The REAL Reason Trump is Trapped in Iran

And why American consumers are up Shit's Creek

Robert Reich

On March 19, Trump said that he’d do whatever is necessary to ease the oil crisis. He also assured America that the crisis “will be over soon.”

Bullshit.

The problem isn’t just that Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz. It’s also that Iran, Israel, and the United States have all inflicted — and continue to inflict — serious damage to the oil and gas infrastructure of the Middle East. This damage will take months if not years to repair.

At one point on Thursday oil prices jumped to $119 a barrel before falling back to around $111 a barrel — all but guaranteeing that the price of gas at the pump will continue to rise, as will the prices of many other products and services indirectly affected by oil prices.

What we are now witnessing is one of the grossest military and political blunders in modern history.

It’s not hard to understand why Trump is trapped in Iran. He doesn’t listen to anyone outside his small circle of sycophants who tell him what he wants to hear.

But there’s something else. Iran has adopted an asymmetric war strategy that’s working.

I’m indebted to Marty Manley for uncovering a fascinating historical fact that sheds light on what Iran is doing. 

During the Korean War, U.S. Air Force Colonel John Boyd came up with a theory of competitive decision-making that shaped American military doctrine for a generation. He called it the OODA loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

Boyd found that victory doesn’t go to the side with more firepower. It goes to the side that cycles through the OODA loop faster — observing what’s changing, orienting to its meaning, deciding what to do, and acting before its adversary does.

Get inside your opponent’s loop, Boyd reasoned, and you don’t just outpace him. You break his ability to form a coherent picture of the war he’s fighting.

Manley observes that Iran has adopted Boyd’s approach. Iran hasn’t needed to match American firepower; it’s needed only to generate economic and political problems for Washington that outrun Washington’s ability to orient, decide, and act.

Iran has gotten inside Trump’s OODA loop because Iran has responded to U.S. airstrikes by widening the war horizontally — attacking tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, launching drones and missiles at Gulf state oil and gas infrastructure, provoking the U.S. and Israel to destroy even more of that infrastructure, hitting Amazon data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain (causing regional outages for banking, e-commerce, and cloud services), and squeezing other choke points that the global economy depends on.

Iran’s leaders — veterans of asymmetric wars in Iraq and Syria — are applying the same asymmetric logic to Trump’s war. Inexpensive drones, short-range missiles, and sea mines can have the same effect that IEDs had in Iraq — only with far greater strategic impact, because they disrupt global supply chains.

What has Washington done? Dropped more bombs and launched more missiles.

Your lyin' eyes

And he's surprised when they say "no!"

The truth

Pothole damage from driving around Rhode Island?

The state will pay only up to $300. Sorry about your Beemer

By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current

Twice in one month Antonio Lanni has heard the same sound coming from underneath his 2025 BMW M3: the hiss of air escaping the tires.

The first instance came in February while driving in the area of Pine Street in downtown Providence. He hit a pothole, cracking the rim and puncturing the tire on his rear passenger side. The cost to repair: $1,000.

The second time happened the night of March 4 on Putnam Pike on his way back home to North Providence. He hit a pothole on the state-maintained highway, ripping through both driver side tires. Replacing them will cost him $225 per tire.

Lanni has filed claims with both the city of Providence and the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) to cover the damage. But he’ll still have to dig into his own wallet. 

Pothole damage is typically only covered by car insurance if the policy includes collision coverage, which is subject to a deductible. Lanni said his car insurance policy would not cover pothole-related damage.

All Rhode Island municipalities, and the state itself, only offer up to $300 in pothole-related reimbursements — rates lawmakers set decades ago during the Garrahy and Sundlun administrations.

“To be honest, if I’m spending $1,500, I’ve got to try to do something,” Lanni said. “I know it’s not going to cover the whole thing, but it’s definitely better than nothing.”

Lucky for Lanni, he said he can get his tires at a discounted rate since he works as a service adviser at Tasca Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram FIAT in Johnston.

RIDOT’s $300 rate was set by lawmakers in 1979, becoming law without Gov. Joseph Garrahy’s signature. Adjusted for inflation, the Carter-era reimbursement rate would be $1,404 today.

The law was updated in 1994 to set a timeline of 45 days for RIDOT to pay for approved claims because there had been no established deadline for the state to respond. Also that same year, lawmakers set the maximum reimbursement for damages from potholes on local roads at $300 to match the state rate. Previously, the maximum amount municipalities could reimburse motorists was $50 under a rate set in 1956, the equivalent of $609 today.

