Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News

Drudge Retort

Menu

Subscriptions

Drudge Retort RSS feed RSS Feed

Links

Recent Comments

Recent comments from all news stories on this site. Users must follow the site's moderation policy. Personal attacks, profanity, abusive conduct and expressions of prejudice are not allowed. If you want to retrieve a comment of yours that was recently deleted, visit your user page and click the Moderation link.

Vices? Well that is what The House Of The Rising Sun is all about: www.youtube.com

Another: "Bottle of Wine" was written and originally recorded by American folk singer-songwriter Tom Paxton in 1965, though Judy Collins first released a recording of it in 1964
www.youtube.com

Speaking of the vice of the Vietnam War ...

Bruce Cockburn - If I Had A Rocket Launcher (1984)
www.youtube.com

Lyrics excerpt ...

genius.com

...
[Verse 1]
Here comes the helicopter
Second time today
Everybody scatters
And hopes it goes away
How many kids they've murdered
Only God can say, hey

[Chorus]
If I had a rocket launcher
If I had a rocket launcher
If I had a rocket launcher
I'd make somebody pay

[Verse 2]
I don't believe in guarded borders
And I don't believe in hate
I don't believe in generals
Or their stinking torture states
And when I talk with the survivors
Of things too sickening to relate

[Chorus]
If I had a rocket launcher
If I had a rocket launcher
If I had a rocket launcher
I would retaliate
See Bruce Cockburn Live
Get tickets as low as $42
You might also like
Family Matters
Drake
Barbie Girl
Aqua
Timeless (Taylor's Version) [From The Vault]
Taylor Swift
[Verse 3]
On the Rio Lacantn
One hundred thousand wait
To fall down from starvation
Or some less humane fate
Cry for Guatemala
With a corpse in every gate

[Chorus]
If I had a rocket launcher
If I had a rocket launcher
If I had a rocket launcher
I would not hesitate

[Verse 4]
I wanna raise every voice
At least I've got to try
Every time I think about it
Water rises to my eyes
Situation desperate
Echoes of the victims cry

[Chorus]
If I had a rocket launcher
If I had a rocket launcher
If I had a rocket launcher
Some son of a bitch would die
...


Black Flag - Slip It In (1987)
www.youtube.com

(there's some censoring [possibly an understatement] of the lyrics in the link, but what might be expected of an "official release?")

The album I have does not have that censoring.

Stan Ridgway " Camouflage (1986)
www.youtube.com

Yeah, the Vietnam war was a vice of the US.

I found this ...

Strait of Hormuz - Live Ship Tracker
hormuz.data-tracking.net

Looks like less than 30 to me. As opposed to the 130 ships per day before Pres Trump's War of Choice.

What does your current alias see?

Donald Trump Once Said He Would Eliminate America's $19 Trillion in Debt. The Total Is Now Approaching $50 Trillion. (July 2026)
finance.yahoo.com

... Trump promised to eliminate $19 trillion in national debt by 2024; instead it has nearly doubled to $39 trillion and is approaching $50 trillion. ...

In April 2016, Donald Trump told The Washington Post he could eliminate the nation's then-more-than-$19 trillion national debt "over a period of eight years."

Most economists called the claim implausible, noting it could require pulling more than $2 trillion a year out of a roughly $4 trillion annual budget.

Trump's argument rested on renegotiated trade deals, particularly with China, generating the growth needed to service the balance. Economists countered that a trade war would instead be crippling to the U.S. economy. ...




__________
#45 | Posted by ClownShack at 2026-08-21 08:07 PM
So you're saying they'll have one any day now?
Any day ...

Where did I say that? Isn't that what IAEA was monitoring against, and the Obama's agreement with Iran was about?

Just like Syria had an undeclared nuclear and chemical WMD program, that has been at least twice destroyed by Israel:
apnews.com - UN watchdog excavates suspected Syrian nuclear site

en.wikipedia.org - Operation Orchard / Outside the Box

en.wikipedia.org - Syria and weapons of mass destruction

|------- "We're talking about a few tons of nuclear material that could be put to bad use and Syria has decided to open up this site to the inspectors of the IAEA," Grossi said. "This material will be accounted for and will be put within the international safeguard system." -------|


#47 | Posted by pumpkinhead at 2026-08-21 08:13 PM
CutiePie is a Zionist operative.

