In 2008, Californians voted on what they were told would be a modern transportation system — a sleek, high-speed rail line connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco in under three hours, financed in part by private investment, delivered at a defined cost, and built within a reasonable timeframe.  Eighteen years later, all that has been delivered is one of the largest eminent domain land grabs in modern history.

No serious person disputes that infrastructure requires land.  But the power of eminent domain is not merely an administrative tool.  It is among the most formidable powers government possesses: the authority to compel the transfer of private property for “public use.”  The Founders allowed it reluctantly, instituting constitutional protections and the requirement of just compensation.  The theory was simple: The public benefit had to be clear, direct, and necessary.

What Californians are witnessing today is a perverse transmogrification of the concept.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority has acquired more than two thousand parcels of land — along its proposed routes, particularly through the Central Valley.  Much of this land was obtained through negotiated purchase, but a substantial portion required formal eminent domain proceedings.  Farms have been bisected.  Family homes have been condemned.  Small businesses have faced displacement.  In many cases, the takings were not entire properties, but strips and easements — yet those “partial” takings often cripple the economic viability of what remains.

The most striking fact is not merely the number of parcels, but the context in which they were taken.

The project that voters approved bore specific representations: a defined route, defined endpoints, cost estimates, and a timeline.  Yet over the years, those routes have shifted, and timelines continue to stretch toward infinity.  The grand statewide vision is little more than a pipe dream.  Meanwhile, land has already been taken — permanently.

Property rights are not abstract philosophical ornaments.  They are the institutional backbone of a free society.  When government exercises eminent domain, it is asserting that the public need outweighs the individual’s right to keep what is his.  That assertion demands that the project be real, viable, and necessary.

When land has been taken for a project that later changes, the property owner does not get his land back.  When construction phases are delayed for years, the displaced family does not rewind time.  When farmland sits idle because funding gaps stall progress, the farmer does not recoup lost continuity of operation.

The defenders of the project often argue that large infrastructure efforts inevitably evolve.  That is  sometimes true.  But evolution in engineering design is not the same as evolution in political promises.  The moral justification for eminent domain depends on the integrity of those promises.

If a private developer misrepresents a project to induce land sales, the law calls that fraud.  When the government makes optimistic projections, downplays risks, and then substantially alters the project after land has been secured, the label may be different, but the practical effect on property owners is the same.

Consider the incentives.  Politicians gain prestige from announcing ambitious projects.  Bureaucracies gain budget and authority as projects expand.  Contractors gain long-term revenue streams.  But the individual property owner stands alone.  His home or farm is not a line item in a budget; it is his capital, his security, and often his legacy.

Compensation, while constitutionally required, does not erase the asymmetry.  “Fair market value” is a theoretical construct.  It rarely captures relocation costs, disruption of community ties, lost business goodwill, or the emotional attachment to land held for generations.  Moreover, the state’s valuation and the owner’s valuation frequently diverge, leading to protracted legal battles in which the government’s resources far exceed the individual’s.

This dynamic is particularly acute in agricultural regions.  In the Central Valley, the rail corridor cuts through productive farmland.  Even when only a strip is taken, irrigation systems must be reconfigured, equipment routes altered, and economies of scale disrupted.  A narrow slice of land can impose broad consequences.

And then there is the uncomfortable question: What if portions of the system are never completed, or not delivered as originally envisioned?

If the high-speed rail network remains a partial system — if funding constraints or political shifts prevent full build-out — then land will have been taken under the banner of a comprehensive project that never materializes.  The constitutional standard is “public use,” but public use implies public functionality.  A right-of-way that sits unused or underused for decades is an egregious violation of individual rights.

We now know that the state’s original ridership projections, cost estimates, and private investment assumptions were totally speculative and overly optimistic.  To proceed with land acquisition on the basis of projections that repeatedly change is to shift risk onto property owners who never volunteered to bear it.

Democratic consent is meaningful only if voters understand what they are authorizing.  When Californians approved billions in bonds, they were not presented with a detailed map of every parcel to be condemned, nor with a candid assessment of how frequently alignments might shift.  They voted for a transportation vision.  They did not vote to empower an open-ended land acquisition program whose scale would become clear only years later.

