Posted on 03/16/2026 5:17:56 AM PDT by MtnClimber
“History doesn’t move in straight lines. What looks like stagnation can be prelude. Let’s not lose hope.” —RVassil on X.
Don’t lose your s--- over mines in the Strait of Hormuz and the oil price shooting up. Iran has many thousands of mines. But something has to lay them out in the water. Iran has no more naval ships. They have small boats. The US can see everything moving on the surface, or sitting at docks. We are blowing them up methodically. The news outlets who want the US to fail in this operation (because: Trump) want you to think that we had no plan for dealing with this problem. That’s not so.
There are very few mines actually laid so far. Tankers are not going through the Strait of Hormuz because their captains are nervous. Their ships and their cargos are worth millions and the insurance costs millions. So, they’re waiting in place, hanging back. The US still has work to do destroying Iran’s shoreline defenses of missile and drone launch sites. Iran is firing all they’ve got left. Whenever they launch something, we see the geo-location on our satellites and radars. The mobile launchers are a little trickier because, obviously, they shoot and move. But they don’t always move fast enough, and there isn’t an endless supply of them.
The US Navy decommissioned its four Avenger-class minesweeper ships in the Persian Gulf in September, 2025, but replaced them with more agile Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs) capable of countering submarines and clearing mines. Two LCS ships — USS Santa Barbara and USS Canberra — quietly deployed in March 2025.
An LCS uses an Airborne Laser Mine Detection System and an Airborne Mine Neutralization System via helicopter. In the water, it uses mine-hunting sonar and the Unmanned Influence Sweep System — all operated from unmanned surface vessels. The unmanned sweep vehicle triggers magnetic, acoustic, or combination mines, with the LCS at a safe distance.
The LCS vessels are armed with an 11-cell SeaRAM launcher for point defense that fires Rolling Airframe Missiles — fast, radar-guided missiles designed to knock down incoming anti-ship missiles and drones at short range. They also carry Longbow Hellfire missiles with updated software and hardware specifically to counter drones. The Longbow Hellfire uses radar-guided technology enabling it to engage targets through battlefield clutter, with a range of up to eight kilometers — giving the LCS the ability to engage drones before they get close. The LCS ships will be accompanied by Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with Aegis and full missile defense suites for protection against the full spectrum of Iranian threats.
The oil markets are extremely sensitive to any changes in the oil environment, and war induces the most extreme changes. Even outside of war, weird things happen. April 20, 2020, was the apex of Covid-19 paranoia when everyday life was shutting down all over Western Civ. The price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures — specifically the May 2020 contract, which was expiring the very next day — crashed to an historic low of negative $37.63 per barrel. That is, sellers were literally paying buyers to take oil off their hands. By the following day, April 21, prices had rebounded back into positive territory, though still at very depressed levels around $10–$15 per barrel.
The current situation with oil in the $100 range is not going to be a one-day event, but it won’t last forever, either, so do your deep-breathing exercises and calm down. Of course, in America right now, a seditious news media will take every opportunity to induce exquisite anxiety in the public-at-large to deflect from the order-of-battle that President DJT is carrying out to 1) improve America’s geopolitical position and relations, and 2) to defeat the forces both external and domestic that seek to wreck the country.
Which is why you might see that the next move in the order of battle will be against the wrecking crew in our own country, including the political figures behind the decade-long conspiracy to undermine the president, the administrative rogues running the “resistance” in government agencies, the Lawfare ninjas queering the justice system, and the big money that funds the hundreds of NGOs attempting to instigate a color revolution here. I have visions of perp walks and indictments coming in on the zephyrs of spring.
It looks just now like Majority Leader John Thune and his RINO herd will trample the SAVE Act (election reform) into failure. But consider that Mr. Trump’s FBI has had more than a month to analyze the Fulton County, Georgia, ballot evidence from the 2020 election (while only last week it seized the Maricopa County, AZ, records, and for all we know the agency also has 2020 ballot evidence from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada, too). So, prepare for the public to be shocked and amazed at what has been discovered, and expect to see a sharp attitude change among embarrassed US Senators who will be compelled to come on-board for election reform.
Somewhere in all that, you might expect Cuba to fall — a momentous event, actually, considering the cumulative mischief Cuba’s government has provoked all over the western hemisphere since 1958. We don’t even have to do anything to make it happen, just respond in the aftermath with emergency food and fuel relief, and perhaps some help averting the vengeful slaughter of the old Castro governing network. We don’t want a bloodbath there.
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James Howard Kunstler ping
Not so long as we have AG Bondi.
Saw a better CENTCOM video with giant aircraft going kablooey. Center hits. Instant fire. All done.
SEE IT: US forces HAMMER Iranian military targets
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6390967848112
Happy Monday.
This is, I think, the most optimistic scenario—not that it won’t or couldn’t happen, but in the fog of war what looks straightforward occasionally goes sideways, and vice versa. The one lesson is to assume that all of the media outside of our side is playing Teheran Tim (the Iranian version of Baghdad Bob) to do everything in its power to cause Trump to fail.
Kunstler is my take no prisoner man. He exquisitely points out the U.S’s ability to deal with the gay Mullah and his band of misfits who are hell bent on ruling the world. Reading about Mike Lee’s Senate plan to call out that sniveling Thune this morning has me all fired up. I’m waiting for a knock down drag out Senate showdown.
Jealous of a woman who is your better?
Some of us do. All who helped the government Castro people for many years need to face justice.
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Fixed
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahahahaha! ! ! ! ! ! !
