Robert Arthur

[Robert Arthur @Robert_S_Arthur]

@tjmcaulay @grok what were his on air comments and NBC statement?

[Lee Kuan Yimby @LeeKuanYimby]

Leftist policy is just extremely strict rules and guidelines for any net contributor to society, and zero enforcement or standards for everyone who harms society and themselves.

[Iain Cameron @theiaincameron]

A man who died only last year had a grandfather who was born in, wait for it:

1790

Not a great-great-grandfather. His actual grandfather.

Harrison Ruffin Tyler was the grandson of John Tyler, the 10th(!) President of the United States.

1/n

[kevin smith @kevin_smith45]

If Seinfeld were still on TV today…

This is what it would be!!!

Absolute Gold!!!

[Jeremy Kauffman 🦔🌲🌕 @jeremykauffman]

The Libertarian Party should:

- Stop running candidates for office
- Invite both candidates to compete to win the official Libertarian endorsement

Libertarians represent 5-10% of America. If they voted as a bloc, they would decide every election.

Libertarian ideas are too unpopular to much of what they want nationally. But Libertarians just got Ross Ulbricht pardoned with this strategy, and they could get even more next time.

[Robert Arthur @Robert_S_Arthur]

@policytensor @grok please explain

[Brandon Weichert @WeTheBrandon]

"Tyler wanted to become a high school football coach. He wanted to mentor young people, teach them the game he loved, and help anyone willing to listen to understand personal finance so they could build a secure and successful future. Tyler believed in investing in people. His goal was to leave every person he met better than he found them."
- We needed this man here, not over there. Our kids need leadership and mentorship of the kind that young Tyler would have given.

Shame. Shame on House Trump for putting him over there. Shame.

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

Iran is carrying out these attacks because the US targeted a conscript dorm in the middle of nowhere Iran, killing many sleeping soldiers. So Iran is retaliating by pivoting from targeting military infrastructure -- radar systems, hangars, helicopters, etc -- to targeting servicemembers in their quarters.

There was zero strategic value in the US killing some sleeping 18-year-old conscripts in their dorm. The only purpose would be to satisfy Secretary Hegseth's openly expressed bloodlust. Utterly reckless.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

How come these people never told prior NYC mayors to just clean up the streets and focus on potholes when all these prior mayors (just like Congressmembers) were constantly declaring their love and loyalty to Israel and making continuous pilgrimage there????

[Ilan Goldenberg @ilangoldenberg]

I’ve worked on Iran for nearly 20 years. Our options are never great, but I’ve never seen things this bad. For the first time in my career, I’m at a loss.

When this war began, I warned that Iran would likely emerge weakened but more aggressive and risk-tolerant—leaving the region trapped in a cycle of military clashes and chronic instability. That has happened. What I underestimated was the leverage Iran would gain through its stranglehold over the Strait of Hormuz.

For a moment, the MOU offered a possible way out. It was deeply flawed, but better than the alternatives. Then vague terms and shoddy negotiating caused it to collapse: Iran believed it could retain some control over the Strait; Washington believed the Strait would reopen to international shipping.

But the fundamental problem wasn’t the negotiation. It was Trump’s catastrophic decision to go to war in the first place.

The result: higher oil prices, economic shocks, depleted US missile-defense stocks, immense regional damage and civilian suffering, alienated allies and very little achieved in return.

So what now?

We could pay Iran off through sanctions relief, oil exports and access to the international banking system. But after surviving forty days of war, Tehran is angry, distrustful and convinced it holds the stronger hand. Its price is so high – and so humiliating – that Trump will never accept it.

We could escalate militarily, which is what the US is doing. But bombing has not produced meaningful Iranian concessions, and Trump appears unwilling to bear the costs of the maximalist alternatives. More pressure means an expensive, dangerous and potentially endless war, with serious risks to US forces and the entire region as we tragically saw this weekend. And it has little chance of success.

Or we could encourage the Gulf states to negotiate a regional arrangement. That may ultimately be the most promising path, but the Gulf states are divided, this remains fundamentally a US-Iran conflict, and any agreement will require major American concessions while leaving Iran strategically stronger than it was before the war. So this isn’t very appealing and hard to get to as well.

The likeliest outcome is therefore that we are looking at a new normal: recurring US-Iran clashes, periodic American or Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, Iranian control over the SOH, higher oil prices and a larger, longer-lasting American military presence in the Middle East. But since the costs of all out escalation are too high both sides try to keep it from going there, though there is always a risk.