That's a good one, when you have no real arguments - just declare someone Zionist or Nazi or... Stops discussion and declares a "win" right there. Congrats!


#46 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-08-21 08:10 PM
How many ships per day pass through the Strait now? Yer up.

1. If you'd read till the end of my post before jumping to post this, you would've had the answer to that question.

2. What does this question have at all to do with my post re your inane comparison of closing Hormuz being "more potent force" than having nuclear weapon?

If you'd read the post and links I provided, you'd know it simply isn't true. If you can't come to terms with it, that's OK, it will be factually useful to other people here, who can learn from it.

Or you'll just keep changing the goal posts, like some here do repeatedly?

3. If you'd actually read the post, you would see the history of threats of closing Hormuz long precedes current situation... refuting your earlier post that "Trump has taught them" anything.

Are you reading posts and links at all, or just keep repeating the same thing because you [want to] believe it, despite the facts presented? A lot of that is going around here, and even more so recently than before.


I had been wondering how long before this current alias would show up.

What does "show up" mean? I post when I have time and can contribute, not non-stop like some paid Putin's / Russia-financed and CRINK trolls here, who tell you only what you want to hear.

Don't get all hot and bothered just because your "current alias" can't handle being refuted on repeated obvious inanity you posted. I thought you've said before you're here to learn, yet here you are, spinning into ad hominem.

And my "current alias" have had several conversations on the stupid subject of "aliases" with your "current alias" years ago - your "current alias" should try this stupidity with someone else... better yet, tell your "current alias" to discard it.
__________

Can Trump fix the national debt? Republican senators, many investors and even Elon Musk are skeptical (2025)
www.pbs.org

... President Donald Trump faces the challenge of convincing Republican senators, global investors, voters and even Elon Musk that he won't bury the federal government in debt with his multitrillion-dollar tax breaks package.

The response so far from financial markets has been skeptical as Trump seems unable to trim deficits as promised. ...

"All of this rhetoric about cutting trillions of dollars of spending has come to nothing " and the tax bill codifies that," said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. "There is a level of concern about the competence of Congress and this administration and that makes adding a whole bunch of money to the deficit riskier."

The White House has viciously lashed out at anyone who has voiced concern about the debt snowballing under Trump, even though it did exactly that in his first term after his 2017 tax cuts.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt opened her briefing Thursday by saying she wanted "to debunk some false claims" about his tax cuts. ...

Council chair Stephen Miran told reporters that when the growth being forecast by the White House is coupled with expected revenues from tariffs, the expected budget deficits will fall. The tax cuts will increase the supply of money for investment, the supply of workers and the supply of domestically produced goods -- all of which, by Miran's logic, would cause faster growth without creating new inflationary pressures.

"I do want to assure everyone that the deficit is a very significant concern for this administration," Miran said.

White House budget director Russell Vought told reporters the idea that the bill is "in any way harmful to debt and deficits is fundamentally untrue." ...

[emphasis mine]

www.scientificamerican.com

"A new technique for analyzing modern genetic data suggests that prehumans survived in a group of only 1,280 individuals."

Everyone is very closely related. Countries didn't destroy others. These are all family squabbles

Another from the Austin Lounge Lizards ...

Austin Lounge Lizards - Jesus Loves Me (But He Can't Stand You) (1991)
www.youtube.com

Lyrics excerpt ...

madmusic.com

...
I know you smoke, I know you drink that brew,
I just can't abide a sinner like you.
God can't either, that's why I know it's true,
That Jesus loves me but he can't stand you.

I'm going straight to heaven, boys, when I die,
'cause I've crossed every T and I've dotted every I
Why, my preacher tells me I'm god's kind of guy,
That's why Jesus loves me, but you're gonna fry.

