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Tuesday, July 28, 2026

28: Kimi K3

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28: Iran

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Sunday, July 26, 2026

26: Iran

Russia is now losing the war in Ukraine Russia entered 2026 with a familiar claim: time was on Vladimir Putin’s side. Moscow still held more territory and expected its larger population and industrial base to produce an eventual victory. Ukraine’s long-range drone and missile campaign has made that conclusion much harder to defend. ....... Russia later rerouted fuel from Siberia and increased imports from Belarus after refinery damage reduced gasoline output and created shortages ......... Moscow suffered about 1.4 million battlefield casualties, including as many as 450,000 deaths, from February 2022 through June 2026 for marginal gains. ...... the idea of an inexpensive Russian victory has collapsed. ......... Russia must protect the front, Moscow, strategic airfields, oil infrastructure, ports, power plants, factories, and commercial logistics. Ukraine chooses where to concentrate each wave, creating a defensive allocation problem the Kremlin cannot eliminate. .............. Moscow can add radars, guns, electronic warfare, and interceptor missiles. It cannot place the same layered defense around every fixed site across 11 time zones. The Omsk attack showed how one successful penetration can create national supply consequences. .............. Russian forces still advance in parts of eastern Ukraine, and Kyiv faces serious manpower, ammunition, and air-defense shortages. Moscow remains capable of inflicting enormous damage. Those facts do not give Putin a credible path to his stated objectives. ..............

Russian advances have slowed sharply while the cost of sustaining them rises.

.............. Putin invaded to subordinate Ukraine, weaken its military, block its Western alignment, and demonstrate Russian power. Ukraine now operates one of Europe’s largest militaries, produces long-range weapons, strikes Moscow and Siberia, damages strategic bombers, and forces Russia to disperse air defenses. Moscow occupies Ukrainian land but has failed to secure the political outcome intended to justify the war. ................ The expectation of inevitable Russian victory depended on Ukraine running out of men, weapons, and time before Russia’s internal costs became decisive. Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign transfers more of the war’s cost into Russian territory while Moscow’s ground forces continue paying heavily for limited movement. ................... As of July 22, Russia faces fuel disruption, repeated attacks near its capital, vulnerable strategic aircraft, slowing advances, and no credible timetable for meeting its territorial demands. Putin began the invasion expecting Ukraine to break. Four years later, Ukraine can strike the Russian interior while Russia remains thousands of square kilometers short of completing its campaign in Donetsk.

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Tuesday, July 21, 2026

21: Iran

‘This is what a quagmire looks like’: Trump enters bleak new phase with Iran the president is rapidly running out of ways to extricate the U.S. from an unpopular, expensive conflict ahead of the midterms. .......... “People, generally, are concerned,” said James Jeffrey, a former ambassador who served in the Middle East in three presidential administrations, including the first Trump administration. “I mean, Americans are dying. It's very serious. This is a real war.” ........ Republicans close to the White House are also distressed about the war’s economic impact on everyday Americans in an election that is expected to hinge on cost-of-living issues. The average price for a gallon of gas surpassed $4 for the first time since mid June, up 13 cents in the last week. ............. And Iran’s demonstrated ability to survive punishing U.S. bombardments while inflicting casualties on American troops and allies and choking off the Strait of Hormuz underscores the challenges Trump faces in trying to win a war against an adversary that is merely trying to survive it. ......... “I don't think anybody likes the in-between position of having an Iran where these terrorists are still in charge and could affect our domestic politics going into November. For them, winning the war is surviving,” said Trump pollster John McLaughlin. “Their whole existence is based on an ongoing war with us that we'd rather not have. But they're leaving us with an option that we don't want to have to do.” ........... Still, some are hopeful that the president’s latest threats are a means to get Iran back to the negotiating table. Mediators passed to Iran a proposal to deescalate the war with the U.S. that would establish a 10-day ceasefire in an effort to revive the agreement reached by the two countries last month, Reuters reported on Monday. ............ “Anyone talking about boots on the ground, I think, is disconnected from the administration and certainly disconnected from the president,” said Alex Gray, who served as National Security Council chief of staff during Trump’s first term. “They're pushing an agenda that has certainly no buy-in from the president and his team, and certainly doesn't reflect the Republican Party today.” ......... “As the U.S. military degrades the terrorist Iranian regime’s ability to attack commercial vessels and disrupt the free flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz, oil and gas prices will plummet back to pre-conflict levels,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers. .......... the military deaths and promises of revenge are casting a grim shadow over the summer campaign season, during which the president and his party were hoping to refocus on their popular tax cuts, Trump accounts for newborns and lower drug prices. ........ “The war has become a persistent dark cloud that is souring the national mood which typically depresses the base of the party in power and motivates supporters of the opposition,” said former Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.). ......... Administration allies believe there are a number of military options open to the president that fall short of boots on the ground, including escalating the U.S’s naval blockade and attacks on Iranian infrastructure. ......... Even though Trump last month conceded he was unsure if Americans had the “appetite” for a longer, broader war, some of the president’s supporters say Tehran is underestimating his tolerance for political risk.......... “They were hoping, because they’ve had a lot of experience with this, that they’ll simply outlast us,” Jeffrey said. But “Trump really has no choice. He put a compromise on the table. He’s not going to surrender, even if he loses the elections” in November. .......... “His patience has always been limited, but I think we're now seeing the consequences of that,” the person said. “A good indicator of where he intends to go is his massive defense budget request to Congress. He wants to ensure the United States has more than enough capability to sustain any future operations if necessary.” ......... In addition to the $1.5 trillion defense budget, the White House also requested $67 billion to cover the costs of the war. ...... That defense budget, however, is stalled in the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has argued that the legislation, which reliably becomes law each year, was tantamount to “a permission slip for that recklessness that we see occurring in Iran” and last week, Senate Democrats blocked it from advancing to the floor.

