Schaubee

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Schaubee

Schaubee

@schaubee

Gen X Refugee

Earth Katılım Ekim 2023
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Schaubee
Schaubee@schaubee·
“A world is supported by FOUR THINGS…the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing…without a ruler who knows the art of ruling.” -Dune, Frank Herbert
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Iran International English
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk called for a prompt, impartial investigation into an attack on an Iranian school in Minab, urging US officials to swiftly conclude their probe and make the findings public, saying there must be justice for the harm done.
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Schaubee
Schaubee@schaubee·
@MPrejety85087 @IranIntl_En I don’t have to. I’m an American and it’s our country that is in charge. You little Europoors can’t even afford fuel or energy. Bunch of retards. You Eurodorks are like little ankle biter dogs that yap & yap but can’t back anything up. Again your glow is showing weak agent.
GIF
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Mike Lee
Mike Lee@BasedMikeLee·
The Senate should
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent
By publishing this explicitly false story, the @FT has officially become tabloid trash for market participants. Despite my direct, on-the-record denial of ever having advocated, explored, or espoused the idea that Chancellor-Bank of England statute serving as a prototype for a Treasury-Federal Reserve relationship, FT journalists manufactured a story with the headline, “Scott Bessent praised Bank of England as model for tighter oversight of the Federal Reserve.” These pathetic journalists have clearly fabricated a story to give the impression that both I and the Trump Administration are setting “about restructuring the relationship… at a time when President Donald Trump has launched an unprecedented assault on the world’s most important central bank.” Their mendacious assertion is based on vague statements from unnamed “financial industry executives familiar with the matter.” In short, FT has literally manufactured an entirely fake policy position for me and the Administration. Other than furthering a maliciously false narrative of dysfunction and divisiveness, it baffles the mind as to why they would shred their already diminished journalistic credibility. Over the past 10 years, I have written more than 20,000 words opining on the Federal Reserve decisions, personnel, structure, and modifications. Nowhere have I ever mentioned this ridiculous notion. The Governor’s letters to the Chancellor have proven to be a useless and perfunctory device. There is much to be said about the storied Bank of England, but any recreation of its operating framework on this side of the Atlantic has never been contemplated. The shameful journalists and editors at the FT are shocking in their meretriciousness, lack of standards, and general intellectual libertinism. It is the worst tradition of Fleet Street to manufacture news rather than report on it. They have brought irredeemable shame to their parent organization, Nikkei Inc., with whom I had previously held excellent relations. In 2025, I laid out a comprehensive 6,000+ word review of each and every policy reform that I believe should be adopted by the Federal Reserve. Read my actual, real thoughts on and proposals for Federal Reserve reform at the International Economy: international-economy.com/TIE_Sp25_Besse…
Financial Times@FT

FT exclusive: US treasury secretary Scott Bessent discussed tightening the US Treasury’s oversight of the Federal Reserve by adopting elements of the Bank of England’s model ft.trib.al/6dgGvkh

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Elizabeth Warren
Elizabeth Warren@SenWarren·
Today, I'm introducing my wealth tax — and more than 50 members of Congress are joining me. It’s time for the government to start working for American families, not just the ultra-rich.
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Cynical Publius
Cynical Publius@CynicalPublius·
RE: TSA This was the TSA Pre line in Philly yesterday at 4:30 am. It went around the corner. Then around another corner. Then around another corner. And it was the PRE line, not the regular line. Yeah I know it supposedly ended today. But this is one of those rare bipartisan screwups. I don’t care what party was at fault. THIS IS ABUSE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BY CONGRESS. PERIOD. ABUSE. Next time the American people are made to suffer by Congress, Congress needs to not get paid and have all health care and other benefits cut off until the problem is solved.
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Catherine Herridge
Catherine Herridge@C__Herridge·
EPSTEIN TEXTS: Apparently Boasts to Steve Bannon "Going Into A SCIF" -- A Secure Facility For Classified Information. "The intel here is superb." A spokesman for Steve Bannon did not dispute the authenticity of the texts, but offered no further comment. @thelatmg @latimesstudios_
Catherine Herridge tweet media
Catherine Herridge@C__Herridge