Iran’s leverage will eventually depreciate as countries build pipelines, diversify energy supplies and establish alternative trade routes. But that could take years.

Eventually, exhaustion may produce a deal. Iran may decide that controlling the Strait while living under blockade is unsustainable. Washington may accept that it must offer more. The Gulf states may finally unite around a workable diplomatic framework. But not soon.

Trump took a situation in which better options plainly existed, started an unnecessary war and produced a strategic disaster that will take years to unwind.
For now, we are all stuck with this mess.

[Michael Tracey @mtracey]

Did anyone check out what this woman’s views are on a single issue before deciding she should be appointed to the US Senate?

[Joe Kent @joekent16jan19]

We need to end the war now.

Get our troops out of the region, restrain Israel, and focus on economic negotiations to open the SOH—and now the Bab Al Mandeb—or we will face a major energy crisis.

Keep in mind that we could not militarily defeat the Houthis in 2025. We know we can’t militarily defeat Iran now.

We will certainly not be able to defeat both of them simultaneously.

The reality is that we will end up cutting deals at some point. We always do—remember how we exited Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.

At this point, we know how this plays out. Let’s skip the decades of carnage & cut the deals now.

Tune out the neocons & the Israeli lobby’s tired talking points about WMD—that was bait to get us into this mess. It worked, and look where we’re at: disastrous quagmire, no military solution, our troops in harm’s way all across the region.

Iran currently controls two key energy chokepoints—SOH & BAM. We are better off accepting this and adapting strategically than we are fighting it and losing more. Pulling our troops out tips the scales of leverage in our favor.

Withdraw and reengage diplomatically to resolve the issue in the region that directly impacts Americans: restoring the flow of oil.

President Trump can still declare victory and restore trust with the American people if he has the courage to leave now, before a mass casualty event happens or an economic crisis hits.

That’s why now is the best time to leave & quietly negotiate.

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

For the first few days, the US's bombing campaign in Iran appeared somewhat haphazard. A large number of targets were hit, but many of them were not strategically decisive. In the 24+ hours, however, the US has begun to more systematically target critical infrastructure such as bridges. It is unclear to me if the bridges are entirely destroyed or the damage is deliberately limited. (An earlier attack on a key railway appeared to have been deliberately limited).

This more systematic approach is fueling suspicion that the US is preparing some form of use of ground troops (troop levels do not appear to be at the level or readiness for an actual invasion; rather, it would more likely be a quick operation and extraction with no attempt to hold territory).

Still, that would be a major escalation, fuel even greater Iranian nationalism and retaliatory strikes throughout the region at a new set of targets (ie GCC infrastructure), and risk something Trump thus far has prioritized: Avoiding Americans coming home in coffins.

And the fundamental question, "For what?" continues to remain unanswered...

[Michael Tracey @mtracey]

Weirdest war. We've been told for months that Iran's military capabilities have been totally destroyed, and yet the US is constantly launching new bombing rounds to "degrade" Iran's military capabilities

[Dave Smith @ComicDaveSmith]

Trump has now restarted the most unpopular war in American history after walking away from every single original war aim last week. He conceded uranium enrichment, missiles development, their relationship with Hezbolla and the nuclear dust.

We’re now solely fighting now over the strait and Lebanon, two non issues before the war.

This thing is an indefensible disaster and all of the people who cheerlead it have been revealed for the clowns and traitors they are.

[Michael Tracey @mtracey]

Ryan Grim seamlessly toggles back and forth between promoting ridiculous rape hoaxes whenever it suits him politically, to scrupulously dissecting them when it doesn't. So it's no surprise that people don't take his latest Platner dissection seriously. (And he wimped out on that right away anyway -- cucking @DropSiteNews into deleting a totally innocuous tweet.)

Grim peddled the "Tara Reade" rape hoax in 2020, as a failed last-minute "hail mary" by embittered Bernie supporters to derail Biden in the Dem primary.

He's shoveled out mound after mound of steaming hot Epstein bullshit, including the claim that "thousands of American children" were mass-raped -- in what would have to be one of the most gruesome large-scale atrocities in recorded human history. He has yet to provide ANY credible evidence for this sensational claim, nor has he had the basic journalistic decency at least to retract it.

And let's not even get into the starring role he once played c. 2018 in the Christine Blasey Ford / Kavanaugh affair.

