Kenneth Sundaresan

Overlay of Jazz, Caballero, Judge and Stanton stealing second base. Stanton: red Judge: blue Cabby: purple Jazz: green

A UCLA researcher found U.S. building codes lack cost-benefit analysis and accumulate rules without removing them. The result: mid-rise buildings cost 55% more per square foot than single-family homes — a gap other wealthy countries don't see. cayimby.org/blog/shining-a…

Palestine is an occupied project of Communism, and has been for decades. The PLO is a Soviet-installed Marxist-Leninist organization. Today bankrolled by the CCP. You don't object to Palestine being "occupied". You object to it being occupied by someone other than commies.

Anyone who has John Kiriakou on their show unchallenged, or reposts his horseshit, is either intentionally or unintentionally serving as the last mile delivery system for the KGB's demoralization campaign against Americans.

Perfect

@AnaKasparian @adamnewyork @Ostrov_A Where did you get the information for the IDF’s testimony? Did IDF Soldiers Get "Stand Down" Orders? There is no evidence from official investigations or mainstream reporting that a high-level "stand down" order was issued to facilitate the attack.

@adamnewyork @Ostrov_A For me, that card expired when members of the IDF testified on camera that they were given stand down orders on October 7 and Netanyahu confirmed (again) that he facilitated Hamas' funding.

🚨 As you’re going about your day, hundreds of thousand of Israelis are racing to bomb shelter, after Iran just fired another barrage of missiles, including in Tel Aviv.

California spent years building a case that oil companies were robbing drivers at the pump. A state investigation found zero evidence of price gouging. A six-month CBS investigation found what's actually happening. The state charges a 61-cent excise tax per gallon plus environmental fees. It mandates a unique fuel blend that no other state uses, which means California can't just buy gas from Texas when supply gets tight. The market is isolated by design. Then two refineries shut down. Valero in the Bay Area and Phillips 66 in Wilmington closed, taking 20% of the state's gasoline production offline. The reason they left: rising costs, tightening regulations, and a profit cap law that punishes good quarters without cushioning bad ones. Chevron's Richmond refinery manager put it plainly: cap the good months but don't support the bad ones, and the business becomes unviable. So California created conditions that drove refineries out, lost a fifth of its production capacity, then blamed the remaining companies for the price increase that followed. The numbers today: California average is $5.89/gal. Oklahoma is $3.27. The national average just crossed $4 for the first time since 2022. A USC study projects California could hit $7.35 to $8.43 by year end. The state is now publicly asking oil companies to please stay. The same companies it spent years accusing of theft.

What you see almost endlessly from Tucker Carlson, "Comic" Dave Smith, Theo Von, etc., and the rest of the blackpillers amounts to a Critical America Theory. I'm not making this up. I'm explaining. Critical Theory was developed by neo-Marxist Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School in 1937. In an interview in 1969, Horkheimer explained what the Critical Theory is. He said (closely paraphrasing): "I developed the Critical Theory because we [Western neo-Marxists] realized we cannot articulate the good or ideal society on the terms of the existing society. What we can do is criticize those aspects of the existing society that we wish to change." In other words, a Critical Theory believes everything is so captured and corrupted by power and those who benefit from systems of power that it isn't even possible to talk about a better situation in clear terms. All that's available is criticism of why the system/society isn't better than it is. This activity has come to be known as identifying or "making visible" the various "problematics" in the existing system. A Critical Theory OF SOMETHING would focus this general mode of engagement into a particular domain. For example, a Critical Theory of Race in America would believe that racism is so endemic to a society and embedded within its systems to the benefit of whites that we cannot articulate a true "antiracist" vision on the terms available to us. All we could do is identify where "racism" manifests and criticize it for being there. We call that program "Critical Race Theory" because it is a Critical Theory of Race. What it does in practice is (1) identifies "hidden racism" in everything (criticizing those elements of the existing (racial) system they wish to change), called "identifying problematics"; (2) induces more people to think this way; nothing else. What a Critical America Theory would look like is not being able to articulate what a good or ideal America would look like on the terms of the existing America but criticizing those elements of America as it exists that we wish to change. That is, it would look for everything America isn't doing perfectly according to some ideal standard that doesn't exist, probably cannot exist, and cannot even be articulated and "make those problematics visible" in the hopes of changing the system. Leftists, including the whole of Critical Race Theory, do this endlessly. From Derrick Bell's (founder of CRT) 1970 book, Race, Racism, and American Law, forward, it is a relentless racial Critical America Theory. That's why it exported poorly and often hilariously to other countries that don't have the same law or racial history. Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States (1980) is another example, a very naked example, of a work of Critical America Theory. Specifically, this book goes through every chapter of American history, from pre-founding (Christopher Columbus) to the present (1980 at the time) and catalogues how America cheated "the people," mainly workers, indigenous, racial minorities, and women (the intersectional coalition). What I'm telling you is that the blackpillers of Podcastistan and X, etc., very notably including Tucker Carlson, are doing a socially conservative variation on Critical America Theory. Whether Carlson or "Auron MacIntyre" (nhrn) from The Blaze, the undertone of every message is plainly "you don't hate your (real) country enough" as compared against an imaginary ideal that doesn't, can't, and won't ever exist. The Blackpill Comics all do the same thing, relentlessly identifying "problematics" and alleged hidden systems of control that delegitimize the country as it actually is against a standard that isn't even real. The thing is, Critical America Theory is a Critical Theory of America. That is, it is a Critical Theory. That is, when you participate in this slop, you are taking on a critical consciousness about America. Having a critical consciousness is being WOKE, by definition (of Woke). This slop is Woke. When this Critical America Theory slop takes on a socially Leftist slant, we call it Woke Left (or just Woke). When this Critical America Theory slop takes on a socially conservative or Rightist slant, we call it Woke Right (which is just Woke too). They are both Woke. They are both toxic. They are both false enlightenment into a kind of terrible darkness, entitlement, malice, despair, hatred, and failure. Reject Critical America Theory. Love your country. It's great, and it's worth it.

