Gardros, Preserve, Protect, Defend

We exist as a country because of our Constitution & the Rule of Law. Opinions are my own.

[QE Infinity @StealthQE4]

Everything will start in Europe and then come here.

Just look at France this weekend.

The whole world is a giant powder keg right now.

The panic is growing regarding diesel and jet fuel. ⛽️

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Claude Malhuret Was Right about Trump.

On Friday, at Trump's direction, the US Treasury issued a license waving Russian diesel back onto the world market, days after Russia killed dozens of Ukrainians, many of them children. It seems a good moment to revisit the speech in which a French senator told us exactly who these people were.

Claude Malhuret took the floor of the Luxembourg Palace and delivered what may be the most surgical dismantling of the Trump administration ever spoken in a legislative chamber. There were no diplomatic niceties, only a point-by-point indictment from an ally who had clearly had enough.

"A year ago, here in France, I compared Trump's presidency to Nero's Court. I was wrong. It's the Court of Miracles. An anti-vaxxer, former heroin addict as Minister of Health," he began, meaning RFK Jr.

Then came the rest of the cabinet: "A climate-skeptic Minister of Economy. An alcoholic TV host, Minister of the Armed Forces. An old Qatar agent, Minister of Justice. A groupie of Putin, Minister of National Security." That would be Scott Bessent, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi and Tulsi Gabbard.

"A Turkish proverb says: when a clown settles in a palace, he does not become king, it is the palace that becomes a circus."

The circus has been busy. Trump came off a phone call with Putin and announced on Truth Social that Russia would send millions of tons of diesel to the world market, promising in capital letters that prices "will be COMING DOWN, IN RECORD NUMBERS, AND FAST!"

Bessent's Treasury promptly made it legal, barely a month after Trump signed a sweeping Russia sanctions law, as NPR points out.

The motive is not hard to find. Diesel prices in America have doubled since the war with Iran began in February and the midterms are weeks away, so the man who set the fuel market on fire is now buying the extinguisher from Vladimir Putin and sending the bill to Ukraine.

According to Axios, Kyiv was blindsided while Witkoff and Kushner were sitting with Ukrainian officials to discuss ending the war, and an analyst told the outlet the volumes are too small to fix the shortage anyway.

So Putin gets revenue and respectability, Americans may or may not get cheaper diesel, and Ukrainians get more missiles. Zelensky called it weakness from partners who are supposed to be strong, which is the polite version. Malhuret gave us the impolite one long ago, and he has been proved right down to the last clown.

Watch the speech and share it loudly.

Stay connected,
Follow Gandalv @Microinteracti1

[James F. Love IV @JamesFLoveIV]

This is a lot of hard truth. Fairly long. Well worth your time. Especially if you’re MAGA.

[Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski]

This is completely outrageous and disgusting. This must immediately be blocked by Congress and Trump should be impeached for this. The US is now funding Putin’s war machine as he murders civilians including children. We are lost as a country.

[Rick Petree @RickPetree]

Now we shall see whether the worst betrayal of a democratic ally in American history will prompt something more than ‘concerns’ and ‘misgivings’ in GOP leadership. If not, their treachery will be joined to Trump’s.

[The Shallow State @OurShallowState]

James Talarico looked and sounded great at the Austin City limits fair today - healthy and rested and ready for the home stretch. On one hand, it's incredible how much this genuine guy gets demonized. But on the other hand, he's running against a candidate who was IMPEACHED BY HIS OWN PARTY. Whose wife cut a commercial without mentioning his name. Whose acts of financial corruption could choke a horse.
So - if THAT is the guy you're putting forward - your ONLY way to play it is to take the spotlight off of your guy and find ways to demonize the other guy.
Paxton will lose. Talarico will win. And it will be THE biggest story of the midterms, and it's ALL on Trump.

[The Space Coast Rocket @CoastRocket]

WE COUNT THE ENEMIES WE KILL. WE RARELY COUNT THE ONES WE CREATE.

Nidal Hasan was a patient on my floor in the surgical trauma ICU at Brooke Army Medical Center.

I wasn't there when he arrived. I had just left for my deployment to Mosul, Iraq. But the nurses and doctors who cared for him were my peers and my friends, and I know exactly what that required of them, because every one of us had done some version of it before. Before anyone tells me what strength looks like, understand what that work demands.

I have cared for a drunk driver who wiped out an entire family and landed in our ICU himself. I have cared for gang members who shot up a block while children were stepping off a school bus, then ended up on our unit with bullets of their own. I have kept alive people who murdered their own families and failed at taking their own lives. And in Iraq, I saved the lives of the very enemy fighters who had just tried to kill us and miraculously survived our response.

Every one of those patients got our best. Not because we felt anything for them, but because of who we were. You set aside anger, grief, prejudice and every personal feeling you have, because a life in front of you is a life in front of you. That's the oath. That's the duty.

