Air Qatar

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (right) and Qatari Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman al-Thani announced at the Pentagon that Qatar will build a new training facility for its air force - in the United States.  Specifically, Qatar will have its new training facility at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho.

This marks the first time a foreign country has had a military presence in the continental United States since the British maintained forts in present-day Michigan and Ohio in the twenty years following the Declaration of Independence, and the first time a foreign air force has had any presence in the continental United States.  Given that the Qataris bribed Trump with a free jet airliner and have enabled Trump to pursue his business interests in their country - a polyp-shaped sand-dune peninsula the Size of Connecticut in the Persian Gulf - this is the biggest scandal to rock America since Tuesday.

Hegseth insists that the Qatari facility is not a separate base but is merely a facility to allow Americans and Qataris to train side by side.  But Qatar has also been been identified as a supporter of terrorism, and even Trump himself, in 2017, once accused Qatar of supporting Islamist terror commando groups.  And now, with a Qatari presence in the U.S.  - perversely, an accused supporter of Islamist terrorists stationed in Christian-nationalist Idaho - terrorists no longer have to hijack planes in America to fly them into buildings.  They'll have their own air base right here!

Incoming!  

The World Cup. Yippee. Whatever . . .

So am I going to watch the World Cup, which starts today in Qatar?  Aah, I'll probably watch some of it, but I'm not as excited about it as I've been in previous common even-numbered years.  maybe that's because I haven't watched any soccer in over two years.

COVID diminished my interest in elite sports, and the disastrous Beijing Winter Olympics this past February all but eliminated it.  In keeping with my recently acquired desire to scale back my involvement in things and quit some things altogether, I am not going to bother rooting for the American men's team, as they have long since become a joke.  CNN's Jake Tapper once mused about how they had made more money than the always-victorious U.S. women's team even though the men's team have been "less successful" in international competition, which is a nice way of saying that they suck, bite, chomp, blow and stink.  

At last the men's team actually got into the tournament after getting the green weenie in 2018. But the idea of seeing them win the World Cup this year (or any year)  is about as realistic as Martin O'Malley being elected President in 2024, and he actually has a plausible shot.

And besides, what's the point of winning when you get an ugly trophy like this?

This is the ugliest cup I've ever seen.

It isn't even a cup.