Strait Jacket

When Iran got attacked, the Iranians took control of and closed the Strait of Hormuz, Trump responded by . . . blocking it?  A blockade of a strait that was already closed?  So no one could pay tolls to the Iranian government that Trump promised he would help the Iranian people overthrow? Blocking blockers?  That don't even make good nonsense.

Then Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz yesterday and Trump said the war would be over soon.  The stock market jumped.  But Trump never bothered to lift the U.S. blockade on the strait, so . . . Iran closed the strait again today and . . . well, apparently Trump made a killing off the killing by manipulating the market and then saying he plans to bomb Iran again soon.

Well, I've long since stopped trying to make sense out of all this, but I know that as long as the strait is closed, the Persian Gulf is the maritime equivalent of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory - no one goes in, no one comes out.  And since so many resources that make modern civilization function, including oil and helium, come out of the Gulf region, it means that much of the West and a good deal of the rest of the world will suffer really severe shortages of almost everything.  And given Iran's newfound power in the region and the United States' lost credibility, the Omanis and the Emiratis ought to consider a canal across the Musandam Peninsula to bypass the strait . . . though it would take at least a decade or so to even plan it before they could start building it.

Trump won't live long enough to deal with a long-term Iranian domination of the strait.  And that's assuming he even lives to see January 2029. 

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.

What Has Trump Done?

When I was a kid, my sister and I had to spend occasional weekends with my maternal grandmother, because my mother had to work overtime on Saturdays.  It was not fun, because my maternal grandmother lived in an inner-city neighborhood in which there was no sign of grass.  Even her entire backyard was paved.  Anyway, one weekend there, I did something incredibly and spectacularly wrong.  I won't say what it is, but when my grandmother called my mother and told her what happened, my mother demanded to speak to me.  When I took the receiver and said hello, the first thing my mother said was, "What have you done?"

If the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) had the same directness and indignation as my mother had in that moment she spoke to me, they would be asking Donald Trump the same question about the war he started against Iran.  But WHCA's president, apparently, is a wuss, and so are the other correspondents, so no one is asking that.

But I'll answer that unasked question.  What Trump has done is spark a regional war that includes attacks on Iran from Israel, whose leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is a war criminal who is continuing his crackdown on Gaza.  Iran has retaliated not just by attacking American military installations but attacking civilian targets in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and several other Middle Eastern countries with drones.  Trump and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth are responsible for having destroyed a girls' school in Iran in which nearly 170 students were killed.  Oil prices are going through the roof.  (That's the one good thing that has come out of this war; maybe Detroit will revert to making small cars - Ford has said it has the ability to do so in short order - and Americans will dump their sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, and maybe Volkswagen will finally sell the Polo in America and maybe Honda will bring back the Fit.)  An explosion at the U.S. Embassy in Norway - whose capital, Oslo, is the site of the accords that tried to establish peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians - may have been  an Iranian terrorist attack and could be a portent of things to come . . . not just in Europe but here in the U.S.  

And as if that weren't enough, Christian nationalist commanders in the military, no doubt with Hegseth's tacit approval, have declared that this war is the prelude to the End Times, when Christ returns to judge the living, the dead, and likely the undead - including MAGA zombies.

Well, that's going to ruin my summer vacation plans!

And as if that weren't enough, Russian leader Vladimir Putin - supposedly Trump's best bud - is giving intelligence on American military positions to the Iranians! 

You know, when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the war that began was, at first, a minor conflict over the status of Poland., with the Third Reich claiming it as living space and the British and the French fighting to help Poland preserve its independence.  Unable to send troops to Poland, Great Britain and France occupied land along the German border with France, and both sides exchanged harmless volleys,  leading to the war's original name, the "phony war."  (The Winter War, which began with the Soviet invasion of Finland in November 1939, was a separate conflict.)   In April 1940 the phony war became real as Adolf Hitler attacked and occupied Denmark and Norway, followed by a major blitzkrieg that result in the Nazi occupation of the Low Countries and the fall of France, prompting Italy to enter the war and prompting Japan, already at war with China, to join what then became known as the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.   By 1941, even before the Japanese attack on Peral Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt began referring to the conflict as "World War II."

My point - and I do have one - is that we are likely at the beginning of World War III, but it may take a year or two before that becomes apparent.  Such a war will likely redraw national borders at least, ,and end millions of lives at worst, and possibly wipe currently existing countries off the map.

