You would think by now, whenever former President Barack Obama speaks into a microphone, few people would bother to listen. 

16 years ago, the mantra promised by the 44th president was if you liked your doctor, you could keep your doctor. If you liked your plan, you could keep your plan. Nevertheless, we spent trillions on a new healthcare system in America to deliver on his twin campaign promises of expanded access and affordability. 

On October 8, over a decade-and-a-half later, Obama released a video endorsement of Troy Jackson for Senate in Maine. Jackson's single message is simple. No, you can't keep your doctor or your plan. You're going onto government-run healthcare if he and other DSA-backed Democrat candidates nationwide get elected. 

And last Saturday in Detroit, standing next to Abdul El-Sayed, the most radical candidate for a Constitutional office in the country's history, Obama asked this rhetorical question. 

And here I thought access to healthcare was solved by Obamacare in 2010. And anyone looking at the cost projections for Open Enrollment season beginning next week knows Obama failed on the affordability promise, too. That's why it's laughable that Democrats are using the same pitch, but without the option that you don't have to participate if you're not a huge fan of socialized medicine. 

It's not a serious argument, but one that resonates with people who were not old enough, do not remember, or were not in the country when the Democrats made this their primary objective the last time. (I would have thought Obama spending 300 percent over budget to build his presidential library in Chicago, J.K. Rowling's mythical Azkaban prison without the scenic ocean views, would be disqualifying enough when the subject of affordability arises.) 

But it was this whopper at his other weekend rally in Ohio for old and tired Sherrod Brown that had me shaking my head. 

Obama's infamous pallets of cash were flown into Tehran in early 2016 after the JCPOA went into effect a month prior. If you allow the rest of the year for the IRGC to spend the money, this is what Iran's stats showed. 

In 2016, their GDP was $479 billion. They saw strong growth from the previous year in the 7-8 percent range. 11-14 percent of their economy went straight to the IRGC, Basij, and Artesh forces, with the IRGC getting the lion's share. How did they spend the money? Missiles, launchers, and forward-staging personnel and weaponry to train up proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Syria. 

In 2016, their military forces were paid, and they were estimated to number between 500,000 and 650,000. Today, that force is a little smaller, with virtually all of their military aircraft and naval assets destroyed. The number of forces today, unlike 2016, now includes conscripts to replace those killed or deserted, among them boys as young as 12-year-old to supplement at checkpoints. And very few of them are getting paid. Those that do get a paycheck are getting eaten alive by inflation. 

On March 1, Iran was capable enough in the ballistic missile department, an area specifically not covered by Obama's JCPOA but nonetheless awash with American-provided cash, to send approximately 500 missiles in the general direction of Israel. Since then, their peak in a day was 30 in early June. After that, they got 20 off in a day a couple times. This last week, they launched one at a ship transiting the Strait of Hormuz. It missed...from less than 20 miles away at a big boat doing a little less than 13 knots, or 15 mph. A missile from a mobile launcher that close is like shooting ducks in a barrel. If it malfunctioned, that should tell you about the rest of Iran's capabilities. If it was intercepted, that should tell you something about America's capabilities. What we do know for certain is within minutes of launch, the launcher, and those IRGC personnel who made it happen, disintegrated. 

In 2016, $60 billion was coming into Iran from oil exports alone. Today? That number has been reduced to, *checks notes*, zero. 

In 2016, when President Obama proudly proclaimed a peace in our time document which he bribed the regime to sign, they were not worried about how they would survive the rest of Obama's term. Today? The head of their central bank has good news. He thinks they have enough cash reserves to survive the blockade through the rest of Donald Trump's term in two years. 

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But as with everything said publicly by someone in the regime, is it true? Miad Maleki of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies looks at the claim, and the math is not mathing. 

Iran's central bank governor says reserves will last through Trump's term. But do the math. The Central Bank itself estimates $20 billion of import foreign exchange for the next 6 months. President Trump has 27 months left. That is roughly $90 billion, with no crude exported since August and the pre-war estimate of reserves near $23 billion mostly in China and not usable due to the blockade. 

The rest is frozen in Qatar, Iraq and China. So where does the money come from? Printing rial covers salaries. It does not buy gasoline.

You know what else doesn't buy gasoline? Iranians. 

That's literally north to south in Iran. The first clip is from Mashhad in the northeast, and Bandar Abbas is along the southern coast near Hormuz. I could include several more, including lines for diesel. And I could also throw in Iranian truckers protesting against diesel shortages by blocking traffic and turning off their rigs. 

And it's not just fuel. If you're a vendor, almost whatever you sell is now being prioritized by their prospective customers as to whether it's an absolutely vital necessity. Transactions we take for granted at home are not taking place at all in Iranian markets. And that goes down to fruit markets. 

When fruit is viewed as an unaffordable luxury item in Iran, it's kind of hard to take Barack Obama's claim that Iran is stronger now than ever before seriously. 

Less than two months ago, Iran announced it had discovered 7.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The problem, of course, is they have exactly zero industrial capacity to go get it or process it for domestic use even if they could. That's how badly their infrastructure has collapsed due to the war and the blockade. The result in Obama's more powerful than ever Iran? They're begging the population about to head into colder winter months to self-ration natural gas to avert a crisis of supply. 