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.

This is normal behavior for terrorist regimes and their proxies. This is from the WSJ today: "Iran Beefs Up Defenses, Recruits Children as It Prepares for Ground War." wsj.com/world/middle-e…

Why aren’t any of these at risk hospitals publishing their full accounting so everyone can see where they spend their money ? All but one group of hospitals that I have looked at potentially investing in, spend so much on consultants and fees that it’s no wonder they are at risk Plus, I have NEVER seen an industry that is worse than hospitals when it comes to buying medications and items like implants, screws, other devices. They overpay for everything. And then when you show them how to save money, their “supply chain” employees resist any change. They are so set in their ways, it’s a shock more don’t go out of business. Prove me wrong.

Iran was trying to use the North Korean model to get a nuke: create sufficient conventional deterrence so you won’t be challenged in acquiring one (it’s called the Seoul Hostage Problem). This has been explained over and over since day one. Everyone claiming shifting goalposts or no imminent threat has been lying. The reason North Korea was allowed to get nukes is because Seoul (and its 10 million inhabitants) is within artillery and rocket range of North Korea. During the 1994 nuclear crisis, the Clinton administration seriously considered airstrikes on North Korea’s Yongbyon reactor but backed off precisely because of the artillery threat to Seoul. Iran was trying to accomplish the same by stockpiling missiles and drones which would have had the same deterrent effect. The proof is what Iran has been doing in the past month: attacking all its neighbors in order to pressure the US to stop attacking it Beyond this, they were building medium-range ballistic missiles that could reach Paris and London, meaning all of Europe could be held hostage as they built a nuclear bomb. The reason Iran has not built a nuclear weapon until now is not because it couldn’t, but because it knew it would be attacked and denied this capability. So by allowing them to continue developing this conventional deterrence, you would be allowing Iran to get a nuclear weapon. And unlike North Korea, Iran is led by an eschatological death cult Reagan saw nuclear mutually assured destruction (MAD) as both morally bankrupt (because of the innocent-body-count problem) and dangerously fragile because it assumed flawless rationality between adversaries…this means it only takes one irrational actor to destroy the world. Working backwards from the conclusion that Iran’s Islamist regime must never have a nuclear weapon, it was necessary for the US to attack Iran to deny it the conventional capacity to hold the entire eastern hemisphere hostage. Every European leader knows this and behind the scenes praises the US for this action. But they are cowards, held hostage by their own internal Muslim populations, and so adopt these ridiculous public positions. This was never about Israel. And if your argument is that Iran should be allowed to get a nuclear weapon then you are a fool and a traitor to western civilization…you’re a useful idiot

@PiersUncensored @piersmorgan @aaronjmate @AnaKasparian @gghamari @elicalebon Lol

@PiersUncensored I'm glad you brought up the @TheYoungTurks point. What do you think staff meetings are like between Ana and Cenk? They can't go 30 minutes without becoming dyspeptic

Norman’s comments here are consistent with his views since Chomsky became his mentor He’s been opposed to a binational state, angrily denounced BDS, and consistently erases the power of the Israel lobby or neocon movement in US policy, even on Iran, obscuring politics itself I’ve also noticed he relentlessly deploys the term “Jewish supremacism” but never offers a critique of Zionism

