AMR

Argue like you are right; listen like you are wrong.

How is this not the most humiliating military failure in US history? We didn’t accomplish any goals, we failed to stop a regional power from effectively stopping maritime trade, we had to ask China to even get that country to accept our ceasefire offer?

I mostly avoid commenting on what President Trump says from day to day, while pulling no punches in my assessments, whether positive or negative, of his policy. His Iran ultimatums feel different. Making such threats is a policy. If he were to follow through on them, the consequences would be immediate, irreversible, and catastrophic on a world-historical scale. So while some will inevitably insist he should be “taken seriously rather than literally,” or that he is executing a sophisticated “madman” strategy in a complex game of 5-D chess, or that he needs everyone’s steadfast support to maximize his leverage, now rather than later seems the time to say that the actions that he is proposing would be a disaster for our country, both strategically and morally, which makes the remarks themselves a terrible mistake. Simply put, what’s the point of all this? If these are empty threats that we all know he will not carry out, then they are ineffective threats (the Iranians are on X too!), merely making the president and our nation look foolish. If they are not empty threats, then the president is asserting the American position that such actions are acceptable in this situation and ones we are willing to take. We are not living in some quantum thought experiment where he simultaneously is and is not serious. We cannot expect the Iranians, but only the Iranians, will believe him. Whether the threats are empty or not, we should be willing to say: This is wrong. We should not establish a pattern of threatening escalation from a blockaded strait to elimination of a civilization. We should not launch strikes intended to devastate the lives of millions of people and take our nation to total war without indisputable justification, or before the American people have deliberated upon and assented to the path with full understanding of what total war might mean for them. Those principles are vital to our Republic, independent of whether the strategy could “work.” But it’s also worth emphasizing that the strategy is a dead end. This war is actively weakening American power, increasing the danger to American citizens, and frustrating the president’s important efforts at addressing our many domestic challenges. It has closed a strait that was previously open, strengthened the incentive for other nations to pursue nuclear weapons, and in this most recent rhetoric made more plausible their use. Our choices for continuing the war appear to be catastrophic escalation of the air war or extensive deployment of ground troops, neither of which were planned or had support at the outset. Stepping back from these threats and admitting such actions do not offer a path to resolving the conflict may be unpalatable, but it is by far the least unpalatable option available. Let us all hope cooler heads prevail.

In the best case scenario, Trump struck a deal to reopen a Strait that was open before the pointless war he started, with the IRGC demonstrating its control over the Strait and potentially extracting fees plus sanctions relief. Thousands of innocents - including hundreds of children - dead in Lebanon and Iran for no reason. U.S. troops killed and wounded. U.S. embassies and bases in the Middle East badly damaged. U.S. standing in the world obliterated. U.S. munitions badly depleted. Hundreds of billions spent. Prices up everywhere. More global economic fallout to come. Putin strengthened and enriched. Just a catastrophic situation even in the best of circumstances. A profoundly shameful episode in American history no matter what happens next.

@JonahDispatch I remember this post. How is it possibly ~8 years old?!?

Flashback

@JonahDispatch This article is from @TheOnion, right? Right?!?

Let me guess: It’s a calf?

@McCormackJohn @MarcGoldwein @lwmccormack Another @thedispatch baby! Well done and congratulations!!

Catherine Teresa McCormack was born earlier this month. She is uniquely and perfectly wonderful, and now there is obviously a tie for the best gift @lwmccormack and I have ever received.

@JonahDispatch Happy birthday!!

“Hi! It’s Saturday. Thumb guy came home very very late. But we said hi. Then, this morning the Special Lady still took us out because he needed to sleep and it’s his birthday. But we were sure to wish him happy birthday with our schnozzles when we got back. Also, I love you.”

@dieworkwear @kevinxu Uh, no?

@kevinxu Personally think you should use college as a time to expand your mind and make friends, not maximize your market value. Major in something that you're passionate about.

friend’s kid asked what they should major in college i almost cried what do you even say anymore

Losing Lou Holtz isn’t just a loss—it’s a transfer of responsibility. At some point, you stop being shaped… and start shaping others. What he gave me doesn’t stop with me.

@BenSasse OMG OMG OMG. THE TURKEY!!!

Mike got a little….salty

Real-life cowboys wrangle a runaway cow that’s loose and on the run in Oklahoma City

@EconTalker Congratulations, Russ. I’m so thankful for EconTalk. I’ve learned so much. Thank you.

