Stay out of the dry heat.
Bullet Points:
** The media has missed an important point in regard to the recent attacks on Russian Oil production. It should come as no surprise. The fact that the crude cannot be processed due to attacks on refineries and cannot be shipped out, as the Russian tanker fleet has been hit hard, means that in many cases, storage facilities are full. This means that Russia is forced to shut down the actual oil production. Restarting a well, more so with the type of oil that Russia produces, is not just “Turning the pumps on,” as it is a complex process that is generally handled by a handful of companies — These companies include a collection of Texas-based companies, SLB (French), Equinor (Norway), and so on. What they have in common is that they are Western companies that have no desire to help Russia out.
** Party wrecker.
** “The question underneath is a political one. A government that secures compliance by managing what its citizens believe about their own risk has arranged for them to consent to what they would have refused if they had been told the truth. That is the difference between governing a free people and administering one.” That quote is from Dr. Robert D. Malone’s article about the methodology employed by Dr. Fauci early on to misrepresent the death rates for COVID. Consent that is not informed, he argues, is not consent. We were consistently lied to, and whenever the truth could be prevented from reaching us, it was. You can say the same thing for the January 6th situation.
** Walsh takes on Muslim rape gangs.
** Can you file it under war profiteering? President Trump did something no Democrat would ever have the nerve to do to a friendly industry: he looked ExxonMobil and Chevron in the eye and told them their record wartime profits belong to the American driver, not the balance sheet. The numbers are staggering. 𝐄𝐱𝐱𝐨𝐧𝐌𝐨𝐛𝐢𝐥 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐝 $𝟏𝟒.𝟓 𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫 — 𝐝𝐨𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫. Chevron pulled in roughly $12 billion, its biggest haul in six years, as crude spiked past $100 a barrel and gasoline hit $4.56 a gallon this spring during the war with Iran.
** Ryan on Bible Study, forgiveness and reconciliation. Ryan learned the hard way. Bible Study can be a two-edged sword. You can move into a gated community, or you can just move where there are no other people. I think the latter is better, but that’s me. Compound, Front Toward Enemy, hands-down.
** h/t Claudio – There is a lot of R & D going on in Ukraine. It’s the perfect proving ground for your stuff, and others (with money who may wish to buy your stuff) can watch it work. Because of that, if only that, the war can’t end. Ukrainian drone and missile maker Fire Point has secured agreements from over a dozen European defense companies to provide radar, guidance, and other systems for the Freyja missile defense project, and is starting to integrate the various systems, its CEO has said. Ukraine had urgently sought partners to develop a weapon capable of stopping Russia’s ballistic missiles. The pan-European project was launched officially in Paris last month by 10 governments and 12 defense firms – including Eurosam, Leonardo, Thales and SAAB.
** Tech stocks have been volatile lately. Just ask Leopold Aschenbrenner, whose AI-focused hedge fund lost $35 billion in just a few weeks last month. It’s the latest incident to trigger fears that the AI bubble is about to burst. It won’t burst. AI is relentless, but there will still be winners and losers as vaporware is exposed.
** The nuclear cat has been out of the bag for many decades now, but the situation in Ukraine (which traded its nukes for promises) changed the playing field. The US-Saudi civilian nuclear agreement is facing criticism from all sides, partly because Red China wanted to be the broker in the Middle East (though its cat’s paw Pakistan and directly). By making the deal contingent on Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, President Trump risks pushing Riyadh toward China, which already cooperates with the kingdom on nuclear research and is unlikely to impose any conditions, Ali Shihabi, a Saudi commentator close to the royal court, wrote in The Washington Post. The kingdom still prefers an American partnership, he added. In addition to opposition in the US Congress, the deal has raised concerns in Israel. Allowing Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium — which, under the agreement, would be overseen by the US and only proceed after extensive study — could encourage Egypt, Turkey (Türkiye), and the UAE to seek similar capabilities, eroding nonproliferation norms. Everybody who can afford nukes will have them, including the ROK and Japan. Will it make the world safer? That is your question of the day.
** The Army wants to quickly develop an “extended-range, quick-response missile to defeat Group 2 and Group 3 small Unmanned Aircraft System (sUAS) threats,” according to the Army’s Sources Sought notice. The deadline is August 20. The initial specifications are for a missile that can intercept a drone flying at 6 kilometers altitude, at a range of more than 16 kilometers. The ultimate goal is to destroy drones flying 8 kilometers high, at a range of more than 25 kilometers. Missile guidance would be via a radar seeker. (h/t Claudio)
Identify the Aircraft
1
2
Only a good rider can tame the worst of horses.