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Monday, July 20, 2026

20: Iran

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20: Trump

Office Hours: What Will Trump Do in Iran NOW? There's no good option, so will Trump take the least bad? .......... Trump’s war with Iran has resumed (it never really stopped). The U.S. is sending more warplanes to the Middle East. Two American service members were killed in an Iranian missile attack on Jordan, and a third is missing. The Strait of Hormuz is again closed. Meanwhile, Mojtaba Khamenei issued his first statement following his father’s funeral, saying “revenge is the will of our nation” and that Iran would act against “criminals whose names are known.” In response, Trump threatened to “completely decimate and destroy” Iran if assassination threats against him were acted upon. ............. How long can Iran continue the war? Its economy appears reasonably stable; it has exported oil sufficient to meet its needs. Its population has become used to sanctions and economic pain, and has no voice, in any event. As shown by its attack on Jordan, as well as those on Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Syria, and Qatar, Iran has ample missile stocks and has also become more adept at evading U.S. air defense systems. ............ How long can the U.S. continue the war? America doesn’t have sufficient munitions to maintain the current bombing campaign indefinitely. World oil reserves are almost depleted, which means that continued blockage of the strait will cause even more economic pain. Oil has again topped $90 a barrel. Plus, there are midterm elections to think about.

Trump’s War on the Future, Monetary Edition Trying to punish Brazil for adopting a better payment system ............. Pix is essentially a digital version of the real, Brazil’s currency. As a Federal Reserve report from 2022 said, a central bank digital currency — which is what Pix is — “is analogous to a digital form of paper money.” Brazilian banks are required to offer Pix, which the Trumpists claim gives it an unfair advantage over debit cards and other payment methods. But this requirement is similar, at a fundamental level, to the requirement that all U.S. banks accept dollar notes as deposits and disburse dollar notes on demand, which few people would consider unfair. .................. Who is hurt by the advent of Pix? Brazilians’ ability to cheaply make instantaneous payments from their phones certainly hurts the business of Visa and Mastercard, which are both U.S. companies. But since when is it unfair business practice when companies lose business to a competitor that offers a better, cheaper product? For example, should we shut down the U.S. postal service because it offers better and cheaper mail delivery than UPS or FedEx? Should we shut down PayPal and Venmo because they compete with Mastercard and Visa? ............... Beyond concerns about Visa and Mastercard profits, Trump officials are reportedly concerned that Pix and similar payment systems elsewhere might challenge the international dominance of the dollar. In reality, Brazil is too small a player to make much of a dent in the world payments system. The dollar may, however, face a real challenge if the European Central Bank is able, as it hopes, to introduce a digital euro in 2029. If that happens, it’s not hard to imagine that a significant number of transactions that would otherwise have been made in dollars will be made in digital euros instead. ................. the reason people might switch to digital euros will be because the US won’t be offering an equally good means of payment. Why won’t there be a digital dollar? Not because it’s a bad idea — as Brazil has shown, it would be a very good idea. But there are powerful special interests that oppose any such move. ..............

