Every president likes to use the military

 But Trump promised to be different so why throw rocks at a junkyard dog?  Trump campaigned as an anti-neocon non-interventionist America Firster.  Instead we get a saber-rattling Israel First foreign policy, impulsive interventionism.  Trump has claimed on his Truth Social overwhelming success in totally obliterating Iran's three nuclear facilities.  He has ignored the advice of his own Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard who recently testified before Congress that Iran was really not that close to developing an actual nuclear weapon.  She's probably on her way out.  Now we have to worry about a protracted conflict with Iran and possible terrorist reprisals.  Pakistan has just nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize why I don't know.  Troubling times but kind of took Homan off the front pages.

Gen. Trump wants to send more troops into American cities

 I guess the National Guard isn't good enough.  I thought they were troops.  Trump wants to militarize more US cities in response to the growing ICE protests coast to coast.  ICE is actually a kind of rogue agency created in the wake of 9/11, an offshoot of DHS.  Basically what Trump wants to do is set up a police, a military state with a vast ai surveillance system, an Orwellian database of every single living American courtesy of Palantir Tech.  Laura Loomer is down with this.  So why do the vast majority of conservatives still support Trump despite these existential threats to freedom and privacy?  They're not really that libertarian to begin with.  This is not to say they need to be full-blown libertarian but they should be more libertarian than they are.  More stuff should bother them but it doesn't.  Instead they constantly fall back on blaming the media and the Democrats.  So what happens if Trump gives the go-ahead for Marines to shoot rioters in US cities?  Will Charlie Kirk cheer?

Dark days ahead.  I hope I'm wrong.

Word on the street

 Is President Trump will soon officially recognize a Palestinian State.  Angling for a Nobel Peace Prize to show Obama.  Meeting with the Saudis, the new Syrian president putting Netanyahu on the back burner for now.  Helped free the last American hostage without his help.  Rumor has it he has cut off direct contact with Bibi.  As part of the nuclear energy agreement with the Saudis he has dropped the Biden era stipulation that they recognize the State of Israel.  Also got a major investment deal going.  More than major.

Down through the decades with each succeeding president the Middle East has taken up way too much of our foreign policy time.  If he does officially recognize the State of Palestine I'll give him more than a few points for this.  Would be a good legacy if he controls the other zaniness.  So far Trump is an assortment. 

Oy vey! - Team Trump giving off those creepy Orwellian vibes

 Fresh on the heels of almost ruining millions of Americans 401k plans (90 day tariff pause) Team Trump has announced they are going to be monitoring the social media accounts of immigrants seeking permanent legal status as well as the online musings of foreign students.  They're going to be looking for antisemitic posts.  Watch them conflate legitimate criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza with support for Hamas and Hezbollah and other terror groups.  No wonder Bibi was grinning on his recent trip to the WH.  I say this if the Trump Administration is going to get all pervy about people's privacy at least include a middle finger emoji at the end of the post.  The Peeps Administration:)

Anti-semitism on campus and Trump's Gestapo

 "Anti-semitism" being rather loosely defined these days to include legitimate criticism of the State of Israel.  Trump Administration now going after perfectly legal people who have all the right paperwork.  Pro-Palestinian foreign students on visas now being detained and actively deported for protesting Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza.  Over 50,000 Gazans already dead including scores of women and children.  Secretary of State Marco Rubio in charge of revoking the student visas over 300 at last count.  Homan's goon squads.  Tufts U. student arrested or should we say kidnapped by masked ICE agents in the middle of the street in broad daylight.  Her crime?  Simply writing an op-ed piece in the university newspaper calling on Tufts to divest itself from companies that do business with Israel.  The horror stories go on.  The banality of evil.

We tend to forget that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Gaza.  On at least two occasions Netanyahu has cut off all water and electricity into Gaza most recently even well after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for him.  He's doing what he wants regardless and is now singing the praises of Trump's crackdown on campus speech and says other governments should follow his example.

This is quite possibly the most shocking episode of our government censoring perfectly valid speech in modern times.  Unless Trump fires some people (e.g. Rubio, Homan) it means the downfall of the Trump Administration imo and the end of MAGA.  A blot on the history books.

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.

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?

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.

Day One of the New Year

 A Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside the entrance to the Trump Hotel in Vegas.  Being investigated by the FBI as a possible terrorist event.  Driver killed and a few others suffered minor injuries.  Also a truck plowed through crowded Bourbon Street in New Orleans around 3 in the morning and killed at last count at least 15 revelers and injured 35 others.  42-year old Army vet and Texas native Shamsud-Din Jabbar was the driver and killed in a shootout with police.  Had an ISIS flag in his pickup.  Both the Cybertruck and pickup both rented through the car renting app Turo.  Possible link between the two events being investigated.  FBI thinks Jabbar was not a lone wolf but possibly had terror associates.  NYC and Yonkers recorded their first murders of the New Year.

Not an auspicious start.  It would have been really nice not to have anything to blog about today.  Ease into the New Year ya know?

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.

At what point can we say there's a problem with some aspect of Islam?

