Sunday, October 06, 2024

Getting rolled ...


The US keeps getting rolled by Israel, the only country possessing the poison pill of diplomacy, an entangled alliance with us where the national interest of one country differs radically with the national interest of the other, a relationship most dangerous when both are faced with a widening mid east war capable of leading the world to WWIII if we let it. Being the arms merchant to Israel to enable it to wage war in any way it desires, is not the way the US should do business but here it is, a situation both shameful and terrifying at the same time. 

For the first 165 years of its history, the United States did not form any alliances besides the one it signed with France during the Revolutionary War. Instead, U.S. leaders followed George Washington’s advice to “steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world,” a recommendation subsequently enshrined in Thomas Jefferson’s inaugural pledge: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.”

Until now.

When Israel defied America’s appeals for restraint by invading Lebanon a few days ago, a reporter asked President Biden if he was comfortable with what had unfolded.

“I’m comfortable with them stopping,” Biden replied plaintively. “We should have a cease-fire now.” He walked away from the podium, grouchy, frustrated and impotent, a self-diminishing president.

It was the latest sign of how Biden keeps getting rolled by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. As the political scientist Ian Bremmer said of Biden’s words on the invasion: “Impact: zero.”

Instead of midwifing the landmark Middle East peace that he hoped for, Biden became the arms supplier for the leveling of Gaza — a war that killed more women and children in a single year than any other war in the last two decades, according to Oxfam. 

It gets "better."

Biden has been calling for restraint for a year, but he marginalized himself by continuously providing the weapons that allowed his appeals to be ignored. He appealed to the better angels of Netanyahu’s nature, but it’s not clear that they exist.

Biden restricted and conditioned U.S. arms transfers to Ukraine but worried that doing the same to Israel might tempt Hezbollah to attack it. So Biden kept the arms flowing (with the exception of at least one shipment of 2,000-pound bombs) and never imposed serious restrictions on their use. This impunity emboldened Netanyahu to ignore Biden, and the upshot is that Biden has nurtured not a regional peace but, it seems, a regional war — with America at risk of being sucked in.

“In the Middle East, we clearly see a failure of policy,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland who admires Biden’s foreign policy in other respects, told me. “And I think it’s ultimately rooted in the Biden administration’s unwillingness to effectively use American influence to achieve the president’s stated goals.”

“The problem we have here is the pattern,” Van Hollen added. “The pattern is that Prime Minister Netanyahu ignores the United States and he gets rewarded for it.”

It's worse than this as the possibility of the US getting pulled into a disastrous war with Iran looms ever larger thanks to Bibi doing a number on Biden in ways most telling. It's time for America to grow a pair before it's too late as it's in our national interest to do so and soon.


Compare this to how Ike handled the Suez Crisis.

Who: Egypt and Britain with France and Israel

What: Britain, France and Israel respond to the nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company by Egyptian President Nasser with a combined military operation.

Where: The Suez Canal in Egypt

When: November 1956

Result: The landings receive international condemnation. Under intense pressure, particularly from the US, troops were rapidly withdrawn and replaced by a UN force. Britain’s declining status was highlighted and its Prime Minister - Anthony Eden - resigned. Egypt was granted ownership and sovereignty of the Suez Canal and it was re-opened in April 1957.

Dark MAGA


To this rube, Musk's indirect connect to Howard Hughes is too obvious to ignore as Hughes, like Musk, was a brilliant engineer who sadly descended into madness, something eerily similar to Musk when viewing, in context, just how radically intense his political views have become with his latest soiree sharing the stage with The Donald, complete with rants supporting the orange menace to the max.

Billionaire tech executive Elon Musk cast the upcoming presidential election in dire terms during an appearance with Donald Trump, calling the Republican presidential nominee the only candidate “to preserve democracy in America.”

The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla who also purchased X, Musk joined Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday at the site where the former president survived an assassination attempt in July. Musk said “this will be the last election” if Trump doesn’t win. Wearing a cap with the “Make America Great Again” slogan of Trump’s campaign, Musk appeared to acknowledge the foreboding nature of his remarks.

“As you can see I am not just MAGA — I am Dark MAGA,” he said.



It gets better.




Any questions?

Friday, October 04, 2024

Used car salesman

Ioulex for The New York Times

Yours truly saw the veep debate with Walz and Vance, which consisted of an interestingly "polite" exchange of "ideas" along the lines of the infamous Cheney/Lieberman affair where the Dark Lord expressed "interesting" ideas in a dulcet monotone enticing rubes like me to say, that's ok, right? Now comes Vance, a used car or snake oil salesman, take your pick, offering truly horrific ideas of how America should be run with "style" as this guy has no morals but rather a subtle lust for power no matter the cost.  With this being said, Vance, to this writer, lacks the gravitas to pull it off as his oiliness is too obvious for all to see but no doubt, he's the rising star in the GOP, an entity that sold its soul to The Donald back in 2016. With Vance, dangerous ideas are nicely packaged, able to be sold to the gullible Magas with little effort, a most disquieting notion in the land of the brave and home of the free.

Elmer Gantry comes to mine here, does it not?

Sounds plausible to me. 

Thursday, October 03, 2024

Glimpses of summer & fall


Lilies


A button of a different kind :)


Shadows


Channeling the Little Prince


Filigree


Of blue & pink


Rain drops frozen for a little while


Powder Puff


A milk weed visitor

Tuesday, October 01, 2024

Hubris



hu·bris
(h)yo͞obrÉ™s/
noun
excessive pride or self-confidence.
"the self-assured hubris among economists was shaken in the late 1980s"
Similar: arrogance, conceit, conceitedness, self-conceit

(in Greek tragedy) excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis.

This is what Israel is feeling after it's successful raids against Hezbollah in taking out their leaders with exquisite precision but this does not equate to taking out their military infrastructure or taking into account the undying hatred and nothing to lose attitude Hamas and Hezbollah fighters have in wanting to extract horrific revenge on a truly hated entity. From this perspective, over extending one's resources comes to mind as fighting a two front war ( & most likely three) in addition to having a an economy gutted by war is not a smart thing to do, particularly when said country's enemies will attack strategic targets using sophisticated guerrilla tactics honed by the 70+ year existence of never ending conflict beginning with the expulsion of the Palestinians from Palestine in 1948 by the Israelis.

The possibility of all out war, thanks to Bibi's frenzied response, unconditionally backed by the US, to the Oct 7th Hamas attack, is now reaching a boiling point as seen by Iran launching ballistic missiles toward Israel in response to the continuing Israeli attacks on Hezbollah and South Lebanon.

As stated before, the gates of hell beckon.

Israeli tanks and APC’s are seen gathering by the Lebanese border on Monday.





The invasion begins.



How this ends, no one knows, do one? - Fats Waller

Passing Thru


As tourists, we always are passing thru, checking out the environs of whatever place we visit, in this case, the Cape and the Vineyard along with a passing take on the endless allure of the beaches as no one ever tires of walking alongside of an entity forever to remain mysterious to us land dwellers.

Sunday, September 29, 2024

Systems :)

Theft of another kind :)

Something wicked this way comes ...


Off in the distance ...

For years, yours truly has waxed "poetic" about AI, the open-ended tech forever to remain unknown thanks to how the tech works in order to react to the real world in real time but in this case, it's not the architecture of same being discussed but rather the risk, particularly when some purveyors of such tech cannot be trusted in any way, shape or fashion.

To whit ...





It is what it is :)