Sunday, September 6, 2026
Thursday, September 3, 2026
On Our "Virtual Route 99" (Special Edition): In America
A number of pundits, especially Republican pundits, interpreted Trump’s win in 2024 as a permanent political realignment proving that post–World War II liberalism was dead. That conviction appeared to help feed Trump’s insistence that he had won a “landslide” and had a “mandate” to enact draconian policies. Skeptics disagreed with this interpretation, noting that Trump’s victory in the popular vote was small— more people voted for someone else than for him— and that the 2024 election appeared to be determined by inflation and the pandemic, two things that had little to do with political positions. Rather than being an embrace of a political ideology, it appeared the swing toward Trump had more to do with anti-incumbent feeling, especially over inflation. Still, after the 2024 election, hopeful Republicans set out to redistrict states like Texas to try to guarantee they would hold on to control of Congress after the 2026 election. They redrew districts based on the idea that what they thought was a new coalition would last, banking especially on Hispanic voters continuing to cast their ballots for Republicans. With that expectation, they created gerrymanders that shaved their margins thinner than they had been before the redistricting. And then, in the elections of November 2025, dramatic gains by Democrats across Texas made some observers wonder if the gerrymandering of Texas hadn’t been a “dummymander,” teeing districts up for Democrats in a blue wave. After the election, G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers noted that the anti-incumbent feeling had turned against the Republicans and that voters were even more strongly opposed to Republicans than they had been against Democrats in 2024. He explained that by then, Republicans had lost an average of 25 points of support from the very voters they were counting on to create their new coalition: young people, nonwhite voters, and working-class/lower-income voters. And then, in a special election on January 31, 2026, voters flipped a seat in the Texas Senate from Republican to Democratic in a historically Republican-dominated district in Tarrant County. Democrat Taylor Rehmet, an Air Force veteran and machinist, defeated right-wing Republican Leigh Wambsganss for a seat that Republicans have held since the early 1990s. Robert Downen of Texas Monthly noted that in the final days of the campaign, the Wambsganss campaign spent $310,000 while Rehmet spent nothing, and Daniel Nichanian of BoltsMag posted that overall, Wambsganss spent nearly $2.2 million more than Rehmet in the campaign. Both Texas governor Greg Abbott and Trump himself publicly supported Wambsganss. Voters flipped a district that Trump won by 17 points in 2024 to Rehmet, electing him by a 14.4-point margin. Without the minor-party candidates in the vote, the swing from the Republican in 2024 was 32 points toward the Democrats. Liz Crampton of Politico noted that “Republicans are in full-out panic mode” after the election, especially over the swing of Hispanic voters toward Rehmet. Republican consultant Mike Madrid referred back to the newly gerrymandered maps and the voting patterns of young Hispanic men when he told Crampton: “They’ve banged three of these five new Republican seats on a demographic that Democrats were never able to turn out for 30–40 years.” Now, though, they had turned toward Democrats as Trump’s arrests, detentions, and deportation policies had “angered and upset them.” In the wake of the election, Trump immediately began talking about nationalizing voting in the country, despite the provisions in the U.S. Constitution establishing that states, not the federal government, are in charge of elections. “If you think about it, a state is an agent for the federal government in elections,” Trump said during a press conference at the White House in early February. “I don’t know why the federal government doesn’t do them anyway.” Trump’s allies began talking about rigging the election by sending armed officers to the polls. Steve Bannon said on his podcast: “You’re damn right, we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.” Since then, the administration has worked hard to take over the midterm elections, but so far everything it has tried has been blocked by the courts or failed in Congress. It is 0–23 in its effort to take over state voter data with the apparent plan of running it through a program designed to make sure noncitizens aren’t receiving welfare benefits for which they’re not eligible, a process that mistakenly flags citizens as noncitizens with a failure rate of at least 14%. Courts also blocked Trump’s attempt to use the United States Postal Service (USPS) as a gatekeeper to stop ballots that the federal government decides shouldn’t be delivered even though state agencies determine they should be. We learned yesterday that, despite court orders, the administration’s plan to use the USPS to impose federal control on elections has continued. It has rushed into place a system a whistleblower warns would throw out entire batches of up to 10,000 ballots if a single one gets rejected. This is a deliberate attempt to skew the midterm election. An analysis by Charles Stewart III of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Election Data and Science Lab shows that Democrats vote by mail more than Republicans. In 2024, 37% of Democrats voted by mail, while only 24% of Republicans did. Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters yesterday that he is not ruling out sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to the polls. “The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down,” Mullin said. “ICE’s job is immigration, customs enforcement. That’s their job…if we’re serving a warrant we will be where we need to be.” Maya Yang of the Guardian notes that Mullin’s threat flies in the face of federal law, which prohibits armed agents from “any place where a general or special election is held.” Last night, in Tarrant County, Texas, county commissioners tried an even cruder way of rigging the election. As Cecelia Lenzen of the Texas Tribune reported, they voted 3–2 along party lines to get rid of 92 of the polling sites the county had in 2022 before the midterm election. In 2022 there were 316 election sites; the Republican commissioners cut that number to 224. They also cut three sites for early voting, from 50 to 47. Republicans voted for the cuts; Democrats voted against them. “It’s not about cost. This is about power. This is very political. This is campaigning from the dais,” said Democrat Alisa Simmons. Throughout the eight-hour meeting about the cuts, speakers from the audience called on the commissioners to increase, rather than decrease, the number of voting sites for the more than 1.3 million people registered to vote in Tarrant County. Those 1.3 million people are more than live in Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Rhode Island, or Montana, and about the same number of people who live in Maine or New Hampshire. Voters in Tarrant County had plenty to say to the Republican commissioners about the cuts. One constituent warned: “You guys are out!” When County Judge Tim O’Hare refused to look at him, the man called out the disrespect. “What could possibly be so important, Mr. O’Hare? Can you listen to me, please? Hello? Hello? Can you look at my eyes, please?” O’Hare answered: “I can hear every word you’re saying. You can use your minute however you choose.” The man responded: “I want you to look me in the eyes.” When O’Hare still wouldn’t, the man continued: “Yeah, look down because down is what you’re going in November. So keep looking where you’re going. Okay? ’Cause this is what we’re doing after this from now until November, whether you cut these places or not. We’re going and we’re knocking on doors and we’re bringing people out. And we’re telling them where the voter locations are, and we’re helping them get there, and nothing you can do can stop us from removing you in November.” — Notes:  Strength In NumbersIt is a matter of fact that Donald Trump won the 2024 election in large part by shrinking the vote margins for Kamala Harris among non-white, working-class, and young voters, relative to past Democratic nominees… 10 months ago · 270 likes · 46 comments · G. Elliott Morris Strength In NumbersI am not going to make a habit of covering breaking news, but when there’s a chart to be made, I really just can’t help myself… 7 months ago · 532 likes · 23 comments · G. Elliott Morris https://thehill.com/homenews/ https://www.politico.com/news/ https://www.democracydocket. https://www.democracydocket. https://www.texastribune.org/ https://www.texastribune.org/ https://www.britannica.com/ https://electionlab.mit.edu/ https://www.theguardian.com/ https://boltsmag.org/ Instagram: Bluesky: jenrice.bsky.social/post/ |
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
Monday, August 31, 2026
On Our "Virtual Route 99" (Month-End Edition): On the Week That Was in Our World
Our team hereby presents a snapshot of the discourse in our World on Israel, Donald Trump, the price of Groceries, the Iran War, and other thoughts:
Saturday, August 29, 2026
Tuesday, August 25, 2026
On Our "Virtual Route 99" In America
Stock of the venerable retailer tumbled 9% after the company reported a dip in comparable sales for its U.S. stores in its fiscal second quarter ending July, even as the e-commerce part of its business grew 23%. The results were fine, really, although there’s no getting around the fact that Walmart is a mature business whose top line is expanding only around 5% annually, even with the boost provided by e-commerce and advertising.
What the results really pointed to is how well Amazon is doing in retailing, comparatively speaking. That’s easy to overlook, given how much attention its cloud unit, Amazon Web Services, gets on Wall Street, particularly now that AI has made cloud even more important to the tech sector. If you exclude AWS from the equation, Amazon’s retailing and associated businesses—including advertising—are growing at 14% to 15% annually. That’s not the rocket-ship growth tech companies usually expect, but it’s decent for a 30-year-old business. And it’s three times Walmart’s growth rate.
Comparing the topline growth of Amazon and Walmart in retailing is a little unfair, of course, as old-fashioned bricks-and-mortar stores account for more than 75% of Walmart’s $700 billion–odd annual revenue but less than 4% of Amazon’s retail revenue. Walmart is growing faster than Amazon in e-commerce, where Walmart is the newcomer. What's striking is that their relative growth rates in ecommerce aren’t as far apart as you might think, given that Amazon is more mature in online shopping. It generates more than three times as much revenue in that business, including advertising, as Walmart.
Excluding Amazon’s small physical store business (mostly Whole Foods), its retail business globally grew 16.3% in the second quarter and 14.2% in the first (a shift in timing of its Prime Day shopping extravaganza from the third quarter to the second quarter provided a boost to the latest quarter). That compares with Walmart's 23% e-commerce growth in its second quarter and 26% in its first quarter.
If Walmart and Amazon maintain those growth rates, Walmart could draw even with Amazon in online retailing one day, although it would take many years. But it’s unlikely their growth rates will stay as they are now. Walmart’s commerce growth rate is likely to slow as it gets bigger, converging with Amazon’s.
