(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . It Is L.L. #15, May 5 [1] ['The Geogre', 'View Profile', 'Greg Dworkin', 'Chitown Kev', 'Belinda Ridgewood', 'Bill In Portland Maine', 'Crashing Vor'] Date: 2026-05-05 [Preface:] This is Laudable Links, a set of (usually three) articles I recommend reading. I will typically give some discussion of them, along with a brief summary of their arguments. Comments needed. Authors needed more. Members needed most. Morning Menu: David Dayen and Whitney Curry Wimbish end up explaining WHY Iran is a forever war. It’s just too damn profitable for the Donald family. At Just Security, Ryan Burke, Ph.D., from the US Marine Corps, explains why Wobbles Hegseth’s decision to “cancel” elite universities is an insult to America’s officers. Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but Tod Blank says that you have to show ID to get a TACO at a food truck — says it on Meat the Press. It is a war that is “over” due to the stopped clock of the War Powers Resolution, Donald Hegseth says, but, uh, with a blockade of every Iranian port. And Donald says that it is “more effective than bombs.” That should mean that it is, even in the rattletrap of his mind, the equivalent of war. David Dayen and Whitney Curry Wimbish, at The American Prospect, write “Oil Execs Thrill to Higher Profits From War,” and that right there is an explanation for every word that Donald utters about the “negotiations.” [Quote:|] he has also now settled on a permanent blockade to squeeze the Iranians into surrender, and naval blockades are acts of war. It’s mass collective punishment the likes of which we’ve seen in Gaza and Cuba. Though Trump has said this is “more effective than bombing,” it’s unlikely to work. [|End Quote] As they say, it’s pretty easy to think of a compromise that would open the Strait — US drops sanctions, and Iran gives up some support for “terrorism.” The problem? No one would trust Trump. No one in Iran, and no one in the USA. [Quote:|] Trump’s business career in real estate and casinos eventually foundered in part because he compulsively stiffed contractors and refused to pay for things he had ordered. When NBC producers came in to set up The Apprentice, they had to bring in outside vendors to build a set in Trump Tower because he had been blackballed by every local company. . . . Or consider Trump’s recent behavior toward America’s closest allies since 1945. Trump spent most of a year repeatedly threatening to seize Greenland and/or Canada by force, to the extent that Germany, France, and Denmark stationed soldiers in Nuuk with orders to blow up the runways if American forces attacked.[|End Quote] As for Iranian trust, Donald shredded the JCPOA because “Obamar” and he had seen Fox News footage of 747’s “full of cash” (a lie he repeated this year, by the way, and added that “all the banks in Virginia” were emptied of their cash for the great Obama cash airlift). Then, while negotiating with Iran, he assassinated the head of the Quds force. That was a genuinely potent evil, but, again, it was another bit of lying. Then more negotiations over the nuclear program before “we obliterated” them with bunker busters. And then we get the negotiations on Thursday, attack on Saturday war — including a “triple tap” strike on a girl’s school. About oil, though, the war must continue. Why? Exxon’s quarterly profits fell by 46%, and Chevron’s fell by 37% compared to last year (but don’t weep: they both made > $2,000,000,000 in profit. [Quote:|] The problem, they said, was that Trump’s war on Iran caused oil prices to rise before that oil was actually delivered, which in turn caused their financial derivative trades to drop in value. (Financial derivative traders, which thrive on volatility, love the sound of that: Energy trader Vitol took home a cool $2 billion in the first quarter.) [|End Quote] See? The shortages need to continue. If they do, the oil in the storage will catch up to the futures contracts, and there are going to be some serious profits. [Quote:|] analysts on Friday said that oil industry fortunes would reverse in short order; they estimated that Chevron’s profits would more than triple in the second quarter and that the full year’s profit would increase by 56 percent over last year. They expect ExxonMobil’s profit to double for the period and for the company to end the year with 46 percent higher profits.