Samuel David Baucom

Lawyer // Navy Officer

[Ross Douthat @Douthat60]

For the would-be Great Man of History, the final boss is always the pope.

[Oren Cass @oren_cass]

I mostly avoid commenting on what President Trump says from day to day, while pulling no punches in my assessments, whether positive or negative, of his policy. His Iran ultimatums feel different. Making such threats is a policy. If he were to follow through on them, the consequences would be immediate, irreversible, and catastrophic on a world-historical scale.

So while some will inevitably insist he should be “taken seriously rather than literally,” or that he is executing a sophisticated “madman” strategy in a complex game of 5-D chess, or that he needs everyone’s steadfast support to maximize his leverage, now rather than later seems the time to say that the actions that he is proposing would be a disaster for our country, both strategically and morally, which makes the remarks themselves a terrible mistake.

Simply put, what’s the point of all this? If these are empty threats that we all know he will not carry out, then they are ineffective threats (the Iranians are on X too!), merely making the president and our nation look foolish. If they are not empty threats, then the president is asserting the American position that such actions are acceptable in this situation and ones we are willing to take. We are not living in some quantum thought experiment where he simultaneously is and is not serious. We cannot expect the Iranians, but only the Iranians, will believe him.

Whether the threats are empty or not, we should be willing to say: This is wrong. We should not establish a pattern of threatening escalation from a blockaded strait to elimination of a civilization. We should not launch strikes intended to devastate the lives of millions of people and take our nation to total war without indisputable justification, or before the American people have deliberated upon and assented to the path with full understanding of what total war might mean for them. Those principles are vital to our Republic, independent of whether the strategy could “work.”

But it’s also worth emphasizing that the strategy is a dead end. This war is actively weakening American power, increasing the danger to American citizens, and frustrating the president’s important efforts at addressing our many domestic challenges. It has closed a strait that was previously open, strengthened the incentive for other nations to pursue nuclear weapons, and in this most recent rhetoric made more plausible their use. Our choices for continuing the war appear to be catastrophic escalation of the air war or extensive deployment of ground troops, neither of which were planned or had support at the outset.

Stepping back from these threats and admitting such actions do not offer a path to resolving the conflict may be unpalatable, but it is by far the least unpalatable option available. Let us all hope cooler heads prevail.

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

The New York Times just published John Bolton's thoughts on Iran, which are basically 'more murder!'

There is literally nothing anyone in the 'foreign policy community' can do to lose their status as a Very Serious Person. It's almost performance art.

[Sam Monson @SamMonsonNFL]

This is Eli Manning's HoF case in a nutshell.

[Dave Smith @ComicDaveSmith]

Best community note ever

[Lee Fang @lhfang]

The people who staff Democratic politicians are either hobbled by comically elite cultural obsessions that make them unable to connect with normal Americans, or are professional and talented but addicted to money so they just sell out at every opportunity https://t.co/hpr7Xy4mCk

[Brad Henson Productions @BradHensonPro]

Troy Aikman: “Talk to me when when he has 33% of my Super Bowl Titles”

[Boring_Business @BoringBiz_]

“crypto backed mortgages”

[Cernovich @Cernovich]

Great news for all of the pro-war podcasters. Most of them are now eligible to join. Happy for them.

[ian bremmer @ianbremmer]

6:49am: sudden spike in oil futures trading. no news. no announcement. nothing public.
7:05am: trump announces a pause on iran strikes. markets move.
someone knew. 16 minutes early. $580 million in contracts. the corruption is staggering.

[Josh Hawley @HawleyMO]

Hawley, Warren team up to back Trump, crack down on defense contractor payouts

https://t.co/Fj7O2YPE8f

[Josh Hawley @HawleyMO]

I’m launching an investigation into FICO

The increasing cost of credit scores is straining homebuyers in an already unaffordable market

I’ve also asked the FTC to investigate FICO’s anticompetitive practices

https://t.co/6RZFJEFtE2

[Mark Cuban @mcuban]

I don’t think people realize how much healthcare costs are driving big companies to fire and not hire.

It costs them $30k per family, per year for premiums and care. Most of that goes to the massive, vertically integrated insurance companies that send weekly bills that no one reviews in details. And it doesn’t include the company overhead to deal with it all. It’s usually the 2nd largest expense after payroll. Which is insane

It’s far easier to blame AI than it is to blame Healthcare costs.

Want to increase jobs, wages and improve affordability for every American ?

Break up the biggest insurance companies. Make divest non insurance companies. They don’t need thousands of subsidiaries. That’s how they game and abuse the system and increase costs for all of us.

Call your senator and tell them to support the BreakUp Big Medicine Bill by @HawleyMO and @SenWarren.

[Auron MacIntyre @AuronMacintyre]

Every war is WW2

Every leader is Hitler

It’s always 1936

Anyone with questions is always Chamberlain

[Nina Turner @ninaturner]

Imagine working for @TheOnion and having to compete with this.

[nature @Nature]

CRISPR–Cas9 might offer a way to make safer, more effective cancer-fighting immune cells engineered inside the human body

https://t.co/UTW3hzXlUF

[. @J0nesToChina]

The Browns being the ones to propose this is like the gambler coming back to the casino right after they lost the house

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

All men and women, especially Christians, are called to fix their gaze on those who suffer, on the pain of the lonely, and on those who are emarginated for various reasons, for without them we cannot build a just society. Only together can we build communities of solidarity capable of caring for everyone, in which wellbeing and peace can flourish for the benefit of all. Caring for the humanity of others helps us to live our own lives to the full.

[Anup Malani @anup_malani]

Countries with more engineers grow faster. Countries with more lawyers grow slower. The cross-country data are striking. I'm a law professor, so make of that what you will.

[Chuck Bass @ChuckFBass]

Justin Herbert had the only other vote