We are on to the Islanders
Joined January 2013
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Old Gregorius retweeted
I honestly thought people on the right were smarter than people on the left…
I was wrong.
Stupid lefties think men can become women.
Stupid righties think 0.2% of the population controls the entire world (to be fair, lots of stupid lefties believe this too).
Those of us with a brain are quite literally surrounded by modern day illiterate peasants.
Old Gregorius retweeted
Regret the tone of my post on data centers yesterday.
What I should have said:
There were reasonable concerns about data centers 18ish months ago: water, taxes, jobs, electricity prices, the environment and what they would do to small towns. Well-structured data center projects have largely addressed these concerns today and we should be celebrating this.
On balance, data centers are awesome for America in every way.
On water: U.S. data centers use a fraction of what golf courses use. A lot of the numbers from 18 months ago were off by over 1000x. Newer data centers use closed-loop systems or recycled water. Should be required by every town approving a data center project.
On taxes: looking only at sales-tax exemptions, as Ronan Farrow did, is the wrong way to evaluate this. Data centers pay significant property taxes. Loudoun County, which is the wealthiest county in America, now collects on the order of $1 billion a year from data centers. In Quincy, WA, data centers are more than half the property-tax roll. Over time, property taxes can go to zero while government spending increases in these towns.
On jobs: this has been unambiguously awesome for blue collar Americans. Demand for electricians, plumbers, welders, HVAC techs, and contractors has gone vertical, and it is not a one-time construction job. These buildings get upgraded and expanded over time. That is why the building trades are fighting for them, and why some unions are now treating opposition to data centers as a reason not to endorse politicians.
On power: the original fear was that households would pay for the incremental electricity demand in the form of higher prices. That is why the ratepayer-protection deals and the new large-load tariffs exist. The right structure is: the data center brings or pays for new generation and signs a contract long enough that existing customers are protected. Where that is happening, utilities are cutting or freezing residential rates and saying so on the record. Where it is not, people are right to object. Electricity prices are going down *today* in a number of large states because of data centers.
On the environment: data centers overwhelming use natural gas today, which is the cleanest power source outside of nuclear, solar and wind. And the companies that are building the data centers are committed to carbon neutrality such that an equivalent amount of solar will likely be built. Maybe more importantly, the data centers need batteries to function effectively and these batteries can also sell energy back into the grid (which recently prevented blackouts in Texas). Over time, data centers will run on solar plus batteries.
On the towns: Poverty in Quincy, WA fell from 29% to 6%. Data center taxes paid for a new high school, a hospital, a library, police and fire stations. This is happening in many left for dead former mill and farm towns that had no other bidder for the land.
Data centers are actually reindustrializing parts of America and creating the kind of working-class jobs both parties have spent decades claiming to support. That should not be a partisan issue. Data centers can and should be awesome for America and they increasingly, overwhelmingly are. Supporting the outsourcing of data centers to China will likely age just as well as support for the outsourcing of high quality, blue collar manufacturing jobs to China has aged.
When the facts change, I change my mind. I hope that reasonable people who had good faith reasons to oppose data centers at least consider updating their beliefs given the change in the facts over the last 18 months. This really matters for America.
I will say I also think the idea of making data centers beautiful is a good one that has yet to be implemented. Data centers should be just as beautiful as Grand Central Station. We can learn a lot from the railroad buildout. Neoclassical revival ftw.
Might write up open-weight AI tomorrow as this is equally essential to America.
Old Gregorius retweeted
America’s ruling class has performed another miracle.
They took the most basic truths in human civilization ... crime needs punishment, borders need enforcement, schools should teach, welfare should be temporary, families matter, merit matters, and taxpayers should not be looted by professional parasites ... and somehow rebranded all of that as “extremism.”
Incredible work, really.
Apparently, a “compassionate” society is one where the violent repeat offender gets another chance, the victim gets a candlelight vigil, the taxpayer gets the bill, the schoolkid gets passed along illiterate, the fraudster gets a grant, the NGO gets another contract, the illegal alien gets services, and the working American gets told to shut up and be more inclusive.
What a beautiful system.
Soft justice did not stay in the courtroom. It metastasized. It became soft borders, soft schools, soft parenting, soft welfare, soft standards, soft men, and soft bureaucrats explaining why every obvious solution is “too harsh.”