So when Hasan came through those doors, my colleagues did what we had always done. They preserved the life of a man who murdered thirteen people and would have killed them too, given the chance. He killed those men and women in one of the very same buildings many Soldier's like myself have been in when I was stationed at Fort Hood.
He is alive today because they did their jobs. That was not sentiment. It was a hard, tangible expression of the values this country claims to stand for. Our principles had to mean something even when the person benefiting from them had violated everything we believed in.

Now the Pentagon plans to livestream his execution by firing squad on Dec. 3, and our leaders apparently believe turning his death into a public spectacle will demonstrate American strength. I think it demonstrates how little they understand the enemy they claim to be fighting. We kept Nidal Hasan alive, now our leaders want to make him a martyr.

Hasan walked into Fort Hood expecting to die. He believed his death would be rewarded. At his trial, he called no witnesses and offered no defense, and his own court-appointed lawyers worried he was seeking execution. He failed at martyrdom once. Now we're about to hand it to him, in high definition, for every extremist with an internet connection to replay, manipulate and celebrate.
We supply the footage. They supply the meaning.
Long after the politicians finish congratulating themselves, that video will still exist. Their moment of bravado becomes somebody else's recruiting material for decades. And this failure to think past the immediate display of power reaches far beyond one execution. We count the enemies we kill. We rarely count the enemies we create.

Look at the school in Minab, Iran, where multiple investigations attributed the strike that killed more than 100 children and their teachers to us. You cannot bury people's children beneath the rubble of their classrooms and expect a speech about American intentions to decide how they remember you. No denial brings those children home. No claim of good intentions makes their parents forget whose weapons killed them.
If those were our children, we would remember for the rest of our lives. We would demand accountability. Many of us would want vengeance. We would tell their stories to the next generation. We know this because we did exactly that after September 11.

Why do we imagine other people love their children less, grieve less deeply, or remember less clearly?

We have developed a horrifying talent for creating more terrorists than we will ever stop. We inflict suffering, evade responsibility, and then act as though the anger that follows came out of nowhere.

Think back to the first time you saw one of those al Qaeda videos of an American being beheaded. Remember the sickness in your stomach. Remember the rage. Remember thinking that only savages would film a killing and send it out for the world to watch. Now ask yourself what the rest of the world will see when the camera is ours.
Terrorist organizations stage executions for the cameras. Authoritarian regimes make death a public spectacle to feed fear and rage. Watching our own leaders reach for those same tools should force us to confront how much of ourselves we are surrendering in the name of defeating them.

The line separating us from the people we condemn has to live in our conduct. A flag cannot hold it for us. Neither can a uniform, a title, or a declaration that we are the good guys.
On that ICU floor, on a bloody street in Mosul, and in trauma bays across this country, people like my colleagues hold that line every day under circumstances most will never face. They keep monsters alive because their duty and their humanity are bigger than their hatred of what those monsters have done.

Execute him if that's the sentence. But do it the way a confident nation does; quietly, lawfully, and without giving him the stage he always wanted. Let him be forgotten.

I expect our leaders to show at least as much discipline as the nurses who had to care for him.
They keep telling us they are defending what makes America different. Every day, they make that difference harder to see.

Robert W. Burns III is the editor and publisher of The Space Coast Rocket, an Army veteran and a retired trauma nurse. The views expressed in this column are his own.

[Christopher Steele @Chris_D_Steele]

Trump’s diesel deal with Putin and the lifting of sanctions on Russian energy exports is more important politically than economically. It won’t deliver but simply boost Putin’s regime. So much for the ‘Russia hoax’. Everything Trump does benefits Putin. He is Trump’s kryptonite.

[Meidas_Charise Lee @charise_lee]

The choreography is a masterpiece
#YungLean #Gener8tion

[Olivia Julianna 🇺🇸🦅🗳️ @0liviajulianna]

This is, and I do not say this lightly, the greatest ad I have seen all cycle.

[Gina Hinojosa @GinaHinojosaTX]

8 time Texas HS football state champion coach knows what’s at stake this November.

[Democratic Coalition @TheDemCoalition]

Seeing Jack Smith and how he composed himself last week in the face of utter MAGA buffoonery was a reminder of all we have lost in the last decade since Trump and his gutter politics burst onto the scene.

It's good to see glimpses of real patriots, of people who put their country and Constitution before all else.

#ResistTrump

[𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞 🇺🇸 @creation247]

Facts about Pope Leo XIV

>IQ: 145
>Speaks 7 languages
>Former professor
>Degrees in mathematics & theology
>Missionary in Peru for +10 years
>First American Pope
>Known intellectual capabilities

This isn’t just a Pope

This is one of the smartest men alive

[Scott Robertson @sarobertson_]

Mark Carney: "In three weeks, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the President of the European Council, António Costa, will be in Montreal. And that is when Canada will launch a new transformative alliance with the European Union."

