And Then What (Iran Version)

First, a real pardon-me for not having posted for a while. I figured to comment on Iran but the situation kept changing halfway through writing each article. Thank you for your patience.

Regular readers know that one of my standard approaches to an issue is to try to define the problem, rather than going off on a tangent that doesn't successfully solve it. I would really like to apply that here, but it's going to be hard.

You remember George H.W. Bush ("Bush 41", if that helps)?  One memorable quote of his was to complain about "the vision thing." That was in response to complaints in the press that he seemed to lack vision, that he didn't have a view of the future. Of course in his case, he had won election to the presidency after eight years of economic success under Ronald Reagan, and he could hardly be blamed for wanting to continue moving in the same direction, rather than excessively innovating.

The Iran situation is a classic example of the need for the "vision thing." Because what we need depends on what you see as the best long-term situation there. 

What is Iran now? As I write this, it is a country with 90 million people, who have been repressed for 47 years by an Islamo-fascist dictatorship. They're capable of so much more. There are seriously intelligent people there, fully capable of implementing a government structure that would allow the free and independent exchange of ideas and would free the Persian people to achieve success and become a vital economic force and a partner in the world community.

That country is defenseless now. There is no navy or air force, its shore defenses are being blown up one at a time, and only the IRGC is left there as a military structure, murdering protesting civilians and tossing up drones here and there to attack neighboring countries. The "gay ayatollah", who is supposedly alive and making decisions there, has not been seen since his alleged ascent to power. If he even is alive, he is being propped up by the IRGC.

And oh yeah, they have lots and lots of oil, more than enough to fund a legitimate economy, or a nuclear weapons program, depending. 

The news media keep talking about two options -- the US bombs them into submission, or they walk away and let them surreptitiously rebuild their nuclear program. 

But "the vision thing" is about two different options, the ones possible after the U.S. departs the region, or at least ends the war. Those options entail who actually runs the Iran that remains afterward -- the current theocracy or a modern representative government. And that is a challenge.

It's a challenge because for the U.S. to be involved in that to any real extent is "nation building", and that phrase leaves a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. 

But let's face it, the greatest outcome of the conflict out there would be for the Persian people themselves to overthrow the corrupt ayatollahcracy, dismantle the IRGC and implement a representative democracy of some kind. Reza Pahlavi, the 65-year-old son of the former Shah of Iran, has offered to help form an interim government and then step away, and he does have at least some level of support among the masses.

Shah's son or not, in order for the people to create a government, the IRGC has to be eliminated as a factor in the way of power getting to the people. I'm not close enough to know how much of an effort it would be, but the "people" are effectively unarmed, so either the U.S., the allies in the region (who have no love for the current Iranian leadership) or both would have to take action.

It's already been a different kind of war, since we are definitively not trying to conquer Iran, just trying to stop the rulers from developing a nuclear capability (a people's government would be great, but it's not why we're there). So it is absolutely not in our interest to kill civilians or take over territory, but facilitating a popular takeover would be great -- and we need the people to grit their teeth while we bomb away.

This has been the dilemma that President Trump has had to face. Normally when you press the delete button on your enemy's navy and air force, they surrender and you go forward. But like the knight in the Monty Python sketch who keeps getting limbs cut off but keeps yelling to continue the fight, the terrorists running Iran won't give up.

Those terrorists running Iran now have no interest in either reaching a negotiated peace settlement or agreeing not to resume their nuclear weapons program. They simply drag out negotiations, sign this or that only to have it repudiated by other elements of the government. The gay ayatollah is nowhere in sight, if he even is the effective leader.

What is the end game?

That is the question. And the answer is unfortunate and simple. We don't want to occupy the country, and President Trump simply is not going to, even to afford time for the people to vote in some kind of government.

The IRGC is not going to agree to a negotiated settlement. Ever. They don't do that. They lie. And we know where the leadership is. Our intelligence and that of our allies, the Israelis, is that good.

The choice is what it is. Terrorists can not have nuclear weapons. They and the leadership of the IRGC need to be taken out and, if boots are needed on the ground, the Israelis are really good at that. 

Then? Hope is that the populace can somehow unite around Persians who are committed to a free government, whether resident there now or returning from overseas or exile. But hope is not a strategy. And the U.S. can only be involved just so much before we're invested. 

We have only one real strategy -- take out the leadership until the IRGC is no more, or no longer effective. Leverage regional allies to facilitate elections and help the Persian people however we can to retake their government themselves. Promise the people that we will support a representative democracy and help them rebuild their economy. We can do that.

That kind of Iran, disarmed and denuclearized, can be a reasonable force in a new Middle East. It can sell oil to China to its heart's content.

That is a vision. Now we just have to get there. 

Copyright 2026 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.  

Because It's Only About the Power

As I write this, President Trump is in China being toasted by the leader of the largest nation on earth, and returning toasts in kind -- Diet Coke, probably.

We've already heard that the Chinese have agreed to buy new quantities of soybeans from America, and that deals are in place for some 200 new jets from Boeing (and the attendant hiring boom that will take place at that airplane giant). These are gargantuan successes in international trade diplomacy.

We've also heard that Presidents Trump and Xi have discussed the possibility of China buying oil and natural gas from the USA to replace the fuels on the Chinese tankers that are languishing in the Persian Gulf currently under blockade.

That last deal makes an insane amount of sense. The USA has huge resources of fossil fuels, with great resources in Alaska. You don't have to have much of a sense of geography to know that it's a straighter shot for oil tankers to get from Alaska to Beijing than it is from the Persian Gulf.

But more importantly, if you're China, buying your oil from the USA makes a lot more sense than buying it from Iran. Look at the two countries. In one, you have an Islamist radical faction shunned by their Arab neighbors, willing to kill 40,000+ of its own citizens merely for speaking out in public. You want to buy oil from them? In the other, you have an acutely stable republic founded on ethical and moral principles, with multiple energy companies willing to compete for your business. Easy choice.

So good things are happening this week. Good things that should be celebrated by the leaders of the opposition party, the Democrats, as loudly as by the Republicans.

But that is not going to happen.

Consider this posture: In almost any election in this country, if you listen to debates, you will notice a distinct difference if you choose to pay attention. The 21st Century Democrat candidate is interested only in winning the election, as the be-all and end-all. "Success" is winning the job. The Republican candidate will be talking about governing, as in what the candidate will do once in the job.

Get the difference? The Republican is running to fix the problems that are at the forefront of the competition. Potholes?  I'll try to fix potholes on Day One. War in East Pooflia? I'll try to get that war settled as soon as possible, and here is how.

The Democrat has no solutions, because liberal solutions do not work and never have. Liberal solutions consist of:

(1) Throw money at it.
(2) Hire lots of government employees.

Number (1) is what they say in the campaigns, because it sounds good. Number (2) is what they end up doing, because that's where that thrown money goes, except when it is going to NGOs, phony hospices and Learing Centers, to get cycled back as donations to Democrat campaigns. 

Democrats do not worry about actually governing, because that is not their goal -- look back up at the paragraph about the Trump/Xi toasts and just picture AOC meeting with Xi instead. Argh. Their goal is not about governing.

It is about power.

Power in the USA devolves from winning elections. That is why everything that the Democrats support is on the side of how to get more votes for Democrats, whether "legally" by gerrymandering all of New England, Maryland, Illinois and California, or illegally by hijacking the mail-in ballot process in states that allow abuse by bundling votes, creating see-through envelopes, or just hauling in pre-filled ballots from neighboring states.

Why ever are the Democrats on the side of open borders and letting 20 million illegal storm across the border? Duh ... votes. Why ever would the Democrats be in favor of non-citizens and felons voting? Duh ... more votes (the assumption is that illegal aliens and felons would vote for Democrats, presumably seeing kindred spirits).

When there's one of those 90-10 issues that you can't for the life of you figure out why Democrats would take the "10%" side, you know, like men playing women's sports, just use the same logic, starting with how that side would get them more votes (in that one, I can only imagine that they assume they'll get the votes of the trans folks, and that everyone else will just vote the way they normally would because the other issues are more important to them).

The Democrats have to try to focus on winning elections because they have no capacity to govern. Barack Obama's singular achievement was not governing; he was clearly terrible at that, from ramming a horrible health-insurance bill through, to signing awful deals with Iran and the Paris climate agreement that Trump couldn't extricate the USA from fast enough in his first term. No, Obama's distinction was only becoming president. Are you starting to get my point?