God loves all his children, by gum,
That doesn't mean he won't incinerate some,
Can't you feel those hot flames licking you?

I'm raising my kids in a righteous way,
So don't be sending your kids to my house to play,
Yours will grow up stoned, left leaning and gay,
I know - Jesus told me on the phone today.

Jesus loves me, this I know
And he told me where you're gonna go,
There's room for your kind down below
Whoa, whoa, whoa

Jesus loves me, he loves me real good.

I know he does.

He called me up on the phone today and told me how much he loves me.

He said, "Son, I love you."

He speaks English pretty well, considering it's a second language for him.

You can talk to him, too, you know.

I've got a 900- number in Tulsa you can call him at, I do it all the time. He'll be glad to hear from you. I talk to him everyday.

Jesus love me, but he can't stand you.
...




__________
#4 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-08-18 03:14 AM
So, Iran is now saying publicly something that Pres Trump has taught them...

Trump didn't "teach" Iran anything about Straight of Hormuz they didn't already know, if you knew the history of the region, e,g,, so-called "Tanker War" happened as part of wider 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war - en.wikipedia.org

And was known long before that:

www.history.com - The Strait of Hormuz: A Timeline of Tensions | The narrow Persian Gulf waterway has been a contested choke point for centuries.

|------- 1507: Portugal Captures the Strait of Hormuz
1951: The British Blockade the Strait to Pressure Iran
1984: The 'Tanker War'
2012: More Sanctions Prompt Iranian Threats
2015-2024: Tanker Seizures and Attacks
...

Iran's ambitions for nuclear weapons were born during the Iran-Iraq War, when the Iranian regime found itself increasingly isolated on the international stage. In the 2000s, Iran's contested nuclear weapons program became the target of increasingly harsh economic sanctions from the U.S. and its European allies.

In 2008, Iran threatened to seal off the Strait of Hormuz if sanctions weren't lifted, a move that U.S. authorities said would amount to an act of war. When the European Union announced a total embargo on Iranian oil in 2012, the Iranian regime once again promised to close the Strait of Hormuz, a move that would disrupt the flow of oil exports from Persian Gulf nations.

... In 2008, Iran threatened to seal off the Strait of Hormuz if sanctions weren't lifted ... U.S., France and Britain sent aircraft carriers and warships through the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran didn't make good on its threat.

"There have been standoffs like this since the Iranian Revolution when the regime came into power. Iran's slogan from the very beginning was 'death to America' and 'death to Israel'..."
-------|


The Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz may be a more potent force to face the world than Iran possessing a nuclear bomb.

You've been trying to make this apples-to-chairs comparison for a while - only a little over a month ago it was explained that these are disparate issues, with entirely different goals, purposes, permanence / timeline and geopolitical effects on the region - one is only temporary, borne of desperation (the only 'weapon' they currently have) and not sustainable, as the affected countries are already partially bypassing and building out permanent bypass pipelines and routes.

drudge.com - #26: Now Iran may be starting to realize that control of the Strait is a better way to get global attention than having a nuke. -- see the explanation re why it's nonsensical and the links about what Iran's "good neighbors" are doing to remove any dependence on shipping through Hormuz and Bab al Mandab Strait... at which point Iran will be left without any leverage (they don't have "control") over shipping routes and can't ship oil and goods themselves, hurting only their own economy.

IOW, Hormuz is a double-edged sword.

Besides that, there are verified reports of US Navy escorting some tankers through (similar to Operation Earnest Will in 1987-88), near the coast of Oman - depending on source, anywhere from 3M to 8M barrels are flowing out... though both numbers are far less than ~ 20M pre-closure and the insurance on these is much higher, thus still affecting the price of oil futures.
__________

Another view ...

As demand for Meta AI glasses explodes, it's harder to avoid creepy recordings
arstechnica.com

... Ars looks at Zuckoff, the latest free app detecting Meta AI glasses amid privacy backlash. ...

Drudge Retort

Home | Breaking News | Comments | User Blogs | Stats | Back Page | RSS Feed | RSS Spec | DMCA Compliance | Privacy