Random Thoughts #82

The Defiant Iranian Mob

The images from Ali Khamenei’s funeral were hard to reconcile with Trump’s narrative.. Did that look like a beaten, desperate population begging for peace? It didn’t. If anything, our bombing and blockade campaign seems to have hardened Iranian opinion against us rather than broken it. Tens of thousands of people filled the streets in a scene of open defiance, not surrender. If there were any opposition, they were bludgeoned into silence by the raw outpouring of emotion of the Iranian mob.

We may well have crippled Iran’s air force and navy and killed a number of its senior leaders. But the Iranians are behaving like the victors of this exchange, and there’s a reason for that: they’ve out-maneuvered our negotiators and the president at every turn, claiming a political win while we keep converting battlefield advantage into diplomatic drift. I can’t tell whether that’s because we’ve put amateurs in the room, or whether even seasoned diplomats would struggle to pin down a durable peace with a regime this practiced at stalling. Either way, the pattern is familiar: we win the fight and stall out prior to victory.

The test of success shouldn’t be vague. It should be measured against three concrete outcomes: a Strait of Hormuz that stays open, a verifiable end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and a real halt to its funding of terrorist proxies. Short of all three, declaring victory is just theater. On the current trajectory, we’re on track to fall short. In fact, the pro-regime demonstrations may have led those now in power to break the truce and seek to reassert control over the Strait. Any reaction on our part seems to be flaccid by comparison. Trump seems to say that there is no TACO this time and that he is fed up with dealing with the Iranians. Here is what he said “They’re a bunch of SCUM.” “These are evil, sick people, and we have to rid their cancer. They’re CANCER! And you know what you do? You got to cut out cancer EARLY, man.” “I told them, every time you hit, we hit. And of course, they’re dirty players.” “They’ve kiIIed thousands and thousands of our soldiers. They’ve kiIIed hundreds of thousands of innocent people.”

We will see but instantly our gas prices just jumped 40 cents a gallon.

What Is “Meat”?

A controversy is brewing over the word “meat.” What do you picture when you hear it? With lab-grown meat now reaching the market, some want the word reserved for animal-based products or banned from lab-grown packaging entirely. Florida legislator Dean Black (R-Nassau) – no kin – a cattle rancher, has introduced a bill to do exactly that. His reasoning is blunt: lab-grown meat, in his words, is “not meat…it is made by man, real meat is made by God Himself.”

I don’t have a dog in this hunt. I haven’t eaten red meat I don’t kill myself since 1971. But the reaction I got from my son is more revealing than any legislative debate. He found the idea of lab-grown meat distinctly unappealing. Yet he admitted that photos of lab-grown steaks and fried chicken filets could easily have fooled him. His actual objection wasn’t the product; it was disclosure. As long as it’s labeled clearly, he has no problem with it reaching store shelves. But eating it? That’s a different matter.

That distinction matters more than the legislation lets on. Consumers already navigate plenty of imprecise food language without confusion. They know Beyond Meat contains no meat, that oat milk isn’t from cows and that buffalo wings are buffalo-free. The solution to lab-grown meat isn’t to legislate the vocabulary, it is to require accurate labeling and let people decide for themselves what they’re willing to eat.

Trump’s Newly Disclosed Jump in Wealth

Are we really supposed to be surprised that the president’s disclosed net worth jumped by nearly $2 billion last year? Only if we’ve been willfully naive. His family has profited from his time in the White House since day one, in a pattern that echoes the Hunter Biden story with one key difference: the Bidens were rank amateurs by comparison. The president has never been shy about his wealth or his lifestyle. Throughout this administration he has rewarded those who’ve come bearing gifts. He has bought stock in companies shortly before they benefited from favorable government action. He criticized Nancy Pelosi’s stock trades. His own record has since made her’s look almost restrained.

Democrats appear to be betting that this disclosure will move some votes in the midterms. I think that bet is wrong. It’s hard to imagine the president’s finances converting anyone who hasn’t already been converted. The standard democratic argument, that Trump is enriching his family while ordinary Americans fall further behind, is a familiar message aimed at a limited pool of persuadable voters. For it to actually damage down-ballot republicans, voters would need to believe that individual GOP candidates personally benefited from the president’s dealings. That’s a much harder case to make than pointing at the president’s own balance sheet.