Let's Make a Deal

Ships of the world, start your engines.  Let the oil flow!

- Donald Trump 

Trump sought to break Iran's regime and for the present has to settle for reopening the Strait.   

As of the publication of this post at 2:30 PM, Monday nobody has seen the text of "The Deal" opening the Strait of Hormuz.  Perhaps this emerging agreement ends a costly war but it leaves Iran's leadership intact and its nuclear future unclear.  Nevertheless, this is good news.  I'll join the president in celebrating a resumption of the way the world was on February 27, the day before the United States and Israel attacked Iran.  Ending one of the biggest global supply disruptions in decades  is hardly a victory; but it is good news.  

Some immediate thoughts.

The market for oil and other critical products (fertilizer components come to mind) will remain tight for weeks and months while ships are repositioned, damaged infrastructure is assessed and repaired, depleted inventories are rebuilt, mines are removed, crew changes are made and navies, insurers and shipowners are convinced the channel is safe.  Even after traffic picks-up, another 50+ days are needed for oil to arrive in Asia and begin to be refined.  Supply chain relief  won't materialize  until late August and any meaningful normalization would only happen in September at the earliest.

Before this deal crude oil flows have recovered only slightly this month with roughly 10 ships transiting the strait  per day according the commodities and shipping data provider Kpler; a far cry from the normal prewar ship transits of 100+ daily.

Remember this; under Obama's JCPOA no soldiers or civilians were killed, no US bases attacked, no aircraft or ships were lost, no treasure was expended on a war and Iran's enriched uranium was turned over to the custody of the Russians.

Donald Trump unilaterally walked-away from that agreement and in the absence of a replacement Iran embarked on a frenzy of nuclear enrichment.  In 2025 Donald Trump claimed to have obliterated Iran's nuclear program.  And earlier this year unilaterally decided to go to war with Iran.  Consequently, American service members and Iranians were killed and wounded, US bases in the Middle East were targeted and attacked and $34 billion of our treasure expended.  Iran still possesses its enriched uranium, the regime is intact and their nuclear ambitions unresolved. 

Happy Birthday Mr. Trump.  Stay-tuned...

The Folly of Impulsive Indifferrence

 

The reckless nonchalance with which leaders like Trump and Putin launch wars speaks volumes about their judgement. 

Meanwhile, playing the long game, China bides its time as Russia and the US burn thru lives, resources and treasure.

 

Not only are the Chinese backing their Iranian allies, China's leadership appears to be better-read than Putin and certainly Trump.  

 

True victory comes not from defeating others, but from arranging circumstances so that victory becomes inevitable before conflict arises.

- Sun Tzu 

 

 

 

PS - An MOU is a start; nevertheless, the deal, if it comes, must hold every red line; no enrichment, full removal of the existing stockpile, verification with teeth, the Strait open and free, permanently.  Nothing less.

Pitch Perfect

With midterms looming and affordability on voters’ minds, Mr. Trump was asked whether Americans’ financial situation was motivating him to make a deal.  

Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran — they can’t have a nuclear weapon.*

- Donald Trump 

*No sarcasm. The President has finally spoken what needs to be said.  The deal, if it comes, must hold every red line; no enrichment, full removal of the existing stockpile, verification with teeth, the Strait open and free, permanently.  Nothing less.

Quote Of The Day

"The blockade is somewhat more effective than the bombing.  They are choking like a stuffed pig.  And it's going to be worse for them."

-Donald Trump

Southern Poverty Law Center In The News

 

 

Some days the White House Information Minister, Karoline Leavitt, is beginning to sound more and more like Baghdad Bob, dontcha think?  She's off on maternity leave now so we're gonna score a break from it.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been indicted.  An indictment is not a conviction it is simply the Department of Justice's (DOJ) allegation that donor disclosures around its informant program were misleading. The organization’s defense is that it used confidential informants in extremist groups as part of legitimate intelligence gathering to prevent violence; a practice that overlaps with standard law-enforcement practices all day long. The legal question is not whether informants were used, but whether donor communications were sufficiently transparent to meet nonprofit fraud standards.

Until trial, claims that this proves intentional wrongdoing or “funding extremism” remain unproven allegations, not established fact.

This is the same DOJ that indicted James Comey and Letitia James, only to have those indictments dismissed once they made it to the legal system. The John Brennan and John Bolton indictments are also stuck in the mud. 

In my view, the odds are better than even that this is just another poorly-conceived retribution indictment. It alleges that the SPLC was supporting the Ku Klux Klan by paying confidential informants who happened to be members of those organizations.  I am not a lawyer but the entire premise seems a stretch.

As for their donor disclosures, since SPLC has used CIs before, I think they'll be able to successfully argue they're not actually "supporting" the Klan, Nazi or White Supremacist organizations.  I think the hypothetical reasonable person would expect that this practice would continue - unless the SPLC explicitly promised in the solicitation that it wouldn't (which also seems unlikely.)   Time will tell.

 

Any good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. 

- Associate Judge Sol Wachtler 

Friday Morning Bible Study

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth just prayed over the Iran war; and he used a fictional Bible verse.

