Mother

Today is Mothers Day, as surely everyone in the US is aware.

I'm going to comment on Mother's Day for a couple of odd reasons, even thought I didn't originally intend to.

The first is this comment by Robert Reich for the day:

Robert Reich@RBReich·14h

Your Mother’s Day weekend reminder that the so-called “party of family values” has historically blocked:

-Paid family & medical leave

-Universal childcare

-Universal pre-K

-Expanded Child Tax Credit

-Programs to support reproductive health

Doesn’t sound very pro-family to me.

First I'll note that I have sort of a love/hate relationship with Reich.  Reich is very far left, but his economic commentary, in my view, is generally pretty good.  And like him, I'm greatly distressed over what Donald Trump is doing to the country.

Secondly, I really hate the writing convention of saying "this is your reminder".  Did I ask for a reminder?  If I didn't, that's really annoying.  Reich also likes to state "I don't know who needs to know this" which suggest that nobody needs to know whatever he's going to tell us.  

He should quit using both of those writing conventions.

Anyhow, like a far lefty, he's bought into the seas of blood position of the Democratic Party. "Programs to support reproductive health" is Orwellian speech for infanticide.

Reich is Jewish, which always makes me wonder how he can support a thesis that holds that infants in the womb, earlier than a certain number of weeks, aren't people.  It's the exact same argument that resulted in the Holocaust.  It's the exact same argument that expanded into eugenics based homicide in Nazi Germany, and which has advanced murder in the guise of "assisted suicide" in various Western Nations.

I'll be frank that I've never been a huge fan of Mothers Day or Father's Day which remind me, in some ways of the Alcohol and Old Lace episode of the Andy Griffith Show in which two elderly sisters were distilling moonshine for "holidays", of which there were an insane number of manufactured ones.  But I really shouldn't be that way for Mother's Day.  There are real reasons to honor motherhood and what it entails.  But murdering infants isn't a good way to do it.

And there's no reason to pretend, no matter how much the left would like to, that the "my body, my choice" argument is a good one, or even a valid one.  A fetus in the womb has a body and its choice i not likely to be murdered.  And that body, genetically, is made up of the DNA of two people, not one.  You don't get ot be a mother through a unilateral act of self will. Motherhood in some instances wasn't planned, of course, but then much of life is not and a massive murderous do over isn't every justified.

The other reason I chose to post is that somebody I know had been at a Vigil Mass in which the attending celebrant mentioned mothers, but largely, apparently, in the context how mother's support their men, which was pretty much apparently it.  The celebrant was Indian (from India).  I'm only noting this as its so easy to forgot for Americans, and probably Europeans, how we are actually a minority of the globes' population, and the culture view of other people may be very much not the one we hold.

That oddly enough occured on the same day, yesterday, in which I listed to a Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World episode on 1 Esdras, which is in some (all?) Orthodox Bibles, but not the Catholic Bible, which is itself larger than most Protestant Biles.  In it, there's a debate between three Guards about what is the most powerful thing in the world.  One Guard presents this, which references the prior two arguments that came before his.:

Then the third, who had spoken of women and truth (and this was Zerubbabel), began to speak: “Gentlemen, is not the king great, and are not men many, and is not wine strong? Who is it, then, who rules them or has the mastery over them? Is it not women? Women gave birth to the king and to every people that rules over sea and land. From women they came, and women brought up the very men who plant the vineyards from which comes wine. Women make men’s clothes; they bring men glory; men cannot exist without women. If men gather gold and silver or any other beautiful thing and then see a woman lovely in appearance and beauty, they let all those things go and gape at her and with open mouths stare at her, and all prefer her to gold or silver or any other beautiful thing. A man leaves his own father, who brought him up, and his own region and clings to his wife. With his wife he ends his days, with no thought of his father or his mother or his region. Therefore you must realize that women rule over you!

“Do you not labor and toil and bring everything and give it to women? A man takes his sword and goes out to travel and rob and steal and to sail the sea and rivers; he faces lions, and he walks in darkness, and when he steals and robs and plunders, he brings it back to the woman he loves. A man loves his wife more than his father or his mother. Many men have lost their minds because of women and have become slaves because of them. Many have perished or stumbled or sinned because of women. And now do you not believe me?

“Is not the king great in his authority? Do not all lands fear to touch him? Yet I have seen him with Apame, the king’s concubine, the daughter of the illustrious Bartacus; she would sit at the king’s right hand and take the crown from the king’s head and put it on her own and slap the king with her left hand. At this the king would gaze at her with mouth agape. If she smiles at him, he laughs; if she loses her temper with him, he flatters her, so that she may be reconciled to him. Gentlemen, why are not women strong, since they do such things?”

It is profound, and note how it came in an ear in which women, in most of the world, would have been regarded as second class citizens.  I should note, however, that he went on to then discuss Truth, with that being the most powerful thing in the World.

