The Iran oil shock is about to hit YouTube video by Max Fisher

And what that will look like (not what you're seeing out the window right now).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFb_...

That probably goes for any other Iranian islands in the Gulf, since islands make excellent defensible positions.
Just a wild guess.

And then they'll seek to remake Kharg Island into another permanent American military base on foreign soil, like Okinawa or Guantanamo Bay.

Yes, Iran is 600,000 square miles and 90 million people, but Trump and his cronies are indifferent to most of it. They do covet its oil -- and now that they've seen it in action, they'll covet Iran's power to control the movement of oil through the Straight of Hormuz.

Does Trump care if this actually succeeds in preventing attacks on ships or making Dubai safe again to carry on as a world-class destination for tourism and global commerce? Probably not much.

A wild guess:
The small expeditionary force of marines being sent to the Persian Gulf will be used to seize Kharg Island. With that in hand, Trump et al will send Special Forces "operators" to the Iranian coast to raid missile launch and drone boat redoubts.

The 'time is a flat circle' award of US military propaganda: William Westmoreland and his body counts, Pete Hegseth and his target strikes.

1) So is it better to own things than hold cash, since all our cash is going to soon be worth a lot less?
2) Is it better to run to the limits on all our fixed interest rate debt lines, since we'll be able to pay it back with money only worth a pittance of what it was when we spent it?

Major Gulf airports damaged as airlines suspend flights Australia's airports peak body has warned of "significant disruptions" to global aviation in coming days after the Middle East erupted into conflict and flights to the region were cancelled.

www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03...

...marine insurers have halted coverage for any voyages in the area, leaving transporters exposed to massive risk premiums or outright refusal.

Why you should visit the three remaining Japantowns in the U.S. Dozens of communities were destroyed after tens of thousands of Japanese Americans were forced from their homes during World War II. But culture and history still run deep through these neighborhoods.

Many survivors attempted to return home only to discover their belongings had been stolen and their properties vandalized or sold, effectively erasing their existence from their neighborhoods.

www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/artic...

The economic persecution being enacted against Iranian heritage communities and businesses and Iranian communities throughout the US in the coming months could bring the same annihilation to them as those visited on US Japantowns in WWII.

If you visit Japantown in San Francisco, there's a memorial with a placard that explains that Japantowns were once as prevalent in American cities as Chinatowns, but that they were mostly destroyed in WWII by government policies targeting Japanese Americans.

War Alert: US-Iran Clash Triggers Global Bank Panic YouTube video by MARKET & HISTORY

Ignore the fear-hype headline.
Good info here: How contemporary military action meets the financial system, how it effects Iranian students (up to 10,000) and thousands more with Iranian surnames or any tangential financial contact with Iran.
Price of oil on Monday?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGiS...

Well, shit.

Kitchen staff got leftover cake to take home to the families. Put away the guillotines.

Basically Trump’s Davos speech is just a thousand Twitter comments in a trench coat.

It's always a good time for a fox in the snow, rendered lovely (corrected from lovingly, but I suspect lovingly is true too).

He says something and all I hear is the rapey subtext: "I bought you an expensive dinner and now you won't put out? No I won't unlock the car door."

Davos live: Trump rules out taking Greenland by force but calls for ‘immediate negotiations’ Rolling coverage of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the US president is addressing world leaders

The Guardian knows how to write about Donald Trump:
"Trump is now banging on about how green energy is a fraud."

Also ➡️: "And lurching into language popularised by England’s football fans, Trump tells WEF..." He's the human personification of a fucking lurch.

www.theguardian.com/business/liv...

Upside: Pay back your expensive debt with newly cheap money.
When dollars are only worth 25 cents of what they were when you took out the loan, well, fuck those guys.

Damn.

BP/ICE aren't cops or soldiers.

They're federal govt. CIVIL enforcement agents vested with limited policing powers for the purpose of enforcing customs & immigration laws

Harassment of, attacks on & kidnapping of citizens isn't their purpose nor charge. Neither are street executions for disrespect

Emails outline potential cuts affecting thousands of FEMA disaster responders Any FEMA terminations are likely to come in waves, according to three people familiar with the plans.

Gift link

wapo.st/3Z3WrN3

A USPS mailbox in New York City

USPS quietly changed its postmark rules — mail is no longer dated when you drop it off. The “official” date is when it hits automated sorting — sometimes days later

Which could have major implications for mail in voting — it’s a clever way to disenfranchise voters that’s going largely overlooked

Fed Chair Jerome Powell Says U.S. May Be Drastically Overstating Jobs Numbers Powell said that Fed staffers believe federal data could be overstating job creation by up to 60,000 jobs a month—which suggests the jobs market might be shrinking.

Gift link

www.wsj.com/economy/jobs...

Stop Waiting for Trump to Die US Fascism doesn't end with him.

"This is swing voters responding to chaos. This is the suburbs recoiling. This is not the MAGA base defecting."

Yep.

cmarmitage.substack.com/p/stop-waiti...

"Many of them, he said, held legal status, but were unable to immediately produce their documentation to the agents.

“Some people left their property, their work permits in their lockers here,” [their boss] said. “I could bring it to them and get them released. But I don’t know where they are.”"

Stacked line plot illustrating estimates of how many SNAP participants should have received benefits by each day in November 2025. Each state is shown with a different color, illustrating how different states use different distribution schedules for SNAP.

By today, nearly 11 million SNAP participants should have received *full* benefits for November. They haven't.

By Friday, this jumps to about 20 million.

(estimated using state participation data and issuance schedules from USDA FNS)

🥗 🛟 🩺📊 #econsky

Scott Jennings melted down on CNN over Zohran Mamdani’s likely win — ranting about “socialists” and tossing out a bizarre new slur, “Islamo-Marxist”
Then David Hogg calmly torched the whole charade:

“People are tired of being lectured by men with Rolexes on CNN about affordability in this country.”