Joe Biden wasn't even actually president, I'm pretty sure; virtually everyone was asking for four years who was pulling the strings in the White House, since it sure wasn't Joe. And it wasn't Kamala Harris either; Joe's handlers publicly made her czarina of this or that, and she accomplished absolutely nothing. By contrast, the current vice president was just given the role of anti-fraud czar, and already since JD Vance took over, well over $300 million has been held back from states identified in a whole-of-government approach as having been paying bogus firms and NGOs, many of which then kicked back a percentage to Democrat candidates. Prosecutions are spinning up and some criminals are going to spend some serious prison time. That is governing.   

The same understanding would apply in, say, California. Thousands of homes were burned last year, and the state has done ... nothing (governor is a Democrat). The city of Los Angeles has done ... nothing (mayor is a Democrat). The reservoirs supplying the firefighters at the time of the fire were empty, but the Democrat mayor was in Africa, where you'd expect the LA mayor to be. Oh, you wouldn't? You're probably right. 

You'd think that at the very least, the elected leaders would ensure that the permitting process would be fast-tracked so the victims' homes could be rebuilt. Yet as of January, a year after the fire, fewer than twelve had actually been permitted and rebuilt. The Democrats running California simply cannot run the simplest of processes, because it is not in their skill set to do so -- they're trained only to win elections, not to govern once in office.

This fall, American voters will go back to the polls to elect all House members and a third of the Senate. The legal voters will realize that for all the vote-buying and promises of the Democrats, they accomplish nothing, and will likely reverse the usual trend of presidents losing House seats in mid-term elections.

We can only hope that only legal voters vote. But you know those wacky Democrats ... it will only be "How do we win the election?" right up until they've won enough of them that there's no need to hold them anymore. 

Like they do in China. 

Copyright 2026 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

Teachers Too? I Don't Think So

My Best Girl and I enjoy going to the theater when we can. We're between two small cities, each about 40 minutes away, so there are about 5-6 theaters between the two that have acts come into town often. It makes for a nice evening.

A whole lot of the acts that are staged there, though, are performers we have no interest in, or tribute bands for groups we didn't like the originals of anyway, but there are enough acts, shows, comics, groups, ballets, and the like that we do want to see, to keep us attending a couple times a month on average.

A month or two ago, we saw a well-known entertainer do his thing. Or their thing. It might have been a group; it really doesn't matter.

What matters is that, near the end of the show, they did a patriotic number. That's not unusual; this is the South, and we're patriotic Americans here. We like such songs, and we like it when an entertainer acknowledges the freedoms our nation provides and that such freedoms allow them to perform as they please. That's cool.

It is typical that, when a performer does such a number, they will introduce it with a big thank-you to veterans in the audience. They'll be asked to stand and be honored before the song, and the audience will invariably cheer loudly for them. Some of those vets -- OK, many of them, given the average age around here -- are Korean War-era veterans, and they're all in their 90s. Big applause.

I said earlier that such intros are pretty common. A frequent tweak to that intro is to ask for vets and cops and first responders to stand.

Certainly I have no issue with that. We honor our veterans, and we also honor our fellow Americans who put their lives at risk by serving as policemen, firefighters and other first responders, helping their fellow Americans in need at the risk of their own safety, and do so on a regular basis.

My late brother-in-law was a career police officer who retired as the head of his department. My neighbor across the street was just named Chief for the local fire department -- and as it is an all-volunteer department, he is paid zero even though it is literally a full-time job.  But even without those connections, I'd find the people who take those jobs worth the honor along with our esteemed veterans.

So imagine my reaction when a recent performer introduced their patriotic tune with a request that "All our veterans in the audience, please stand, along with our policemen, firefighters and first responders ... and teachers."

Our what?

Yep, the guy asked for teachers to stand along with the actual heroes in the audience.

Now, please don't say I'm demeaning people who teach children for a living. We need teachers, and I've certainly admired some that I've had. But in no way do I regard them in the same way as those who put their lives on the line as a regular part of their job.

Let me give you a way to look at this. I've been a defense contractor for the last 40 years of my professional career, a career of over 50 years starting as an actor. The work I do is important, in the sense that what I do ultimately helps our customers in the Department of War more easily acquire products and services needed to accomplish their missions.

But from my position, I look at the uniformed servicemen whom I support as the heroes. They volunteered to take up arms and take on their mission defending our nation at risk to life and limb. I look up to the newest E-1 in the military service. I'm just helping them. They're the heroes.

That logic applies to our cops and firefighters as well. They volunteered for a job that risks their lives daily to protect the lives and safety of their fellow citizens. I wave at cops when I can, but that's about all I can do to help them.

To me, the teachers are far more analogous to me and my job, than to the military and first responders. They do a valuable job, but so do I, and I would surely think of it as stolen valor, if I stood up along with those who risk their lives so my wife and I can go see a show. 

There are heroes, and then there are those who do a job.

I'll let the heroes stand, and I'll just applaud them vigorously from my seat. 

I'd hope that the teachers would be applauding the real heroes along with me. 

Copyright 2026 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

Wait -- Inequality Is Your Problem?

The news was just going on in the background, when the voice started citing some recent poll about what was most on people's minds. The context was in regard to the 2026 elections, the November midterms in eight months and the primaries, ongoing as this is written.

What got my attention was that some percentage -- maybe 10%, maybe 15%, I can't recall and was too lazy to rewind -- checked the box for "Income Inequality."

Seriously?

Think about what it is actually saying when you say that "income inequality" is a problem for you.  Hint: it is not a good reflection on you.

If you want to say that your income is an issue, and that you wish it were higher, well, join the crowd. No one goes to their boss and asks for their pay to be lowered, except maybe Ted Williams in 1960*. We pretty much all wish we were making more.

But "inequality" doesn't have to do just with what you are making; it has to do with what someone else is making compared to you. 

By checking that box, you are saying that you should make more because someone else is making too much and it makes you unhappy.

I will confess, I can not understand that mode of thinking. It's one thing to look inside your own company and say, "Hey, I've been working here longer than Charlie, and we do the same job, he shouldn't be making more than I do".  But that's not what "income inequality" is and you know it. 

Plus, you have to be careful if you have that situation. As I wrote in this cautionary tale a few years back, there is often an answer you don't want to hear.

No, the people who checked that box are mad because Elon Musk is worth a bazillion dollars and earns thousands of times more than they do.

The problem is that "income inequality" as a concept is a bit mythical. Yes, Elon makes more in a day than we will in our lives. But our income is not what it is because his, or any other high-income person's, is what it is.

Money is not a fixed thing. Wealth can be created, and people with the capacity to build in a free economy, actually create wealth -- they produce jobs where there were none; they produce products and services where none existed, and the new and better jobs that come out of their willingness to absorb that risk add wealth to the economy.

In other words, the poor are not poor because the rich are rich. They can be poor for a host of reasons, but it is not because someone hogged all the money. It is because they are not, for whatever reason, producing value.

If people are checking the box; if they are deluded into thinking that "income inequality" is somehow a problem in and of itself, they are telling us that they are more concerned about what someone else is making than what they themselves are.

They're telling us they really don't understand economics.

They're telling us that they are Democrats. 

* OK, so Ted Williams. Back in 1959, the Hall of Fame outfielder for the Red Sox had a pinched nerve in his neck most of the year and had by far the worst season of his life. So when he sat down with the GM to do his contract for 1960, his last season, the GM pulled out a contract for $100,000, the same as the prior year. Ted told him that he didn't deserve it based on his poor 1959 season, and wanted his salary cut by about $20,000. The Sox obliged. 

Copyright 2026 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

The Good Part of the COVID Pandemic

Let's agree with this. the COVID pandemic was not a fun time.

Many people died, although we will never have a remotely accurate estimate of deaths directly caused by COVID infections.

The massive overreach by governments worldwide led to individual impacts, from people kept away from dying loved ones and their funerals, to others having ventilators forced on them when just letting them recover would have been satisfactory treatment.

But the lessons, ah, the lessons.  May we only appreciate that miserable time for what benefit we achieve in hindsight.

I mentioned the lack of an estimate of how many deaths were directly due to COVID infections. We'll never actually know how many, and we'll never know because -- yep, government.

Let's recall the history. At the time the pandemic started, in only a couple states, it was depicted as an "often fatal" infection. We started counting how many states had had people test positive, until it was all 50 and the answer was simply "lots."  

But what we did not know was what should have been the obvious question -- "What is the fatality rate?"  Very simply, what percentage of people who were exposed to, and infected with, the COVID virus, died as a direct result of COVID infection?

