Jeff Carlson

I write about stuff. CFA® Charter-holder

[Jeff Carlson @themarketswork]

Our entire government is corrupt. Not Left. Not Right.

Us versus them

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Follow the money on this one. It is rotten to the core.

The Pentagon just lent $620,000,000 to a tiny North Carolina startup called Vulcan Elements. The company is two years old.

It had fewer than 50 employees.

And three months before the deal was announced, Donald Trump Jr.’s venture firm quietly took a stake in it.

Here is the part the administration tried to bury.

Of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was weighing, Vulcan was the only deal initiated by a top White House aide. That aide was Peter Navarro, a close friend of Trump Jr. The order came down to move fast.

One official put it plainly: The call came from the White House. We have to get this done.

Staff worked late nights to push it through in weeks. Deals like this normally take many months of vetting. And when it closed, Vulcan’s valuation jumped from about 200 million dollars to roughly 2 billion.

A windfall for the investors, including the president’s son.

This is public money. Your money.

Routed through the Pentagon to enrich the president’s family and their friends. The Bush administration’s own chief ethics lawyer called it corruption we pay for.

And there is more coming.

A drone parts company Trump Jr. holds a stake in is also under Pentagon review.

This is not a one-off. It is a pattern. The president’s family is treating the federal Treasury like a private bank, and the bill lands on every taxpayer.

https://t.co/4kB1cZNmlE

[Jeff Carlson @themarketswork]

@EFischberger @buckleycarlson Why wouldn’t you support Platner?

Anyone is better than someone like Susan Collins who votes for Israel every time.

[Jeff Carlson @themarketswork]

@Geiger_Capital @RoKhanna The wealth gap has never been greater than now. That’s massively destabilizing and must be addressed in some fashion.

Our entire Congress is also controlled & compromised and needs to be replaced. Do both.

[Michael T. Lester @MichaelTLester]

Trump is once again talking about Kharg Island and saying we can take it "at a time of our choosing."

He's not wrong. We can get troops on that island.

But he's not telling you what happens next.

Kharg Island is 16 miles off the Iranian coast. Iran has every square foot of it registered for artillery and rocket fire. They've spent the last three months laying anti-personnel mines on the beaches, pre-deploying shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, and moving IRGC troops into hardened positions. They know we might be coming.

Every one of our ships in our assault force is 47 seconds from an Iranian anti-ship cruise missile. Every Marine on that island is within rocket artillery range of a coastline that runs 1,500 miles. We can't suppress that effectively even if we used all of our forces

I flew CH-53E helicopters in Desert Storm, and I know what it means to put troops in a fixed position on a small island with no room to maneuver and no friendly territory within reach. The military term for that is a kill box. The political term is leverage. The human term is a body bag.

The analysts are being careful in how they are framing it. Ryan Brobst and Cameron McMillan of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is about as hawkish as think tanks get, wrote in March that a seizure and occupation "is more likely to expand and extend the war than it is to deliver any sort of decisive victory." Former CENTCOM commander Joseph Votel said troops on the island would be "very vulnerable" and would require massive logistical backup. Malcolm Davis of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute put it more plainly: "I think the Iranians can probably sit back and attack Americans on Kharg Island, and casualties will mount up."

That's the politically correct version.

Here's what they're not saying out loud: Iran has FPV drones. The same camera-equipped drones being used by the millions in Ukraine. If our troops land on that island, Iranian drone footage of American casualties will be on every screen in the world within hours. Trump will own every frame of it.

Iraq bombed Kharg Island for four straight years during the Iran-Iraq War. From 1982 to 1986, but they never put a single soldier on it. They couldn't. The Iranians rebuilt and kept exporting oil. That's the historical record on what "taking Kharg" actually means.

And here's the part that makes even less sense: seizing the island doesn't open the Strait of Hormuz. Kharg is 300 miles from the strait. The Iranians mine the strait from their southern coastline. You'd have to suppress 1,500 miles of Iranian coast to fix that problem. Kharg is just a political symbol, not a solution.

We can bomb it into rubble. We've already struck over 90 targets there. Trump can destroy every oil facility on that island from the air, permanently. That's a real option with real consequences for Iran's economy and real consequences for global oil markets.

But putting Americans on the ground 16 miles from the Iranian coast, surrounded by water, within range of everything Iran has left?

That's not a strategic or tactical military operation. That's just a sacrifice of American lives.

Are you OK with that?

[Mel @Villgecrazylady]

31.0013° N, 35.1445° E.

[Jeff Carlson @themarketswork]

@Villgecrazylady I’m dying 🤣🤣🤣

[Rich Baris THE PEOPLE'S PUNDIT @Peoples_Pundit]

Holy shlit, she did it.

[Jeff Carlson @themarketswork]

@GovMikeHuckabee The blackmailed Israeli ambassador sending out fake AI pictures to justify his psychotic Zionism is peak 2026.

[Jeff Carlson @themarketswork]

@DavidLimbaugh @RuthieBlum Netanyahu is controlling Trump and Israel is responsible for pushing the US into endless wars in the Middle East.

But nice try liar.

[Jeff Carlson @themarketswork]

@netanyahu @AmichaiChikli If the “most moral army in the world” went away there would be peace in the Middle East

[Jeff Carlson @themarketswork]

Why does Trump keep giving exclusives to these Israeli assets?

[Fox News @FoxNews]

BREAKING: President Trump exclusively tells @TreyYingst that the U.S. is getting close to ordering new strikes against Iranian power plants and bridges in response to “tapping the United States along” when it comes to drawn out negotiations.

The U.S. launched overnight strikes against Iranian-linked targets after a U.S. Apache helicopter was downed near the Strait of Hormuz, hitting roughly 20 sites.

Trump also revealing new details about the helicopter incident - saying an Iranian drone became lodged between the helicopter's two pilots as they maneuvered to avoid an explosion.

[Owen Shroyer @OwenShroyer1776]

2 unfortunate things we've seen over the last 24 hours.

1. The commentary in response to the Karmelo Anthony verdict is quite the blackpill. Yikes.

2. The neocons are running the GOP again and will keep Republicans like Lindsey Graham around forever. Also, yikes.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

Absolutely wild to watch @benshapiro castigate @megynkelly as a principle-free grifter for changing her mind about Trump, when it was Ben Shapiro himself who fanatically hated Trump in 2016, was a vocal #NeverTrumper, and only changed his mind once he saw Trump serves Israel.

[Axiomatic Enemy of the State @DeTocqueville14]

Thomas Massie lost and Lindsey Graham won.

If you still believe that the Republican Party is for small limited government, individual freedom, and no new wars then you have the IQ of a potato.

[Jeff Carlson @themarketswork]

@marklevinshow @directorblue Weird how the Captain of the USS Liberty stated in a speech that Israel intentionally attacked his ship knowing full well what they were doing.

The Liberty’s Bridge Officer has repeatedly stated the same.

[Jeff Carlson @themarketswork]

@ConceptualJames The evil people who killed these poor girls? Great idea.

[Karl K. Wuckert @KarlWuckert]

Trump has lost his entire base. He’s relying on people like Lindsey Graham and Randy Fine to push the Israel First narrative.

This all ends the moment Trump leaves office. America Only is the future.

[Jeff Carlson @themarketswork]

@marklevinshow Churchill was an evil, drunk puppet. And Netanyahu is a genocidal demon.

[Jeff Carlson @themarketswork]

Trump is really Draining that Swamp

[Lindsey Graham @LindseyGrahamSC]

Thank you, Mr. President.

[Jeff Carlson @themarketswork]

@ScottPresler We need a third Party. Fck the GOP.