Lock up predators? Cruel.
Deport illegals? Hateful.
End generational welfare? Lacking empathy.
Punish fraud? Complicated.
Restore merit? Problematic.
Teach kids to read? Probably colonialism by Tuesday.
A serious country protects the innocent from the guilty. A decaying country protects the guilty from consequences and makes the innocent finance the experiment.
That’s America’s real crisis.
Not poverty. Not “root causes.” Not another fake expert panel.
Consequences.
We stopped imposing them on the people destroying the country, so now the country imposes them on everyone else.
(article below)
Old Gregorius retweeted
Bukele was elected the Mayor of San Salvador in 2015 which is El Salvador's most populated city with 1/4 of the nation's population. His approach on crime & the resulting reductions there, is what led him down the path of becoming president. Your ignorance is unparalleled
Old Gregorius retweeted
Not only is Jalen Brunson super polished and likable....but on top of that, he took $100 Million less and won an NBA championship....in NEW YORK CITY
It's pretty insane to think about
Old Gregorius retweeted
Chicago lost the Bears this week. A team that's been in the city since 1921.
They didn't lose them to a bigger market or a better deal. The Bears decided they'd rather be a tenant in Indiana than deal with Illinois for one more year.
Think about how badly you have to run a place for that to be the smart move.
They lost them for two reasons.
The people running Illinois would rather villainize a builder than keep one. And they're bad at their jobs.
In 2021 the Bears spent $197M on the old Arlington Park racetrack.
Before they could break ground, Cook County valued the empty lot at $192M (Bears said $60M). They were salivating at the chance to extort a building that didn't even exist yet.
That fight dragged on for years.
The Bears were ready to put $2B into the stadium. All they wanted was a promise the county wouldn't reassess them into oblivion, plus $855M for infrastructure everyone uses. Roads, transit, utilities. A $3B project, two thirds of it private money pouring into Illinois.
Springfield had since 2021 to get this done. They dragged it to the final night of session, passed it through the Senate at 3:39AM, and the House went home without voting.
So now it's all gone.
The funniest part? This started because Cook County tried to grab the tax early. They knew a built stadium would pay $53M a year. Now they get under $4M on a vacant lot. No jobs, no buildout, no new anything.
Congrats on fighting for scraps and losing the whole prize.
Pritzker: they're "an $8.5B valued business" that doesn't need propping up.
But be smart for a second. Almost every NFL city throws in public money for a stadium. Not charity. The return is real. Tourism, hotels, restaurants, jobs, game days, property tax on a huge development. The math works.
Indiana did the math. While Illinois sat on it for years, Indiana passed a bill in months, put up $1B, and took the team.
And the Bears took a worse deal to get there. In Illinois they were going to own their stadium. In Indiana they rent it from the state. A team that wanted to build its own home gave up ownership just to escape Chicago.
Nobody won but Indiana. The Bears lost their stadium. Illinois lost the team, the $2B, and $53M a year in taxes.
Pritzker after they left: "I wasn't willing to give up billions of dollars of taxpayer money to give it to a billionaire-owned family or team."
There it is. "Billionaire-owned."
That's how Democrats talk about any business right before they run it out of town. Call them a billionaire, act like you're saving working families, take a victory lap while the tax base drives across the state line.
Meanwhile they're running the whole state into the ground. And you already know how this ends. You're living in it.
Pensions are $143B in the hole, worst in the country and not close. You pay $6,285 a year in property taxes, double the $2,969 national average, for a city that's $1.15B in the red. The mayor called its finances "the point of no return."
When you run things this badly, you sell what's left.
They leased the parking meters for 75 years to Morgan Stanley and a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi. Took $1.15B and burned through it in two years. The investors already made it all back, with 58 years left to collect.
Sold the Skyway. Sold the downtown garages. Every asset that made money, gone for one check.
But a fixed property tax rate for a team that's been here 106 years? That's "propping up billionaires."
Companies are leaving. Boeing for Virginia. Caterpillar for Texas. Citadel for Miami. In 2023 alone Illinois lost 56,000 people and $6B in income to other states. The ones who left earned a third more than the ones who moved in.