EXCLUSIVE: New Files Examined By Law Enforcement/Intelligence Analyst Reveal Jeffrey Epstein Allegedly Acted as Go-Between to Block 9/11 Victim Families From Suing Saudi Arabia And Details Possible FARA Violations This week on Straight to the Point I sat down with Morgan Wright, a nationally recognized cybersecurity, law enforcement and intelligence analyst. Wright analyzes the new revelations from the Epstein files and discusses evidence that Jeffrey Epstein functioned as a high-level influence operator allegedly protecting Saudi Arabian interests which included apparent attempts to block 9/11 families lawsuits before Trump took office, a 9/11 “shadow” commission with Ghislaine Maxwell, and bragging about SCIF access with Steve Bannon. Wright also says that Epstein fits the exact profile of individuals valuable to the CIA National Resources Division and questions why Epstein was never investigated for apparent violations of foreign lobbying laws by either party. A spokesman for Steve Bannon did not dispute the authenticity of the texts, but offered no further comment. A Saudi Embassy spokesperson confirmed receipt of our questions about the Kingdom’s relationship with Epstein, but did not immediately comment. The Estate of Jeffrey Epstein did not respond to our email seeking comment. A spokeswoman for Kathryn Ruemmler, former White House Counsel for President Obama said: "Ms. Ruemmler did not take any action, in either a professional or personal capacity, related to JASTA (Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act), the 9/11 families, or their ability to sue Saudi Arabia. She was never asked to take any action on this matter and never did." "Ms. Ruemmler welcomes the opportunity to appear before the Committee. At the time she interacted with Jeffrey Epstein, she was a practicing criminal defense attorney and shared a client with him. She has done nothing wrong and had no knowledge of any ongoing criminal activity on his part.” Ken Starr died in 2022. @thelatmg @latimesstudios_ Straight to the Point: Exposing Epstein’s Saudi 9/11 Connection 01:00 Epstein: Alleged effort to Block 9/11 families from suing Saudi Arabia 02:00 Epstein: Claims he will get former Obama WH Counsel and Ken Starr to help 03:18 Urgency to Act: Before President Trump’s first term 04:20 Epstein: Violations Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) 05:05 Neither Republican nor Democrat Administrations Pursued Epstein’s Alleged FARA violations 06:10 Ghislaine Maxwell: “Shadow” 9/11 Commission 08:15 Epstein: Brags to Steve Bannon About Access to “highly classified” facility 10:12 Epstein: In-Q-Tel (CIA-Backed High Tech Fund) 11:30 Epstein: Travel to “Denied” Areas 12:22 Congresswoman Mace: CIA should open its books on Epstein 13:30 CIA: National Resources Division For Intelligence Gathering 14:40 Epstein Attorneys File CIA and NSA FOIAs: Controlling The Narrative 17:49 DOJ “Coding Error” on Trump/Epstein Files 19:30 Response Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Epstein Estate, Kathryn Ruemmler

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Apple Lamps
Apple Lamps@lamps_apple·
"As to separation between California prices and the prices in the rest of the United States, we can offer the following information. For Valero, California is the most expensive operating environment in the country and a very hostile regulatory environment for refining. California policy makers have knowingly adopted policies with the expressed intent of eliminating the refinery sector. California requires refiners to pay very high carbon cap and trade fees and burdened gasoline with cost of the low carbon fuel standards. With the backdrop of these policies, not surprisingly, California has seen refineries completely close or shut down major units. When you shut down refinery operations, you limit the resilience of the supply chain. From the perspective of a refiner and fuel supplier, California is the most challenging market to serve in the United States for several additional reasons. California regulators have mandated a unique blend of gasoline that is not readily available outside of the West Coast. California is largely isolated from fuel markets of the central and eastern United States. California has imposed some of the most aggressive, and thus expensive and limiting, environmental regulatory requirements in the world. California policies have made it difficult to increase refining capacity and have prevented supply projects to lower operating costs of refineries. We believe the Commission experts understand that California cannot mandate a unique fuel that is not readily unavailable outside of the West Coast and then burden or eliminate California refining capacity and expect to have robust fuel supplies. Adding further costs, in the form of new taxes or regulatory constraints, will only further strain the fuel market and adversely impact refiners and ultimately those costs will pass to California consumers."
Apple Lamps tweet mediaApple Lamps tweet media
Governor Newsom Press Office@GovPressOffice

