AlphaOne

I like Scott and I believed he liked me, there is nothing wrong with opening up the floor on this issue. He was significant both in the early days of Covid for his profound persuasion skills that were applied to get people to respond to the perceived threat - whether that was good thing or a bad thing is open for debate. In the later part of Covid it seemed like he persuaded himself “too much” and was incapable of persuading himself in the other direction. Again, I like scott and I do not represent myself as his peer, I think well spirited discussion should be welcome. I stress “well spirited”

🤑 What happened to all this money?

Destroy New Zealand, move out when the shit hits the fan. Destroy California, move out when the shit hits the fan

Rule of thumb with Bloomberg: Anything that's good for America is bad "because..." Anything that's bad for America is good "because..."

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.

Javier Milei: “I thought being on the left was a mental problem. The empirical evidence is so overwhelming that it never worked anywhere, and they refused to accept it.” “But what I discovered is that being on the left is a disease of the soul. The left is built on envy, hatred, resentment, and unequal treatment under the law. They are very violent, and since they have no way or arguments to answer, they go for physical violence.”

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Great choice by the NYT to run an op-ed on Operation Epic Fury by Ali Vaez — who emailed Iran's foreign minister in 2014 pledging, as a matter of "national and patriotic duty," to help Iran campaign against nuclear breakout limits and prepare reports on Iran's "practical needs"

I LOVED Jacklyn Smith, unbelievable. It was Farrah, Jacklyn (the hottest, let’s be real) and then the smart one, I think her name was Carol or Debbie or something. When she was talking to Charlie I’d just leave the room

What’s wrong with America and Israel seeking Iranian regime change? Doesn’t Iran use proxies to legally distance itself from war yet be its sponsor? Did China seek, and accomplish, regime change in America via 2020 election an fueled Covid hysteria and ngo fed protests and propaganda? What other countries participated in this endeavor? Europe? Why is their regime change ok but ours isn’t?

🚨 Hello @grok I have several questions, please answer in detail as an expert. 1. How many Muslim majority of countries are there. a. what is the Muslim population of those countries b. tell me how many Jewish majority countries are there, and what is their population? 2. combine amongst all those Muslim-majority countries, how much do they spend on defense, and then tell me how much Israel spends on defense? Do a deep dive. 3. Of those Muslim-majority countries, how many of them right now are engaged in war, and let's exclude Iran? 4. I want you to take all those Muslim-majority countries and tell me how much they spend on propaganda in the US and think tanks in the United States, and also include fara filings and diaspora groups. 5. Now give me that same calculation for Israel.

@BowTiedSalsero Why would I ever believe that anything that China allows to be posted on fukcing telegram is real? I’m not an idiot. Please don’t tag me on this stupid shit. You’re better than that 🙏

💩 This is the spaces that Mario is hosting. If you listen to this shit you gotta check yourself, seriously, one X junkie to another, you gotta check your emotional and psychiatric health 🙏

This is the man that helped create the Climate Change Act that has resulted in the UK closing its fertiliser plants. Now he's worried about a lack of fertiliser. These people should be in prison.

I’ll tell you something crazy, the EXACT same people that were the first to inflame and throw gas on the fire that the Covid videos coming out of China were “true” - are now doing it again with same script, different bullshit.

Please stop posted he was rescued. Until it’s confirmed what you’re saying is a lie

🚨 Hidden camera footage from Los Angeles' Skid Row shows petition circulators logging into an online voter database, pulling real registered voters' names and addresses, and handing those identities to individuals who were then paid to forge signatures on California ballot petitions. Investigators tracked the names captured on footage and went door-to-door to verify residents — who confirmed their addresses were accurate but said they never signed any petitions. The website identified in the footage as the source of the voter data is SigValid.com. The conduct captured appears to potentially violate multiple California felony statutes, including Elections Code §18613 for signing another person's name on a petition, Penal Code §470 for forgery, and Elections Code §18601–18602 for paying for petition signatures. U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli stated that under Attorney General Pam Bondi, the DOJ will aggressively pursue anyone involved in violating federal election laws. The investigation is ongoing and no charges related to this specific footage have been publicly announced at this time. Who do you think should be held accountable — and at what level? 👇 #ElectionIntegrity #PetitionFraud #LosAngeles #SkidRow #California #Breaking

I'm pro-Catholic but not interested in what the Pope has to say about anything political.

@SohrabAhmari If this pope and the previous one hadn't been so reliably in the tank for the left, more concerned about climate change than offering a dignified liturgy to a billion people, they'd have a little bit more credibility. Benedict XVI against this war would have meant something

🚨NEW: Billy Bush on 2016 Trump-Clinton debate after Access Hollywood tape🤣 "Trump's answer was MASTERFUL! He turned right to Hillary and cut her off at the knees and said, 'Bill Clinton said worse to me on a golf course.'" @sagesteele: "SO GOOD!" @DailyCaller