robert digital

Dad. Husband. Airborne Ranger.

[robert digital @bobdigitalistic]

Modifying Franklin’s famous liberty/safety quip perfectly encapsulates CJ Roberts tenure:

"Those who would give up essential [constitutional rulings], to purchase a little temporary [reputational feelz], deserve neither [constitutional rulings] nor [reputational feelz],"

The Court’s “integrity” and “reputation” would have been bolstered by the strong constitutional rulings it provided. Instead, Roberts frittered away his tenure coddling the perpetually aggrieved.

[Mollie @MZHemingway]

Another major Supreme Court leak to a left-wing media outlet to support a left-wing narrative. Interesting.

[robert digital @bobdigitalistic]

@Badger419256 @TheDemocrats “You didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

[Giga Based Dad @GigaBasedDad]

LMAO

[robert digital @bobdigitalistic]

Kinfolk.

[Dudes Posting Their W’s @DudespostingWs]

The Scots took over Boston bars and sang "Take Me Home, Country Roads"

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

@iam_smx *trillioniare

[robert digital @bobdigitalistic]

@cdrsalamander @DeepWithARifle @GWOTMF Love the design. The colors should be bright and vibrant, though, so it can boldly stand out against any background - to commemorate the Army Combat Uniform.

[PoIiMath @politicalmath]

This is really pulling the mask off. The previous narrative was "late ballots always lean toward Democrats, it's just demographics"

But now we are seeing that late ballots always lean toward the specific Democrat who needs more ballots.

That is not possible.

[Private Tier @Jayseki]

@peterjhasson damn, this former soldier, former merc, military history buff had a totenkopf but had no idea. meanwhile his ex who is none of those things casually recognized it and said nothing to him. what rotten luck he has, poor guy

[Labrador Skeptic @SaysSimulation]

The past is over, there will be no returning. And the world of rich white girls safely & comfortably playing Leftist status games while trying to pull down their civilization will have ended - that game has been played for too long, it always carried its own destruction.
6/

[robert digital @bobdigitalistic]

Two things:

1. I’d bet good money that when Reichsführer-SS Platner was just Lance Corporal Platner, he was part of that 10% who create 90% of the problems in the platoon.

2. Reichsführer-SS Platner *chose* to enlist after both AFG and IZ had kicked off. He’s acting fussy about those wars now, but don’t forget that he enlisted knowing full well that he would be fighting in those wars.

[Magdi Jacobs @magi_jay]

In 2019, seven years ago, when he was 34-years-old, Graham Platner logged into reddit and posted a response to a video of an American soldier being shot by the Taliban.

Platner wrote:

"This video never gets old. Dumb motherfucker didn't deserve to live. At least his stupidity and fat ass wheezing are available for all future infantrymen to witness and hold in contempt. Poor marksmanship on the Taliban's part is the only reason this mouthbreather made it home, he managed to make every possible shit decision possible when it comes to small unit combat."

Think about each line. "This video never gets old." Platner's implying he's watched the video several times and enjoys it. "At least his stupidity and fat ass wheezing are available for all future infantrymen to witness and hold in contempt."

That's what Platner thinks about his fellow Americans at war. If they're not good at killing or broader tactics, he has contempt for them. He displays no empathy. The opposite, in fact.

The man that Platner is commenting on, by the way, is Pfc. Ted Daniels, who was a 37-year-old father of two serving in Afghanistan at the time of the incident (2012). The bad tactic Platner enjoys mocking? Daniels stepped into the open deliberately to draw Taliban fire away from his fellow soldiers so his squad could get to safety.

Daniels was shot four times in this video and, ultimately, earned a Purple Heart.

When the video was initially released (2013), Pfc. Daniels was critical of himself in interviews, saying, "It wasn't the most tactically brilliant thing to do." He described that he was embarrassed by the video; that people could hear him screaming for help. But, also, he said: "I put my ass on the line for other guys."

Then, we have, again, Graham Platner, logging into reddit, in 2019, to comment: "Dumb motherfucker didn't deserve to live."