Like the United States.

Oh yeah, that horrible thing I did at my grandmother's house?  It turned out to be no big deal in the end.  My mother would later laugh about it, though, I remembering the terror I felt at the time, did not.  And no one will look back in 2026 years from now and laugh.  They won't even have the urge to chuckle. 

War With Iran

Trump just began World War III. 

Early this morning, he commenced a full-scale missile and aerial attack on Iran with Israel.  The attack has nothing to do with getting Iran to give up its nuclear program.  

Iran has responded with counterattacks by firing missiles into Israel and every regional Gulf State except Oman.

And you can bet the gasoline prices are going to go up back home, and I feel sorry for anyone who owns a large SUV or a truck.  Not!  The switch back to smaller cars is the one likely good thing that can come out of this.

Oh yeah, Trump, in an effort to distract people from the Epstein files, is a war criminal now.  Now that he is a war criminal, who needs the Epstein files, really?  We can get him for war crimes instead of sexual assault, the same way they got Al Capone for tax evasion instead of bootlegging.

Regarding Iran - I'm Not Going To Talk About . . .

I'm not going to talk about Trump bombing Iranian nuclear-development sites despite the fact that they're so far underground they likely don't need fortified concrete ceilings.

I'm not going to talk about Pete Hegseth being the wrong man at the wrong place at the wrong time for any military operation.

I'm not going to talk about how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu played Trump into going along with joining Israel's attack on Iran.

I'm not going to talk about Trump's threat to Iran not to attack American interests in retaliation for the bombings and how the spectacularly insufferable New York Post predicted that Trump's posturing would lead to a prospect for peace and prosperity in the Middle East - and then Iran fired missiles at an American base in Qatar.

I'm not even going to talk about the need not to impeach Trump but for Democratic states to secede from the Union.  

Nor am I going to talk about how Trump's strategy to flood the zone with policy sewage keeps making me have to talk about him - "Oh, Christ, do I have to write about this?"  - when I really want to write something about the closing of the revered Wanamaker department store in Philadelphia and the end of penny production by the U.S. Mint.

I'm only going to say this.

If, by this point, you still have a Trump flag hanging in front of your house . . .

. . . you need some serious psychiatric help. 

Iran Amok

Donald Trump returned to office promising that he would never start another dumb war.  Except if it's with Iran.

Iran has been a bugaboo for Americans for years.  Having had an Islamic republican government since the revolution that swept out the vacuous and hated Shah in 1979, it is living proof that authoritarian states can, in fact, last a long time, contrary to popular wisdom.  The U.S. had supported the Shah and had even put him back in power at the request of the British to keep a socialist prime minister from nationalizing British oil interests, yet it wasn't the British Embassy in Tehran that got overrun by Iranian militants in January 1979, it was the American embassy.  That takeover was short-lived, but on November 4, 1979, two weeks after President Carter let the Shah come to America for medical treatment, militants in Tehran overran our embassy again and took its inhabitants hostage for fourteen months.  Subsequent attempts at normalizing relations with Iran backfired miserably.

Donald Trump clearly has a particular hatred for Iran, or at least for the mullahs who run the show there.  Perhaps the paranoid Trump, who believes that all other nations are out to humiliate us, had his own sensitivities offended when, at the age of 33, he saw the U.S. Embassy get seized in November 1979.  Something about it clearly wedged into the folds of his brain.  For he clearly bought Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's overheated rhetoric about Iran being close to getting the bomb, and he even in his first presidential term withdrew from the agreement that was meant to ensure that that would never happen.  The attacks Israel has launched against Iran have given Trump the excuse he needs to pursue another Middle Eastern war as part of a clearly psychological need to punish Iranians for burning all of those American flags.

Except that even some of his staunchest supporters - Tulsi Gabbard, Tucker Carlson - have a problem with that.  Carlson was even appalled when interviewing Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) on his Internet program and Cruz demonstrated his clear lack of knowledge about the very country he wants Trump to go ahead and attack.

Adding to this is the fact that Mike Huckabee, a born-again Christian, is the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, and his only qualification for that job is his experience with evangelical Armageddon prophesies.  He wants a war in the Middle East to bring about the Second Coming of Christ to restore the Garden of Eden with Christians, along with Jews who accept Jesus as the Messiah, to be saved and Muslims, along with Jews who still reject Jesus as the Messiah, to be condemned to the fiery furnace.

