Michael Roesch🇮🇱

@BrettErickson28 Suddenly, there are a thousand experts on Iran, it's future, and American failure. We are only in the 5th inning, America is ahead by 2 runs, but these "experts" act as if the final score is already written. It is not.

One way or another… Iran is getting PAID. This is one of the key issues of the U.S. Blockade. Let’s assume… 30-45 days from now (maybe longer), Iran is forced to shut-in their oil wells at scale. Iran makes ~$35B per year in oil sales. Let’s assume, in a worst case scenario, Iran permanently loses 20% of their oil production (bold assumption). That’s $7B/yr in revenues. Not great, but… what are they looking at with their leverage over the Strait of Hormuz? Conservatively, IF (and it’s a big if) Iran is able to legitimately implement the PGSA (Toll Booth), we’d be looking at a very conservative revenue per year of $25B… very conservative. But let’s assume they’re not able to do that. What are their other options in a peace deal? Unfreezing of assets and large scale sanctions removal. This is worth orders of magnitude more than $7B/year to Iran. Iran, one way or another, is going to force the United States to make MAJOR concessions in order to secure a reopening of the Strait. Whether it be from the Toll Booth, or through sanctions relief, $7B is nothing in the big picture for the regime in Tehran compared to the value their control over the Strait of Hormuz has. The blockade is a broken strategy for the United States, and it’s time for us to employ a new plan… if there even are any left to pursue…

It's partisan clowns like Ro Khanna that remind me exactly why I switched from Democrat to No Party Preference. I was a Clinton Dem--fix the border, protect the American worker, prosecute crime. Slowly, the Dems promoted open borders, closed mills and coal mines, and put the criminal above the victim. The Dems pushed me further away when they embraced boys in girl's sports, chose Palestinians over Israel, and refused to condemn Antifa and BLM violence. There are millions of us Clinton Dems that now see the Democrat party, and supposed moderates like Ro Khanna, as representing a failed vision leading to a steady decline of American culture, economic progress, and societal cohesion. Many of my Dem friends who still drink the Dem party punch have become litmus testing zealots. The Republican party is certainly not a comfortable fit for me either, but I'm not ostracized by them for being pro-choice, pro separation of Church and State, and someone who often disagrees with Trump's methods.

The next Democratic White House does not need a court reform commission like some college seminar. We need action. We need term limits for Justices. We need to expand this morally bankrupt Court from 9 to 13.

@RoKhanna Actually, they will just make it much easier for a Black Republican to be elected to the house.

South Carolina, where the first shot of the civil war was fired, where 40 percent of those enslaved came through the Charleston port, is today engaged in an ugly recidivism to draw maps that will deny a Black person the chance to serve in Congress. The stakes could not be higher. Our political fight is not on a playground, but a moral battleground. We must stand for Black representation across the South.

@copesint I handled everything from classified to top secret code word docs everyday for a few years. Cynical Publius is correct. Kelly, by offering specific information on munition shortage, not the general information that Hegseth released, gave possibly valuable info to Iran and others.

Grade inflation in college is real, and it's much worse than most people realize. I have been a faculty union president, faculty Senate officer, and I created one of the first online classes in California. I know the subject well. Here's just one significant problem--about 50% of college courses are taught by adjunct instructors, and most of these part-time teachers have no seniority or job protection. They are generally assigned the classes tenured instructors do not wish to teach--remedial courses, courses with lots of grading, and the failure rate can be high. These adjunct instructors also teach many or most online classes, and they often teach at two or more colleges each semester. Adjunct faculty, if they want to maintain employment, know they must recruit adequate student numbers, retain the students, and do well with student reviews. This can be difficult to impossible in many online situations, putting the adjunct instructor in a difficult position. If they readily drop too many underperforming students, or they get poor student reviews for tough grading, they know they might not be hired again. Over the years, as the number of adjunct instructors teaching online increased, I watched the number of "gift" passing grades skyrocket. The adjunct system and online courses, though necessary, has become a nightmare where grade inflation is common.

I can say with certainty that Joyce Carol Oates is mistaken on this point. I have been teaching at Princeton for 41 years. I have not inflated my grades. (Nor do I grade on a curve.) I give each student the grade he or she deserves. I assign challenging material and demand rigorous analysis and argumentation. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, my enrollments are large by Princeton standards. And many of Princeton's top students take my courses. The median grade is typically between B and B-. The grade of A is rare. (Sometimes no student in the course earns one.) As a result, an A actually means something. An A- will usually place a student in the top 10-15% of the class. B+ is a good grade. A grade of B is entirely respectable. The grade of C and even C- is given. The grade of D is rare, but not unheard of. In other words, despite Princeton's admissions standards, not all our students merit the grade of A, or even something near it. When it comes to student performance, there is a range. At least in my experience, honest grading--giving each student the grade he or she has actually earned--will reflect it.