For all those who say, "That's just how Marines talk," I'll tell you: Platner's comment got downvoted by the military community. Even if it didn't: We're not talking about the military anymore. We're talking about a 34-year-old man, years after service, logging in to mock another man who's being shot on video. We're also talking about the U.S. Senate, not boys-will-be-boys or Marines-will-be-Marines.

We're always told to view Platner as a changed man. 2013, when he made the rape apologia comments, was the "darkest point in his life," or so we have been told. So what was going on in 2019, such that Platner enjoyed watching a video of a man getting shot and mocking him? How many arcs of change are there in Platner's life? Was there a specific point where he discovered human empathy?

I couldn't help but think of that specific reddit comment while watching the video below. "Still sending young Americans to die thousands of miles away from home," Platner says. Didn't he log in to reddit seven years ago to say, "Dumb motherfucker didn't deserve to live" ?

I don't like being lied to.

[robert digital @bobdigitalistic]

“Opa loves me and says that I’m his apt pupil.”

[Washington Free Beacon @FreeBeacon]

Michigan trial attorney and Democratic fundraiser Kelly Neumann, the co-chairwoman of Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow’s campaign, threatened the Free Beacon with “legal action” unless we retract our story about her Veterans Day Facebook post honoring her grandfather who served “on the German side” in World War II, @AndrewStilesUSA reports.

[robert digital @bobdigitalistic]

@AzPinkLady @nicksortor Looks like security escorting a VIP. Cabinet member, maybe? Thought it looked like Bobby.

[robert digital @bobdigitalistic]

@octagirl @AutismCapital More bad news: don’t try to fulfill your Little League dream of a hat catch - dead ball; 3 bases for the batter AND 3 bases for all baserunners.

[robert digital @bobdigitalistic]

“Wait. This guy is in the Klan, but he also sat next to me at last year’s SLPC Annual Gala.”

[Pete Hegseth @PeteHegseth]

Long live the Warthog.

[Office of the Secretary of the Air Force @SecAFOfficial]

In consultation with @SecWar, we will EXTEND the A-10 “Warthog” platform to 2030. This preserves combat power as the Defense Industrial Base works to increase combat aircraft production.

Thank you to @POTUS for your unwavering support of our warfighters and quick, decisive leadership as we equip our force. More to come.

[robert digital @bobdigitalistic]

Just getting a regular lobotomy doesn’t mean you can claim you got The Field Grade Lobotomy.

[Christiane Amanpour @amanpour]

Using the Pentagon podium to lash out at journalists in extreme biblical terms is unprecedented, misguided, and frankly wrong on the substance. Ever since Sunday School Catholic classes, I have been well aware of the Scribes and the Pharisees. They were the bad guys against Jesus, the good guy… in current U.S. good v evil war parlance. Bearing witness to the truth is what we journalists are commanded to do, without fear nor favor.
I am also well aware of the Ten Commandments, and therefore urge any government radical anywhere, to follow the 9th… against bearing false witness.
And finally an observation: the current Secretary of War, f/k/a Defence, left the military with the rank of Major. I recall my dogtag in the first Gulf war had the rank of major... the very same rank. Just sayin’!

[James E. Thorne @DrJStrategy]

Food for thought.

Trump, Hormuz and the End of the Free Ride

For half a century, Western strategists have known that the Strait of Hormuz is the acute point where energy, sea power and political will intersect. That knowledge is not in dispute. What is new in this war with Iran is that the United States, under Donald Trump, has chosen not to rush to “solve” the problem. In Hegelian terms, he is refusing an easy synthesis in order to force the underlying contradiction to the surface.

The old thesis was simple: the US guarantees open sea lanes in the Gulf, and everyone else structures their economies and politics around that free insurance. Europe and the UK embraced ambitious green policies, ran down hard‑power capabilities and lectured Washington on multilateral virtue, secure in the assumption that American carriers would always appear off Hormuz. The political class behaved as if the American security guarantee were a law of nature, not a contingent choice. Their conduct today is closer to Chamberlain than Churchill: temporising, issuing statements, hoping the storm will pass without a fundamental reordering of their responsibilities.

Trump’s antithesis is to withhold the automatic guarantee at the moment of maximum stress. Militarily, the US can break Iran’s residual ability to contest the Strait; that is not the binding constraint. The point is to delay that act. By allowing a closure or semi‑closure to bite, Trump ensures that the immediate pain is concentrated in exactly the jurisdictions that have most conspicuously free‑ridden on US power: the EU and the UK. Their industries, consumers and energy‑transition assumptions are exposed.

In that context, his reported blunt message to European and British leaders, you need the oil out of the Strait more than we do; why don’t you go and take it? Is not a throwaway line. It is the verbalisation of the antithesis. It openly reverses the traditional presumption that America will carry the burden while its allies emote from the sidelines.

In this dialectic, the prize is not simply the reopening of a chokepoint. The prize is a reordered system in which the United States effectively arbitrages and controls the global flow of oil. A world in which US‑aligned production in the Americas plus a discretionary capability to secure,or not secure, Hormuz places Washington at the centre of the hydrocarbon chessboard. For that strategic end, a rapid restoration of the old status quo would be counterproductive.

A quick, surgical “fix” of Hormuz would short‑circuit the dialectic. If Trump rapidly crushed Iran’s remaining coastal capabilities, swept the mines and escorted tankers back through the Strait, Europe and the UK would heave a sigh of relief and return to business as usual: underfunded militaries, maximalist green posturing and performative disdain for US power, all underwritten by that same power. The contradiction between their dependence and their posture would remain latent.

By declining to supply the synthesis on demand, and by explicitly telling London and Brussels to “go and take it” themselves, Trump forces a reckoning. European and British leaders must confront the fact that their energy systems, their industrial bases and their geopolitical sermons all rest on an American hard‑power foundation they neither finance nor politically respect. The longer the contradiction is allowed to unfold, the stronger the eventual synthesis can be: a new order in which access to secure flows, Hormuz, Venezuela and beyond, is explicitly conditional on real contributions, not assumed as a right.

In that sense, the delay in “taking” the Strait, and the challenge issued to US allies to do it themselves, is not indecision. It is the negative moment Hegel insisted was necessary for history to move. Only by withholding the old guarantee, and by saying so out loud to those who depended on it, can Trump hope to end the free ride.

[The All-In Podcast @theallinpod]

David Friedberg: California’s “Billionaire Tax” is a Trojan Horse to Go After the Middle Class's Private Assets

@friedberg:

“The reason they're calling it a billionaire tax is to make it easier for people to vote for it, and sign up to this entirely new tax system that they're proposing to put on all Americans at some point, and for the first time ever degrading our private property rights.”

“Forget about how much wealth you have, forget about how rich you are, forget about the term billionaire, millionaire, whatever it is.”

“We're creating, or proposing the creation, of a new tax system that allows the government for the first time ever to come in and audit everything you own.”

“All the jewelry your grandma gave you, the value of all the couches in your house, the value of your car, the value of all your stocks and bonds, and the government can come in, and for the first time, look through the veil into your personal property.”

“And say, ‘Here's how much all this stuff is worth. I'm charging you a percentage of that. That's what I need to get paid.’ And it doesn't matter that it starts with billionaires. What matters is that we're giving the government the right to look into our private property and take a percentage of it every year.”

“The total net worth of billionaires in the US is $8 trillion.”

“The net worth of the US, the middle class, and everyone else is $170 trillion, compared to $8 trillion of the billionaires.”

@chamath:

“They need a way to open the door so that they can go after the real honey pot.”

“The real honeypot is not 200 people.”

@friedberg:

“Just so everyone understands the real goal of this is not to tax billionaires, because there are other ways to tax billionaires.”

“Charge them a capital gains tax if they borrow against their assets that they haven't paid capital gains tax on. Very simple, that can resolve this.”

“Another thing you can do, you can raise the capital gains tax rate. Sounds unpopular. I don't agree with that, but that's another way to deal with this, which is to take the capital gains tax rate from 20% to 30%. You could do that.”

“The real goal of this is to create, for the first time in American history, a private property asset seizure tax. Because they're going after the $170 trillion, not the $8 trillion that the billionaires have.”