction are beside the point if the name Jeffrey Epstein doesn’t appear in the news alongside the words “rape” and “13-year-old” and “Trump” for a while.

Donald Trump isn’t afraid of Iran having a nuclear weapon. He’s afraid of an even bigger bombshell that might drop right on his cotton candy noggin.

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