Gee-Dunk

That’s excellent and an example of a properly structured relationship between two first world nations. I am in no way claiming that ROK are freeloaders, even though we never asked for repayment on the $100 billion US taxpayers spent between WW2 to today. I am only asking for your sword when we need it. Use some of those shiny US weapons we sold you.

@i63556 @RedWavePress @grok How much does the ROK pay the US annually for defense?

HILARIOUS: President Trump: “You know who else didn't help us? South Korea didn't help us. We have 45K soldiers in South Korea to protect [them] from Kim Jong Un, who I get along with very well. He said very nice things about me. He used to call Joe Biden a ‘mentally retarded person.’” “Joe Biden, he said he’s a mentally retarded person. He was so nasty to Joe Biden. It was terrible.”

@TimeTravelWalls @RedWavePress Considering what we have invested in this relationship, I would say they are getting a hell of a deal. No excuse to back an ally when they ask

@i63556 @RedWavePress South Korea has been one of our strongest allies — over 320,000 troops fought alongside us in Vietnam, plus thousands in Iraq & Afghanistan. Facing nuclear-armed North Korea with artillery pointed at Seoul, their focus on home defense is understandable. The partnership is mutual.

@TheSurvivalMom @feelsdesperate Oh, there’s definitely a solution.

In our small, safe city (Texas), kids as young as 11 or 12 regularly terrorize people on the greenbelts, ride in a large group down the middle of one of our main streets, and if confronted, respond with the most vulgar, in-your-face language and hostility with zero fear of consequences. People complain in Facebook groups but you're right -- it's a continual, low-grade social disorder, and no one has a solution.

There was a guy in my neighborhood who would go around shoving, slapping, spitting on, and screaming at people on the street. His preference was women walking with strollers or small children. There was a Facebook page dedicated to his exploits of which a couple dozen were documented. I don’t think he was ever arrested for any of this stuff. At some point he was finally arrested in midtown for something more serious and he finally disappeared. Anyways, this sort of thing has become more common in NYC the past few years, it wouldn’t have been tolerated a decade ago, and it doesn’t show up well in crime stats either because arrests aren’t made or because the crimes are pled down to nothing. People have a hard time articulating the sort of lower grade persistent social disorder that’s at issue: your neighbors aren’t getting shot or stabbed but they are being subject to low grade assaults, having things stolen, and all sorts of other little insults and injuries, of which some can occasionally be very serious. If you complain about permissiveness of low grade criminality and social disorder to libs they will roll their eyes at you but the failure to enforce order actually represents a huge technocratic failing, one that I consider to be disqualifying. There is a reactionary sentiment in the air and it’s not because people have been misled about what’s going on. It’s that they don’t like homeless people washing their genitals in the playground water fountain or shooting up on a park bench in broad daylight at 2pm on a Wednesday and other things like that. People know these things are unnecessary and don’t need to happen and the reason they are happening is because of a political program by Soros DAs and other like minded people that has the goal of intentionally immiserating the public in this exact way.

@TimeTravelWalls @RedWavePress So strong they won’t help us when we need them.

As a U.S. soldier stationed in Korea 1991-93 and 2000-03, then DA civilian for many years, the 45,000 troop number is decades out of date. We were at 35k–41k during my tours and settled at the ~28,500 authorized cap since the late 2000s. Facts on alliances matter. We have a strong partnership with the ROK.

@ProvenReserves And the price per KWh has tripled between 1998 and 2026. Green energy is definitely green for a corrupt elite.

After 2000 to Today - Britain shut down 6.6 GW of nuclear without replacement. Total Generation in 2025 plus total annual generation form that 6.6 GW of nuclear = total generation in the year 2000. 6.6 GW of nuclear that were desperately needed because of declines in North Sea energy production. And then suddenly steel production fell 85% because there was no electricity to replace the blast furnaces with EAF. And then suddenly the chemical industry had to be shut down because of the lack of process heat. And then suddenly you are on the verge of having to import SALT for the first time in record history because of this energy crisis.

Sorry, he used the term: “frees us from the chains placed around our necks”. I am all for a more independent Europe that is not politically or militarily linked to the US. The bad blood between the UK, France, and Germany with the US has been decades in the making. Western Europe is simply too radical left for most Americans. We can be trading partners but no more special treatment.

@i63556 @larroumecj @Daniel_Chrisman And their economy is worse off without the EU. Shackles you say?

Anglophone X is now flooded with Americans explaining how Europe was freeloading off the American empire, and cheering its coming end. I'm cheering too, so we're on the same side. But here's the funny part: MAGA has actually gaslit itself into believing the American Empire was a bad deal for America and a gift to Europe. (And that it was always this way - meaning they genuinely think their parents and grandparents were either idiots or naive philanthropists who, having Europe in the palm of their hand, decided to set up a system that worked against them.) As a result, MAGA is now dismantling its own empire. We haven't seen a self-own this spectacular since Germany blew up its own nuclear plants. There's always a moment in history when the metropole gets tired of paying for empire and loses sight of what it's getting out of it. We're there now. It's going to cost Europe dearly to exit its semi-protectorate status. But in the end, it'll be far better off for it. I put together a quick scorecard of what each side - America and Europe - gains and loses from the status quo. I'd encourage my American friends to take a look. So many of you have no idea how your own empire actually works. (1/2)

@BravoKiloActual Can you give a little snippet?

