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 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.

Can Taylor Swift run?

This is all rather unprecedented.  If Biden does drop out of the race can the Dems just nominate anyone?  What are the parameters?  What are the protocols?  Trump vs. Newsom?  Trump vs. Michelle Obama?  Trump vs. Morning Joe?  How 'bout if there's no election and the country is adrift?  Let's just ride the wave and see what political shores we wind up on like a Gilligan's Island.  Is there a conspiracy somewhere?  What if Biden doesn't drop out?  I just heard he introduced Zelensky as Putin at the NATO summit.  Why do we need SNL anymore?  It doesn't seem quite fair to Trump that they can throw anybody up at this point.  You're prepping for one opponent and now it's maybe a mystery face.  Of course if Biden resigns the POTUS altogether Kamala Harris becomes president but that's the rational response.  Surreal political times.

The News is a bit off-center of late

Bill Cosby may spend the rest of his life in prison and President Donald Trump may win the Nobel Peace Prize. Haven't googled Bill Cosby's exact age of late. Could be 89, 97 or 105 but Justice has been served. Public disgrace and opprobrium not enough and I'm no legal authority but I thought there was a statute of limitations or something. The Hollywood academies have rescinded his many awards and mere mention and it's as if I Spy never existed. They finally realized Roman Polanski is a perv too and did the same such is the feminist juggernaut a little late in coming though. President Trump is seriously being mentioned as a viable peace prize potential winner with the upcoming Kim Jong-Un summit in Singapore the Stormy Daniels saga being merely a springtime diversion to fuel the news cycle. As an aside I don't see any more tip cups in Dunkin' Donuts and I have a chunk of change to spare. Are the clerks making too much or something?

Can Dennis Rodman save the world?

Seemingly overnight the whole North Korea/Kim Jong-Un discussion is now the easily unhingeable despot may possess an actual hydrogen bomb.  Think fusion not fission and over 10X the power of an A-bomb.  If Kim can customize it for the nose of one of his ICBMs he can conceivably detonate it at a very high altitude thus causing a superpowerful electromagnetic pulse (EMP) completely destroying the US power grid.  This whole thing reminds me of a bad Austin Powers movie.

The Manchester Attack - the new normal?

At last report there were 22 dead and at least 100 injured including 12 children in that suicide attack at the Manchester Arena Ariana Grande concert. ISIS is now claiming responsibility which was almost a foregone conclusion. The lone suicide bomber a 23-year old man by the name of Salman Abedi. So nobody's really talking about it at work today just the normal grind. I brought it up a little and there was a small discussion but it's like these things are now accepted as part of the day's news just a normal and inevitable element of the news cycle. President Trump in Saudi Arabia said to Muslim leaders you need to drive the extremist elements out and likened the War on Terror to a battle between Good and Evil. Not much to disagree with there. I felt maybe the security in Britain could be better but others see it as no matter how good your security these tragedies can and will still happen. NYC Police were on a heightened state of alert last night as to be expected which begs the question why does it take an incident for police departments across the nation to be on a heightened state of alert? It seems only a matter of tragic time before this gets imported here and becomes a part of the nightly news. One thing I see though Obama's intellectual decision to refuse to call radical Islamic terror radical Islamic terror has done absolutely nothing to defeat extremist ideology.

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.

The strange thing is the msm kinda liked the Trump Address

RE President Donald J. Trump's first address to a Joint Session of Congress last night the New York Times called it "a presidential speech" (read that again). I watched the bulk of it on ABC News and right after when you get to the post-game the commentators said the latter part was even lyrical. CBS and NBC noted a softer and different Trump, less combative who tapped into some unifying themes. Sure he massaged the nuts of the base at times ($54 billion in increased military spending, crime in Chicago) but it's like a big jug of cough syrup came over the msm in that they were positively and pleasantly subdued. Sure for much of the night the Democrats just sat there stone-faced and sullen, Trump could've offered up a true bona-fide cure for cancer and they still would've sat there with their diarrhetic expressions but I even caught Nancy Pelosi near the end furtively clapping over something. The most emotional and poignant moment of the night came of course when Trump had the widow of the slain Navy SEAL stand up, the wife of Petty Officer William Owens who was killed in that commando raid in Yemen that President Trump ordered in January. That cut across the boundaries and the Dems momentarily came out of their stupor and stood and clapped too. Sure the New York Times has to remind us they have to fact check everything (run it through Snopes?) but it's as if we were witnessing an alt-Trump.