Last year Republicans in the House passed a bill that didn’t just forbid the creation of a U.S. central bank digital currency; it prohibited any study of the issue by the Federal Reserve. “Don’t even think about parking here creating a digital dollar.”

................ Proponents of this ban claimed to have concerns about how a central bank digital currency would work. But it’s obvious that their real concern is that it would work too well. Crypto interests, in particular, are very worried that consumers who had access to digital dollars would lose interest in stablecoins and other cryptocurrency products, because these products, being risky and awkward to use, would not be competitive with a system that simply lets people make electronic payments in dollars. ............ Brazil’s success is especially galling to crypto promoters because it’s in such stark contrast to the results of another Latin American monetary experiment: El Salvador’s attempt to make Bitcoin a major means of payment. The government of President Nayib Bukele made Bitcoin legal tender and spent large sums trying to promote its use. Yet the effort failed: cryptocurrency never caught on as a means of payment, and the plunge in Bitcoin’s price since last fall has inflicted large losses on El Salvador’s government. ..............

If we can have a digital dollar, why not a public option for health insurance?

.............. the furious opposition to central bank digital currencies reminds me of the Trump administration’s all-out efforts to block development of wind and solar power. In both cases we see political players beholden to special interests — crypto when it comes to money, fossil fuels when it comes to energy — who claim to favor technological progress, but scream “not like that” when a superior technology doesn’t take the economy where they want it to go. ......... using tariffs to punish Brazil for its monetary achievements won’t succeed. Politically, the move will only strengthen Brazil’s President Lula. Economically, the reach of the tariffs will be limited by Trump administration fears about driving the prices of coffee, orange juice, beef and other goods even higher. And as Monica de Bolle at the Peterson Institute for International Economics argues, Trump’s tariffs have on balance strengthened Brazil’s position: “Trade diversion around the globe as a reaction to US tariffs has turned Brazil into an export powerhouse,” with Brazil, for example, capturing much of the Chinese soybean market.

The US and Iran have blown past red lines as they lurch back toward all-out war
Texas Hispanics swung hard to Trump. A new poll shows they’re furious at his deportations. A new survey of Hispanic business owners in Texas shows Democratic nominee James Talarico dominating......... Benny Melendez voted for President Donald Trump in 2024. But since Trump returned to the White House, it has been increasingly difficult for Melendez to run his small construction company in south Texas. He says immigration officers have detained workers at his job sites and while driving his company trucks. Since the beginning of 2025, more than 10 of those workers have been deported.......... The chaos of the past year-and-a-half has convinced Melendez to abandon his support for Trump and Republicans, and instead back the Democrat in this year’s U.S. Senate election, state Rep. James Talarico. .......... “How can we continue voting for someone that is targeting our community?” Melendez said. “There’s no way possible we’re going to support that. No way.” .............. One in five Hispanic business owners in Texas say they’ve had an employee deported in the past year ........... Seven in ten said their businesses had been impacted by Trump’s tariffs. Among those surveyed, Talarico holds a seven-point lead over Attorney General Ken Paxton, the GOP nominee, even though a plurality of the over 1,000 respondents self-identify as Republican. Almost one quarter who supported Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary now say they’ll back Talarico, while over half say they’ll back Paxton. .......... Hispanic voters around the country are swinging hard against him, thanks to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and the shaky economy. ............ “If you’ve got a small business of 10 people or so, and you get even one person deported, you can imagine what that does to the morale of that business unit and to the fear of the business owner.” .................. The Texas Senate race will be one of the nation’s most watched — and most expensive — this cycle. Early polling shows it in a dead heat: A New York Times/Siena poll released last month showed

Paxton and Talarico tied

. Among Hispanic voters, Talarico led by 32 points. In 2024, Trump won Texas Latinos by 10 points. .................. In a statement, Talarico offered an olive branch to Hispanic voters: “We should be supporting Hispanic small businesses — not crushing them under the weight of high costs and failed immigration policies,” he said. “Here’s my message to Hispanic communities across Texas: if you feel like you’ve been conned, if you feel like you’ve been let down by both political parties, if you feel like politicians aren’t doing anything to lower your costs or fix this broken immigration system — you’ve got a place in this campaign.” ................. “I didn’t like what Biden was doing here on the border,” Melendez said. “But now with Trump, it’s all the opposite, 180 degree change. He doesn’t let us work. He’s taking the best we have.” ............

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you can be austere in a bustling city

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) July 18, 2026
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