Donald Trump has done more to protect Jeffrey Epstein than he has to protect you from rising gas prices and grocery costs.

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readtheticker
readtheticker@readtheticker·
TRUMP goals - Leave NATO, cause when USA needs them they run - Show up Israel negative influence on USA - Weaken petrodollar, allow DXY < 90, or 85, quicken re shoring to USA Midterms - needs the SAVE act passed, blackmails DEM's over 2016 and 2020 elections foreign interference. Iran gets a Nuclear weapon (eventually) so USA and Israel will leave Iran alone (ak like Nth Korea). This wont matter as USA working on SPACE lasers to kill missiles (my guess) Winners: Iran, USA, Russia Losers: UK, Europeans, China (re shoring play)
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Tom Luongo
Tom Luongo@TFL1728·
Right… to buy oil from whom? With what currency? The Yuan? No. Importer The Pound? No. Importer The Euro? Hell to the no. importer The Yen? No Importer The Ruble? Been an option for four years…. Market said no. Exporter The Rupee? No. importer The SAR, other gulf states? Same as the USD , pegged. FFS, life ain’t a spreadsheet.
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John Reddick
John Reddick@svyolo9·
Amazing. The same clowns that were predicting a disastrous US "invasion" of Venezuela, didn't learn anything from round 1. Even without ANY deep understanding of history or current geo-politics, you would think at least some of them would at least sort out that Trump wants the Straits closed, and that he hoped it would happen on Feb 28. Or some would at least take a guess that that is the case.
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Eric Daugherty
Eric Daugherty@EricLDaugh·
🚨 HOLY CRAP! DNI Tulsi Gabbard has learned that US intelligence intercepted Ukraine government plans to route HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of American tax dollars to boost Biden's 2024 campaign against Donald Trump, and the DNC — Just The News Gabbard is now asking the US Agency for International Development to determine if the "plot" was carried out. The US tax dollars were earmarked for Ukraine to use for "clean energy" Gabbard's team even found that the communications — intercepted under BIDEN — were NOT even thoroughly investigated IMAGINE THAT. Investigate and expose it all, DNI Gabbard!
Eric Daugherty tweet mediaEric Daugherty tweet media
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Schaubee
Schaubee@schaubee·
Well put. Spot on!
10Δ@_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.

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Schaubee
Schaubee@schaubee·
This is a must read!
mike bski@BskiMike22802

