News reports are that Trump has bolstered the presence pf troops in the mid east by 9,000 and his threat appears to be of a ground invasion after the mid terms.
This week 8 Marines were wounded when a ship was attacked by a missile.
The Navy hires civiliian freighters to use in clandestone operations. Just speculating, but it appears that Trump was planning a Marine raid on an island, and I would guess Kharq Island.
Kharg Island is the jewel in the Persian Gulf, and Trump has publicly lusted after it.
The Island is the main pumping and bunkering station for Iran, with underrwater pipes running to the island, Bunkering is where ships fill up with fuel.
An invasion of Kharq Island would be a blood bath. the IRGC has every square inch of that island, preregistered for rockets and mortars, and the island is heavily mined.
Even if they took the island, the island lies under the sight of the Zagros Mountains, and the IRGC and Artesh have been preparing for 30 years, with hardened tunnels and caves, that will rain down hell on our troops.
The other foolish Idea he has is to take Pickaxe Mountain..
Any attempt to take the Mountain with a ground assault from the border with Iraq.
Iraq is majority Shia and look to the Ayatollah Khameini as their pope. The Shia comprise the Hashd a Shaabi, Popular Mobilization Front or MBF, that has already fired missiles at our installations in Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
The PMF is battle tested. earned their stripes kicking ISIS ass.
Then there is the terrain, Iran is a mountainous country, to main mountain chains, that make Afghanistan look like a desert.
An invasion force would have to run up the valleys, for that is where the cities are also located, under a fusillade of fire from the mountains that ring both sides of the valley.
If Whiskey Pete has a harebrained idea of an airborne assault, then the disaster that they will be a slaughter of our troops.
Operation Market Garden (see the movie a Bridge too far and the series Band of Brothers) The British 1st Airborne Divion jumpedright on top a German Panzer Regiment and was decimated, a little over 100 men escaped and were resecued by a night boat lift, by the 101st Ariborne Div, (noted in Band of Brothers).
Any airborne assault on Pickaxe Mountain would be a disaster on the scale of that, the D Day jump on San Mere Eglise, the Fallshirmjaeger jump on Crete (which was, despite the heavy losses a success) but Pickaxe mountain or any airborne assault in Iran, will be a day of heavy weeping for the widows of the 82nd Airborne.
And you can’t drop troops on a mountain, you need a rather flat drop zone, and the nearest one to the mountain is over a mile to the west, and again the troops will be met with fire from even goat herders, not just the IRGC or Artesh.
Iran has a paramilitary force of volunteers over 1 million stong and they are fanatic nationalist Shia. ca;;ed the Basij, and it is the Basiji that machine gunned the 30,000 protestors in January, not the IRGC or Artesh.
And should they secure the drop zone, while under constant fire, they would have to airdrop heavy equipment to build roads to Pickaxe mountain, and then clear out the tunnels which Whiskey Pete sealed shut with JDAM’s and 20,000 lb bomb.
But first they have to get the aircraft to the drop zone.
6 minutes from the airdrop, the aircraft stops down to drop altitude, 1,000 to 1,500 ft, six minutes from drop and slows down to 130 knots and flies that course for 6 minutes, down a valley, between mountains, ringed with caves, rockets, and Ground to Air missiles, heat seekers, even RPG’s
My bad, you are correct. There are drones, used by the Ukrainians, that can deliver autonomous or FPV vehicles that weigh over 400 lbs, that amazed me until I saw a video. Damn thing lifted a drone with a mounted machine gun, and they have mechanized drones that carry ammo, fuel and food. Using a drone to drop a mine is nothing.
I wish to add, that it is about a month away from even starting. Whiskey Pete has deployed the aircraft carrier group USS Roosevelt and theThe USS Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group—along with the amphibious transport dock ships USS Anchorage and USS John P. Murtha—is deploying to the Middle East. The Makin Island carries about 2,500 Marines, of which about 1,600 are fighting riflemen/amphib raiders.
It will take a month for the Roosevelt and Makin to arrive on station.
So whatever Trump and Whiskey Pete have planned for after the election, if it is immediate will have to be an airborne assault,
The biggest factor in an assault, airborne or seaborne or both, is logistics, meaning parts, food, gas, diesel, munitions and transportation of supplies..
This will require, air transportation, sea transportation, and depots/warehouses, and Iran has already destroyed those in Kuwait, Qatar and Iraq has been handed over to Iranian proxies as of yesterday
Once ground forces have been engaged, they will be in need of resupply, and the only means of resupply, unless a corridor through the mountains can be secured, is airdrop, and I've discussed that problem
By the way, COVID was nothing compared to what is coming. From today's Black Man Spy,
In East Russia, a 29 year old lab tech dropped a vial of a virus,it broke and she was dead within 48 or less hours, and everyone with whom she interacted has been infected and is critical.