I've stopped reading Gulf war headlines. Here's what I track instead. We run an India-focused equity fund. 85% of India's crude comes from imports. Half of that normally passes through Hormuz. So yes — this crisis is personal. But the information environment right now is garbage. Trump says the war ends tomorrow. Iran says Hormuz is shut forever. One analyst says $150 oil, another says $60. You can't build a portfolio view on this. So I've narrowed it down to 4 signals. These are priced by people with real money on the line. They don't lie. 1. Ship insurance premiums through Hormuz This is the single best signal. Lloyd's underwriters have billions at stake on every pricing call. Before the war, insuring a tanker through Hormuz cost 0.25% of the ship's value. Today it's 3.5–10% — and almost nobody is buying. A $100M tanker that cost $250K to insure now costs up to $10M. When this drops below 2%, the people with the most to lose are telling you it's getting safer. No press conference can replicate that. 2. How many ships are actually crossing Every ship carries a GPS tracker (AIS). You can count exactly how many cross Hormuz each day. Before: 100+. Now: 8. That's a 92% collapse. You can't spin a ship being somewhere it isn't. Iran is letting some Chinese and Indian ships through, but it's a trickle. When this number crosses 30–40, trade is resuming. You can track this free on the WTO Hormuz Trade Tracker. 3. Paper oil vs real oil This one most people miss entirely. Brent crude (the headline price) is at $112. But Dubai physical — what Asian buyers actually pay for delivered oil — is at $126. That's a $14 gap. It exists because Trump's comments keep pushing paper prices down. Traders call it jawboning. But the refiners buying cargo aren't getting any discount. If you're looking at Brent to assess India's oil bill, you're looking at the wrong number. 4. The mid-April cliff Multiple emergency measures expire around the same time. The 400 million barrel SPR release runs dry ~April 15. The US waiver letting India buy Russian crude expires. Formosa Plastics has declared force majeure from April 1. Right now these stopgaps are keeping the supply gap at ~5 mb/d. Without them, BCA Research estimates it doubles to 10 mb/d — the largest crude disruption ever. If Hormuz doesn't reopen by mid-April, we're in uncharted territory. Bottom line: track the insurance premium, the ship count, the paper-physical spread, and the April timeline. Everything else is noise.

NEW 🔴 Harvard Harris Poll: Key Takeaways on Iran & the War: •76% say the U.S. is currently winning the war against Iran •64% say Iran violated its nuclear deal •62% view Iran as a direct U.S. national security threat •67% say Iran is a leading source of instability, terrorism, and war •68% believe the Iranian people do not support the regime •73% support Israel over Hamas •51% support U.S. Israel strikes on Iran, 54% say the campaign is justified Support for the war is heavily split politically, Republicans strongly back it, Democrats largely oppose

@AnaKasparian I'm not a Democrat but her district and our city has a sizeable Jewish community that has different views then you

Sure, I might be untalented. Up to others to decide. But I can deduce that voting “no” on legislation that would cut arms to Israel amounts to supporting U.S. funded arms to Israel…as they carry out war crimes and atrocities daily. Those crimes are committed with zero fear of blowback thanks to the defensive capabilities Americans are forced to bankroll. In addition to voting no on that legislation last year, in 2021 you originally (and correctly) voted “no” on a bill to funnel an extra $1 billion to Israel on top of the $3.8 Billion we already send them every year. You got a little pressure from your corrupt colleagues, changed your vote to “present” and then wept about it…literally. Is that what political “talent” looks like? Israel was enjoying an economic surplus that year. We, on the other hand, were not. As for cashing checks, I’d respectfully ask you to remember who pays yours. It’s the people you’re lying to right now.

@AnaKasparian AOC doesn't represent you or Californians. She represents Metropolitan New Yorkers. We don't comment on all of the representatives in the California delegation in your district, like all the clowns who represent Los Angeles. So why are you worried about who represents New York?

@mtracey This was reported by the New York Times shortly after 911 and was in the 911 commission report. I believe a few of the 911 hijackers transited through Iran at some point. Not operational collaboration, but some peripheral collaboration. nytimes.com/2004/07/18/wor…

REMINDER: Trump 1.0 also tried to connect Iran to 9/11 and Al Qaeda x.com/mtracey/status…

Trump posted on Truth Social that everyone should watch Mark Levin's show last night, particularly this interview, in which Marc Thiessen makes the case that Iran was involved in 9/11, and Trump's war will go down as "the greatest military campaign" since the American Revolution