Reading some of the after action reports on the rescue op and DAMN; EVERYONE came out to play.

@larroumecj @Daniel_Chrisman So, the UK pushed through Brexit 6 years ago. This is an excellent example of what a European country can do when freed of it’s shackles. How’s it working out for the Brits?

This is exactly what I mean when I say Americans have no idea how their own empire works and believe their own propaganda. You think you are the only empire in human history that owes its dominance to some kind of intrinsic superiority rather than coercion. This naivety is staggering. People buy dollars because it is the only way to buy oil, and it is the only way to buy oil because the United States imposes this on the Middle East. The day — coming soon — when the United States no longer guarantees the protection of the Middle East, demand for dollars collapses. Europe buys American weapons because it is mandatory under NATO. Notably, countries that are not required to buy them tend not to. Europe has been trying for years to ban Big Tech, and the United States threatens to withdraw from NATO if Europe does so. It is therefore by force that American tech giants maintain their position. When China banned them, within 24 months it had produced equivalents. It would be the same thing in Europe. But in truth I am very happy that what is obvious to the entire world and to the older generation of Americans from the Greatest Generation has become totally incomprehensible to the new generation of Americans. Thank you for scuttling NATO. It frees us from the chains placed around our necks when we destroyed ourselves in 1945.

@therealthoughts @RepReaganPaul

@i63556 @RepReaganPaul It depends on the model but most have to shut down around 50mph.

⚡️After billions of dollars spent, right now at 9:27 am on April 2nd, 2026: ALL of the wind turbines in ALL of New England are contributing only 4.3% of the power to our grid. Or in other words — only 608 MW of the current system demand of 14,121 MW. Refuse: 1.6% Wood: 2.0% Solar: 1.1% Landfill gas: 0.2% Net Imports: 9% Hydro: 7% Once again, it is natural gas at 52% and nuclear at 23% keeping our lights on. Source: ISO-NE Website Photo: Penobscot County

The Strait of Hormuz is not the only path for ME oil to flow. In fact, this will force other options (pipelines, canals, etc.) which are long overdue. In no way is it the interest of either the EU, or China for Iran to have veto power over 20% of the world’s oil capacity. The US can honor its security committment to SA by helping to build out further pipeline capacity or developing a monumental canal. The goal would be to get the oil to the Mediterranean. All controlled indirectly by the US. Master Stroke if you ask me.

Well, here are my thoughts... Firstly, I doubt that Trump has ever heard of Hegel or would have the slightest inkling of what 'dialectic' means. But the picture you present is essentially Trump's narrative - that NATO allies and others are free-riders on American hard power. But your analysis is ahistorical. You write as if America has no skin in the game - like they're doing the rest of us a big favour keeping the bad guys at bay. You don't mention the petrodollar system that replaced the Bretton-Woods Agreement that was repudiated by the 'Nixon-shock' in 1974. That new system was a deal between the US and Saudi Arabia, and then the other Gulf petrostates, whereby in return for American guarantees of security and investment these states would price and sell oil in US Dollars - and then recycle the Dollar surplus back into the US economy by buying US debt. It is this arrangement that has created an almost limitless demand for US loan notes and funded 50 years-worth of US budget deficits. Part of that US security guarantee was to keep the Hormuz Strait open so the oil exports could keep flowing. But in this present conflict America has failed to defend its Gulf allies from Iran's retaliatory strikes and now the Hormuz Strait is closed. This is a strategic catastrophe for the US - proving themselves to be unreliable allies to the very states that buy their debt. This could be the fulcrum on which the petrodollar system is undermined or even collapses and the Yuan becomes the currency for pricing oil. This isn't some Trump-genius Hegelian dialectic working its way through, it's a god-almighty cock-up by a President being manipulated by a Zionist Israeli leader. The tail wagging the dog nearly always leads to disaster.

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.

@RasmusJarlov Is Ukraine a good example of how the EU will treat a partner?

In the future, there will be three major powers in the world: China, USA, EU. Neutral countries will move as much as possible towards the EU as their preferred partner because both China and the USA treat other countries disrespectfully and try to extort them. Europe will be the only great power and market to turn to if you want to have an equal and fair relationship. Canada is already moving towards Europe for this exact reason. India and Japan will also form a closer relationship with Europe. This is what soft power means. MAGA replies in the comment section will prove the point.

@Atomicrod The trend lines on California politics are clear. Newsome pivoted because he has bigger political ambitions. I’d give it less than a 50% chance it survives beyond 2030.

