The Trump Administration: The Clusterfuck Continues (Part 2)

I would trust classics scholars over Hegseth and his ilk any day of the week and twice on Sundays, they’ve probably read Thucydides for starters.

I was wondering who the previous philosophy majors and classics scholars he’s alluding to?

Educated people?

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! Yet another lawsuit against the Second Felonial Era.

Worldwide warning issued by State Department.

Senator Cassidy wants Killer Kennedy to quit shitting us.

And a GOP senator tells war criminal Hegseth he’s full of shit.

&

The Manchudarin candidate isn’t bothered by certain foreign election interference. (The bolding is mine.)

The fool actually thinks China has elections.

Federal judge orders the convicted fraudster to hand over financial records.

Rip van Simple-Criminal loses another battle in his war on immigrants.

The convicted felon is still trying to not pay one of his victims.

And being the moron he is, he’s opened himself up to paying her even more money. (Continuing on the same link.)

“Only the best people” yet again.

Killer Kennedy carries out another attack on the poor.

Gee. I wonder which candidate those two states carried in the last presidential election.

Milo Minderbinder would like a word with you.
And while we are at it he would like to sell you some eggs. And cotton. Lots of Egyptian cotton. Some of it covered in chocolate.

The felon’s now ruined international sports.

Canada cancels bridge opening thanks to Rip van Simple’s stupid tariff stunt. (The bolding is mine.)

Vanity of vanitie; all is Vanity! redux. (The bolding is mine.)

And now the convicted felon wants Saudi Arabia in the uranium enrichment business.

Why would a country sitting on an enormous pool of hydrocarbons need nuclear power? Drill, baby, drill!

The Saudi’s are also apparently the largest solar energy producer in the Gulf.

If these “world class business leaders” are “running the military like a business”, why aren’t they making a profit? Why are they here begging Congress to cover their massive shortfalls in revenue? Come on man, being a mercenary has been a profitable business model for most of human history, why are these guys screwing it up so badly?

You know, I would think that the largest solar energy producer in the Gulf would be the sun.

By that logic the largest oil producer is ancient phytoplankton and geological pressure…

And yet, they’ve never made a dime off of any of it. Bloody Capitalists!

Well those hippy freeloaders don’t pay the sun either…

REBECCA: I spoke to the owner of The Sun.

TED LASSO: You spoke to God?!

They then added that the White House needs a big beautiful ballroom and that the name “Trump” should be returned to the Kennedy Center.

Trump’s (and Netanyahu’s) war in Iran has already cost the US taxpayers some tens of billions of dollars, much of which inures to the revenue of US-based defense contractors.

Some percent of that revenue inures to the profitability of those defense contractors – likely on the order of <=$10BN in incremental profit.

Where those companies are publicly traded, that increased revenue increased earnings per share and translates into rising stock prices, the benefits of which were both taken early in the war by those in the know, and on an ongoing basis by many who play the markets.

And much of what Hegseth is begging Congress for comes as a result of depletion of our munitions stockpiles and the inherent need for resupply, creating an amazing annuity for those same DoD/Military-Industrial Complex players.

Also in that cohort are Don, Jr. and Eric Trump.

And who knows whether, if, and how much Donald J. Trump is skimming off the top.

I think some people are profiting – handsomely – from this war.

Same as it ever was …

In other words, the “business” in question is decidedly not the military itself, but making as much money as possible off of the actions of the military.

Yes, but all that profit arises out of them explicitly not running the military (or the war) as a business. Name another business that routinely buys multi-million dollar assets, and then just blows them up, without any expectation of a pay-off that more than offsets that loss.

Even when someone like SpaceX blows up a rocket in testing, there’s the expectation that they’ll learn enough from the testing to eventually let them make rockets that will make lots of money by launching stuff into space.

On the other hand when they run the country as a business… woah what a coincidence…

Saudi has a large and growing population that needs energy, for heating and cooling, desalination, transportation etc just like every other developed economy and their energy demand is growing year on year. Oil and gas can be used for producing electricity, but oil much better used as a transportation fuel.
They produce oil that can be sold at market or near market rates overseas , or they can use it internally effectively sold at a huge discount .
So they use solar and want to use nuclear to replace internal energy demand with that , freeing up more oil to sell on the global markets where they can make more cash than selling it at a discount internally.
One could also question if declining production is also a factor and need to shift internal energy demand to other sources to preserve the dwindling production for export and cash generation. Getting actual real reserve and production data from Saudi is problematic at best.

Grandpa is thrilled to announce that Arizona Republicans won every race in the (checks notes) Republican primary.