Regarding their vaunted proxy network all over the Middle East, Iran has lost Hamas, Hezbollah, most of the Iraqi Shia militia groups it sponsored, and their Syrian network of terrorists. All that remain are the Houthis in Yemen, who continue to fight for control over the country and the ability to choke off Saudi Arabia's secondary oil export route through the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

The Houthis had been getting pummeled for weeks, gradually losing the attrition war. And to be honest, they're still losing commanders, fighters, and equipment every day. But this past week, they dusted off their stockpile of Iranian missiles, and scored one direct hit that hurt. 

The Houthis have launched dozens of missiles in the past week, most of them supplied by the IRGC. Keep in mind, these are all courtesy of Barack Obama's JCPOA being silent on ballistic missile development. Most were intercepted, like 10 headed into Saudi Arabia. 

Other missiles fired by the Houthis were duds. 

The key battleground in Yemen remains the mountain city of Taiz, their third-largest city. 

Houthi casualties in Taiz are mounting. 

The Houthis claimed this week that they have a limitless army. They don't. 

That's why they're resorting to conscripting kids... 

...who tragically are turning into cannon fodder. 

All over Yemen, Houthis are finding themselves at the wrong end of drones and/or anti-tank missiles. 

Yes, the Houthis have escalated to using missile launchers. But that also paints them as a target the second they light them up. 

Abdul El-Sayed has been asked for months by Mike Rogers and others to condemn terrorism in all forms in the Middle East, be it Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, or the IRGC which sponsors most of it. El-Sayed can only condemn Israel for genocide and other war crimes, neither of which is a reality, and the U.S. for imperialism and unwarranted intervention. He has never condemned any Iranian proxy group. 

The difference between the Yemeni coalition, including Saudi Arabian air assets along with government-aligned tribal fighters like the Giant Brigades and the Houthis? The coalition uses whatever it can -- airplanes, smart bombs, dumb bombs, drones, or anti-tank missiles to kill Houthis and recapture control of the country. 

The Houthis? Well, they target ambulances removing non-combatant women from houses in Taiz they bombed.

As of last night, eight different strikes by Yemeni coalition forces struck Houthi targets in Taiz alone, and in Sana'a, the capital city where the Houthi have been entrenched since 2014, the bombing has renewed. 

Before the war started, the al-Madab Strait saw between 20-25 tankers move through it daily. Traffic is roughly half of that, between 8-12 transits a day. That is more than offset by some oil going north through the Suez and increased volume through Hormuz. And combined with all other oil traffic in Hormuz, more oil is flowing daily than before the war. 

The supply of crude isn't an issue in that part of the world. Speculators do not like all the racket and rockets popping off in the neighborhood, and that unease is resulting in a risk premium built into the price. Refined gasoline and diesel limitations remain the primary cause for high prices at the pump. 

What's in store? A week from tomorrow, we'll know who's right about the midterms — pollsters or Republicans like Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump. Regardless of the wave, whether it be navy blue and tsunami-esque or baby blue and barely a ripple on the sand, three certainties are shaping up. 

1) The Teddy Roosevelt is coming. It'll join the George Washington and George H.W. Bush carrier groups in the region in a couple weeks, depending on how hard it's sailing. And with it are another 10,000 American forces to go along with an awful lot of aerial firepower. Assets are flowing into the region and forward staging once again. We know it, the Middle East knows it, the regime knows it, and the oil speculators know it. The blockade has done everything it was designed to do and more. Left alone, the regime would still wither on the vine eventually. No regime can withstand the screws put to it like Donald Trump and Sec. Bessent have with Operation Economic Fury and Operation Economic Outcast. 

2) Once the election is over, President Trump has a limited window of time to finish the regime once and for all kinetically, if he so chooses. What can and should be a relatively easy operation once the order is given and dual use infrastructure gets taken out along with regime remnants, Iran could be mopped up before the 2028 presidential campaign starts in earnest in the summer of 2027. And when I say relatively easy, don't take my word for it. Take the families of former regime members' account. We know where they all are. So do the Israelis. Nothing has changed on that front since March. 

3) Either the regime is going to crack up, or Iran's population is. If you thought Los Angeles or San Francisco has it bad with a mental health crisis among its burgeoning homeless population, imagine the toll this runaway inflation, uncertainty about the future, and repression from the regime is taking on the population. 

The election of Donald Trump to a second term caused a sizeable chunk of people in this country to lose their last marble. Intellect, education, or economic status does not necessarily inoculate Never Trumpers from taking the leap into irrationality. Trump may not want to resort to kinetic action again, but if the Iranians he's purportedly trying to protect come unglued due to the combined pressures arrayed against them over an extended period of time, perhaps the humane conclusion would be to finish the regime off and quickly and lethally as possible. 

Remember, according to Abdul El-Sayed in last week's debate with Mike Rogers, Iran was handled. It was solved by throwing money at the IRGC, which threw weapons at Hamas they used to killed 1,200 Israelis. 

And the guy who threw the money at Iran, Barack Obama, wants you to know that they're now stronger than ever. 

Keep this in mind when you go vote early, if your state affords you the opportunity. I understand the hardship and annoyance high gas prices are. I live in California, and I just put 34 gallons into my truck at $5.95 per gallon. I get it. But I'll be damned if I vote to turn over controls of the government, even if only in the legislative branch, to people who can't recognize or condemn terrorism, and possess a worldview and understanding of history that is so warped, it would give the coming Iranian national mental health breakdown a run for its money.