Greg

Liberally sprinkled with conservatism. Conservatively sprinkled with liberalism. And so, like a conservative, always open to rational conversation.

[Lee Zeldin @epaleezeldin]

Not only should it not be controversial that I refuse to give myself powers that are not clearly stated in federal law, but that should absolutely be the standard, the constant of how an EPA Administrator approaches this position. Strictly adhere to the single best reading of the law pursuant to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loper Bright, and don’t ever get creative in trying to give myself any powers that the law hasn’t given me. If Congress wants me to do something other than the single best reading of the law, then they should try to change the law instead of demanding that I circumvent statute.

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

Milton Friedman on responsibility to the poor.

[Greg @realgregcarter]

@MandyConnell Me and my Grandson with Snowball.

[Greg @realgregcarter]

@MandyConnell Single sentence paragraphs. It rather tends to make me question the veracity of the content.

[Lee Zeldin @epaleezeldin]

I told Senator Sheldon WhiteClub today that I won’t be listening to or caring about any of his lessons on morality knowing that he joined an all-white Rhode Island Country Club.

I’m also done with the likes of AOC, Al Gore, John Kerry, and the rest of the lying cabal that make stupid climate predictions, plunder tens of billions of tax dollars, enrich their well-connected allies, and are committed to strangulating out of existence entire sectors of our economy.

Climate alarmist AOC wants to be taken seriously while also insisting the world is imminently about to end due to climate change (Just under 5 years remain on her nutty Jan 2019 prediction that only 12 years of life are left on Earth).

Al Gore is now speaking publicly about his concern with global freezing after decades of grift talking about global warming. “Within the decade there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro,” said Gore in 2006 (There’s still snow on Kilimanjaro year-round). Gore also predicted in 2009 ice-free Arctic summers within 5-7 years.

John Kerry warned in 2009 that the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013.

These people are dishonest, power-hungry hacks.

The GREEN NEW SCAM is DEAD!!!

[Jonathan Turley @JonathanTurley]

I had to check to be sure that this was not a hilarious addition to the Babylon Bee. The Democratic city council of Ann Arbor, Michigan, unanimously voted to order the removal of anti-crime signs in order to be more "inclusive"... https://t.co/HdUXjyxyq7

[Secretary of War Pete Hegseth @SecWar]

Our military installations have been turned into gun-free zones—leaving our service members vulnerable and exposed.

That ends today.

[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.

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

“Fair” in that framework isn’t about what’s earned, agreed to, or produced. It’s about what can be taken without immediate collapse.

If you can remove $135 million from someone and they’re still standing, it gets labeled “reasonable.” If you can redistribute it and make others feel helped, it gets labeled “just.” The standard isn’t rights. It’s tolerance for extraction.

That flips the moral question entirely.
Instead of asking, “Who created the value?” it asks, “How much can we take before it hurts too much?”
Instead of voluntary exchange, it becomes calibrated coercion.

And once that’s the premise, there’s no limiting principle. Because “you’re still rich” is infinitely elastic. There’s always more that “won’t kill you,” which means there’s always more that can be taken.

So fairness stops meaning equality before the law and becomes a moving target based on envy, optics, and political leverage.

[Brit Hume @brithume]

From Bret Stephens in today's NY Times: "if past generations could see how well this war has gone compared with the ones they were compelled to fight at a frightening cost, they would marvel at their posterity’s comparative good fortune. They would marvel, too, at our inability to appreciate the advantages we now possess."

[Greg @realgregcarter]

@Aspire2Humility @adamcarolla Perhaps one would ask oneself if no one else, "What kind of scrutiny does a new vaccine typically get before public release?"

[Greg @realgregcarter]

@SenatorWarnock What's the evidence that he has no idea what he is doing? Or even that he is unhinged?

[Greg @realgregcarter]

@RepThomasMassie Without security, who cares about the price of gas?

[Greg @realgregcarter]

@mattshumer_ Hmmm... I've not heard of any of this. I'll check it out.

[Farm Girl Carrie 👩‍🌾 @FarmGirlCarrie]

Still true today…

[Greg @realgregcarter]

@Timmy_Helps @PixelPalettePPN @MyPalettexyz @Roker_51 Hi Timmy! Good to hear from you.

[Greg @realgregcarter]

@elonmusk But can you humanely euthanize a racoon with an electric car?

[Robert Davi @RobertJohnDavi]

Brilliant explains the Trump Doctrine !!!One of the greatest speeches of our time by Sec of State Marco Rubio
The fact he received a standing ovation by the European leaders after seeing their defiance against the Trump administration lately.. just wow.

“Mass migration is not, was not, isn’t some fringe concern of little consequence. It was and continues to be a CRISIS that is transforming and destabilising societies across the West”

“In a pursuit of a world without borders, we opened our doors to an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture and the future of our people”

Full speech here.

[Greg @realgregcarter]

@RepMarkPocan Apparently, from my read of the bill, you are incorrect.

[Greg @realgregcarter]

@Hickenlooper Quite a political hack you've turned out to be.