A LOVE LETTER TO THE UGLIEST, MOST IMPORTANT AIRPLANE AMERICA EVER BUILT I am a physics teacher. I teach my students that when a pattern repeats itself enough times, it stops being a coincidence and starts being data. And when the data contradicts the conclusion, you do not defend the conclusion. You throw the conclusion out and follow the data. The Air Force has tried to retire the A-10 Warthog something like seven times. Seven times. Every single time — EVERY single time — a real shooting war starts, the retirement plan quietly disappears and the Warthog shows back up doing the job no other aircraft on Earth does as well. You would think that pattern would eventually produce a different conclusion in the procurement meetings. You would be wrong. But the data does not lie, even when the procurement meetings do. And right now, on Day 26 of Operation Epic Fury — right now, TODAY — A-10 Warthogs are over the Straits of Hormuz turning Iranian fast-attack boats into what I am going to generously describe as floating debris. So I wrote it a love letter. Because somebody should. --- FIRST, LET ME EXPLAIN WHAT I MEAN BY 'UGLY' --- The A-10 does not look like a fighter jet. It looks like an engineer was given a GAU-8 Avenger cannon — which is, to be clear, a seven-barreled Gatling gun the SIZE of a Volkswagen Beetle that fires 30mm depleted uranium rounds at 3,900 rounds per minute — and then told to build an airplane around it. Because that is almost exactly what happened. The engine pods stick out from the tail section like afterthoughts. The landing gear, instead of retracting cleanly into the fuselage, leaves a little bulge hanging out. The nose is blunt. The whole aircraft has the aesthetic of something designed by someone who was told the specifications and then ran out of time to make it pretty. Beautiful aircraft are designed around aerodynamics. Around low radar cross-section. Around marketability to congressional appropriators who have never heard a radio call with their own name on it. The A-10 was designed around one question: how do we keep the pilot alive while he puts steel exactly where the guys on the ground need it to be in the next thirty seconds? Everything else was secondary. EVERYTHING. The titanium bathtub cockpit that can stop 23mm rounds. The redundant hydraulic systems so that if one gets shot out, the other keeps flying. The widely-separated engine pods so that one hit does not take out both engines. The foam-filled self-sealing fuel tanks. The manual reversion backup system — cables, physical mechanical linkages — so that if ALL the hydraulics fail, the pilot can still fly the aircraft home using nothing but the original mechanical connection between the stick and the control surfaces and the strength in his or her own arms. This is not 1970s technology that has not been updated. This is 1970s design philosophy that has never been wrong. There is a difference. Pay attention to it. --- APRIL 7, 2003. AND I NEED YOU TO STAY WITH ME ON THIS ONE --- Her name is Kim Campbell. Her callsign is Killer Chick. At the time of this story she was a lieutenant colonel, and I want to tell you what happened over Baghdad on April 7th, 2003, because I do not think enough people know it and because every time I think about it I feel something I can only describe as the particular combination of admiration and rage that comes from watching bureaucracies try to throw away things that matter. She was flying her A-10A on a close air support mission. Baghdad. April 2003. The city was not, shall we say, a low-threat environment. Her aircraft took a direct hit from enemy ground fire. Not a graze. A DIRECT HIT. The hit destroyed both hydraulic systems — both of them, completely — and caused significant structural damage to the aircraft. Everything that makes a modern aircraft flyable is, under normal circumstances, hydraulically assisted. You lose hydraulics, you lose the ability to move the control surfaces that make the aircraft go where you point it. She switched to manual reversion. This is the part I want you to understand. Manual reversion is not a computer backup. It is not a digital system that kicks in. It is a set of mechanical cables — physical, metal cables connected through pulleys — that create a direct link between the pilot's control stick and the aircraft's control surfaces. No assistance. No amplification. Just the pilot's actual physical strength and the mechanical connection that the A-10's designers put there in the 1970s because they assumed — correctly — that real combat means real damage and they were not going to let a hydraulic failure kill the pilot if they could help it. She flew that aircraft for over an hour. In manual reversion. Over hostile territory. Not knowing what else might be structurally compromised. Not knowing if the next thing that happened would be the thing that ended it. She landed it safely. She was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Now. I