Then there he was again, in April 2026, smugly recommending that the Eric Swalwell campaign HQ call me up for crisis PR advice. Hey @ryangrim, it's been three months since that Swalwell shitshow broke. Where's all the corroborating evidence of rape we were promised? Have you looked into it at all lately, or have you just flushed it right down the memory-hole, with the rest of your bullshit?

Grim is happy to embrace any rape/pedo/trafficking hoax with unwavering credulity if he feels it will advance some vaguely "Anti-Establishment Progressive" cause of his.

But the minute this predictably boomerangs back on him, he puts on his Super Skeptical Journalist cap again, and forensically digs into the dubious rape details. Give me a friggin' break.

[Saifedean Ammous @saifedean]

There's no sport called athleteball. Football requires a highly specific skillset which must be coached properly from a very young age, and must graduate through competitive leagues through youth ranks to professional competitive clubs. The US simply has no league because it has the idiotic MLS franchise ponzi scam whereby teams buy their spot on the top league with money rather than win it on the pitch. They have very little incentive to develop talent and that's why the US has never made a single elite football player and will never produce one while the MLS exists. Even the best US players are developed abroad in competitive leagues when they're in their critical formative years. You can't keep coping about athleticism because this isn't track and field and physicality is not that important. Most the world's best football players would have absolutely no chance to compete in US sports, which rely on athleticism a lot more. Usain Bolt loved football and tried to play it but was complete garbage and would never get a pro contract. Also, the US has more football players than Belgium has citizens. There's no magic quota of elite athletes that gets spread around. The US just has a dogshit closed league ponzi scam designed specifically to stunt the sport to keep the NFL & NBA & MLB ponzis at the front because they're much better for TV commercials. Implement an open league system in the US and you'll get thousands of clubs across the country competing to develop talent to make it to the top division. They wouldn't charge the players exorbitant sums because developing the players is the business model.

[Michael Tracey @mtracey]

The woman now accusing Graham Platner of sexual assault and/or rape, Jenny Racicot, already spoke to the New York Times for its June 4 article on Platner. In that article, she recounted having "positive memories" of her relationship with Platner, but said there was an episode in 2021, about which she "declined to elaborate," that she found “reckless” and “unsettling."

She now claims she told the NYT off the record that she was sexually assaulted, but this contradicts the NYT's characterization that she "declined to elaborate" on the 2021 episode.

According to POLITICO, she was upset by the reaction to the NYT article, so she began collaborating with "Cheyenne Hunt, a progressive Democratic lawyer who founded the nonprofit Reckoning Action, which launched earlier this year to fight misogyny" and was previously involved with ousting Eric Swalwell. (By the way, have any of those Swalwell rape claims been corroborated yet?)

Hunt then "connected" Racicot with POLITICO, which now claims that "at first, she confided [about the purported sexual assault] only in her therapist, who she continues to see," but the therapist "declined to comment when reached on Monday." Why would the therapist decline to provide corroboration, if authorized to do so by Racicot?

The only corroboration involving the therapist cited by POLITICO are "recent emails" with the therapist, in which Racicot explained she was talking to the media about her relationship with Platner and the “sa/rape." As in: "corroboration" from only the past month -- about an episode that allegedly occurred in 2021? During a period over the past month when Racicot was collaborating with this advocacy lawyer/organization and media entities to bring forth additional claims about Platner?

Has everyone just 100% removed their brains and deposited them into the nearest sewage receptacle on this stuff?

[Robert Arthur @Robert_S_Arthur]

Cities traded a horse related filth and disease vector for speed related dangers, chemical pollution (including insidious lead), noise, congestion and massive spatial demands.

How about we try more mass transit, walking and cycling?

[Karl Dandleton @Phanatic1a]

@UrbanCourtyard @Robert_S_Arthur @Steve_Sailer "most did not travel around on privately owned horses."

Motte/bailey detected. Your claim was that cities got dirtier/smellier we switched to cars. They did not, because horseshit is dirty and smelly.

[Robert Arthur @Robert_S_Arthur]

They also had electric street cars and pedestrians. We should have improved that rather than go all in on car infrastructure.

[Karl Dandleton @Phanatic1a]

@Robert_S_Arthur @Steve_Sailer @UrbanCourtyard Before cities went all in on car infrastructure they had horses. Horses are dirtier and smellier than cars.