Meanwhile, the General Authorities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints will flee from Utah to the site where Mormons believe the Garden of Eden will be restored upon Christ's return - the place non-Mormons know as Kansas City.    

And wouldn't it be something it the Saints turn out to have been right all along.

I'd prefer not to find out just yet.  But it figures that I'm finally ready to travel to Europe, something I've wanted to do for 35 years, and yet one more thing might prevent me from doing so this time as well.

That thing is World War III.

Guess I'll be going to Kansas City instead.  I'm not a Mormon, but I want to hedge my bets.  Also, it's easier to get there than to the Holy Land. 

Gaza

It's been a year to the day since Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip crossed into Israel and murdered young people at a music festival that started out as being like Woodstock but ended up being twelve times worse than Altamont.  You would think that after a year of relentless bombardment of the strip, Hamas would be completely obliterated and the Israelis would be in complete control and the war would be over, as the Israelis clearly identified the enemy as Hamas, not "terror," as the U.S. did after 9/11 and chose to fight a war against a tactic more than against an organization.   

One year on, not only is the war against Hamas is still going on , but a series of  military operations between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah organization in Lebanon has begun and subsequently intensified.  What could happen if these military operations increase?  World War III, that's what.  Or worse.  How could it be worse? Add hostility from Arab-American and American Muslim populations in key swing states toward Kamala Harris and the evangelicals flocking to Donald Trump who believe that Armageddon is at hand, and, well, you can draw your own conclusions. 😱 

Iran Amok - 2024 Edition

After Israel attacked an consulate annex of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, claiming it was a building used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that was not part of the actual embassy, Iran attacked Israel with at least three hundred drones.  The Israelis, with help from the British, the Americans and the Jordanians, shot down all but a handful of the drones with the few that got through doing little damage.

President Biden asked Prime Minister Netanyahu to "take the win" and let the Iranians call it even, but Netanyahu has said that Israel will do anything it considers necessary to defend itself.

The mullahs who run Iran and the nation's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have regarded Israel as an enemy and as a country with no right to exist since the Islamic Republic took over in 1979 after overthrowing the Shah.  Just one more example of how American efforts to contain Soviet influence in the Cold War affect us to this very day.  If we hadn't put the Shah back on the Iranian throne in 1953 after ousting the socialist prime minister Mossadegh to appease British oil interests, we wouldn't have the Islamic Republic of Iran threatening Israel with annihilation. And we're obliged to help protect and support the Jewish state, even as the Iranians are possibly making a nuclear bomb.  Oh, that's better.   😠     

UPSET!

What?  

The U.S. Men's National Team (USMNT) defeated Iran 1-0 in Tuesday's World Cup soccer match?

Okay, I admit it I was wrong about the men's national soccer team.  (I was also wrong when I said that the U.S. and Iran were in Group D when they're in Group B; sorry about that, I fixed it.) .  When I saw that game, I, as Bill Maher might say,  went from "God damn USMNT!" to "God damn, USMNT!" 😊 

The USMNT is the third youngest team in this World Cup tournament, and they have a lot of energy and heart that other teams lack.  Also a lot of grit, and it was that grit that enabled Christian Pulisic (below) to score the only goal in Tuesday's game.

I saw the game on a recording the day after it happened, and to be honest, I knew the result beforehand.  When my mother told me that one of the players had hurt himself badly, I thought to myself, "That happens, that's why they have subs."  When I found out it was Christian Pulisic who'd injured himself, I thought, "Oh, this team is going to lose the next game big time!"   Pulisic got hurt in scoring the game's only goal and colliding with the Iranian goalkeeper.  The idea of the team carrying on without Pulisic is the sports equivalent of when the Doors tried to carry on after Jim Morrison died.  

The U.S .plays the Netherlands on Saturday.  Pulisic, hospitalized with a pelvic contusion, says he should be back in shape by then.  That's a tall order, but we'll see if he's able as soon as he's better . . . and better as soon as he's able. 

Political Football

The U.S. men's soccer ream faces Iran in tomorrow's Group B game.  If the Americans lose or play Iran to a draw, they're eliminated and go home with their fellow companion in misery, the Canadian team (which got blown out of the water by Croatia).

Iranian state media, however, have called for the U.S. to be eliminated immediately.