I’ll take a moment to celebrate with those who have worked so hard to renew Diablo Canyon’s NRC operating license for another 20 years. I’ll also join in a round of applause for the nuclear energy advocates who helped convince Gov Newsom and state legislators to give PG&E permission to complete the renewal process initially begun about 10 yrs ago. Now for the cold water. Unless CA state laws and regulations are changed, the plant will close in 2030. The fight isn’t complete.

@EU_Propaganda @PM_ViktorOrban You’ll be buying our big,beautiful, American LNG for the next 50 years fella.

@PM_ViktorOrban Thankfully, the rest of Europe hasn't been asleep for the past 4 years and has gotten new energy partners or has invested heavily in renewables and/or nuclear. Unlike Hungary, who has done nothing.

Europe is heading toward one of the most severe economic crises in its history. The world is facing a serious energy crisis. Europe is in grave danger. The only way out is to lift the sanctions imposed on Russian energy. Immediately. We must think not about Putin, but about our own country and our peoples. Instead of warmongering, love and save your country, Donald!

@IAPolls2022 AOC with those big, juicy quenepas would have a hell of a shot.

AXIOS: Some top Democrats are quietly debating a fraught question: whether the party's best bet for winning back the presidency in 2028 is to nominate a man — perhaps a straight, White, Christian man. Former first lady Michelle Obama fueled such talk recently, saying the U.S. is "not ready for a woman." Democratic strategists have put it bluntly, with several saying a version of "It has to be a white guy." axios.com/2026/03/29/som…

IDF has 3 divisions engaged in Lebanon. On the high end this is around 45,000 troops. The IDF has approximately 635,000 total troops (with reserves). Certainly, they can spare a few hundred thousand motivated troops to help secure the Straits. Want to take a bet on how many they provide for the next phase of this war?

We could switch with them and prosecute the Lebanon side of the war instead, if that would make you feel better? And there are plans for IDF ground support, hence the forming of a CJSOTF in Israel. Guys, don’t be surprised that an A10 pilot has the strategic level warfare understanding of an A10 pilot…

@unusual_whales @PaigeSully88 Lots of people commenting on this have never paid out social security tax in a given year and don’t understand how the system works. Politicians on both sides rely on people’s ignorance but it’s a fundamental pillar of the modern Democrat party.

Murray: Is it true that people making under $184k pay a 12.4% Social Security tax rate? Dahl: Yes Murray: And the rate for someone making $1 million? Dahl: 2.2% Murray: So, a 12.4% tax for people making less than $184k, but 2.2% for a millionaire or .0002% for billionaires.

@StejokiKing @RazorOil @grok You took that sum bitch to the wood shed. How’d that feel Stefan?

@RazorOil @grok fair enough but not enough

How come the Saudis maintain a pipeline operating at partial capacity ( currently full at 7mm bbl/d) as a strategic backup for contingencies, yet Canada can't even approve the construction of a new one that would take years to build, and in a weird way with a prerequisite for current pipelines to be running at full capacity at all times especially with WCS discounting…it doesn’t make sense. Let’s build !! 🇨🇦🫡🪒

@Indian_Bronson Are there any Republicans running for Congress or the Senate who have come out against this war?

The Make America Great Again and America First political saga of 2016-2026 has shown that even “alternative right” or “new right” ideas about immigration control or reindustrialization are simply inert. It is all pointless. The GOP will not stop prioritizing Israel over America, even if millions of Americans give up a decade of life and normal social relations and public dignity – and their money – for the sake of Donald Trump and empty promises of no new wars and mass deportation. The GOP, conservative establishment, and pro-Israeli interests instead co-opt all of it and then turn around and accuse you of insufficient patriotism. The only thing that will change this is the Republican Party being lustrated by repeated election loss. Nothing else will force honesty and open conversation and political re-orientation. What they are hoping is that they can show you enough pictures of black people committing crimes, or Middle Easterners chanting “Death to America”, or LGBTQ types being gross and weird, or illegal aliens being unintelligible and numerous — that they can then demand that you, as a White American or a conservative or Christian or whatever diligently vote for them and donate to them despite them doing nothing for you, because the other side is Scary, Annoying, Gross, and Evil. I’m not saying the other side of the US political domain *isn’t* populated by Scary, Annoying, Gross, and Evil sorts and interests. It’s chock full of them. But you survived 2020 to 2024, actually. You survived the Obama years. Maybe you even survived the Clinton years. The world will not end if the Democrats are in charge — and by the way, their policy preferences hardly exclude foreign wars for Israel, either, just at the GOP isn’t really too animated about ending transgenderism despite what the amateur young activist classes in each might tell you — but the GOP, the Republican Party, the venal traitors who squandered a decade of coalition building for self enrichment : they might be ended. That is worth exploring in the upcoming elections.

@sainimatic Anarchist Cookbook is all you need

it begins