You would have thought it was 50%, by the level of panic by spring 2020. We were running around wearing masks and running at the sound of someone coughing or sneezing. We had to stand six feet apart as if there were something magic about that distance. We stayed home.  We canceled school. We delayed weddings. We were kept from funerals.

The reason we didn't know the fatality rate though, was quite simple. We did, in fact, know early on that there were people with infections but no symptoms at all; the earliest versions of tests exposed that people could test positive but have no symptoms. The problem was that it was almost impossible to isolate a population enough to know how many had been infected, how many of those showed symptoms, and how many of those died.

The best isolation models were from a couple of cruise ships that had COVID outbreaks and were able to do the assumption that all passengers were exposed. The asymptomatic rate there, surprisingly enough, was high -- in the 50-60% range -- and the death rate very small -- in other words, much like a typical flu. Had those figures been seriously analyzed, we would have treated COVID much like a typical flu, and just let it ride through the population.

As it turned out, a couple years later, with reams of data to lean on, the CDC finally was able to provide the answer that the fatality rate for COVID was about one-fifth of 1% of infections -- in other words, one person died from COVID out of every 500 people infected -- lower than most flu strains.

I used the words "from COVID" very carefully and intentionally. One of the worst unintended-consequence factors in the first year or two of the pandemic was that, for some reason, the government decided to provide a higher subsidy to hospitals based on the number of deaths shown as "from COVID."

Well, just ask yourself what you would do if you were a hospital and needed the cash. You would report every death in the hospital where the decedent had a positive COVID test, and declare that the person died "from COVID", even though they might have died from heart disease, lung cancer, a fractured skull, or lupus (OK, it's never lupus). People died with COVID but were deemed to have died from COVID. Why? Because it paid.

That 1-in-500 death rate itself needed clarification. Ask any family practitioner, and they'd tell you (as it turned out) that the true deaths from COVID were almost entirely in specific patient populations -- diabetics, obese people, people with heart disease, and people with auto-immune conditions. Almost nobody without one of those risk factors (and almost no one under 18) died from COVID, although the hospitals' propensity to over-count COVID deaths to claim the cash made it harder to show that. 

So what did we learn?

We learned that government, which is supposed to protect us, is capable of the most evil power grabs imaginable. You think dictators in other countries will do anything to expand their power? Ha! That is a default position for anyone in government. 

Look what happened with the COVID pandemic. The state governors, whose states are typically the laboratories for what works and what doesn't, were all over the place in their reactions. Most of them immediately took excessive action, closing schools, imposing the 6-foot standing gaps, mandating masks all over (including outdoors!), etc. 

The government shelled out billions in PPP payments -- those questionably-audited checks to employers and independent contractors whose business was affected by all the shutdowns -- which were, of course, shut down by an overreaching government.

And yet that was a good thing, at least in one way. 

 No one grabs power like Democrats, and when the people who told Joe Biden what to do grabbed power in 2021, they tried hard to keep things shut down as long as possible to maintain control. The teachers unions embarrassed themselves by trying their hardest to keep schools closed, which we all saw as a powerful union with the Democrat leadership in their pocket, doing everything it could to prevent its members from having to, you know, work.

We all saw that.  Even had the Democrats not shot themselves in the foot by nominating an utter joke of a presidential candidate in Kamala Harris, Americans were so suspicious of the Democrats' use of power to control their lives, that Trump would have gotten elected regardless.

Republicans will always be able to point to the COVID experience as the threat of Democrat rule, as long as they're smart enough to keep pointing it out.

But there was another thing that came out of the COVID experience that wasn't really political, but has had -- and will continue to have -- long-term effects on the life of Americans.

I work from home.  I have a home office, which I use for conference calls and where my desk sits. there is no office building that I go to, because there is no office space assigned me by my employer. And that's a good thing, because their headquarters is 450 miles away from where I live, and I'm not moving.

Another reason I don't have an office space with my employer is that they were bright enough to dispose of tens of thousands of square feet of office space in the past ten years, and worked hard to put employees on customer site and home offices wherever possible.

It costs far less for a company to let its employees work remotely than it does to pay a proportional chunk of office space rental for them to be physically present. Multiply that by a corps of, say, 1,000 employees on an ongoing basis, and costs can go way down.

Obviously we're talking about employees who actually can do their work remotely, on line (vs. employees in areas such as health care, retail,and manufacturing), but that still amounts to a goodly percentage who no longer needed office space. Let's just say that I wouldn't want to be in commercial real estate right now.

This is probably one of the 3-4 most prominent permanent outcomes of the pandemic. Companies all over discovered that one of their biggest costs was no longer needed. Employees were happier, and any company worth its salt can easily determine whether a remote employee is doing his job. I work in golf shirts and sweat pants, and get my work done just fine.

I meant "permanent." Remote work. something hardly discussed 25 years ago, is now encouraged. As a result of the pandemic, we have learned that a remote work model is every bit as productive (with the right employees) as herding people in expensive office space, and a whole lot cheaper.

We're all sorry for the people who lost family members due to the pandemic, although that number is surely far smaller than any number you will read.

But there were positives that came out of it, things we learned about government and its lurch to grab power in any possible situation allowing it.

I wonder, though, if perhaps the most beneficial will be the ability of working people to work from wherever they choose. And as long as there are places people no longer want to live (coughCaliforniacough), remote work is here to stay. 

Copyright 2026 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

The Disproving Example in the Transgender Case

Good day; sorry for the long article drought. 

I suppose we are all in semi-rapt attention over the case which was the topic of audio-broadcast debate in the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday.

It's actually "cases", as there is one each from the states of Idaho and West Virginia, similar enough that the Court took them on together.  The two states, as we probably know now, are two of the 30+ states which require women's sports, interscholastic, intercollegiate, or both, to allow only actual, God-made, XX-chromosomal human beings to participate.

This has caused a huge foofaraw in the nation, with the overwhelming majority of Americans believing the law makes perfect sense, but a handful of people complaining loudly, as handfuls of people can do, that biological men and boys should be able to play on women's teams.

I profess to be amused.

I realize that "amusement" is not the predominant emotion among interested Americans regarding this case, but it is not the litigants, their attorneys, or most Americans that are the source of that amusement.  

No, it is actually about pretzels.  Not the giant pretzels that are among the top-five comfort foods out there, but the metaphorical pretzels that certain people, including at least one DEI Supreme Court justice, have to twist themselves into to provide opposition to the perfectly rational posture of those laws.

Justice Jackson, the aforementioned bench-sitter, was querying the attorney representing the great (and not fictional) State of Idaho.  Since God forbid she actually concede the logical and legal position supported by most all conservatives and probably most all liberals if you put them on sodium pentothal, she had to come up with questions to ask the poor guy, who had to be answering questions while thinking "How did this clown get through the Senate confirmation?"

She asked questions relating to whether males pretending to be female were being treated fairly, using non-terms like "cis women."  The Idaho lawyer, to his credit, did not say what he would have loved to, and flipped the script back to the true unfairness, which was that who was actually in need of protection were actual female athletes, and his state's law did just that.

[Just a side note.  As a chemistry minor at MIT, I always laugh, sometimes quietly, when some leftist clown or clownette uses "cis" to reference the gender of normal people.  The term was appropriated from organic chemistry, of all things. There is a fundamental chemical structure called the "benzene ring", six carbon atoms arranged in a hexagon. Other atoms can be attached to any of those six carbon atoms. When a chemical is made up of a benzene ring and two attached atoms, they can attach to two carbons in the ring that are next to each other (the "cis" position), two that are opposite each other (the "trans" position), or two with one between them (I'm 74, I forgot what that's called).  Each position produces a chemical with different properties. So some weirdo with an organic chem background decided that if people pretending to be the opposite sex were "trans", then the people without that mental illness were "cis".  Go figure.]   

If the Supreme Court does not come back with a 9-0 vote upholding those laws, then one wonders what is going on in DC. 

Just ask yourself what the outcome of allowing cosplaying males to participate in girls' sports has been to date. The counts of how many medals, scholarships, all-region teams, etc., are all over the media these days; you don't need to hear it from me.  I'll just go with "Lots, and even one is too many." Worse are the counts of injured women, including the volleyball player who got spiked in the head with a ball by a good-old XY guy pretending to be a girl, leading to a life-altering injury.

And the gain has been ...?  I'm waiting.  I'm also waiting for how any Court decision that doesn't totally uphold the two states' laws would deal with a guy who just wants a medal, and decides on Saturday for the competition that he is a girl, and then decides on Sunday that "Aaaaah, maybe I'm a guy again" as he polishes his medal -- or deposits a winner's check.