While it likely shouldn't, that reminded me of Kipling's great poem, The Ballad of the King's Jest, which has this line:

Four things greater than all things are,—

Women and Horses and Power and War.

We spake of them all, but the last the most,

For I sought a word of a Russian post,

Of a shifty promise, an unsheathed sword

And a gray-coat guard on the Helmund ford.

Then Mahbub Ali lowered his eyes

In the fashion of one who is weaving lies.

Quoth he: “Of the Russians who can say?

“When the night is gathering all is gray.

“But we look that the gloom of the night shall die

“In the morning flush of a blood-red sky.

“Friend of my heart, is it meet or wise

“To warn a King of his enemies?

“We know what Heaven or Hell may bring,

“But no man knoweth the mind of the King.

“That unsought counsel is cursed of God

“Attesteth the story of Wali Dad. 

It's interesting how Kipling put it, "Four things greater than all things are--Women and Horses and Power and War".

Well, have a Happy Mother's Day.   

Pope Leo XIV

As I'd predicted, the new Pope, Pope Leo XIV, was a cardinal that wasn't in the pundit list.

A quote from an AP news article:

Vatican watchers said Prevost’s decision to name himself Leo was significant given the previous Leo’s legacy of social justice and reform, suggesting continuity with some of Francis’ chief concerns.

Not just the AP, I said this yesterday, and in spades.  In fact, as a Distributist, Pope Leo XIII is one of my absolute favorite recent Popes.  He was an ardent opponent of communism and capitalism.

Some headlines:

NEWLY ELECTED POPE FIRST FROM US

From the Star Tribune.

MAGA Melts Down Over New Pope's Anti-Trump, Pro-Immigrant Social Media

Rolling Stone

This will be interesting. There was, yesterday, a flood of negative comments about Pope Leo from the mostly non Catholic populist far right.  I suspect that a hidden anti Catholicism in that quarter will really start to surface.

Indeed, Pope Leo being an American poses a real challenge to the isolationist, nationalistic MAGA populist elements now in power, as well as the pretending to be isolationist, nationalistic and MAGA fellow travelers.  Some have already wondered if that's part of the reason that he was chosen as Pope, but that will not be known for years, if ever.  At any rate, right now, it's really interesting to note that the US is lead by a not very smart almost octogenarian who has shown aggressiveness and extreme nativism, while global Christianity will be lead by a highly educated catholic concerned for the poor, who as a Cardinal corrected J. D. Vance's odd comments about an order of mercy.  

This leads, I suppose to noting that Pope Leo is, at this point, nearly as Peruvian as he is American.  But as noted, the Catholic Church is catholic, i.e., universal.  It's concerns are for humanity, not a narrow section of the American public.  But Pope Leo might serve to remind Americans of what the United States has, in its better moments, stood for. 

Nativism is no virtue

Nativism is no virtue: A birth certificate stamped Wyoming doesn't qualify as authority or expertise, guest columnist Marion Yoder writes.

This is no doubt true, but I have to note that I'm very nativist myself.

What Yoder didn't note, interestingly, is that a lot of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, indeed, most of it, is made up of imports. 

Clothing, then and now, and a lost manufacturing base.

derek guy@dieworkwear

at the turn of the 20th century, working class men had something like two pairs of pants, three shirts, and a pair of boots. middle class men wore detachable collars bc shirts were expensive. one man died bc he got drunk. his head drooped & he choked to death on his stiff collar

Very interesting, really, and not just in the context of the Very Stable Genius and his trade war with China, but in terms of the focus of this page.  

I've discussed this before, but cheap clothing is a post World War Two thing.  The entire series of jokes about people having vast numbers of shoes, or t-shirts that are decades old, reflects a bonafide change in how people live.  I recall my father mentioning that at one time it was considered ideal to buy a suit with two pairs of pants, as you could stretch out the cleaning.

Clothing now costs less, and frankly it lasts a lot longer, than it once did.

Indeed, how often do you really wear out clothing?  I'm do wear out shits, but waistline expansion over time is more likely to render my trousers unwearable than really wearing them out is.  Granted, part of that is because I have a fair number of them.  If I was wearing the same two or three pairs of trousers every day, the story would be different.  But they also simply last longer than they once did.

This is really intended to be an observation on clothing, then and now, but a little remark about now is warranted.

I have a cotton Colorado Rockies kelly green baseball hat sitting here where I'm typing.  If you look at the label, it's made in China.  Lots of Levis are made in Vietnam.  We have, truly, exported clothing manufacturing overseas, which is to say, the producers did.  I do lament that, but do U.S. consumers want to pay more for clothing?  I wonder.

I guess with tariffs, we'll find out.