Eminent domain, by its nature, is coercive.  It substitutes state judgment for individual choice.  That substitution can be justified — but only under stringent conditions.  When those conditions are diluted by shifting plans, cost escalations, and uncertain completion, the moral and constitutional foundation weakens.  The citizens pay a heavy price for having trusted the government.

This is not an argument against infrastructure per se.  Roads, bridges, and railways have long required land assembly.  It is an argument for discipline — fiscal, political, and moral — before invoking the state’s most intrusive powers.

A government that can take land on the basis of ambitious or unrealistic projections must also be willing to reassess when those projections deteriorate.  Each additional parcel condemned is an immoral act with permanent consequences.

Californians were promised speed, efficiency, and transformation.  What many property owners have experienced instead is uncertainty, displacement, and the heavy hand of eminent domain exercised for a project with no resemblance to its original design.

In the end, the controversy over high-speed rail is not merely about trains or budgets.  It is about the hierarchy of values in a free society.  Property rights are a cornerstone of individual liberty.  When they can be, in effect, stolen by bait-and-switch politics, citizens are reduced to pawns and dupes.

Jim Cardoza is the author of The Moral Superiority of Liberty and the founder of LibertyPen.com.  Read more of his essays there.

Job 23:10-11 (King James Version) But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. My foot hath held his steps, his way have I kept, and not declined.

Listening to the Buggy Whip Press explaining the Iran attacks to the American people is like watching a monkey typing Shakespeare. Trump has such an amazing gift of exposing everyone for exactly who they are and what they are not. Nobody believes them or listens to them since they know the standard reporting will be Trump bad Iran good, so why listen when you already know their conclusion.

They have no curiosity while only axing Gotcha questions when you have the most important jobs in the capitol and are more useless than a Tesla with a dead battery. The President has taken out the biggest instigator of terrorism in the entire world and the mediots want to know what the end game is and how high oil prices can hurt Trump. The end game is sending the biggest mass murderer in the world to meet Satan, game over.

President Trump has also shown how really dumb these people actually are. In their need to overthrow the freely elected President they cannot point out the obvious brilliance of his presidency. This is simply the last step of freeing the world’s vital oil supplies from despots and dictators. It is so obviously obvious only a media moron would not notice it. These are the same mental giants who did not notice Biden could not find the stairs off the stage or would always shake hands with nobody with a look that said nobody home.

Now Trump has the largest reserves of oil accessible to the free world. This would be America, Canada, Venezuela, and Iran with a terror free Middle East. He has neutered the biggest threat to the Strait of Hormuz by putting their ships on the bottom of the ocean and having complete air domination over Iran. This makes the Iran military more useless than the Tesla.

Without air support they cannot terrorize oil shipments let alone their own people. The Kurds have been fighting them for centuries and now have an open season on Iran. If Iraq wants to take part of it there is nothing stopping them since anytime Iran mounts an attack or defense America or Israel will have target practice so they effectively have no military which is the end game for Iran.

This brilliant strategy will free the oil supplies around the world like it has never had before driving prices lower and making manufactured goods lower than ever before. There is now a very real possibility Trump will have secured the lifeblood of business for decades thanks to his partnership with Israel and Venezuela.

The bigger picture is he has cut off China’s main supplies of cheap oil. Since both countries had an embargo on their oil, wink, wink, they were purchasing it at half price or less and both those suppliers are dead and buried. Now China will be buying most of their oil from Trump’s Oil which is the real end game for the Dinosaur Press. Perhaps you Dinosaurs could smile once in a decade or so?

The same doom and gloom from the Pen and Quill press who are still living in Watergate as they predicted runaway inflation from tariffs and an endless war in Venezuela. They have never been right about anything and wrong about everything yet this time Trump is going to fail.

It is obvious God is in control and is using the last man men would choose just like David. He has turned Israel into Iran’s ally and going to free the Iranian people. Whether they can handle freedom is up to them, but the end of the dictatorship is here.

They are now a military state without an effective military. It has no communication, air cover, or a weapons industry. God works in mysterious ways and this may be the most mysterious way of all.

Pray for our Sailors and Airmen

Bray

Ayn Rand wrote, “Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.”