Trump's Russian spiral

The solid mass is beginning to form, something substantive that may lead to a Congressional investigation and possible impeachment of President Trump down the road. The story is that members of his campaign and even inner circle regularly had communications with members of Russian intelligence. Was it to discuss cronut recipes or perhaps a future vodka market for a newly refurbished Trump Vodka brand? I've long said most of the GOP would be perfectly willing to throw Mr. Trump under the bus if the Democrats start making enough trouble. Only the Michelle Malkins and the Daystar crowd would go to the mat for him. Of course the press hates him and will only keep digging. IMO President Trump's days in office may be politically numbered.

The global protesters against Trump

We have dictators and tyrants in real-time spanning the world and yet nobody's globally protesting them. I hear the Bushmen in Africa were even protesting.

I Am So Shook

Reality has finally set in and it's the Zoloft/Abilify phase for liberals, the PTSD of Hillary losing. Now in a logical universe Trump becoming president of the United States would be like if the late Benny Hill had at one time become the PM of Great Britain. Wouldn't happen, not likely to happen and really can't happen all things considered. Trump has gone on the record as saying that the use of nuclear weapons would be a good strategy in the war against ISIS but on the plus side he and Pence have accepted the official report on the Russian hacking. I got the heebie-jeebies too that vague weird anxiety ever since the Election but liberals are so shaken to the very core of their being that even in dreams they're working out their tweets and blogs and anti-Trump posts for the next day now that Ole Man Winter has set in and it's cold as a witch's tit outside so all the placards and posters have been safely stashed away gathering dust and spiderwebs ready for the first hint of spring. We'll see what happens but I hope they make it. Hang in there!

What the CIA couldn't do old age did

Socialists are in mourning today. Former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro dead at the ripe old age of 90. In this fast-paced and ever-changing world we're definitely talking a retro channel in History here, pre-Internet dictator, blast from the past cigar-chomping revolutionary. I had to laugh at an Onion parody once where they had "Candid Camera" host Allen Funt calling up John F. Kennedy saying the Cuban Missile Crisis was all a hoax and the photo of JFK all relieved. Castro outlasted the power of what 10 U.S. presidents? Political tortoise crawling through the ages, a perennial figure in the pages of the past all yellowed and tattered. I know Michael Moore has said the Cuban healthcare system is the best in the world. I guess you don't get a bill in the mail for colonic polyp lab analysis, dunno. All those Hollywood celebs who hate Trump here's a great place to shuffle on over;)

The French 9/11 and limited intelligence

First off there should be an investigation of the French intelligence agency to rule out any radical Muslim sympathizers in some top spots. President Obama plans to forge ahead with the G20 Summit in Turkey anyway which will focus on climate change naturally. Yesterday's ISIS-coordinated multiple terrorist attacks in the heart of Paris - NBC News is going with the planners involved probably used social media codes to pull it off to escape the usual cell phone and other surveillance. I agree and thank you Mark Zuckerberg. I've always felt and made the point that a disturbingly high % of users on social media are a bad element and in particular a terorrist element. IMO ISIS terror is coming to the shores of America and that very soon. The Xmas shopping season is just around the bend, it's a definite Christian ritual and ISIS has said this is the first of a storm. Personally although I never did I would not go shopping on Black Friday. Don't participate in the madness. For the near future I am no longer going to the Palisades Center Mall in West Nyack and the Danbury Fair Mall in CT. is a definite soft target. I'll also see Mockingjay not on a crowded weekend showing but on an off-day. The Russian jetliner and now the Paris attacks, these are highly trained professionals who know what they're doing and some of you have made the point you're not concerned with what's happening over there because we have other things to worry about over here like Pat Robertson. Mistake. On another related note it has always been my personal view that the famed vision of the Third Secret of Fatima publicly released on June 26, 2000 pertains to a future terrorist event of enormous magnitude perhaps even involving Pope Francis himself. ISIS itself has a peculiar theological fixation on the city of Rome if you've noticed. The Sodano Interpretation is so much bullshit and it's just as well Benedict XVI who should know better retired when he did (bad conscience?). I've always maintained ISIS deserves our top priority and attention and not things like processed red meat causes cancer and the latest doings of the Kardashians. ISIS has upped their game when our world's intelligence agencies are woefully lagging behind:)

Greek Mythology

...that you can get endless freebies from the government and not have to pay the price in the end.  Now where can I get myself a gyro?

