What is the impact of the Ukraine war on US gasoline and diesel prices? None.
Scott Hielen
@scotthielen.bsky.social
Diplomacy Stuff • Flew Navy • Geopolitical Risk • Veteran • Nebraskan • Kid and Cat Dad • Bibliophile • Itinerant by Design 🌍 🇺🇸🇳🇱🇹🇷🇩🇪🇧🇪 📍Brussels
Trump Admin hires private equity guy at DOD. Months later, guy's former employer gets a $281 million *no bid* contract to consult for him. Pro Publica is running circles around every other news outlet when it comes to chronicling the obscene level of corruption going on right now
Congress and the American people have a vested interest in preparing DoD’s infrastructure for new climate realities even if the “SOW” doesn’t. Infrastructure will be there long after Pete is a footnote to an ugly history.
Bloomberg News@bloomberg.com · 6mo agoPete Hegseth said the Pentagon wouldn’t do any “climate change crap.” It’s still fortifying bases against rising seas and stronger storms.
Trump wants to build a huge arch, the largest one in the world. He wants it to honor himself. But it stains America’s tribute to fallen veterans at Arlington. It must not be built. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/b...
A Huge Arch
nytimes.com
US gives aid and comfort to global adversaries while continuing to abuse its historic allies and partners www.reuters.com/business/ene...
US extends waiver for Lukoil gas stations outside of Russia
The Trump administration has extended a waiver allowing Lukoil retail service stations to operate outside of Russia until late October, a narrow allowance in sanctions the U.S. imposed last year to...
reuters.com
1/ The Russian army has been taken over by an organised crime syndicate, says a Russian journalist. The mass recruitment of criminals means that crimes and corruption of all sorts – murder, torture, extortion, prostitution, drug and alcohol smuggling – are now routine. ⬇️
What a concept. One-year, renewable visas predicated on valid employment and clean criminal records, rather than just ripping them out of the workforce with high drama, tearing apart families, and sending them back to unknown peril. www.bbc.com/news/article...
Spain approves plan to give around 500,000 undocumented migrants legal status
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said migrants helped "build the rich, open and diverse Spain that we are and to which we aspire".
bbc.com
"since America’s problems with Iran are inherently political, military objectives cannot be proper war aims. And proper war aims are what’s missing: a desired end state that can be served by a ledger of destruction but must be more than the ledger itself.” @ryanevans.bsky.social
Kori Schake 🎃@kschake.bsky.social · 6mo ago"one might be forgiven for concluding that America’s war against Iran has gone pretty well. That would be a mistake. And it is a mistake with a time-honored but deleterious tradition: that of mistaking tactical success for victory and of operational excellence for a strategy.” @ryanevans.bsky.social
Like Civil War era democrats, it should take a generation before the Republican Party (or some reinvention of it) ever gets the keys to the White House again.
Financial Times@financialtimes.com · 6mo agoOpinion: After a series of setbacks, the vice-president is no longer Trump’s obvious successor. ft.trib.al/YB2gZOZ
Foes get waivers and exceptions while friends (Allies) get excoriated for not helping Washington out of a disaster of its own creation. We’re still in the upside down.
there is a lightning storm in the sky with a red lightning bolt coming out of the sky .
ALT: there is a lightning storm in the sky with a red lightning bolt coming out of the sky .
media.tenor.com
Reuters@reuters.com · 6mo agoSinopec buys Russian oil to replace Mideast supply after US waiver, sources say reut.rs/4cr6jqM
Some of the Framers understood. George Mason, namesake of my university, gave the warning below as Virginia debated ratifying the new US Constitution on June 18, 1788. Perversion of our Constitution will harm all Conservative and Liberal Americans
The Wall Street Journal@wsj.com · 6mo agoPresident Trump has repeatedly promised his top administration officials pardons before he leaves office, according to people who have heard his comments.
Category: Problems Europe didn't have before Trump and Bibi went wilding in Iran www.nytimes.com/2026/04/10/b...
European Airports Warn of Jet Fuel Shortages if Strait of Hormuz Remains Shut
An association of airports told European Union officials that fuel shipments through the Strait of Hormuz had to restart within three weeks to avoid a “systemic” shortage.
nytimes.com
"In other words, Google has created a misinformation crisis. Studies have shown that people tend to trust what an AI tells them without question (...)." #AI #KI
Futurism@futurism.com · 6mo agoThis is catastrophic.
New at CBS News - Army survivors of deadly attack in Kuwait dispute Pentagon's account, say unit "was unprepared" to defend itself — this is a photograph of the tactical operations center struck by an Iranian drone on March 1. www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-wa...
The world went from two superpowers to one when Pope John Paul II pulled the Poland piece on the USSR jenga tower. Pope Leo is looking at you, America.
Kevin Rothrock@kevinrothrock.me · 6mo agoSo it turns out that Elbridge Colby is, indeed, insane: “The US,” Colby said, according to a report by The Free Press, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.” One U.S. official present at the meeting brought up the Avignon papacy.
They can turn to a pillar of stability and reason, one happy to provide market relief and predictable policy. 🇨🇳 Of course, there would be some compromises, but they may be ever more palatable as the crazy train trundles on.