Identify the Boat
3
Parting Shot
Democrat Brain Trust
End
Identify the Aircraft
1. Heinkel He 115
2. Caudron C.714 Cyclone
Identify the Boat
3. Romanian Smârdan-class River Monitor
I concur.
Nailed them. Outstanding
Pilots were not over enamored with the Caudron C.714 Cyclone – controlled take-off, but it’s like flying with EdB on the landing….!
My son listened to the Ryan/Howerton podcast and it spoke to him so hard he had to call me and talk about it.
(Not the gated community part. 😀)
I appreciate that.
I think that it’s typical across the spectrum of people.
My 2.1 cents: Pastor Howerton is spot on. Forgiveness from ones heart is the point of that aspect of Jesus’ example…it is not forgiving the sin, that’s God’s department…it is so one does not carry hate ‘in the heart’, which takes up space that love should reside…ultimately damaging ones faith. Watch Amish Grace (movie), it presents the Lancaster, Pennsylvania Amish school shooting, showcasing the difficult forgiveness aspect, especially how individuals within a faith community deal with a massive tragedy, including the shooters wife.
Forgiveness is not offered lightly, nor should it be, however one must do so as an example of our faith as Jesus taught.
Is reconciliation forgiveness?
Assumes both sides, the offending party must be remorseful.
With no specific comment on this episode, I find Ryan’s channel brings forth topics ignored in general. All challenges my thinking. Most make me uncomfortable; likely a good thing.
I don’t follow all of Ryan’s podcasts. I’m not going to throw rocks at him or his guests, and I usually don’t do that to Tucker either. As with all things – make of them what you will, weigh evidence, come to your own conclusions.
How does ramping up Firepoint in Ukraine fit with the Patriot Missile transfer of technology to Ukraine?
I don’t know whether Firepoint contains elements of Patriot tech or not.
A license produced Patriot will still be too expensive, and late: it takes years to stand up a new production line and expand the supply chain. And you need 4 to 5 years to build a Patriot, though this is being reduced. Patriot costs $4 to 5 million per shot, and you need to fire 4 to 6 units to ensure intercept a ballistic missile. The target price for the new Ukie ABM missile is $1m8llion per round. Most of the hardware such as radarsand sensors already exists, as does the customer base.
Thanks.
“A government that secures compliance by managing what its citizens believe ”
And then you mentioned Fauci and then Jan 6th.
Senator Gary Peters in an opening statement at the Fauci hearing lauded bipartisanship and mentioned the congressional investigation into J6th as an example.
Nothing could have been farther from the truth, but it went unchallenged.
It only went unchallenged officially. We all knew what was going on. What about Ray Epps? Why isn’t that scrote testifying before Congress regarding his role in J6?
I just heard a report that a whistle blower has reported seeing Cap Police changing into MAGA gear that day.
Had someone known to us who was at J6. In town for business so decided to go to the rally. He was off-site (not at the Capitol) as large buses drove in, people off-loaded and immediately donned MAGA gear, then saw the FBI show up, have a meeting with MAGA imposters while the techies erected a cell tower that we now know was used to captured every cell within the area, hence how they later tracked down grandma from Iowa to arrest her and put her in prison without actually being charged and without any recourse.
Do a ‘J6’ web search (I use DuckDuckGo, so irrelevant which one), top answer states ‘right wing rally and riot’. Nothing changes regardless of facts, now irrefutable…the propaganda still exists.
War is Peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.
#3 is one hell of a border patrol tool. Worried about the Bulgarians are they?
If they lose in a fight, it won’t be from a lack of capacity to return fire.
Exactly!
Identify the Aircraft:
1. Heinkel He 115
2. Caudron C.714
Identify the Boat:
3. Romanian Smârdan-class river monitor. Can’t make out the hull number to identify the specific member.
Excellent
So now Trump wants Socialism in the oil industry. This disgusts me. I like cheap gasoline as much as anyone but exactly how can anyone who didn’t invest in an industry be entitled to any of the profit from that venture? My God, this is exactly what the libtards preach.