She nailed it.

Because I am a therapist, people always ask me: “What is self-esteem?”

In part, self-esteem refers to the attitude that you have a right to your OWN life, and to live for your OWN sake.

In line with Rand’s quote, socialism (which is tyranny) is incompatible with self-esteem.

¹In short: Freedom (economic and otherwise) is the mental oxygen you breathe. Your self-esteem will choke under socialism. And if you possess any self-esteem at all, you could never support socialism.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The only difference between a socialist and a Democrat is that the Democrat says, “Your earnings don’t belong to you. Your earnings belong to the government. Now hand over half of your earnings.”

A socialist (aka communist) says, “Your earnings don’t belong to you. Your earnings belong to the government. Now hand over ALL of your earnings.”

Morally, there’s no distinction.

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Today’s Democrat has turned into a socialist. Why? Because the thief who feels entitled to half your income feels entitled to all of it. It’s only a matter of time.

A conventional Republican, by the way, claims: “Your earnings are yours. But please hand over half of them anyway. And if the communists take over — well, we’ll meet them halfway.”

You cannot meet a thief, a brute, a predator, or a totalitarian halfway. Once you concede anything to a totalitarian, you have lost it all.

Most of the world, outside of America, now understands this. Americans will be the last to learn it — the hard way.

Uninformed people say they support socialists because they’re struggling with expenses. “I care about affordability.”

So, imagine this solution: Hire someone to rob other people and give you a portion of the loot. Now you’ll be able to afford more, right? “Well, no, that would be theft. I can’t do that. It’s not right.”

So instead, they vote for a candidate who says he will make robbery LEGAL when he does it — that he’ll give you a portion of the loot, and then all will be well.

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“Now you’re talking. That’s not only morally acceptable. It’s morally virtuous.” Being uninformed will come with consequences.

And then there’s the economics of it. Let’s pretend for a moment that there are no moral issues with voting for someone who promises to legalize robbery.

You can pretend there are no unintended practical consequences of this action — but there are.

For one thing, there’s the law of supply and demand. Now that you’ll have all this free loot, the prices for those goods and services will go up.

Why? Because as demand goes up with supply staying the same, prices go up.

And supply, in fact, will go down. Why? Because with a communist now in charge of everything, the most productive and profitable companies and businesses will flee — to places with no socialism, or less socialism. Or they’ll just stop producing.

Put simply: When you outlaw profit as socialism does, you outlaw production.

So economically, socialism’s legalized theft can be expected to lead to smaller supply and greater demand: a recipe for high prices.

This will create an even greater “affordability” crisis. Case in point: the empty grocery shelves in Soviet Russia, Cuba, or Venezuela.

At that point, communists will do what communists always do: Take everything over.

“Prices are out of control, thanks to greedy capitalists; no job is too big for the government, so let the government handle everything.”

In New York City, victorious socialists have already promised to take over grocery stores and control the distribution of food. This sets the stage for taking over everything, which will seem rational when socialist policies make prices go through the roof.

Remember: This is what the Democrat Party has in store for all of America. We are no longer dealing with JFK’s Democrat Party. Nor even Lyndon Johnson’s, Jimmy Carter’s, or Bill Clinton’s Democrat Party.

The Democrats have gone all the way, both in theory and practice.

The previously unthinkable result of all this? AOC is their front-runner for the 2028 nomination for president.

A growing number of younger voters, as they age, say they want socialism. What will America look like in 10 years under socialism? What will NYC look like in 10 months?

The only hope for “affordability” is capitalism. Capitalism meets demand by producing the goods.

The quest for profit ultimately leads to more goods and that, in turn, reduces prices.

Conversely, socialism creates NOTHING. It disrupts innovation, prevents production, and leads to stagnation and shortages.

Note that socialist supporters always live in capitalist countries. They take for granted that goods will continue to be present and plentiful. 

The U.S. economy expanded at a surprisingly strong 4.3% annual rate in the third quarter as consumer spending, exports, and government spending all grew. Interesting.

All I hear people saying is how bad the economy is. “AI is destroying the economy!”

How? It’s never explained.

