by

The Trump-Iran War: Who Benefits?

by guest blogger Ian Randal Strock

Last year, President Donald Trump was railing against wind power, urging the UK to shut down their wind power farms in favor “cheap and reliable” oil. His Big Beautiful Bill (which seems much more like a Frankenbill) cancelled tax breaks for solar and wind power in the US.

Three weeks ago, he launched a hot war against Iran.

The United States, which is nearly self-sufficient in terms of oil, is not threatened by that bottleneck. Prices, however, skyrocketed. And last week, Trump reminded the world “when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.”

In response—a response any first-year political science student could have predicted—Iran threatened the safety of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, sending the cost of oil skyrocketing and imperiling the global flow of oil. And now Trump is calling for other countries to pledge military support to secure the Strait, in effect, demanding they clean up after his mistake.

Who benefits?

The “we” in that Trump quote is not the average American; it’s the oil companies in the US. And quite possibly Trump himself and his close advisors. The US oil companies, for whom the cost of producing and distributing oil and gasoline have not changed, now get to sell their product for more money.

Global instability also leads to lower values for national currencies, increasing interest in those media which are not tied to any nation, such as cryptocurrencies. In October 2025, Bitcoin peaked at a value around $126,000 per coin. It then plummeted to about $62,000 in February. Since Trump launched this war, it is back up to $74,000, a 20% increase. Ethereum—one of the cryptocurrencies in the president’s personal portfolio—has followed a similar trajectory.

Saudi Arabia is almost the undisputed power in the Gulf region. Indeed, the only country that can threaten them is Iran, which is lead by people who are unpredictable and dangerous. Reports March 16 say that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Salman, is speaking regularly with Trump, urging him to continue attacking Iran harshly.

Meanwhile, since the onset of this war, you haven’t thought about the Trump-Epstein Files, have you?

Presidential historian Ian Randal Strock is a publisher and writer whose home on the web is at IanRandalStrock.com. He is the recipient of two AnLab Awards, the American Mensa National Service Award, and the 2025 Skylark Award.

by

The Big Dumb War Cycle

Jen Sorensen

by

Trump has never had a majority

I get depressed about how many Americans voted for Trump, but at least it’s never been a majority.

He lost the popular vote in the first election, never even reached a 50% approval the entire time he was in office, lost the second election by a larger amount, only won 49% of the vote the next time, and has an even lower approval rating this time.

Still, it’s astounding that people voted for him a second and third time at all. We should all be ashamed as a country about that.

His popularity is currently at the lowest of any President since they began doing these polls. He beat the record of the previous President with the lowest popularity, which was (checks notes) Donald Trump in his first term.

Rob Rogers
by

Noble Intentions

Garry Trudeau

by

Suddenly, being a pedo is just fine with conservatives

The whole fake QAnon thing was about how there was a cabal of liberals abusing children. They made up stories about secret basements in pizza parlors that don’t have basements and tied every liberal they could think of into it. Look at how terrible this is! Won’t somebody think of the children!

Turns out they were right about the abuse of children, but wrong about who was doing it.

Now they don’t care because, as we have seen time and time again, the current conservative in America stands for nothing.

cartoon by Chris Britt

by

The Good, the bad and the ugly

Adam Zyglis

by

The Republican party these days is all about violence

Basically, the current Republican party believes in violence when it’s against people they don’t think are important. Immigrants, foreigners, people who don’t do what they tell them to do — it’s all okay. They celebrate murderers like Kyle Rittenhouse because he murdered people they don’t like. They support violence against police when the police are blocking them from entering Congress while screaming that they want to hang the Vice President. They want to take other countries by violence, like it was the middle ages.

It’s a childish, caveman-like response to things they don’t like, and this President is their caveman leader, urging them on.

by

Not bloody likely

Clay Bennett
by

Best and worst animated films of 2025

Time for my year-end countdown of the best and worst animated films of the year (based on Rotten Tomato scores, so take from that what you will).

In the 80s, I started a magazine called “Animato!” that later grew quite large and popular. I got to meet and interview great animators like Chuck Jones and Ralph Bakshi but later sold the magazine, and it went on to even bigger successes until the internet killed all magazines. So you can see my interest here.

This list only includes films that got at least 10 reviews, and ties are broken by the number of reviews. I did not include films that are motion-capture (that’s not animation!) or films that had a lot of CGI unless the CGI was for a major character in the film.

There are a lot more foreign films on the list this year — I don’t think that’s because there are more being made, but more are being shown in America thanks to streaming and as such, more are getting reviews than ever before. I also wonder though if this is very accurate, as some of the foreign films that did extremely well here did not get a ton of reviews. Maybe the only people reviewing them are people who love anime (for instance) and are already biased in favor? Then again, maybe not. I haven’t seen many of them so I can’t really say. (What are your thoughts? Comment below!)

Anyway, here we go:

  1. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle (98%)
  2. Lesbian Space Princess (98%)
  3. Little Amélie or the Character of Rain (98%)
  4. Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc (96%)
  5. K Pop Demon Hunters (95%)
  6. Predator: Killer of Killers (95%)
  7. Ne Zha 2 (92%)
  8. Zootopia 2 (91%)
  9. Arco (91%)
  10. Endless Cookie (90%)
  11. Lost in Starlight (89%)
  12. The Bad Guys 2 (87%)
  13. Dog of God (87%)
  14. In Your Dreams (86%)
  15. SpongeBob: The Search for SquarePants (85%)
  16. The Light of the World (85%)
  17. Elio (83%)
  18. Dog Man (82%)
  19. Death Does Not Exist (79%)
  20. Scarlet (74%)
  21. A Magnificent Life (72%)
  22. Plankton: The Movie (71%)
  23. Stitch Head (71%)
  24. David (68%)
  25. The King of Kings (61%)
  26. The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep (58%)
  27. Fixed (56%)
  28. The Twits (50%)
  29. A Minecraft Movie (48%)
  30. Sneaks (29%)
  31. Smurfs (20%)

Yeah, I know Zootopia isn’t at the top of this list, but it is the most obvious one people have heard of so I put it at the top. Here’s a poster of the #1 film. Doesn’t look like anything I’d be interested in.

by

Presents from your Uncle Sam

Nick Anderson