☕️ LOVELORN FROGMEN ☙ Tuesday, April 28, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Why Iran is lovelorn for a buyer; why the National Science Board is lovelorn for a chair; and why the Loveland Frogman was lovelorn for a tail. And more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! Your roundup includes: why Iran is filling its bathtubs with crude; how Trump just fired the 25-member committee that gatekeeps nearly all American science spending; and Ohio’s bipartisan plan to legally adopt a magical bipedal frog.

🚀⛑️ C&C ARMY BRIEFING — IRAN WAR UPDATE ⛑️ 🚀

Defying all expert predictions, the President’s Iran War plan appears to be working, and the Second Great Depression has not landed. Plus, yesterday’s breaking war news exposed most of last week’s trad-media war reporting as outright lies. The Wall Street Journal reported, “Iran Is Flooded With So Much Unsold Oil That It’s Stashing It in Derelict Tanks.” The sub-headline added, “Tehran is trying to buy time as the war turns into a race to see whether its oil fields or global consumers can take more pain.” They’re playing chicken. BUCK-BUCK-BACAAAW!

You might think that having too much oil is one of those good problems that no one sympathizes with, like having so much bitcoin the taxes are eating me alive, or the quarterback who complains to the nerds in the IT class that he can’t decide which cheerleader to take to prom. But it turns out that, under certain rare and exotic circumstances, having too much oil is more like having too many black mambas slither out of your Manhattan apartment toilet.

Whoever is in charge right now in Iran —probably some anonymous, morally flexible, Arabian business gentlemen who are totally off the grid and who enjoy multiple Swiss bank accounts and a private army— finds themselves tightly pickled in one of those rare and exotic “black mamba” situations. Iran is burning up its own oil in desperation.

🚀 Why? For one reason and two reasons. The one reason is President Trump. More broadly, the two reasons are, first, Iran is running out of places to stash the pumped oil, but it cannot stop pumping. Second, President Trump’s Uno-reverse-card blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has stuffed a cork in Iran’s lower drainage aperture and it can’t ship the oil anywhere else.

It’s that simple.

It gets worse. You see, Iran pumps a lot of oil. A lot. It has to, to meet expenses. Supersized private armies and secret nuclear programs are among the most costly of the modern world’s luxuries. And recently, due to various ‘sanctions’ that the ‘International Community’ strongly worded and then promptly forgot to enforce, Iran has been pumping it out of the ground at record rates. They’ve been pumping it, and pumping it, and pumping it. (Note to self: That would make a good refrain for a pop rock song, Pump It Good!)

At this point, you, being a logical person, are probably wondering: Well, why can’t they just switch off the pumps for a while?

This is because you, like me, do not understand how an aging Middle Eastern oil well works. An oil well is not like a garden hose. If you turn off a garden hose, the water stops, and the only negative consequence is that your azaleas die, which they were going to do anyway because you bought them at a home improvement store where they were primarily watered with leftover Diet Mountain Dew.

But if you turn off an Iranian oil well, the entire apparatus seizes up. The subterranean pressure collapses, the machinery breaks down, and the well can never be restarted. (Note to self: Wait! “Subterranean Pressure” would be an even better song name. Someone call Spotify.)

Hence, they cannot stop pumping. The oil must flow. It is like that hilarious scene in I Love Lucy where the chocolates keep coming down the conveyor belt, except instead of chocolates, it is millions of barrels of highly combustible unrefined crude, and instead of Lucy and Ethel, it is a group of panicked clerics frantically searching around for empty containers.

They are filling up derelict oil tankers. They are filling up spare barrels. They are probably filling up Tupperware containers, empty swimming pools, and those little plastic cups you get at the dentist. Any day now, the Supreme Leader is going to wake up, go to the kitchen to get some milk for his Cap’n Crunch, and find that his refrigerator is completely full of light sweet crude.

It is the geopolitical equivalent of a defective soft-serve ice cream machine you ordered from Temu that won’t stop dispensing vanilla. You start out holding a cone, then you grab a bowl, then a bucket, and eventually you are just standing there in your pajamas, screaming at your spouse to bring the kiddie pool into the kitchen.

This awkward conundrum is Iran’s own fault. After President Trump asked Iran to give up its enriched uranium, Iran said, “No, we need it for personal purposes,” yelled something incoherent about Great Satans, and told the Orange Man to stuff it. They deployed six motorboats with black-masked men holding machine guns to shut down the Strait.

Trump shrugged and said, “no, you’re not shutting down the Strait. I am.” Iran’s mullahs had forgotten one very important fact— they need the Strait, too, to get rid of all the pumping oil. But Trump played his Uno reverse card and the clock started ticking on Iran’s ability to find spare gas cans and pickle barrels to hold the black stuff. Iran reached for the cork; Trump used it on them.

And thus began one of the most mendacious media campaigns in history. Iran can be forgiven for lying; it’s in a war. War involves propaganda. But the media isn’t supposed to report our enemies’ propaganda as straight news.