I have, as readers  here know, a fondness for M65 Field Jackets.  I'd like to have an OG 107 one for every day wear.  I thought one would be easy to find, but they aren't, so I ordered one, to my present regret, from Propper.  It came Chinese made (of course) and the size is completely wrong.  I should have sent it back, but I didn't, as my extreme introverted nature precludes me from doing so.  I thought maybe I could shrink it, but it doesn't look like I'll be able to.  Anyhow, it's just wrong.  

I note this as US military uniforms are in fact made in the U.S., and indeed I believe there may be a statutory requirement to that effect.  Some years ago there was a scandal when the US ended up with some berets that were made overseas.  I've heard of the military actually checking to make certain that soldiers don't deploy with foreign made gear, but that must be tougher than ever, with the loss of so much of the US manufacturing base.

All of which is to say that I'm sympathetic with those who lament that loss.  But the time to really address it came and went some thirty to forty to fifty years ago and, if could be addressed, which is a huge if, it can't be done all at once.

And, my Propper M65 Field Jacket aside, things made overseas are not, by and large, of cheap quality anymore.  Some things surely are.  The stuff you get at Harbor Freight might be second rate. . . or not.  As overseas manufacturing has increased, quality has too.

A Disturbing Trifecta

The weekend shows were unsettling, to say the least.

Economic chaos was referenced in all three shows.

On This Week, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who sounds like a dimwit in spite of a fairly impressive set of credentials, indicated that the tariff exception for electronics is only temporary until the government comes out with targeted tariffs on them of some sort.

On Meet The Press, investor and author Ray Dalio pretty much predicated a depression, and perhaps a global war of some sort.

On Face the Nation Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, clinically said the economy is going in the toilet.

Also on Face the Nation, recently resigned Dr. Peter Marks, the creator of Operation Warp Speed, went after Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on his measles response with both barrels, and reloaded four or five times.  He also related Kennedy's promise to figure out the cause of autism by fall as absurd.

Nifty.

Thursday, March 27, 2025 It's Opening Day, and I'm Not Feeling It

A post I really sympathize with:

Thursday, March 27, 2025

It's Opening Day, and I'm Not Feeling It

I'm not feeling it either, and for a lot of reasons.

A note. "To be honest with you".

Pre statement declarations of honesty are only made by people who 1) aren't about to say something honest, or 2) are very unsure of what they're saying.

Trump says "to be honest with you" all the time, as an example.  People are entitled to believe that a person they're listening to is speaking honestly.  A person who repeatedly starts his comments with "to be honest with you" has a different world view.  It implied the speaker normally lies, and is probably lying right now.

The Best Posts of the Week of March 2, 2025. The week where I suffered through Influenza A.

It was a week in which, after Mass on Sunday, I took the dog out with me austensibly to go fishing and we ended up on the Sweetwater.  We walked a fair amount and I noticed, on such a nice day that I shed my coat, that I was walking fatigued.  "Out of shape?", I wondered, or just rapidly onsetting old age. 

I was having a pretty hard time.

Turned out it was Influenza A.  The next morning I was in horrific shape.  I went to work, but by noon was a wreck.  

I knew it already, but one of the negative things about being a lawyer, at least in some cases, your health matters only to you, and you keep on going anyhow.  I had to crawl down to work every day, didn't eat at night, and had the fevers of delirium all night long.  Nobody really care that much as they have things they want to you to do.  "Help me!".  So you go and do it, knowing you are killing yourself.

"You don't look good".  "You look worn out". Things I was hearing during the week.

Oh well, the weekends here . . and I worked.

The glory of the law.

The law, they say, is a jealous mistress.  As one still practicing older lawyer told me, "the law's a bitch".  Both are true.

The same week an event in 1925 recalled a proposal in 2025 that didn't go anywhere, thank goodness.

Tuesday, March 3, 1925. Monumental.

Saturday, March 3, 1945. Manila taken.

Last week's entry here was pretty grim, but in a really strange way, we seem to have turned a corner in the story of the False Trump Presidency.  Now a significant portion of the population, I'd guess well over 50%, regards him for what he is, a buffoonish demented toddler.  You have to worry about him, as he's literally a toddler with his finger on the nuclear key, and this pat week in spite of all his weird ramblings about "beautiful" young men getting killed in the Russo Ukrainian War, he showed himself willing to get more killed.  Like toddlers, he is only concerned about himself.

But now everyone, save for the most ignorant, deluded, or convinced, is simply marking time for him to die or be replaced.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. 77th Edition. A bridge too far?

We resumed looking at the collection of the National Museum of Military Vehicles in Dubois.

Punitive Expedition Display, National Museum of Military Vehicles, Dubois Wyoming

We were reminded of a time when the Republican Party had dignity.

Wednesday, March 4, 1925. The Second Inauguration of Calvin Coolidge.

We lived through a time in which it doesn't.

Trump's address to Congress.

We recalled one of the large events prior to the Revolution, one which would end up notable for the dedication Americans of the period showed to the law in spite of passions.