Cancer vaccines could transform treatment and prevention – but misinformation about mRNA vaccines threatens their potential

Why are Trump and Bobby Jr. standing in the way of a cure for cancer?

Dannell D. Boatman, West Virginia University

Scientists are making rapid progress toward a long-awaited goal that could help to reshape cancer care: mRNA cancer vaccines with the potential to significantly boost the immune system’s ability to fight and eliminate tumors.

Since the early 2000s, there have been over 120 promising clinical trials testing the use of mRNA vaccines to treat multiple cancer types, such as melanoma, brain, breast, lung and prostate cancer.

At the same time, misinformation about so-called turbo cancer began spreading widely on social media, with mainstream media outlets first reporting on it in late 2022. Turbo cancer refers to the false claim that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines cause unusually aggressive cancers.

As a researcher in health communication who monitors cancer-related conversations online, I have seen how quickly new misinformation can spread and the impact it can have on people’s health decisions. In the case of mRNA cancer vaccines, this false narrative could undermine public confidence in an important tool that may help prevent or treat cancer in the future.

Cancer research and mRNA vaccines

Most people likely first heard about mRNA technology through COVID-19 vaccines, but scientists have been studying it for decades.

How mRNA vaccines work is by delivering instructions that prompt the body’s cells to make specific proteins. This process teaches the immune system how to recognize and attack those proteins. In cancer research, scientists can design highly targeted vaccines that train the immune system to find tumor cells and more effectively kill them without harming healthy cells.

Cancer vaccines teach the immune system to kill tumor cells more effectively.

One example of this potential comes from studies on glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor with few effective treatments. Researchers have found that a personalized mRNA vaccine can rapidly activate people’s immune systems against this type of brain cancer and improve survival.

The body of evidence that mRNA vaccines can transform how researchers harness the immune system to treat cancer is growing. However, even the most promising medical advances can only improve health if people are willing to use them.

Sen. Gu, Rep. Cotter introduce bills to cap electric and gas utilities’ profits

Protecting consumers from price-gouging utilities

If only this was real

Sen. Victoria Gu and Rep. Megan Cotter have introduced legislation to limit the profits of utilities distributing electricity and natural gas to “just and reasonable” rates.

“One very important reason our utility bills are so high is that in Rhode Island, as in many places across the country, utilities are making unreasonable profits that exceed a reasonable rate of return, reflected locally in the nearly $12 million Rhode Island Energy’s parent company CEO made in 2023, ” said Senator Gu (D-Dist. 38, Westerly, Charlestown, South Kingstown). 

“Utilities are regulated monopolies, and they don’t operate like a normal business. If they spend $100 million on a project, they get 9.275% back from ratepayers. If they spend $200 million on the same project, they still get 9.275% back and they double their profits. There’s no incentive to control costs.”

Said Representative Cotter (D-Dist. 39, Exeter, Richmond, Hopkinton), “While billion-dollar utility companies post record profits, families and seniors in our community are sitting at their kitchen tables trying to figure out how to pay their electric bills. That’s just not right. Our profit cap bills are about protecting working families who are choosing between heat and groceries and making sure seniors on fixed incomes don’t have to live in the cold. Utilities are a necessity, not a luxury, and we have a responsibility to make sure they are fair, affordable and accountable to the people they serve.”

Guy with enough money to fund 41 political action committees in Rhode Island, including ones aimed at ousting Charlestown legislators Tina Spears and Victoria Gu, claims he is being hurt by the minimum wage

If we pay a living wage, our businesses will suffer, argue lobbyists and business owners opposed to increasing the minimum wage

Steve Ahlquist

In a hearing that highlighted a fundamental disagreement over the purpose of the minimum wage and the economic consequences of raising it, virtually every Rhode Island business represented by a trade association opposed it.

The Rhode Island House Committee on Labor heard three bills seeking to raise the minimum wage:

• H7770, from Representative David Bennett (Democrat, District 20, Warwick, Cranston), would increase the minimum hourly wage commencing January 1, 2029, by an amount equal to the total percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers (CPI-U) for the Northeast Region for the calendar year 2027;
• H7769, from Representative Jenni Furtado (Democrat, District 64, East Providence, Pawtucket) would set the minimum wage for 2027 at $20 per hour; and,
• H7771, from Representative Enrique Sanchez (Democrat, District 9, Providence), would set the minimum wage for 2027 at $24 per hour.