Men and women are different. And I'd be remiss if I didn't remind everyone of the stunning example of how different they are in sports.

I refer, of course, to the tennis match from Mother's Day, 1973, when the #1 women's tennis player in the world, Margaret Smith Court, was defeated at her peak 6-2, 6-1, by a 55-year-old man named Bobby Riggs.  I was 22 and a college senior, and I remember that match quite well.

If  Riggs had just hung in there close with Mrs. Court but lost (as would happen later in the year when he played another top woman player, Billie Jean King and lost in a close match), his point, and mine in this piece, would have been made.  The fact that he actually did dominate against the best woman player in the world despite being 55, makes the point that much stronger. 

Wait, you never heard about that match with Mrs. Court?  I guess you need to read this piece: https://uberthoughtsusa.blogspot.com/2018/11/visiting-column-2-omission-in-news.html     

I am strongly in favor of the integrity of women's sports, and I share that position with most all Americans. 

At least those who do not resemble pretzels. 

Copyright 2026 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.  

The Trump Vision for the Planet -- and Getting There

It is only a couple days since President Trump added an eighth "war ended" notch to his diplomatic belt, getting out all the living hostages, innocents seized in a raid by Hamas two years ago, and facilitating a sort of cease-fire in the war in Gaza.

We can certainly debate and discuss the extent to which the action, celebrated worldwide, will indeed lead to a lasting peace.  I'm not all that optimistic, because much like Vladimir Putin does not operate in a rational manner, neither do the worst of the Islamist radicals, and Hamas fits that description.

But that's not the point -- it is that the deal that was indeed done involved nations which have been brought in, or volunteered, who a year ago wouldn't have come close to participating in such a negotiation.

Why?

It's not that hard to answer, but it certainly says a lot about government.

Donald Trump learned a great deal during his first term. A lifelong New York real estate developer with a worldwide footprint long before entering politics, he looked at his own background in 2016 as ideally suited to overhaul the problems of an entrenched deep state, protected by an unquestioning press that was as much of the problem as immovable government itself.

He looked at elections and winning the presidency as a means to an end -- not, as Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Democrats everywhere view them, the end in themselves.  Those people wanted power.  Donald Trump wanted a better world -- economically healthy and peaceful.

He won in 2016 for a variety of reasons -- the appearance of a fresh approach by a known individual, the poor legacy of the Obama terms, the poverty of ideas in the Hillary campaign and her inability to explain her candidacy other than entitlement and a uterus.

Reality hit even before his inauguration. The Federal Government in 2016 was a rigid and insulated body, bloated beyond belief and with a mentality of entrenchment; just let me have my job, get promoted, retire with a nice pension and not necessarily have to do very much along the way -- don't disturb that. 

Obviously that does not apply to many thousands who served diligently in government and did an excellent job -- but the fact that it did (and still does) apply to so many still there who haven't been DOGEd yet lets you know how deep things ran.

That entrenched state was governed by political appointees, not necessary there in those jobs for expertise but out of patronage.  Trump saw that as an impediment to his broad, long-term goals of economic prosperity and world peace through American strength.

To his unpleasant discovery, the people that now-President Trump had engaged for his Cabinet in 2017 included a number who were more attuned to the loyalties of the deep state than they were to the long economic and diplomatic goals. 

One could argue that, despite the putridity of the intervening Biden Administration, the USA and the world are better off for President Trump having a four-year period to reflect on what those impediments to greater success had been in his first term. With another opportunity, selecting people far more prepared to do the leadership jobs needed in the way he wanted them done, he could do a lot more.

President Trump's vision for the planet has nothing to do with his winning elections. It is a vision where war ends, whether after lasting two years, 30 years, or 2,000 years.  The people leading things now, he believes, can set that old nonsense aside and solve things.

The genius of this president's strategy in this is that he never attacks these problems by looking at the war itself, or the disputes themselves, or the land grabs that are so often involved.  Those are the kinds of issues that can drag on for years, or a millennium or two.

The genius is in looking years down the road and envisioning each situation as an end state, with a successful economic plan, peaceful relationships, and defused tensions.

Donald Trump will always be the real estate developer. Two thousand years of Middle East tensions, and when Donald Trump becomes president, he looks at the Gaza Strip, not as a homeland for a wandering people no one wants, but as a long stretch of beachfront coast ready to develop and create jobs and homes for all those people living there. 

About 99.99% of the world looks at Gaza and sees fighting, Islamist radicals, torture, guns.  President Trump sees Gaza ten years from now without all that, not based on years of failing negotiation for this territory or that land, and failing cease-fires, but based on things no one looks at -- a thriving economic future with productive employment for people now running scared.

Further, he doesn't just rely on the usual suspects to assist -- like the UN, which has no credibility in the region anymore after 80 years of failure and the inability even to ensure that aid to displaced refugees even gets there.

Who else would look at the problems in the Middle East and start by getting the Arab nations to be willing to sit down with the Israelis?  And who else would use the carrot, not the stick, to get them to the table, looking at economic relationships, mutual investments?

The Arab states are mostly rational actors. Their leaders depend for their wealth on oil, and as long as the pipelines and refineries are open, their stability is ensured. Guarantee that and, well, their disputes with Israel -- which ultimately wants only its own security -- fade far into the background.  It is not in the interest of the Saudis, or the Jordanians, Egyptians, or Qataris, that anything happen to Israel, because Israel is not a threat to them and they know it.

Getting some of them to be willing to make that first step, the 2020 Abraham Accords, only took an appeal to their sensibilities and ignoring historic, but irrelevant, disputes with no real roots remaining in present-day life.

Indonesia, a Muslim country, is going to send troops to support the interim peacekeeping force in Gaza.  Hamas would not dare attack them, nor would they do the same to Qatari troops provided by the nation that housed their leadership.  Why would those nations become involved?  Because the appeal to them was an economic one.

I'm over 70, and have seen a lot of diplomatic approaches over that time to try to solve international disputes.  They rarely work, because the proposed terms simply don't affect the people of the countries involved and so don't change the fundamentals. Country X hated Country Y because of something from 200 years ago, or ethnic disputes, or whatever, and nothing two scotch-sipping diplomats come up with changes that.

But if that diplomacy leverages economic development and investment to improve the lives of those people, well, all of a sudden the lion can lay down with the lamb, because there's plenty of opportunity for both, and the ability to feed one's family is far, far more important than whether you're Sunni and the neighbor is Shi'ite.  

No one looked at diplomacy that way.  But if you have a vision that stretches far beyond just a cease-fire and actually lifts the lives of the citizens of these nations, you see the creative solutions that don't come from a single-malt.

You see things like President Trump does. 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

A Fun OSHA Story

OSHA is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, yet another nanny-state relic of the 1970s actually signed into law by Richard Nixon early that decade.  The intent was to provide Federal oversight and regulation of workplaces that were particularly unsafe and, only incidentally, create a regulatory workforce of more government employees.

The problem with such agencies is that when you create a regulatory workforce like that, they actually have to go find things to justify their existence, whether (in this case) they entail an actual work hazard or not.

I have a good friend from Chicago, a reader of this site, whom I have known for nearly sixty years since college.  We ushered at each other's weddings (a week apart) and although we've not been together much since, distance being what it is, have tried to stay in touch.  I'll call him "Tony", because it's his name.  When I was traveling on business in the late '70s, I visited him on my frequent trips to and through the Chicago area, getting to know his parents pretty well.

[On a side note, Tony's mother was from Chisholm, the small town near Hibbing, MN, that was the home of Moonlight Graham, the physician/ballplayer in the movie "Field of Dreams" and a long scene there.  The actual Archibald "Moonlight" Graham, who really did play in one game for the Giants and practiced medicine in Chisholm, MN, was her pediatrician.  You can't make this up.]

Tony's father had an electronics component factory in the Chicago area.  I believe I was there once, so I recall either the actual factory or Tony's description quite well. To my recollection, it was a fairly straightforward structure, a huge open area about two or three stories high, metal roof. All the assembly, packaging, shipping and the rest was done from that huge open area. Go with that.

In one corner of the building, the office area was raised up a flight of stairs, a level higher than the work floor.  The offices were there, and if you wanted to reach the offices, you climbed the stair a flight up to a small landing area and walked to the door of the office you wanted.  Well, something like that; if you imagine that, the point of this piece will be easily understood.

Imagine the stairs, those exposed industrial metal staircases, just steps and a railing, up to a landing area. Then imagine that at the top of the stairs, in the landing area, there is a pay phone about five feet up the wall for the use of employees needing to make calls in those days long before iPhones and Blackberries.