US Soccer removed the symbol of the Islamic Republic from the Iranian national flag in the graphic showing the Group B standings of both teams along with England and Wales (who also play teach other tomorrow - Brit against Brit, only in the World Cup, folks!).  US Soccer did so temporarily for 24 hours to show solidarity with Iranian women and anti-government Iranian men protesting against the hijab rule and to express anger over the brutal crackdown against said protestors.  Iran calls it an insult to the flag and has called for the expulsion of the Americans as punishment.

Because the Iranians show such great respect for the flags of other nations.

The U.S. men's team scored a lot of points for their defiance against Iran and supporting Iranian women.  Even sports journalist Christine Brennan, who never says anything about the men's team (probably because they lose a lot) voiced her approval for their actions.  But, alas, the American men are likely to score more points off the field than on it.  Iran is favored to win, and even if Iranian players don't concur with the anti-American hostility of their government (and by all accounts, they don't), their inevitable victory will expel the Americans for their leaders.  It will be like 1998 all over again, when the Iranians eliminated the U.S. Team from the World Cup in France, with the Americans coming in dead last, and the Iranian leadership poured salt in our wounds. 

Oh yeah, after that, the U.S. women's team came to the rescue of American honor a year later and won the Women's World Cup decisively. They've won it thrice since then, making the U.S. women's team the most successful women's soccer team in the world even as, among men's teams, the U.S. is among the least. 

This pattern is;likely to continue indefinitely.  The women will keep winning until, like Donald Trump likes to say, they'll be sick and tired of winning.  (Not that Trump would care about women's soccer, because it involved two things he completely disrespects - women and soccer.) The men? Aah, they're as likely to win the World Cup as Bernie Sanders is likely to become President.  The men's team, famous for sucking, cannot simply reverse decades of sucking and suddenly rise to a level of consistent competence.

But it could be worse. 

Our boys could be as bad as the Canadian men's team, which just got eliminated from only its second World Cup ever. 

Everybody Let Their Hair Down

When Iranian woman Mahsa Amini was arrested by Iran's "morality police" for showing too much hair from under her hijab and taken to a "re-education center," she was tortured to death.  Now women everywhere in Iran are protesting in the streets with their boyfriends, husbands, fathers and brothers joining in. 

Many women in Iran are not only tearing off their hijabs - meant to conceal hair to prevent women from showing any feminine beauty in public, an act of depravity in strict Islamic custom - they're also cutting or shaving off their hair in public.  One Iranian expatriate woman living in Italy explained this to CNN this way:  "We want to show them that we don’t care about their standards, their definition of beauty or what they think that we should look like.  It is to show that we are angry."  She also explained this practice being rooted in history and culture.  "In our literature, cutting the hair is a symbol of mourning, and sometimes a symbol of protesting,” she told CNN. "If we can cut our hair to show that we are angry . . ., we will do it."

Iranian women are doing it to the point where women all over the globe are expressing solidarity with them - even in America, where liberals have a tendency to show solidarity with Muslim women for supporting their right to leave their hijabs on.  (That white bourgeois liberal insistence that non-Western practices must always be condoned as cultural tolerance, you understand.)  The policing of women's dress in Iran as been a bone of contention ever since the Islamic Republic of Iran's first Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, first issued the hijab degree as part of his effort to roll back the Westernization of the country under the Shah.  That was the price to pay for being rid of the Shah's autocratic rule and suppression of dissent.  Except that the Islamic Republic is known for the exact same thing, apart from the fact that the Shah gave more freedoms to women than the mullahs running the country today do.

With so much anger at the the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - only the second Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic - and the gerontocratic Guardian Council that sustains him coming from Iranian youth over Mahsa Amini's death, some pundits are actually suggesting that the Islamic Republic's days are numbered and another revolution is at hand.  Don't bet on it.  The mullahs are well seasoned at maintaining power through their Revolutionary Guards and a well-funded police.  They take advantage of the latest information technology by studying how to suppress it and shut it down.  The Iranian leadership is, in short, well-versed in staying in power after 43 years of experience as Iran's government.

These protests are just the latest challenge to their authority.  This time they'll win by . . . a hair.        

Iran Amok Again

The conditions in the Middle East that existed before the assassination of Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani seem to have been restored, now that the Iranian government has admitted to shooting down a Ukrainian jet airliner by accident after having denied it.  The Iranian people are mad at the government for not being straight with them, and they're tired of being taken for fools by their authoritarian leaders.