From the previously unknown Book of Pulp Fiction.

At the Pentagon's monthly worship service on Wednesday, April 15, the Secretary of Defense stood up, told military leaders what they hear in worship should  'inform' their war decisions and then read a prayer calling for 'great vengeance and furious anger' on Iran. He said the prayer was called  'CSAR 2517,' which stands  for Combat Search And Rescue, and was based on Ezekiel 25:17.

Only it wasn't.

It was from Pulp Fiction. Specifically, it was the speech Samuel L. Jackson's character recites before executing an unarmed man.

The actual Ezekiel 25:17 has one sentence. The rest, including 'the path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men,' was invented for Tarantino's 1994 film.  

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

- Quentin Tarantino 

The Secretary of Defense read a fictional hit man's execution speech to bless an actual war.

And then he said this: 'Fifteen minutes ago I was talking about blockades with Admiral Cooper, and now we're going to study the Lord's word. May what we talk about, how we worship today, inform the remainder of our day and the remainder of our week.'

The man coordinating a naval blockade and potential strikes on Iran is citing Bible verses that don't exist. 

From Hollywood. 

To bless a war that has killed men and women in service to our country, thousands of Iranians and threatens order, security and the entire global economy.  

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Pope Leo responded to Hegseth's earlier violent prayers on Palm Sunday. The Pope quoted actual scripture, Isaiah 1:15:'  Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood.' 

Archbishop Reinhard Marx of Munich called Hegseth's sermons 'shameless blasphemy.

This is the man in charge of American military.  You know; the good guys.

The Crusader-tattooed former Fox News host who prayed for 'overwhelming violence' at his confirmation.  Who has fired Army leadership out of paranoia. Who invoked a movie as scripture to justify killing more civilians.

Too be clear, I have no sympathy for the Iranian Mullahs.  But this mash-up of God, guns and country implies Hegseth belongs back in rehab.  

Why your ask?

Because you can’t make this shit up.

Notable Quoteable

And any domesticated primate alpha male, however cruel or crooked, can rally the primate tribe behind him by howling that a rival alpha male is about to lead his gang in an attack on this habitat. These two mammalian reflexes are known, respectively, as Religion and Patriotism. They work for domesticated primates, as for the wild primates, because they are Evolutionary Relative Successes. (So far.)

― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

 

Quote Of The Day

Tell these tankers to get themselves, get to it, we have wiped out most of their launchers.   These ships should go through the Strait of Hormuz and show some guts, there’s nothing to be afraid of.  They have no navy, we sunk all their ships.

- President Trump 

Fools and Lapdogs

The U.S. merchandise trade deficit hit a record $1.2 trillion last year, despite President Donald Trump’s promise to eliminate it by imposing the highest tariffs in eight decades on foreign-made products.

Thursday’s Commerce Department report represents the first full-year assessment of the president’s ambitious reordering of global trade. The persistence of the deficit in the face of steep new taxes on imports from China, the European Union and scores of other nations reflects the limits of Trump’s blunt policy tool.

As expected, the Supreme Court today nullified Donald Trump's signature economic policy this morning in a ruling that invalidated the president's arbitrary and capricious imposition of trillions of dollars of import taxes on our trading partners around the world.  

Naturally, the President's response was to be presidential and call the justices fools and lapdogs for ruling against him on tariffs.    

 

Back in August the president threatened the court stating that this ruling would: Literally destroy the United States of America. 

Well, it's happened and in the long term we're all likely to be better-off for the ruling.  Tariffs, on their own, are not likely to raise-up or destroy the country inasmuch as imported goods account for only about ten percent of our total economy.  Because we are largely a service economy tariffs don't have much direct impact on things like education and healthcare.  Manufacturing constitutes less than ten percent of the US economy.

Nevertheless, the imposition of import taxes at the sky-high levels the administration imposed are a tax on all consumers, business and manufacturers shrinking the country's Gross Domestic Product by an estimated .3 percent per year. If you put a number on that it amounts to roughly $90 billion a year in losses. That isn't insignificant but nowhere close enough to destroy America.  It just raises everyone's cost of living, jeopardizes farmers, ranchers, small business and contributes to inflation.

So where is this all going to lead us?  Too early to tell but I suppose there are companies for whom imports are a necessary part of doing business; and they're going to want a tax refund. 

Meanwhile, I guess none of us are getting the tariff dividend we were promised and the income tax isn't going to be replaced by tariff revenue.  Of course the DOGE dividend never showed-up in my checking account either.  

Money talks, baloney walks.....

Quote Of The Day

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

-Winston Churchill*

 

 

 

 

 

*Attribution to Churchill is questionable.  Still a good quote.  

 

Notable Quotable

Greenland is a territory of Denmark; it does not seem really reasonable that the United States would attack and occupy a friendly nation.

 - Vatican Senior Cleric and Archbishop of U.S. Military Services, Timothy P. Broglio

Don't Get Fooled Again

Delcy Rodriguez - Venezuela's interim president

Meet the new boss

Same as the old boss

- Peter Townshend

 

You Read It Here First

 

Yup, sometimes the king of bad predictions finds a truffle.  I wasn't wrong after-all.

