There is nothing inspiring about the Trump presidency

 The dismal 2nd term continues.  I honestly thought Marco Rubio was a decent choice for Secretary of State but he's turned into a dick.  He's boasting he revoked 300 Visas of foreign students who have engaged in pro-Palestinian protests on campus.  Actually it may be more he lost count.  He says those coming here from abroad to colleges and universities are here to study and learn and to earn a degree.  Has he never heard of intercollegiate sports?  The Vietnam War protests?  Thou Shalt Not Criticize Israel.  Rubio somehow conflates condemning the ongoing genocide in Gaza with support for Hamas.  Expect more judicial spanking.  Meanwhile RFK Jr. in his mission to make America healthy again has cut about 10,000 jobs from his own agency.  So where are all the Fruit Loops cops gonna come from?  On the Greenland front Trump is now making almost daily veiled threats against the island nation.  Denmark is not amused.

You can't make this shit up.

Maybe next time add a Houthi to a group chat?

 Maybe someday you'll be able to get Yemen war plans on your Smart TV.  If I was new to blogging struggling to come up with a name during the early days of the 2nd Trump Administration it would have just hit me in the shower,

You Can't Make This Shit Up

Meanwhile JD Vance is going to join his wife Usha in Greenland for a creepy visit upcoming. See the sights dine on whatever Greenlanders eat and exert some pressure.  A kind of friendly Mafioso sitdown.  Is  Musk going to abolish the DMV?  The dismantled DOE workers where do they wind up slicing deli meats?  I get the OAN channel crystal clear in these parts and some nights host Riley Lewis looks like he's going to uncork one.  The erstwhile sensible National Review is all MAGA now.  Lonely.  Maybe I'll go smoke a pipe with Mitch McConnell. 

You know it would all make sense if I was involved in a horrible car accident and wound up in a comatose state and this was all a bad dream.  The Orange Man is real though.  It'll all be over in 3 years and 10 months if we have a country left.

It's not conservatism it's rule by oligarch

 Breaking with my fellow conservative bloggers.  I do not celebrate thousands of federal workers across multiple agencies losing their jobs.  I do not support massive tariffs levied against our allies.  I am against trying to censor and punish pro-Palestinian speech on campus.  Re Trump's tailspin into dementia or whatever it is if Canada and Greenland did become U.S. states how many electoral votes would they hold?  How would the new Canadians and Greenlanders lean politically?  I'm thinking Canada to the Left.  WHO elected Elon Musk???  He's our de facto president on the domestic side of things.  The sentiment among many people I've talked to is he needs to go and these are middle-of-the-road people not radicals.  Go back to running Tesla and Space X and whatever else.  Go to Mars and start a colony if you want I'm not a fanboy.  We need to grow up.  Stop blaming Dems and lefties all the time.  Trump's nuttery is the issue at least for now.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Will probably go down as the weirdest Administration in U.S. history

 At the risk of making a low-effort post scanning the newsfeeds this morning and it's hard to make a coherent post about Trump because his actions are incoherent.  Do you want to spend an extra 12K for a new car?  Would Kamala Harris have pushed us into a recession?  Meanwhile Bibi has cut off all food, supplies and electricity into Gaza (again) but Trump wants to crack down on pro-Palestinian speech on campus instead.

If Biden truly was the worst president in U.S. history as Trump says Trump seems to be vying for the #2 spot.

Everything but the cost-of-living

 Being a foreign policy hero.  The DOGE.  The term "government efficiency" always strikes me as an oxymoron.  When is Homan going to go after the lettuce pickers, the masonry workers, the diner cooks and the fence installers?  Is Trump going to tariff the Aleutian Islands?  A Trump Hotel on the Gaza Strip?  Panama Canal. Greenland.  Canada.  Gulf of America.  Rare Earth minerals in Ukraine.  Cutting the Defense budget in half.  Would Reagan have done such a thing?  Dementia in overdrive.  Why doesn't he make a peace treaty with the fairies?  The MAGA cult and OAN applaud his every move. EVERYTHING but the price of eggs and Fancy Feast.

Oy vey!

Mindless in Gaza

 In addition to Canada Greenland and the Panama Canal Trump now wants the Gaza Strip.  He said at a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu it would be a good idea if the U.S. took control over it.  I didn't know Gaza was for sale.  Trump says it could be rebuilt into a Riviera of the Middle East but first the Palestinians should get out and live somewhere else.  Egypt?  Jordan?  Yonkers?  Many are calling this a call for ethnic cleansing but it is sure to appeal to the far-right elements in the Israeli government. 

Every president tries their hand at peace in the Middle East.   The Trump Plan a golf course some hotels and casinos in Gaza but no Palestinians allowed.  Is there a Nobel Prize in the works?