Indiana didn't outbid anyone. AAA credit, 16 years straight. A $676M surplus. Fourth-lowest debt per person in the country. They just weren't a disaster.
Illinois could have collected $53M a year. It chose zero. Ignore all the bad management but make sure to stick it to those evil, pesky billionaires.
Old Gregorius retweeted
Food for thought.
Welcome to the New Great Game: the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is not an outburst, it is a long‑planned move on a board Washington has been studying for decades.
Donald Trump’s Iran gamble is being judged against the wrong baseline. Nobody serious expected regime change by airstrike; the bet of Operation Epic Fury was narrow but brutal, halt Iran’s march to a bomb, break the infrastructure that threatens Americans and allies, restore deterrence and, by closing Hormuz, demonstrate that even in a “multipolar” age the United States can still reach for the world’s most strategic chokepoint.
The question is not whether Iran looks worse than in peacetime, but whether it is weaker than the Iran we were otherwise on track to face: near‑weapons‑grade enrichment, hardened sites, ICBMs a tested weapon within a year, and implicitly backed by China. Against that counterfactual, a regime that has lost senior commanders, core nuclear facilities and major war‑making capacity has not “emerged stronger”.
Nor did this war suddenly hand power to the IRGC. The Guards have run Iran for years; the conflict stripped away the clerical façade and killed many of their most capable officers. They are not true religious believers but calculating military men, interested in power, money and survival more than theology. Such men can be negotiated with, if the terms strip away their most dangerous options. A discredited IRGC with degraded capabilities and no viable nuclear path is weaker than the old clerical‑IRGC hybrid with a bomb option. This looks less like a revolutionary vanguard and more like a brittle military dictatorship.
Venezuela shows why this is not neo‑conservatism in disguise. There, Washington helped force Nicolás Maduro from power with sanctions, isolation and support for the opposition, but it did not send Marines into Caracas or attempt to remake the country in America’s image. The objective was pressure and transition, not permanent US stewardship. The same bounded playbook now applies to Iran: maximum economic and military pressure to fracture the regime from within, not an occupation or bayonet‑installed government.
Seen from that perspective, Hormuz is not a shocking improvisation but the central artery in a strategy that has been war gamed out : use control of sea‑lanes and finance to punish Iran first, but also to remind China and Europe that their growth models still depend on flows Washington can disrupt. What cannot be allowed is for this world to turn Iran into a Chinese staging point on the Gulf.
The endgame in this first round of the New Great Game is narrow and knowable: no enrichment, real caps on missile reconstitution, no Chinese forward base, no open chequebook for terror, and enough sustained pressure that when the Iranian people finally move, they are pushing against a weakened security state rather than a confident nuclear one.
The world has changed; Iran has lost the war, Pax Americana is dead. Trump’s national security doctrine, coercion without occupation, leverage without crusades, is the planned successor, and the Strait of Hormuz is its chosen proving ground. Is the Strait of Malacca next?
Why should investors care? Because if this strategy succeeds, it removes a looming nuclear breakout risk, curtails state‑sponsored terrorism, re‑establishes a credible fear of US hard power and, for a time, compresses the geopolitical risk premium that has hung over energy, shipping and global equities for a generation. It offers the possibility, however briefly, of a peace dividend: lower volatility, higher investment and a world that, for a moment, rhymes with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War.
In that window, capital will scramble to reprice assets that assumed perpetual Middle Eastern and Nuclear escalation. The New Great Game is not just about guns and chokepoints; it is about who captures that re‑rating.
If Trump manages to successfully address Venezuela, Iran (including the Strait of Hormuz), and Cuba after having removed Chinese control of the Panama Canal, and entering into a Malaysian joint-military relationship to put our Navy in the the Malarcca Strait thereby putting 80% of China’s oil imports at risk (awarding the US massive/unheralded leverage) then how can anyone argue it was all understaken and accomplished by Trump just hamhandedly throwing darts at a wall and hoping for the best?
The obvious answer is you can't. It will be considered some of the most bold & courageous moves ever made in world history. Moves whose outcomes will reshape the humanity moving forward.
Trump went all in, and on the grandest stage of all time. And by all appearances, this is EXACTLY where things look to be heading.
