Prediction markets are for some reason regulated as investments, when really they are gambling. They are prone to manipulation–not just insider trading, but someone can pay a person to throw a dildo in a basketball game and then bet that someone will throw a dildo in a basketball game; someone can bet that a certain guy will get punched in the face, and then go punch that guy in the face.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXpR9bsEVqE
Trump falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen, and then he tried to steal that election himself, and is now trying to steal future elections. US democracy is under threat.
If you are disenfranchising millions of Americans to stop a few dozen potential illegal voters, then your goals are to make it harder to vote, rather than to secure the election, unless you are just ignorant of the facts.
Kansas tried a documentary proof of citizenship law in 2011 and it blocked 31,000 citizens from voting–12% of first time registrants.
The founders intentionally did not give the president the power to regulate elections because they feared something like a king or a dictator. Yet, Trump is claiming such powers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_WqgMg5Id0
The problem wasn’t that Trump didn’t evacuate Americans from the area in advance, that would cause a panic and give a tell that we were attacking. The problem is that we didn’t have a plan to get them out at all! That makes it seem like the administration did not expect Iran’s reaction even though a large and deadly reaction should be expected when we are trying to eliminate their regime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=givlddFLYv8
Trump told Iranians to surrender, but there was no one to surrender to. There were no revolutionary forces or US troops on the ground.
The US cut off their Farsi service before attacking Iran and telling their people to rise up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGb-u1XMl90
Israel sees Iran as an existential threat and is happy to see Iran greatly weakened so Israel can have some temporary breathing room.
This doesn’t match American interests. Iran is not the same level of threat to the United States. Using blood, treasure, and munitions to temporarily weaken Iran is a large net bad for the US. This war is only worth it for the US if Iran gets a friendlier regime or has a long term change in behavior.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCkwFvuRvM0
W Bush focusing on fighting insurgencies while China was rising, led to the US not having the military industrial base and stockpiles of certain munitions. If the US uses too many munitions fighting Iran, it will be greatly weakened for a fight against China. This also weakens US deterrence against China.
However, if Iran is in too much chaos to pump oil, or if it is friendly enough with the US that in the event of a China-US war it would not sell oil to China, that would be a huge advantage in starving China of oil in the event of a war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupwKXGd54g
It seems that Trump got overconfident from the military’s dazzling success in Venezuela. That, combined with Trump gutting the bureaucracy that actually knew a lot about Iran, led to a war against Iran that’s harder to win than Trump expected.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgHH_y8tceI
The US didn’t seem ready to defend against Iranian drones against their own bases. There are cheaper ways to defend against such drones learned in the Ukraine war, but the US didn’t apply those learnings even though they chose the time of the war.
Trump went to war without enough of certain munitions and then blames and insults Ukraine while also wishing Ukraine would share their knowledge in defending against drones. Incompetency.
Trump’s special military operation in Iran is getting bogged down. The US is destroying a lot of stuff, but don’t appear anywhere near to achieving actual serious goals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbkLWSOskV0
History is full of stories of powerful countries losing a war in a foreign land partially because they think they’ll have more local support then they actually get.
Iran decentralized its military and designated 5 backups for all leaders, so it was prepared for strikes on military leadership. Iran’s military may be resilient and prepared for a long war.
The Trump administration seemed to think that the Iranian regime would implode and the war would be over in days. We can see this in their shifting explanations to the war and Trump’s comments about his original expectations.
If the Iranian regime and military are really resilient and not close to breaking, then the United States is losing this war. It doesn’t matter how many military successes the US and Israel have, the objectives of the war are either regime change or a long-term weakening of Iran. Without Iranian leaders agreeing not to rebuild their offensive capabilities, they will rebuild them and the war will have been a failure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3TVxgh-R-c