Trump 2.0 - Back With A Vengeance

 ICE raids, Homan to talk to Canadian officials, Colombia caves and takes in the aliens, Laken Riley Act, Gitmo again, political retribution, firing inspectors general, tariff threats, funding freezes, eclectic Cabinet picks, executive orders, rescuing TikTok, no DEI, calls to Denmark, J6 pardons, Trump threatens BRICS, Hannity interview, Trump offering to buyout federal workers, Meta to pay Trump $25 million, DOGE, Rubio to visit Panama, Israel/Gaza, Trump goes after Buttigieg over DC plane crash, Bob Menendez angling for pardon, Greenland for sale? Gulf of Trump.

And it's not even 100 days.

Of bluster and bullshit

 Should I keep my autograph book handy in case Homan and crew come to my workplace?  Greenland, the Panama Canal, the annexation of Canada, mass deportations...Trump is not going to invade a NATO ally.  It's not worth going to war over the Canal.  We never had a state the size of Canada makes no sense and we don't have the infrastructure for mass deportations.  Not so much in the hot air category though is a serious growing consensus that Trump is the one mostly responsible for this historic ceasefire/hostage deal between Israel and Hamas.  He even sent a Middle East envoy over there to take part in the negotiations and this is all pre-the Inauguration.  Biden has issues with Trump getting most of the credit.  Don't be jealous.  As for Trump being an expansionist president in the Polk tradition I highly doubt it.

So what is bluster, what is la mierda and what's the real deal here?  We'll just have to wait and see.

Bibi was only playing around

 He bombed a few hospitals in Gaza but Trump has promised "all hell will break loose" in the Middle East if Hamas does not release the rest of the Israeli hostages by the time he is inaugurated.  I almost said installed as Trump has a kind of monarch complex.  It won't be good for Hamas or anybody else he said.  WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? Also where can Netanyahu travel these days?  The ICC has issued a warrant for his arrest for war crimes and the Polish PM said he'd arrest him if he comes that way.  Our own House in turn has voted for sanctions against the ICC.  If Trump follows through on his threat to unleash hell in the Middle East he too could wind up on the ICC docket someday.  Meanwhile Trump said he will sign 100 Executive Orders on Day One.  About what?  Sidewalk cleaning in Yonkers?  Also where is T. Swift these days?  Will she send a multi-million dollar aid package to LA County?

Don't know if this is a false issue or not

 I wasn't actually going to say anything about Jimmy Carter.  Am I required to?  So the latest Trump controversy is the President-Elect is upset that the Dems want to fly the flag at half-staff on the day of his inauguration to honor the recent passing of Jimmy Carter.  So my thing is today is January the 4th.  The inauguration is still slightly more than two weeks away.  HOW LONG are the flags supposed to fly at half-staff anyway?  What's the rule on this?  Sure when a former head-of-state dies there'll be three funerals and the whole thing will go on for a month so I guess the funereal feelings can well wash up against Jan. 20 but again if anyone knows the rule on the flag thing let me know.

There's always been a kind of rough consensus that Jimmy Carter wasn't a great president but a decent human being.  There were the long gas lines and the Iranian hostage crisis but he also negotiated the Panama Canal Treaties and of course is well known for the Middle East peace accords.  He did better work post-presidency.  Took up a hammer and nail for Habitat for Humanity and put his work pants on.  A devout Christian also taught Sunday school.  Made it to the 100 Club with Kirk Douglas.  Must've been all the peanuts.

Thoughts?

Building a better blog

 Cats?  Pipe smoking?  The Middle East?  No foreign policy post for Dennis Rodman in a Trump Administration?  My drone is better than your drone?

Recent case in Yonkers.  A couple brought a very young cat which was severely injured to a local vet clinic and dropped it off without giving their names or phone numbers.  Anonymous good Samaritans but there's a bad twist.  Cat later died and tested positive for rabies.  The County Health Department is desperately trying to track the couple down to have them tested for the virus.  Got me googling rabies again with my hundred other topics.  Rabies is still generally considered fatal but...

As always though talk about anything you like.

The Dummies Guide to the Middle East

 I'm not one of those knowledge off the top of my head type guys.  I'm more of a Captain Google tbh.  Wikipedia the Assad dynasty in Syria and you could easily go into the wee hours.  Get your brandy snifter.  Bashar al-Assad during his earlier life actually graduated medical school and then went to London to train to be an eye doctor but was recalled back to Syria after his older brother died in a car crash and he then became heir-apparent to the regime....military academy...Syrian occupation of Lebanon...Arab Spring...Syrian Civil War...war crimes...human rights violations...chemical weapons...the UN, Obama, Trump.  Turkey's Erdogan later became a kind of foe and worked behind the scenes...LOTS to go through.  Bashar al-Assad has now been ousted as we all know by rebel forces and the head of HTS an al-Qaida offshoot is practically running the new government.  Turkey is heavily involved and the new HTS-led Syrian government is trying to moderate its image.  Putin has granted al-Assad and his family political asylum in Moscow.  He may have brought a bag of gold coins with him.  He always wore nice suits and believed in climate change and even recognized the State of Israel in private.  Otherwise a brutal dictator.