Meanwhile, Amazon has a lot of momentum in areas like advertising, where its Prime Video business is likely to become a powerhouse. Walmart is growing a bit faster in advertising, to be sure, but it’s much smaller, despite buying businesses like Vizio TV to beef up its presence. But given its lack of a streaming business like Prime Video, and its smaller retail marketplace, it’s hard to see Walmart catching up on the ad front. Amazon’s edge in retail perhaps deserves more attention from investors.
AI’s Crowding-Out Effect
Economists like to talk about the danger that government borrowing will crowd out private sector activity. You could make the argument today that AI-related fundraising is crowding out everything else!
Today’s headlines, for instance, include a Bloomberg report that Anthropic expects to match or beat the $86 billion SpaceX raised in its June IPO. Bloomberg also reported that Broadcom is discussing borrowing more than $60 billion for a chip financing deal. Nvidia last week announced a $500 billion–plus fundraising effort with a group of private equity firms. And of course the neocloud firms, such as Nebius, keep raising money, while big tech companies like Google are doing the same.
All of this is having an effect on the market. As The New York Times pointed out today, one reason government bond yields have hit 20-year highs this week is because of borrowing by AI firms. AI is already unpopular with the general public, largely because of people’s dislike for having data centers located near them. The fact that AI is driving up electricity costs, phone prices and now interest rates won’t improve those sentiments.
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PoliticsThe Trump economy: $40tn debt, 6.7% mortgages and $5 dieselThe president’s agenda is under strain as the Iran war pushes up prices and America’s finances worsen AUGUST 22, 2026 by Myles McCormick and Eva Xiao in New York and Claire Jones in Washington |
Sunday, August 23, 2026
Saturday, August 22, 2026
Friday, August 21, 2026
Wednesday, August 19, 2026
On Our "Virtual Route 99" (Special Mid-Week Edition): On the #Iran War & #MeccaAgreement
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AHVAZ, Iran—When U.S. missiles struck the harbor outside in the port city of Badar Abbas last month, Sajjad saw his livelihood literally go up in smoke.
The small wooden fishing boat that had supported the 56-year-old and his family for years was reduced to a charred husk, along with dozens of other boats lining the docks. Sajjad told Drop Site News that nearly every fisherman he knows lost a vessel that night. Replacing a single boat now costs around 2 billion tomans (around $1,050)—far beyond what most families can afford.
“Both my children are in university,” Sajjad said. “Everything depended on that boat. Soon, I may not even be able to pay their tuition.”
When U.S. strikes resumed in early July following a two-month pause, the attacks focused heavily on southern Iran. Interviews with residents in hard-hit southern provinces like Khuzestan, Hormozgan, Sistan, and Baluchestan describe strikes not only on military facilities, but also on critical civilian infrastructure, including fishing ports, bridges, telecommunications networks, power plants, hospitals, and transportation corridors.
Dozens of communications towers have been knocked offline in repeated attacks, disrupting internet and telephone services. One attack on a transmission tower near Tappeh Aluakbar in Bandar Abbas killed five people, including a woman who died shielding her son with her body, local residents told Drop Site.
Transportation infrastructure has sustained similar damage. Alireza, a resident of Hormozgan who studies screenwriting and is carefully tracking recent events in the hopes of making a documentary about the war, described strikes on Tappeh Aluakbar overlooking Bandar Abbas, bridges linking Bandar Abbas to Khamir and Rudan, railway infrastructure, and key transportation routes connecting the province. At one destroyed crossing, road crews carved a temporary dirt route through a dry riverbed within hours simply to keep vehicles moving.
The damage extends to the sea as well: Alireza estimates that roughly 300 civilian fishing boats have been destroyed across Bandar Abbas, Bandar Lengeh, Sirik, and Jask, affecting the livelihoods of thousands of people. Two maritime search-and-rescue vessels operating near Bandar Abbas, Qeshm, and Hormuz Island were also put out of service.
Kharg Island, Iran’s principal oil export terminal, has long featured in discussions among U.S. officials and defense analysts as a strategically significant site and was bombed in March during the U.S.-Israeli aerial campaign. According to an Iranian military analyst who spoke to Drop Site on condition of anonymity for security reasons, if the U.S. ever sent ground troops to take over the island, Iran’s ability to reinforce Kharg would depend heavily on the transportation networks running through Hormozgan.
“They’re not simply destroying roads,” the analyst said. “They’re reducing Iran’s ability to move personnel, equipment, and supplies before any future operation ever begins.”
Residents and medical workers in Khuzestan also describe the toll on civilians caused by the bombing campaign, particularly children.
Just after midnight on July 15, explosions shook the area surrounding Shahid Baghaei Hospital in Ahvaz, one of southwestern Iran’s principal treatment centers for children with cancer and blood disorders. While the hospital was not destroyed in the attack, the blast forced the emergency evacuation of 211 pediatric patients, including children undergoing chemotherapy and several dependent on ventilators.
