Brad Range

Hey everyone...

The thought of someone carrying in that little podium and setting it down in the middle of that airport just before he starts to speak cracks me up.

@patrickbetdavid I’m not convinced her math maths…

Top 1% pays 42% of all federal income taxes. Bottom 50% pays 2.3%. And Congress continues to waste tax payers money.

A car meet at my local gas station! They’re all young. Not a corvette or white new balance shoe in sight. Nature is healing! And as I type, local police roll by blasting the theme from cops. Lol

@PugTrader @_10delta_ No. Not even close. Rethink your strategy. It isn’t working.

@RangeBrad @_10delta_

3 weeks ago I argued the US goal in Iran is to seize the global oil spigot. Venezuela in January -> Iran in February. Neutralize every supply channel outside the dollar system within 90 days. Achieve a compliant successor government and complete energy dominance. The oil thesis was the obvious layer. However, when you zoom out & view the last four years as a single sequence rather than isolated geopolitical events, the architecture of the grander US plan becomes visible. 1st was Europe, which laid the groundwork. The Ukraine conflict provided the justification for sanctions that collapsed Russian pipeline gas from 150 billion cubic meters to 40. Then Nordstream was destroyed, which rewired the entire European energy system permanently. The US went from supplying 28% of Europe's LNG in 2021 to 58% by 2025, exporting a record 111 million MTs, the 1st country in history to break 100 MT. Europe was transformed from a customer with options into a captive market now purchasing its survival in USD. 2nd was Syria. The fall of Assad severed the critical node connecting China's Belt & Road Initiative to the Mediterranean. The trilateral railway linking Iran, Iraq & Syria, designed to bypass Western maritime chokepoints, was completely destroyed. This isolated Iran geographically & cleared the path for what came next. 3rd was Venezuela. In January the US effectively took control of the world's largest heavy crude reserves. The US Gulf Coast has the most advanced refining complex on earth, specifically built for heavy sour crude. Phillips 66, Valero & the rest are now positioned to process hundreds of thousands of barrels of Venezuelan crude daily. The US captured a massive strategic reserve & solidified its position as the dominant exporter of refined petroleum products, an industry worth $110 billion in 2025 alone. Venezuela & Iran were the two major oil supply channels that existed outside the dollar system. Both produce heavy crude sold primarily to China & evaded US financial supervision. Both now being neutralized within 90 days, which leads us to.. 4th is Iran & the Middle East energy shock. Israel struck Iran's South Pars gas field, the world's largest natural gas reservoir. Iran retaliated against Qatar's Ras Laffan, the single largest LNG facility on earth, responsible for a fifth of global supply. QatarEnergy's own assessment is that 17% of export capacity is gone and recovery will take up to 5 years. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. European gas prices spiked 70%. Asian spot prices doubled. The only remaining scaled supplier? The United States. If Iran falls & a successor government is installed that the US controls or influences (the Delcy model described weeks ago) then roughly 40 to 45 million barrels per day of global production out of 103 million is effectively under US control. OPEC becomes irrelevant because the US coalition is now the marginal producer. Now add the gas dimension & it goes beyond oil. This war is solidifying the petrodollar system as it evolves into a hybrid petro/LNG-dollar. The old system was built on Saudi crude priced in USD. The new system is built on American crude plus American gas from the Gulf Coast, with no alternative supplier of comparable scale. The dependency is deeper because LNG infrastructure requires long term contracts & regasification terminals that lock buyers into supply relationships for decades. Europe & the Pacific allies (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc.) cannot pivot away as there is nowhere left to pivot to. They're now locked into the US energy system. The market confirms this. DXY went from 96 to 101. Gold down ~20% from its January all time high. Bitcoin down 20% on the year. Brent above $100. European & Asian institutions are liquidating precious metals and crypto to buy dollars because they need dollars to buy the only remaining scaled energy supply. The world is selling its gold to buy American energy in American currency. The dollar is now being weaponized through energy dependency. The structural repricing is happening regardless of how the conflict resolves. But the US grand strategy goes deeper.. Artificial intelligence is a physical industry. It runs on power and chips. Data centers require massive uninterrupted baseload electricity, primarily provided by natural gas. Semiconductor fabrication requires helium & rare earths. By choking the Strait of Hormuz & crippling Middle Eastern LNG & helium production, the US is systematically degrading China's ability to power its data centers & fabricate semiconductors at scale. The US is energy self sufficient, especially with newly captured Venezuelan reserves & expanding Gulf Coast capacity running on domestic gas. On the other hand, China is import dependent & every joule it imports effectively now transits chokepoints the US Navy controls.. Iran was the Belt & Road's overland energy bypass, the corridor that allowed China to mitigate the Malacca Trap. With Iran neutralized that corridor is severed. China faces a world where its compute infrastructure competes for scraps on a depleted global LNG market, while American data centers run at full capacity on domestic energy. Russia is next in the sequence. A post-war Iran reopening under US influence competes directly with Russia for the same refineries in China & India at lower cost. Iran's production costs are lower. Russia loses its last structural advantage in heavy crude & its economic lifeline. Additionally, under the Iran war cover, Ukraine has been opportunistically destroying Russian energy infrastructure & all signs point towards Russia being at the end of the line. The message from Washington becomes very simple: we dismantled two regimes in three months, your economy is about to get crushed, sign the Ukraine deal. Then Trump sits down with Xi holding every card. Complete energy dominance. The hybrid petro/LNG-dollar fortified, Iran cleared, Russia cornered, & China facing the Malacca Trap fully closed with no remaining energy bypass. Israel & the GCC are absorbing the kinetic cost of a conflict whose primary beneficiary, counter to the mainstream narrative, is actually America (First). Qatar offline for 5 years reprices the entire global gas market in favor of US exporters for the remainder of the decade. The Gulf states face years of rebuilding. Europe faces its 2nd energy crisis in four years. Sure, the average American might face temporary moderate inflation & higher gas prices. But if you are the architect of the US empire & you view the rise of China & Chinese ASI as an existential winner takes all scenario, the collateral damage is acceptable cost. Whoever controls the energy corridors controls the monetary system. Whoever controls the monetary system & the energy supply simultaneously controls the compute infrastructure that determines which civilization builds ASI first. The US is seizing all 3.