Sunday, March 5, 1775. The Boston Massacre.

We recalled the birth a jazz great who left us too soon.

Friday, March 6, 1925. Wes Montgomery born.

The most famous Ameircan v. German tank dual of the Second World War took place, in a dense urban environment.

Tuesday, March 6, 1945. Soviet murders in Poland and Eagle 7.

Random snippets. Nero's Court.

The Ludendorff Bridge was taken in one of the great moments of World War Two.

Wednesday, March 7, 1945. The Bridge at Remagen taken.

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List.

Donny imposed tariffs and then backed off, with Mexico rolling its eyes and Canada saying "fuck you and the horse you rode in on".

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 2. The Stupidist Trade War In History Edition.

Tuesday, March 8, 1910. First pilot's license issued to a woman.

Wars and Rumors of War, 2025. Part 2. The world is not a development opportunity edition.

What I found out in Kansas

Last edition:

The week of February 23, 2025. The week the US became Brazil.

Labels: 2020s, 2025, Best Posts of the Week, Commentary, Donald Trump, Populism, Republican Party, The Second Trump Administration, United States

The week of February 23, 2025. The week the US became Brazil.

J. D. Vance boring Peru, Tuvalu,  and Kiribati while the adult nations meet elsewhere.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Martin Luther King Jr.

This last week saw the conclusion of existential shift in the United States.  The country went from being a great nation, albeit with greatness foisted upon it due to World War One, World War Two and the Cold War, to becoming a second rate regional power hated by its neighbors and regarded as an also ran by the rest of the world.

Basically, since November, and concluding last week, we went from being what the country was following World War Two, to Brazil.

The concluding act was Donald Trump, whom the nation is pretending to be President, berating a heroic embattled President of a heroic embattled nation.  At that point, every head of state around the globe just switched the senile narcissist developer off.  He showed himself to be stupid and by extension, showed the US to be worshipping stupidity. 

Why would anyone care what we think.

In the next few days the act will play itself out.  The US will impose tariffs on our neighbors and sink into a recession that will last a decade or more.  We'll be lucky if it isn't a depression. This assumes, of course, that we're nto at war with China within a year and a half.  If that occurs, we'll fight it, and lose, on our own.  Our former allies have written us off all over the globe, and for good reason.  As an importing nation, we're about to find out economically that we just slit our wrists and everyone is going to let us bleed out.

And they should.

The decline of the US was perhaps inevitable.  Americans, and its Americans, not their government, have never figured out how to live within their budgets.  Government wise, we ran a big government from 1932 on, but always had a hard time balancing it.  We went off the charts thsi way in the first Trump administration, with the country lead by a stupid man who never had to live wthin his own budget.  The country, which has always had a strong element of anti intellectualism as Richard Hofstadter well explored in his published in 1963 Pulitzer Prize winning book on the topic in which he concluded  both anti-intellectualism and utilitarianism were in part consequences of the democratization of knowledge but also embedded in America's national fabric as a result of its colonial and evangelical Protestant heritage. He believe,d and we've recently discussed, that Evangelical American Protestantism's anti-intellectual tradition valued the spirit over intellectual rigor.  In the turbulent times that have come from 1963, that's festered and become a near worship of ignorance over science, something that the Reagan Administration's abandonment of science fostered.

But its also the case that being ain international power is expensive and nobody has been able to maintain a singular global status forever.  The British run of it, for example, was much shorter than generally imagined. So was Spain's.  The Japanese effort barely got off the ground bfore it collapsed.  So our 1945 to 2025 run probably was a good run.

But it didn't need to end this way, with the nation collapsing as an international joke.

Some nations have come to this point and managed to transition with dignity.  The United Kingdom particularly did, realizing after the failed 1958 Suez Canal intervention that it could no longer hold on it its empire.  It simply announced the arrival of The Winds of Change and worked with those winds.  In the 1960s the United Kingdom was still a major colonial power. By the 1970s it no longer was, and was then a European power.  Today, it's one of the leading European nations.

A former British colony, however, provides a contrary example.  Unable to accept those winds, Rhodesia chose to stand against them and declared itself independent and unyielding to change.  Change was violently foisted upon it, giving us the mess of Zimbabwe today.

France may really provide the example we need to consider.

In the 1930s France was a political mess and appeared to be teetering on the edge of taking the same path that Spain had, a civil war between a strong left and a strong right.  World War Two interrupted that, but it also temporarily completed it, throwing the government to the far right autocracy of Marshall Petain.

France from 1940 to 1944 was not the every Frenchman in the Resistance nation that France and Hogan's Heroes pretended existed by any means.  A huge percentage of the French were comfortable with a new France that replaced "liberty, equality  and fraternity" with "work, family, and country".  Petain was, in significant ways, what Franco also was, an earlier version of National Conservative.  He was also, and this should not be forgotten, part of an elected government that even the Socialist who remained supported.

