Iran Amok Again

At a pre-inaugural party for President-elect Ronald Reagan in January 1981, as the Iran hostage crisis was nearing its end - the American hostages were released on January 20, 1981, the day President Reagan was sworn in - Bob Hope, always one for a zinger that bordered on bad taste but was still trenchant, told the following joke: "What's big, sandy, and glows in the dark?  Iran, after Reagan's inaugurated." 

Ronald Reagan, of course, had no intention of nuking anyone, viewing nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip in which to negotiate with the United States' adversaries - "Peace is only achieved by a projection of strength" - in hammering out a treaty.  Like the Flintstones" character the Great Gazoo and his button for destroying the universe, Reagan never had any intention of using the U.S. nuclear arsenal.  He just liked the idea of having one.

Trump does want to use nuclear weapons - because he figures that there's no sense in having them if you don't use them - and so threatened to wipe out Iran and seven thousand years of its history and heritage with said nukes to make Iran open the Strait of Hormuz, which would still be open today if Trump hadn't started a war with Iran in the first place.  But then, at the last minute, Trump announced a "cease-fire" that he tried to treat as a victory and as a testament to his negotiating skills.  Right.  Only the Strait of Hormuz remains under Iranian control and the Iranians are charging fees - tolls, if you will - for oil tankers, and the "deal" does nothing regrading Iran's nuclear program.  Meanwhile, the "cease-fire" is being violated by the U.S.'s closest and only partner, Israel, which is busy bombing pro-Iranian militias in southern Lebanon.

All indications that, short of nuking Iran proper, Trump plans a ground assault on Kharg Island, the strategic island where Iran's oil exports are stored and sent out, which could involve a force as big as 50,000 service personnel.  It would be a fruitless - a fatally fruitless - endeavor, for the war is already lost.

Anyone who's been to a gas station can attest to that.  

As for rising gasoline prices . . . get used to it, SUV owners.  Good luck in finding a more fuel-efficient replacement.

Heck of a Way To Start Easter Season

Easter, for those who don't know, is not just one Sunday after the first full moon of spring but an entire season devoted to rebirth and renewal.  So bear that in mind when you see Donald Trump's post from yesterday, Easter Sunday, on his misnomered TruthSocial social media platform.

To think, eighty-five thousand people are cheering him on.

Trump is either evil or crazy, though, like the Joker, he's likely both.  And I doubt he's joking.  It looks like he will mark tomorrow, April 7, with the fire and fury he threatened against North Korea in his first term of office.  Bombing power stations and bridges used primarily by civilians is, of course, a war crime, and he will have to answer for plenty to many if he goes ahead with this idea.

And if Trump is interested in a little Easter-time ecumenicalism, he sure has a funny way of showing it with his mocking reference to Allah, which Iranian religious leaders - who are also government leaders - will not forget.  Or forgive.  As an infidel, Trump can expect severe punishment from the mullahs in charge.

Meanwhile, Roman Catholics - already under the gun from progressives for too many reasons to list - have been slighted by the Pentagon.  Evangelical warrior Pete Hegseth - whose boss won the majority of the Catholic vote in 2024 because Trump managed to convince enough of them that the Democrats mocked their values and because Kamala Harris couldn't be bothered to show up at the Al Smith dinner - let Catholic service personnel know that there would be no Good Friday services aimed at Catholics in the Pentagon chapel this year, as his pastor has denounced Catholicism and has called for the banning of Catholic idolatry in public spaces.

Between the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence on one hand and the evangelicals on the other, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Catholics are becoming increasingly paranoid, though Pope Leo XIV has gone a long way toward repairing the Church's negative reputation.

It is in this milieu, in which Hegseth has declared the war against a Muslim country to be a crusade, that Trump is suspected to be planning nuclear strikes.

Today marks the 196th anniversary of the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, i.e. the Mormon Church, whose followers are constantly preparing for End Times, when Jesus returns and the angel Moroni will herald His return with the sound of his horn.

Blow your trumpet, son.  See you in Kansas City.     

Locked and Loaded

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says his country will no longer test nuclear weapons.

Donald Trump sees this as positive step in advance of his planned summit with Kim later this spring.

Uh, Donald?  The reason Kim isn't testing nuclear weapons anymore is because he doesn't need to test them anymore.  The experimental phase is is over - North Korea is now a nuclear power!  Kim wanted those weapons because he believes that peace can only be achieved from a position of strength.

And where did he get that idea from?  He got it from us!

Specifically, this guy.

Or maybe you don't remember the American arms buildup of the early 1980s.

Right, now that Internet neutrality has officially bitten the dust, I don't expect this post to get very far . . .