Here’s the video, edited to exclude bills and discussions not related to the three minimum wage bills: House Labor - Minimum Wage - March 18, 2026

Proponents, including labor representatives, public health professionals, and economic justice advocates, argued that the current minimum wage was not a living wage, forcing full-time workers into poverty and creating health inequities. They contended that raising the wage would provide economic stability, stimulate local economies, and offer dignity to workers.

Opponents, primarily small-business coalitions and a hospitality association represented by well-connected, high-priced lobbyists, argued that significant wage increases would hinder small businesses already facing high costs. They warned, without evidence, that raising the minimum wage would lead to higher prices, inflation, and job losses, making Rhode Island less economically competitive.

But the core of the opponents’ argument is that most businesses in Rhode Island cannot survive if they are required to pay their workers a wage sufficient to lift them out of poverty. In other words, an “economically competitive” Rhode Island depends on the exploitation of low-income workers.

Among the lobbyists present to make these arguments were:

• Jason Martesian, representing the Rhode Island Business Coalition;
• William Walsh, representing the Northern Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce, the Rhode Island Builders Association, the Rhode Island Hospitality Association (RIHA), the Rhode Island Marine Trade Association (RIMTA), and the Construction Industries of Rhode Island;
• Robert Goldberg, representing the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce; and,
• Ryan Moot, manager of Government Affairs at RIHA, who doesn’t appear to be registered as a lobbyist.

Some business owners, such as David Levesque of Brewed Awakenings, also spoke in opposition:

“I don’t know how many of you guys actually sign the front of a check, but I do. And many of the businesses that I work with also believe in what I’m about to say: You guys are trying to push a minimum wage so we can have a livable wage. Well, what is a livable wage? What’s it for you? What’s it for you? It’s different for everybody.

“I can tell you, when my daughter started working for me a year and a half ago, at 15 years old, she wasn’t worth $15 an hour. She had no experience. She hadn’t worked before, but you required me to pay her $15 an hour. So the worker that’s been with me longer, eight, nine, 10, or 20 years… We can’t afford to pay more when we’re forced to pay an entry-level worker an unacceptably high wage. There needs to be an entry-level wage.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Dave Levesque is the founder of the League of Rhode Island Business (LORIB), a statewide political action committee with 40 subsidiary PACs in every Rhode Island city and town, including Charlestown. Levesque is pro-MAGA and Trump, as well as bitterly opposed to gun control and taxes on the wealthy. His PAC seeks to unseat virtually every Democratic woman legislator in South County, as detailed HERE.

War on terror

Truly stable genius

March 24: Discussion with indigenous author at Tomaquag

CRMC Denies Westerly Couple’s Application to Redo Seawall

Stones unturned

By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff

How many stones can you replace in a seawall before it becomes a new wall?

Five percent? Ten? What if the stones are almost twice the size?

That was the subject of debate between commissioners on the Coastal Resources Management Council and a waterfront property owner.

James and Cheryl Chrones own, via a family trust, the last house on Atlantic Avenue in Westerly before the street turns into sandy beach. Like many houses dotting Rhode Island’s shoreline, this one has a 400-foot revetment, a seawall that has existed in some form or another since 1938.

The water in front of the Atlantic Avenue home is designated as Type 1 waters by CRMC; it’s meant for conservation only, and shoreline-hardening structures like seawalls aren’t allowed. It’s why coastal regulators have gone back and forth with the Quidnessett Country Club in North Kingstown over its illegal seawall.

But there’s a catch: the Chrones’ seawall is grandfathered in because it predates the formation of CRMC by more than three decades. So, while state regulations say they can’t expand it or create a new wall, they are allowed to keep the current one and put in applications to maintain it.

Since 1993, the Chrones have put in seven other, separate CRMC applications for seawall maintenance, including an emergency permit following Superstorm Sandy to replace riprap and repair a concrete patio.

Thinking about switching from Medicare Advantage to Medicare/Medigap?

In Switching to Original Medicare, Beware of Medigap Plan Refusals

Michelle Andrews 

It’s open enrollment season for Medicare Advantage, when people currently enrolled in private managed-care plans can either sign up for a new one or switch to original Medicare through March 31.

But there’s a catch: If people want to move to original Medicare and buy a supplemental Medigap insurance plan to cover some out-of-pocket costs, they may not be able to. Medigap insurers can generally refuse coverage to applicants whose medical history or current health problems might make them expensive to cover, a process called medical underwriting.