🚀 While President Trump and CENTCOM were calling the US blockade a “tremendous success,” corporate media sneered until its reporters’ faces required extra Botox, and reported official Iranian State announcements as news facts. For example, consider this Financial Times headline from just three days ago:

“At least 34 tankers with links to Iran have passed through the US blockade to exit the Gulf,” the Times gushed, whereas “US forces have so far detained one container ship in the Gulf of Oman and boarded a sanctioned tanker in the Indo-Pacific.” In other words: Trump’s blockade is a joke. But one week ago, before the FT article, the trade press was reporting the opposite. From Kpler (a commodities industry financial rag), dated April 23rd:

So, if the Financial Times’s story was true, it seems super weird that the Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Iran is running out of pots and pans to hold its “black gold.”

According to the Journal, Iran is down to maybe days before things start getting really slippery. Sad! The WSJ’s “race” is a game of chicken. Iran, which cannot win on the battlefield, is trying to win a political pressure war, to force Trump to unblockade its oil so that futures prices fall. Meanwhile, Trump is waiting for the Iranian oil fields to collapse.

So far, Iran —erroneously believing Democrats’ TACO nonsense— has bet that Trump wouldn’t actually let the oil fields collapse, because then its global output will begin being permanently reduced. JPMorgan estimated Iran is already down roughly 750,000 barrels per day from pre‑war levels, even before full shut‑ins, and that a prolonged shut‑in cycle could lock in a permanent loss of several hundred thousand barrels per day relative to pre‑war capacity.

In other words, Iran is betting that the President will back down and chicken out, well before its oil fields begin imploding, since, as time marches on, the damage will permanently reduce its ability to contribute to global oil supplies. That increasingly seems like a bad bet. Trump is showing no sign of relenting.

Think about what this reveals about the bigger plan. The structure of Trump’s blockade strikes the heart of the one thing — the aging oil fields— that really supports Iran’s nuclear ambitions, its gigantic private army, and its terror proxy budgets. By driving export flows down roughly 70% and pushing Iran’s mature reservoirs toward forced shut‑ins, Trump’s policy is not just squeezing this year’s cash flow; it’s sailing straight toward permanently shrinking the entire resource base that funds Iran’s private armies and secretive underground programs.

If that happens, Iran will disappear from the global-problems stage for a generation. What first looked like a reckless blockade is starting to look like Iran’s structural retirement. Tick, tock.

🌍🇺🇸 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🇺🇸🌍

💉💉💉

Oh, frabjous day! The vorpal sword of DOGE’s ghost just went snicker-snack again. Saturday, the New York Times reported, “Trump Fires Board Members of Group That Oversees U.S. Science Funding.” Not just some members. He fired all 25 members of the National Science Foundation’s board, which ‘oversees’ 90% of all federally funded science projects like measuring the male-female diversity in Panamanian hummingbirds and improving gender reassignment outcomes for gerbils.

For 76 years, the country’s scientific direction has been overseen by the National Science Board, a super-diverse group of 25 highly distinguished people whose primary job, as far as I can tell, was to sit around a massive mahogany table and say things like, “Yes, absolutely, we should give a million dollars to study dance-making in physics. Let’s do the Macarena of Thermodynamics.”

Until Friday. Friday was another historic day in Washington, and a historic day for truth, accountability, and real science. On Friday, the Trump administration, acting with the swift, terrifying efficiency of a man who has just discovered a wasp in his underpants, fired the whole “independent” National Science Board. All 25 gone. Terminated via a curt email that said only, “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately.”

Naturally, the Times reacted to this the way the media always reacts to anything Donald Trump does, which is to say, by immediately declaring the end of the world. The Grey Lady’s headline could just as well have said, “Trump Fires Science; Gravity Suspended Pending Further Notice.”

The board’s next scheduled meeting was a week from now —May 5th— but unfortunately, right now there are no members to attend. It’s going to be a very short meeting.

Representative Zoe Lofgren of California called it “the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation.” And she has a point. How will America innovate without federally funded women’s grievance circles, seal-microaggression studies, and new pronouns for hamsters?

Before DOGE showed up, the NSF was dishing out grants —mostly to progressive ‘scientists’— for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion faster than a hyperactive toddler hands out Halloween candy.

They funded studies on the extinction of pollinators in Hawaii. They funded studies on aquatic insects. They funded a project to develop a web extension that would flag “misinformation” online, which as you know, is government-coded vibe-speak for “opinions we don’t like.” They funded —and I am not making this up— a project to study “decolonizing space.”

Space! Where no one can hear a trans climate scientist scream.

🔥 The main problem is that, nowadays, when you put 25 unelected activist academics in a conference room with a $9 billion spending valve, for some reason, they don’t say, “Let’s cure cancer and invent a flying car.” No, they say, “Let’s study the intersectional trauma of rural Arctic students engaging with polar science.”

DOGE tried to defund the NSF. Congress gave the NSF its budget back. So Trump pulled his classic Apprentice maneuver. Just... boom. You’re fired. It’s a move that has left the scientific community reeling, mostly because they now have to figure out how to pay for their hummingbird diversity studies without using our wallets.

