Sunshine State Iowegian

[Joe Kent @joekent16jan19]

Israel is publicly distancing themselves from what they’re calling our “contained campaign”. Notice the language their cabinet officials are using and what it implies.

This is Israel publicly signaling that they want to expand the war, and that when they do they won’t be coordinating that escalation with the U.S. It’s worth noting that the phrasing of these public statements affords President Trump plausible deniability if/when Israel escalates.

One might be wondering, how can Israel escalate without us when the catalyst for this disaster was that Israel needed U.S. military support? Remember—just last week Netanyahu was hinting, again publicly, about Israel’s nuclear capability, which has never officially been confirmed.

At the same time, in the last 24hrs reports from Israeli intelligence claim that the Iranians have moved their enriched uranium to the heavily fortified “Pickaxe” Mountain—providing Israel with a justification for potentially using a nuclear weapon.

Israel must be meaningfully restrained. Failing to do so means we are likely comfortable with allowing Israel to use a nuclear weapon so long as we can claim we had nothing to do with it.

If you think the potential for a nuclear weapon seems far-fetched, play out the options for a military solution in Iran: we don’t have enough troops to invade Iran, so using nuclear weapon becomes the next logical step. This would be catastrophic.

This is why we must immediately restrain Israel, pull out of the region, & use economic diplomacy to reopen the SOH.

[Joe Kent @joekent16jan19]

We honor our fallen by ending this war & stopping any more of our young men & women from being killed.

We’ve done our retaliation strikes, now it’s time to leave.

This war shouldn’t have started, it will get worse if we attempt to “finish it” any other way than leaving now.

[Martyr Made @martyrmade]

There is no conceivable strategic goal in Iran that was worth this girl’s life.

[Stew Peters @realstewpeters]

MAY 12, 2026: The Range Officer in Charge of SEAL Team Six, Rob O’Neill, told me he immediately knew Charlie Kirk wasn’t shot.

Where were @paramounttactcl and his merry band of FEDS to shit on O’Neill and try to discredit his expert opinion?

[Bret Weinstein @BretWeinstein]

The social media phenomenon surrounding the murder of Charlie Kirk behaves exactly like the one that existed in the early days of Covid. The replies and quote-tweets here are telling. I’m actually shocked.

[Rothmus 🏴 @Rothmus]

We’re all conservatives for what we want to protect.

Even the most radical revolutionary doesn’t stay radical once the revolution wins. The day after victory, he suddenly has something to defend in his newfound power, institutions, and the new order he helped create.

So the man who tore everything down becomes the one who now guards it.

Power changes the incentives. What began as destruction turns into preservation, because endless upheaval threatens what you’ve just built.

So Arendt’s point is that the true test of a revolution isn’t how fiercely it attacks the old, but whether it can stop attacking long enough to protect something worth keeping.

But unfortunately, it is often the case that the “new” that the revolutions create is never worth conserving.

[Joe Kent @joekent16jan19]

We need to end the war now.

Get our troops out of the region, restrain Israel, and focus on economic negotiations to open the SOH—and now the Bab Al Mandeb—or we will face a major energy crisis.

Keep in mind that we could not militarily defeat the Houthis in 2025. We know we can’t militarily defeat Iran now.

We will certainly not be able to defeat both of them simultaneously.

The reality is that we will end up cutting deals at some point. We always do—remember how we exited Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.

At this point, we know how this plays out. Let’s skip the decades of carnage & cut the deals now.

Tune out the neocons & the Israeli lobby’s tired talking points about WMD—that was bait to get us into this mess. It worked, and look where we’re at: disastrous quagmire, no military solution, our troops in harm’s way all across the region.

Iran currently controls two key energy chokepoints—SOH & BAM. We are better off accepting this and adapting strategically than we are fighting it and losing more. Pulling our troops out tips the scales of leverage in our favor.

Withdraw and reengage diplomatically to resolve the issue in the region that directly impacts Americans: restoring the flow of oil.

