I don’t understand the long-term purpose of a cease-fire. Is it an admission that Ukraine will not be able to retake occupied territory and an attempt to limit further losses?

I do generally lean towards lowercase-L libertarianism (I don’t support the Libertarian party) but running a huge deficit isn’t libertarian. Taxes shouldn’t be lower than spending in the long term.

I didn’t mean to imply that Trump’s overall budget is a good one - maybe the cuts could be justified as part of a serious effort to reduce the deficit, but I don’t support them when they’re accompanied by even bigger tax cuts and the deficit grows.

So far, Milei has been right and his critics have been wrong. I assume he’ll veto this again.

The thing about government spending (and I’m seeing it come up a lot in the context of Trump’s budget cuts too) is that pretty much all of it is important to someone sympathetic who will experience hardship without it. Reducing spending means taking money away from people who need it, but reducing spending is still sometimes necessary for long-term national prosperity.

Note that this is a mathematical model the authors present. It’s not data from the real world.

We estimated that the annual cost of housing would be $20 900 per person housed.

Their estimate of costs is much lower than the real-world cost of providing just a shelter bed (not permanent housing) in a large city. A shelter bed costs NYC about $50,000 per year. With that said, I have not looked at their sources for that number.

Edit: they’re also not including the cost of building housing.

Our analysis assumes that housing for PEH is available. Construction of new housing would be a substantial additional expense. The cost of affordable housing varies from $150 000 to $1 million per unit nationwide.

A 30 year mortgage to pay for the construction of a unit that costs the minimum $150,000 would cost about $16,000 per year. For a million dollar unit, such a mortgage would cost about $108,000 per year. (These are costs for an individual. Municipalities may get lower interest rates.)

I thought I could see piles of debris at the bottoms of some slopes in the after pictures which weren’t there in the before pictures, but now that I’m looking at them again, I’m no longer sure that what I’m seeing isn’t just a difference in the shadows. (Presumably the pictures were taken at different times of the day.) I’m going to edit my original statement.

The landslides at Fordow look extensive. The whole mountain must have shaken.

Edit: Maybe what I’m seeing is just shadows rather than new debris at the bottoms of some slopes.

Israel is an ally of the USA but Iran is violently hostile to the USA.

I interpret this as a way for Trump to position himself as the “good cop” rather than as a factual description of something that actually happened, or else I would be concerned about how such sensitive secret information is apparently being casually given away to news agencies.

I think many people learned the wrong lesson from GWB’s Iraq War. It was presented as (among other things) a way to stop an enemy of the USA from obtaining nuclear weapons and it was a mistake, so they conclude that using force to stop enemies of the USA from obtaining nuclear weapons is a mistake. However, using force (if necessary) to stop enemies of the USA from obtaining nuclear weapons is a prudent idea and the problem with that Iraq War was that it was not actually fought for that purpose. GWB was the boy who cried wolf but real wolves still exist.

How can the war realistically end?

1. A return to the pre-war status quo. The withdrawal of Israeli troops, presumably in return for the hostages, with either Hamas or another group equally hostile to Israel in control of Gaza. This is the worst-case scenario for Israel, because it represents a total failure to eliminate the source of more potential October 7 attacks. I suspect it’s the worst-case scenario for Gaza too, since future attacks on Israel would lead to future destruction in Gaza.

2. The destruction of Hamas and the establishment of a Gazan government friendly towards Israel, perhaps by the Palestinian authority or a coalition of Arab states. Very difficult and failure-prone, but a pathway to peace in the long term. I had hoped that this would be the outcome when the war started but it isn’t what Netanyahu is trying to accomplish and by now I’m not sure there’s enough goodwill left for it to still be possible.

3. Permanent Israeli occupation. I don’t think Israel can maintain such an occupation - it would be extremely expensive in money, lives, and international goodwill. Netanyahu and his supporters seem to think that Israel can, but many of them seem to make plans reliant on divine intervention.

4. Expulsion of the population of Gaza. Egypt wouldn’t accept that without a war. Maybe Trump thinks he can find another country that would, but even if he did (unlikely) then the logistics of moving two million people would be extremely challenging. I think this outcome is effectively impossible - another one of the “divine intervention required” plans. However, it would be a best-case scenario for Israel. The gain in territory means little, but no longer having Gazans as neighbors immediately ends the conflict for good, which no other outcome does.

If (2) isn’t going to happen then (4) may be the best case scenario for everyone. Even the people being expelled and their descendants would probably be better off than they would be if they remain in Gaza for for many more decades of conflict. However, I very much doubt that it can happen.

[subsidiary protection status] is for people who do not meet the specific criteria for refugee status under the Geneva Convention but who face a risk of serious harm in their country of origin, including the death penalty, torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, or indiscriminate violence in the context of an armed conflict.

The title is somewhat misleading. It’s not refugee status as defined in international law and It’s also apparently not a permanent status?

So, do I sell because he’ll keep wrecking the economy, or do I hold because he’ll keep backing down? What do the licensed financial advisors here, acting in their professional capacity and accepting full legal responsibility for the consequences, think?

Titled “The Perimeter” and published on Monday, the report said the stated purpose of the plan was to create a thick strip of land that provided a clear line of sight for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to identify and kill militants. “This space was to have no crops, structures, or people. Almost every object, infrastructure installation, and structure within the perimeter was demolished,” it said.

The article presents this as a new revelation, but wasn’t creating a wider buffer zone on the Gaza side of the border one of the explicitly stated war goals? (And visible from space.) I’m surprised that there isn’t signage and barbed wire to prevent civilians from wandering in accidentally, but the rest seems to be describing what a buffer zone (or “kill zone”) is almost by definition.

I don’t think that’s how people would have “gathered for instructions on an attack” especially when “attack” would mean launching missiles. But I’m glad that and we can trust Laura Loomer to handle the sort of intelligence gathering that would guide strikes like this.

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I hate it when a curse makes all my clothing too big.

I don’t see how that’s related to excluding particular countries.

Edit: What I mean is that I don’t understand how you conclude

So if you aren’t exporting/importing from those countries they wouldn’t be included. It doesn’t even matter if there was a trade surplus.

based on the formula.

Cuba, Belarus and North Korea were also not included

At least they’re being consistent. If Biden had excluded Russia along with those countries from some global economic policy, I wouldn’t be suspicious.

In grad school, the only way they could get a lot of graduate students to show up anywhere was by offering free pizza. I think ice cream would have worked too.