And all the world is wondering and watching . . . not watching Iran, but watching Donald Trump and wondering how he's going to screw this up.

Every time something happens in the Middle East to the United States' advantage, Trump seems to undermine the very country he promised to put first and restore greatness to.   And the Democrats still haven't figured out how to respond to unfolding events either, if Nancy Pelosi's convoluted effort to criticize Trump for escalating tensions with Iran that may have led to the downing of this jetliner - with a lot of Iranian students - while making clear that she does not support the actions of Iran's government is any indication.  She was immediately attacked as pro-Iran, which, as I warned, is a good strategy in a culture that favors slogans over nuance.

Fortunately, Pelosi doesn't have to worry about that so much when Trump and his Cabinet are stepping on their own and each other's toes.  They can't even agree on whether or not multiple embassies were targeted by Soleimani before they took him out, and Trump reportedly authorized the operation back in May or June of 2019 and waited for the right (read politically expedient) moment to carry it out.  Yet, while a majority of Americans agree that the assassination of Soleimani makes the country less safe, a plurality of Americans supported the operation.  And the Iranian government has made it clear that they're not done with avenging his death just yet.

I think the best thing for America to do is let events in Iran run its course while keeping an eye out for possible proxy retaliations for Soleimani's death in the near future.  The protests in Iran right now could lead to a new regime in a relatively short time because that's more or less how the revolution against the Shah transpired - strikes and protests against his reign that began in late 1977 and picked up steam in late 1978 led to the Islamic Republic in early 1979.  This time I suspect that the timetable will be quicker.

Imminent Stupidity

When I heard Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insist that the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani was justified because of imminent threat to U.S. embassies in Iraq and elsewhere without providing any proof or explaining just how close they were to happening, I merely looked at him on the TV screen and had one thought in response:

"Nice tie!" 

I don't think American credibility has been lower than it is right now, but with Trump still in the White House and possibility getting his lease on it renewed in November (more about that in a minute), it could plummet to greater depths than the Marianas Trench soon.  European nations are angry with us and refuse to work with us now to secure Iraq, which wants our military out of its territory and has demanded a meeting to discuss the details of a withdrawal.  (Pompeo refused.)  Senators of both parties are disgusted with Trump about the briefing over the Soleimani killing because of the lack of transparency.  Trump's operation as also united Iraqis and Iranians against America (not to mention turning the entire planet against America!) and has turned Iranians to supporting their government after demonstrating against it. 

Get used to it.  In November, the voters will cast their ballots on two issues.  One is the economy and I can't remember what the other issue is.  And in fact, the economy is chugging full steam ahead.  And no matter how Democrats insist that they are not sorry Soleimani, who made a name for himself murdering Americans, is gone while saying simultaneously that now or any other time was not the right time to take him out because of the backlash it started, Trump will paint them as being soft on terrorism and unpatriotic.  And it will work - especially among older voters who remember the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-81.  He'll likely compare Democratic dissatisfaction with the Soleimani operation and how and where it was carried out (in Baghdad's airport) to opposition to executing Hermann Göring (who actually escaped a hanging at Nuremberg by committing suicide).  Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders - the wrong man at the wrong time - is ahead in Iowa while Joe Biden is in fourth place and attractive candidates like Michael Bennet are getting no place.  (Bright side: Marianne Williamson finally quit the race.)  The Democrats ought to prove themselves in appealing to the general electorate and getting the voters to think of something more essential and more important than the economy, but the 2020 presidential campaign suggests that they're not capable of doing either.

Nice tie.

Is Baghdad Burning?

Shortly after the United States committed air strikes on on the Iran-backed Kataeb Hezbollah militia in Iraq, members of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a mostly Shia Muslim group formed to fight the mostly Sunni Islamic State group, attacked the high-security U.S. Embassy  compound in Baghdad.  They got through the main door of the compound, causing chaos for the American soldiers and Marines defending the embassy.  Trump blamed Iran for egging on the PMF, and he vowed to take punitive action against the Iranians in retaliation.  The U.S. air strikes were themselves in retaliation for the killing of an American contractor at an American base in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

Can you say, "threat to world peace," boys and girls?