Not all Frenchmen supported the rightest government, of course, and as the months rolled by, and it was a mere matter of months, World War Two for France became a French civil war.  After June 6, 1944, and then after World War Two itself, Franch struggled with what it was to become and made a desperate effort to hang on to its empire, failing first in Indochina and then in Algeria.  France was lucky to have Charles de Gaulle, heroic, haughty, deeply Catholic and committed to democracy.  De Gaulle saved France, but huge elements of French society, particularly within the military, were opposed to his agreeing to dismantle the remaining parts of the empire and become, once again, a major European country.  De Gaulle and French democracy barely survived.

We're effectively in the same position these countries were after World War Two. And indeed, there were things to address.  The United States acclimated itself to running huge deficits and the last two chief executives, Biden and Trump, or rather Trump, Biden, and Trump again, vastly accelerated out of control spending.  The US remains a powerful global power, but this would have resulted in some reckoning sooner or later.  The American public has become poorly educated in many was post Ronald Reagan, and it no longer grasps why the US should be a world power.  Basically, Americans are like the French of the Vichy era, folding in on themselves into work, family, and love of a country that doesn't have to deal, they think, with anyone else.

National Conservatism, which will follow Trump's demise will fail. The US won't convert itself into isolated mythical kingdom, and it won't enjoy being the temporarily biggest bully on the block.  The real question is whether or not it will enjoy being Brazil.

Trump's stupidity and lack of releavant experience has caused the United States to be removed to the children's table.  The opinions of the country no longer matter on the global stage.

And honestly, some of this will be a good thing, while much will be bad.  While the US has been a major force for democracy and good in the world since the Second World War, starting with the Trumpist decline in the Republican Party, suppressed elements of real ignorance have been harming the world, chief among them being a stubborn refusal to recognize that the fossil fuel era needs to change, and quickly.  We've been, essentially, like China in that regard.

Now with the Western World's axis shifted back to Europe, with Canada and the other English speaking nations with it, the US will have to change, and quickly.  A blistering sense of arrogance and ignorance that has come to define Americans in recent years will have no currency and will not be tolerated. We'll be told what to do, and like it.

All empires fall. Some fall into stupidity.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

The best entries of this sad week:

We started to look into the elements that have caused Americans in this era to worship the rich and reject knowledge, and started with this one.

What's wrong with the United States? The Protestant Work Ethic.

We also looked back on an event from when we were a great nations.

Friday, February 23, 1945.

What were the Trumps doing in the war. . . . well not fighting.

We posted one we thought would be controversial, but which received very little attention.

Women and combat

We also looked at another source of our ignorance and arrogance.

Lex Anteinternet: What's Wrong with the United States? Cultural and linguistic ignorance.

We reminded people that all of this is happening under a man who isn't even the President, he can't legally qualify to be that, but who has no mandate at all.

Trump's Mandate? There isn't one.

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List.

We also revived our warning that Christians in general are going to take a lot of this on the chin.

"Do not be led astray: 'Bad company corrupts good morals.' Trump, Putin and American Evangelicals.

Thursday, February 25, 1915. The Cottonwood Bluff War.

You know, insulting Canada and Canadians, as Trump has done, and slapping a tariff on Canada, as Trump has done, while tweeting about the need to finish the XL Pipeline, as Trump has done, is, well, really stupid.

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 2. The Stupidest Trade War In History Edition.

The 2025 Wyoming Legislative Session. Week 7. The photo says it all.

We concluded our first entry on wars for 2025 with Trump's petulant childish tantrum, which is basically where this thread starts.

Wars and Rumors of War, 2025. Part 1. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

Last edition:

Best Posts of the Week of February 16, 2025.

Wars and Rumors of War, 2025. Part 1. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

Matthew, Chapter 24.

And so we're on to a new year.

Armenian woman kneeling beside her dead child in Syria during the Battle of Aleppo.

Heading into 2025, the big news remains the Russo Ukrainian War.  Other wars are going on, of course, including the Middle Eastern War, as we have termed it here, in which the United States is an occasional belligerent.

As the world is just a few days away from the inauguration of Donald Trump as president, there's good reason to be concerned about the impact this will have on various conflicts, the Russo Ukrainian War in particular.  Trump has long been a Putin fan boy for reasons which remain very difficult to discern.  Over the past three years Russia has proven that it is, at best, a weak regional power.  Putin is bankrupting his country and his armed forces have been reduced to such a level that he's imported North Korean forces to aid his, with North Korean being a Stalinist Clown College.

Ukraine has managed to hold on against its much larger neighbor in no small part due to largescale Western support.  Europe has actually, at this point, contributed more to Ukraine than the US has.  US leadership and support has been critical, but its often missed that the US has used the war to clear out obsolescent stocks of arms and, in fact, could do much more of this if it wished to, and should.  Trump, however, has been generally hostile to Ukraine and lovey dovey to Putin.  His relationship to the Russian head of state is so peculiar that it has long raised questions about what's behind it.

