The market is irrationally exuberant today
Posted By: Big Bopper, 4/8/2026 10:50:18 AM
Everyone loves a party. Especially when the party makes you money. Forget that the money you’re making now is the same money you lost last month. It’s still fun. And so, the stock market is having fun today. And why not? America and Iran are not exactly kissin’ cousins now, but at least nobody’s civilization will end. Not today, anyway. The stocks of the boomers are booming, oil is crashing, monster pickup sales to monster drivers will certainly become monstrous again, the Pope (who is “God’s representative on Earth,” a reader informs me) will take credit for a few days, and we’ll probably get a docu-fiction war movie
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Everyone loves a party. Especially when the party makes you money. Forget that the money you’re making now is the same money you lost last month. It’s still fun.
And so, the stock market is having fun today.
And why not? America and Iran are not exactly kissin’ cousins now, but at least nobody’s civilization will end. Not today, anyway.
The stocks of the boomers are booming, oil is crashing, monster pickup sales to monster drivers will certainly become monstrous again, the Pope (who is “God’s representative on Earth,” a reader informs me) will take credit for a few days, and we’ll probably get a docu-fiction war movie
Take out one Iranian power plant per day
15 replies
Power plants are legitimate targets in war. They’re “dual purpose” infrastructure in that they serve a civilian purpose but also a military one. (The same was true of the large bridge in Tehran that we took out last week.)
That’s one reason that terrorists like Hamas position their military commands in hospitals, not power plants. It is recognized that hospitals are not legitimate targets (unless a military use is made of them) while power plants are.
America is therefore justified in disabling Iran’s power plants, as President Trump has threatened to do. It will be much tougher for Iran to launch drones and missiles without electric power.
Bill Maher’s Magical Mystery Tour
3 replies
I once saw an unidentified flying object, or “UFO.” I was a passenger on a commercial airliner on an overnight flight. I awoke in the middle of the night, looked out the window, and saw a lighted object flying near the airplane. I couldn’t identify it.
The object kept perfect pace with the airplane, as if it was shadowing us. Once in a while, it blinked, as if it was signaling us. Maybe the blinks were an extraterrestrial form of Morse Code?
In my half-awake stupor, it thrilled me to realize that we are not alone.
This war with Iran is one that had to be fought, and so we were right to fight it on our terms at a time before it became harder to win. The way Iran has lashed out at civilians everywhere, including with indiscriminate killing machines it denied having, has confirmed that.
But I recognize that there are arguments and counterarguments. Some of those are just the lame “Orange Man Bad!” or “Orange Man Good!” type, but others are more principled.
Half a century ago, American children were taught in elementary school that “representative democracy” was the highest form of government.
Part of me wondered even then, why should everyone get an equal say in things? That wasn’t how it worked in my elementary school, I observed, even as they taught that creed. The students and the janitor didn’t get the same say as the principal and the teachers.
Given Iran’s half century of cruel barbarism in the Middle East, it’s hard to understand why the Democrats seem to be rooting for them in the current war. I have two theories.
One is the obvious one. The Dems are not so much rooting for Iran, as rooting against Iran’s enemy. Bad as Iran is, its enemy is even worse in the eyes of the Dems.
Iran’s enemy, you see – or at least the Dems see – has a history of its own cruel barbarism going back to at least 1619. Iran’s enemy has engaged in genocide against native people. Iran’s enemy has wrongly oppressed workers of the world
Electric vehicles are probably the vehicle of the future, but they are not the vehicle of the present. Let’s look at the numbers.
An EV uses about six cents of electricity to go a mile. That’s if you charge it at home with inexpensive residential electricity rates. It’s more if you use a charging station, and it’s more if it’s a large vehicle like a Rivian. And by the way, be prepared to leave it plugged in for several hours to get it charged.
Gasoline-powered cars use about thirteen cents of gasoline to go a mile, assuming gas is something over $3/gallon and you get something like 25 mpg.
Predictions are hazardous, especially about the future and especially about politics, but the best prediction right now is that the 2028 Republican nominee for President will be either JD Vance or Marco Rubio, and the Democrat nominee will be either Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris. The ones not nominated for President will likely be nominated for Vice President.
Before we employ these people for these important jobs, let’s do what employers do: Let’s look at their resumes.
The argument against the war with Iran boils down to two points. The first point is that this war was initiated by the hated President Trump, and so it should be opposed. That point cannot be rebutted because it is not a point at all; it’s simply a reactionary expression of hate by people who scarcely bother to conceal their hope that Iran wins.
So, let’s move on to the second point.The second point is that we were able to handle Iran’s aggression for many years without going to war, and so we could have continued to handle its aggression for many more years without going to war.
Iran consistently promoted and sponsored terror throughout the Middle East and the world. They’ve been chanting “Death to America” for half a century. They’ve been working on a nuclear bomb for decades. Their radical Islami-fascist theocracy repeatedly vowed to wipe Israel off the map, because they believed Allah willed it.
War with Iran was therefore inevitable. The only question was when.
We could have waited for Iran to attack us. America’s unspoken policy over the years, after all, has been not to attack an adversary until the adversary attacks us first.
In his quest for the Presidency, Gavin Newsom has a few things to overcome.
First, he’s burdened with all that great hair.
Second, he’s the Governor of the State of California, which used to be a great-state-to-go-to, but is now a-great-state-to-be-from.
Third, he’s a victim of white privilege. I know, I know, white privilege is a privilege, not a liability. The problem, however, is that in order to run for President, he first has to win the Democrat nomination (notwithstanding the Joe Biden 2024 rule). Many of the people who vote in Democrat primaries see whiteness as a liability.