We should have learned from COVID that supposedly was invented or emerged in Wuhan China, that it doesn't take much.
If COVID came out of China, then it's first victims were a nursing home in Seattle
And as Trump is fully engaged in a campaign to depopulate the country, I can only hope that any pandemic will sweep first through Trump country, and the anti vaxxers,
But considering his and MAGA's hostility to the CDC and Vaccines, there will be no Operation Warp speed this time.
Trump's first term first meeting with the joint chiefs. He asked why we could not use the nuclear weapons we have? He asked this three times. The generals and admirals were dumbfounded.
I get being pissed off about the pricing thing. Personally I don't think that's the worst of it. I'm going to vote on November 3, 2026, martial law or not. Does that mean I get shot to death on my way to vote? Three aircraft carriers on the way to the middle east? Doesn't that leave us defenseless through out the rest of world? Threatening to drop a nuclear weapon somewhere? Even sci fi writers can't come up with this stupid shit. If it's an ice agent I can understand getting shot to death going to vote. They come from the absolute lowest of scum anywhere. But will I get shot by a national guards person? Do they teach integrity to servicemen? Even though there are many high ranking officers military getting fired, does that mean those left are willing to leave us defenseless through out much of the world? Are there no military people left with integrity to protect against this God damned satan possessed animal in the oval office? John Thune, if he hasn't already, will go down in history as the worst Senate majority leader ever, worse than Mitch McConnell. The rest of the world will be writing about this country not just the right wing Nazis in Washington DC.
It seems to me that Amazon and maybe others are "pricing us" in another way--if you repeat buy a product, the price often increases. So they are atomizing the law of supply and demand and making it individual. YOUR demand gets you a price increase even if the supply is abundant. That is making us change up our buying, which is far from ideal. Nor, frankly, fair. But given we have peak capitalism now, only a huge statement in November and then 2028 with a strong followup offers any hope. As an old antitrust lawyer, the antitrust laws need to get their teeth back, and a better SCOTUS needs to rein in its decisions gutting them from GTE Sylvania forward. Not holding my breath.
All moot if the demented one goes finally and utterly bananas and gets us into some sort of nuclear war. Given he will be dead soon, and cares about no one else, that is hardly beyond the realm of possibility. His petulance grows by the hour.
A bit off the current topic: Congress needs to pass legislation prohibiting a sitting President from pardoning members of his staff or Cabinet for egregious behavior or crimes committed under his watch. Otherwise those people can do as they wish with immunity knowing that they have a "get-out-of jail free" card.
When Trump says he’s very smart it’s because he is using AI to make plans and decisions, AI that has been configured and “educated” by providers with ulterior motives.
We’re retired and recently bought a hybrid. We didn’t think we could afford it either, but were surprised by the price. I heard that used EVs were reasonably priced
POSOTUS may declare a state of emergency. I sure hope Chuck has another strongly worded letter ready to go. Maybe Hakeem will sign on and really show ‘em where it’s at.
Billionaires are raising today’s youth on “renting an uber” rather than ownership. They have priced US Taxpayers out of a home and now vehicles. Education is now on the chopping block. This will make the middle class go up or down.
For Cheeto the most despicable word in the English language is "loser". For a malignant narcissist there can be no defeat. Pure and simple the psychopath always wins. If it weren't for the economic pressures coming from his billionaire cronies in the oil industry and more broadly the energy sector, Cheeto would have manufactured reasons to carry out this war out interminably.
But alas, Nature always catches up with psychopaths eventually. The governing laws of human behavior are inextricably tied to forces beyond human control and Cheeto is as good as a cooked turkey for Thanksgiving.
Nonetheless the Cheets will find some way to creatively make it so he doesn't appear to be the loser that he is. For every self respecting malignant narcissist there has to be a way out of this conundrum. Blame as WE the People have seen is the most common highway but in some spin there will the obvious lies that all his objectives have been met so in stretching truth to meaningless meanderings is a good way for Fox or Stephen Smith and Bill Maher to give him an off ramp.
But this sad hunk of human protoplasm is still just a demented psychopathic loser.
The on demand pricing is real. I am retired from career and now work at walmart. The prices are being removed due to price fluctuations of time of day. It is real. When did the policy of identifying product and its price per unit get discarded?
News reports are that Trump has bolstered the presence pf troops in the mid east by 9,000 and his threat appears to be of a ground invasion after the mid terms.
This week 8 Marines were wounded when a ship was attacked by a missile.
The Navy hires civiliian freighters to use in clandestone operations. Just speculating, but it appears that Trump was planning a Marine raid on an island, and I would guess Kharq Island.