This week's EconTalk episode with Mike Munger (the Babe Ruth/Hank Aaron/Barry Bonds of EconTalk with 51 appearances and counting) marks the 20th anniversary of the program. EconTalk has been supported from the beginning by Liberty Fund, an Indianapolis-based foundation started by an Indianapolis businessman, Pierre Goodrich, who believed in great books, conversations around the ideas in those books, and the importance of liberty. So while LF was started long before the internet, EconTalk (conversations around ideas) seemed very much in his spirit. When I started, I didn't know how hard it would be to do. Early on, I realized we had to come out every week. In the early years, we took off a week or two for the holiday break of Christmas and New Year's. But we stopped doing that long ago. We haven't missed a Monday for something like 850 weeks. LF pays me to produce the podcast and then we give it away which is wonderful. And being a Hoover Fellow also allows me to put in the time necessary to produce the podcast. So I am grateful to both organizations for the freedom to create EconTalk over the last 20 years. And now Hoover will be releasing episodes on YouTube as they come out. You can head over to the Hoover Institution page on YouTube and find EconTalk every Monday morning along with other video Hoover produces: @HooverInstitution/videos" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@HooverInstitu… All 1041 episodes are available without charge at the EconTalk.org website, and at my website, russroberts.info. Most (if not all) podcast sites like Spotify or the iPhone podcast app have all the past episodes as well. You can also find all the past episodes at EconTalk's YouTube page, @econtalkwithruss" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@econtalkwithr…, which is a little complicated now that Hoover is also distributing them but I assume you will figure it out. The older episodes don't always have video... Doing 1041 EconTalk episodes over 20 years has been an extraordinary experience. I have grown tremendously. My interests have widened. It has shaped me in ways I'm sure I don't completely appreciate. I like to think EconTalk has stoked my curiosity about the world around me. When I was younger, I wondered if I would hit some goal like the 1000th episode and stop. Now I think I will only stop when I can't do the job the way I think it should be done. So as long as I can keep reading, hearing, thinking, an speaking, and I can have a good internet connection, I hope to continue. What a privilege it has been to speak to smart, interesting people every week for 20 years and to be able to share that with my listeners. I am grateful to everyone at EconTalk who supports the program and helps me get this done. These days that's Lauren Landsburg, Rich Goyette, Les Cook, Katie Flavin, Marla Goldfinger, Sarah Skwire, Shelly Rogers, Cassandra Karnick, Blake Van Der Kamp, Pat Lynch, and Sean Shelby. And many thanks to those who started with me at Liberty Fund way back at the beginning or nearly so, Emilio Pacheco, Jim Cote, and Amy Willis. And now there is a new team at Hoover who is working on the YouTube side: Shana Farley, Jonathan Movroydis, Vy Nguyen, and Imagine Gonzales. I apologize if I have forgotten anyone. And of course, I am grateful to all of you who listen and who have stuck with the program even as we moved away from focusing on economics. I always enjoy hearing from you. Thanks for being part of the journey. See you next Monday.

@Camp4 That’s how we ended up in CO after 25 years in Texas. Kept coming here in July/August for vacation. Going back to 90-100 degree temps got harder and harder. So we moved.

At the tail end of a vacation, do you catch yourself browsing local real estate listings and joking with your spouse: “What if we just moved here?” Then you quickly dismiss it as unrealistic. Let me ask you a question: How’s the water? 👇

@WhiteHouse What is actually wrong with you?

UNDEFEATED.

define ‘perfect casting’

@HumanityChad This is Iowa nice. ❤️

For 27 years, A daughter would photograph her parents waving goodbye 😭😭 For nearly three decades, photographer Deanna Dikeman documented a tender family ritual - her parents standing in the driveway, waving goodbye as she left. What began in 1991 as a way to ease the ache of parting evolved into an intimate visual diary of love, time, and loss. After her father passed in 2009, her mother continued the custom, her waves growing even more poignant with each visit. When her mother later moved to assisted living, the goodbyes shifted to a doorway instead of the driveway. In 2017, following her mother’s death, Dikeman captured the final image in the series: an empty driveway, a silent farewell to both her parents and the years they had shared in that space

A legacy that will always live here #GoIrish☘️

@dieworkwear High waist, mid rise, low rise. Repeat.

is life just a series of days where you're tired in the afternoon and wide awake at night, running behind on weekly deadlines, and seeing pants get slim and big and then slim again over the years until you die?

@BenSasse @CaseyMattox_ What an excellent combination of dudes.

#NotDeadYet podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/not…

@JonahDispatch Favorite Zoe pic.

On this day 2017