President Trump can still declare victory and restore trust with the American people if he has the courage to leave now, before a mass casualty event happens or an economic crisis hits.

That’s why now is the best time to leave & quietly negotiate.

[Handre @Handre]

Envy needs an ideology, and socialism has always been happy to provide one. Mises wrote a whole book about this in 1956, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, and the diagnosis holds up: people who resent the outcomes of voluntary exchange will always search for a doctrine that transforms their resentment into virtue. The woke left found theirs.

Notice what wokeism and socialism share at the root. Both start from the premise that unequal outcomes prove injustice. You earned more than your neighbor? Exploitation. One group outperforms another in median income? Systemic oppression. Neither doctrine ever asks whether people made different choices, took different risks, or produced different value for others. Asking that question would ruin everything, because the entire project depends on assigning blame rather than understanding prices, profit, and loss.

Once you accept that unequal outcomes equal injustice, you need a corrector. Someone powerful. Someone with the authority to override contracts, seize property, and redistribute according to a moral hierarchy the planners themselves define. That job description has exactly one applicant: the state. This is why the woke activist and the socialist always arrive at the same policy desk, demanding rent control in New York, wealth taxes in Sacramento, hiring quotas in every HR department from Seattle to Brussels.

Marcuse and the Frankfurt School figured out decades ago that the Western worker refused to play his assigned role as revolutionary. He got rich instead. Capitalism handed him a car, a house, and air conditioning, and he stopped listening to men promising utopia through expropriation. The revolutionaries needed a new client base. Class became identity, but the machinery stayed identical: oppressor and oppressed, guilt and grievance, revolution and rule.

The love affair with socialism, then, follows logically. Wokeism supplies the moral demand for coercion; socialism supplies the economic apparatus of coercion. Neither can survive in a world of private property and voluntary exchange, because in that world you rise by serving customers, not by capturing committees. Venezuela ran this experiment from 1999 onward. The grocery shelves reported the results.

[John Ʌ Konrad V @johnkonrad]

I grew up poor, raised by a man with an Ivy League degree.

3 luxuries matter:

Home-cooked meals.

A car that starts every time you turn the key.

Two weeks of vacation each year.

Everything else is BE.

And yes, I said luxuries. We ate at one reasonably priced restaurant maybe six times a year. I didn’t even taste sushi until I was in college.

Even those luxuries were limited. Every meal was made with store-brand groceries.

The cars were reliable used cars. Ask AI for “the most reliable used car with the lowest resale value.”

Vacations = free museums, state parks, beaches, battlefields, and camping. No Disney. Hershey or Six Flags maybe once a year.

The essentials?

Clothes: Salvation Army. Honestly, this one sucked, but today Walmart & Target make it easier.

Fixer-upper: I’m talking serious problems. You need a solid foundation, walls & a roof. Everything else can be fixed with Harbor Freight tools, YouTube, and sweat equity. We literally bought an abandoned house in a good neighborhood.

I live in rural Massachusetts. My neighborhood has $1 million homes. I bought an abandoned house and restored it, but just outside my neighborhood there are still homes for $300,000.

Medical: Before settling down, one of you should get a government job with benefits or join the military before having kids.

Time: This is the hardest part. My dad was a firefighter, so he’d work double shifts, then spend his days off repairing the house.

Activities: Boy Scouts, Civil Air Patrol, church choir, church camp, etc. Sign your kids up for free or cheap activities.

Education: Teach your kids everything you know. Read to them for an hour every night.

DAD INTEL: This is the big one. Build a network. Know where to get discounted building materials, who has tools, who’ll loan you a trailer or skid steer. Firefighters, cops, National Guard members, tradesmen & church communities have always been great for this, but those networks are disappearing.

Family: Live within three hours of relatives if you can. Someday you’ll need emergency babysitting or another guy to help lift something heavy.

What to avoid like the plague:

NO COSTCO: Unless you’re extremely disciplined, you’ll buy more than you need.

NO HOME DEPOT: Lumber isn’t always the best value, tools are overpriced, and those marble countertops start looking “necessary.” Formica from a local building supply works just fine.