The Wall Street Journal@wsj.com · 6mo agoAmerica’s friends in Europe, Asia and the Middle East are frustrated with President Trump acting in ways that they see as erratic and that have caused hardship and uncertainty. But the allies are also reliant on America’s military and economic might. on.wsj.com/4bWgWCO
The Delphic Oracle told King Croesus of Lydia that if he attacked Persia "a great empire will fall." He saw this as a prediction of victory and attacked. It was his own great empire that fell.
Trump's explicit threat of genocide against a nation of 90 million people is being treated by the New York Times as just another story on a Tuesday morning.
A statement that should be impeachable in the United States, but it's certainly damnable in almost every faith.
Kevin Rothrock@kevinrothrock.me · 6mo agoIt is a national disgrace that the U.S. Congress doesn't immediately impeach this man.
Fact Check: Image Does NOT Show American F-15 Crew Member After Rescue From Iran -- It's AI-Generated Is an image of a smiling man in a combat uniform holding an American flag a real photo of a U.S. F-15 crew member after his rescue from Iran? No, that's not true: The image wa...
Fact Check: Image Does NOT Show American F-15 Crew Member After Rescue From Iran -- It's AI-Generated | Lead Stories
Is an image of a smiling man in a combat uniform holding an American flag a real photo of a...
leadstories.com
Watch responses to this from mainstream media. The inability to call insane behavior insane is a major failure of contemporary “journalism.” Same with the failure to call out threatened or enacted war crimes for what they are.
Anna Bower@annabower.bsky.social · 6mo agoI had to check but yes this is real
Shameful to see willful misrepresentation of NATO by current and former Sec States. NATO was purpose-built. The North Atlantic treaty language is specific. FAFO outside of its territory (Art. 6) is not its remit. Lay guilt on individual states for not following the U.S. into folly, but not NATO.
Anton Gerashchenko@antongerashchenko.bsky.social · 6mo agoFormer US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: (Comment from me below the quote) "I've been someone who believed NATO was a very important set of allies for decades. I served in the army in NATO operations in 1986 to 1989.
Further incentivizing politicization of our military. This should be penalized, not rewarded.
Wesley Morgan@wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 7mo agoHow Chris LaNeve came to be Hegseth’s military assistant and then VCSA (and now acting CSA even he isn’t picked as George’s successor) “LaNeve got Trump’s attention in the hours after his inauguration, when LaNeve called into the Commander in Chief’s Ball with his troops from South Korea.”
“They’re destroying more than fifty research facilities across thirty-one states, labs that house decades of irreplaceable long-term science…And they’re replacing all of it — the offices, the scientists, the institutional knowledge, the professional independence — with fifteen political appointees”
Trump administration orders dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service
Late Tuesday afternoon, with the subtlety of a wrecking ball and the morality of a foreclosure notice, the Trump administration announced the most devastating attack on the U.S. Forest Service in the ...
hatchmag.com
The Swiss electorate is difficult to please, making government deals hard to get and easy to lose. Sunk cost may keep them in for now, but they’ll avoid any future US opportunities after getting shoved down the procurement stairs. www.swissinfo.ch/eng/foreign-...
US circumvents Swiss payment freeze for Patriot air-defence system
The US has been redirecting Swiss payments intended for the F‑35 fighter jet to cover Patriot costs.
swissinfo.ch
NATO comes with instructions, in the form of treaty language. In the same way you don’t make toast in the bathtub, you don’t drag a defensive alliance into an offensive ME adventure with no apparent strategy.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 7mo agoHegseth: "As far as NATO, that's a decision that will be left to the president, but a lot has been laid bare ... you don't have much of an alliance if you have countries that are not willing to stand with you when you need them."
One must credit this administration for its unceasing and innovative efforts, finding new ways to tarnish America’s reputation abroad and zeroize any remaining trust with our allies. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
US directs embassies to team up against foreign ‘hostility’ – and use X to ‘counter anti-American propaganda’
Cable signed by Marco Rubio and seen by Guardian suggests staff work with Pentagon psychological operations unit
theguardian.com
This regime has detained the parents of more than 11,000 U.S. citizen kids – New Directive: officials revised a document advising how ICE officers should interact with parents, removing the word “humane.” #PINKS www.propublica.org/article/trum...
Trump Has Detained the Parents of More Than 11,000 U.S. Citizen Kids
A ProPublica analysis of new ICE data shows that Trump has detained parents of U.S. citizen children at about twice the rate that Biden did, and moms have been deported four times as often.
propublica.org
"Trump, who took office promising to keep the U.S. out of 'stupid' military interventions, now appears to control neither the outcome nor the messaging of a conflict he helped to initiate." Via Reuters
Three weeks in, Iran war escalates beyond Trump's control
Donald Trump took office promising to keep the U.S. out of "stupid" military interventions. He now appears to control neither the outcome nor the messaging of a conflict he helped to initiate.
reuters.com
Let's be sure and give Kori the full Streisand effect.
The Atlantic@theatlantic.com · 7mo agoThe Air War College asked Kori Schake not to give a scheduled lecture on civil-military relations—a subject that she writes is “extremely relevant” in the current political climate. Here’s what she would have said: