Mar
20
2026

Nineteen Seconds of War Porn

From CENTCOM's Twitter feed:

So good on them. I find myself mostly in tune with Jonah Goldberg, who pens An Anti-Manifesto on the Iran War. (archive.today link)

I don’t work for the RNC or DNC. My job isn’t to take the talking points of the day and denounce or defend anything. When people say I should “support” Trump (or the GOP or the Democrats) what they mean is I should be a cheerleader regardless of the issues at play. When others say I should “oppose” Trump, they mean I should figure out a way to say he’s wrong about something even if he’s right. Almost no one ever makes a serious argument that my support or opposition will make a difference. To put it in Seinfeldian terms, they just want me to wear the ribbon. Walking with them—for a while—isn’t good enough.

Trump is not my king or pope. I am under no obligation to treat him as infallible or even presumptively correct on any issue. Nor am I obliged to treat everything he does as a Satanic act and make my arguments fit that conclusion. I just don’t have that team spirit.

That said, I do not think Trump is a good or wise man. I do not think he’s fit for the presidency. That means even when he’s correct about something, I reserve the right to doubt his motives and competence. He has not earned the benefit of the doubt on anything—from me, from his wives, from his supporters, from his business partners. He’s steadfastly earned all the doubts. And, if you want to argue that giving air to those doubts undermines some of the good or necessary things he’s doing, all I can say is, so be it. But I think you should be angrier at him for earning the animosity he receives than you are at those with animus toward him.

Also, the WSJ editorialists make some very good points. Or maybe just one: The Enemy in Iran in One Lesson. (WSJ gifted link)

We know it’s fashionable on the left and even in some parts of the right these days to think that President Trump is the enemy in the Iran war. So forgive us for pointing out the character of the actual enemy our troops are fighting. To wit, Iran’s regime has resumed executing its citizens for protesting against the government.

News reports say Iran on Thursday hanged three men accused of killing police officers during the mass January protests. One of the men, Saleh Mohammadi, was a 19-year-old member of the national wrestling team.

The men were accused of working for the U.S. and Israel, though the protests around the country were spontaneous, widespread and came before the current conflict began. The men were said to have confessed, and you can guess those interrogations included torture. Amnesty International said Mohammadi was forced to make a confession “in fast-tracked proceedings that bore no resemblance to a meaningful trial.

If Trump (or, more likely, some bright people in his administration) can figure out a way to cut the all heads off this murderous hydra, all the better.

Also of note:

  • Writing from Planet Reality… Veronique de Rugy compares and contrasts: Fact vs. Fiction on Medicaid and the Wealth Tax.

    I try to be fair to people I disagree with. Emmanuel Saez — the famous UC Berkeley economist who's considered an architect of California's proposed billionaire wealth tax — is someone I read carefully, even when I find his income-inequality work unconvincing. So, when I say that his arguments for the wealth tax are not just biased or misleading but egregiously wrong, I'm not being careless. I mean it.

    In a recent debate at Stanford University, Saez offered his central justification (apart from, you know, "billionaires are unfairly rich"): California's hospitals need it because the federal government cut Medicaid through last year's One Big Beautiful Bill.

    As Economic Policy Innovation Center researchers have repeatedly documented, under the Biden administration, Medicaid spending expanded by almost 60%, going from roughly $409 billion before the pandemic to $656 billion by 2025. Using the most recent Congressional Budget Office numbers reflecting the OBBB — the supposed instrument of destruction — these researchers now project Medicaid spending to reach $905 billion in 2034. Calling a 38% increase between 2024 and 2034 a "cut" is not an honest argument.

    Vero goes on to dispute the other part of the equation, too: aside from its ugly motivations, the proposed "wealth tax" won't raise anywhere near the cash its proponents promise.

  • Could we put this movie on fast-forward? The libertarian-leaning WaPo editorialists hale The beginning of the end of the Jones Act. (WaPo gifted link)

    The Trump administration announced on Wednesday that it will suspend the Jones Act for 60 days to reduce fuel prices. It’s a good start.

    The Jones Act says that any vessel carrying goods between United States ports must be U.S.-built, U.S.-owned, U.S.-flagged and U.S.-crewed. Given that shipping is one of the most globalized industries, few of the world’s ships meet those requirements.

    The law was supposed to encourage more domestic shipbuilding. But outside of mobilization during the world wars, commercial shipbuilding has not been one of America’s strong suits for 150 years, despite — or perhaps because of — near constant protectionism since the founding of the country.

    Utah Senator Mike Lee and CongressCritter Tom McClintock have introduced legislation to repeal the Jones Act, but (as near as I can tell) it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

  • I'm not a fan of sob stories, but… This one, an LTE in the WSJ from Jennifer Bastian Thornhill in McLean, Va. spotlights The Human Cost of the FDA’s War on New Drugs. (WSJ gifted link)

    Your editorial “How the FDA Kills a Drug” (March 14) is devastating because it isn’t remotely surprising. You ran nearly identical arguments in op-eds in 2007 (Mark Thornton’s “Black Wednesday at the FDA,” May 14) and again in 2010 (Scott Gottlieb’s “The FDA Is Evading the Law,” Dec. 23). Different drugs. Same story. Twenty years later, the Food and Drug Administration is still killing treatments for rare-disease patients.

    One of those patients is my 10-year-old son. He has bone cancer. And he still can’t access the drug Mr. Thornton described in 2007. We were denied compassionate use last month.

    The FDA has consistently held drugs for rare diseases to impossible and illogical standards. Testimony at the Senate’s February 2026 hearing made this clear. We all know the FDA is problematic in this space. After the hearing, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, one of the rare disease community’s most steadfast allies, said he would investigate. I respectfully ask him to go further. We already know the problems—they’ve been right in front of us for 20 years. We need action. Congress must compel the FDA to change.

    Or, there's always Plan B: follow Katherine Mangu-Ward's advice to Abolish the FDA.

  • Maybe Uncle Stupid should concentrate on blowing up Iranian bad guys. At Reason, Bill Wirtz dreams the impossible dream: Before RFK Jr. can crack down on 'processed foods,' he'll have to figure out how to define them.

    Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promised that by April, the federal government will issue a definition of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) as part of the "Make America Healthy Again" campaign. Kennedy told Joe Rogan on his podcast that a definition will be used to create a nutritional label that indicates, in red, yellow, and green, how nutritious a processed food product is. Whether it will lead to bans on ingredients is still unclear.

    Kennedy is importing a failed European idea. For years, the European Union has promoted Nutri-Score, a label that grades food from A to E for nutritional quality. Yet even after all that time, it has not been made mandatory because the system is widely criticized as misleading. For good reason: A label like this cannot meaningfully tell consumers whether a product belongs in a healthy diet. Nutri-Score can give Coke Zero a favorable rating even though it contains none of the fiber, vitamins, or minerals that actually nourish the body.

    Meanwhile, Europe is still struggling to define what an ultra-processed food actually is. For all the political rhetoric, regulators have not agreed on a clear definition or on which processing methods should be allowed. So despite Europe's more precautionary approach and a few differences on additives, Europe and the United States permit broadly similar kinds and quantities of ultra-processed foods.

    It's kind of reminiscent of SCOTUS Justice Potter Stewart's test for obscenity: "I know it when I see it."