“Trump is destroying the economy.” By doing what? “Why, it’s Trump!”

No other explanation needed. “Well, OK; he’s racist.”

Inflation is killing us. Yes, it is. But governments create inflation. The Democrats’ unlimited government equals even more inflation.

Affordability? We cannot afford socialism. And we cannot afford to abandon capitalism.

America, at least the part governed by socialists, stands on the precipice of economic ruin.

Tragically, had we been paying attention, none of it ever had to happen.

Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D. is a psychotherapist with a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Psychology. He’s the author of “Grow Up America” and “Bad Therapy, Good Therapy,” (see: www.DrHurd.com). Dr. Hurd has been quoted in and/or appeared on over 30 radio shows/podcasts (including Rush Limbaugh and Larry Elder) and on Newsmax TV. He also authors two self-help columns weekly. Dr. Hurd resides in Charleston, South Carolina. Read More Dr. Hurd’s Reports — More Here.

Next month the most important political book of the year, or perhaps the decade, will be published. It is called The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control. The author is Jacob Siegel, a journalist for the Tablet.

To summarize: shocked by the arrival of Donald Trump in 2016, American government officials, the media, and the technology giants created a system of censoring the public, spying on other opponents, and planting false stories. The media was complicit and will never fully recover.

Trump’s rise, Siegel writes, “meant that politics had become war, as it is in many parts of the world, and tens of millions of Americans were the enemy.” He goes on: “One of the most disorienting aspects of the conspiratorial mania that overtook America’s elites in response to the rise of Donald Trump was the sheer scale of expert consensus behind views that were, on their merits, utterly deranged. What an ordinary person saw in 2016 was the country’s most venerated institutions all promoting the same claims about a Russian takeover of the American political system. Any given charge about Trump’s ties to the Kremlin might fall apart under scrutiny, but there were so many, coming from seemingly authoritative sources, that their totality seemed to outweigh their individual merits. The alternative—that it might all be so much propaganda—was difficult to face.”

To face the truth means to face the fact that “legions of Harvard professors, senators, senior national security officials, and respected journalists touting Trump’s sinister connections to Vladimir Putin had allowed themselves to become credulous bullhorns for a cynical and destructive information operation. If that was true it suggested that institutions and individuals with hundreds of years of built-up trust behind them were not only capable of getting big questions wrong but could, at any moment, decide to join hands and break out in song while they led the entire country off a cliff.”

One of the things that is going to make The Information State so powerful is that it will challenge the media’s greatest power – the power to ignore. Siegel, a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan wars, is not MAGA, even if he is not liberal. He will be interviewed at the CUNY Graduate Center on March 16. His book will get reviewed – unlike others that the media chooses to ignore.

Siegel explores how reporters became more pliant and stupid, even as the digital revolution exploded with access and new voices. A key moment came in 2015 when White House aide Ben Rhodes tried to sell Obama’s deal with Iran. Rhodes observed, “Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington.” Siegel: “Without reporters on the ground, journalists simply retailed the narratives fed to them by their political contacts….Rhodes seemed to enjoy boasting about his power over people he considered beneath him. That did not make his assessment of the media landscape wrong. ‘The average reporter we talk to is twenty-seven years old,’ he noted. ‘Their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.’ The depth of reporting and institutional experience built into the twentieth-century print model was dead. Something else that was easier to manipulate had taken its place.”

When asked about the “onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal,” Rhodes explained how the White House had manufactured a consensus: “We created an echo chamber.” The legions of experts were apparatchiks. “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say,” Rhodes acknowledged. The echo chamber effect relied on the twin revolutions in social media and the smartphone. It worked because great masses of people had already been herded into the vast, unbroken wholeness of the digital networks, where a message could reverberate from one end to the other without hitting any structural walls. Twitter, the social media platform favored by journalists and DC insiders, played a crucial role by synchronizing the various narrative purveyors in the echo chamber.”

On December 23, 2016, Obama signed the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act. The Act directed the State Department to expand the mission of the recently formed Global Engagement Center, run out of the Department of Homeland Security, and whose job was to counter the effects of foreign propaganda and disinformation. Siegel notes that “by creating a mechanism to enforce a party line on matters related to fighting disinformation and defending ‘US interests,’ the agency effectively created an official government office for coordinating the resistance to Trump.”