Obama, man in search of a legacy

In a way you can't blame him, every president wants a legacy and not a Carter legacy.  In the twilight of his second term his motivation is obvious from his opening up relations with Cuba to his attempted but failed for now trans-Pacific trade agreement.  It's not that these things make the most sense necessarily but in terms of legacy he needs stuff.  Probably as his last term comes closer to winding down he'll come up with even more things from his grab bag of Ideas one of the latest being he's somehow trying to tie in climate change with national security.  Not sure how this works, should ISIS go green?  Can he do something on race and the police? doubt it.  Your ponderings......

Battle of the Dynasties

Now that Hillary has made it official let's just say it's Jeb Bush finally on the Republican side. Yeah the normal one in a field of Huckabees, Walkers and maybe Trumps Bush coming across by default like the blonde woman on The Munsters and so is dynastic politics ultimately good for the country? Already the GOPers who are officially in the ring are salivating to talk about Hill's character and baggage but the usual Samsonite way when dealing with the Clintons ain't gonna wash imo. Folks who vote straight Democrat always vote straight Democrat and so it'd be much better for Rand and Cruz and co. to put some Ideas on the table, visions, foreign policy conceptions. Yeah yeah I know Hillary is from leafy Chappaqua and not Getty Square in Yonkers and she's gonna make it a cornerstone of her campaign to talk about economic fairness and the average American. Hypocrisy thy name is Clinton but get over that and tell the country where YOU stand. Hillary bores me I can't tell you and she looks like she's doing it because she has to. BTW has Obama tried a Cuban cigar yet?

Tragedy in the French Alps

The horrible news today, that Germanwings Airbus that crashed into a remote region of the French Alps was brought down deliberately by a kamikaze co-pilot killing all 150 passengers on board. He locked the other pilot out of the cockpit so that he couldn't even use the code to get back in and then pressed a button for a swift descent into the Alps. Of course the vast majority of suicides are just that, suicides and he could've simply downed some sleep aids with a bottle of Scotch so why this mad exit? Was he a lone wolf or part of a larger ISIS plot? Was he none of this but simply wanted to take others with him? The news gets stranger by the day.

Winnowing down the Republican field

The ones I would vote for: Scott Walker, Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney (not running as of now). The one I would NOT vote for: Jeb Bush as I simply don't like the notion of dynastic politics. Christie seems hopelessly tarnished by Bridgegate even though final reports have come out exonerating him of any knowledge of the scandal. Rand Paul? gosh I gotta think about that one. I suppose push comes to shove and on the other side why it is mandatory and in the stars that Hillary HAS TO be the Democratic nominee positively escapes me. She seems dull and tired even though she's trying to jazz up her image of late by being more peppy or something. Perhaps Bruce Jenner can be in charge of LGBT outreach in a Clinton Administration. Our old friend George Zimmerman has been totally cleared by the DOJ so he can continue going on messing up his life in private. Wondering how a President McCain would have dealt with the problem of ISIS. He'd probably just nuke the whole of Iraq and Syria and start over. "Jihadi John" has finally been positively identified according to all the newswires today, an educated man in his mid-20's from West London with a computer degree who went radical somewhere along the line. I fail to see the attraction of a 7th century-style caliphate and why some bored teen girls wanna join up so this is well over my head. Take it from there......

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.

The conservatives' wet dream - Brian Williams suspended for six months

God they go on and on about it! Then the other thing you hear about ALOT is what is Obama doing exactly about ISIS and terrorism in general? Obama is the DroneMaster (sounds like a good name for an app) and has more hits of top terror leaders under his belt than Bush ever had and is leading that international coalition against ISIS in Iraq and northern Syria so I don't understand the nature of the question, in fact it verges on stupid. Bruce Jenner - I honestly think the man/woman has too much time and money on his hands. Maybe Kanye West can make a song about it. I've been doing alot of walking in the snow lately and people don't hike in the snow as much as they used to seems to me. They leave half-hearted footpaths in the snow and don't maintain them by walking everyday or maybe it's the coyote snowtracks I've been seeing lately so they turn around and go home and play with their smartphones and pack on a few more pounds that they could've lost by following the coyote tracks. Let's see what's going on in Space? For you eggheads out there they found these twin stars in some nebula out there that are gonna merge soon and die or explode or something. God a six-month suspension and he didn't even use steroids!! maybe he was just trying to get women with his barroom tales:)