Ian Welsh – The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

What I Released This Week

Election night kind of overwhelmed me; I’m not used to staying up that late! Will be more productive next week.

The Democrats are the dogs who caught the car and think they’re really fast and have strong jaws when in reality voter rage at Trump’s losing war on Iran, data center madness, the ongoing genocide in Gaza virtually guaranteed the opposition party a huge win.

It appears neither the House nor the Senate will overthrow the corrupt and incompetent leadership, so I’m not especially optimistic about the future, but it’s nice to see that American voters can still throw a tantrum and get noticed, however briefly.

Live Thread: US 2026 Midterms Election Night Live Thread — Naked Capitalism, Nov. 3rd.
Coffee Break: 2026 Elections: A Dem Betrayal, Trump Bargaining, and GOP Cheating? — Naked Capitalism, Nov. 2nd.

From me as Nate Wilcox at the Let It Roll Podcast

The From the Beginning Project is hitting a fun patch. The 1930s were a spectacular decade for dance music. A massive depression will do that, and the U.S. was culturally potent like it had never been, combining cultures and rhythms in a way that got the whole world’s attention.

Mambo hit New York hard in the 1930s, 40s and 50s: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 5.2 — Let It Roll, Nov. 6th.
Milton Brown Mentored Bob Wills and Invented Western Swing: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 5.1 — Let It Roll, Nov. 4th.
Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra and the Swing Era: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 4.12 — Let It Roll, Nov. 2nd.

It’s Ian’s annual fundraiser. This allows us to cover the changeover of hegemony from America to China, environmental collapse, internal US fascism, what a better society would look like, Gaza, AI, the coming stock market crash and various other issues. As of this writing we’ve raised about $9,460 out of a $14,500 goal, from 75 people. It’d be great if you can help out (please don’t donate if your financial situation is dire.) You can Subscribe or Donate here or contact Ian at admin-at-ianwelsh-dot-net if you need another way to donate (mail, usually. A lot of cash apps don’t work in Canada.)

From me as Nate Wilcox — The MMA Draw & the Mad Squabbles Show

Will TKO Blame Dana White for Trump’s Midterm Disaster? — The Mad Squabbles Show (YouTube), Nov. 4th.

What I’ve Been Reading and Watching

Dems

The Money Behind Hakeem Jeffries — Sludge. “Executives at Anduril and Palantir, crypto industry advocates, and investors giving through AIPAC helped fund the Democratic leader preparing to become speaker.”
In the middle of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer teamed up with Mike Johnson and Mitch McConnell to invite their boss, Benjamin Netanyahu to give a speech in Congress. During the speech, they gave him 28 standing ovations. — @GenXGirl1994.
House Democrats “inundated” with anti-Jeffries calls — Axios.
The Private Equity Lobbyist Network Surrounding Chuck Schumer — Sludge. “Blackstone, Apollo, and private equity trade groups employ Schumer alumni to push their interests in Washington as progressive senators push for tougher restrictions on the industry.”
The Angie Nixon Caucus — The American Prospect. “Meet Victoria Broderick and LaKesha Womack, two Southern Bernie broads who flipped two blood-red seats, while spending all of $155,000—between them.”

Will the Democrats Betray Us Again? — The Chris Hedges Report (YouTube).

AI Bubble

OpenAI Is Screwed — The Tech Report (YouTube).

What Are All Those Data Centers For — Inside China Business (YouTube).

WTF Just Happened to Global Markets? — Eurodollar University (YouTube).

Crypto

North Korea Robbed Binance — Patrick Boyle (YouTube).

Deep State

9/11 as a Structural Deep Event — Peter Dale Scott. “Early on the day of of 9/11 Vice-President Cheney and Defense Secretrary Donald Rumsfeld, while George W. Bush was absent in Florida, implemented the elaborate rules of Continuity of Government (COG), a once once described in Congress without rebuttal as ‘a plan to suspend the American Constitution.’ It was also a plan on which the same pair, Cheney and Rumsfeld, had been working on in secret for two decades – even when both men were outsude government and heading important private corporations.
“I wrote in 2014 that with a few notable exceptions, there has thus far been scant interest in the media and the public in the extraordinary facts that Cheney and Rumsfeld were able to
“1. help plan successfully for constitutional modifications, when they were not in government, and
“2. implement these same changes themselves when back in power.”

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Open Thread

By Ian Welsh

On November 7, 2026

1 Comment

Use this post to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Americans Still Love Billionaires Too Much

By Ian Welsh

On November 6, 2026

18 Comments

We’re about 2 weeks into our annual fundraiser. We’ve raised about $8,955 out of a $14,500 goal from 69 people. This blog is free for everyone to read, and we’ve got about ten thousand visitors a month. Of those about 6K are regulars.

