Dudical Rad

[Brett Erickson @BrettErickson28]

I can’t overstate how foolish this would be, nor can I overstate how aggressively this strategy is being pushed inside of Washington. For well more than a month now, I have been highlighting how the Trump Administration has been listening to advisors hellbent on pursuing “maximum pressure” economic warfare.

This is what this bombing campaign would truly be about. Most of the reporting on this highlights how this would target energy infrastructure. In all likelihood, I would imagine this to be “Bridge and Power Plants Day”.

This is, of course, riddled with flaws. Not only have the Iranians proven to be incredibly adept at making rapid repairs to their infrastructure, as well as having contingencies in place for such events, but it would be entirely insane because Iran would immediately devastate Gulf countries by targeting their own energy infrastructure, as well as almost certainly Gulf water desalination that they rely on.

However, it would also not surprise me in the least to see this be nothing more than a bluff. Just in the past few weeks, we have seen a plethora of aircraft, personnel, and equipment move into theater only to… sit there.

But “let’s hope it’s a bluff” is not a plan of action.

As Americans, as citizens of the world, we need to push back on this NOW in the public domain. We’re talking about a massive humanitarian crisis. We’re talking about BLATANT war crimes meant to cause immense civilian suffering.

We CANNOT remain quiet on this.

[Matt Walsh @MattWalshBlog]

This is a penalty reserved for white parents specifically. No inner city black mom or deadbeat black father will ever be arrested, much less sentenced to 15 years in prison, for the savage crimes committed every single day by their kids.

[Jack Prandelli @jackprandelli]

🚨🛢️Goldman Sachs says diesel is now at the epicenter of a global fuel crunch.

Refinery activity is at its lowest seasonal level since the pandemic.

War related outages in Russia and the Middle East + slower Chinese processing, knocked 6.5 million barrels a day off global refining throughput.

Diesel exports are down 35% from a year ago.

European diesel futures just hit a near 3 month high.

🇺🇸2 US refiners just posted their best quarters in years, and it is not a coincidence.

$VLO , Valero: net income of 3.7 billion dollars, the highest since Russia invaded Ukraine. Refining margin per barrel of 23.62 dollars, nearly double a year ago.

$DINO HF Sinclair: net income of 892 million dollars, also the highest since 2022. Refining margin per barrel of 25.95 dollars, up 57.3%.

International buyers abandoned disrupted Gulf supply and came straight to the US Gulf Coast.

Same quarter.
Same cause.

This is what Hormuz looks like from US refineries.

[Uncle Milty’s Ghost @his_eminence_j]

I honestly don’t think @realDonaldTrump is capable of comprehending how much damage his second term has done to his voters and what’s waiting in November.

[cdrsalamander @cdrsalamander]

23% of your physicians are foreign-born because we have artificially strangled medical education opportunities for native born Americans, that is why 23% are foreign born.

[Robert Barnes @barnes_law]

Without #AI Capex (that leads to few jobs), we likely were already in a recession.

[Rosemary Kelanic @RKelanic]

We have completed 5 full months of war. Today is the 1st day of the 6th month.

The U.S. is farther from achieving its objectives. Nuclear concessions from Iran are likely beyond reach. Now Trump’s just trying to fight his way back to zero — a prewar Hormuz — and likely won’t get there.

Forget any “theory of victory” at this point. Trump doesn’t even have a “theory of exit.”

The stable equilibrium isn’t hard to grasp. Iran gets Hormuz and monetizes it. The world pays a little more for reliable flows of Persian Gulf oil. A negative precedent is set against freedom of the seas, but the world moves on.

Can we please skip to the end state now, without getting more people killed?

[Sina Toossi @SinaToossi]

Before the war, Iran’s relative restraint was cited as proof it was weak. Now its assertiveness is attributed to an “inferiority complex.” Perhaps it’s time to spend less effort psychoanalyzing Tehran and more effort understanding its strategic logic.

[Brett Erickson @BrettErickson28]

Of COURSE the blockade will hurt the Iranian economy. BUT, as I said in my recent op-ed in The Hill “Why Another Blockade of Iran is Doomed to Fail”:
“Economic suffering for the sake of economic suffering is not a strategy”.

Economic warfare… the blockade… sanctions… it’s a pretty binary calculus in the Iran War.

It either WORKS and topples the regime/forces major concessions… or it just imposes significant suffering on the very Iranian people we “claimed” to want to help when we started this war.

