Friends, the United States and Iran are both threatening to unleash "hell" on one another, which, in the case of Iran, seems speculative at best, since they can't even deliver an explosive payload anywhere they aim at. Missile fragments, maybe. Be that as it may, the world thinks Iran is "winning", because the world hates Donald Trump so much that it's rooting for the theocratic loons instead -- and of course the global media tells them that, indeed, the U.S. is sinking ever deeper into a "quagmire". Well, maybe at some point these talking heads, and the mullahs, will wake up and smell the coffee. Alas, it probably won't be today.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y90jl8veyo
In other news, the latest Newsmakers show is the usual tour de force of exquisite analysis. Brian and I cover everything from A.I. to Western security arrangements. Don't miss out!
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Of course many of the world's talking heads are talking such hooey because have been ordered to do so. And for many it is "fashionable" to trash America and especially an unaplogetically pro American President. Perhaps the European carpers might want to think of just which Hitler youth graduate they would be subjugated to today were it not for little old us.
ReplyDeleteIn our free country, maybe the only way to shut down the reflexive domestic ingrates is for the public to be motivated to make the same choice we made when we finally smelled the coffee about such as Dan Rather and Phil Donohue , and when far left talk radio fluffed right from its presumptuous start. We laughed them all off the stage! President Trump may yet be seen for the great President he is and when the public is convinced of that his vicious detractors may well be seen for the "insects ,microbes" (Chekov the author)they are.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Well, Artemis II is going well so far . For me the WONDER is still there; Apollo 8 was always my favorite because of that and its a thrill to see a reprise of it. It has some new features too. I'm not sure why, because all the lunar Apollos went around the moon but apparently this is the first time some features on the usually invisible side will be sunlit for their edification. Sure , its our moon but it IS another world. Its only 240, 000 miles away and that is 10 to the infinite factor less than the ninth part of a hair of distances even within our "local"galaxy. And not too long ago they pointed the Hubble to an "empty" part of the cosmos and just happened to sight over 200 galaxies! STILL, in itself, they are in deep space I think; perhaps it would not be so very different in its ambience if they were rounding Pluto (?). Some of the Apollo Command Module Pilots did EVAs outside midway between the moon and Earth. I hope they do it again this time and give us a view of what it looks like to have the sun , earth and moon all suspended within sight. Or to have the heavens almost fantastically visible beneath one's very feet. GLORIOUS!
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Reportedly Iran possesses a cache of approx. 60% enriched uranium which might be enrichable to weapons grade in a very short time. Could it be that they have been pursuing a crash program to do that very thing in the time since when our assault became a certainty? What then? I'm confident our commanders have planned for that conceivable possibility.
ReplyDeleteIt has always been customary for Iran's regime to declare apocalyptic condemnation for any entity which in the least offends them.They have in the last month lashed out at most of their neighbors in reckless and somewhat incomprehensible dudgeon. So it might not be beyond them to use a nuke despite even their certain knowledge that they would be crushed for doing so. Perhaps the mullahs anticipate other worldly rewards for themselves for confronting heresy and perpetual retribution for this impudent American President and his already long condemned Jewish accomplices .
Yes, President Trump often verbally shoots from the hip. Perhaps we've never had one so publicly frank. But he is a stone wise ass player who has a visceral understanding of the kind of street level chicanery which has always dominated international politics. And like all players he is good at posturing. Imagine if Churchill had ever sat down with Hitler; he might well have put that thing in his utterly amoral place. Yet, there were many creditable and patriotic Brits who thought he would lead them to catastrophe. His competence was beyond their ken and we may have now a similarly counterintuitive instinctive leader. So when he "crudely" prods the oh so sensitive omniscient 7th century theocrats who so atavistically rule their weary land , well, he may not mean exactly what he says.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: If the mullahs have ANY horse sense they may at some point short of necessarily comprehensively forceful induction into the 21st century , discern that our President has set a pattern of backing up what he says he will do, if necessary. No player worth his salt does less, not all the time at least. Oh he's not perfect, as his detractors both international and their domestic factotums, feign expectation of him. He doesn't always succeed but gee,people like the "smartest woman in the world" disdained him and learned to regret it.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack :Re the Newsmaker broadcast: I'll first address the shameful phenomenon of tasteless jerks trying to provoke the Buckingham Palace guards and even chancing annoying their horses, so that I don't reach critical mass over it. Its profane!!
ReplyDeleteI was once privileged to be in the honor guard around the monument on the traditional spot of the Gettysburg Address on the night of one of the annual Remembrance Day commemorations on the approximate anniversary of that deathless oration. Our Union Army reenactor Company was in full Civil War uniform and we were ordered to stand still and remain silent and unmoving no matter what. Nonetheless, one of us was made fun of to his face by an ignorant and childishly insolent observer.