@lthlnkso Yes, cash would be better than giving diapers. In order to give diapers, the state will use up money to hire program administrators, rent storage, and hire distribution people. The new parents will end up getting a small percent of diapers they could get with cash. Fact.

Why not just give cash? Cash is simpler. Don't have to worry about getting, transporting, storing, distributing diapers. Cash is better. If the new parents want diapers, they can buy diapers with cash. If the new parents received a lot of diapers as gifts from friends or family, they could spend the cash on something else.

@adamtaggart Adam, your analysis and summary are reasonable, but most replying to your posts are biased and hiding behind half-truths and definitions that make little sense. Barnes mistakenly believes his intelligence in one field gives him worthy insight into all others--he is wrong.

I'm sure I'm going to regret wading back into the fray, but here goes... I'm hearing a lot of people say, "The US attacked Iran unprovoked, so of course Iran has the right to seize the Strait of Hormuz. Iran is just defending itself." First off, "the shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz...are governed by international maritime law and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)" britannica.com/question/Who-o… Second and more important, since when has it ever been acceptable to attack or hold hostage neutral parties, in war or otherwise? Spoiler alert: NEVER Your enemies are fair game in war. But NOT neutral parties. Again, NEVER. If I'm wrong here, please some one show me historical precedent. But Iran's attempted taking hostage of the Strait and the ships of neutral nations held captive there, threatening them with deadly violence should they attempt to transit, flies in the face of this. Honest question: why do so many people see this as acceptable?

@CynicalPublius @AdkX13 I'm a vet, and I know veterans who take advantage of the ease of getting VA disability benefits. Fraud and abuse, no matter the perpetrator's background, should be rooted out.

@AdkX13 "Getting old and warn out is not disabled." Yeah it is, when it's Service-connected.

Somehow there is an X debate going on right now about VA disability ratings. I'm hearing some idiots saying if it's not from a combat wound, you should not get a disability rating. To which I rebut with the following; 20+ years of: -12 mile ruck marches. -5k/10k/10 mile/every other distance runs. -Parachute landing falls. -Obstacle and confidence courses. -Vehicle rollovers. -Helicopter hard landings. -Heat injuries/cold injuries. -Anthrax shots, COVID shots, all other kinds of shots. -"Here, take some Motrin, you'll be fine." -Weeks/Months/Years of high stress and little sleep. -Extended periods of poor nutrition. -Weird diseases you can only get in places like Afghanistan or Korea. -Burn pits. -All other manner of training injuries. -Never telling anybody you are injured because if you do they might pull you from that leadership position you fought so hard to earn. You do all that for 20+ years, your body will be torn up, I promise. The US military is a physically demanding place, no matter what your branch of service or MOS. Training accidents happen routinely. People die in peacetime accidents, routinely. The idea that a VA disability rating should only come from something that also earns a Purple Heart is nonsense. If anything, our warriors are consistently denied VA disability ratings for what are clearly service-connected ailments.

@BasedSamParker Imagine someone making use of the X data centers, including the massive Colossus data center complex (about 2 million square feet) to complain about the building of a data center and then "advocate violence" against the center while denying he is advocating such violence.

Imagine a building a half-mile wide. Now imagine that building stretches from Seattle to Portland. That's what they're gonna build in Utah. Utahns showed up in droves to oppose it. The 3-man county commission passed it anyway. This is "democracy." Lol I don't normally advocate violence, but they're making it VERY difficult here.

@BillKristol "Criticism and dissent" are one thing, but you know darn well that is not a fair description of what the left has been doing.

Those of us in the pro-democracy movement can and should hold both of these positions. 1. We unequivocally reject violence. 2. We will unequivocally oppose efforts by this administration to use last night as an excuse to try to suppress criticism and criminalize dissent.

@JoshEakle Ah, if you continuously call the President a fascist, compare him to Hitler, say he's and authoritarian dictator, is a rapist, a pedophile, and destroying our country, well, yes, you are priming the pump of violence. Don't act surprised when crazy people take action.

There's a fundamental rejection of free expression baked into this. Jake Tapper and members of the media aren't calling for violence against the President. Criticism is not incitement. The idea that anyone critical of a president bears responsibility for political violence reduces the First Amendment to a conditional privilege. That's the logic of authoritarian regimes. It absolves the perpetrator and collectivizes guilt against the opposition. It is flatly incompatible with America.