[Realizing that not everyone who reads this is as old as I, or even half as old as I, a "pay phone" is a communications unit that sits on a wall, or an even more forgotten location called a "phone booth."  You didn't need a cell phone or an app; you just put coins in little slots on top of it, and you'd get a dial tone.  You push buttons and call whomever you want.] 

Now imagine one other thing.  A little inspector from OSHA comes around to the factory for his annual safety review according to OSHA rules. He walks around the shop floor, inspects the assembly area and sees that everyone is properly dressed and the floors are clean and not slippery.  He sees that the shipping area is properly overseen  and tools everywhere are properly put away when not in use.  Safety thrives here.

Finally, he goes up the stairs. The ridged metal stairs are rough and grip well, and the railing is secured well, no slip, no rattle.  He makes it upstairs with no problem.

Except that he has nothing to write up.

Then he sees the pay phone on the wall. "Aha!", he shouts.  "A problem.  That phone is five feet off the wall, a perfect height for you, me, and almost everyone else."

But not, he declares, would it be a good height for someone -- I'm not making this part up -- in a wheelchair.  Nope, someone in a wheelchair would not be able to make a call from that pay phone, and it would have to be lowered in order to allow wheelchair-bound employees to use it.  Otherwise, the factory would be cited by OSHA and fined.

Before you start thinking how stupid that citation would have been, let me help you understand that it is even more inane than that.  Yes, I know that your first thought is to ask if anyone in a wheelchair actually worked there, and the answer was "no."  But OSHA was a forward-looking organization, and didn't want to rule out the possibility that the company might actually hire someone in a wheelchair.  And except for every other reason, that one is legitimate.

It should be obvious to you any now that, no matter how inaccurate my description of the building was, in actuality the pay phone -- and any access to the one-flight-up office area, for that matter -- required one to go up a flight of stairs.  

That's right; in order to use that wheelchair-accessible pay phone that OSHA demanded be lowered to three feet off the floor, the person would either have to maneuver a wheelchair up a flight of stairs (think about that one) or be carried up the stairs by one person, have the wheelchair be brought up the stairs by another person, and then use the newly-relocated phone.

They would need the wheelchair brought up, because -- oh, yeah -- if you lowered the phone from a normal standing-human-accessible height to three feet off the ground, you could only use it from a wheelchair. The rest of the employees, meaning all of them, could not stand and make a call.

Even if you simply lowered the phone to three feet and put a normal chair next to it to pacify OSHA and facilitate calls from the handicapped, you still have to appreciate the idiocy of the OSHA guy requiring this to be done for a phone whose use would require the person to ride a wheelchair up a flight of stairs.

It has been over fifty years since this happened, so forgive me if I can't recall what Tony's dad decided to do -- probably either lowered the phone and put a chair next to it, or just put a second pay phone on the main floor at three feet.

I'd be delighted to know if sanity has returned to the OSHA Inspectors' Guideline Book, or at least the one used by their staff in the Greater Chicago area.

I would imagine that, regardless, some DOGEing over there might even now be in order. 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

Open Debate -- the Needed Legacy of Charlie Kirk

Let's talk about two groups.

One of them is about power. They want to rule, and they want to ensure that the systems are aligned such that there is no possibility for their power to be challenged. They spout platitudes about this and that, but in practice, their highest -- actually, their sole -- priority is maintaining power for decades to come.

Now, "power" is not "leadership." Being the ruler doesn't mean you know how to lead the people. Nor does it mean that you know how to govern. Examples of that abound, including a few recent Democrat presidents. And when the people start complaining because their leaders won't (or can't) even fix potholes or keep them safe, rulers like that respond by suppressing dissent and fixing elections. 

They don't believe in the high-minded liberal ideas they speak of, like equality and justice; they use them to divide their constituents into identity classes. Then they claim that those groups need to vote for them because only they can protect the obscure interests of their identity class. When they're elected, of course, they do nothing for those classes, but that doesn't seem to matter -- fixing problems is not why they want power. 

Their leverage with these groups is to convince them that government is the solution to everything. If the people think they need lots of government, then such a group can use that to justify vast expansion of government -- lots of government jobs filled by people beholden to the group for paying their salaries. 

That group utterly despises democracy.  It's obvious why; in a democracy (or a Constitutional republic such as the USA) elected leaders who can't govern are subject to being voted out of office on a regular basis.  They can vote in a leader who can DOGE many of those useless government jobs. That's a risk they cannot afford.

The second group is about governance. Their goal is for the streets to be safe, for people to have jobs, to strive to be their best. They want criminals off the streets and in jail.  They want a stable currency, for mail to be delivered on time, and to be able to protect our borders. They want government to be constrained by the tenets of their nation's Constitution, limited to only the powers granted it there.

They need the power to do all that, sure, but that power is the necessary evil to be able to accomplish what is needed to achieve that goal -- a goal, again, for the citizens, not for the rulers.

If you're familiar with the notion that "You only get to vote for communists once", then it's no secret who those groups are, and the first group, the left, are the ones to fear. 

We fear them, because they combine dictatorial autocracy with managerial incompetence. We fear them, because once they get enough power to be able to fix elections, or at least affect them as was done in 2020 by mass implementation of corrupt mail-in and mail-out ballots, it's extraordinarily difficult to get them out of power.

But they have fear, too.

They fear Democratic institutions like well-regulated elections, because a free people will never vote for them, or if somehow they get in as in 2008, the people realize they're poor at actually governing and vote them out -- see the 2010 House flip as an example.

But more than that, they fear free speech and open dialogue. Free speech is anathema to the left, whether in the USA, or South America, or China, Russia or wherever.  When people can speak, they're going to say their version of the Emperor's New Clothes -- the left has no ability to lead, to solve problems, or to protect the citizens; they're only after power, and they do nothing whose goal is not to seize and expand that power.

The left cannot have that. 

They fear open dialogue as well. They do not want debate, because they have an Achilles heel in any discussion -- their governance ideas have never worked anywhere.  Socialism is a failure, because it disincentives people from working to improve their lot, which leaves them uninspired and relying on government for the basic needs that they should be pursuing themselves.

When people debate, they start to learn to think critically.  One guy says, "Poor this oppressed class, poor that oppressed class ..." and the other says, "But look what your policies have done to hurt those so-called oppressed classes; you have been allegedly trying for 60 years and they're all on welfare and not working!"  Reasonable people hear that and start thinking. Thinking?  Critically? The left can't have that.

Debate is so dangerous to the left that they have to take the most extreme measures to stop it. Taking over the school systems and teachers unions, to ensure that children are not taught to think critically, has been their first step. Working to put overwhelmingly leftist professors on campuses is another.

So when someone goes to campuses nationwide and takes thousands of questions in a rational way, when he encourages people who disagree with him to come to the front of the line to challenge him, that is a severe danger to the left.  It is a danger that they cannot allow to continue.

Donald Trump is a danger to the left, of course.  But Charlie Kirk was a bigger threat to them, because he was young (and would be a force for decades), brilliant, in tune with youth, and was successfully engaging with the very people the left needed to be meek sheep for them.  So they had to silence him.

This was a political murder. Do not let anyone convince you otherwise. The truth as offered by Charlie Kirk was the biggest danger to the left, and they did what the left does.

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

The "Indian" in the Senate

A few years back, I did a few pieces that discussed the Government's set-aside programs that granted special access to contracts for people with the right ethnicity, presumably as penance for past discrimination.  In some cases those contracts could be done without competition, particularly for Native Americans.

One such piece came down hard on the set-asides, citing in one case a person in a commercial who had just discovered she was a quarter Indian, even though she had had no idea of it.  My point was that a person who didn't even know she was a quarter Indian had clearly not experienced discrimination and therefore had no right to claim any harm that needed to be rectified by giving her a no-bid contract.

In another, I asked how much of this or that preferred ancestry was necessary to enter into the program and get set-aside contracts, or reparations, or any preferential treatment -- such treatment, I argued, if it were even to be done, should reflect actual harm to the specific person (not their ancestors).

So Elizabeth Warren. 

Back in one of those columns, I mentioned her case of getting preferential treatment in college admission and some early jobs based on claiming Native American ancestry.  A commenter asked if she were ever going to take a DNA test to see, which at that time she had not. 

As you probably know, Elizabeth Warren DID, in fact, eventually take the test, which showed that she was in fact about 1/1024th Native American. That means one of her 8-times great-grandparents was an Indian; the other 1,023 were not. 