Nothing will come of this.
“ perhaps some help averting the vengeful slaughter of the old Castro governing network. We don’t want a bloodbath there”
Revenge murder of Castroites would be a salutary warning to other despots.
My last one went out by surprise.
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Correspondent Dick was talking about Che Guevara. I replied
Che used to enjoy Sunday afternoons at the soccer stadium in Havana, where he would beat “gusanos,” [worms], the pejorative for those who refused to support the Revolution, to death with a baseball bat, before the “adoring” crowds. His favorite tool for execution was Louisville Sluggers, which he enjoyed breaking on his victims. He always batted 1000.
GUY MILLER
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Big News Media and the Democrat-Communist Party are whining about chow rations for the troops in the combat zone. They don’t believe troops in combat should be allowed steak night once a week. Instead, that money should go to Somali daycare centers, then on to al-Shabaab.
Not a single person complaining ever served a day in combat.
GUY MILLER
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From Larry, we see reports that Nicolas Maduro, in Federal custody in Brooklyn, is singing like Tweety Bird regarding American officials who took bribes to place Venezuelan Smartmatic and Dominion voting systems to rig American elections. Specifically named are Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger, Gretchen Whitmer and Jocelyn Benson.
This would explain why Georgia and Michigan elections were so inexplicably pro-Democrat-Communist Party in 2020 and subsequently. The accusation is that these named officials and others accepted foreign cash in order to allow the Democrats to dial in their desired results from the electronic elections.
No corroboration so far. As President Trump says, “We shall see.”
NOTE: It was reported at the time of the 2020 “ELECTION?” that Brian Kemp’s daughter’s boyfriend died when an explosive device in his car went off. Fortunately, Kemp’s daughter was NOT in the car at the time. The event was a SERIOUS ATTENTION-GETTER!! Need we explain?? RAB
GUY MILLER
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President Trump and Secretary of War Hegseth are holding in reserve cards which would completely eliminate Iranian oil shipments, if the regime does not open Hormuz to international traffic. Tiny Khark Island handles 90% of Iranian loading of oil tankers, and the Department of War has completely obliterated all military defenses on the island.
Maintaining the island facilities intact but denying them to the regime would be the preferable card to play, but that could possibly involve American boots to assume control over the defenseless facilities. The ultimate card would be complete destruction of the facilities on Khark, but that would demolish the Iranian economy for a generation.
Best option is for Iran simply to reopen Hormuz to all traffic, enabling Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and UAE to resume deliveries and enabling the world glut of oil. So what are the priorities of the Revolutionary Republic and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps?
GUY MILLER
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From Dick, just finished watching THE ALL-TIME MOST IMPORTANT FILM EVER MADE, 1:45, 2005
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG2meiZ2JKM
This documentary covers two issues: The IRS and the Federal Reserve, both brought into existence in 1913 under President Woodrow Wilson.
It seems the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was never ratified by enough states to become part of the Constitution. There has never been a Federal law which requires citizens to pay a tax on their earnings; the Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly so. The income tax is enforced solely by inferior courts which disavow the authority of the Supreme Court to influence or affect their operations.
The Federal Reserve is not Federal, any more than FedEx, being a privately owned bank operated by and for the benefit of its secret owners. Yet the Fed has taken control over every aspect of not only our government, but our lives.
Fascism is defined by government control over all private businesses. That is not what we have.
What we live under is private banking control over all our government. Perhaps you might call that Anti-fascism.
Invest the time to watch this entire documentary if you wish to be really educated. Or not.
GUY MILLER
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“There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious.”
GUY MILLER— Ayatollah Khomeini
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Since Venezuelan oil got cut off, Cuba has finally achieved “Net Zero.” Of course, Greta Thunberg is protesting that Cuba can’t burn fossil fuels any more, because of the mean old United States.
GUY MILLER
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Continuation from above: A military objective is to deny the Iranian Revolutionary Islamic government of oil sales, without destroying the infrastructure which will be needed to make the Persian nation prosperous in the future. Some 90% of Iran’s oil ships through the facilities at Khark Island, where we have completely destroyed their defenses, but left all infrastructure intact.
The Strait of Hormuz is NOT closed. Iranian and Red Chinese tankers are navigating both ways at will. Empty tankers show up, take on two million barrels of crude each at Khark, and head on out. The United States Navy has surface supremacy over the Iranian Navy.
One idea to deny Khark usage while maintaining Khark capability is to land 2,500 Marines on the undefended island and have them shut everything down, which I think is a bad idea.
How about this? Deny Iranian and Red Chinese tankers the freedom to operate as usual. This could be done by attacking or threatening these enemy tankers before they arrive or while they are taking on crude. We do not want to be sinking loaded tankers, for a bunch of obvious reasons.
If we could disable [attack communications ability, radars, command decks, engines, propulsion?] contraband tankers before they load, we could dissuade them from running the oil. Fact many don’t realize: Only about 10% of the oil shipped out through Hormuz is Iranian. The other 90% comes from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and UAE. THAT is the oil the world economy in desperate for. THAT is the oil we have to get moving.
GUY MILLER
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Oil futures for October delivery are $78 per barrel. Somebody isn’t too worried.
GUY MILLER
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Electronic edition of the New York Times this morning says professors are changing how they teach and do research under Trump Administration. Presumably that means they now will wait until after research is completed before reporting their findings.
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NYT warns people to expect hot weather when summer comes. They further report cold weather this past winter. Duh!!!
GUY MILLER
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Semper Fi — guy
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