Travis Price

[Tucker Carlson @TuckerCarlson]

According to an informed federal official, in the coming months the Trump administration plans to send a total of 40,000 Mark 84 and Blu-117 bombs to the government of Israel. Each bomb weighs 2,000 pounds. This appears to be the largest transfer of conventional explosive ordnance from the United States in modern history.

How big is this shipment? It amounts to 40,000 tons of bombs. For perspective, the largest American air raid of World War Two was the Eighth Air Force’s attack on Berlin in March of 1945. Combined, the 2,023 Allied aircraft involved dropped about 3,000 tons of bombs. That’s 7.5 percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. That same month, March of 1945, the US Army Air Forces began the single most destructive bombing raid in human history, Operation Meetinghouse over Tokyo. More than 100,000 Japanese civilians were killed. By the end of that operation, the US had dropped 1,600 tons of bombs. That’s four percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. World War Two ended five months later, when the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The shipment Trump is sending to Israel amounts to more than three times the destructive power of that nuclear explosion. There is no precedent for what the Trump administration is doing.

Nor is there a justification. The government of Israel is not fighting World War Two, or even a war. It is engaged in periodic skirmishes with a guerrilla force in Lebanon, and it is working to exterminate an unarmed civilian population in Gaza. Neither front requires modern 2,000-pound bombs.

An American-made Mark 84 has a destruction radius of half a mile. It releases a thermal wave the temperature of the surface of the sun. Within 100 feet of the explosion, rock melts and human flesh turns to vapor. The bomb collapses apartment buildings and leaves craters thirty-five feet deep. Until the war with Iran, the US military generally avoided using the Mark 84 in urban areas. It kills too many civilians.

For the Netanyahu government, that’s been the upside. In the weeks after October 7, the IDF dropped nearly six hundred 2,000-pound bombs on densely populated areas in Gaza, including on more than 100 officially designated civilian evacuation zones. The slaughter was so grotesque and embarrassing that for a moment the Biden administration paused a shipment of Mark 84s. Those shipments quickly resumed under Trump. Now they’ve accelerated.

It’s hard to overstate the scale of the crime the Israeli government is committing in Gaza. Over the last three years, more than a quarter-million Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces there. The majority of them have been noncombatants: women, the elderly and tens of thousands of children. Many thousands more remain missing, presumably entombed under the rubble of 200,000 collapsed buildings. So far the Israelis have destroyed 92 percent of all homes in Gaza, and 34 of the 36 hospitals. By comparison, the 1945 Allied bombings of Dresden, now acknowledged as a war crime, destroyed about half of the city’s inhabited buildings.

By any definition, what the Netanyahu government has done in Gaza is genocide. The 40,000 new bombs the Trump administration is sending will be used to do the same in Lebanon, and likely in other countries in the region. If you wanted to extend the Iran war into the indefinite future, this is exactly what you’d do.

So far none of this has received public scrutiny. At some point, inevitably, it will be described in media accounts as an “arms sale.” It is not an arms sale. It is a gift, funded by American taxpayers through the Foreign Military Financing program, an arrangement designed to disguise welfare as capitalism: Congress appropriates money to the executive branch, which transfers the cash to Israel to “buy” American-made weapons, in this case from General Dynamics. Politicians claim this is a win for America. Most voters have no idea they paid for it. The bill in this case is about $3 billion. Add that to the $352 billion the US Treasury has transferred to Israel since 1951.

How did this happen? The request for 40,000 new high-explosive civilian-killing bombs originated at the US Embassy in Jerusalem, which is run by Christian Zionist Ambassador Mike Huckabee and his aide David Milstein, who is the stepson of Fox News host Mark Levin. From there it moved to the State Department, where Marco Rubio enthusiastically approved it.

At this point, only four more people need to sign off before the bombs ship to Israel: Senators Jim Risch and Jeanne Shaheen, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and Congressmen Brian Mast and Gregory Meeks, the top two members of the equivalent House committee. All four are committed neocons. Collectively they’ve taken millions from the Israel lobby. In 2015, Brian Mast traveled to Israel to volunteer for the Israeli military. In 2023, Mast showed up in the House of Representatives wearing an IDF uniform.

It’s hard to imagine any of them hesitating before sending more free bombs to Israel. Only public outrage can stop this.

[Will Compton @_willcompton]

Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

I spoke to McConnell for about 20 minutes this morning.

He said we should end the war with Iran, quit giving aid to Israel, stop spying on Americans without a warrant, and he’s really sorry about how my primary turned out.

