Archive for the ‘war’ Category

Five Up too early for a Saturday Thoughts Under the Fedora: World Cup Highlights, The Hardest Part, Musk’s Trillions, Iran Trickling down and Big Finish to the Rescue?

Posted: June 13, 2026 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, doctor who, employment, Sports, under the fedora, war
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I spent some time watching World Cup Highlights yesterday and those highlights demonstrated why the sport is not worth my time.

The highlight reels ran 15-20 min with several replays in them so maybe 10-12 minutes of play. That from a match that runs 90-100 minutes. That’s 80 minutes of dead time where there is no much happening but a guy kicking a ball back to another while they look for a chance to make something happen,

Contrast this with Baseball which while not having a clock has the potential for a run to be scored & a highly happening on every single pitch.

Give me the pine tar & the leather any day.

The worst part of being out of work is the waiting.

Last time around in 2008 I couldn’t buy a job interview. This time I’ve had quite a few. I’m waiting on three companies right now 2 of which had told me I’d be hearing back from them up or down before this point.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy that I’m getting interviews it’s the waiting that throws me for a loop.

It’s not easy at 63 to be competing for positions with people 20+ years younger than you.

Let me remind you of several somethings concerning Elon Musk’s soon to be Trillion dollar net worth.

  1. Musk employs tens of thousands of people
  2. Musk is actively using his wealth for some rather incredible things
  3. There are plenty of people who have never built anything who will critique his wealth for profit. power & clicks.
  4. There are plenty more who only started hating on him once he became a threat to the power of the left or to virtue signal to said left that they’re one of him.
  5. As the old saying goes, he will still be able to only eat one meal at a time & sleep in one bed at a time & will like all of us eventually die.
  6. The only think that really counts in the long run is his relationship with God, I’d worry more about that but I’m too busy worrying about my relationship with God.

But the real thing about Musk’s wealth is this: It’s nothing to do with me and not my concern. He has what he has and does what he does and what he so does is his own business, not mine. I have no more right or claim on what he has than the guy down the street has to mine.

Over the past two weeks gasoline has dropped .29 cents from it’s high in my area. About 9%.

While that’s nice it’s still up 57% from the low it had hit before the Iran War.

This causes me pain but it’s still worth it if Iran is emasculated. What the people who are complaining about the lack of a deal or Trump not getting said deal or bombing them on any given day either don’t understand or ignore is that every day that passes Iran grows weaker and we grow stronger.

As the tankers continue to come to the US & we keep getting tankers in the straits out Iran’s leverage continues to drop. Yeah if we were willing to commit 100,000 troops we could likely bring them down and take the country & the oil but at the cost of 1000’s of US lives that while justifiable in the long run to destroy once & for all the leading terror sponsor in the world, is a price our current society is unwilling to pay & unnecessary if Iran can be emasculated without doing so.

The price will keep trickling down slowly as the alternate supplies continue to open up. I suspect if things aren’t concluded right away it will take till the end of August to see gas at $2.99 again. By that time Iran will be capping wells and their ability to finance jihad outside will be practically finished, which frankly they are almost at now anyways.

That’s a lot less sexy than seeing the Mullahs fall just like winning the cold war over 50 years was a lot less sexy than Patton leading his army against the Soviets in 1945 would have been, but I’ll take less sexy with thousands of less casualties every day of the week.

Finally word is out that the Doctor Who Christmas special is nixed & the BBC is pretty much taking bids to see who wants a shot at running the franchise that they’ve driven into the ground once again.

Like the anti-thatcher stuff that killed it in 1989 the work stuff has made Doctor Who so Toxic that actors have no interest in the iconic role & fans don’t care.

In my opinion the solution is obvious, I’d give it to Big Finish which has been producing original Doctor Who stories for more than a quarter of a century & doing so without needing a government imposed fee to pay the way.

While they have their share of woke they are experts at making stories that people are willing to pay actual money to hear, and while they don’t have experience in TV that doesn’t matter as the special effects and or cinematography are not the problem here. it’s the stories and as Big Finish says: Big Finish, We Love Stories!

Let Big Finish supply the scripts and Doctor Who can thrive again, or let the TV show die and let Big Finish run the Time Lord as strictly audio. Remember it was six years of Big Finish stories starting a decade after the final show that caused it to return. And even if it dies here, remember the first episode was broadcast in 1963 when I was six months old.

Not a bad run.