At least, a threat to the global oil market, and also the Dow.  And now that Iranian Revolutionary Guard leader Qasem Soleimani has been killed on Iraqi soil on Trump's orders - an act of war by any definition - it could threaten everything else.  Yes, General Soleimani was a bad actor on the world stage who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, but will taking him out lead to even greater trouble - and more terrorist acts?

If there's a foreign-policy crisis that will end Trump's Presidency, this may be it.  Now, I'm not going to wish for a takeover of the Baghdad embassy that would result in an interminable hostage crisis, but I do note that a similar crisis ended Jimmy Carter's Presidency.  Maybe Trump can still slip through this with our so-called booming economy, but it won't be so booming if consumer confidence falls apart in the wake of the Middle East  spiraling out of control.   And as much as I don't want to compare Trump to Carter, there is an interesting symmetry to what's unfolding in Baghdad.  A crisis in the Middle East ended Democratic dominance of the Presidency and led to a Republican political era; another one could do the opposite.

Except that Carter didn't deserve the drubbing he got.  Trump deserves the drubbing he could get and then some.  Note to Trump supporters: This isn't funny anymore.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

I've been so busy commenting on the 2020 presidential election campaign (which, alas, is still very much in progress) and other issues here that I haven't found any space for any one of the numerous rebellions against the established order in so many other countries around the world.  I had always hoped to get to the unrest in one country or another, but I never did.  There were simply too many distractions.  Now, I realize, after having struggled for something trenchant to say about Hong Kong, Lebanon, or some other place like that, I realize I don't have to. Because the takeaway is obvious.

The whole world has gone mad!

Actually, it went mad decades ago, but for the first time since World War II, the madness has gone beyond the pale.  In Venezuela, there's a situation not unlike our own - a fundamentally flawed leader with backing form rank-and-file military members - Nicolas Maduro - refuses to step down despite growing opposition to his rule.  The standoff between him and opposition leader Juan Guaidó continues, but the American media lost interest in the crisis months ago - and not for reasons you might think.  They've since been distracted by other hot-spot stories around the globe, such as the protests against the cost of living and economic strain in Chile and in Iran, the fragile, corrupt government trying to mollify angry citizens in Lebanon, and the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong against its Chinese overlords, who want greater control over the administrative region even as Hong Kongers resist any threats to the autonomy granted to them by Beijing back when we Westerners were still calling it Peking, when the deal handing over Hong Kong from Britain to China was negotiated.  

And Iraq?  Well, as the former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, democracy is messy!

Perhaps the world isn't really all that mad.  Perhaps this is an extension of what we have seen in America in the form of the rise of Trump, in Britain with Brexit, and with France with the yellow vest protests. People are getting sick and tired of the elites screwing things up to the point where people's futures are uncertain and they act out as a form of protest.  For the most part, as with Trump and Brexit, this has only made the problem worse, and in places like Iraq, all anyone is accomplishing is contributing to climate change by burning all of those tires.  Heck, in Israel, the system is so paralyzed that even after two elections, no one has been able to form a government, and there might yet be a third election that resolves nothing.  Still, the people of all of these various countries are onto something here - nothing is working for them, and they're making a desperate effort to get things to work right for a change.

Just don't expect anything to be sorted out any time soon.

Except, maybe, in Hong Kong, were pro-democracy council candidates won power in a free and open contest.

Oiled Again!

I thought it was finally coming to pass.  

This past weekend, there was a Houthi terrorist attack on two major Saudi Arabian oil refineries (one attack shown above), which may or may not have been spearheaded by Iran, which supports the Houthi rebels in Yemen.  (There were no casualties.)  After this, I assumed that people would realize that the age of cheap oil is over and that we'd get a huge spike in oil and gasoline prices that would make us more cognizant of carbon emissions, get us to drive smaller cars and use more mass transit, and - hopefully - get SUVs off the goddamned road.  Especially with the attack on the refinery showing what an unstable place the Middle East is.   And Trump, who started rattling his saber against Iran again, was likely to get sucked into a recession caused by an oil shortage not unlike those of the 1970s.

Never mind.  The Saudis said they could get their refinery - responsible for five percent of the world's oil production - up in running in a few weeks, and oil prices plummeted.  Gasoline is still cheap - too cheap.  And while Americans happily buy gas-guzzling monster wagons. Trump - who is issuing more sanctions on Iran, even though there's not much left to sanction - is also moving to kill the tougher fuel economy standards observed in California.