want you to answer this question for me. What is the manual reversion backup system on the F-35? There is not one. The F-35 is fly-by-wire. The pilot inputs go through computers. If the electronics are compromised beyond a certain threshold, you are not flying home on cables. I am not saying the F-35 is a bad aircraft. It is an extraordinary aircraft. I am saying that the people who designed the A-10 understood something that modern procurement culture has largely forgotten: the enemy gets a vote. The aircraft is going to get hit sometimes. The question is not "will it survive a hit?" — the question is "when it gets hit, does the pilot come home?" Killer Chick came home. Because the designers of her airplane thought about the moment she was in and built the answer into the airframe before she was born. I find that extraordinarily moving. I make no apologies for that. --- THE PEOPLE WHO KEEP SHOWING UP TO CONGRESS --- Every time there is a retirement hearing, something interesting happens. The Air Force shows up and argues to retire the A-10. They bring slides. They have acquisition cost comparisons and sortie generation models and capability matrices and everything else that looks rigorous and data-driven from 30,000 feet. And then the Army shows up. The Marine Corps shows up. The Special Operations Forces community shows up. The Joint Terminal Attack Controllers — the JTACs, the men and women whose job it is to call in airstrikes from the ground while people are actively shooting at them — they show up. And they use words the Air Force slides do not have a column for. Words like "guardian angel." That is a direct quote from official congressional testimony. Not my word. Not my framing. An actual operator, in front of an actual congressional committee, describing the A-10 as a guardian angel. You know what that word means when it comes from someone who has been in the situation where they needed it? It does not mean "highly capable air asset." It means: I was in a bad place, the radio call went through, and that aircraft showed up and the calculus changed. The Air Force does not have a metric for that. Because the Air Force was not in the bad place. The JTAC was. There is also the sound. I know that sounds strange in an official procurement argument, so let me explain it, because it matters more than the Air Force acknowledges. The A-10's engines have a distinctive low grinding sound that travels. The GAU-8 firing — that BRRRT — is one of the most instantly recognizable sounds in modern warfare. And the documented, verified, prisoner-interview-supported effect of that sound on enemy combatants is real and significant. It disrupts coordinated attacks. It changes behavior. Enemy forces who know the A-10 is overhead make different decisions than enemy forces who do not. A fast mover at 20,000 feet that drops a bomb and is gone in four seconds does not produce that effect. The aircraft that LOITERS — that circles, that is visible, that can stay for hours — that produces that effect. The A-10 loiters. It loiters at $6,000 an hour. The F-35 loiters — when it loiters — at $30,000 to $35,000 an hour. I have a student who can tell you exactly how much that ratio matters in a sustained campaign. She is sixteen years old. She figured it out in about forty-five seconds. --- THE FLY-OFF THEY DID NOT WANT YOU TO SEE --- The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act mandated a formal comparison test. A-10C versus F-35A. Close air support, airborne forward air control, combat search and rescue. The Air Force hated this idea. The Chief of Staff at the time, General Mark Welsh, called it publicly — on the record — a "silly exercise." A silly exercise. They ran the tests anyway. April 2018 through March 2019. The final report was completed in February 2022. And then — and this is the part that made my jaw drop when I found out — the Air Force buried it for over a year. Would not release it. Fought FOIA requests. The Project On Government Oversight had to sue them in federal court to get it. And when it came out, it was so heavily redacted that key findings are still hidden. That is not the behavior of an organization confident in its conclusions. Here is what the report actually found — even through the redactions. The A-10's typical loadout enabled MORE attacks per sortie than the F-35. Not equal. More. To hit the same number of targets, you need more F-35 sorties. That might be acceptable if the F-35 had a great readiness rate. It does not. As of a 2023 Government Accountability Office report, the entire F-35 fleet has a full mission capable rate of BELOW 50%. Below fifty percent. Half the jets do not work on any given day. So you need MORE sorties from an aircraft that is available LESS often. That is not a capability gap. That is a capability crater. The F-35's gun — the GAU-22 — has documented accuracy problems. The report actually recommended the Air Force "fix the F-35A gun." It carries 181 rounds