Then came Russiagate. Terrible people like John Brennan of the CIA, James Comey of the FBI, and President Barack Obama created a false story and sold it to the American people. Government officials were practicing the new art of “hybrid warfare,” which involved manipulating information itself. “Hybrid warfare,” Siegel writes, “provided the framework for reclassifying populist parties as security threats and shoving them outside the protection of the law.”

Obama also forced people like Mark Zuckerberg and platforms like Twitter to go along. Zuckerberg at first resisted, but quickly caved when Obama demanded that they combat “disinformation.” The new Leviathan, observes Siegel, was huge. The “whole-of-society apparatus” intent on “fighting disinformation” was in reality a group that “fused the political goals of the Obama-led ruling party with the institutional agenda of the intelligence agencies, funding from the financial elite, the narrative power and activist fervor of the media and NGOs, and the tech companies’ technological control of the public arena. The fact that the populist challenge was both legal and highly democratic did not affect their view that it was illegitimate. If democracy allowed such a threat to arise, then the rules of democracy would have to be changed.

So the Democratic Party plans to turn Texas blue by placing a creepy-looking faux minister in the U.S. Senate. “He’s a moderate.”

But once in the Senate, how will he vote?

Will he support the genital mutilation, grooming and exploitation of children by trans activists? Will he support 90 percent tax rates and unlimited spending? Will he support abortion at 8.5 months? Will he support multiple impeachments of President Trump and his eventual arrest, if Democrats take over again? Will he support gun confiscation, including in Texas? Will he support censorship of conservatives, and bankrolling Muslim terrorists? Will he oppose Trump’s strengthening of the military? Will he support open borders? OF COURSE HE WILL. The Democratic Party is now a unified totalitarian force. They all vote in lockstep. There are no moderate elements in a totalitarian movement.

Talarico’s whole campaign is a hoax.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Beyond the Ideological

China is Scrambling

The Overnight Pivot

Zineb Riboua

Mar 04, 2026

This piece was originally published in National Review

I have added edits given today’s developments.

The men in Zhongnanhai do not rattle easily. Decades of patient statecraft, a foreign policy built on studied ambiguity, and an economy engineered to absorb external shocks have granted Beijing’s leadership a remarkable tolerance for turbulence. Operation Epic Fury, the American-Israeli air campaign now dismantling Iran’s military architecture, has produced something unusual in the corridors of Chinese power: visible confusion.

Xi Jinping is scrambling. The word is not used lightly. For a leader who has built his image on strategic composure and long-horizon thinking, the current moment is acutely dangerous. Not because China faces a direct military threat, but because every available response to the crisis in the Persian Gulf leads Beijing into a trap of its own contradictions.

Three Reasons Operation Epic Fury Is Catastrophic for Xi

First, the Iranian counterweight is gone. In 2021, Xi told senior Party officials that “the East is rising and the West is declining,” that America was “the biggest source of chaos in the present-day world,” and that China was entering a period of strategic opportunity. Iran was central to that thesis. Beijing needed a defiant Tehran to keep Washington pinned down in the Gulf, to sustain a sanctions-proof energy corridor, and above all, to stand as living evidence that American power had hard limits. The entire architecture of CCP’s dogma of inevitability, which rested on Iran’s ability to endure, and Epic Fury removed the foundation in a single afternoon.

Khamenei was the man who made the thesis feel real. Beijing’s relationship with the Islamic Republic was never really ideological, but Khamenei’s survival was the single most useful fact in Chinese foreign policy. Here was a man Washington had threatened, sanctioned, plotted against, and encircled for over four decades, and he was still giving Friday sermons. Xi personally signed the comprehensive strategic partnership with Khamenei’s government. He personally authorized the weapons transfers. And he personally wielded the Security Council veto. None of it kept Khamenei alive for one additional hour once Washington decided he was finished.

Second, Xi’s own story is collapsing from the inside. The story he told 1.4 billion people, that America is a declining power incapable of decisive force projection, does not match what happened in seventy-two hours over Tehran. State media can suppress the footage and the censors can scrub Weibo, but the ones who matter most, the military planners, the foreign policy professionals, the provincial officials who read between the lines for a living, know what they saw. And if the story is wrong about Iran, the unavoidable next question is whether it was ever right about anything else.