What will the late-state TDS crowd say then? They won't be able to stand the adulation coming his way.
Sadly, many of them are going to lose their damn minds, more than we've ever seen. And I mean like legit lose them.
Chokepoints are now more valuable than gold. The most valuable real estate on the planet.
Under Biden we lost the most important chokepoint in the world, the Suez Canal, to the Houthis.
We lost Gibraltar when woke politicians in the UK and Spain refused to allow 🇺🇸 ships to fuel there.
We lost the Kerch Strait and Bosporus to Russia.
Trump is a real estate legend.
And he came in swinging.
Day one after the election: Argentina’s President invited to Mar-a-Lago. This is not an active chokepoint today but is THE most important backup chokepoint for the US Navy if the Panama Canal fails.
He offered asylum to South Africans to put diplomatic pressure on that government.
He appointed Lou Sola to chair @fmc_gov and investigate chokepoint control.
He dispatched diplomats when Norway refused to bunker Navy ships.
He pressured the UK hard to secure the English Channel from migrant boats.
He launched the largest carrier bombing offensive in naval history against the Houthis in Yemen and pirates in Somalia.
He cut the steady flow of cash from USAID and Minnesota to Somali warlords.
He demanded (and, yes, failed) to end the Russia-Ukraine war to reopen the Bosporus to 🇺🇸 ships.
He sent @PeteHegseth and @SecRubio to secure the Navy’s most important chokepoint: Panama.
He dialed back rhetoric with China to keep goods flowing through the Taiwan Strait while improving security of the Luzon Strait.
He got an icebreaker deal signed to secure the Bering Strait.
He pushed back HARD on the UN @IMOHQ carbon tax that would have eliminated fueling options at chokepoints.
He closed the GIUK gap by playing hardball with Denmark over Greenland.
He put the Indonesian President front and center at Davos and, just last week, made a huge tariff deal to secure the Malacca Strait.
Now he’s laser-focused on the most important energy chokepoint in the world: the Strait of Hormuz.
In a world of geopolitical crisis, chokepoints are king and Trump is the only leader on earth treating them like the strategic real estate they are.
Was this guy Trump actually playing 4D chess??? @hobie_tweets
cc @hobie_tweets Panama Canal, Greenland, Venezuela, and now Iran.. every move has been related to shipping lanes and oil supplies.. all signs pointing to limiting China
It Was Never About Iran or Venezuela: It’s About Weakening China, and It’s Brilliant
China’s economic ascent is tethered to a critical vulnerability: its reliance on foreign oil. Importing over 70% of its oil, China depends heavily on a few key suppliers. This reliance creates a strategic opportunity for the U.S.
By influencing Iran and Venezuela, two of the world’s top holders of oil reserves, the U.S. can exert direct or indirect influence over their trade partnerships, thereby tightening China’s energy supply.
Key Points:
• Venezuela: Ranked 1st globally, holding around 17–18% of the world’s proven oil reserves.
• Saudi Arabia: Ranked 2nd, holding about 15–16% of global reserves. Although an ally, their reserves are pivotal.
• Iran: Ranked 3rd, holding around 12% of the world’s proven oil reserves.
Combined, these three countries hold ~45% of the world’s proven oil reserves.
Strategic Moves with a Broader Aim
While the public narrative focuses on removing dictators, curbing drug trafficking, and neutralizing Iran’s nuclear threat, the overarching strategy is clear. Ensuring these nations are not under the influence of U.S. adversaries limits China’s ability to secure its energy needs.
Take Venezuela.
Yes, drug trafficking into the United States is a serious issue. But Mexico remains the primary corridor for narcotics entering America, and China has played a documented role in supplying precursor chemicals that fuel the fentanyl crisis. Neither country faced comparable military intervention. If drugs were the sole driver, the strategic map would look very different.
Now consider Iran.
Stopping nuclear proliferation is a legitimate national security objective. Yet North Korea already possesses nuclear weapons and continues advancing its missile capabilities. The United States has not pursued direct regime removal there. The difference is not the level of authoritarianism or even the nuclear threat. The difference is strategic energy leverage.
This strategic foresight is what makes the move consequential.