The ousted board members were, predictably, as ever, outraged. Keivan Stassun, an astrophysicist at Vanderbilt University and former board member, complained that the White House is defying the board’s authority. He noted that the Office of Management and Budget recently had the unmitigated audacity to direct the NSF to build a new Antarctic research icebreaker without asking the board’s permission.

Think about that. The Trump administration wants to build an actual ship. A ship made of steel, to do actual research in actual Antarctica, and the academics are mad because nobody asked them to form a study committee to discuss the icebreaker’s commitment to equity and inclusion.

“We would ask them, ‘Are you following board governance directives?’” Stassun said of his conversations with NSF officials. “And their answer would be, in effect, ‘We don’t listen to you anymore.’”

I don’t know about you, but “We don’t listen to you anymore” might be the most beautiful sentence ever uttered to a woke bureaucrat.

🔥🔥🔥

Every once in a while, a story emerges from the local media that tops anything in the corporate media news cycle. Yesterday, a massively underreported Ohio story broke into the UPI, headlined, “Bill introduced to name ‘Loveland Frogman’ as Ohio’s official cryptid.”

As you know, every state has official symbols. These are selected by state legislatures, which consist of people who spend their days trying to figure out how to spend our money, and when they get tired of that, they pass laws declaring that the official state dirt is now “loam.”

Ohio is no exception. Ohio already has a state bird (the cardinal), a state tree (the buckeye), and a state amphibian (the spotted salamander). But apparently, the spotted salamander is not getting the job done. The spotted salamander is slacking.

Which is why two forward-thinking Ohio lawmakers, State Representatives Tristan Rader and Jean Schmidt, have introduced House Bill 821. This is a truly bipartisan piece of legislation, meaning that both Republicans and Democrats have joined hands across the aisle to agree on one fundamental truth: Ohio needs an official state cryptid.

And not just any old cryptid. They want the Loveland Frogman.

🔥 Now, you may be fairly asking: What is a cryptid? A cryptid is a well-known creature whose existence is entirely unproven by ‘science,’ like Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, the goat-sucking chupacabra, or a balanced federal budget. And what, you would be forgiven for asking, is the Loveland Frogman?

According to local lore, the Loveland Frogman is a four-foot-tall, bipedal frog that wanders around the Little Miami River near Loveland, Ohio. It was first spotted back in 1955 by an alert local businessman —who may or may not have just returned from an Ayahuasca retreat— who claimed he saw three frog-like figures standing on their hind legs by the side of the road. One version of the story says one of the frogs was holding a wand that fired a spray of sparks. I am not making this up. If you are going to hallucinate a giant frog, you might as well give it a magic wand.

But the legend really launched with force in 1972, when a Loveland police officer named Ray Shockey was driving near a boot factory at 1:00 a.m. and saw an animal scurry across the road. He described it as a 50-pound creature with leathery skin that was “crouched like a frog” before it stood up, climbed over the guardrail, and headed for the river.

Two weeks later, a second officer on night patrol, Mark Matthews, saw something similar crouching in Loveland’s gloomy darkness. Being a trained law enforcement professional, Officer Matthews calmly handled the situation like any skilled professional would: by shooting it. He then stashed the body in his trunk and showed it to Officer Shockey.

And here is the best part of the story, the part that truly qualifies the Loveland Frogman to be an official state symbol: It wasn’t a proper frogman. It was just a very large iguana that had lost its tail. Officer Matthews confirmed this in 2016, noting that it was probably somebody’s pet that got too big and was released into the wild.

Now, the State of Ohio is poised on the riverside of officially recognizing a legendary four-foot-tall, wand-equipped, magical bipedal frog that, by all actual evidence, was just a very unlucky, oversized tailless iguana.

This is perfect. This is exactly the kind of critical bipartisan issue our government should be focusing on. “This bill is about showcasing our communities,” Representative Rader said in a press release. “The Loveland Frog is uniquely Ohio.”

He is absolutely right. What could be more uniquely Ohioan than taking a misunderstood reptile, shooting it, stuffing it, and then turning it into a beloved local mascot? The city of Loveland has fully embraced the Frogman. They have a Frogman Festival. They have T-shirts and frogman puppets. In 2023, the city even debuted a life-sized Frogman mascot dressed as a “frog prince.”

I fully support House Bill 821. I think every state should have an official cryptid. Florida’s should be the Skunk Ape. New Jersey’s could be a guy named “Tony” who claims he can get you a deal on some surround-sound speakers that “fell off a truck.” California’s would be a learning center with live students in it.

In the meantime, we should all applaud Ohio for taking its bold stand on the cryptid issue. If you happen to be driving near the Little Miami River late at night, keep your eyes peeled. And if you see a four-foot frog waving a spark-shooting wand, for Heaven’s sake, don’t shoot it. It’s probably just a short Ohioan supporting the newest state mascot.

Have a terrific Tuesday! Get back here tomorrow morning, for more delicious and entertaining essential news and insightful, if at times weird, commentary.

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