[Ari Meirov @MySportsUpdate]

#49ers TE George Kittle speaks out on NFL teams being willing to use grass for World Cup matches, but not for their own football players, via @NFLPA:

[Saagar Enjeti @esaagar]

The next 65 days until the final deal is signed will be the greatest fight in the Israel lobby's history. They will stop at NOTHING to derail it. The closer it gets, the more unhinged they'll become

Perhaps the highest stakes 65 days in modern history

[Barstool Sports @barstoolsports]

The Data is in: SGA is falling to the floor at a higher frequency than every other star player during the Playoffs

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

Such a perfect tweet on so many levels.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

If you ask 15 people who are MAGA followers what the Iran war aim was, you'll hear 15 different answers, because Trump gave a different goal every day. Here's what he said was his main goal on the day the war started.👇

[Wayne Waldrop @WayneWaldropW]

Rand voted to keep sending money to Israel though.

Actions speak louder than tweets.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

I think we’re gonna need a bigger truck.

[Owen Shroyer @OwenShroyer1776]

Trump 2 years ago ran on "Kill FISA", the illegal spying that is very unpopular.

Today, Trump is urging Congress to pass FISA, which he ran against, and continues the illegal spying on Americans.

[Clayton Morris @ClaytonMorris]

Update: We've now spent over $42 billion so far on Israel's war in Iran. 1 Billion per day. Remember this as you mail your taxes into IRS on April 15th.

[Saagar Enjeti @esaagar]

The most revealing part of the Trump presser was near the end: He trashed not only Europe but Australia, South Korea, and Japan

The only real allies in his eyes were the GCC and Israel. Literal inversion of reality

[Ana Kasparian @AnaKasparian]

Sure, I might be untalented. Up to others to decide.

But I can deduce that voting “no” on legislation that would cut arms to Israel amounts to supporting U.S. funded arms to Israel…as they carry out war crimes and atrocities daily.

Those crimes are committed with zero fear of blowback thanks to the defensive capabilities Americans are forced to bankroll.

In addition to voting no on that legislation last year, in 2021 you originally (and correctly) voted “no” on a bill to funnel an extra $1 billion to Israel on top of the $3.8 Billion we already send them every year. You got a little pressure from your corrupt colleagues, changed your vote to “present” and then wept about it…literally. Is that what political “talent” looks like?

Israel was enjoying an economic surplus that year. We, on the other hand, were not.

As for cashing checks, I’d respectfully ask you to remember who pays yours. It’s the people you’re lying to right now.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

As another man who once worked with me declares himself saddened by my beliefs on gender and sex, I thought it might be useful to compile a list for handy reference. Which of the following do you imagine makes actors and directors who aren’t involved with the HBO reboot of Harry Potter so miserable?

Is it my belief that women and girls should have their own public changing rooms and bathrooms?

That women should retain female-only rape crisis centres?

That men don’t belong in women’s sport?

That female prisoners shouldn’t be incarcerated with violent men and male sex offenders?

That women should remain a protected class in law, because they have sex-specific needs and issues?

That language should reflect reality rather than ideological jargon, especially in a medical context?

That women shouldn’t be harassed, persecuted or fired for refusing to pretend humans can change sex?

That women should not be threatened with violence and rape when they assert their rights?

That freedom of speech and belief are essential to a pluralistic democratic society?

That troubled minors, especially those who are gay, autistic and trauma-experienced, should be given mental health support instead of irreversible surgeries and drug treatments on non-existent evidence of benefit?

That gay people shouldn’t be pressured to include the opposite sex in their dating pools, nor should they be smeared as ‘genital fetishists’ when they don’t?

That cross-dressing heterosexual male fetishists aren’t actually oppressed, but having the time of their lives piggybacking off gender identity ideology?

That said ideology, and the privileged, blinkered fools pushing it because they suffer zero consequences themselves, have done more damage to the political left’s credibility than Trump and Farage could have achieved in a century?

Let me have your thoughts.

[Ragged Trousered Philanderer @RaggedTP]

**WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT**
Israeli citizens urinate on the dead bodies of Palestinians who've been tortured, murdered and set on fire by the Israeli military.
This is the level of depravity that is mainstream in Israeli society.

[Ifure Usen @real_Ifyarts]

My new pencil art on paper.

Shadows of the evening II

[Matt Walsh @MattWalshBlog]

Most people don’t realize that the Muslim population in America more than doubled after 9-11. Our government responded to 9-11 by mass importing the Arab world into our country. National suicide. No other term to describe it.

[Red Pill Media @RedPillMediaX]

MAGA

[Tom Woods @ThomasEWoods]

If Glenn Beck can use an AI George Washington to claim the father of our country would have wanted us to bomb Iran, how about I use THE REAL GEORGE WASHINGTON'S ACTUAL WORDS to figure out what he would have thought about the U.S. relationship with Israel:

A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification....

And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.