The simplest truth of capitalism is that you get more of what you pay for. Money sends the message and resources required to do things. In most cases your power is tiny, one of millions, but this isn’t like that because the numbers and the need (to keep the blog and Ian running) are relatively small.

So if you value this blog, if it’s worth having around to you, please consider Subscribing or Donating.

There was a fair bit of good news during the election, but one vote which went very wrong was California’s vote on a one time wealth tax on billionaires, proposition. It failed 55% against, 45% for.

California’s a fairly “blue” state, but still, Americans won’t tax the rich.

And the simple truth is that nothing significant can be done to fix America as long as it’s an oligopoly: as long as the rich control government. There are some good signs, of course, billionaires spent a lot of money trying to stop the blue wave and failed. Millions were spent against progressive candidates like El-Sayed and failed.

But money is what gives oligarchs power: power to bribe, power to fund intellectuals and propagandists, power to control government for their own ends. As the famous Princeton oligarchy study detailed, the opinions of ordinary people have no effect on policy.

The bottom line is fairly simple: since elites don’t experience most of the shit parts of life in the US, they don’t care. Education sucks? So what, their kids go to private school. Healthcare sucks? So what, they can bypass the crap and get the best care. Security at airports and a crappy flight experince? They don’t go through the same security, since they fly on private jets.

Welfare keeps getting cut because they want the money for other priorities and they control most politicians. AI could steal everyone’s IP except a few groups with lawyers, same reason. Food prices don’t effect them, it could go up ten times, and it’d be a rounding error to the expenses.

In general, they certainly don’t want low prices, because high prices benefit them more than harm them. Cost of living? If you’re rich, it’s irrelevant.

The most fundamental rule of good societies is that people with power and wealth can’t be allowed to buy their way out of the experience of ordinary people. No private schools. No private jets. No private health care that is unaffordable to ordinary people. No wars that they or their children don’t fight in themselves.

As long as the rich have a lock on political power they will control the US and until a majority of people understand that and vote and act as if rich people are the enemy, life will keep getting worse. It’s that simple.

JD Vance Continues To Maneuver Towards His 2028 Run

By Ian Welsh

On November 5, 2026

15 Comments

Vance published a long piece on why Republicans lost the elecctions. It’s… not insane and more correct than not. First: Republicans voted Democratic.

I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we’re going to shock the world? “No,” he told me. “We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us.”

Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.

Second.

(a pollster he trusts) saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:

1) End the war

2) Focus on cost of living/inflation

3) Put America First

4) Change our relationship to Israel

This is pretty accurate overall. He’s sticking hard to anti-immigration policies though:

In the next few months, there’s going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I’m open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.

And his summary:

The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.

If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest.

But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there. I remain hopeful about our country.

To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.

Again, not insane. And very obviously with an eye towards a Presidential run in 2028. Vance has done this sort of thing all through his time as Vice President: support the President while making it clear he doesn’t agree with everything Trump has done. He’s trying to thread a needle: Trump’s hard core supporters won’t tolerate dissing Trump, but if he wants to win both the primary and the election, he needs to create distance between himself and Trump.

In 2024 the moment I knew that Harris wouldn’t win (remember, she was ahead for much of the campaign) was when she was asked if she’d have done anything differently than Biden and she said no. People were unhappy with Biden, and that was the moment she put a gun in her electoral chances and pulled the trigger.

Vance isn’t that stupid.

It’s my annual fundraiser. This allows us to cover the changeover of hegemony from America to China, environmental collapse, internal US fascism, what a better society would look like, Gaza, AI, the coming stock market crash and various other issues. As of this writing we’ve raised about $8,955 out of a $14,500 goal, from 69 people. It’d be great if you can help out (please don’t donate if your financial situation is dire.) You can Subscribe or Donate here or contact me at admin-at-ianwelsh-dot-net if you need another way to donate (mail, usually. A lot of cash apps don’t work in Canada.)

I think that in some ways Vance is much more dangerous than Trump. Vance is much more disciplined and a lot smarter (this doesn’t mean he’s brilliant, I’ve had dogs who were smarter than Trump.) But he’s a creature of Peter Thiel, he’s xenophobic despite having an Indian wife and he’s willing to do anything to grab the brass ring.

It’ll be interesting to see if he can thread the needle and it’ll be interesting to see how much support Trump keeps losing (since the economy is just going to keep getting worse until a few months after he actually ends the war with Iran in a way that gets them to stop blockading the Strait.)

Overall I am not optimistic, the fundamental problem in the US is that the majority of people in power are delusional. They think that this is America in the 90s or 50s, at the height of its power, not a nation that has made itself abhorrent to most of the rest of the world, shipped its industry to China and which can’t even re-arm properly without materials from China which are increasingly subject to sanctions.