The Halloween terror attack in Lower Manhattan. You know the details: a 29-year old radicalized man from Uzbekistan, Sayfullo Saipov rented a Home Depot pickup truck in NJ then drove to Lower Manhattan on the West Side and deliberately used the vehicle to kill eight people on a bike lane just north of and literally in the shadow of Ground Zero. Among the dead were some Argentinian tourists in town for a reunion. Saipov then yelled the customary "Allahu Akbar" meaning "God is great" when he left the truck brandishing a pellet gun and paint gun and then ran down the street before he was shot in the abdomen by a hero cop whose career trajectory would seem to be way up at this point. You know the rest: radicalized over the Web, lover of ISIS videos, requested an ISIS flag during his hospital stay etc. etc. So then model Gigi Hadid called some alt-right woman on Twitter a fucking moron for saying something about the lack of decency of two women walking around in hijabs in the area of the attack so there's that. Well anyway as the post-title says throw your coins in the fountain here.

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.

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!

free-floating anxiety or maybe it's the state of the union

Part of def.: "a generalized feeling that something is wrong, to fear something but you don't know what it is"  - - There's the bad choice of Trump vs. Clinton,  ISIS is always in the news.  You'll be in a modern hip mall checking out the wifi at Nordstrom Rack and you do have the random thought some guy is gonna come in, shoot that useless security guy and start yelling "Allahu Akbar."  My Scripps card ain't working, am I gonna have to go on an Obamacare exchange?  What if I'm frying chicken and my heart just stops working?  I mean how many beats can it take?  Colorectal stuff, always the polypic obsession after 50...I think maybe it's not so much a mental disorder, that the free-floaters are plugged into reality and the reality ain't good.  The normal go about their day-to-day totally anxiety free because they really don't know what's going on.  Indian Point......

Tim Cook traveling down Creepy Road

The latest news from the Tim Cook vs. Federal Gov't fight over Apple encryption is the FBI may have found a third party way to open up the dead San Bernardino terrorist's iPhone. I'm fairly libertarian myself and at first blush his position sounds good and brave and other swell things but I got to thinking. Our country is already rife with perverts, the mentally unbalanced, online predators and yes I'm sure there are some terrorists scattered about and he would seem to be saying these groups need to have their privacy and data protected as well. Cyberstalking is a big subject these days and feminists have been a driving force behind the ever-evolving legislation but strangely I don't hear them criticizing Tim Cook and Apple. Another huge terror attack today in Europe this time in Brussels but Mr. Cook continues to dig down deeper into his Snowdenian position which is somehow supposed to get us to buy more Apple products. I for one am sticking with Android with its myriad problems from incompatible apps to slow-charging Samsung tablets but at least it's a stand. I have long agreed with Hannity, as soon as the government or law enforcement wants to get inside your head and police your mind that's totalitarianism plain and simple but these other folks I'm talking about ain't just thinking things they're already breaking the law in some fashion. I'm not taking a pro-government position here, I'm at best sometimes ambivalent about law enforcement in this country but do you want to give the worst elements of society that high-tech advantage?

It's hard to believe the American electorate is this dysfunctional

OK I probably wasn't in my right mind when I said I'd vote for Trump if it came down to that. What's the GOP to do? too bad Jack Kemp weren't in a cryogenic freeze and we could reanimate him. Trump's first tv ad is out calling for an outright ban on all Muslim entry into the US until we can figure out what is going on. On the other side there has to be some on the liberal divide who can't vote for Hillary for various reasons so these are the choices we're usually given every four years. The political menu usually sucks and that goes right back to our two-party system. I hate not to vote but it might be the only viable option this time around.

Random thoughts on random violence

Re yesterday's very tragic events in San Bernardino CA -- Premature liberal commentary as usual headed by the president himself and Nicholas Kristof and the editorial board of the NY Times. Apparently it's too much to ask to wait a day or two before opining but opine they must framing yesterday's massacre in the usual gun control terms when terrorism hasn't been ruled in or ruled out yet. Some of my preliminary thoughts: the act was carried out by a young couple in their late 20's and it involved a social services agency so my first thought was it's easy enough for any bureaucratic dept. of the gov't to piss people off but then we got some Egyptian/Middle Eastern names going and the husband recently made the obligatory trip to Mecca and the way they carried the whole thing out struck many initially as being something other than the usual gun violence in this country so there does seem to be some reluctance on the part of liberals to go down this road, they don't want to offend CAIR and the guy did work there or something so...such commentary is a form of leftist political masturbation, they can't help themselves and it serves no purpose but being a habit they need to get it out of their system and anything that may even tenuously smack of the need for more gun control becomes a kind of social/political trigger, a liberal frenulum. So basically it doesn't really matter what the investigation comes up with it's just another golden opportunity to discuss gun control and maybe Obama can even put the whole thing in the larger framework of climate change who knows?

What's app with that?

NYS State Governor Cuomo announced the launch of the See Something Send Something app for iPhone and Android.  I'm probably gonna install it but just the same is a Muslim man and his friend allowed to take pics of the GW Bridge at twilight or of the Croton Dam?  Meanwhile Charlie Sheen who's a public health menace could be having sex in both places and it'd be no biggie.  I'm gonna go to the Play Store right now and check it out.

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:)