I visited revered St. Paul's in London on a Sunday with the bells tolling and it was sublime for me. Not so for a young woman clad in a slatternly manner who cavorted in suggestive poses for her camera wielding and cackling fellows on the very steps of that shrine. It would be charitable to say, as is probably true, that she simply did not understand what that magnificent and enduring building symbolizes for Britons who may still remember the Blitz. To think that she and her mates may have knowingly dismissed it poses the question "what do they hold sacred and inviolable!?"
People who frivolously and vilely task the Buckingham Palace Guards are acting with shameful disrespect and disregard for the feelings of those dutiful and honored exemplars of traditional military excellence. That very faithfulness was demonstrated by the exalted regiment which guards the Monarch nonetheless deploying to France in 1914 and meeting the full fury of the Boche in savage combat.
Too, when foreigners do it they cast aspersions on their country and ,again, pose the question "are there not venerated people and places in your country?" How would an American feel were some idiot to harry the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier?
I should add: ". . . what do they hold sacred and inviolable; SURELY SOMETHING!?" Jack
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Re Newsmaker broadcast cont. : You commented that that we don't know at what point the Iranian people might rise to throw off the present regime. Victor Davis Hansen opined that we would not decimate the Iranian everyday infrastructure because of the suffering it would bring to the mostly blameless population. But what if it becomes obvious that only such hardship might move the Iranian people to revolt? President Trump has threatened such comprehensive destruction. I do not suggest faulting him for proposing it; President Truman saved probably millions of American, British, Chinese, Korean and Japanese lives when he made a similar promise after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Would President Trump carry it out? Surely it is an exceedingly important moral decision which I think we can trust this patriotic and compassionate man to make responsibly.
ReplyDeleteYour observation that President Trump is very upset about Western Europe"s recalcitrance in helping to clear the Straits of Hormuz and that it casts doubt on our commitment to Nato makes much sense. My guess is that even if a near future reflexively obstructionist Congress , out of spite, moves to prevent our formal withdrawal from that alliance which may well have worn out its utility for our oceanic fortress , President Trump will have "means" at his Executive disposal. He could order our military to "come home" in both physical and cooperative form.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Re the Newsmaker broadcast cont. : I wonder if often un far left/Dem Pennsylvania Senator Fetterman might contemplate bolting his party if doing so would prevent the Dems from taking the Senate after a close midterm? I doing so he could make a historic difference by assuring President Trump a GOP Senate for his remaining two years. Eg. if a departure of one of the 6 lawful Scotus Justices were to occur, President Trump could then appoint an antiradical leftist successor! And of course the baleful rule of Schumer would be prevented. As you pointed out, Fetterman didn't seem inordinately attached to a party which has certainly left him and would, if it could afford it, cast him into political darkness.
ReplyDeleteIs there, Jack, no way to defeat the mainstream media except by turning them off? Well, most people have, but their influence runs deeper than the Nielsen ratings would suggest. The rot represented by the MSM infests all sorts of search engines, A.I. chatbots, and social media platforms. And naturally this is only possible because hundreds of major corporations continue to throw money at all of the above because they either fear the Left or believe in its nonsense. No, I think we have to attack this machine and destroy it, root and branch, because it FORMS public opinion far more than it reflects it. It has to go, and it won't do to wait around and hope that it obliterates itself.
ReplyDeleteWhat a glorious road trip Artemis II is proving to be! And I must say I'm very pleased that our vast investments in the SLS are finally yielding us some returns. No one ever accused NASA of being cost effective, but at least it's helping to jump-start our species' interplanetary destiny. I strongly suspect that private enterprise, especially SpaceX, will do most of the heavy lifting.
Hmm. Could the mullahs detonate an a-bomb on their way out? Possibly. I think our big problem now is that there may be no one person or group meaningfully "in charge" in Iran, and all it would take is one faction hell-bent on apocalypse to...bring it about?
Sadly, RESPECT is not a virtue that modern man exemplifies. I'm not aware of any evidence that this situation is getting better either. I can think of lots of proof that it's getting worse. So, long story short: reconsider your application to join the King's Guards. That's my advice.
Destroying Iran's infrastructure would have very serious consequences for its people, yes, but I don't think we could assume that it would motivate them to rise up in rebellion. On the contrary, desperate times can empower an authoritarian regime all the more. And frankly, even if the mullahs were overthrown, it might take any new government decades to overcome the damage that we could so easily do to their infrastructure and economy -- assuming that Iran would have just one government at that stage, rather than several, or none at all. If I were Trump, I'd be very cautious.
Agreed: our membership in NATO is meaningless if the President is clearly unwilling to honor it. Game over.
Hmm. Good thinking, Jack! Fetterman might become the deciding factor in the Senate, in which case all the nice things we've said about him, and all the venom he's encountered from the Left, might seal the deal. Let's hope!
