id before with a $9.4 billion package he sent to lawmakers, what you could do is have it sit there. The memo could land on Capitol Hill less than 45 days before the new fiscal year is set to begin on October 1st. And then by withholding the cash, see if he can follow all this, by withholding the cash for that full time frame, regardless of the action by Congress, the White House would treat the funding as expired when the current fiscal year ends.

So something about a formal request to claw back funding, but you don't really mean it. You just want the request to sit there and time out and then somehow it times out and then you don't have to spend it. Does that even sound like a real process to you? I may be getting some part of that wrong, but it's so frustrating that our government doesn't have a process that the voters even understand. It's like, why don't you do your budget like everybody else does where you say, "This is how much I want to spend. Does everybody agree?" And then you vote on it. No. No. We've got to have rescission packages and spending packages. We've got to have pocket rescissions. Yeah. So we'll see if that works.

Anyway, I saw one report today on X that there's a senior Iranian official who told Reuters that Iran is ready to discuss limitations on its uranium enrichment. To which I say, one guy? There's one guy who said that? What good is that? If it wasn't the Supreme Leader, do we trust this one guy who allegedly told Reuters, "Oh yeah, we're totally open to discussing our uranium enrichment"?

Well, at the same time, also on ZeroHedge I think was reporting this, another senior Iranian official who is different from the last one said zero enrichment will undoubtedly be rejected, especially now because of the Israeli strikes. So you've got one Iranian official who says, "Oh yeah, we'll totally discuss that," and another one who says, "Oh no, we're not even going to be open to that." But it could be that one of them is talking about zero enrichment and the other one is talking about limitations on enrichment. So you don't really need to get to zero, do you? Could you make a deal where it's just low enrichment levels are allowed as long as there's lots of inspections? So maybe there's some room to deal with that.

According to NBC, Iran has unleashed what they call combat drones inside Israel for the first time. Now combat drone, what would be a combat drone versus a drone? I don't know exactly, but I think a drone would be like a smart rocket but not very fast and it would plunge into something and explode. Whereas I'm guessing these combat drones are more like an unmanned jet that has a number of weapons and it can go in and fire a bunch of things and then return home and get some more ordnance. I like saying ordnance. Makes me sound like I know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, the Revolutionary Guard has announced that its drones have penetrated Israeli airspace and they're hitting infrastructure using missiles and airdrop bombs. So that's what it sounds like, a pilotless aircraft.

Meanwhile on X and other places I keep seeing these estimates of how many missiles Iran had and how many they've used and how many got shot down. And for about five minutes I said to myself, "Huh, here's some useful data." I told myself if I know how many missiles Iran has and I know how many they fired and how many they have left and what percentage of them are getting through, I have a good idea what's going to happen. And my current opinion is it doesn't matter.

But here's what matters. Iran is never going to surrender unless there are boots on the ground, meaning Israeli and American soldiers on the ground. And that's not going to happen. I'm pretty sure. I mean it seems deeply unlikely that Trump would agree to soldiers getting killed on the ground in Iran. And of course Iran is a much bigger, harder land target than Iraq was by a lot. So we don't think it would work. And if you don't put people on the ground, are we really going to change the leadership in Iran? And if we don't change the leadership, is anything going to be different once the bombs stop dropping?

So it seems to me like we're on a path to destroying as much of Iran as you can from the air, at least the government and military stuff, but then when it's all done we won't have anybody on the ground. I'm positive that there will not be a legitimate organic rising up of the population of Iran to take over with a moderate. I feel like that's a zero chance. I just don't see a world in which your nation is being targeted and bombed all day long and you say to yourself, you know what, I think I'll take the side of the people bombing my country. Even if you like the West and even if you didn't like your Ayatollah, you're still not going to rise up against your own country and take the side of the country that's bombing you. Has that ever happened in the history of anything? I don't think so.

So if we're not going to have soldiers on the ground, which I don't think we will, and there won't be any kind of organic national uprising, that means that either the Supreme Leader will still be in power when this is over or maybe somebody worse who's just down the line. If the Supreme Leader gets taken out, he's not going to be replaced by a moderate. Probably replaced by somebody who's the hardest hard-ass they have. So what exactly would be the way that we could have any kind of victory here? It looks to me like there's only one way this all works out. If we're not going to put boots on the ground, Iran will still be Iran when we're done. And then they will start rebuilding their offensive weapons presumably because they think it's their best chance of survival. So I just don't see a path. Do any of you see how this could possibly be settled in a way that we would all be happy? And when I say all, I mean everybody except Iran. I feel like everybody's going to be unhappy, including Iran. So that's what it looks like.