America needs a reset and I doubt Vance is the one to do it.

Democrats Take The Senate & House

By Ian Welsh

On November 4, 2026

25 Comments

Not surprising:

These results are from about five AM. They will change, but the overall results are firm.

The first thing to watch for, though it’s a way out, will be what the Senate rules are, in particular, the filibuster rules. If the filibuster is kept, Democrats aren’t serious about challenging Trump or changing anything.

Folks, it’s my annual fundraiser. This fundraiser keeps the lights on. Everything here is free, there’s no ads, I don’t take sponsored posts and I don’t write pro-Israeli propaganda, even though I’ve been offered money (which I could really use) to sell my soul and betray my readers. If you can give, if it won’t cause you hardship, & you value this site and the writing here, please Subscribe or Donate. So far we’ve raised $9,110 from 71 people, meaning we’re a bit over half way to our goal.

The second question is whether “designated villain” where just enough Dems vote with Republicans to stall anything popular but against the elite consensus is used. I’d be very surprised if it isn’t, but I’d be happy to be wrong.

The election result is primarily about cost of living and the Iran war, which are mostly the same thing to Americans. I have a hard time imaging Democrats actually Congressional power over war making or the purse to stop Trump’s war. They certainly won’t do a damn thing about Israel and its genocide.

I don’t actually think this election matters very much. Most of what Trump does that is objectionable is based on Presidential powers, either innate or which were delegated to the Presidency by various Congresses. Again, if Democrats start taking back the powers that were delegated, you’ll know they’re serious, if not, they aren’t. It’s that simple.

I’ve seen some people suggest that if the Dems don’t do anything significant, it might lead to a third party. I doubt it: Americans have been sheep for generations. Again, happy to be wrong, and hope I am.

We can expect a fair bit of screaming at Trump and meaningless votes. He might get impeached in the House, but I doubt the Senate will actually remove him even if so.

America is determined to go down, to lose what remains of its hegemony, except over Latin America (that’ll take another 20 years or so), and to continue impoverishing the mass of citizens so it can mint more billionaires.

Everything else is, sadly, noise, which is why I don’t cover US politics much these days.

US 2026 Midterms Open Thread

By Ian Welsh

On November 3, 2026

15 Comments

Use this thread to talk about the American elections. If you want to talk about other things, use Saturday’s thread instead.

Update 1: massive swing to Democrats.

Update 2: And, despite all the screaming, Jews are still primarily democratic voters:

Update 3: Projections show Susan Collins losing in Maine. (Entirely a matter of Trump’s tariff policies + Iran war. He lost the seat.)

Bullshit Stats: Indian Poverty

By Ian Welsh

On November 3, 2026

12 Comments

So, India and Indian chuds are doing a victory round because supposedly Indian poverty has massively dropped to 2.6%. Supposedly 496 million Indians were lifted out of poverty.

What’s the poverty threshold? Making over $3/day. You are still poor, even in India, at $3 a day. As Cateleya says:

Poverty depends on where you draw the line At the $3 threshold, only 2.6% are poor. At the $4.20 threshold, 16.1% are poor.

And, for the record, at $4.20 a day you’re still in poverty.

Some other stats:

Yeah.

Folks, it’s my annual fundraiser. This fundraiser keeps the lights on. Everything here is free, there’s no ads, I don’t take sponsored posts and I don’t write pro-Israeli propaganda, even though I’ve been offered money (which I could really use) to sell my soul and betray my readers. If you can give, if it won’t cause you hardship, & you value this site and the writing here, please Subscribe or Donate. So far we’ve raised $8,780 from 68 people, meaning we’re a bit over half way to our goal.

Anyway, this is why I don’t trust stats I don’t investigate. There are stats that are somewhat accurate, for sure, but if you eyeball and number and you think it’s off, it probably is. CPI is bullshit in almost every country. Poverty and extreme poverty stats are almost all bullshit as well, except from China, which actually has lifted people out.

As for India, it’s a wreck. Modi’s policies have been terrible, starting with demonetization, when he took all large bills out of circulation to defeat corruption and hit the grey and black markets. Seemed like a good idea, but it empowers middlemen to take an electronic cut, and those markets were huge in India.

And, surprise, it didn’t make any real difference to corruption.

Further, AI is hitting offshoring hard, since companies are keen to replace employees, even cheap Indian speaking employees, with it. This is hurting all those Indian customer service centers, but also a lot of offshored programmers and so on. India went hard into being an outsourcing center, and unlike China mostly hasn’t used it to uplift their population as a whole, create a domestic market or build its own domestic industry meant for consumption in India. It’s a financialized, extremely corrupt state, with government full of criminals, authoritarian and ineffective.

