Trump Job Approval
| Pollsters wrong in 2024: | 41.6 / 55.6 | -14.0 |
| Pollsters right in 2024: | 45.5 / 52.1 | -6.6 |
 | GOP | DEM |
| Democrats +21 | 207 | 228 |
Wednesday without polls
13 responses to “Wednesday without polls”
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LOL, we need to syndicate Homer Hedgehog and friends.
And share the royalties among HHR regulars of course.
A-holes should get a premium because, ah, hmmm, huh…they should.
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. TRump faked it all. EVeryone in the crowd behind where Trump was speaking were all in on the fake assassinatio”
And they even had a guy shot in the head to make it look good.
And some people say Trump is incompetent.
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Democrat Congressman Beyer says the quiet part out loud: “It’s not forcing any change. In the meantime, [Democrats] are making people hurt. The long lines, that can’t make [Democrats] more popular.”
Rs need to do a better job about tsa. It’s getting so bad thst some airports will close due to the shutdown,
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An assessment of the war…
“Iranian ballistic missile launches have fallen by more than 90 percent from 350 on February 28 to roughly 25 by March 14, according to publicly available data. Drone launches tell the same story: from more than 800 on Day 1 to about 75 on Day 15.
The figures drawn from US and Iranian military statements differ in detail but converge on the trajectory. Hundreds of Iranian missile launchers have been rendered inoperable. According to some reports, 80 percent of Iran’s capacity to strike Israel has been eliminated.
[…]
The campaign has moved through two distinct phases. The first suppressed Iran’s air defences, decapitated its command and control, and degraded its missile and drone launch infrastructure. By March 2, US Central Command announced local air superiority over western Iran and Tehran, achieved without the confirmed loss of a single American or Israeli combat aircraft.
The second phase, now under way, targets Iran’s defence industrial base: missile production facilities, dual-use research centres and the underground complexes where remaining stockpiles are stored. This is not aimless bombing. It is a methodical campaign to ensure that what has been destroyed cannot be rebuilt.
Iran now faces a strategic dilemma that tightens every day. If it fires its remaining missiles, it exposes launchers that are promptly destroyed. If it conserves them, it forfeits the ability to impose costs of the war. Missile and drone launch data suggest Iran is rationing its remaining capacity for politically timed salvoes rather than sustaining operational tempo.
[…]
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is dominating the critical commentary. US Senator Chris Murphy has called it evidence that President Donald Trump misjudged Iran’s capacity to retaliate. CNN has described it as proof that the administration has lost control of the war’s escalation.
The economic pain is real: Oil prices have surged, a record 400 million barrels of oil will be released from global reserves, and Gulf states are facing drone and missile strikes on their energy infrastructure.
But this framing inverts the strategic logic. Closing the strait was always Iran’s most visible retaliatory card, and always a wasting asset. About 90 percent of Iran’s own oil exports pass through Kharg Island and then the strait.
China, Tehran’s largest remaining economic partner, cannot receive Iranian crude while the strait is shut. Every day the blockade continues, Iran severs its own economic lifeline and alienates the one major power that has consistently shielded it at the United Nations. The closure does not just hurt the global economy; it accelerates Iran’s isolation.
[…]
When proxies launch retaliatory attacks across the region, this is not evidence of an expanding network; it is evidence of predelegated response authority, which is what a centralised command system activates when it anticipates its own destruction.
Predelegation is a sign of desperation, not strength. It means the centre can no longer coordinate. The attacks will continue, but they will become increasingly uncoordinated, strategically incoherent and politically costly for the host states where these groups operate.
Qatar and Bahrain are arresting IRGC operatives. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are intercepting Iranian drones over their own territory. The regional environment that sustained Iran’s proxy architecture, including the grudging tolerance by Gulf states fearful of Iranian retaliation, is being replaced by active hostility.
Hezbollah is weaker than at any point since 2006, degraded by more than a year of Israeli operations before this campaign began. Iraqi militias retain the ability to launch attacks, but they are doing so into a region where they face increasing isolation.
The Houthis in Yemen possess independent capability but lack the command integration with Tehran that transforms militia activity into strategic effect. What the critics described as an expanding regional war is better understood as the death spasm of a proxy architecture whose authorising centre has been shattered.
[…]
Seventeen days in, Iran’s supreme leader is dead, his successor is reportedly wounded and every principal instrument of Iranian power projection – missiles, nuclear infrastructure, air defences, the navy, proxy command networks – has been degraded beyond near-term recovery. The campaign’s execution has been imperfect, its public communication poor and its post-conflict planning incomplete. War is never clean. But the strategy – the actual strategy, measured in degraded capabilities rather than cable news cycles – is working.”
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jason, and Paul was here yesterday calling the war “a mess” and I think Iran would agree, we have made a mess of them. But I think Paul meant what CNN means, that this is somehow a chaos that is hurting us.
As I mentioned before, the left is thrilled whenever lethal weapons are rounded up and destroyed. Well, Trump in the last three weeks has destroyed more lethal weapons than the past many presidents combined. But the left hates it, because those were weapons pointed at us.
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Imo, the “war” is nearing its final chapters. We just hit gas and oil structures in Iran. Another mullah, the “head of intelligence” was taken out.
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Even if there is no immediate regime change, the war has decimated Iran’s military infrastructure. To rebuild it will put Iran in the same quandary the Soviet Union was faces with in the 80’s, “butter or arms”. Iran cannot do both, even with oil revenue, the population is too large, over 90 million people. It is doubtful they will have the cash to keep financing their proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.
Of course, they could get help from China, bur even that would not come free.
It will be a different Iran after the war, one way or another.
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Not good..
“The producer price index — which tracks the change in wholesale prices — rose 0.7% in February, well above the 0.3% that economists polled by Dow Jones had estimated. The report shows that inflation was already in a precarious spot prior to the Iran war breaking out — an event that has heightened stagflation fears amid rising oil prices.
“The hotter than expected number is specific to tariffs,” Todd Schoenberger, CIO at CrossCheck Management, said, noting that metals, industrial inputs and manufacturing costs are all seeing higher prices. “This is structural inflation, not temporary, and is likely going to impact monetary policy deep into the third quarter.”
It’s hard to reinvent the basic laws of economics….
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Hochul wants the rich to come back? Good luck with that.
“I need people who are high net worth to support the generous social programs we have in our state. Some patriotic millionaires who stepped up. Ok! Cut the me the checks. But if you want to supportive, maybe the first step should be go down to palm beach and see who you can bring back home”
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The Hedgehog Report - Phoenix Edition 
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