Yes, that's a chicken. Going along with this morning's WSJ headline: Trump Tells Aides He’s Willing to End War Without Reopening Strait of Hormuz. (WSJ gifted link)
The reporters found a source to state the obvious:
Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert and vice president at the Brookings Institution in Washington, called ending military operations before the strait is open “unbelievably irresponsible.”
The U.S. and Israel started the war together and can’t walk away from the fallout, Maloney said. “Energy markets are inherently global, and there is no possibility of insulating the U.S. from the economic damage that is already occurring and will become exponentially worse if the closure of the strait continues.”
So we'll see what happens, because that's a weathervane in Mr. Ramirez's perceptive cartoon.
Meanwhile, Kevin D. Williamson has a few thoughts on The Welfare-Warfare State, Redux. (archive.today link)
At the best of times, Americans get bitchy when the price of filling up the fuel tank goes up, and these are not the best of times: We are, rather, the better part of a decade into elevated inflation thanks to the COVID-era disruptions and the continuing orgy of government spending for which that awful epidemic provided a convenient pretext. Donald Trump, because he is an imbecile, is doing everything he can think of to make that inflation worse: disrupting regular trade, imposing taxes that put upward pressure on prices, providing direct financial subsidies to politically important groups (farmers again) where possible, pressuring the Fed to cut interest rates, dreaming up new ways to inflate housing prices (such as 50-year mortgages), etc.
The upshot of that is that we are offering sanctions relief to the petroleum-dependent country with which we currently are at war (undeclared, unauthorized, and illegal) because apparently we cannot afford to fight a war with Iran without simultaneously subsidizing the economic activity controlled by the very same fanatical miscreants we supposedly are trying to depose.
Read the whole thing, because you got another thing coming.
Also of note:
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"The Capitalists Will Sell Us the Rope with Which We Will Hang Them" Yes, I know: there's no evidence Lenin ever said that. Nevertheless, it's what came to mind while reading James Freeman on the Kings of Dark Money. (WSJ gifted link)
He quotes a Fox News story: No Kings Protest Backed by $3B Network of Activist Groups, Investigation Finds
A network of about 500 groups with an estimated $3 billion in combined annual revenues is behind the coordinated nationwide “No Kings” protest Saturday, including communist groups who are using the day to call for a “revolution,” according to a Fox Digital News investigation.
According to a copy of the permit for the “flagship” march in St. Paul, Minn., Indivisible, a national well-heeled Democratic political advocacy organization funded by billionaire George Soros, is the lead coordinator for the protest.
But Fox News Digital has also identified key participation by a network of radical socialist and communist organizations funded by Neville Roy Singham, an American tech tycoon and avowed communist living in China.
James further observes:
Would readers not find this subject highly relevant in current coverage of protests in the United States? Yet for some odd reason Mr. Singham’s name is now extremely hard to find in stories from large U.S. media outlets that often purport to be highly concerned about “dark money” in U.S. politics.
I found this NYT article about Singham. It's pretty damning, but it's also kind of old (August 2023). Not much at the NYT since.
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Commies: they're not hiding under the bed any more! Continuing our red-baiting theme, Matthew Hennessey reports on Suckers for Soviet Communism. (WSJ gifted link)
In a better world, the media would treat the appearance of the hammer and sickle at this weekend’s No Kings rallies the same way it treated the appearance of the tiki torches in Charlottesville, Va. That is to say, as evidence that something has gone deeply wrong in our political culture.
In 2017, a platoon of fascist dorks marched across the lawn at the University of Virginia chanting, “You will not replace us.” The entire political world flipped out for weeks—months, years even. They’re still recovering.
In 2026, keffiyeh-clad tankies clustered in New York’s Times Square chanting, “Only one solution, Communist revolution.” How much do you want to bet you’ll never hear about it again?
Matthew goes on to point out actual-Communism's bloody record. Summarizing:
The hammer and sickle represents repression and dictatorship, stagnation and misery, the negation of human rights, the opposite of progress. It is the symbol of unfreedom, and therefore of slavery. It is death on a stick.
As that old Commie sang: When will they ever learn?
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More on Commies. Bryan Caplan writes on Crypto-Communism and Game Theory.
“Crypto-Communist” is a word with a strong conspiratorial crackpot connotation. But it simply means “secret Communist,” and the history of the Cold War is packed with bona fide examples. Fidel Castro ruled Cuba for two years before he admitted he was a Communist. Ho Chi Minh joined the Comintern in 1920, but spent decades posing as a Vietnamese nationalist. Enver Hoxha, long-time dictator of Albania, similarly joined the Comintern in the early 1930s, but pretended to be a mere anti-fascist during World War II. Nelson Mandela wasn’t only a crypto-Communist; he was on the Politburo of the South African Communist Party since the early 1960s. Alger Hiss was merely the most infamous of the American crypto-Communists. The case of Juan Negrín, last prime minister of Republican Spain, is more controversial. But Burnett Bolloten, author of the magisterial The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution, deemed him a crypto-Communist, and I believe Bolloten.
Who cares if a successful politician is a crypto-Communist? Anyone with a hint of sense. Communism is a murderous totalitarian doctrine, and Communist governments largely practice what they preach. Furthermore, once Communists take over a government, getting rid of them is like pulling teeth.
Once you admit the notable prevalence and grave danger of crypto-Communist politicians during a particular era, there is a clear-cut contemporary implication: A notable share of current and would-be leaders who say they aren’t Communists are probably lying. If you’re living through this era, this raises a thorny question: “How do we identify the crypto-Communists before it’s too late?”
Exercise for the reader: Apply Bryan's tests to Graham Platner.
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Liquidating the kulaks as a class. The National Review editorialists look at the latest effort: Progressive Wealth Tax Would Be Unjust and Economically Destructive.
It’s the 2020 Democratic primaries all over again. Just as they were then, progressives are trying to one-up each other with increasingly outlandish fiscal proposals. One of the worst ideas from that year’s frenzied contest — a direct tax on household wealth — is back in fashion.
The same characters are back to reheat old redistribution. Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) got the ball rolling, outlining a 5 percent annual tax on all billionaires’ net worths. Not to be outdone, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) is more ambitious. Her plan is to tax all household wealth above $50 million at 2 percent each year, with a 1 percent surtax on fortunes over $1 billion. Both senators would use the proceeds not to trim the gaping deficit, of course, but to fund a laundry list of new entitlements.
Although Warren’s wealth tax would be slightly kinder to billionaires, it would apply to far more Americans than Sanders’s plan. Targeting what she calls “ultra-millionaires,” it would hit an estimated 260,000 households. Sanders limits his confiscatory scheme to the 900 or so billionaires in the country, though it would surely discourage more entrepreneurs and investors from joining their ranks.
I usually try to be charitable, and say those of the Sanders/Warren ilk are merely delusional: Fervently believing, despite all evidence, that the US Government can spend that money more wisely and productively than their targeted victims,
But maybe (see above) they're just crypto-Commies.
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