How is that relevant?

How exactly were the names “East Antarctica” and “West Antarctica” in that map decided? What does “East” and “West” mean at the South Pole?

Wrestling terminology is once again best for describing MAGA. There are certainly “smarks” who know and don’t care, yes. But there is surely also plenty of “marks”, who believes it is reality. Remember how stupid the average person is.

Often it is the case (and documented) that Hamas deliberately used hospitals and residential buildings to shoot from, or for other military purposes. In that case, by the laws of war, Israel is actually allowed to level those buildings - and Hamas are the ones who committed a war crime. A fact that often seems utterly lost in social media posts. Often in war, a party will retreat from or surrender a city, rather than shoot from the buildings, if the defending party is not a death cult.

Power plants can be military targets, and as such valid to bomb. But… Trump has pretty much stated here that he is bombing them as terror against civilians, which is a war crime. So Trump is arguably behaving worse than Israel.

You will need to do a small amount of research on planting times

And climate zone. There are many places where it is too cold.

You surely need a lot of oil tankers to sail oil across the Pacific Ocean - because each voyage takes so long. And there needs to be export oil terminals in the US towards Asia, which I assume there isn’t currently, because Asia was supplied by the Middle East.

So a priory doesn’t seem too surprising to me, that there is a price spread.

Does lifting sanctions on a country that you’re at war with the smart thing to do? Literally helps to fund their enemy.

It is not a zero sum game. Letting the oil through, and thereby preventing the world market from a total tail spin, probably helps the US more than it helps Iran. So is on the surface surprising, but surprisingly rational on second look.

I’m pretty sure he thinks allies of the US are beta males that follow the US alpha male…

Vance said Trump was “America’s Hitler”. Before Vance realized that he could get power by supporting Trump.

You seem to be using “he thinks” in the sense “Vance genuinely believes”. I am not convinced Vance believes anything, his actions look like pure opportunism.

I actually don’t understand what Carlin is saying, then. “The wars I don’t like are bad”?

An overbroad and often false generalization is not a good joke. So yes, it isn’t much of a joke.

Asia is $60/bbl higher.

Asia get their oil through the Hormuz straight. Of course their oil price is higher.

There probably isn’t oil tankers enough in the world to equalize the supply between the US and Asia. Hence you should not expect the price to be perfectly equalized between the US and Asia.

We have tons of untapped oil fields

But that is likely irrelevant for the timescale of this conflict, right? Surely the lead time for bringing new oil fields online is measured in years.

Oil prices are pretty global. If you look at the prices for European oil (Brent crude) and US oil (West Texas Intermediate), then they are $14 apart. Which is not nothing, but WTI is still up by 63% from pre-war. That is still going to hurt the US economy, a lot.

Also, in the US the oil price windfall is privatized, while the oil price pain is socialized. So the US will still feel almost the full pain.

It is not just at the pump. The whole supply chain depends on oil. Industrial processes, plastics, fertilizer.

The price rise at the pump is often masked by taxes. The percentage jump for industry will be larger.

But isn’t lifting sanctions on Iranian oil actually the smart thing to do? Get all the oil to market, to ameliorate the supply shock. Even though it looks horrible from a PR angle.

It truly should be a learning experience. But I genuinely don’t think Republicans in the US are capable of learning anything, especially not something as narratively inconvenient as this.

Carlin’s quote said nothing about “defense”.

And in any case, e.g. NATO’s prevention of the genocide was not “defense”. Was that also like "fucking for Virginity”? I have met some people from Kosovo, and they certainly do not think so, naming their children after Bill Clinton and all… No, Carlin is an idiot here.

It’s so ironic then that Biden was so criticized for the consequences of Trump’s agreements with the Taliban 💀

Trump was responsible for the vast majority of bad outcomes, yup. And the media did not reflect that.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediaite :

The New York Times has described the site as “a blog that chronicles the gossipy media world”

So not the most credible source you could imagine. But on the other hand, Wikipedia doesn’t list any examples of Mediaite being fake news. And in this case, Mediaite is just summarizing a CBS article - the CBS article should obviously have just been linked instead.

In any case, it seems to me that Trump has two options: 1) Give consessions to Iran to save the global oil market or 2) ground invasion. Since I can’t imagine Trump surrendering, no matter how game theory rational it would be, I am expecting ground operations.

Going by Trump’s actions in first term, the “no wars” thing was the rare promise that was actually pretty believable.

Trump first term didn’t start new big wars, and withdrew from e.g. Afghanistan (in a bullshit way, but still). Based on past actions, and yes because Trump promised it, I believed that Trump would be isolationist in his second term.

But the oil price shock is going to hurt Trump electorally, and normal people’s wallets, way worse than the Epstein files. So in a sense it is silly to say that the distraction is “working”.