But Starlink is still live in Iran. Everything's about Elon Musk. So Iran has turned off its regular internet service, but the people who have Starlink, I don't know how many there are, but they do have full internet thanks to Elon Musk's Starlink company. Now that's something that apparently Iran can't turn off because they don't have any control over the satellites in the air. So that would suggest that at least Israel and the US could feed a bunch of propaganda into their population, but there won't be that many people who have a Starlink, right? And I imagine that if you did have a Starlink and the Iranian authorities found out, wouldn't they arrest you or take your Starlink base platform away? So I don't think Starlink will have a gigantic impact on the population of Iran because there can't be that many people with access to it. And even if they did, as I said before, you're not going to convince the population to rise up against their own leader while you're bombing them. It just isn't a thing. It just couldn't possibly happen in our world.

Anyway, over on MSNBC there was some talking head who was arguing that when the Iranians chant "death to America," that they don't really mean it. And his example was that he was at some event where they were chanting "death to America" and then he introduced himself to some of the locals and the locals said, "Oh, we love America. We like your movies and your culture and all that." And so he concluded that "death to America" doesn't really mean death to America. It's just a thing they say.

To which I say, it doesn't really matter what the public wanted. It only matters what the leadership means when they say "death to America," right? It doesn't matter how many people repeat it. They don't have any power. So what matters is do the top people in Iran, the top military, the top Supreme Leader, when they say "death to America," do they mean death to America or is it just something they say while they're loving Western culture? Well no. The Supreme Leader is not loving Western culture. So anything that the population says about how much they love America, which I do believe, all indications are that the Iranians are at least pro-Western culture if not pro-America, I don't think it matters. I think it only matters what the leaders think. And if they want to destroy America and Israel, well they'll keep doing it.

The Pentagon, according to Jennifer Griffin of Fox News, the Pentagon is very confident that the bunker buster missiles would work if employed. And apparently they're GPS guided. And if one doesn't get the job done, they can drop a second one in the same hole as the first one and it'll make the hole deeper and that'll get the job done.

Now let me ask you this. When was the last time you saw a very complicated system that had never been tested work on the first try? Well, maybe the nuclear bombs that we dropped on Japan. But you could argue that we tested those before we dropped them, right? Not the ones we dropped, but did the Manhattan Project test the explosions with other bombs before they went after Japan? I should know that. It was tested, right? I feel like we would have tested it, but how in the world have we tested dropping two bombs in the same hole? Does that sound like something we could be sure is going to work?

It would be one thing if we said it'll probably work so it's worth a try. But they're not really saying probably, are they? The Pentagon is basically saying, "Oh, this will work." Do you believe that? So I would say that the chance that it doesn't work or it doesn't work completely or it doesn't work enough or something goes wrong, they're pretty high. Pretty high because in the real world when you haven't tested something that's complicated and it's kind of complicated to fly a bomber all across the ocean and refuel it multiple times, drop one bomb and then drop a second one in the same hole while the Iranians are watching. And I guess they would have no defense against any of that. Well let me just say that I don't think it's guaranteed. I don't know what the odds are, but I would put the odds at maybe 70% that it would work. What would you do? Tell me in the comments if you had to guess without knowing anything. You know none of us really know anything about this topic. But knowing that it's complicated and there's technology involved and there's war and when war is involved nothing goes exactly the way you planned, what would you guess are the odds it would work?

I say 70%. 25%? Well you're just joking on the 25. 99%. Yeah, we don't know, do we? It's an unknowable estimate. I don't think the Pentagon knows. But they use words like this, that it would definitely work if it were deployed correctly. Do you see what they're doing? If deployed correctly. That's the problem. I'm actually confident that they know how to make a bomb that makes a big hole. That part I believe. I believe the bomb will explode. So I don't really have a lot of doubt about that. There's some uncertainty but very low. The uncertainty is whether we implement it correctly. So they've got that little catch in there. Oh yeah, this is 100% gonna work if deployed correctly. Wouldn't that be everything? Everything works if deployed correctly. It's sort of like saying nothing.

Anyway, according to the Wall Street Journal, Israel is spending hundreds of millions of dollars a day supporting this war, which would explain why they wanted it to end in two weeks. But do you remember one of my predictions that it would not end in two weeks? Now Trump has said he needs two weeks from now to make a decision because the Europeans are meeting to allegedly talk about what can be done with Iran. So it doesn't look like Iran wants to talk to the United States or to Israel directly, but they might talk to the Europeans because the Europeans have not been as bellicose as the US and Israel.

So let's say they talk to the Europeans and that takes two weeks before Trump decides whether he wants to get militarily aggressive on the side of offense. And so we're already at three weeks, right? So minimum would be three weeks. And remember, two weeks is just to make a decision. If he makes a decision, how much longer will it take for the additional military force to make a difference? So how do you like my prediction now where Israel said we'll be done in two weeks? And I said I think probably months. I think we're up to at least a month already no matter what. And I don't think we're done extending that. I've got a feeling it's going to be multiple months. And whatever Israel thought they were going to spend, they're going to spend a lot more. So it's going to be billions. And Israel might bankrupt themselves on this war.