You read it here first

I suppose we'll have to see what comes on Sunday, Monday and thereafter. 

 

They stole our oil, and we'll be selling large amounts of oil to other countries.

- Donald J. Trump  

Quote Of The Day

This relief will provide much-needed certainty to farmers as they get this year’s harvest to market and look ahead to next year’s crops.  We’re going to make them so strong it will indeed be a golden age for farmers.

-President Donald Trump 

 

*Speaking about the latest farm bailout resulting from White House tariff policy 

Noticeable Quotable

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness. 

- Oscar Wilde

 

Quote Of The Day

We're going to shove the drugs up the nose of the gringos, and they're not even going to realize it.

- Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández

Wikipedia

Hernández, whom Mr. Trump called a victim of persecution, helped orchestrate a decades-long trafficking conspiracy.  He flooded the US with cocaine.  The 57-year-old former two-term president was sentenced last year to 45 years in U.S. prison for helping drug traffickers to safely move hundreds of tons of cocaine north through his country to the U.S.

Trump now signals Hernández will receive a full pardon. 

I've asked around people I know to be MAGA supporters and not a single one has been able to square the administration's policy of extrajudicial killings of alleged narco-terrorists in the Gulf of Mexico and Eastern Pacific with the promise of a pardon. 

The cynic in me wonders if perhaps pardons are for sale.

The Math Doesn't Work

 We're going to make a lot of money and we're going to cut taxes for the people of this country.  It will take a little while before we do that, but we're going to be cutting taxes and it's possible we'll do a complete tax cut because I think the tariffs will be enough to cut all of the income tax. 

- President Trump, April 27, 2025  

The line from the White House Information Minister, various Cabinet Secretaries and the President himself is that we are awash in tariff revenue wealth.  Millions, billions and trillions of dollars; all willingly paid by other countries.  The president has even floated the notion about creating an External Revenue Service to collect the tariffs and replacing the Internal Revenue Service in collecting income taxes.

We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913.  That's when we were a tariff country.  Perhaps the president has drawn his inspiration from 19th century America immediately before the establishment of the federal income tax.

Of course if you know your American history when tariffs were the primary source of federal revenue government was much smaller; federal spending was barely two percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).   Nowadays, federal spending is north of 23% of GDP.  It would be impossible to rely on tariffs to meet current spending levels.  Heck, we're already running ginormous annual deficits that are slated to increase further with the passage of recent legislation. 

Tariffs (sometimes called a duty) are a tax imposed on imported goods and services.  The tariff is not paid by other countries; the US import company is required to pay the tax.  This makes imported goods more expensive to US companies and consumers. Consequently, domestic producers may benefit from reduced competition potentially protecting domestic jobs and industries.  Decreased competition may also result in domestic producers raising their prices as we have seen in the steel industry. 

In 2024 individual income taxes generated roughly $2.4 trillion in revenue to the government representing nearly half of all federal revenue.  Because tariffs apply to the narrow sector of imported goods they would likely generate only a fraction of that amount resulting in ballooning deficits.

Furthermore, because tariffs apply to imports (as opposed to broad-based income) this would result in a disproportionate economic impacts with industries relying on imported materials or components being hit the hardest.  

Tariffs also increase costs to domestic companies and consumers. 

Conversely, if tariffs replaced the income tax your wages/salary would theoretically become tax-free.  This shift would allow you to keep more of what you make.  Sound appealing?  As a trade policy tool tariffs are probably more effective than as a revenue generator.  

The economic reality is the challenge of replacing income tax revenues with tariffs would require import taxes on a scale of enormity so high as to become disruptive to consumers, business, supply chains, trade relationships and the US dollar.  They won't fix our country's  persistent problem with annual deficits or balance the budget.  The notion of issuing everyone a government check and calling it a tariff rebate is absurd.  Tax the citizenry with import duties and then return a small piece and call it a tariff dividend?  PT Barnum had a term for this so if you have a rational explanation I want to hear it.

Meanwhile, the best summation of this challenge can be found over here at the Tax Foundation.  It's a short read of only a few minutes and worth your while.  

Finally, revenues from import taxes have been growing for months, and the latest data shows that the U.S. has collected $130 billion from them as of August 15.  That is $73.8 billion, or 131.2% more, than the same time last year. But that’s still far short of the $2.4 trillion federal income taxes brought in last year.  The running totals are updated daily and can be found here at the Trump Tariff Income Tracker.  You might want to bookmark this web page so you can follow along.

Bottom line?  The math doesn't work.....

 

Notable Quotable

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. 

 

- Hunter S. Thompson 

Notable Quotable

Tell Medvedev, the failed former president of Russia, who thinks he's still president, to watch his words. He's entering very dangerous territory!

-President Donald Trump 

Russia is right about everything and will continue to go its own way.  

- Former President Dmitri Medvedev  

Quote Of The Day

I never went to the island. Bill Clinton went there supposedly 28 times. I never had the privilege of going to his island.

- President Donald Trump