Russian Dopes

I have  a feeling that the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea this coming February are going to be pretty interesting.  Because the Russian team has been banned from taking part over past doping violations.

This is a compete reversal over the concern as to whether the Soviet Union would participate in the Seoul Summer Olympics in 1988, because the U.S.S.R. had no diplomatic relations with the Republic Of Korea, and Cold War tensions were still very palpable then.  The Olympic moment hung by a thread back then.  But the Soviets did attend those Games, and, ironically, so did the doped-up East Germans.  Even more ironically, both countries were gone by the time the 1992 Olympics were held, and South Korea became a full-fledged democracy as a result of its experience hosting the Summer Games.  But the focus in international athletics then turned away from Cold War tensions and even more to state-sponsored performance-enhancing drug programs, as various countries pursued athletic steroid use for national prestige and lucrative profiteering.  Soon individual athletes from sports non-powers got involved, and doping went from being a way for Communists to cheat to a way for everyone to cheat . . . even Americans.  Lance Armstrong, anyone?

We might not see any Americans cheat in Pyeongchang, though, and not because our athletes are all clean. The White House recently refused to commit to allowing a U.S. Winter Olympics team to South Korea, probably because of that nuclear-weapon thing on the other side of the DMZ.  NBC, already cheated out of broadcasting the 1980 Moscow Olympics due to geopolitical tensions, may not be happy about that, but who cares if Kim Jong Un decides to test missiles during the 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony?

And the 2020 Summer Games are in Tokyo . . .

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach may not like drugs, but I can imagine him having a good stiff drink right about now.

Going Nuclear

I thought we'd be spared any more saber rattling between Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un.  U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (above) has been in talks with the Chinese in an attempt to cool the tensions between the United States and North Korea and said there would be "lines of communications" with Pyongyang to prevent what Tillerson called the "dark situation" of a nuclear crisis. He even got China to approve sanctions on North Korea.

Then Trump told him to cut it out.

Trump told Tillerson that his efforts were a waste of time and added, "Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!"

This sounds like a man who sees the danger of the North Korean crisis and is ready to take bold and decisive action to resolve it.

I meant Rex Tillerson.

It just flabbergasts me that Trump would rather risk - nay, start - a full-scale war in Asia and turn half if not all of Korea in to an ash pit than do anything that could avoid it.  Such a war could easily engulf a good chunk of the rest of the planet.

Both Trump and Tillerson have grandchildren.  The difference between the two is that Tillerson, who also opposed pulling out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, wants his grandchildren to live in a clean, safe world.

Tillerson obviously views his grandchildren differently.  He actually loves them.

Fire and Rain

The sanctions against North Korea to deter its development of a nuclear weapon this past Sunday came too late, as Kim Jong Un's government reportedly miniaturized a nuclear device to fit onto one of its missiles, which was reported on Tuesday.

The dear leader promised "fire and fury" against his adversary like the world "has never seen before."

Kim said that?  No, Donald Trump!

Later it was reported that North Korea was considering an attack on Guam.

As dangerous as Kim and his paranoia toward the United States are, Trump's airheaded machismo is exponentially worse.  The only way to deal with North Korea at this point is to try to find a diplomatic solution to avoid a military confrontation that could lead to a full-scale war worse than the one on the Korean peninsula in the early 1950s.  Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been making one declaration after another that the U.S. has no intention of removing Kim from power and uniting Korea under the government in Seoul, and now Trump has undermined him by answer Kim's nasty rhetoric with even nastier rhetoric.  With North Korea promising to rain fire down on the United States - including the East Coast! - those fallout shelters I used to see as a kid are going to have to be put back into service.  

And the Mormons can be expected to congregate en masse along the banks of the Missouri River for the Second Coming when Moroni blows his horn. :-O  

And remember, South Korea would be annihilated by a North Korean attack and and Japan is under greater threat than we are by virtue of its proximity to Korea.  South Korea's forces are too small to beat back North Korea alone, and Japan doesn't have much of a military to begin with these days.  Guess who's expected to step into the breach.  Guess.

Oh yeah, only 37 percent of voters approve of the way Trump is handling the Korea crisis. Good news, until you realize the 37 percent are the same voters that Steve Bannon wants to keep Trump connected to.

With hopes for a negotiated settlement with North Korea slipping away, we have to pin our hopes on the President . . . of China. Xi Jinping is the last person who can talk Kim Jong Un of the ledge over self-destruction.  Kim is, somewhat ironically, interested in survival, and if Xi can convince his fellow Communist leader that restraint in handling nuclear arms is his best recourse, that will help a lot.  But I don't see how he does that.  I don't even see how anyone keeps Trump restrained.