NO FLIGHTS. We won a trip to London when I was five. It nearly bankrupted us. No flights anywhere.

Fast food. This was my dad’s biggest weakness because it was cheap and easy.

Again: NO RESTAURANTS. They add up fast, and you’re paying for convenience more than nutrition.

No drinking or drugs. Bad decisions usually start with small compromises.

No expensive hobbies. Your hobby is fixing the house, improving the yard, and coaching your kid’s Little League team. Fish from shore if you want a hobby. Dig for worms. You don’t need $15 lures.

No subscriptions. You don’t need Netflix. I have plenty of money now and didn’t even own a TV until recently. You don’t need home security cameras if you own an inexpensive firearm. You don’t need Uber or constant Amazon deliveries.

Now the big one:

You’ll feel like shit. You’ll think you’ve failed as a dad. You’ll envy the families with nicer houses, newer cars, and bigger vacations.

Don’t.

This is not a competition.

Your job is to be a great father, love your wife, raise capable kids, and become a productive member of society.

The antidote is gratitude.

Go to church. Every Sunday, thank God for what you have. Gratitude is critical.

It also helps if your work serves the public: firefighter, police officer, teacher, construction worker, sanitation worker, military.

Mental health problems? Start with the basics. Stay physically active, journal for 30 minutes a day & pray a full rosary.

“But John, that’s extreme.”

Maybe. But you’ll still be better off than 80% of Europoors.

[Joe Kent @joekent16jan19]

I agree with what you’re saying, if it were up to me we would not be in this war, but once we are in it & under fire we have to hit back if our troops are killed. Not hitting back invites more attacks— that’s simply the nature of war.

Also, I was certain the retaliation strikes were going to happen so they weren’t worth arguing over, it’s what we do next that matters the most. I’m advocating for us to use the retaliation strikes as covering fire for our withdrawal.

[Joe Kent @joekent16jan19]

In any chaotic situation, the side that restores order wins.

Ending the escalation cycle w/Iran and restoring the free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz must be our top priority—not only for the sake of our economy, but for America’s standing as a global superpower.

There is no military solution to this conflict. The air campaigns are not working & a ground campaign would be a strategic disaster, producing heavy American casualties while further destabilizing the region.

Continued escalation only worsens the damage to the U.S., our partners, and the global economy.

Killing the Ayatollah has backfired: instead of fracturing the regime, it’s unified Iranians—including many who previously opposed the IRGC & the government— to now rally around the flag and the IRGC.

After months of bloodshed, basic human nature combined with nationalism & Shia martyrdom culture dictate that meaningful concessions from the Iranians via diplomacy are highly unlikely while U.S. forces remain within striking distance.

We restore order by ending the conflict on our terms: deprive Iran of military targets to strike by removing our troops, bases, & naval forces from the area.

Our bases in the region are liabilities & relics of the past—abandoning them is not retreat, it’s strategic adaptation to modern warfare.

This move removes Iran’s primary justification for disrupting shipping in the SOH and for attacking its neighbors. We can then offer the carrot: sanctions relief in exchange for freedom of navigation in the SOH.

The war has changed the region. Iran has emerged as a major regional power—the sooner we recognize this reality and adjust our posture accordingly, the stronger our position will be.

[VanRaalte, Agro-Nationalist @AgroNationalism]

Our country is under foreign occupation that is liquidating our economy and enslaving us. They're bringing in tens of millions of our enemies to directly target our families.

You aren't going to 'individual action' yourself out of a domestic war.

Collectivise, or die.

[Bret Weinstein @BretWeinstein]

We, the governed, did not consent to mass surveillance. Civil disobedience is morally justified. The technocratic authoritarians can flock right off with their “license plate readers.” We know this isn’t about our safety. It’s about control. We see you.

[Fr Calvin Robinson ©️®️ @calvinrobinson]

This event marked the end of Western Civilisation.

The Bolsheviks have been in power ever since. Few today even recognise it.

