I’ve read a report that ten huge airplanes for which we paid nearly half a billion dollars are rusting away on a runway somewhere. Homeland Security/ICE purchased these planes for use in deporting what they hoped would be hordes of illegals, but this scheme seems not to have worked out. So we’re stuck with 1/2 billion dollars worth of aircraft for which (I pray) we have no use.
These airplanes are the jet-age revival of the cattle cars the Nazis used to deport people to the concentration camps.
“And after all, says John Wyse, why can’t a jew love his country like the next fellow?
Why not? says J.J., when he’s quite sure which country it is.”
from Ulysses
Through the last months it has become apparent that the United States is now almost a satellite of Israel. How can this be? The various organizations and persons that make up the Israeli lobby have at their disposal enormous amounts of money and use it to purchase candidates and policies that must uncritically affirm the nationalism of the country that is in effect supplying the money.
Rep. Nancy Mace, after her defeat in a bid to be the Republican candidate for Governor in South Carolina, is trying to breathe life into her moribund political career by raving against Muslims about whom you can be sure she knows nothing at all. Oh, the bimbo’s zeal!
The President says he’s not focusing on Iran so he can concentrate on domestic issues. Having done permanent damage to the United States overseas, he will intensify the same work at home.
Anglo-American reactionaries are yucking it up about Jason Arday, product of Cambridge’s near-fatal case of liberal guilt. Academic appointments are, of course, usually political in some way, but we should not be forced to play make-believe about unqualified candidates.
It occurred to me that there is a link between Trump’s mania about the 2000 election and the war against Iran. Trump lost the 2000 election, but immediately claimed that he had won it. Why? because it is not possible that Trump loses. Trump has won the war against Iran because he says so, again, and again, and again. Why? again, Trump cannot possibly lose. Just another idiosyncrasy of our Looney Leader.
Today one of Nature’s wonders ambled through our backyard. I don’t mean the beautiful deer that live in the neighborhood. No, I’m referring to Union Pacific R.R. locomotive no 4014, one of UP’s legendary “Big Boy” locomotives, the largest steam engine currently in use. It is an articulated locomotive with the wheel arrangement 4-8-8-4, and it is the apotheosis of articulated steam.
It had been on display yesterday at St. Louis’ Union Station, and today began its journey to the West over what was originally the right-of-way of the Missouri Pacific R.R., the oldest railroad west of the Mississippi, a line that happens to run through the end of our yard. A phone call let us know that it had passed through Webster Groves to the East of us, so we started listening for it to come along our way after passing through Kirkwood. Soon, we heard its bell ringing as it made its way up to the top of Kirkwood Hill where our house is located. Then, as it moved closer, we could hear that steam-engine sound, and then it passed by, a giant taller than the passenger cars it was pulling. It passed in the twinkling of an eye, but, after a short time, we heard its distinctive three-chime steam whistle blowing for a nearby grade crossing.
This was a transcendent experience. And I beg God to bless the U.P. and the crew that maintain and operate Big Boy.
Our President invariably accuses his critics of the very misdeeds of which he is himself guilty. Now, the Secretary of W A R, Pete Hegseth (Trump’s natural son?), is claiming that the men and women who serve in our military haven’t enough testosterone. Who is it that does not have enough testosterone? I imagine that Hegseth, that aspirational brute, is projecting onto others a lack that is in his case obvious and acute.
The following was a comment of Sen. Ted Cruz on Trump’s get-out-of-Iran plan: “History teaches that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea. I think the president is receiving some very poor advice on this deal.”
Second part first: Of course the President is receiving “some very poor advice.” Trump has surrounded himself with people who can give only very poor advice.
First part: I suppose that by theocratic lunatics Cruz means the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, this expression would just as well describe some people in the Trump administration, e.g. Pete Hegseth and Russel Vought, and Christian nationalists generally.
The internet contains many reports about the upcoming few-holds-barred Ultimate Fighting Championship fights to be held at the White House for Trump’s birthday. Now A.I. tells me that “Engaging in or sponsoring animal fighting is a felony across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.” So if the Trumpies were to sponsor a dog fight they would go to jail. As it is, human fights are not so well regulated, so I suppose Trump will get away with this also.
As we’ve seen, Trump has denounced performers who bailed out from the program of his planned entertainment. His plan B is: “So I am thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime … ” This is unfair to Elvis who was just a popular singer, whereas Trump is a head of state. It would be more fair if Trump would measure himself against his peers, Mussolini and Hitler.
The Associated Press has published an article about reports by “whistle-blowers” in the Israeli Defense Force of the atrocious behavior of the Israeli troops occupying Gaza. The way some of these soldiers kill and main Palestinians of every age show plainly that they regard the Palestinians as a subhuman group that must be expelled from Israel. The I.D.F. and the government behind them have come to rival the Nazis.
The article is accompanied by a photograph of I.D.F. soldiers in their tactical costume and the anonymity of their masks. Did the I.D.F. provide the model for I.C.E.?