In the meantime, we have Trump trash-talking a guy who might be able to take out Los Angeles in a few months and take out Guam sooner.  I've never been afraid of nuclear war in my entire life, not even when Reagan was President, but I am now.  Even with Secretary Tillerson saying that Americans can "sleep well at night."  

And deciding to hold three consecutive Olympiads in the Far East has turned out to be a really stupid idea. :-( 

What To Do About North Korea

Okay, this is bad . . .

Kim Jong Un, the leader of the inappropriately and redundantly named Democratic People's Republic of Korea - that would be North Korea - just had his military conduct a successful missile test.  The intercontinental ballistic missile that was tested can reach Alaska . . . and  with a nuclear warhead, it can turn our 49th state into a baked Alaska.

And then it really will be the Last Frontier.

Okay, here's the situation.  Kim Jong Un wants nuclear weapons to prevent the reunification of Korea under the Republic of Korea in the south.  He wants to prevent his own people from rebelling against him - you can do that with nukes.  He also wants to drive a wedge between the United States and South Korea by pointing offensive nuclear weapons at the U.S.  He bases this policy on the fear that the U.S. would be instrumental in reunifying Korea under the government in Seoul.  Meanwhile, China, North Korea's closest (only?) ally, doesn't want a reunified capitalist Korea threatening its interests.  What can be done beyond tighter sanctions against North Korea?

Okay, here's the solution.

Leave Kim Jong Un alone.

I mean it.  Send a signal to the North Korean leader that we have no intention of bothering him, and maybe he won't bother us.  If he does, even after we and the South Koreans act in good faith and show a purely defensive posture along the so-called demilitarized zone, maybe the Chinese can go into North Korea and replace him with another Communist leader - someone who won't cause so much trouble but maintain the status quo.

Defense Secretary James Mattis believes that we can still use diplomacy.  As long as we make it clear that we're not going to do anything that would instigate an armed conflict with North Korea, Kim may very well realize that, should he succeed in developing nuclear weapons, like the Chinese did in the 1960s, he would be better off keeping them as deterrents to aggression, and not actually, well, using them.

And if all else fails . . . we can always call Dennis Rodman.

Happy Nuke Year

Donald Trump sees Russia's Vladimir Putin interested in making more nuclear weapons, so it's game on for Team USA!  As President, he plans to ramp up production of nuclear arms in this country, and may the greater participant emerge victorious!

Well, so, much for the détente a Trump Presidency promised. 

Of course, if Armageddon does start, it won't start in the Baltic region or Ukraine, but in the Middle East, where the actual Battle of Armageddon was fought.  And Israel will be ground zero.  After the Obama administration abstained and let a United Nations resolution against Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory pass, most Republicans and some Democrats slammed the abstention.  Trump has promised to rectify that and appoint as his ambassador to Israel a far-right Zionist named David Friedman and putting the U.S. clearly on the side of Israel and against everyone else.     

For his part, Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the U.S. and other countries can disagree with Israel on the settlement issue, but that the United Nations Security Council is not the place to discuss it.  Well, what is the place? Seems like that would be the perfect  place to discuss it, because stopping the settlements would help produce security to the Middle East.  

It is called the "Security Council."

Oh yeah, Trump has dismissed the U.N.'s existence.  I suppose the United Nations will expel the U.S., and move to Geneva, freeing Trump's companies to turn that building on the East Side into condos.

To be served by the new Second Avenue Subway, which could also double as a bomb shelter. :-O

Inflexibility

Remember just last week when Mitt Romney was ridiculed in the press last week for his anger over President Obama's remark to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, inadvertently caught on an open microphone, that he could be "flexible" over nuclear weapons after the U.S. elections because Russia isn't considered an enemy anymore? Not so fast, buster! Other Republicans - and outgoing Independent-Democratic senator Joe Lieberman - have sided with Romney.  They still consider Russia to be a highly suspicious power, what with the aid the Russians have given Iran and their support of Syria . . . and, you know, some of the former Soviet republics and former Warsaw Pact countries (including, ironically, Poland) still don't trust them. House Speaker John Boehner angrily demanded an explanation for President Obama upon the President's return from Korea for his remarks to Medvedev. Obama has insisted that he only meant that he could negotiate over nuclear arms in better faith once election-year politics were no longer complicating the issue, and of course the Republicans are not buying that explanation. They think he wants to sell out America.

Meanwhile, psychologists who make a living writing books that try to explain why inflexible people destroy themselves will have their hands full trying to explain Keith Olbermann. The clown prince of liberal punditry was just fired from Al Gore's Current TV channel, and not because no one was watching Olbermann's "Countdown" - because no one watches anything on Current TV. Olbermann was fired for breach of contract, along with - among other things - failing to show up for work refusing to help promote the network, and also having less of a say in which shows preceded or followed his own. Geez, even Charlie Sheen never complained about what came before or after "Two and a Half Men" on CBS.