There I've done my homework.  Trying to give this blog some heft.

The great MAGA betrayal

 So about Trump's cabinet picks I'm hearing this and I'm hearing that.  Bunch of rabid war hawks being nominated going against all the MAGA principles.  Others not happy about Marco Rubio being tapped as Secretary of State.  I'm hearing that Matt Gaetz is the least likely to get confirmed and it has nothing to do with the edge of seventeen sex allegations.  Everyone on board 110% pro-Israel of course.  Huck even opposes a Palestinian state.  Gabbard is in there.  RFK Jr. ready to run wild.  A FOX News host running Defense?

We have aways to go before the Inauguration.   Normally this is boring and dry stuff for me.  I'm not a political junkie but Trump's cabinet picks are generating quite a bit of discussion.  There is even some talk of MAGA protesting Trump.  Me?  I just live my life and feed the cats.

The only problem is Woodward isn't a trash writer

 I'd sooner trust him than Tom Selleck trying to sell me a reverse mortgage.  Woodward's new book War - According to the book Trump and Putin had at least seven private calls since Trump left office.  Also Trump allegedly sent Putin Covid-19 test machines during the peak of the pandemic when there was a shortage.  Trump calls Woodward "a storyteller who has lost his marbles",

POT - KETTLE - BLACK

Steven Cheung Trump's communications director said Woodward's book is "the work of a truly demented and deranged man" who suffers from TDS.  Did he make up Watergate too?

There's other stuff in the book.  Lindsey Graham calls visiting Mar-a-Lago like visiting N. Korea everybody has to clap when Trump enters the room.  Biden's complicated relationship with Netanyahu and his angry tirades over the Israel/Hamas War yada Yada.

I'm no fan of the media by any stretch but it ain't Maury Povich writing.

President Trump, following through on Obama's Red Line

Some are no doubt already making the case that Obama's shifting red line encouraged Syria and President Bashar al-Assad to attack a small Syrian village with chemical weapons killing and injuring scores of children. One can use the word "allegedly" but for all intents...President Trump followed this within 24 hours with 59 air strikes with Tomahawk cruise missiles of a Syrian airfield believed to harbor chemical weapons. Now things get complicated with Russia refusing to cooperate with the U.S. over avoiding air conflicts over Syrian airspace. Russian warships have already moved into the region closer to our fleet so you have the seeds of a major world crisis in the making. Trump is getting bipartisan support on this one from Marco Rubio to Charles Schumer usually a critic but the base is mighty unhappy with these developments. There's that Pat Buchanan strict non-interventionist/isolationist wing to deal with. Obama was too much the Hamlet intellectual with this aspect of our foreign policy. Trump of course is taking some flack for not consulting with the UN Security Council and Congress first but if first showings are any indication we may be dealing with a very militaristic and action-oriented president on the world stage. As long as he stays away from the nuclear codes.

Why throw rocks at a junkyard dog?

The Garland TX Mohammed cartoon shootings, our little version of Charlie Hebdo - ISIS is now claiming responsibility which even if true you'd think they'd be a bit hesitant as it hardly came off in their favor, not their best work you could say. Pamela Geller of her American Freedom Defense Initiative coordinated this event in TX and from what I understand it was some sort of cartoon contest for who could come up with the best sketch of the Prophet Mohammed I guess. I might be in the minority but her subway ads in NYC which the MTA had a huge problem with I don't find them the least bit offensive. I'm sure you've heard of them and they always have the angle of radical Islamists are anti-Semitic which they are so it's kind of hard for me to unravel just why the MTA has their collective knickers in a twist. However having said that what was the point of this little sketchathon in Garland TX? Are they suddenly interested in this particular faith system? Are they contributing to global culture? Was the whole affair designed to be provocative? (x) I'm thinking we have enough to worry about. Thanks guys and gals and all you Bob Ross wannabes.