@avidseries As Dostoyevsky pointed out, "It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently," and Cole Allen is just another leftist fool who believes Trump is a "pedophile, rapist, and traitor." Yes, Trump is egotistical and spiteful, but the left is pushing something darker.

You are both telling the "truth" depending of how you define political violence. Both truths depend on ommission of relevant facts. Walsh is likely looking at the number of killings (a few right-wing nuts killed a high number of people at a church, market, and synagogue--few events, but high number of deaths. Leaving them out, well the left (Antifa, BLM, anti-ICE...) is responsible for the burning of cities, looting, harassment, hundreds of protests with some violence. The right, well, nowhere near as much.

You’re lying. All the public & private data shows that political violence in this country over the past 30-40 yrs comes primarily from the right. Even with an uptick from late 2025 of political violence from the left. You know you’re lying. But your job is to divide. Shame on u.

What you say is true, but it is also very, very misleading. For example, if we asked whether the right or left is responsible for most violent street protests, lootings, and destruction of buildings in the last 10 years, we would see the left being the culprit. Yes, the right killed more people, but that is because of a three or four right-wing nuts that shot up churches and a synagogue, killing a large number of people in a few tragic events. Antifa, BLM, Anti-ICE and related groups are responsible for many billions in damages in dozens of American cities. The right is responsible for the Capitol Hill unrest.

This is garbage. Every data set you look at shows that political violence (especially that involving fatalities) has been mostly a rightwing problem over the past twenty years. (Property-directed political action is usually more of a problem on the left than the right.) This holds true even if you remove the problematic methodologies and assumptions (e.g., classifying Islamists and prison skinheads as rightwing) used in some of the studies conducted by ideologically-motivated organizations. More recent data show that this longer-term trend may be reversing as leftwing activity rises in volume and targeted lethality. Data from 2025 and later is still emerging and will provide a more complete picture. It's useful to remember that political violence is still a tiny percentage of all fatal violent crime. Racially and ethnically-motivated violence is far more common.

@McFaul Ah, Iran is the one blocking the Strait of Hormoz. The USA, in response to Iran forcing ships to use its mandated route, pay tolls, and stopping free passage of shipping, has put up a blockade of ships leaving Iranian ports and Iranian vessels. So, what is your point exactly???

I hope those cheering for the blockade are thinking about the implications of this new precedent for the South China Sea and Taiwan. For a long time, the US has stood for freedom of navigation in international waters. That policy has served our security and prosperity well.

ADA also requires we spend about a billion to install these yellow bump sheets on all new curbs and building exits. They're expensive and costly to maintain. They are sometimes slippery when wet, and can be difficult for some people. They are installed for the few thousand totally blind Americans, but I'm sure the money could be better used by that group.

In America we bypass common sense for mandated regulations This sidewalk was likely made like this to be ADA complaint Someone decided this small area needed wheel chair access. Who wants to bet this project took 15 city planners and $10 million dollars New construction sidewalks built or significantly altered after the Americans with Disabilities Act must generally meet full accessibility standards

@niall_barr @stevehou @grok Since the war with Iran has started, has the Strait of Hormoz ever been open without restrictions?

@MichaelRoesch16 @stevehou That is not what was visible on the ship tracking sites. Ships were avoiding the area that may be mined, but not using the route where Iran took tolls, or slowing to allow checks. ~I'm fairly certain you're talking bollocks.

Can someone explain why the US was still enforcing the blockade during a period of formal ceasefire when Iran had publicly committed to reopening the Strait of Hormuz and allowing ships to sail through but the US insists on the blockade until a deal was finalized? Just because?

@compliantvc Complete BS. The average American does not spend "3 hours in traffic each morning...", but rather about 28 minutes. Do better.

Meanwhile, the average American spends 3 hours in traffic each morning on a congested interstate just to travel 12 miles No wonder the EU is winning in basically every economic metric besides petrol sales

@NotAvgLiberal Actually, you do sound like an average liberal. You confidently judge the value of people by what they wear. You believe your quick observations about a society show deep insight rather than lazy analysis. You are eager to disparage your own country. Yup, sounds very average.

Today we’re leaving Europe. We visited Rome, Trastevere, Vatican City, Venice, Barcelona and Madrid. Not a single MAGA hat. Not a single Trump t shirt. Not on any tourist, Not in any shop. Not a single cop or law enforcement officer wearing a mask, Not a single law enforcement officer beating the shit out of anyone, for any reason. Europeans make it perfectly clear. They don’t like or approve of Trump. I’m going to miss it here.