[Brad Miller @BradMiller1010]

Now would be a good time to study up on Operation GLADIO.

Much of what is happening now is straight out of the GLADIO 'strategy of tension' textbook. It isn't new. Frame the left as the source of all problems. Blame the left as communist sympathizers connected to the CCP. Create tension. Public outcry (primarily from the right) for more 'security' from the govt then permits gradual implementation of more authoritarian control measures.

For the morons out there that don't realize two things can be true at once: crazy leftist loons do exist AND govts do also engineer terror, crime, & authoritarian control measures. The existence of the former in no way suggests the latter isn't a well-known operational pathway used by govts around the world to include our own.

Yes, crazy leftist extremism can be real and it can be criminal. No one disputes that. However, criminal behavior is often used by govts as a pretext for policy initiatives that would otherwise be politically untenable due to public resistance. In fact, 'organic' craziness from the left can, and often is, co-opted for exactly these purposes.

None of the above implies that I don't believe in security, the rule of law or the idea of free & fair elections. I just know that free & fair elections haven't existed for a very long time in this country.

Much like the GLADIO of the second half of the last century, this one may become a component of a constructed Cold War 2.0 with China.

[Bret Weinstein @BretWeinstein]

.@elonmusk makes an excellent point intuitively here, but it’s the same one I make when I say: we should want an economy where you don’t make a profit for destroying wealth. If your product is net harmful, you shouldn’t get rich selling it.

Producing vaccines that do more harm than good, addicting other people’s kids to porn or drugs, making bad loans and then selling them back to the market… these are just a few examples of profitable activities that destroy wealth.

I’m not making a policy point. The policy question is at least difficult, and may be impossible. But there is an obvious moral principle: Just as you shouldn’t make laws you wouldn’t want to be subjected to, you shouldn’t offer products or services you wouldn’t want your own children to use.

[Jeremy @jeremyct]

My wife and I got into it last night about the grocery bill.

I pulled up an old Target order from February 2020.

28 items. $64.50.

Added every single one back to the cart just to see.

$158.30.
Same 28 items. Same store. Same cart.
$93.80 more.

In five years.
We didn’t buy more.
Didn’t upgrade anything.
Didn’t add a single extra item.

Just needed the same things we always needed.

They told us inflation was transitory. They told us it was under control. They told us the economy was strong.

Our cart didn’t get any of those memos.
145% increase in five years.

Not one member of Congress has looked at a grocery receipt in decades.

And it shows.

[Chief_Engineer @ChiefEngineerCE]

They Dont Work For You- In fact they want us to work for them..

What do the globalists want?

They want a world with no real privacy, where you own nothing and act happy (via credit score), where all your data is captured and controlled, where movement is restricted and approved, and where a small elite class manages every aspect of life through technology and regulation.

What would they need to build that system?

They would need the physical and digital infrastructure that tracks and controls people without looking like obvious tyranny at first.

So with innovation technology and policy where are we at?

Here is the check off list of what has already happened or is advancing:

✓ Remote kill switches in cars justified as safety and emissions rules.
✓ Cameras and license plate readers blanketing streets for crime and traffic control.
✓ AI systems capturing data from phones apps cars and public spaces under convenience and security pretexts.
✓ Digital IDs and CBDC pilots rolling out for modern banking.
✓ Election integrity weakened while mail-in and non-citizen voting debates expand. No save act...
✓ Smart city and 15-minute city plans limiting where and how you can move for sustainability.
✓ Big Beautiful Bill dictating per mileage tracking of vehicles
✓ Data Plants populating Wyoming and the more sparsely populated areas

One day we wake up and the system is all coordinated, locked into place, our income tied to accepting it, and we are prisoners to it unable to vote our way out of it unless we act now.

They Dont Work For You.

If you have seen these pieces going up in your area drop your observations in the comments. Like share and bookmark this if you see how the parts fit together. Follow for more.

[John Ʌ Konrad V @johnkonrad]

Dort makes an excellent point, but all conservatives are missing the cornerstone of masculine warrior ethos, and this is why @SecWar is failing to make the deep cuts we need.