Which means that, until further notice, I won't be able to see anything up ahead on the road because of behemoths like this!         

This is a GMC Yukon.  As far as I'm concerned, Yukon have it!

Once again I thought we were finally getting away from these awful vehicles, and the Saudis screw me in the ear. Thanks a lot, guys. >:-(

When War With Iran Is the Answer

Iran has never forgiven the United States for supporting the Shah.  The United States has never forgiven Iran for holding 52 of its citizens hostage for fourteen months.  With both sides flexing their muscles, things are coming to a boil in the Persian Gulf, and the U.S. Fifth Fleet is on alert. 

Everyone says this would be nothing more than another war for oil.  Well, of course it is, because that's what Iran is best known for producing and that's what the U.S. so desperately wants, particularly under an administration that doesn't believe in solar power or electric vehicles.  But if you show up at an anti-war demonstration with a "War Is Not the Answer" bumper sticker on your car, you'd better be driving something like this . . .  

. . . not this!

Because if you drive a sport utility vehicle that could house a family of four, then war is the answer.

James Howard Kunstler happened to point this out the last time we got into a war in a country with a name spelled with four letters with three of them being "I," "R," and "A."    

Weapons of Mass Distraction

I so wanted to avoid talking about Trump this week, but he leaves me no choice.  He's already made  a week's worth of news, and this is only Tuesday.

Trump ratcheted up tensions with Iran, the country that Americans love to hate after they took over our embassy and took fifty-odd Americans hostage for fourteen months.  Maybe he won't start a war with the Iranians (though it could lead to higher gas prices if Iran takes action, which could mean SUVs becoming obsolete overnight, and I would love to see that, of course), but he can certainly distract from his disastrous summit with Putin last week with this ploy.  Don't expect his tough talk to cool tensions with Iran like it did with North Korea; Iran is deeply committed to refusing to improve relations with the U.S. except on its own terms.  You can't win with the Iranians, as Ronald Reagan found out when he tried back-channel negotiations and arms sales with them.  He was hoping for a "Nixon goes to China" moment but got a Laurel and Hardy "fine mess" moment instead.  

Iranians love to punk us, but not as much as Trump loves to punk his base.  As I type this, he's addressing a VFW convention and promising $12 billion in emergency relief for farmers affected by tariffs.  Hey, isn't it illegal to buy votes? Again, he's trying to distract his base.  It might not work for the midterms, as farmers don't want a handout.  They want foreign markets.

And former national-security officials advising current national-security officials need security clearances because they need to give their successors advice. Trump wants to take them away because he can't tolerate their negative criticism.  Another distraction from that "Russia thing."

One of them is former national security adviser Susan Rice.  Don't worry, she'll get her credentials back if she loses them - she'll get them back when she becomes President Martin O'Malley's Secretary of State in 2021.

Forget 2021 - is it Friday yet?

These Trump-triggered brain dumps could ruin my writing . . ..               

Pompeo's Iran Pomposity

Worried about a war with Iran?  Don't worry, boys and girls, Mike Pompeo, our new Secretary of State, has a plan to deal with Iran in a peaceful manner. Really.

Pompeo has offered to resume trade with Iran and to restore full U.S. diplomatic relations with that country, provided the Iranians agree to a list of no fewer than twelve demands, copied verbatim here from the al-Arabiya news site (always credit your sources, boys and girls).  They are as follows:

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1) Iran must declare to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) a full account of the prior military dimensions of its nuclear program, and permanently and verifiably abandon such work in perpetuity.

 2) Iran must stop enrichment and never pursue plutonium reprocessing. This includes closing its heavy water reactor.

 3) Iran must also provide the IAEA with unqualified access to all sites throughout the entire country. 4) Iran must end its proliferation of ballistic missiles and halt further launching or development of nuclear-capable missile systems.

 5) Iran must release all U.S. citizens, as well as citizens of our partners and allies, each of them detained on spurious charges. 

 6) Iran must end support to Middle East terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. 

 7) Iran must respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi government and permit the disarming, demobilization, and reintegration of Shia militias. 

 8) Iran must also end its military support for the Houthi militia and work towards a peaceful political settlement in Yemen. 

 9) Iran must withdraw all forces under Iranian command throughout the entirety of Syria. 