Hassan, a doctor who works at one of the hospitals where patients were transferred to, said the attack revived memories of the war’s opening day in February, when a missile strike on Minab Elementary School killed more than 150 people, most of them children.
“The memory of Minab came back to us immediately,” he said. “When we heard the explosion, everyone feared the hospital had been hit.”
The children were physically unharmed, but emotionally distraught. “We tried to reassure them,” Hassan told Drop Site. “We kept telling them nothing had happened. But children understand more than adults sometimes think. They knew the strike happened next to the hospital, and they were terrified.” Many had already lived through the 12-day war the previous year. That trauma, doctors say, will not disappear when this fighting ends.
“This isn’t something that simply goes away after the war,” Hassan said. “These children will carry it with them.”
Razieh, whose apartment overlooks the neighborhood of the hospital, ran outside after hearing the blast and saw smoke rising into the night sky. Since that night, she said, her three-year-old daughter can barely sleep.
“She wakes up even on nights when there isn’t any bombing,” Razieh said. “She tells me, ‘Mom, we’re being attacked. I hear bombs.’ At some point I couldn’t keep pretending nothing had happened.”
Hadis, another mother in the same neighborhood, described a similar pattern. Too scared to sleep, her children remain awake until the early hours of the morning. Loud sounds trigger panic. Some refuse to sleep unless a parent lies beside them.
Across parts of Hormozgan, repeated strikes on electricity and communications infrastructure have interrupted power, internet, and phone service during the hottest weeks of the year when daytime temperatures frequently approach 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit). The prolonged outages also cause water pumps to stop operating and refrigeration to fail.
“The pattern documented across these accounts touches on core protections under international humanitarian law,” said Mohamed Habibi, a human rights lawyer who holds a master’s degree in international law from Imam Sadiq University. “The Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocol I require that attacks distinguish between military and civilian objects, and that any incidental harm to civilians remain proportionate to the concrete military advantage sought. Article 54 of Protocol I explicitly prohibits attacks on objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, including water and power infrastructure—a threshold that Hormozgan residents say has already been crossed amid summer temperatures exceeding 50 degrees Celsius.”
A second military analyst, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the repeated strikes on electricity, communications, and transportation infrastructure appear designed to exacerbate the civilian cost of the conflict.
“In this climate, electricity is part of basic survival,” he told Drop Site. “If you remove power, communications, and water at the same time, you’re putting enormous pressure on civilian society. The calculation seems to be that if enough pressure is placed on everyday life, people eventually become exhausted and begin questioning whether continued resistance is worth the cost.”
Even at military sites, the targets appeared designed to maximize casualties rather than just weaken military capabilities.
Shortly after 12:30 a.m. on July 15, residents near the Iranian Army garrison in Bampur, in the Sistan and Baluchestan Province, were awakened by two powerful explosions. Jalalzehi, who lives near the base, rushed outside to find smoke rising above the compound and the surrounding area dark.
By morning, the Army confirmed at least seven soldiers had been killed, including a conscript with fewer than forty days left in his mandatory service. Iranian media reported that thirteen missiles struck the garrison, hitting a dormitory, a guesthouse, and guard posts.
“Military installations such as the Bampur garrison remain lawful targets,” Habibi said. “However, the decision to repeatedly strike sleeping quarters rather than command posts or weapons depots raises a separate question long debated among legal scholars: whether maximizing casualties, rather than degrading military capability, played a role in the targeting.”
The second military analyst also raised similar questions. “If the objective is simply to reduce a garrison’s operational capability, barracks are not the most decisive target,” he said. “A strike on command facilities, communications, or weapons depots would have a more direct military effect. Concentrating repeated strikes on dormitories suggests that maximizing casualties may also have been part of the calculation.”
Eight days later, on July 23, missiles struck the Shalamcheh border crossing connecting Khuzestan Province with Iraq, as thousands of pilgrims prepared to travel to Karbala for Arbaeen, one of the largest annual religious gatherings in the Shiite calendar. Local residents reported two people killed and eleven wounded, with additional strikes hitting nearby towns.
Hassan, an Iranian pilgrim present during the attack, has crossed the border to make the religious pilgrimage every year for the past decade. Normally, he said, the route is filled with mokabs—volunteer stations providing food, water and medical assistance free of charge to pilgrims making the journey.
“When the missiles hit, people screamed,” he recalled. “But no one ran.” Instead, men moved toward the perimeter while women and other pilgrims formed lines to carry the wounded until ambulances arrived. “It showed something about our society,” Hassan said. “People were frightened, but they chose to help each other before thinking about themselves.”
* All residents asked to be referred to by their first names only for security reasons.
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