@PugTrader @_10delta_ No you don’t. This is about you lying about the Iran war. Before you start telling me about Jesus, you need to focus on being truthful. Once you get that figured out, come back and see me and I’ll straighten you out on misusing Scripture to justify breaking the law.

@RangeBrad @_10delta_ I do, do you?

@PugTrader @_10delta_ I don’t think you understand anything that you are posting lolz

@RangeBrad @_10delta_ Laughing 👇🏼

@maziehirono It’s you.

There is one person stopping our TSA agents from being paid. And that person is Donald Trump.

@PugTrader @_10delta_

@_10delta_ The terrain now 👇🏼

Wetherholt leading off speaks more to the composition and direction of the team than it does Wetherholt himself. #stlcards

@OfficiallyAlf You are so angry you don’t even know Why you are fighting, you just want to fight. Thats not healthy man. Go for a walk.

@OfficiallyAlf Just wondering why you are defending the blatant attempt to destroy the man’s life when he’s clearly done nothing illegal. Call me what you want. It’s not my fault you just want the man destroyed.

For most of us, the Russia hoax was a source frustration, even anger, but it didn’t hit us personally. For others, the hoax upended their lives., it was personal.

@OfficiallyAlf Is that illegal?

@RangeBrad Im sure you are also fine with him taking USAID $$ as well

@TheEconomist The economist fluffing Iran is not something I had on my bingo card. TDS is a helluva drug.

A month of bombing Iran has achieved nothing. Will Donald Trump escalate, or talk? For now, at least, the advantage lies with the Islamic Republic. Register for free to learn why econ.st/4bPYtXk

Lord of the Rings has no sequel. Lord of the Rings needs no sequel.

@Type07Safety No, but since when is it about need. If you want it, go ahead and get it. You’re grown. 😂

Smith and Wesson steel framed 9mm M&P 2.0 makes me weak in the knees. Do I need it?

@TimMurtaugh How cool is that?

The link in the image takes you here, by the way. Maybe one day he’ll get in. @AdobeOrg&affiliateId=mlbapp-ios_webview_news-index&rsid=mlbios.at.bat.new.implementation" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">mlb.com/news/danny-mur…

Grandpop could be wry. Check out @GeorgeWill’s Opening Day quiz in the WaPo: washingtonpost.com/opinions/inter…

@OfficiallyAlf Man, you think if that was accurate, they could have put him in prison with as much effort as they threw at him... Clown.

@RangeBrad Hes a Putin stooge, you bootlicking cuck

You think defending yourself from the bottomless resources of the US government is cheap? Is it easy? Nah that is lawfare and that was the whole point. Make it too expensive to work with the Trump administration. Don’t talk to me about muh democracy, when democrats are doing crap like this.

@OfficiallyAlf Well is he in prison? Was he convicted of anything? No. So, there’s that. He was falsely accused.