of 25mm. The A-10's GAU-8 carries 1,350 rounds of 30mm. The A-10 pilots reported SIGNIFICANTLY LOWER workload than F-35 pilots on the most complex missions. Oh — and as of the testing period, F-35 pilots had ZERO dedicated training requirements for close air support missions. Zero. So what did the testers do? They loaded the F-35 side of the comparison with former A-10 pilots who already knew how to do the job, specifically to "minimize the impact" of that training gap. The former A-10 pilots, flying the F-35, still did not outperform the A-10. Let that land. The Air Force fought the test, lost the test, buried the results, and then continued retiring the aircraft anyway. At some point, as I tell my students, "I ignored the data" stops being an oversight and starts being a choice. --- WHAT I KNOW ABOUT WAITING --- I was a line medic in Iraq. Combat medic. Actual forward operating base, actual radio, actual contact. I want to explain something to you about what it feels like to be on the ground in a firefight waiting for air support, because I do not think the people making these procurement decisions have ever had to think about it from that angle, and I think they should. In a near-peer conflict without air superiority, we were told to plan for 48-hour medical response windows. Forty-eight hours. I am a former paramedic. I know what the golden hour means. The window — roughly one hour — inside which surgical intervention makes the difference between a soldier walking home and a soldier coming home in a flag-draped box. Tension pneumothorax. Hemorrhagic shock. Traumatic brain injury. All survivable. All survivable if you reach a surgeon inside an hour. Not survivable after forty-eight hours of waiting for a medevac that cannot fly because there is no air cover to protect the helicopter on final approach. When the A-10 is overhead, the medevac can fly. The A-10 suppresses the ground fire that would shoot that helicopter down. It is not just killing things. It is keeping the route clear. It is the reason the helicopter makes it to the landing zone and the reason the landing zone is still there when it arrives. The people arguing about sortie generation rates and procurement costs have not done that math. I have. I do not apologize for caring about it. --- THE PART NOBODY WANTS TO SAY OUT LOUD --- The A-10 community is the only community in the United States Air Force that still produces fully qualified Forward Air Controllers Airborne. FAC(A). This is the skill set that makes combined arms operations work — multiple aircraft, ground coordination, danger-close fires in complex environments, all managed simultaneously by a single aircrew who have spent their careers learning how to do exactly this and nothing else. That knowledge lives in people. Specifically in A-10 pilots. And when those pilots retire, it does not transfer to a shared drive. It goes with them. The Air Force's current plan — and I want to be precise here, because this is not editorializing, this is documented fact — the current plan involves zero dedicated CAS training requirements for F-35 pilots. Zero. They are retiring the one community specifically trained for this mission and replacing it with a community that does not train for the mission at all. I ask my students a version of this question sometimes. If you fire your only chemistry teacher and replace them with a math teacher who has never taken chemistry and has no plans to learn it, what happens to your chemistry program? They always get the answer right. They are sixteen. --- SO WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY BUILD --- Not a refurbished 1970s airframe with duct tape and digital displays. I want to be clear about that. Metal fatigue is real. The youngest A-10 in the fleet is older than the parents of my students. That is not a forever solution and nobody who has looked at the maintenance reality is pretending otherwise. I want a new one. An A-10X. Clean-sheet design, same mission philosophy, fifty years of technology applied to it. Modern high-bypass turbofan engines — more thrust, 25-30% better fuel efficiency, lower infrared signature, and specifically designed from the start to work WITH the GAU-8 instead of tolerating it. Gun-gas ingestion is a known issue on the TF34s; it can be engineered away with current combustion technology and active flow control. You want the plane built around the gun. Build the engines around the gun too. Selective radar-absorbent materials on leading edges and key surfaces. Not stealth. Low-observable. The goal is not invisibility — it is cutting detection range in half. If a SAM that sees the current A-10 at 40 kilometers only sees the A-10X at 15, the pilot has time to react. That is survivability engineering. It is not complicated and it is not expensive. A compact AESA radar — pylon-mounted or conformal, leveraging existing F-16 and F/A-18 arrays, under $10 million per aircraft for integration. Ground moving target