[|End Quote] Do we know anyone with an interest in oil who might have an effect on war policy? It is a puzzle. Wobbles thinks officers are melting snowflakes who cannot withstand a course in queer theory. I really enjoyed Ryan Burke’s “Hegseth’s Intellectual Purge is an Insult to His Officer Corps” at Just Security. It is from a professor who is a USMC officer who went to Harvard on the Marine Corps’ dime. He went in a conservative Republican, and he came out the same way, in spite of attending the Kennedy School of Government. I am a veteran military officer and a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. I am also a registered Republican and a gun owner. I did not arrive in Cambridge confused about my political identity. I did not leave with it erased or chastened. — Ryan Burke, Ph.D. Now, let’s start with how thorough-going Hegseth’s cancel culture has been (in the name of purging the cancel culture of inclusion): [Quote:|] When Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in February that the Defense Department would sever ties with Harvard University, he framed the move as an act of ideological hygiene. Harvard, he suggested, is an incubator of “woke” narratives awash in liberal orthodoxy with faculty that “squelch anyone who challenges their leftist political leanings.” Later, the Secretary formally added 13 more institutions to the department’s list of “canceled” educational relationships, accusing each of “sacrificing freedom of expression for the suffocating confines of leftist ideology.”[|End Quote] Because writing isn’t really Pete’s power these days, he made a video (it’s just like being on Fox again! it’s an audition for his next job as a podcaster) and said that Harvard made “ideological automatons.” Now one wonders about ideology and the civilian military, but that just kicks the frame of reference back a level to “What is the DoD to Party Pete?” (Answer: it is politics by other, more anonymous and lethal, means. It is not, ever, dispassionate or empirical.) [Quote:|] Secretary Hegseth apparently believes his officers are not just impressionable, but ideologically brittle. He implies that years of operational experience, command responsibility, and professional military education can be undone by seminar discussions and exposure to alternative policy perspectives. He subtly suggests that the same men and women entrusted with lethal authority and national secrets cannot be trusted with a syllabus. That is not a serious critique of an academic institution. It is a tacit indictment of the military officer corps by the Secretary of Defense.[|End Quote] Damn, but that’s good! What Mr. Burke misses is that it is an indictment, most of all, of the “ideology” Hegseth thinks has to be defended from these omnipotent attacks. If he thinks a seminar on international law can destroy what he imagines to be the good “warfighter,” then, if the officers aren’t weak, the fascism, nativism, and totalitarianism Hegseth thinks is the “real America” is phenomenally weak. I have loved to tack up a quote from John Milton’s anti-censorship essay, Areopagitica, and it applies here: [Quote:|] I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. [With censorship] Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. [|End Quote] Dr. Burke has not only anecdotal evidence, but also evidence from contemporary life: [Quote:|] At no point during my time at Harvard did I feel ostracized or vilified for holding views different from many of my peers. I encountered disagreement. Robust disagreement. It is, after all, a school of government. The Kennedy School classrooms are not therapy circles designed for social and emotional validation. They are debate forums and intellectual proving grounds where you check your ego at the door. Faculty span the political spectrum, many having served in presidential administrations of both parties. Discussions are sharp, substantive, and often uncomfortable. That is precisely why the experience is valuable. It’s no wonder that scores of senior military leaders, conservative members of Congress, and current administration officials attended Harvard and the other educational institutions on the list of 13. [|End Quote] Sure, there’s a bit of nostalgia for the old Crimson going on here, but there is also a person “with standing” as both an officer and an advanced degree holder rebutting the claims of a Fox Weekend fill-in host. At the same time, the vacuity and rank insult of Hegseth’s position is at least being aired. Maybe Tod only eats at Cigar Bars with Rudy or the Club at Mar-a-Largo? Kathryn Rubino, at Above the Law, notes the howler from the howling Deputy Attorney General that will, no doubt, get him the gig as AG: “Todd Blanche Goes On TV To Defend Voter ID And Accidentally Reveals He Has Never Been To A Restaurant.” As with other pieces of hers, I’m going to break her order of presentation. . . just