I have always been willing to cut her some slack on that; she's in her 70s, and growing up in Oklahoma in the 1950s, she was told that she was part-Indian and believed it -- we didn't have Ancestry back then to confirm or deny it, and Oklahoma was particularly likely to have its residents have a healthy titer of Indian blood. 

I'm almost the same age, and I can assure you that, as a child in Oklahoma, I would have believed any reasonable assertion my parents had made about being "part Indian."  I wouldn't have asked "how much" -- back then, before preferential treatment and casinos, it just would have been a neutral attribute.

Later on, when she recorded herself in applications for colleges and early jobs as being Native American, it was a different situation.  Yes, she likely believed herself to be part Indian -- again, going on family lore, with nothing else to say otherwise.  But at that point, she knew that a claim of Native American heritage was actually advantageous.  By that time (the '60s and '70s), being anything but a white male was worth a few preference points in leftist New England.

So yes, she believed back then that she legitimately took preferential treatment -- admission to colleges, jobs -- based on giving the institutions the ability to claim they had taken in an "Indian" in their student bodies and given one a job. They happily checked one of their hard-to-check boxes and signaled their virtue, while someone else lost a spot in the class or a job with the employer.

Like I said, I cut her some slack for those claims -- then.  She legitimately believed she was entitled to that preferential treatment, not for any discrimination she had ever encountered, but because the rules said "Native American", and she was told she was one (though how Indian she was supposed to be is lost to the ages, and she'll likely never say).

But now we know.  She took a DNA test, and if her reporting of it is to be believed, she has virtually no legitimate claim of Indian ancestry save for the possibility of an eight-times-great grandparent born around 1680 or so.

So why am I writing this?  Clearly, now-Senator Warren has suffered not a shred of discomfort or prejudicial treatment for her early claim of native blood. Yes, there has been a heap or two of ridicule for claiming it, especially strong since the blood test, but I distinguish between the before and after -- decades of believing, but now a decade of knowing the contrary.

Maybe only a couple people were affected by the early claims.  Maybe she won her first senatorial election in Massachusetts only because enough voters who weren't going to vote for her switched as a pro-Indian virtue signal. 

Either way, how much would it hurt to apologize to anyone who may have been hurt?  Wouldn't an apology for something that ultimately caused minimal damage, and was excusable, be received as a wonderful gesture?

I know that, despite my opposition to every policy she favors, I would do a positive piece on her were she to release an unprompted statement like this one:

To my constituents and my fellow Americans -- As you know, a few years back, I volunteered to take a DNA test to verify my ancestry.  As a young girl in Oklahoma, my family had always told me that the family had Native American ancestors and we were of Indian blood to some extent.  I certainly believed my family; after all, I had no reason to doubt the family stories, and there were no tests available at the time.

As a student and then early in my career, at times when the topic came up on applications, I indicated the native ancestry that my family had told me was the case. I understood even then that it may have afforded me an advantage in selection for schools and positions.  Of course, at the time I thought it was appropriate, since I believed myself a member of that group.

As we now know, the test showed I had only negligible Native American ancestry. I believe my family truly believed what they thought to be their background and mine.  But that means that any advantage that I have been given in my career has not been deserved.  More than that, it is possible -- maybe even likely -- that at least somebody has been denied an opportunity that was lost to them because of a preference given to me.

I need to put this issue to rest.  I would like to take this moment to offer a sincere and heartfelt apology to anyone whose career or life has been affected by my claims of Native American ancestry, however honestly made when it was what I believed to be the case.  I realize that any such person might not even be aware if they were indeed affected, but I prefer to be the the kind of person who feels the pain of injustice no matter the form.  Thank you and I am so very sorry.

I admit that I would be very shocked if she were ever to do such a thing. But I would devote an equally sincere apology to her and have a very non-grudging respect for her were she to do it.

But I'm not holding my breath. 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

The Russiagate Discovery Made Clear

I don't doubt that a few of you were able to listen to the White House daily press briefing yesterday (23 July) and heard the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, elaborating on recently declassified documentation that provides a seriously upsetting view into actions by former President Obama.

Realizing that the readers of this column are found worldwide in large numbers, and may not have heard the briefing, and may be getting their information from biased, filtered sources, I wanted to clarify some things.

As I was listening to Miss Gabbard speaking, I was thinking of those readers.  I though that perhaps a translation of what she shared, a simple-language summary, might be in order and helpful.  So here goes.

You know what happened in 2016.  Throughout the 2016 campaign, the Hillary Clinton people pushed the narrative that Trump was somehow a "Russian asset", and perpetually tried to connect him to Russia, partly to try to paint him in an unfavorable light to tip the election, and thereafter, when they lost, to compromise his Administration by claiming that the Russians had influenced the outcome and helped Trump win.

There are several overlapping areas we now know, and I want to help you by explaining each one separately.

1. What Russia Actually Did in 2016.

The Democrats claim that the Russians "influenced" or "meddled in" the election. What we now know is that their goal was not to change the outcome; they assumed that Hillary was going to win, presumably because the US media assumed and kept reporting that.  Their goal was, however, to sow chaos by fomenting distrust in the integrity of the election, so Americans would see their cherished election process as suspect.

They did not care who won, so nothing they did was aimed at affecting the outcome. As the actual, reliable Intelligence Community assessments stated, the Russians were utterly incapable of influencing the election itself.  Not only is that hard to do, but with 50 states having separate election processes, nothing the Russians could do had any hope of accomplishing anything. 

They could have done something, though, had they chosen.  They had information that Hillary had been having manic episodes, was on medications, that sort of thing. If they'd wanted to help Trump win, they could have dumped that on the public -- but they didn't.  Remember, their goal was subverting public confidence. Knowing they couldn't change the outcome, they thought a more effective use of it was after the election to make it harder for Hillary, the assumed winner, to govern.  Ironic, eh?

Summary: Russia's goal was to cause chaos.  It was not to change the outcome of the 2016 election, which they couldn't have done anyway. And the CIA knew and reported all that to Obama, so he knew that they had no influence.

2. What the Obama Team Did in December 2016    

Here is the big news, and where potential criminal conduct comes in.  I'll try to make this simple. After the election, Obama received an intelligence briefing telling him all the above, meaning that Russia didn't try to swing the election, that they only tried to subvert Americans' faith in the process, and that they had dirt on Hillary that they held back to use when she got elected, as they assumed.

Importantly, that briefing was factual, was based on sound and standard intelligence-gathering practice, and reflected the inputs from multiple intelligence organizations. In other words, it was extremely reliable. In the normal course of events, it would have been also shared with President-elect Trump.

What it wasn't, though, was good for Democrats who had been trying to paint Trump as a Russian asset.

So Obama ordered the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, and the CIA Director, John Brennan, not to publish that briefing (because then President-elect Trump would be given the briefing) and, instead, to go back and create a replacement briefing that had the content that Obama wanted in there. The analysts who created the factual briefing were told opaquely not to publish because of some "new guidance."

The replacement briefing was, of course, garbage, for a host of reasons.  It had a predetermined outcome.  It did not reflect inputs from across the various intelligence agencies. It was prepared by a small team of hand-picked analysts and a chief writer (who still objected to having their names on a report with no factual basis). Finally, it included already-discredited sources (such as the Steele dossier that the whole intelligence apparatus knew was just opposition research for Hillary's campaign and was full of made-up content).

We know that senior intelligence officials objected mightily to putting out a briefing that was so far below minimum community standards for sourcing and breadth of input. They were shut down. Not only were their opinions squelched, but the new, garbage briefing, was immediately leaked to the media to be splashed all over the news.

We also know that when the writers of the phony report went to back to Brennan, the CIA director, saying there was no factual basis for what they were asked to write, Brennan told them to put it there anyway because "... doesn't it ring true?" The American people rely on their intelligence agencies to provide accurate information for the President to make decisions. "Ringing true" is not what we want our presidents to use to act on.  Yuk.

Summary: Obama knew that there was no real Russian impact on the election; he knew that Trump was in no way connected to Russia, so when the sound briefing telling him that was developed, he squashed it before Trump could see it, and (the potential criminal act) ordered the creation of an essentially phony briefing that pretended to state as fact all the equally phony assertions that the Hillary campaign had been making.

Because this was all done after the election, it can be readily construed as not a political act but a criminal one specifically intended both to give false information to the incoming president and, by leaking it to the media, to diminish the ability of the incoming president to govern.    

We were all there. "Russia Russia Russia" tied up the first Trump Administration.  We were lucky they were able to get anything done at all.