And who does he think is pocketing the money from those profits? There are no more Rockefellers- Exxon/Chevron/et al are publicly traded companies and are owned by millions of Americans, not to mention all the pension funds and such. If he wants to say ‘well the war on Iran caused sky high oil prices’ then the man needs to look in the mirror and find out who started the shooting. (not that i have a problem with that)
Agreed. And well reasoned. Pres. Trump’s administration emptied the strategic oil reserve in an attempt to stabilize prices and now that’s gone, he’s making this move. It’s politics, and it translates into pocketbooks.
This is why I hate this sort of ‘world econ’ stuff, too many cooks in the mix, yet nothing one can do about it. PDJT is trying something to mitigate because WTP can’t. Now look at Big Pharma/Ag/ etc….comes down to K-Street meddling, which perpetrates the grift.
> how can anyone who didn’t invest in an industry be entitled to any of the profit from that venture?
Considering that Big Oil could not be Big Oil without a massive proportion of America’s political and military might backing it, it could be argued that anyone paying US taxes has invested in (or rather been forced to contribute to) those enterprises. (And yes, I fully realize that “taxpayer” leaves out something like 40% of the population, if you define “taxpayer” as paying federal income taxes.) I’m also opposed to socialism, but the current system in the US is hardly the free-market capitalism that we learned about in junior high school or whenever. The wealthiest classes (call it 0.1%) and the essentially parasitic classes (call it 15%) are sucking out the blood of what remains of the productive middle class, and using Government to do it. But this “oil socialism” thing doesn’t matter anyway, because: See below.
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> who does he think is pocketing the money from those profits?
I have no idea what Trump actually thinks, but his “standing up to Big Oil” is political theater, kayfabe as the wrestling people say. It’s performative (fake) populism because people are abandoning the festering corpse of what used to be MAGA in droves [1]. But it’s all bullshit, and in the end the corrupt 0.1% will end up with more wealth and power as a result of it. As to profits, some people have made a lot of money from multiple cycles of actual Fake News announcing imminent (but imaginary) peace deals with Iran. The timing of rather large buys and sells is eerily prescient; it’s almost as if some people had inside foreknowledge of not just what Trump was going to say, but exactly when [2] he was going to say it, and how it would affect the market. What surprises me is that the general market responses have been much like Charlie Brown and Lucy’s football; at some point you’d think they’d have learned.
—
[1] I don’t know how much Trump personally cares about midterms, much less 2028 since he can’t run, but any rational Republican political analyst would be freaking out over how badly everything is going right now. Vaguely threatening the oil companies is simply bleeding off a bit of the political pressure. It’s fake and ghey and not to be taken seriously.
[2] Like within minutes.
—
>There are no more Rockefellers
Well, they’re still around, just not as flamboyant. But now we also have Finks, and Singers, and hundreds, if not thousands of people like this Aschenbrenner person (apparently German, but fear not, he’s married to one Atival Balwit). The majority of these people don’t produce wealth; they shuffle around wealth that other people have produced. (This is not objectionable per se. It’s objectionable because not only do they take their “tithe” off the top both coming and going, they use the power derived from that wealth to screw the rest of us “cattle”.) And the “well, people like that are engaged in efficient reallocation of capital” argument may have been true once, but these days it too is … bullshit.
—
Not meant as a personal attack on you, Janice, by the way. I’m just disgusted that nearly everything (political and historical) we’ve been taught in school has turned out to be made up nonsense, and over how quickly this country is going down the tubes.
X2…also well reasoned Mike. Your final sentiment is mine as well, galling to say the least.
Trump is a populist.
There is nothing wrong with publicly shaming war profiteering. No matter who the stockholders are.
Many believe we are being gouged.
Rapid pump increases, slow decreases.
💯… Diesel pump price went up .60c over the last week then…magically…dropped .23c Tuesday here. Weird. All over the map with the Fiddlers messing with us who get to charge whatever they determine we’ll tolerate (except Californian’s who apparently don’t mind direct theft by TPTB).
The “price at the pump” has many factors, only one of which is the Brent Crude Fix or the futures prices as calculated by various quants. In some cases (Buc-ees) fuel is a loss leader to get you into the store to buy a stuffed beaver or a bag of $20.00 jerkey.
I know, totally fungible resource…but still…can’t stand how the fiddlers have infiltrated a commodity industry the world relies on for existence…unless of course one follows the money, then it makes sense.
America doesn’t need crude that passes through Hormuz or the Bab el Mendeb. But as an international commodity, trading is heavily influenced by those chokepoints. Shale light sweet crude is more expensive to extract than Permian light sweet crude that was drilled 40 years ago and is being sucked up by a pump jack.