indication. Synthetic aperture mapping. Self-defense tracking. The same array in electronic attack mode to jam enemy search radars. Software-defined. Redundant. Armored. Updated armor suite — hybrid titanium-ceramic composite with aerogel thermal insulation, better protection at 20 to 30 percent less weight. That freed-up weight goes to payload. The aerogel is not just for armor — it reduces the aircraft's infrared signature, which matters enormously at low altitude where IR-guided threats are the primary danger. Loyal wingman integration. Control stations for four to six semi-autonomous drones operating under pilot supervision. Scout ahead. Carry additional munitions. Draw fire. Act as decoys against radar-guided threats. The pilot issues high-level commands; the AI handles tactical execution. One aircraft becomes a multi-platform strike package. The GAU-8 stays. Upgraded ammunition options — programmable airburst for troops in the open, improved armor-piercing for vehicles, smarter ballistic computer integrated with AESA ranging. You do not redesign the part that works. You make it smarter. Cost per airframe in a production run of 200-plus: roughly $80 to $120 million. That is half the cost of an F-35. Operating costs: approximately $22,000 per flight hour on the upgraded platform versus $42,000 for the F-35. In a 100-sortie operational day that is $2 million in daily savings. Per day. In a sustained campaign. I am a physics teacher and I like a clean ratio. The math is not difficult. The will to acknowledge what the math says apparently is. --- DAY 26. OPERATION EPIC FURY. --- Let me bring this back to right now. March 2026. The F-35s went in first. When Iran's integrated air defense network was intact, the fifth-generation platforms did what fifth-generation platforms do — they penetrated contested airspace, suppressed and destroyed the air defenses, and dismantled the threat environment. That is the exact right use of those aircraft and they did it effectively. Not arguing otherwise. Then the A-10 showed up. 120-plus Iranian naval vessels sunk or damaged. Mine-layers: gone. PMF command infrastructure in Anbar Province: struck with precision, seven killed, thirteen wounded in a single pass. IRGC fast-attack boat fleet in the Straits: being reduced to floating scrap at $6,000 an hour. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs confirmed it. The A-10 is, in his exact words, "hunting and killing fast-attack watercraft in the Strait of Hormuz." One F-35A took a hit during a deep strike mission. Suspected passive IR sensors bypassing radar stealth. Emergency landing. Pilot with shrapnel wounds. Aircraft returned safely — and that is genuinely good news. But the aircraft that no one can seem to stop trying to retire has taken zero losses. Zero. Because the people who designed it assumed it was going to get hit and built the answer into the airframe before the pilots who fly it were born. Killer Chick flew home on cables. That is not mythology. That is engineering. And it is the engineering philosophy we need to preserve, update, and build again. --- THE CLOSING ARGUMENT --- The people who keep showing up to testify — year after year, hearing after hearing, retirement announcement after retirement announcement — are not defense contractors protecting a revenue stream. They are Army officers and Marine officers and SOF operators and JTACs who have been in the bad place, made the radio call, and watched what happened next. They call it a guardian angel. They use that word in official testimony. In front of Congress. On the record. And every year, the Air Force brings out another retirement package. I want us to stop having this conversation on a two-year loop. I want someone in the Pentagon to look at the fly-off results they tried to suppress, the testimony they keep ignoring, the current operational results over the Straits of Hormuz, and say the thing out loud: NOT EVERY MISSION REQUIRES A $200 MILLION STEALTH PLATFORM. Some missions require something that flies low and slow and stays for hours and absorbs a hit and brings the pilot home on cables if everything else fails. Build the A-10X. Keep the community. Preserve the institutional knowledge. Let Killer Chick's generation train the next one. The Warthog does not need your respect. It just needs your enemy to look up. What do you think — should we build an A-10X or retire the mission entirely? Reply below. I will be here But what do I know — I am only a physics teacher and former Army combat medic who stood on the ground in a combat zone and learned firsthand what close air support means when YOU are the one waiting for it, who wrote the physics textbook being used to teach the next generation of soldiers how the world actually works, and who apparently has run out of patience for procurement decisions made by people who have never had to make that radio call. #MAGA #Veterans #Trump

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