3. The Media and the Government

Media outlets won Pulitzer Prizes for reporting on that story, even though it now turns out that their reporting was abysmal journalism, the result of their being manipulated by political sources on the left. "Russia Russia Russia" sounded so good as a story, and line up so nicely with their political leanings, that they tossed away journalistic standards, forgot about doing simple research, and got rewarded for it by their industry.

On the government side, you had the Schiffs and Swalwells of the world puffing out their chests and lying through their fake indignation. Adam Schiff, as we know, insisted that he had secret information, "factual evidence" that Trump was a Russian asset.  The media gave them plenty of air time, but failed to practice even basic journalism by asking follow-up questions and insisting on answers.

Summary: the Democrats did what Democrats do, but the media tossed aside all sense of objectivity, particularly as relates to the sainted Obama. 

                  - - - 

There are a few ancillary notes here from the last week.  You're hearing Secretary Rubio's name as having been part of a Senate committee back a number of years that appeared not to have dug into the matter deep enough to discover the original, factual intelligence briefing. I believe that was a red herring; the committee can only deal with what they were allowed to see, and as diligently as Obama squashed that sound briefing and hurriedly had a replacement made up with his predetermined content, you can be that the committee was never allowed to know the original even existed.

We also know that there are whistleblowers -- senior personnel who were in the intelligence community back then and who are still there, who were professional enough not to want what happened to stain the honor of their agencies. Their testimony before the House and Senate committees that are sure to take this matter up will be riveting.

Finally, there is the matter of justice. Director Gabbard has referred the whole matter to the Justice Department for investigation.  They will determine if there are criminal charges to be filed, and FBI Director Kash Patel and his team will look into it carefully and speak at length with the whistleblowers and others.

Obama is somewhat protected from charges, either where there is a statute of limitations issue, or in some cases by Supreme Court rulings that a president cannot be charged with offenses during his term if they are related to the scope of his official duties as president. Regardless, he can be forced to testify under penalty of perjury, and sitting there pleading the 5th will not be helpful to his precious legacy.

Personally, I am more interested in the truth coming out and being in some way certified as truthful than I am in seeing Brennan or Clapper or James Comey behind bars, fun though that would be.  But let there be no doubt -- I would very much like to see enough criminal trials and convictions to prevent anyone from trying to pull this type of stunt in the future.

Perhaps the best answer to the Russian subversion of public confidence is to see some jail time for some of the perpetrators. It would sure make me feel a bit more confident.

 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

Has Trump Overhauled the Republican Party?

As I write this, the House of Representatives is debating the One Big Beautiful Bill, and this piece has little, if anything to do with that, mostly.

I have lived through a lot of U.S. presidents.  Harry Truman was in office when I was born, and that means I've experienced about 14 or 15 of them, depending on how you count and when I was old enough to care.

In every case but one, the new president had come in and approached domestic and foreign policy issues in pretty much they same way that his predecessors had, at least those of his party.  Active, passive, high tax, low tax ... same solutions tried whether they worked before or not.

When Donald Trump became president in 2017, he was the first president since Dwight Eisenhower in 1953 to have never served in elected office before becoming president.  He was the first in anyone's lifetime not to have taken a government paycheck of any kind before becoming president, and that's even more relevant.

Donald Trump was a businessman up until the day he was sworn in for his first term, when he was already over 70.  You can guess that business and economics were well-embedded in his approach to problem-solving by the time he said "So help me, God."  

He served a first term the best he could, hounded by the opposition party, lawfare and, frankly, sub-optimal decisions in selecting Cabinet members.  But he learned strong lessons that term about whom he could trust, for sure, and most certainly how to navigate the weirdness of Congress.  By the time he (and we) had to live through the four years of the incompetent Joe Biden presidency, he knew exactly how to go forward, as we'll see in a moment.

In fact, my point in this piece was exemplified at the end of his first term, when he was able to negotiate the Abraham Accords, the treaties between Israel and formerly hostile Middle Eastern nations. He understood as a businessman that the conflict between those nations, which had been fundamentally of a religious nature, no longer held sway as a religious conflict.

President Trump understood that the Arab nations had a common enemy, and it wasn't Israel.  A peaceful Israel held no threat to them -- but Iran did.  Trump saw that what the Arab states' leaders wanted was to hold onto their power, meaning a stable market for oil, a stable economy, and no external threat.  

Those that signed the accords looked at Israel and looked at Iran, and realized that the threat to what they wanted didn't come from Israel at all. Trump go them to see that the clear path to the stability they sought was economic -- and that there was no stronger world power to keep their economies stable than the USA.

Simple?  "Hey, [fill in the blank with an Arab nation], sign this long-term document guaranteeing peace between your nation and Israel, and we'll have a more favorable set of terms for trade with us and, by the way, if Iran threatens you, we'll have your back one way or the other."  Had Trump gotten his second term in 2021, the whole Sunni Middle East would have signed up.

So up comes Trump's second term, only now he has a vice president (J.D. Vance) squarely on his side, and a Secretary of State (Marco Rubio) and Secretary of Defense (Pete Hegseth) squarely on his side, and a Cabinet full of people he can trust.  How does he approach foreign relations?  America first -- implementing tariffs, an economic lever, on nations worldwide as his actual first foreign policy step.

Trump understands that FTM ("follow the money") is the driver for 99% of what goes on in the world. The rest of the world, that has been ripping us off for decades, will not take up arms if we sue for fair trade terms; they'll just come to the table and negotiate, in the outcome will be fair for the USA -- Trump's own country.

Republicans and Democrats alike have never had the cogliones to do that, ever before. "Oh, oh, we can't offend our allies!"  But the Trump Republican Party will have none of that. The other nations can take care of themselves; we are concerned about America first.

And funny how well it worked.  The NATO types have flipped and agreed to pony up 5% of their GDP for their own defense with barely an argument or naysayer.

No president has done that, taken that approach that is so economically based.  But Trump has broken the Republican mold -- ironic given that the Republicans are seen as economically oriented.  He is using the economic leverage of the USA to create a better USA and, by extension, a better free world.

I want to end by pointing out what President Trump said right after he bombed the Iranian nuclear program into oblivion, and how it reflects an approach we have not really seen from the two parties of recent decades.

Consider all the conquering dictators of recent memory.  How did they deal with defeated enemies?  They took them over is what they did, threw out, exiled or murdered the opposing leadership and annexed the territory.

Trump didn't conquer Iran, he just destroyed their threat, with immense credit given to our ally Israel and their destruction of Iran's air defenses.  And what did Trump say thereafter?  He wanted a commercially healthy Iran, he said, and that if they wanted to ship oil to China or wherever, they could go for it.  His vision was of an Iran that was economically successful, even under the same mullahs, as long as it posed no military threat to its neighbors (or us) and ceased threatening other nations.

The mullahs are surely talking among themselves, and at least one of them will likely say the Persian version of "So what if we just be a great Iran and let America work with us and be a trading partner instead of the Great Satan?" And what are the odds that a few others will allow the paradigm to be shifted enough to sit down and work something out that eases tensions in the region?

There is not a president in decades who would even think like that, because to Donald Trump, unlike his predecessors, he sees that economics drive foreign policy as much as domestic.  "Politics" are a distant, bottom-level factor, because he has a vision of an economically successful world.

The Republican Party has the option to allow his policies and his successes to be the foundation of their principles going forward.  If the younger leaders in his Cabinet, who will be the ones to assume the mantle going forward, can maintain that approach, it will be good for the nation as well as the party.

Because the Democrats are still running on "We're not Trump", and when things are working, that's simply not a winning platform. 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

DEI Infects the High Court

The sad left was publicly, chest-poundingly upset by yesterday's last-day decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, most particularly the case in which the Court's majority ruled on the issue of district courts' capacity to issue rulings with nationwide impact.

The case itself actually related to the concept of birthright citizenship and the interpretation of the Constitutional amendment that dealt with the concept.  Curiously, that aspect of the decision wasn't dealt with, for now.  What was decided, in a 6-3 majority opinion that now serves as legal precedent, is that district courts no longer have the ability to block the President from implementing executive powers, certainly not beyond the impact of the case before such court.

Beyond the celebration of those believing in law and the Constitution, and the tooth-grinding of the left, a non-trivial amount of the post-mortem appeared to deal with a minority opinion delivered by Ketanji Brown Jackson, the most junior associate justice on the Court.

Justices deliver minority opinions all the time.  The interpretation of written law is a large part of why there is a Supreme Court in the first place; the law is the words of the legislation, and legislatures often produce ambiguously written legislation, as well as laws which are in potential violation of the Constitution. 