 10) Iran must end support for the Taliban and other terrorists in Afghanistan and the region, and cease harboring senior al-Qaeda leaders. 

11) Iran must end the IRG Qods Force’s support for terrorists and militant partners around the world.

12) Iran must end its threatening behavior against its neighbors – many of whom are U.S. allies. This includes its threats to destroy Israel, and its firing of missiles into Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It also includes threats to international shipping and destructive cyberattacks.

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Needless to say, many of these conditions would cause the Iranians to surrender elements of a foreign policy agenda that the mullahs leading the Islamic Republic consider vital to Iran's own national security, and although the demands mirror some of the suggestions made by the Europeans, the list is too long and too demanding to make Iran comply with anything.  Twelve demands?  As the French would say, even God Almighty has only ten.

If none or less than all of these demands are met, Pompeo says, the U.S. will impose the toughest sanctions on Iran possible along with sanctions against any foreign company that does business in Iran.  This would theoretically penalize any Americans who do business with a European company that has Iranian operations (i.e., a lot of us) and damage already strained relations with European countries.  Pompeo says he's doing this to help the Iranian people, already fed up with their own government, to rise up against it, but the appearance of American pressure on Iranian society may actually lead many Iranians to show solidarity with the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the elected government that serves him.  Our allies might see this as more right-wing American bullying; the fact that Pompeo made is comments on Iran at an appearance at the right-wing Heritage Foundation research group speaks volumes by itself.   

If Pompeo can pull off this strategy without a shot fired against Iran or without harm to the global economy, then I'll be the first person to admit he's a genius.  However, I seem to recall that, in 1914, Austria, after seeing its heir to its imperial throne assassinated in Austrian-ruled Sarajevo by a Serb, made a list of ten demands against Serbia in order to preserve the peace between the two countries.  Serbia agreed to all but two of them, and Austria then declared war.  A week later all of Europe was mobilizing and World War I was underway.   

We Americans, to be sure, have a peculiar hangup with Iran that other countries don't.  Gee, you'd think our diplomats there had been taken hostage for fourteen months or something . . .  :-O

Mr. Macron Goes To Washington

So this Frenchman walks into a joint session of a Republican-majority Congress and starts talking . . .

That's the joke.

But there's nothing funny about the concerns French President Emmanuel Macron voiced in his speech before Congress this past Wednesday.  After some laudatory remarks about the special relationship between France and the United States and the long alliance between the two countries - longer than our alliance with the British, which didn't even take root until the 1870s - Macron stressed the importance of an interdependent relationship between the U.S. and its European allies, urging the United States to avoid a trade war, rejoin the Paris climate agreement, make the transition to a carbon-neutral economy, understand the value of rules and regulations in economics (Macron is a trained economist), and, most important at this particular moment, stay in the Iran deal.  He also vowed that Iran would never get a nuclear weapon.  

Macron's speech got some applause from Republicans, especially his remarks on trade.  But when he touched on all of the other major points, he might as well have been reading a chapter from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," for all of the good that it did to persuade the GOP majority.  Indeed, when he stressed the importance of regulating economies and climate science, neither House Speaker Paul Ryan nor Vice President Mike Pence (who was there as the presiding office of the Senate), sitting behind the French leader,  bothered to acknowledge those comments.

Macron has charmed and flattered Donald Trump to try to reason with him on this state visit, in which the two men have forged an unlikely and peculiar friendship, though their only commonalities are never having held elective office before and marrying women not of their own respective generations.  It got Macron a state dinner.  But he still can't get Trump to admit that the Paris Agreement is a good idea (he didn't try on this trip), trade remains a point of relative disagreement, and it looks more and more like the Iran deal - the last remaining pillar of Barack Obama's "legacy" - is on borrowed time. Oh yeah, those of you still angry with Debbie Wasserman Schultz for promoting Hillary Clinton and thus giving us Donald  Trump and thus threatening the Iran deal, bear in mind that Wasserman Schultz, along with several other Democrats, were skeptical about the deal.  

It is just at sort of cluelessness and duplicity among the Democratic establishment that let Trump get elected President and why Democratic leaders so richly deserve not being invited to the Macron state dinner.

And if Macron wants to change Trump's mind about the Iran deal . . . maybe he can give him a ten-page pamphlet that explains the benefits of the deal in monosyllabic words . . . maybe one that features Babar!                

Yeah, I tick off everyone . . .