I still see no reason to believe that India will be “the next China”. Yes, they have a lot of young people, but they don’t have much else going for them. Even without onrushing climate change I don’t think they’d make it, with global warming and onrushing water and rainfall issues, I see no hope. While India won’t be the first country hit hard by climate change (various Island states, Bangladesh, etc…) it’s going to be the first major country to be hit hard unless the Atlantic current flips sooner than expected (in which case Europe is beyond screwed._ I fully expect mass famines withing twenty years, and hundreds of millions dead.

I hope I’m wrong, but I see few signs that suggest otherwise.

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US Elections & The Iran War

By Ian Welsh

On November 2, 2026

11 Comments

I haven’t written a lot about the US elections. The Democrats will win, since Trump has completely trashed the US economy with his policies and caused a cost of living crisis (you ain’t seen nothin’yet), the only question is how large the Democratic wave is.

Democrats controlling Congress is unlikely to make much of a difference. Even if they have enough votes they won’t remove Presidential war powers, even though constitutionally those belong to Congress and were given by Congress to the President. Likewise Trump’s signature policies of erratic tariffs with no plan and violent immigration enforcement will not cease.

It’s hard to predict Trump, but the evidence suggests another attack on Iran immediately after the election. The US has been shifting massive resources to the Middle East in preparation. The Iranians, once again, seem unlikely to attack first even though they can see the buildup, so I guess they’ll tank the first hit again.

There’s some speculation that Trump may use a nuke on the primary nuclear research and development site in Iran. Tucker:

Under pressure from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Trump administration may be within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran. The target would be Pickax Mountain in central Iran, where Israeli intelligence claims the Iranian government has restarted its nuclear enrichment program. No conventional weapon in the American arsenal can penetrate 300 feet of solid granite to destroy the tunnels where enrichment is supposedly taking place. The only military option is a nuclear strike.

Netanyahu has been pushing hard for one. “Bibi calls Trump about it every day,” says an informed observer. Netanyahu is cornered and desperate. After last week’s election results, he can’t form a government unless Trump intervenes directly in Israeli politics and brokers a deal with other parties that gives Netanyahu 61 seats in the Knesset. Otherwise, he is out as prime minister and on his way to ignominy, investigations and possibly jail. Netanyahu must stay close to Trump. He needs this war.

It’s hard to overstate how bad this could be. Even a conventional attack appears likely to provoke a massive response from the Iranians, and they’ve been warning that they’ll hit targets they avoided last time, especially if the US hits Iranian oil infrastructure.

It’s my annual fundraiser. This allows us to cover the changeover of hegemony from America to China, environmental collapse, internal US fascism, what a better society would look like, Gaza, AI, the coming stock market crash and various other issues. As of this writing we’ve raised about $8,755 out of a $14,500 goal, from 67 people. It’d be great if you can help out (please don’t donate if your financial situation is dire.) You can Subscribe or Donate here or contact me at admin-at-ianwelsh-dot-net if you need another way to donate (mail, usually. A lot of cash apps don’t work in Canada.)

If there’s a nuclear attack, all bets are off. The Iranians will retaliate with everything they have, and they’ve said they’ll take out Israel’s nuclear facilities and its desalination plants, plus hit US companies in the Gulf, possibly cut the underwater internet cables, and likely take out as much oil and industrial infrastructure in Gulf countries as possible.

Downstream, once the US uses nukes, everyone else will feel much freer to use them, and everyone will want nukes of their own as protection, since the taboo will have been broken. It’s one of the first steps towards a new war, possibly even a nuclear war.

This is sheerest insanity, and the people pushing for this are absolute scum, and in most cases stupid. (Netanyahu is not stupid, he cares more about himself than Israel or anything else. He’s completely selfish and genocidal.)

If there isn’t an attack my judgment is that Iran will eventually force a peace more on their terms than America’s. The economic pressure is getting severe, and oil and fertilizer stockpiles are dwindling. They’ve been much more aggressively enforcing their blockade and unlike before, they’re actually destroying tankers. Before they usually just disabled them.

If there is an attack, Iran will still “win” but no one, including them, is going to come out of this without catastrophic economic damage.

The world is on the brink. US elections will not change that. Nothing will seriously change until America admits it has lost the war and makes peace on terms that reflect that.

That remains the most likely outcome, but the longer it takes for America to admit it’s loss, the worse the suffering will be. I repeat my advice to stock up on fuel, food, medicine and other goods (motor oil, etc…)

As for America, until there’s an actual opposition party, elections will simply shuffle the chairs on the deck and inexorable American decline will continue.