I have debated writing this for months. I’ll get pummeled by all sides because it’s a knife in the heart of the liberal agenda, but also something the vast majority of MAGA gets wrong.

The underlying feminine fear is exclusion.

The feminization of the world is really growing inclusivity and benefits. They want more people in their circle, and they want their circle to have more benefits.

The military has been feminized primarily by giving you more. More pay. More VA benefits. More opportunities for disability pay. More praise for your service. More parking spots at Lowe’s. Better food & barracks.

And by bringing in more people. More active duty, more reserves, more civil service, more consultants, more women, more immigrants.

Masculinity is a subtractive force. The most masculine & effective fighter pilot of the last 50 years was Colonel John Boyd, the “ghetto colonel,” who refused promotion, consulting fees, awards, everything. He lived in a shitty apartment & his wife & kids suffered.

Boyd ruthlessly sought less in life so he could do more. The more comfortable the barracks, the better the food, the greater the praise & ribbons, the more incentive you have to stay & bend the knee.

Boyd refused to bend the knee on any truth because lies get men killed.

Masculinity, at its most fundamental, is the willingness to leave.

That’s it. That’s masculinity.

If they want you to compromise your morals, a GOFO will say:
You have great job security.
Nobody respects civilians.
I was going to put you in for a luxury assignment.
Stay another year and your retirement grows.
It’s scary out there.

And your wife will say:
How will we afford the mortgage?
I’m just getting to know the other wives. What benefits will we lose?

These are legitimate questions. Getting kicked out of an organization or passed over for promotion IS a risk.

Nobody wants to be the male lion off on his own to die.

So Hegseth succeeds in areas like barracks, budgets, top cover & pride in your work because these all sit on the MORE side of the equation which is feminine.

No fem liberal will admit to agreeing on anything, but the cogs will move to spend more.

But why do they want more people & more benefits? Why, nationwide, do they want more immigrants & give them free stuff?

Because feminine power is exclusion.

The more members, the worse exclusion feels.

The bigger the fall, the more histrionics & begging to be let back in which signals to everyone inside the group: never break the rules & leave.

And the group’s number one rule is to consume more resources & benefits.

Don’t believe me?

Which service is the most masculine?

Which spends the least on comfort?

Which complains the least when an individual is sent out alone?

Which doesn’t care if they sleep in the mud or on a rolling ship?

Which never excludes anyone who leaves, but instead says “once a Marine, always a Marine”?

The USMC, of course.

The Marine Corps doesn’t care if you join because it makes its recruiting targets every year, and doesn’t care if you go, because once a Marine, always a Marine.

USMC stripped away all the trappings and advantages of life.

Same with the SEALs. Want out? Go ring that bell. We encourage you. Ringing it gets you more benefits, more comfort, more inclusivity, more time with girls. Stay here & you’ll probably get killed.

Hegseth will fail because masculinity is about slashing headcount, burning bullshit & giving less of nearly everything, in exchange for more freedom of decision & the personal pride of knowing you can survive without anyone.

That’s rugged individualism: nothing but a horse and a Marlboro cigarette on an open plain, because you would not bend the knee & beg to stay in.

Masculinity is wanting less of everything except freedom of action, dignity and self respect.

[Teddy - PolyBackTest.com @Bitcoin_Teddy]

Richard Nixon's brutal truth on happiness that hits harder in 2026:

"The unhappiest people in the world are those in the watering places—south coast of France, Newport, Palm Springs, Palm Beach—parties every night, golf every afternoon, bridge, too much drinking, too much talking, too little thinking. Retired, no purpose."

He saw it decades ago: Endless leisure without struggle isn't paradise—it's a slow death of meaning.

"What makes life mean something is purpose, a goal, the battle, the struggle—even if you don't win it."

In an age of quiet quitting, early retirement dreams, and infinite scrolling... Nixon reminds us: The fight is what keeps the soul alive.

What keeps you in the "battle" right now—even when it's exhausting?