“We really want people to factor that in,” said Kata Kertesz, managing policy attorney at the Center for Medicare Advocacy. “If someone is in a Medicare Advantage plan for several years and then wants to switch to original Medicare, they may find they can’t switch and also get a Medigap plan.”

There are many reasons people might want to trade their MA plan for traditional Medicare. Although MA managed-care plans are typically cheaper and offer benefits not available in original Medicare, such as coverage for vision and hearing services, they have smaller provider networks than the original program and, sometimes, extensive prior authorization requirements.

In addition, as Medicare Advantage plan profits have sagged in recent years, a growing number of plans are pulling out of areas they used to serve, leaving members with fewer options. This year, an estimated 1 in 10 MA plan members will be forced out of their plans for this reason, according to a study published in JAMA in February.

“We saw some Medicare Advantage plans that just left the market completely and stopped issuing plans,” said Emily Whicheloe, education director at the Medicare Rights Center.

For those considering a switch to original Medicare, getting a Medigap plan can be tricky. Federal law provides a one-time, six-month opportunity for people 65 or older and newly covered by Medicare Part B to sign up for any Medigap plan without underwriting. After that initial sign-up period ends, however, there are fewer coverage guarantees.

But some do exist. Here are a few key circumstances and time frames when people are guaranteed a Medigap plan without having to undergo underwriting:

Pope Leo to Iran War Architects: ‘Cease Fire’

Trump is as likely to listen to Pope Leo than he did Pope Francis

Olivia Rosane for Common Dreams

This is an actual Trump post from May 2025

Pope Leo XIV called for a ceasefire in the Middle East on Sunday, in his most direct appeal for peace since the US and Israel launched a war on Iran on February 28.

While the pope did not mention either US President Donald Trump or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by name, he directly addressed those driving hostilities.

“On behalf of the Christians of the Middle East and all women and men of good will, I appeal to those responsible for this conflict,” Leo said, according to The Associated Press. 

“Cease fire so that avenues for dialogue may be reopened. Violence can never lead to the justice, stability, and peace that the people are waiting for.”

The remarks came following his recital of the Angelus Prayer from the Vatican at 12:00 pm local time.

“Some claim to involve the name of God in these deadly decisions, but God cannot be enlisted by darkness.”

‘One Person Cannot Tear Our Movement Down,’ Farmworkers Say of César Chávez Revelations

The danger of revering heroes

Jessica Corbett for Common Dreams

“Our collective power is what defines us and is our movement, and one person cannot tear our movement down,” Alianza Nacional De Campesinas said in the wake of The New York Times reporting Wednesday on multiple sexual abuse allegations against late Mexican-American labor leader César Chávez.

“As a farmworker women’s organization, many of us have experienced or witnessed the sexual abuse and silence women endure in many aspects of our lives,” the group continued, adding that “we are deeply troubled and devastated” to learn about the reporting, and “we stand with Dolores Huerta, Ana Murguía, and Debra Rojas, who have bravely shared their painful stories.”

Huerta, cofounded with Chávez a group that went on to become the labor union United Farm Workers (UFW). In her comments to the Times and a separate statement, the 95-year-old described two separate encounters with Chávez that led to pregnancies: “The first time I was manipulated and pressured into having sex with him... The second time I was forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped.”

Murguía told the Times that Chávez molested her for four years, beginning when she was 13. Rojas said she was 12 when Chávez first groped her breasts in the same office where abused Murguía. When Rojas was 15, the newspaper reported, “he arranged to have her stay at a motel during a weekslong march through California, she said, and had sexual intercourse with her—rape, under state law, because she was not old enough to consent.”

The reporting has sparked a wave of responses from labor groups, elected officials, and others who have expressed support for survivors and stressed, as Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan wrote Friday, that “the rightness of the movement for the dignity of workers, for the rights and respect of Latinos, and for a future in which there is more freedom and possibility for poor people... cannot be tarnished by Chávez’s behavior.”

UFW Foundation said this week that “as a women-led organization that exists to empower communities, the allegations about abusive behavior by César Chávez go against everything that we stand for.”

Describing the alleged abuse as “shocking, indefensible and something we are taking seriously,” the UFW Foundation also announced that it “has cancelled all César Chávez Day activities this month.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: I spent a day with Cesar Chavez when he visited Providence in May 1972. I was a young organizer of 23 and was picked to be part of a contingent who essentially served as human shields. Cesar had gotten many death threats. I was mostly within an arm's length of him and liked and admired him at the time, but much less so now. - Will Collette