The modern world runs on energy. Petroleum products heat homes and power cars, airplanes and ships. Electricity runs computers and appliances, produces light, and powers an increasing number of cars and a few trains.
Electricity is a “high” form of energy which can be used for almost anything. The least efficient use is to simply route it through a resistive wire to generate heat. It does that very well, but it’s a waste of this high form of energy. As a source of heat, electricity is about as effective as rubbing two sticks together.
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It is absolutely self-evident to me that space exploration is pointless, and the more urgent the crises besetting this planet we live on, the more pointless it becomes. I can see why people got excited about it in the 1960s, back when the world was young and we still thought there might be little green people out there – who wouldn’t want to meet them? Most serious opinion, however, has now settled on the “Where is everybody?” paradox first framed by the physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950. If there is intelligent life anywhere, why has it not sought to make contact? It’s because there isn’t. There’s nothing out there
One of the past decade’s most polarizing figures in American sports will publish a book, nearly 10 years to the day after the moment that dramatically changed, and prematurely ended, his NFL career. Colin Kaepernick has announced plans to publish The Perilous Fight on September 15, 2026, two weeks after the 10-year anniversary of the moment he was first spotted sitting during the national anthem before a preseason game. He’d been sitting during the anthem throughout the 2016 preseason. For the September 1 game, he was in uniform for the first time, making the gesture conspicuous and noticeable. What followed
A Haitian illegal immigrant released into the US by the Biden administration’s lax immigration policies allegedly bludgeoned a Florida mother at a gas station in a brazen daylight attack.
Rolbert Jaochin, 40, is accused of striking the 51-year-old woman multiple times, leaving her to die in the parking lot outside a Chevron gas station in Fort Myers around 7:20 a.m. Friday, according to court records viewed by The Post.
The woman was found by first responders outside the convenience store, not breathing, lying in a pool of blood around her head, according to the documents.
Pope Leo's Flawed War Doctrine
25 replies
Pope Leo XIV used part of his Palm Sunday message to castigate the United States for attempting to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power and threatening the world with mass destruction. In doing so, the "American Pope" confused the real enemy in the war. Addressing thousands in St. Peter's Square, the Pope claimed that God rejects the prayers of leaders who wage war. He called the Iran war "atrocious" violence that cannot be justified by faith. He further said that God doesn't hear the prayers of people whose "hands (are) full of blood."
President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he agreed to suspend planned attacks on Iranian infrastructure for two weeks.
The move was “subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz,” he wrote on Truth Social.
The announcement came less than two hours before his deadline on Iran to either make a deal that includes opening the Strait of Hormuz or else face major attacks on its civilian infrastructure.
Trump wrote that he made the decision “based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan.”
Democrats and several conservative commentators demanded the invocation of the 25th Amendment to remove Trump.Democrats called for the invocation of 25th Amendment to remove President Donald Trump after his latest threat that a "whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again". "Not a single bomb has dropped on America. We cannot kill an entire civilization. This is evil and madness," former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene posted. "We need to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump. Threatening war crimes is a blatant violation of our Constitution and the Geneva Conventions," Dem Congressman Ro Khanna said,
Could Marco Rubio be the one to take down the woke and seemingly untouchable Rep. Ilhan Omar?
He seems to think that $40 million fortune of hers came from something different than wine sales from her winery.
Which is shockingly direct. Usually, they don't state things so directly.
But if it's true that Omar ran a pay-to-play refugee operation, it would surely be illegal. And who would be in a position to know this better than Rubio who runs the Department of State and all its adjacents?
With a confident tweet like that, it seems likely that he knows something. What's more, he's been after her for at least six weeks;
The U.S. government is using AI to locate and arrest migrants who are accused of being in the United States illegally. According to several reports, the Department of Homeland Security is hiring a litany of private contractors and giving them the names of thousands of migrants. The contractors are then using artificial intelligence to find the migrants. The process of using AI, public records, databases, online information and surveillance is called “skip tracing.” It’s been used by debt collectors, bail bondsmen and private investigators for years. But reports say DHS is paying private companies billions of dollars to use this process to find migrants for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
After less than three months in office, Virginians are expressing displeasure with Virginia’s Democrat Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s tenure thus far.
A Washington Post–George Mason University Schar School poll shows Spanberger with the highest disapproval rating at this point in her term than any Governor, from either party, since 1994.
Under Spanberger’s leadership, Democrats have championed a slew of leftist policie
WASHINGTON — The CIA used a futuristic new tool called “Ghost Murmur” to find and rescue the second American airman who was shot down in southern Iran, The Post has learned.
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It was the tool’s first use in the field by the spy agency — and was alluded to Monday afternoon by President Trump and CIA Director John Ratcliffe at a White House briefing.
Iranian authorities are urging young people, students, artists, athletes, and volunteer groups to form “human chains” around power plants across the country just hours before President Donald Trump’s deadline for a deal expires, effectively gathering civilians at infrastructure sites the United States has explicitly threatened to strike.
The campaign, promoted through Iran’s Ministry of Sports and Youth, is set for 2 p.m. Tuesday local time — roughly 13 hours before Trump’s 8 p.m. Eastern deadline — and has been branded “Human Chain of Iran’s Youth for a Bright Future.”
U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins sent USDA staff an Easter email that emphasized the story of Jesus being crucified and resurrected, a message that some Christians said alienated them for its overt religiosity. “Happy Easter — He is Risen indeed,” Rollins wrote in the email sent on Good Friday, which CNBC has reviewed and was first to report.
“From the foot of the Cross on Good Friday to the stone rolled away from the now empty tomb, sin has been destroyed,” Rollins wrote.