Trump, of course, who didn't serve in his nation's war when he was of military age, claims to abhor war and he may in fact have that view.  He generally doesn't like military men that much, and he's sufficiently wealth and self centered that he frankly might just not grasp that there are people who are willing to fight and die for their country.  Be that as it may, however, like many of the populist camp, quite a few of whom are strongly influenced by a certain strain of Evangelical Protestantism, he has an "Israel can do no wrong" view.  There is no reason to believe, therefore, that the incoming administration won't essentially give Israel a free hand in whatever it wants to do in the ongoing struggle in the Middle East.

The US, it might be noted, retains a small number of forces in Iraq and Syria.  Trump made sounds about pulling US forces out of Syria when he was first elected, but he didn't.  He's made some statements about the US having no role in Syria now, but the US forces in Syria aren't sufficient to impact the outcome of the war there, and are there only to address ISIL in the region.  There is, therefore, no real way to know how the change in administrations will impact that.

In terms of prognostications, its notable that Russia's 2024 effort in Ukraine have produced no real results.  That Putin isn't trying to commit larger forces to the region and is instead allowing his forces to be bled is telling.  He probably can't do more.  Ukraine, however, remains unable to push Russia out. The situation therefore depends nearly entirely on what the US and Western Europe does.

The commitment of North Korean troops was always boing to be a failure and will be.  North Korea is much more of a paper tiger than many suppose.  Mostly, a lot of North Koreans will get killed. Those who return to North Korea will have been exposed to a partially westernized Russia. Stalinist have always feared that as it means there's now a population that knows things could be much better somewhere else.  Moreover, those returning will be elite troops.  They'll be much like French Algerian troops who returned home to Algeria after fighting in Indochina, and that won't be good for the Communist Hermit Kingdom.

Right now, in regard to Syria, there's really no real reason to hope that the country breaks into a western democracy.  At least some period of internecine strife appears likely, absent a massive intervention by Turkey, which we really do not want.

January 1, 2025

Russo Ukrainian War

In a sort of odd even in the ongoing war, a deal between Ukraine and Russia which allowed for the transport of natural gas across Ukraine into Europe, in spite of the war, expired this past week and, as a result, Ukraine shut the pipelines down, which makes perfect sense.

This creates, for the most part a less dire situation than a person might suppose.  Europe receives 5% of its natural gas from Russia.  Another pipeline that does not go through Ukraine does exist.

Unless you are in Moldova.

This is the only way the breakaway Transnistria region gets gas, and the impact there has been immediate.

January 6, 2025

Russo Ukrainian War

Ukraine has launched a new offensive in Russia's Kursk Oblast.

Last edition:

In this instance, of course, the last edition was, from last year.

January 8, 2025

United States v. Panama

United States v. Denmark

Today's headline in the Tribune:

TRUMP TALKS USING MILITARY IN TAKEOVER

Trump appears to be demented, and the US acting illegally in a war against Panama and NATO Ally Denmark should be taken seriously.

January 13, 2025

Russo Ukrainian War

Donald Trump's special envoy for the Russo Ukrainian War, who of course right now is simply a private citizen and may always be, has declared that Trump will end the war within 100 days of taking office.

Originally it was within 24 hours of taking office.

After that, it was within 24 hours of being elected.

Of course, a person would have had to have drank the KoolAide to believe either of the first two, and not to heavily doubt the third.

A really interesting look at North Korean troops in the war:

Troops Captured by Ukraine Provide Rare Glimpse Into North Korea’s Military

January 15, 2025

Middle Eastern War/Hamas Israeli War

Hamas and Israel appear to have agreed to a complicated cease fire.

January 20, 2025

Middle Eastern War/Hamas Israeli War

The first prisoners and hostages were released yesterday.

No more wars?

That was the promise of the Trump campaign, along with the price of groceries going down (they won't) and the war in Ukraine ending within 24 hours after his nomination to the GOP ticket (that didn't happen).

No more wars isn't shaping up to be true either.  

Two huge stories broke yesterday on Face the Nation, but with all going on, they aren't getting that much attention.

They are, in the style of this thread:

Israel v. Iran?

Lindsey Graham was on Face the Nation yesterday begging for Israel to hit Iranian nuclear sites.  He will be "engaging" Trump on this topic.

United States v. Mexican Cartels?

Incoming National Security Advisor strongly hinted that the US will be listing two Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations and implied that the US will be intervening in Mexico to take them on.

I'm frankly amazed this isn't a banner headline.  

If this goes in the direction that it seems to be, one of the purposes of having Graham and Waltz on the day before the inauguration on the best of the three weekend news shows is to get the information out, in a sort of early and curve ball fashion, that we're headed into to major military actions.  We apparently are going to urge the Netanyahu administration to basically finish the Iranian regime off, or at least decapitate its nuclear potential, and we're going into Mexico with special forces and aircraft, the way we've fought in Syrian and Iraq over the past two decades, but in a much more substantial fashion.