Radical Islam explained (sort of)

The best analysis I ever came across is from Pat Buchanan's book Where the Right Went Wrong (Thomas Dunne 2004) in the chapter "Is Islam the Enemy?" This short and very readable chapter (without footnotes thank God) gives a quick history of Islam from the Prophet Muhammed to the various caliphs which followed his death, the Crusades and the Ottoman Empire. Minority view on the Crusades here: they were originally the Catholic Church's response to the original aggressive and conquering behaviour of Islamic warriors (e.g. retaking Jerusalem from them). That's the history here's the theology. Islam along with Judaism and Christianity is a monotheistic and Abrahamanic faith system. Muhammed greatly revered Jesus as a great prophet and held in high regard His mother Mary but Islam fundamentally rejects Trinitarianism (big deal you say) so at first glance this presents a major puzzlement as to the radical Islamists' hostility to Christians in general as shown in that recent mass beheading of those 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians. Buchanan sheds light on this. Early in their history both Islam and Christianity were gaining millions of followers and so it wasn't the minor religions that presented the greatest threat to Islam's hopefully worldwide influence and dominance but Christianity. This is like a theological business model if you will where one major brand hates the competition and attempts to drive it out and would certainly explain why they focus on the Pope and Rome so much. Lest this become too long a dissertation we'll save everything else for the Comments section.

Return to the Dark Ages in the age of the Twitterverse

Here's my rough and very imperfect knowledge of the history of terror. Not that long ago, in recent memory in fact most terror was politically motivated (the Red Brigades, Carlos the Jackal, the IRA, Munich) and much, sometimes most of it had to do with the eternal and never-ending Israeli/Palestinian conflict. FF to the present with Al-Shabab, Boko Haram and Islamic State and it's pretty much do you read the Quran? no? you have to die infidel! With the latest outrage, the burning in a cage of that Jordanian pilot I don't see how you can't have boots on the ground at this point. Airstrikes alone brings to mind using a can of Raid and you're shooting at the cockroaches scurrying around in your kitchen. Sure you'll get a few, perhaps many but the rest go in the cracks and crevices of your floorboards so basically you have to find a way to get in there, get to the root of the problem. So basically and this is what I don't get unless it has to do with protecting hostages ISIS has this safe and fairly large staging area in some desert somewhere in which they continue to produce a series of highly polished but gruesome videos along the line of Faces of Death. Apparently they feel safe doing this, some kind of drone-free airspace I guess which is only another reason we really need an international coalition of boots on the ground and I don't care if King Abdullah II quotes Clint Eastwood. Lastly many conservatives are blaming Obama himself for the rise of ISIS by not continuing Bush's adventures in Iraq indefinitely when truth be told Bush's original actions led to the rise of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi which later metamorphosed into ISIS and it bears repeating while Saddam Hussein was a very bad man he had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. Meanwhile Americans are continuing to flock to see that sniper film while Boko Haram just took almost 100 civilian lives in northern Cameroon.

The international coalition of the unwilling

My position which has evolved is that there needs to be an international coalition of boots on the ground in both Iraq and northern Syria to combat the psychopathic evil of ISIS. Also this constant conservative sniping at how Obama is handling this international crisis/tragedy is not part of the solution and usually at such times with such a real foreign threat out there their usual counsel is to get behind the president. Even Canada has gotten involved but whenever a new coalition partner makes an announcement it's usually along the lines of we're willing to do airstrikes in Iraq but not Syria. Well ISIS has adapted to airstrikes since they pretty much knew they were coming and Obama should never have ruled out boots on the ground so categorically when his own generals are saying otherwise. Lastly the FBI says they know the identity of "John the Beatle" or that masked hostage-beheader seen in those infamous ISIS videos but are withholding this information and not making it public for strategic reasons it is to be presumed. I don't know why since not making the name a matter of the international record has not stopped the latest hostage Brit Alan Henning from meeting the same fate. So those are my thoughts and I would say the matter is urgent.

Axis of Isil

I thought President Obama's speech last night detailing his global strategy for dealing with IS was rather brief and subdued. I thought it would be longer and more impassioned but I'm not against it and generally agree with the tenor. Obama has quite obviously chosen to use the label "ISIL" or Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant instead of the more popular "ISIS" and there are reasons for this. Using ISIS constantly the way most in the media now do makes it sound like we're in a war with the ancient Egyptian goddess and also using this term all the time has that "Get Smart"/comic book feel to it (remember Don Adams and his nemesis KAOS?). Another reason Obama prefers the term ISIL is it definitely refers to the threat IS poses to the nation of Israel since Israel falls under the definition of the Levant along with other countries like Jordan. I haven't really read the reviews yet in particular those of the always nitpicking right-wingers but the war and it is a war will eventually include airstrikes in northern Syria and it is the pundit's view that just like Bush left the Iraq war with Obama Obama will leave the Syrian mess to the next president. Syria has already bombed certain IS targets in the north and I couldn't help thinking if they could have they would have used chlorine gas again. The Sotloff family spokesperson has alleged the so-called moderate forces fighting Assad, the Free Syrian Army, sold Steven Sotloff for a price to IS but the State Dept. denies this. OK thoughts:)