Just a historic side note… Hiroshima atomic bombing anniversary is today.
*
They still have room for a couple grenade/smoke launchers, 30 cal machine guns, and a propane grill on the Romanian patrol boat. But I agree with the philosophy.
I have a sorta personal Hiroshima story at my blog.
https://ed-bonderenka.blogspot.com/2026/08/hiroshima-and-dinner-with-nazi.html
DIL’s grandparents were out of town the day the Bomb was dropped, so they survived and my son ended up marrying one of their graddaughters.
“The question underneath is a political one.”: When an entity gets too big for its collective britches this is what happens; customer service goes to pot (and in some states pot is used to keep a compliant populace). Heard Tarlov whining about the loss of government jobs under PDJT…hear that, the tiniest of violins playing. Time For A Rest.
***
Parting Shot: Apparently Sandy doesn’t have cable…duh, weather channel. Now they have weather at the pump so you can be bombarded with more media blather while filling up. (Whose idea was that?!)
I’m tempted to call bs on the fpv drone video clip. I can almost hear “Use the Force, Oleg.” Industrial Light and Magic, or is it real life imitating an almost 50 year old movie?
The party wrecker? I don’t know if it’s accurate, but I do know that a drone can do that.
Tactics are timeless.
Occasional-Cortex just needs to listen for the Tony Joe White song. It will let her know.
😁
🤣, altho have come to appreciate Polk Salad Annie after hearing a version in Ford v Ferrari, which led to streaming The Pandora channel.
in re several points above:
*
I’ve been getting the uncomfortable feeling that Brussels (political center of the EU), in the historical texts of the future, will be recognized as having recently initiated GWI (Global War One) through its spearpoint, the Ukraine.
**
Questions: will these same texts recognize that Washington has abetted Brussels? how will Russia be divided amongst the winners? China is certain to be involved, how? if certain individuals e.g.: George Soros) are behind this effort, will it profit us to be tarred with the same brush?
** Allowing Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium — which, under the agreement, would be overseen by the US **
If the cabal or the communists steal the mid-term elections what will the US look like come the next presidential election? That is the question I’d be asking if I was going to depend on the US for ANYTING in the future.
Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that we (the U.S.) has become more Euro-compliant?
*
It seems that every measurement I read today is now in kilos or kilometers; as an endodontist (ret’d) I never minded measuring in halves of millimeters in the office, but I still measured distances in gallons required or miles. When are we going to get gasoline/milk/Coca-Cola delivered in litres (maybe it’s happened and I haven’t noticed!).
Is the average distance of Mars from Earth now about 225 million km or is it still 140 million miles from us?
What’ll be the (required) airline pilot lingua franca in ten years?
They need to use that ‘party wrecker’ on the Pakis in England… I cannot…well, if you have no way to fight back, and the cops and courts are on their side, it is kinda hard, unless you go to the knife.
has Western civilization already lost the battle in its effort to be more gracious?
Drone + grenade
Seems implausible but provides a lesson; every chimmney needs a cap.
Paul M ,,heard same story from friends who were there. Former cop and his wife ,but they will not talk about it. Odd that .
Ah yes, Fauci, the highest paid civil servant in the history of our history. What an utter fraud. Could you please arrest him? Thx.
Muslim rape gangs? Where are the men? The ones that hit the beaches and flew over London when the days were the darkest?
It’s not just the UK. Where are the men of Europe when their women and girls are being brutalized by these savages?
Where are the proud German men? The Swiss? Norwegian?
Is that an FJ Cruiser under that beautiful canoe? A good friend who owned one passed about a year ago and his wife wants me to sell it for her.
I would think it would be a fairly easy sell. He took excellent care of it.
Where are the Vikings?
.
Exactly.
.
Yes, it’s a 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser. I know quite a bit about them, having had mine for coming up on twenty years. If you want to talk shop, larrydotlambertatmacdotcom. I’d look at the mileage and the mods. Did he use it as a mall crawler or did he wheel it. How hard did he wheel it? There used to be an FJC Forum that was pretty good and I was a moderator/admin on the forum. Too bad it’s gone -> the people who knew a lot about FJs left because of forum politics.
https://www.savageriver.com/
Politics ruins everything and might be the death of us all.
Oh and I don’t go in canoes since the accident. The loss of my collection haunts me to this day.
A 22lb canoe? Amazing!