Whatever a person thinks of these proposals, Iran is not going to go gently into the night, although you could argue, as some have, that its down on its knees and needs to be wiped out.  

Mexico, no matter what the incoming Trump administration might think, does not want troops on its soil again for the third time.  It would likely fight back against an intervention, just like it did in 1916, even when the intervention is against an internal enemy, just like it was in 1916.

At any rate, at least right now, it would appear that the incoming administration isn't really against wars.  It's just in favor of different, and bigger, wars.

January 24, 2025

Russo Ukrainian War.

North Korea is sending more cannon fodder to the war.

This won't serve to turn the tide in favor of Russia, and if it continues, it will destroy the core of the North Korean army and leave an embittered veterans class.  The real threat to Ukraine now is Donald Trump.  So far Trump seems to have assumed that his pal Putin would simply end the war because Donald was elected, or perhaps due to something in the relationship between them (Trump is undeniably a Russian asset, the question is what kind of Russian asset he is, bought and paid for or by personal inclination).  Trump's present plans in regard to his first broken campaign promise is to cause the Saudi's to lower the price of oil as that will make Russia's too expensive to buy, apparently.

January 26, 2025

Middle Eastern War

The Trump Interregnum is resuming shipments of 2,000 lbs bombs to Israel on the basis that "they bought and paid for them", reflecting his sad view of the world.

Whether a person supports Israel or not, already leopards are eating the faces of left wing pro Palestinian voters and Arab American voters in the US who didn't support Harris.  Trump will make Biden look like a peace protester as far as Israel is concerned, and the far right is packed with the element that feels Israel can do no wrong.

Trump also is proposing to Jordan and Egypt that they take in the Gazans so that Gaza can be "cleaned out".  While there is in fact some merit to the Gazans being relocated (we suggested this earlier), both countries have rejected the idea completely and Trump's phone call diplomacy is working no more successfully here than it did with his call to Denmark's leader about his bizarre demand for Greenland.

January 28, 2025

Congo

The Congo River Alliance, backed by Rwanda, entered the country and took a major city this week.  Made up of 17 parties, the principal member is the U.S. and UN sanctioned March 23 Movement.  I have no idea what they are seeking.

January 31, 2025

Congo

M23 rebels seized control of Goma and are advancing toward the South Kivu provincial capital of Bukavu. 

February 1, 2025

US v. ISIL

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Statement on U.S. Africa Command Strikes in Somalia Feb. 1, 2025 Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth statement on U.S. Africa Command strikes in Somalia At President Trump's direction and in coordination with the Federal Government of Somalia, I authorized U.S. Africa Command to conduct coordinated airstrikes today targeting ISIS-Somalia operatives in the Golis mountains. Our initial assessment is that multiple operatives were killed in the airstrikes and no civilians were harmed. This action further degrades ISIS's ability to plot and conduct terrorist attacks threatening U.S. citizens, our partners, and innocent civilians and sends a clear signal that the United States always stands ready to find and eliminate terrorists who threaten the United States and our allies, even as we conduct robust border-protection and many other operations under President Trump's leadership.

February 6, 2025

Arab Americans For Trump has changed its name to Arab Americans for Peace following Trump's proposal to remove the Palestinians from Gaza and turn it into an American territory.

Basically, they realized they'd been dumbasses, which was plenty obvious to start with.

Israel has of course leaped right on this lunatic suggestion and instructed its military to be prepared to allow Palestinians to leave, although freedom to leave a region is generally regarded as a human right.

It should be worth noting right now that a US presence of this type guarantees death will come to Americans involved in it, and we will now be a direct combatant in a nearly 80 year old guerilla war in the region.

I'd also note that a lot of far right evangelicals have a very peculiar view of Israel, and we now have a Secretary of Defense who is all tatted up with appropriated Crusader symbols, although a Crusader coming back form the dead would regard him as a heretic.

Oh well, what could go wrong?  Leopards won't eat our faces.

February 17, 2025

Russo Ukrainian War, Taiwan and World War III.

Donald Trump, who promised to end the Russo Ukrainian War upon being nominated for the Republican ticket, and also within 24 hours of being elected, is belatedly trying to make good upon his promise. . . but on what terms.

This past week the United States has basically told its European allies that its abandoning Europe and at the same time is starting unilateral talks with Russia in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia?

Hmm. . . . 

The Saudi's likely regard Trump as an epic clown, and have no real interest in the war ending, so who knows what's up with that.

Anyhow there are widespread fears, and legitimate ones, that Trump is just out to betray Ukraine Chamberlin style.  Trump's life reduces simply to money for Trump, and he's a man with no real values, so he likely genuinely can't grasp what the war is about.  At the same time he's trying to extract an economic deal from Ukraine, as that's all he really understands.  