So I guess the interceptor missiles are a major expense according to the Wall Street Journal. So the interceptor missiles cost up to $200 million a day and then the building repairs because Iran is knocking down buildings in Israel are estimated at 400 million. So that's the kind of expense that Israel is looking at to keep doing what they're doing. And keep in mind that they could do this forever and they still wouldn't get the result that they need without boots on the ground and there won't be boots on the ground. So they're not only spending hundreds of millions of dollars a day, but it's in an effort that even on paper it's hard to imagine how it would work. Because even if the leadership collapses, there's just going to be some new mullah. It doesn't mean it's going to be better and we're not going to be on the ground. So I think Iran wins just by not losing. If Iran just has to exist in two months and it's going to look like they won in a weird way. I mean they'll be in terrible shape, but they would be able to rebuild and the fighting would be over and then presumably they would rebuild some offensive capabilities.

Anyway, so Trump is still acting like negotiations are still possible. But it's up to the Europeans at this point. However, some people are saying that Trump isn't so much expecting the negotiations to work. He is really just buying time for the US to move more assets into the theater as they say. Does that sound right? It might be both. So Trump might be thinking, well you know there's some possibility the negotiations will work so might as well give it a few weeks. At the same time he might be thinking, well you know if I had another week or two we could get a few more naval ships in the area or some more ammunition or something. So probably waiting makes sense. But also it could be that Israel is planning a ground attack on Fordow, which is the place that we're looking at as far as bunker busters. So maybe if you wait two weeks we will know if Israel can get in the front door of these underground bunkers if they have boots on the ground, limited. It'd be like special forces and just to do that one job and then presumably go home as soon as they're done.

So we've got at least two or three things that might be happening in two weeks. More assets getting into the war zone for the US, Israel potentially making their own ground attack on Fordow, and maybe negotiations that might lead to something. So that's probably all happening.

The New York Post has a story about how all the once devoted Iranian proxies, as they call them, are all out of the fight. So are you surprised that Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis and the Shiite militia are sort of sitting this one out? It does suggest that Israel did a heck of a good job in suppressing them and I guess the US did a good job with the Houthis. And maybe they just don't have the assets. Maybe they just don't have the possibility of helping much, so they're just going to try to sit it out and survive.

But I would say the same thing about the proxies that I'm saying about Iran. For them to win, they only have to survive. Because even though Hezbollah is acting like they don't want to attack Israel, they can change their mind once they built up more resources. But it does look like Iran is going to be sucking for money and I don't think they're going to have much money for their proxies. So making Iran run out of money might be the only way you can keep them weak enough to not be a risk.

Now if anybody is new to my podcast, I remind you that what I'm talking about is predictions and observations. So I'm not taking sides and I'm not making moral or ethical judgments and I certainly don't know the military ins and outs, but just looking at it as an observer trying to figure out, all right, what's going on here? What do we expect?

All right, another topic over on Politico. There are unnamed Democrat people who were criticizing their own team and they're calling the DNC chairman Ken Martin weak, whiny, and invisible. That does sound exactly like what we're saying. That Ken Martin guy, he does seem weak, whiny, and invisible. And he's had quite a bit of drama.

But here's another quote from the same article. Many DNC members and outside Democrats, including Martin supporters, said they wish the party would just move on from recent internal turmoil and focus instead on mounting an effective fight against Trump. An effective fight against Trump? You mean fighting the 80% of the country who agrees with them? How much of a loser strategy could you possibly have? I mean just think about that. The Democrats are just decomposing and falling apart and they've got all kinds of turmoil. They don't have a leader. They've got all these problems. And then when you ask the brightest, most informed, most involved Democrats, what do we need to do? The answer is they need to mount a more effective fight against Trump. Trump got elected because people wanted more of his stuff. So when they say they want to fight Trump and they don't say we want to help the country or help the working class or any of that, they're sort of admitting that they've got nothing. Fighting Trump is not exactly what anybody needs. Even if you thought he was wrong, you would still say, "Well, you know, we'd rather do this plan instead of that plan." It's unbelievable that they can't get off the fighting Trump thing. That's pure TDS.

So it seems that TDS doesn't just infect individuals. It seems it's infected the entire Democrat party because as a party the way they talk is they've got to defeat Trump. That's just TDS. That's not even politics.

But even Randi Weingarten who was a member of the DNC, she was on some board, she recently quit. And when asked why, she said she wants the Democratic Party to work for working families. And she said that's what FDR did. T