Third, the energy math turns against Beijing. China bought 1.38 million barrels per day of Iranian oil last year and takes over 80% of everything Iran ships. Half of China’s total oil imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz. With Ayatollah Khamenei now dead and Iran’s military leadership weakened, the Gulf’s strategic balance shifts decisively toward Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, whose energy ties with the United States are strengthening. China’s old selling point was very simple and transactional: we buy your oil and never mention human rights. That pitch loses its utility when Gulf producers already feel protected by an American security guarantee that just proved, on live television, that it works.

The Messaging Trap

Xi’s communications problem may be worse than his strategic one, because there is no good answer. If Beijing endorses the strikes, it loses the “Global South.” If Beijing condemns the strikes, it attaches Chinese prestige to a dead man’s regime, and risks provoking a Trump administration that has just demonstrated, through the act itself, that it does not bluff.

So Beijing chose the remaining option: hide behind the United Nations. Mao Ning called the killing “a grave violation of sovereignty.” The language sounds forceful, but the Belt and Road countries are watching, and what they see so far is a confused superpower reading from a script while American carriers do the actual deciding.

Every Iranian Move Is a Chinese Loss

The truly vicious part of Beijing’s situation is that Iran’s entire playbook for retaliation was designed to punish Washington, but the geography and economics of each weapon mean the damage lands on China instead. Iranian missiles aimed at Gulf states threaten the very oil infrastructure and port facilities that Chinese companies have spent billions investing in across the region.

The Strait of Hormuz is worse. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced within hours that no ship would pass through the channel, a threat designed as leverage against the West, except that the United States has a shale industry and a crisis-proof strategic petroleum reserve. In fact, according to Kayrros, as of March 31, 2025, China had only filled 56% percent of its above-ground strategic and commercial storage facilities.

Which means that nearly 45% of China’s own oil imports now sit/would sit hostage to a blockade that was never meant to hurt Beijing. The Houthis have resumed attacks on Red Sea shipping, every flare-up in Iraq threatens oil concessions that Chinese companies spent billions building, and the sum of Iran’s resistance amounts to a systematic disruption of Chinese commercial interests across every waterway and energy corridor Beijing depends on, executed in Khamenei’s name, with no regard for who actually pays the price.

Counting Moves

The clearest sign of Beijing’s disorientation is the absence of action: no emergency summits, no diplomatic maneuvers, no military repositioning, even as a Chinese citizen was killed in crossfire in Tehran and over 300 nationals were evacuated. The sum total of Beijing’s response to the largest American military operation in a generation remains a press conference.

Xi bet a decade of foreign policy on Khamenei’s ability to withstand American pressure, and the bet did not pay off. Operation Epic Fury was designed to break the Islamic Republic, but it may also have exposed the uncomfortable truth that Chinese influence in the Middle East was only as durable as the assumption that no one would ever call it into question, and in Zhongnanhai, they know it.

Khamenei now dead and Iran’s military leadership weakened, the Gulf’s strategic balance shifts decisively toward Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, whose energy ties with the United States are strengthening. China’s old selling point was very simple and transactional: we buy your oil and never mention human rights. That pitch loses its utility when Gulf producers already feel protected by an American security guarantee that just proved, on live television, that it works.

The Messaging Trap

Xi’s communications problem may be worse than his strategic one, because there is no good answer. If Beijing endorses the strikes, it loses the “Global South.” If Beijing condemns the strikes, it attaches Chinese prestige to a dead man’s regime, and risks provoking a Trump administration that has just demonstrated, through the act itself, that it does not bluff.

So Beijing chose the remaining option: hide behind the United Nations. Mao Ning called the killing “a grave violation of sovereignty.” The language sounds forceful, but the Belt and Road countries are watching, and what they see so far is a confused superpower reading from a script while American carriers do the actual deciding.