Jackson's minority opinion was fraught with issues, not the least of which being the lack of Constitutional foundation for her rationale; but even more so the problem that, as Justice Amy Barrett wrote in her commentary on Jackson's dissent, that Jackson was objecting to the concept of an imperial executive and replacing it with an imperial judiciary, a rather immature approach for a Supreme Court justice.

We should all be bothered by the presence on the Court of such a political individual, and we are, but it is even sadder that the opinions of this justice will forever be questions of competence related to her appointment itself.

Ketanji Brown Jackson is black.  Duh.  We all can see that. No would care; Justice Clarence Thomas is equally black, and certainly has strong opinions flavored by his own beliefs in the primacy of the Constitution. But Thomas was not appointed the Court because of his race, but because of his background and approach to Constitutional law. You might say race was not a factor in his appointment, but considering the hateful rhetoric thrown at him by senators -- including Joe Biden, then a back-bench senator from Delaware -- it was certainly part of the process.

But in Jackson's case, race was not only a factor, but a requirement.  Joe Biden, whose handlers had him appoint her, declared publicly that he was looking for a black woman; i.e., no white people need apply.  Joe Biden is of Irish descent, and I wondered if the irony would have struck him that, 100 years after "No Irish Need Apply" signs were common at job sites, this descendant of legal Irish immigrants put out a race requirement for a Supreme Court appointment.

Of course, Biden had no clue what was going on, so he gets a pass.  Someone made that decision, and Biden just blathered in assent.

So now we have however-many years of a Court with an associate justice whose primary qualification was race. And here is the thing.  Because of Biden's pronouncement that the appointment would be a DEI hire, Jackson will, for the rest of her tenure, be regarded as a DEI hire -- not a standard-issue associate justice, but one who was put on the Court to fill a quota.

Democrats never look at the downstream effects of their actions and, yes, I've written before about that very issue.  With them, it is all about power and votes, and if they think they'll get more votes in the next election by installing a black associate justice, they'll do it, regardless of their actual judicial competence or willingness to apply blind justice.

We are not privy to the internal debates of the Court when discussing cases after oral arguments, but one has to wonder how the other eight justices regard the opinions and inputs of the most junior member of the Court, knowing that she was a classic DEI hire, wasn't the most qualified candidate, just a black female with sufficient experience to get the Senate to confirm her.

The note from Justice Barrett suggests that the rest of the Court has its own concern about what Jackson is even doing on the Court (she actually wrote, to paraphrase, "We will not concern ourselves with Justice Jackson's opinion ...").  So there's that.

But there's also the situation that, to fill a racial quota, there is now a lifetime appointment on the Court of a DEI hire, someone whose opinions are starting to make it clear that her judicial opinions are political, reflecting the signs of protestors more than the history of the interpretations of the Constitution.

I'm not a lawyer, of course, but it is my semi-educated view that the impact of decisions should be only a minor, or even absent, factor in the Supreme Court's consideration.  Laws may have detrimental impact on some people, but if they are Constitutionally sound, it is not for the Court to overturn them. 

Justices like Jackson may have graduated law school, but if they haven't learned the lesson that their politics should not be a factor, certainly not to the extent of allowing impact to affect their assessment of Constitutionally, then Houston, we have a problem.    

And at bottom, every serious black judge in the nation should be concerned that the single outcome of the appointment of Jackson to the Court is to call in question the seriousness and qualification of them as competent members of the judiciary.

DEI strikes again. 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

Obrigado, Amigos Brasileiros!

Obviously I don't write in Portuguese, and as you might guess after reading the last 1,100 or so of these pieces, that's because I don't speak it.  My English is pretty good, though; I've been reading it for almost 72 years and have a pretty good idea from that experience. 

So it is of great interest that, joining my surprising readership in the Netherlands, recently there has been a huge number of readers of this column from Brazil.  And I mean huge.

Sure, I'm immensely grateful that you in the Southern Hemisphere (and the little part of Brazil that pokes above the equator) have been coming here and reading some of my columns here.  But with that gratitude comes an equally great curiosity, my never having been closer than Panama.

Tell me about yourselves!  Are you native Brazilians who enjoy reading the ramblings of a geriatric American with a terribly bizarre life story, to practice your English?  Are you expats living in Rio who share all my political opinions and appreciate the sentiments?

This is just to ask you to get back to me privately (contact information in the notice block below) and assuage my curiosity.  How did you come across the site?  A friend?  A search?  And do you know how the site got so popular in Brazil?  Inquiring minds want to know!

As our president might say, "Thank you for your attention to this matter." 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

 

 

When the War is Actually Over

As I write this, missiles are being exchanged between Iran and Israel, a situation which, despite the lack of ground troops involvement, constitutes a "war."

The exchange is not being done by FedEx or UPS, and we certainly know it's not the US Postal Service, since at least some of the missiles are actually arriving on time. No, the missiles are being launched from hundreds of miles away, using sophisticated guidance systems.

So yes, it is war.  And for the most part, people do not want war and certainly don't enjoy it.  War is heck, to paraphrase General Sherman during the War Between the States.

OK, so no one wants it.  How do we end it?

Well, the first problem is two paragraphs back, in that little disclaimer "for the most part."  There are people who want war, because what they want to accomplish is conquest, and if you want to conquer another nation, as Putin does in Ukraine and the Iranian mullahs do in Israel and, for that matter, the whole Middle East, you need war.  The people you're trying to conquer are not going to roll over, you know.

As I write this, I'm thinking of the old Roman Empire and the legions sent into battle to expand the Empire, and Alexander the Great, and Genghis Khan.  Tons of soldiers sent into battle, hundreds of thousands killed but, for the most part, the borders of all these empires continued to change over the centuries.  Nothing was really permanent, and all those conquerors are dead. Memento mori.

I'm thinking of them, because it seems utterly ludicrous that a couple millennia later, there are still guys out there trying to do the same thing.  Since those old empires, we have implemented indoor plumbing, and electricity, and we can fly.  We actually have free nations without dictators.  Kingdoms have parliaments.  Civilization has advanced far beyond where we were back then.

And yet we still have dictators demanding that they conquer other nations.  We shouldn't have to have huge militaries and sophisticated armaments, given how far we have come in society.  But as the Iranian mullahs show, we haven't all come that far.

President Trump is, as we speak, deciding whether or not, and when, to provide Israel with a bomb capable of taking out what is believed to be the last nuclear bomb-development site in Iran, utterly wiping out the mullahs' ability to develop a nuclear weapon.  

Surely the left will be crying about "diplomacy", and how we just need to talk this through and achieve a negotiated settlement.  But here's the thing.  Much as I'd like to claim that I thought up this quote, it was probably Sun Tzu, or one of that crowd: 

The war is over when your enemy says it's over. 

Got it?  It's not when you think you've defeated them, but when they act in such a way as to concede defeat. Obviously, this is harder when the conqueror himself loses, because their concession of defeat isn't compelling unless they are, well, dead.

The problem isn't "Iran", as far as what is going on there; it is the Iranian leadership.  The people of Iran would be perfectly happy to live in peace with Israel, if only they were allowed to self-govern.  They are an intelligent and reasonably sophisticated people, sitting on enough oil to drive a thriving economy and enough brain power to manage it, if they could only implement a government whose primary objective was the elevation of the economy and the protection of the Persian people.

We wish we had a shred of confidence that a democracy of some sort could arise from the ashes, if the enemy "said the war was over" by being, you know, dead.  If the mullahs were wiped out, could a representative government be developed?

Remember -- the war only ends when the enemy says it's over.  The mullahs are never going to let it be over, let alone say it is, and Israel knows that.

I'm afraid that there has to be a complete wiping out of the leadership there in order to end the war, and someone has to be prepared immediately to create a government consistent with civilized principles before they get more mullahs.

The good news is that peace in the Middle East, an impossible task for centuries, could actually be possible (the rest of the Muslim Middle East has no use for the Iranian leadership either).  The "bad" news is that no one has a clue who's actually around to lead it.

Once, that is, the enemy has said it's over. 

[Update 26 Jun 2025 -- I don't mean to gloat and scream "See, I was right!", nor say "Oops, I was wrong" but, as we saw the past few days, the mullahs indeed did let it be over after the US obliterated their nuclear weapons program. So I was wrong about that, but I will say without gloating that the premise of the piece was actually borne out.  The Iranian version of saying it's over was to call us up, and tell us that they were going to send some face-saving missiles to Al Udeid AB at whatever time we said it was OK, so we could intercept them. So yes, it's over when the enemy says it's over, and the Iranians just proved the point.] 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.