because I’m like that. (It’s because I think the point is stronger this way.) Blanche was on Meat, the Press, and he pulled a number of boners. The one in question was his defense/advocacy of the SAVE Act (“SAVE the Republican majority”). He was explaining that showing ID is NBD! Really! Who would object to that, except people who have something to hide. . . like the hundreds of millions of in-person fraudulent voters in 2020, no doubt. [Quote:|] Trump has repeatedly claimed when pushing voter ID laws that Americans need to show photo ID at grocery stores, incorrectly saying in at least three instances that consumers needed to show ID to buy bread or cereal. When then-press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to explain this, she suggested Trump was referring to buying beer or wine. Three months later, Trump clarified that he was in fact talking about a box of cereal. In 2023, the president claimed identification was needed to buy a loaf of bread. Just last November, he upgraded the claim: speaking to Republican senators at a White House breakfast, Trump said, “All we want is voter ID. You go to a grocery store, you have to give ID. You go to a gas station, you give ID.” [|End Quote] Donald has been ridiculed by the reality caucus, who are obviously disloyal and suffering from TDS and watch Jimmy Kimmel. That’s why what happened on Sunday is probably going to increase Tod’s bona fides: [Quote:|] Blanche told Kristen Welker, “Like every time you walk into a restaurant or a club, you have to show your ID. How about you have to show your ID to vote? That’s not anything that’s crazy. And that’s what we should be talking about.” I shouldn’t have to say this out loud in the year of our lord 2026, but restaurants do not card you to walk in the door. [|End Quote] Note the postulate. Every time you walk through the door, you’re carded. That doesn’t sound like any sort of restaurant, does it? Now, Blanche said “restaurant OR CLUB,” and that lead people on the Internet to suggest He’s thinking of strip clubs The Liquor Cabinet isn’t just Hegseth, Patel, and Pirro. Ms. Rubino thinks that perhaps something else is on Tod’s mind, and that is a club that won’t have him as a member any time he shows his ID at the door. [Quote:|] he said restaurants and clubs. Which is an interesting choice of words for a man who, reportedly, has been trying since February to join the Metropolitan Club, one of Washington’s oldest and most exclusive private clubs, and is currently being blocked by at least six members who have written to the board of directors to object. A man who thinks TGI Fridays checks your ID before seating you might not fully grasp why six members of one of Washington’s oldest institutions are writing letters to keep him out. [|End Quote] Yep. Like Sean Penn’s character in One Battle After Another, Blank’s dream is membership in the club that doesn’t allow anyone to join. Also like that character, he’s being black balled. (Pun intended, but not invented.) It seems that some current members (six of them) think that he’s “controversial.” And after he prosecuted Comey and the SPLC! [Quote:|] This is an administration that has spent considerable energy arguing that voting should be harder, more restricted, and more heavily policed… and the best real-world analogy its top law enforcement official can muster is a thing that does not actually happen. The premise of the whole argument, that requiring ID is simply the normal, universal American experience, collapses the moment you point out that you can walk into an Applebee’s without so much as a library card. [|End Quote] Well, sure, but the vapidity of the analogy is not due to there being no analogies to draw. It’s because they’re not sincere. They’re not trying to even pretend to argue that voter ID is normal. They are arguing, out loud and in many outlets, that voter ID is necessary to stop the voter fraud that Donald Trump’s narcissism needs more than air itself so that he can have “won” 2020. It’s funny because it’s bathetic. It’s scary because the bathos has vast reservoirs of power behind its art of sinking. [Conclusion:] Aren’t you glad it’s not a poem? Next time I do that, I promise it will be in Modern English. (I’m thinking about Pope’s third epitaph to the Stanton-Harcourt Lovers. 🙂 ) The problem with today’s fare is that they’re all. . . slight in their way. I think all three are enjoyable and worth your time, but none are going to cause a spasm of philosophy. That, too, is a joy. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/5/5/800033211/community/it-is-l-l-15-may-5/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/