Kharg Island is the jewel in the Persian Gulf, and Trump has publicly lusted after it.
The Island is the main pumping and bunkering station for Iran, with underrwater pipes running to the island, Bunkering is where ships fill up with fuel.
An invasion of Kharq Island would be a blood bath. the IRGC has every square inch of that island, preregistered for rockets and mortars, and the island is heavily mined.
Even if they took the island, the island lies under the sight of the Zagros Mountains, and the IRGC and Artesh have been preparing for 30 years, with hardened tunnels and caves, that will rain down hell on our troops.
The other foolish Idea he has is to take Pickaxe Mountain..
Any attempt to take the Mountain with a ground assault from the border with Iraq.
Iraq is majority Shia and look to the Ayatollah Khameini as their pope. The Shia comprise the Hashd a Shaabi, Popular Mobilization Front or MBF, that has already fired missiles at our installations in Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
The PMF is battle tested. earned their stripes kicking ISIS ass.
Then there is the terrain, Iran is a mountainous country, to main mountain chains, that make Afghanistan look like a desert.
An invasion force would have to run up the valleys, for that is where the cities are also located, under a fusillade of fire from the mountains that ring both sides of the valley.
If Whiskey Pete has a harebrained idea of an airborne assault, then the disaster that they will be a slaughter of our troops.
Operation Market Garden (see the movie a Bridge too far and the series Band of Brothers) The British 1st Airborne Divion jumpedright on top a German Panzer Regiment and was decimated, a little over 100 men escaped and were resecued by a night boat lift, by the 101st Ariborne Div, (noted in Band of Brothers).
Any airborne assault on Pickaxe Mountain would be a disaster on the scale of that, the D Day jump on San Mere Eglise, the Fallshirmjaeger jump on Crete (which was, despite the heavy losses a success) but Pickaxe mountain or any airborne assault in Iran, will be a day of heavy weeping for the widows of the 82nd Airborne.
And you can’t drop troops on a mountain, you need a rather flat drop zone, and the nearest one to the mountain is over a mile to the west, and again the troops will be met with fire from even goat herders, not just the IRGC or Artesh.
Iran has a paramilitary force of volunteers over 1 million stong and they are fanatic nationalist Shia. ca;;ed the Basij, and it is the Basiji that machine gunned the 30,000 protestors in January, not the IRGC or Artesh.
And should they secure the drop zone, while under constant fire, they would have to airdrop heavy equipment to build roads to Pickaxe mountain, and then clear out the tunnels which Whiskey Pete sealed shut with JDAM’s and 20,000 lb bomb.
But first they have to get the aircraft to the drop zone.
6 minutes from the airdrop, the aircraft stops down to drop altitude, 1,000 to 1,500 ft, six minutes from drop and slows down to 130 knots and flies that course for 6 minutes, down a valley, between mountains, ringed with caves, rockets, and Ground to Air missiles, heat seekers, even RPG’s
This will be a very sad day at Ft Bragg.
Don't forget drones. Look what Ukraine is doing to Russia with them.
My bad, you are correct. There are drones, used by the Ukrainians, that can deliver autonomous or FPV vehicles that weigh over 400 lbs, that amazed me until I saw a video. Damn thing lifted a drone with a mounted machine gun, and they have mechanized drones that carry ammo, fuel and food. Using a drone to drop a mine is nothing.
I wish to add, that it is about a month away from even starting. Whiskey Pete has deployed the aircraft carrier group USS Roosevelt and theThe USS Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group—along with the amphibious transport dock ships USS Anchorage and USS John P. Murtha—is deploying to the Middle East. The Makin Island carries about 2,500 Marines, of which about 1,600 are fighting riflemen/amphib raiders.
It will take a month for the Roosevelt and Makin to arrive on station.
So whatever Trump and Whiskey Pete have planned for after the election, if it is immediate will have to be an airborne assault,
The biggest factor in an assault, airborne or seaborne or both, is logistics, meaning parts, food, gas, diesel, munitions and transportation of supplies..
This will require, air transportation, sea transportation, and depots/warehouses, and Iran has already destroyed those in Kuwait, Qatar and Iraq has been handed over to Iranian proxies as of yesterday
Once ground forces have been engaged, they will be in need of resupply, and the only means of resupply, unless a corridor through the mountains can be secured, is airdrop, and I've discussed that problem
By the way, COVID was nothing compared to what is coming. From today's Black Man Spy,
In East Russia, a 29 year old lab tech dropped a vial of a virus,it broke and she was dead within 48 or less hours, and everyone with whom she interacted has been infected and is critical.
We should have learned from COVID that supposedly was invented or emerged in Wuhan China, that it doesn't take much.