Every indication points to the fact that Iran is winning this war, will win this war, and the only result of the economic warfare will be entirely unnecessary and avoidable civilian suffering.

[Dave Smith @ComicDaveSmith]

Last year, not a single defender of the 12 day war argued that it would lead to another war in 7 months that resulted in hundreds of dead or wounded Americans, and cost hundreds of billions of dollars. They just viciously smeared everyone who warned of the obvious risks.

[Jejune The Annihilator @Midnight_JJ0]

It's clear that DJT's sole mission is to demoralize and punish his voters. Now we have DJT advertising Loomer's interview with Zelensky. Are we to be spared nothing? There was no way to imagine that Trump would be this terrible: he's no better than Biden and perhaps even worse

[Matt Walsh @MattWalshBlog]

The Shiloh Hendrix case isn't even a close call or a grey area. She was charged and convicted of a crime for saying a word. If that's not a violation of the First Amendment, nothing is. This is one of the most straight forward free speech issues we've seen in a long time.

[Dudical Rad @DudeBadDude]

@FischerKing64 With the "fighting words" basis they may angle toward the precedent that if he had knifed in in response to her uttering the slur he egged-on, that it would have been self-defense

[Lucky Teter @TheMagaHulk]

The man who was filming Shiloh Hendrix was Sharmake Beyle Omar

He was previously charged with raping a 16 year old after she ran away from her foster home.

According to court records, the teenager told law enforcement that Mohamed Omer picked her up at a Rochester Kwik Trip and offered her a place to stay at his trailer, then propositioned and raped her after the teenager told him she would not have sex with him.

The teen said she met Sharmake Omar at the trailer later, and that Omar sexually assaulted her twice.

"The teenager said she was kept at the trailer for just under 24 hours with no food, and the two men took her shoes to prevent her from running away."

The prosecutor didn't attempt to bring the case to trial for 3 years, and the victim aged out of the foster system and left Minnesota, so the charges were dropped.

[Daniel Concannon @TooWhiteToTweet]

Understand this:

One of Shiloh Hendrix's "disorderly conduct" charges is for saying a word to a man AFTER THAT MAN DEMANDED SHE SAY IT.

That's the level of inside-out, upside-down, anti-White insanity we've reached.

[Matt Walsh @MattWalshBlog]

Obviously people can forget things. But the “repressed memory” scam claims that the mind completely buries certain traumatic events and only a trained psychiatric professional can magically uncover these buried memories that your own conscious mind is unaware of. There is simply no evidence for this claim. It’s been debunked many times over. This was litigated very publicly and openly back in the 80s and 90s. And there are many cases, including some very famous ones, of psychiatrists helping their clients to invent false memories. That’s what generally ends up happening when you go to a therapist searching for your “repressed memories.” Again this is all documented.

[Brett Erickson @BrettErickson28]

At some point, the costs to toppling the Iranian government outweighs the benefit.

Even if Trump COULD topple them, despite zero indications that he can… at what cost?

A global depression? Hundreds of millions of people being thrown into a humanitarian crisis? Tens of thousands of Americans being killed?

These aren’t VICTORIES. They’re even greater failures than the Iranian government remaining in place.

[Brett Erickson @BrettErickson28]

President Trump poked the bear. He backed down. And then he poked the bear again.

The Strait of Hormuz is closed. The Bab al-Mandeb is now closed.

And the world pays the price for Trump’s recklessness.

[Daniel Davis Deep Dive @DanielLDavis1]

Shortly before Ansar Allah fired on two Saudi Arabian ships this evening in the Red Sea, President Trump posted this on TruthSocial. It should be painfully evident to everyone, even President Trump, that these threats and military actions will never compel Iran or the Yemen rebels to submit to his will.

It will do the opposite.

Now President Trump is starting to face the reality that the application of fire power is not only failing to achieve positive results, it is making our situation worse, hardening the resolve of our adversaries, and deepening the cost of our increasing strategic failure.

Now it’s not just the Straits of Hormuz that are closed, it’s also the Bab al Mendeb. Things are going to get worse for us financially. President Trump does not appear even close to the point where he realizes more lethal power equals a worsening position.

I think we can expect that he’ll probably escalate even more in the coming days, making our position more intractable and raising the cost on our country, before possibly reality will compel him to change course.