I should add above: President Truman also probably saved the lives of very many Soviet troops with his threat to Japan of unendurable destruction. The Soviets' cavalier attitude toward the lives of their soldiers would probably have assured massive casualties in North China against the still hard fighting Japanese. Zhukov told Eisenhower that he simply ordered troops over known minefields. JACK
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Your's is an interesting comment that the far left has not destroyed Musk. Maybe he is just too much for their pinched minds to comprehend. After 109 years of the most catastrophically discredited imposition of their infernal system on tragically misled peoples they STILL fanatically hold it vital that democracy and free enterprise be punished and immolated in favor of their dreamy, smoky screed. Any objective reaffirmation of democratic capitalism's towering superiority to their proven inhuman doctrine is blasphemy to radicals and their worker ant cadre, even among the highly educated. One would think such "an heretic" as Musk, who is a prime exemplar of the dynamism of free people , would be a prime target of their amply demonstrated amoral antipathy.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, if they took over they would deprive him of the wealth he has earned contrary to their unimpeachable justice and wisdom though they might suffer him to live and try to "reeducate" him in order to use his technological brilliance. But admitting that they have been terribly wrong since 1917 ; they are incapable of it and must be out"politiked "onto civilization's refuse heap along with their Nazi comrades.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: You are right: an assertive ("affirmative action" if you will) onslaught on the rampant antiAmerican milieu which , from many points on the now much bloated radical compass, assails our civilization's fundamentals , is the best way to prevent it from destroying our humanly imperfect nation. We must accept the onerous reality that we have within our polity a deceitful faction with now openly totalitarian intent , enjoying its unprecedented latitude within our perhaps too "tolerant " society . Believe me, 20 years working in very close contact with criminals affords me much familiarity with the cynical advantage amoral people take of well meaning but maybe overidealistic people. Because our far left coterie embraces a Marxist assumption of an inevitable perfect future they cannot abide any imperfection in our present polity, legality , economy and declared principles. And so, being as they are very purposeful types, they are resolved to destroy it, regardless of any heretic and undeserved benefits it has afforded its citizens.
ReplyDeleteThey herald their guarantee , if only humanity grants them but one more try at it, of EQUALITY in everything, without explaining how it would improve the human condition. Of course that is humanly impossible and nothing proves that better than their 20th century tyrannical national tenures in which certain groups seized "enhanced" equality.
Public opinion is paramount in a free country. How can we who already realize it convince our fellow citizens what consummate danger we face? Fox News sets us a good example. Their attitude is one of unrelenting opposition to the incipiently totalitarian 'American" far left/Dems. More and more we see other networks emulating them at least as far as Fox's convictions balance the obsequious far left/ Dem prejudices of the MSM. Believe me, from one who chafed under the radical domination of the airwaves until Rush came along , this has been a very encouraging development.
But the far left persists: it has been lifted by the rise of "Democratic " Socialist Mandami in beachhead NYC and its continuing haven in Newsom's CA. In an , I believe, Ohio Senatorial race, radicals such as Mamdani have hastened to support a Muslim candidate who they believe will cleave to radical Islam's anti American strictures. One of their sincerely hate filled cadre includes a radio host who contemptuously dismissed the telling importance of Hamas' rape of women. These people we harbor in our very country and who, due to our Constitutional guarantees of free speech, persist in potentially fatally undermining us! This realization must be our call to political arms in aggressively defending our civilization against still incipient, in many terribly important institutions , far left presumption of "inevitable" triumph.
How? First support our President, who has proven his understanding and expansive stand against our aggressive far left curse, Second, look to the continuation beyond his tenure of his perceptive and courageous actions to directly confront this fundamental threat to all we cherish. Third, justify the increasing presence in our media of channels which disdain the far left's totalitarian deceit. Fourth : bid our law makers and governmental executives prosecute those who cynically protest their "free speech rights" while doing their unlawful best to tyrannically suppress such rights when their opponents exercise them.
Its the Michigan far left/ Dem Senatorial race, not Ohio. Jack
ReplyDeleteJack, I think quite honestly there wasn't much prospect of the war going on much longer, a-bomb or no a-bomb. The Russian bear was more than enough to scare the already wobbly Japanese straight. But, as you suggest, if the war had dragged on, plenty of Russian, Japanese, and Chinese would have died in the Chinese theater.
ReplyDeleteOh, I think Musk's wealth is the least of the lefties' concerns about Musk. Sure, they can play the class warfare card when it suits them, but basically their hearts are not in it, and they welcome concentrations of wealth so long as that wealth flows in agreeable proportions to their candidates and causes.
Yes, Fox is a welcome corrective to what used to be a leftist monologue coming from the mainstream media. And, yes, many other voices now compete in a media environment that is far more open, pluralistic, and genuinely democratic than perhaps at any time in our history. That's all to the good. And yet...the concentration of enormous media and social media influence in the hands of neo-Marxists is much to be regretted and, I daresay, feared.