Iran: It’s Worth it, Even at the Cost to my Wallet & of Election 2026

Posted: May 5, 2026 by datechguy in economy, middle east, politics, war
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Paul Crewe: Hey Pop, the time you hit Hazen in the mouth, was it worth 30 years?

Pop: Yeah: For me it was.

The Longest Yard 1974

Last week I filled up my gastank at $4.009 a gallon.

The $4 barrier was a big shock as gas had plummeted during the 2nd Trump term to a point where I had paid $2.56 just before the start of the war with Iran. That had saved me a lot of money and it showed.

I had hoped that things would be over before a final oil delivery but it was not and my oil delivery cost considerably more than I had budgeted, fortunately my prepay had still covered it so the impact wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

With my job about to end this week after 10 years these additional costs are a real strain on the family budget and I imagine that for people who are less careful with their money, which I imagine is most people, the gas increase is a matter of real pain.

Gas is now $4.27 everywhere as we start getting fuel that was traded on markets at the top of the spikes.

It’s a real concern not just financially but politically because the cost of gas increases the cost of everything else and the Democrats who didn’t say boo when gas prices were like this during the Biden years are making hay of it all.

Every incentive both personal for me and political for conservatives in election 2026 screams for things in Iran to end yesterday.

But when it comes down to it, none of that matters, because this is a defining moment for the country and the world.

For 47 years the Islamists in Iran have been the number one source of murder and terror in the world and have exported this terror to almost every corner of the planet. Thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of others have lost their lives become of their direct actions over this time. They have been the delivery system for all our enemies who want us dead. For 47 years they have chanted “Death to America” and I’ve never for one moment thought they didn’t mean it.

America had opportunities to stop this. Reagan, could have gone in regardless of the Hostage release but was dealing with the cold War. Bush one didn’t want to upset Arab allies as he dealt with Iraq. Clinton was more interested in not getting booted, Bush two who actually had Iran surrounded on three sides never pulled the trigger and Barack Obama, It’s my opinion that he’s been on Iran’s side from the very beginning of his presidency and into his 3rd term running the autopen man.

The single greatest thing Donald Trump can do for the United States and for the World is removing the Islamic Republic from the face of the earth.

  • It will save countless lives, free the people of Iran from the terror they’ve lived under.
  • It will destroy terror networks and connections that will take our foes years to rebuild.
  • It will change the face of the middle east permanently giving an incentive for Israel’s neighbors to make peace
  • It will deprive both Russia & China of a proxy used to attack us and intimidate others
  • And it will deprive Islamists of a nuclear device (at least until England and France fall)

All of these gains are stacked against a tighter belt for me and mine.

There is no contest.

I hate where Gas prices are, but if they reach $5 and Iran falls this year, it’s worth it.

If the economy slows because of the increase in gas prices, but Iran falls this year, it’s worth it.

And if the Democrat left, which I suspect is doing all it can to encourage Iran to hold out actually wins both houses of congress because of this war, but Iran falls IT’S STILL WORTH IT!

All of those things me a harder life for me in the short term, but a better life for my sons and myself and the entire world in the long term.

About 85 years ago my father found himself in the Pacific fighting a war for the world’s survival while at home my ancestors on both my mother and fathers side did without in order to support that effort until it was won. Because of their sacrifices I lived in a safer world in freedom.

You and I are being asked to do the same but on a much smaller scale and with a lot less pain.

Let’s be worthy of those who came before us.

Mr. President, fight this war to win. I know the world will not thank you for it, in fact they will publicly curse you for it and teach others to do so. A generation of idiots (outside of Iran itself) who already hate you will hate you more. The Europeans whose oil supply you will scorn you and don’t even think of the Nobel Prize that you had earned for your actions of the past year.

They will attack you for the rest of your life and dance upon your grave with you go to face your maker. They will live to do it in freedom and security.

But even as they do all of these things, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that the freedom, security & even the lives that they spend mocking you, will have been a gift you have freely given them asking nothing in return.

That’s one great legacy.

Five Iran War Thoughts Under the Fedora: Ignorance is the rule, Yes they get to shoot back, Ukraine gives a hand, The only two advantages Iran Has, Israel’s big Drone Endgame

Posted: March 13, 2026 by datechguy in middle east, under the fedora, war
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One of the disadvantages of the all volunteer army is that you have 1% of the population serving so that the vast majority of people in the nation have absolutely no idea how the military or how war works.

A good example of this is the fuss over the meals for the troops but a better example is the shock, SHOCK that the enemy gets to hit back in war.