By focusing on two nations that sit atop massive oil reserves and that have served as energy lifelines to China, the U.S. does more than remove hostile regimes. It reshapes global energy influence.
The effect is subtle but powerful. Direct control is not required. Influence over leadership, trade policy, or export alignment can be enough to alter who benefits from nearly half of the world’s proven oil reserves.
While the world debates the immediate justifications for U.S. actions in Iran and Venezuela, the broader picture reveals a calculated effort to weaken America’s primary competitor.
Removing dictators matters.
Stopping drug pipelines matters.
Containing nuclear threats matters.
But the main plot is strategic pressure on China.
And seen through that lens, the move is not reckless.
It is deliberate.
And it is brilliant.
Old Gregorius retweeted
Europe doesn't have "a problem". It has THREE problems: 3 European nations are suffering from a severe "post-imperial hangover".
First, there is the United Kingdom, a nation that voted for Brexit to "take back control" only to realize it has completely forgotten how to drive.
The British identity crisis is like watching a retired lion try to adopt a vegan diet. They traded imperial confidence for an HR department’s sensitivity training. The land of Churchill is now governed by a sprawling "nanny state" bureaucracy that is more terrified of offending someone on X than it is of actual decline. The British police, once the envy of the world, now seem to spend more resources investigating "non-crime hate incidents" and painting their patrol cars in rainbow colors than solving burglaries. It is a nation desperately clinging to the aesthetics of tradition—the Royals, the pomp, the tea—while its institutions have been hollowed out by a progressive rot that makes a California university campus look conservative. They want the swagger of the 19th century but are paralyzed by the emotional fragility of the 21st.
Then there is France, the angry, chain-smoking aunt of Europe who refuses to admit she’s been unemployed for decades.
France’s hangover manifests as a permanent state of insurrection masquerading as "civic engagement." Their identity is split between a delusional elite who still think Paris is the capital of the universe and a populace that expresses its "joie de vivre" by burning down bus stops every Thursday. The French suffer from a Napoleonic complex without a Napoleon; they demand the living standards of a conquering empire while working a 35-hour week and retiring at an age when most Americans are just hitting their stride. They preach "Republican values" and aggressive secularism, yet the state has lost control over vast swathes of its own suburbs. France is essentially a beautiful, open-air museum where the curators are on strike, the guards are afraid of the visitors, and the management is busy lecturing the rest of the world on "grandeur" while the electricity bill goes unpaid.
Finally, we have Germany, the neurotic giant that has decided the only way to atone for its history is to commit slow-motion industrial suicide.
Germany’s post-imperial hangover is a moral autoimmune disease: the country is so terrified of its own shadow that it has replaced national pride with aggressive self-flagellation and recycling regulations. Their identity is built on being the "Moral Superpower," which practically translates to shutting down their perfectly functional nuclear power plants to burn dirty coal, all while lecturing their neighbors on carbon footprints. It is a nation of engineers who have engineered a society that doesn't work. The German spirit, once defined by efficiency and discipline, has mutated into a paralyzed bureaucracy where filling out the correct form is more important than the outcome. They are so desperate to avoid being "threatening" that they’ve become essentially a large NGO with an army that has broomsticks for rifles, terrified that showing any backbone might be interpreted as a relapse.
@yannispappas sitcom idea you need to write “Volatile Greeks” starring John Stamos and Jennifer Aniston who are husband and wife of a big crazy Greek family but also run a small finance consulting/valuation firm (greeks is a name for partial derivatives in finance)
@yannispappas You can scrap the finance part.. we just need a show where the two most beautiful Greek celebrities are starring in a sitcom written by you.. you could play like a degenerate cousin (sorry but you couldn’t pull of sibling of either of those two) who steals the show
Old Gregorius retweeted
Sad @colbertlateshow is cancelled. I'll miss moments like this, where Claire Danes is talking about "the intelligence community allying itself with journalists" & Colbert abruptly changes the subject!
cc @BarstoolBigCat @Philly_Mays is a STAR.. if he isn’t on the live stream you might as well not even air it
Just finished my annual replay of the most underrated podcast episode of all time @DogWalkBarstool Christmas Song Snake Draft from 2020.. shoutout @BarstoolChief @barstoolcarl @barstoolWSD @EddieBarstool @Return_Of_RB