Disagreements between Olbermann and Current TV over coverage of the Iowa caucuses pretty much set the events in motion that led to Olbermann's dismissal. His own inflexibility was not the result of politics, national or office, but his own self-righteous arrogance. It has also resulted in Olbermann re-entering the job market for only a year or so after his similar prima-donna antics at MSNBC got him fired from that network, but with much fewer prospects than before.

Eliot Spitzer, late of CNN - possibly the only cable channel with lower ratings than Current's - has replaced Olbermann.

This growing inflexibility among both politicians and the media figures who cover them is why we have an insufficient health care law, why we have an ideologically charged Supreme Court, and why that same Court is likely to overturn that same law in June.

Pacem In Terris

Not since Pope John XXIII issued his landmark encyclical on the subject of world peace, Pacem in Terris, forty-seven years ago this month have the need for a better understanding and more negotiation between nations and the dignity of all humankind been so relevant in light of President Obama's nuclear weaponry summit in Washington. Obama and the leaders of 46 other countries reached wide-reaching agreements on the need to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and the goal of reducing and eliminating the national stockpiles of nuclear material. Mexico and Ukraine have agreed to slash production of high-enriched uranium, and Russia has pledged to close a plutonium-processing factory. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has proposed an international effort to crack down on elicit uranium trafficking, thought he has not committed to reducing the French nuclear arsenal any further.

The Summit on Nuclear Security has been a success for Obama because he has put the United States in a constructive partnership with containing nuclear proliferation and keeping such weapons out of the hands of terrorists, he has formed a greater consensus on pressuring Iran for its own nuclear weapon program, and he got commitments from various nations on further cooperation. Obama clearly wants to change the trajectory of American foreign policy that recognizes its limitations as a major power and seeks a leadership role among, rather than in opposition to, other countries. Because al-Qaeda and state-sponsored terrorism have been at the crux of these agreements, it should be hard for the Republicans to find any flaws in Obama's approach, and I don't really expect them to.

Nuclear Politics Go Ballistic

President Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signed a new and historic strategic arms reduction treaty in Prague yesterday, which seeks to begin a process toward the gradual elimination of nuclear weapons. The treaty calls for the reduction of 1,500 developed weapons, 700 deployed missiles and 800 deployed and non-deployed launchers. Furthermore, Obama has said that he is resolving not to threaten non-nuclear nations with atomic weapons as long as they have been proven to comply with international agreements involving nuclear weapons, so excluding Iran, even as he and other world leaders are trying to get Iran to stop developing a nuclear bomb.

So who on earth could be against this reasonable, balanced policy?

Oh, right. . . .

Well, the Queen of the Last Frontier came out against Obama's refusal to threaten non-nuclear states with the bomb, comparing it to letting a schoolyard bully hit you in the face without retaliating. But then she knows a thing or two about going after defenseless creatures.

It's not just Alaska's half-term governor emeritus who opposes Obama's nuclear policy, and they're not just against Obama's refusal to threaten non-nuclear countries with our arsenal. They're against the treaty itself. Many Republicans have charged that a large nuclear stockpile is not only necessary but desirable, as it's there to show other countries to think twice about messing with us. One conservative blog even compared it to male sexual prowess. "You see," an anonymous blogger wrote at AlterNet.com, "a nuclear weapon is like a large erection. George W. Bush’s foreign policy was like a large erection. Ally and adversary alike were cowed and impressed by these large erections. Obama is taking the blood out of our impressive foreign policy and system of deterrence. When it comes time to criticize a Democratic President’s foreign policy, the first thing is to accuse him of having a limp d**k."

This is the kind of stupidity that no amount of education reform can eradicate.

Commentary from these bullying high school dropouts notwithstanding, the treaty is expected to be ratified by the Senate despite a two-thirds majority required by the Constitution. Only eight Republicans are needed to join the Democratic caucus, and Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), a leading figure on the issue of nuclear proliferation, is expected to use his influence to find enough support on his side of the aisle.

Republicans such as Olympia Snowe of Maine should support this treaty, and even Scott Brown of Massachusetts is a possibility for a "yes" vote. Don't expect John McCain of Arizona to be any help - despite his support for arms control in the past, he's facing a tough re-election campaign in his state's Republican Senate primary and may want to avoid offending the right-wing rank and file who likely oppose this treaty without having even read it.

And if McCain's old running mate should ever be President, maybe we won't have to worry about a nuclear war. Hey, she should get along with Medvedev easily - after all, their practically neighbors! ;-)