If COVID came out of China, then it's first victims were a nursing home in Seattle
And as Trump is fully engaged in a campaign to depopulate the country, I can only hope that any pandemic will sweep first through Trump country, and the anti vaxxers,
But considering his and MAGA's hostility to the CDC and Vaccines, there will be no Operation Warp speed this time.
Trump's first term first meeting with the joint chiefs. He asked why we could not use the nuclear weapons we have? He asked this three times. The generals and admirals were dumbfounded.
Surveillance pricing makes me furious.
I walk over 1.5 miles everyday. Thanks for the report, but we can't afford an EV.
The audio and paperback of The Hidden History of American Healthcare are within arms length.
I get being pissed off about the pricing thing. Personally I don't think that's the worst of it. I'm going to vote on November 3, 2026, martial law or not. Does that mean I get shot to death on my way to vote? Three aircraft carriers on the way to the middle east? Doesn't that leave us defenseless through out the rest of world? Threatening to drop a nuclear weapon somewhere? Even sci fi writers can't come up with this stupid shit. If it's an ice agent I can understand getting shot to death going to vote. They come from the absolute lowest of scum anywhere. But will I get shot by a national guards person? Do they teach integrity to servicemen? Even though there are many high ranking officers military getting fired, does that mean those left are willing to leave us defenseless through out much of the world? Are there no military people left with integrity to protect against this God damned satan possessed animal in the oval office? John Thune, if he hasn't already, will go down in history as the worst Senate majority leader ever, worse than Mitch McConnell. The rest of the world will be writing about this country not just the right wing Nazis in Washington DC.
Useful and informative, as always! Thanks, Thom.
It seems to me that Amazon and maybe others are "pricing us" in another way--if you repeat buy a product, the price often increases. So they are atomizing the law of supply and demand and making it individual. YOUR demand gets you a price increase even if the supply is abundant. That is making us change up our buying, which is far from ideal. Nor, frankly, fair. But given we have peak capitalism now, only a huge statement in November and then 2028 with a strong followup offers any hope. As an old antitrust lawyer, the antitrust laws need to get their teeth back, and a better SCOTUS needs to rein in its decisions gutting them from GTE Sylvania forward. Not holding my breath.
All moot if the demented one goes finally and utterly bananas and gets us into some sort of nuclear war. Given he will be dead soon, and cares about no one else, that is hardly beyond the realm of possibility. His petulance grows by the hour.
A bit off the current topic: Congress needs to pass legislation prohibiting a sitting President from pardoning members of his staff or Cabinet for egregious behavior or crimes committed under his watch. Otherwise those people can do as they wish with immunity knowing that they have a "get-out-of jail free" card.
Pardons by anyone - President, Governor, prison - must be reviewed by an independent impartial committee to preserve integrity.
When Trump says he’s very smart it’s because he is using AI to make plans and decisions, AI that has been configured and “educated” by providers with ulterior motives.
We’re retired and recently bought a hybrid. We didn’t think we could afford it either, but were surprised by the price. I heard that used EVs were reasonably priced
Used hybrids and EVs are great so long as the battery passes testing. We bought our first new car ever (a Prius) a few years back and love it!
POSOTUS may declare a state of emergency. I sure hope Chuck has another strongly worded letter ready to go. Maybe Hakeem will sign on and really show ‘em where it’s at.
Billionaires are raising today’s youth on “renting an uber” rather than ownership. They have priced US Taxpayers out of a home and now vehicles. Education is now on the chopping block. This will make the middle class go up or down.
Well here we are. Thanks, Thom. I didn’t vote for this.
Cheeto Is A Loser
For Cheeto the most despicable word in the English language is "loser". For a malignant narcissist there can be no defeat. Pure and simple the psychopath always wins. If it weren't for the economic pressures coming from his billionaire cronies in the oil industry and more broadly the energy sector, Cheeto would have manufactured reasons to carry out this war out interminably.
But alas, Nature always catches up with psychopaths eventually. The governing laws of human behavior are inextricably tied to forces beyond human control and Cheeto is as good as a cooked turkey for Thanksgiving.
Nonetheless the Cheets will find some way to creatively make it so he doesn't appear to be the loser that he is. For every self respecting malignant narcissist there has to be a way out of this conundrum. Blame as WE the People have seen is the most common highway but in some spin there will the obvious lies that all his objectives have been met so in stretching truth to meaningless meanderings is a good way for Fox or Stephen Smith and Bill Maher to give him an off ramp.
But this sad hunk of human protoplasm is still just a demented psychopathic loser.
Always enlightening
The on demand pricing is real. I am retired from career and now work at walmart. The prices are being removed due to price fluctuations of time of day. It is real. When did the policy of identifying product and its price per unit get discarded?