[Warren @swd2]

Seven months into the war with Iran, we’re only now seeing footage of something extraordinary: American troops abandoning a major U.S. military base after repeated Iranian attacks.

And the more you read about what happened, the more questions there are about how much of this war the American public actually understands.

CBS News has obtained and authenticated previously unseen footage showing Iranian missiles and drones striking Camp Buehring, a major American military installation in Kuwait that has served as a staging ground for U.S. operations throughout the Middle East for more than two decades.

Before the war began on February 28, approximately 7,000 American troops were stationed there. Anticipating Iranian retaliation, the Pentagon moved most of those troops out of vulnerable positions.

But more than 100 American service members remained behind.

What followed was a series of attacks that left the installation badly damaged, American soldiers sheltering in bunkers, and defenders running critically low on .50-caliber ammunition. Military officials also acknowledged concerns about the availability of Patriot missile defenses.

Three American service members told CBS that Iranian fighter jets attacked the installation, flying so low that soldiers could see the pilots’ helmets.

Eventually, the remaining Americans abandoned the base.

They gathered whatever equipment they could carry, loaded their vehicles, and drove through the night into the Kuwaiti desert, where they established temporary positions and remained for weeks. They were finally relocated in May.

No American service members were killed by enemy fire at Camp Buehring or those desert positions, although several were injured.

One soldier told CBS, “They hit us bad.”

Now consider the larger picture.

According to a Pentagon inspector general report, American equipment losses during the Iran war have reached as much as $3.7 BILLION, including nearly 60 aircraft.

A separate Congressional Research Service report identified 81 American aircraft and drones lost or damaged since February. These figures cover the entire conflict, not just Camp Buehring.

The inspector general also documented Iranian strikes against American installations in EIGHT countries: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan.

And earlier this week, an Associated Press investigation revealed troubling details about the March 1 Iranian drone strike at Kuwait’s Port Shuaiba that killed six American soldiers and wounded dozens. Soldiers described warnings about inadequate defenses and serious problems obtaining medical care afterward.

These are separate incidents, but together they raise significant questions about American preparedness, the extent of the damage, and what the public has been told.

To be clear, moving troops away from vulnerable installations was a legitimate military precaution that likely saved American lives. But protecting sensitive military information is not the same thing as providing the public with an honest accounting of a war’s consequences.

We’re seven months into this conflict, and journalists are still uncovering major incidents from its opening weeks through footage and firsthand accounts from American service members.

When CBS asked about Camp Buehring, U.S. Central Command declined to comment. The Pentagon referred reporters to earlier explanations about repositioning troops.

That doesn’t answer every question about what happened to those who remained.

How extensive was the damage? Were American forces adequately defended? Why did the remaining troops have to abandon the installation? And what other major incidents have yet to receive a full public accounting?

The American people are paying for this war. American service members are risking their lives in it. They deserve to know the full scope of what is happening, including the setbacks, the losses, and the decisions that put our troops in danger.

[Wiki Leaks 1.0 @WikiLeaksQ]

Thomas Massie: The Epstein scandal is “deeper and darker” than anyone imagined.

“It’s bigger than Watergate.”

“It’s bigger than Iran-Contra.”

“It’s not about Joe Biden or Donald Trump.”

“There are degrees of evil here that we’ve never seen at this scale … ”

“Our government was compromised by wealthy, connected billionaires, and by Jeffrey Epstein himself.”

“At the age of 14, these girls that were being sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein were told if they could go find another girl to take their place, then they wouldn’t have to be sexually abused.”

“And some of them took that deal.”

“It’s one thing to be evil to a child.”

“It’s another thing to get a child to do evil.”

“The light sentence that was given to Jeffrey Epstein in 2008 that allowed him to victimize hundreds of more women, we want to know, why was he given that light sentence?”

[Gina Hinojosa @GinaHinojosaTX]

I’m deeply honored to have Luci’s support. Her father used the power of the presidency to expand the American Dream to more Americans. When I am governor, I will use President Johnson’s pen to sign legislation that secures that same promise for Texas families.

[Thomas P (TOM) Logan 🇯🇵 🇺🇸 @TokyoTom2020]

👍📌Pope Leo, an American, is within his authority to issue a letter, a Litterae Apostolicae Motu Proprio Datae— Apostolic Letter, stating that any Catholic serving in the military assigned to that #FortHood firing squad must not participate and must refuse the order because of the perverse, inhuman spectacle of televising of it… That won’t stop the execution itself, but it will send a powerful international message.

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

We are ruled by monsters.

[Owen @Owennfa]

I came across a Reddit post that described AI in a way I can’t stop thinking about:

“AI allows the wealthy to access skills while stripping skilled people of their ability to access wealth.”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the purpose of AI captured so brutally and accurately.