Without history being taught properly combined with only movies & TV to give them a reference means people don’t know what they’re talking about & are easily taken.

We have pretty much destroyed the air & navel arm of Iraq and have done so at a cost so minimal that military historians will be writing about it for centuries.

Yet because of the ignorance that I mentioned above, the slight amount of causalities we have suffered are being treated as a disaster by the left & being sold as failure.

This is war, the enemy gets to shoot back and occasionally they will get lucky and occasionally we will get unlucky with a failure of equipment or even human error.

Additionally our enemies (Russia & China) while not providing direct aid are undoubtedly proving whatever intelligence available

This is war and in war some of our troops are going to die. This is a reality and the price that’s necessary to destroy an enemy who has been killing our people since I was a teenager.

Ukraine has gotten a lot from us over the last 4 years to help in their war vs Russia (and not just the graft either) and until now they had little that we needed.

But there is one thing that they have in abundance that we do not have & would be most useful in the effort to destroy the Islamic republic: years of practical experience in drone warfare, both in offence and defense.

It is reported that Ukraine is now sharing that experience with us and those that are being hit by Iran.

This is a smart move by Ukraine, if Iran falls one of Russia’s key allies goes with it and thus weakens Putin further. Additionally such help make it more likely that Trump will be more amenable to releasing more aid with less questions is a helping hand is given.

Nothing builds an alliance more than mutual self interest.

To say Iran is getting pummeled is the understatement of the year. No level of propaganda, tweet farms & paid influences spinning makes all of this any less of an absolute disaster to the Iranian Muslim leaders and their networks.

Combine this with Israel’s use of intelligence to use drone attacks on small checkpoints to eliminate those whose job it is to repress the people and all the cards look poor for them.

They do however have two advantages one tangible and one not.

The tangible advantage is the clock. The war powers act gives Donald Trump 60 days to do what he can without a vote in congress. While there is every chance he would win such a vote (no matter what the MSM says) the longer the war goes on the better the chance that any kind of reversal can be played upon by the left or that the cowards in the congress will be subject to their fears.

The intangible advantage is Islam itself.

I suspect there are plenty of people in the Iranian government working for the Mullahs or the secret police that are IINOS (Islamic in name only) who are doing what they do for the money and/or doing it out of fear for their families or even to “be somebody”.

But I also suspect that there is a percentage of these people who are true believers in radical Islam, Who think that “Death to America” isn’t just a chant but a holy command.

Those true believers will fight to the death because they think they’re serving God. If there are enough of them it will be real trouble for us because people who don’t care if they die are capable of anything.

Granted neither of these are big advantages but you have to play the cards you have.

Finally when it comes to drones Israel has made it an art.

With information given via Iranians in Iran they have been able to strike at individual checkpoints within cities. In other words at the people who actually do the killing of protestors who want the Mullahs gone.

Even if the US stops bombing if Israel can keep this up then the game is up and done. Without those guys holding the people back there is no way to stop a popular revolution.

I think the Mullahs might lose their country before I officially lose my job

I’ll Believe it When I See It

Posted: October 9, 2025 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, middle east, war
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Yesterday during the Antifa conference Marco Rubio upstaged the rather important meeting with the news that they where on the verge of a breakthrough in the middle east.

Now I have woken up and the news is Hamas has accepted stage one of the peace deal and the hostages (at least the living ones) will be released on Monday.

Now I don’t for one minute doubt the deal making ability of this Trump administration which has pulled rabbits out of their hats on more occasions then I can count.

But what I DO doubt is the sincerity of Hamas, I doubt that they will release the living hostages, I doubt that they will release the bodies of the dead, I doubt they will disarm and I doubt they will give up killing Jews.

My guess is that they will (at absolute best) release the living hostages and then dig in their heels figuring Trump will not be as adamant about dead bodies when it comes to pushing the peace plan. Of course we might not actually see all the living hostages released either. Given Hamas’ history we also might not see any hostages released and Hamas back out at the last minute.

Now in fairness I’ve argued from the beginning that Israel should consider the hostages dead and crush Hamas without mercy. I know that’s a hard thing but the destruction of Hamas will save a lot more lives in the long run, but it’s not my call it’s Israel’s call and if they were willing to lose troops to free these people then so be it.

Bottom line: I’ll believe that the hostages will be released when they are all turned over to Israel till then I’ll watch and wait.

I hope I’m wrong.

If I am and Trump not only gets the hostages, but secures peace then the Nobel Peace Prize will not be good enough for him.

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