Every Iranian Move Is a Chinese Loss

The truly vicious part of Beijing’s situation is that Iran’s entire playbook for retaliation was designed to punish Washington, but the geography and economics of each weapon mean the damage lands on China instead. Iranian missiles aimed at Gulf states threaten the very oil infrastructure and port facilities that Chinese companies have spent billions investing in across the region.

The Strait of Hormuz is worse. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced within hours that no ship would pass through the channel, a threat designed as leverage against the West, except that the United States has a shale industry and a crisis-proof strategic petroleum reserve. In fact, according to Kayrros, as of March 31, 2025, China had only filled 56% percent of its above-ground strategic and commercial storage facilities.

Which means that nearly 45% of China’s own oil imports now sit/would sit hostage to a blockade that was never meant to hurt Beijing. The Houthis have resumed attacks on Red Sea shipping, every flare-up in Iraq threatens oil concessions that Chinese companies spent billions building, and the sum of Iran’s resistance amounts to a systematic disruption of Chinese commercial interests across every waterway and energy corridor Beijing depends on, executed in Khamenei’s name, with no regard for who actually pays the price.

Counting Moves

The clearest sign of Beijing’s disorientation is the absence of action: no emergency summits, no diplomatic maneuvers, no military repositioning, even as a Chinese citizen was killed in crossfire in Tehran and over 300 nationals were evacuated. The sum total of Beijing’s response to the largest American military operation in a generation remains a press conference.

Xi bet a decade of foreign policy on Khamenei’s ability to withstand American pressure, and the bet did not pay off. Operation Epic Fury was designed to break the Islamic Republic, but it may also have exposed the uncomfortable truth that Chinese influence in the Middle East was only as durable as the assumption that no one would ever call it into question, and in Zhongnanhai, they know it.

Democrats and RINOs suddenly shriek that Iranian terrorist cells in the U.S. are going to rise up against us.

So let me get this straight: Muslim terrorists will START to become violent only now, due to Trump. Seriously, leftist media?

“This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong,” according to a quote usually attributed to Hannah Arendt.

As for Donald Trump, he’s a lone wolf in politics. For decades, nearly all Republicans and even many Democrats said we had to do something about Iran. The few given a chance never did a thing. Now Donald Trump as President has done it.

Ayn Rand’s quote comes to mind about Donald Trump:

“Notice how they’ll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once. . . . There’s a special, insidious kind of hatred for him.”

Rand was mostly referring to the creator, the innovator, or the risk-taker required by capitalism. Donald Trump is that in the business world, but he also achieved that in the world of politics. It hasn’t been done before; and probably won’t be done again, at least not for a very, very long time.

THIS is why they despise him.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Our job wasn’t to replace the Iranian regime. Our job wasn’t to give the Iranians “democracy” or a Constitutional republic. Our job was just to destroy the Iranian regime, because it was the # 1 sponsor of world terrorism for 50 years (primarily against America) and it was in our interest to do so. The rest is up to the Iranians. If they create a new terrorist regime, then we will have to destroy that one too, most likely.

People critical of Trump’s actions are caught in a false alternative. Either we fix Iran, or do nothing to defend ourselves. No to BOTH! We cannot fix Iran. Only the Iranians can pull that off. Look how well trying to fix Iraq and Afghanistan worked out. But we must defend ourselves. It’s plausible to assert that 9/11 and so many other things would not have happened without Iran’s direct or indirect help. Sooner or later, thanks to billions in aid to Iran provided by Obama and Biden, Iran would have acquired nuclear weapons and used them offensively, first against Israel and eventually against American troops and cities. Why Obama, Biden and other treasonous Democrats still walk free after giving a mortal enemy the means to incinerate us all is beyond comprehension.

YES (a thousand times YES!) to Trump’s intervention against Iran. Trump is an American hero. NO to any hint that we owe anyone else anything. The world owes US for getting rid of the Iranian regime. Well, the world owes those of us who voted for President Trump, at least.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Capitalism is the social system of the Enlightenment, founded on a philosophy based on reason, egoism, and freedom. Central to a proper concept of capitalism is reverence for the power of reason and the human mind. It is this power that allows us to harness the power of the atom for energy, build planes and rocketships to travel the skies and stars, and innovate technology to increase the quantity and improve the quality of our lives.