Not very well grasped in this is that the US is rocketing towards a world war, with Trump being too dense to grasp it.  We've been harrassing Taiwan in recent weeks while we also removed a statement from our embassy website that we don't support its independence from China. Now, we apparently don't object to that.  I'm fine with that, but what Trump doesn't grasp is the following:

We'll be in a type of world war.

Chinese poster from 1971. The Chinese have long memories.  Americans have the memories of gnats.

And I don't mean figuratively, I mean actually.

Somewhere around here is a post that predicted, at the time it was posted, that we would be at war with China within, I thought, about five years.  We aren't at that mark yet. 

China wants Taiwan and have been openly planning to invade it for years.  The Biden Administration was fairly openly planning on the defense of Taiwan.  Japan and the Philippines expect it to occur as well.

Trump is now punishing Taiwan economically, and China is going to move to get it.  The Chinese are not dumb, and my guess is that they don't figure that Trump will be around long either.  

North Korean Army poster.  North Korea is desperate, and it undoubtedly regards Trump as a complete doofus.

Trump's a demented doofus who is destroying the American government.  This would be the ideal time for China to act.  And if they do, and I think they will, North Korea will attack South Korea shortly thereafter.  Whatever has gone on or is occuring in Eastern Europe, Russia will launch a massive fully mobilized campaign against Ukraine, and maybe the Balkans and Poland.  You can easily see a scenario where China attacks Taiwan and North Korea attacks South Korea later that same week, and Russia has a major offensive occuring within a month.

Russian poster equating the Russian invasion of Ukraine with the Soviet victory in World War Two.

Indeed, if I led China, and the morals of the Chinese leadership, I'd do it. The balance of risks is on their sides, and will even be more on their sides after Elon Musk takes the meat cleaver to the military.

What will Trump do?  Probably babble and vacillate.  He'll yap for about a week on the basis that world leaders listen to him.  After a week, the situation will be grave for Taiwan and we'll be in an all out war in South Korea.  We'll act then, but we'll have lost a week which means when we do, we're going to take a naval pounding.

Trump, it might be noted, didn't answer his country's call when it came in Vietnam.  Musk managed not to be conscripted into the South African Army by migrating to Canada.

I think our chances of winning such a war are very slim.

A war like that isn't avoidable and we'll get in it.  Probably with Vance as head of state as Trump's escorted out the door babbling.

The reason Trump can't grasp this that Trump can't grasp that not everything is for sale.  Indeed, most things aren't for sale, and in much of the world very little is for sale.  For China, bypassing taking Taiwan does not have a dollar value. For Taiwan, reuniting with China doesn't have a dollar value.

We're headed towards World War Three.

February 20, 2025

Russo Ukrainian War

There were sharp words between President Zilensky and Donald Trump yesterday in which Zilensky said the quite part out loud saying the would be was "living in a disinformation space".  Trump ironically hit back by calling Zalinsky a "dictator", a real irony for a person illegitimately gathering autocratic authority to himself.

Trump's efforts to end the Russo Ukrainian War might actually have begun to sew the seeds of his irrelevancy.  Europe is united against Trump and Russia, as Trump tries to revive an late 19th Century view of foreign policy. And Trump's legendary negotiating skills, which are really fairly thuggish, don't appear to be working outside of the world of real estate, with Trump's worldview so limited that he can't really grasp that most people don't dream of being Florida golf course owners.  The question in increasingly becoming to what extent will his interregnum damage the United States internally and globally before an actual President returns to office.

March 1, 2025

Russo Ukrainian War

Yesterday made it clear that Donald Trump is really a spoiled, and not very smart, child.

Raised with a sliver spoon up his ass, and a bully by heart, with a career of well funded bulliness, he's come to believe he's a genius, as have his largely ignorant supporters, the latter of whom are seemingly unaware that a person born into Trump's wealth could have the IQ of a houseplant and still make money.

Trump, busy trying to make a deal to extort Ukraine's mineral wealth in exchange for . . . well it's not clear, found that leaders of country's don't respect spoiled children.  This lead to a short of shouting match between Trump and President Zelenskiy in the White House.

In the past month Europe as a whole has moved away from the United States, as has Canada, and are well on their way to forming a new second power block as the United States fades into being a regional petulant power.  Tariffs next week will finish it.  Ukraine will likely turn to Europe, and the US, lead by a spoiled not very smart brat, will turn into an economically hobbled regional bully in which somewhat over half the population dislikes to outright detests its leadership

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

Last edition:

Wars and Rumors of War, 2024. Part 9. Closing out 2024.

Labels: Donald Trump, Lebanon, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Putin, Russo Ukrainian War, Syrian Civil War, Trailing Posts, Trailing thread, War, Wars and rumors of wars