- From Tom Nichols at The Atlantic: Trump Is Risking a Global Catastrophe.
- From G. Elliot Morris at Strength in Numbers: Trump has made ICE a 70-30 issue — for Democrats.
- Via The Atlantic: The Candor of Jerome Powell.
- Via PBS News: Fact-checking Trump’s claim that each boat strike off Venezuela’s coast saves 25,000 lives.
- Via The Atlantic: Big Oil Knows That Trump’s Venezuela Plans Are Delusional.
- Via the NYT: Smithsonian Removes Label Noting Trump Impeachments.
- Via Politico: ‘Freaked out’ about the bond market: White House reels from Powell probe.
- Paul Krugman: Trump is Venezuelifying the United States.
SaturTabs
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21 responses to “SaturTabs”
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The 25,000 lives saved per boat sunk is from back in October, when only five boats had been sunk. Enough more have been sunk that there should have been a significant decline in the US death rate now. Macrotrends reports that the death rate for 2025 increased slightly from 2024, continuing a trend that started in 2010. The temporary spike from Covid is clear in the graphic.
I’ve seen a variety of speculations about the cause of the increasing death rate. In 2010, the first Baby Boomers turned 64. My own hypothesis is that there are enough of us to mess with the statistics as we die off from the usual age-related causes.
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@CSK: His scenarios assume business somewhat as usual. If Trump decides he’s serious about this, a single Wasp-class assault ship anchored in the fjord where Nuuk is located would be the dominant military presence* in Greenland as long as it stays there. Denmark, with some other European countries, holds an annual Greenland exercise. Descriptions of the 2025 version made a point about how difficult it was for those countries to move 500 personnel, two F-16s, one helicopter, and a frigate to Greenland. NATO has very little effective overseas force projection capabilities outside of US assets. The US has seven Wasp-class ships.
* Wikipedia suggests that a typical load for a Wasp-class ship is 1,900 Marines, a couple of big air-cushion landing craft, a couple of tanks, 4-6 F-35Bs, a half-dozen attack helicopters, many cargo/personnel helicopters, and lots of trucks. The Navy side is another 1,000 crew, anti-air and anti-ship missiles, close-in point defense, state-of-the-art radar, etc. And a better hospital than anything in Greenland.
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@Michael Cain:
And European submarine might make the Wasp-class ship and 1,900 US Marines and 1,000 crew and all the rest go *glug glug glug* -
@Michael Cain:
@JohnSF:IMO the war on Ukraine has shown the nature of warfare has changed. On paper, Mad Vlad’s forces ought to have taken Kyiv and subjugated just about the rest of the country. Instead we have a slow and bloody not-quite stalemate in place. Ukraine can’t expel Russia’s troops, but Russia can’t win.
While the US has a better trained and equipped military, this did not help them to win in Vietnam or Afghanistan.
And I’ve heard more than once the USN has a lot of respect for the RN.
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@CSK: after reading that Nichols piece, all I could think was how Miller-Trump would take it as an outline for how to proceed in terrorizing the world.
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@JohnSF: How much military fiction has WW3 starting in the North Atlantic with the US and Europe squabbling over Greenland? Would any publisher touch it, or would they tell the author their story has to be least minimally plausible. I like to think the US Navy/Marines would decline to “occupy” Greenland, even after Trump has another couple of years to purge their leadership.
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@Kathy: I have zero doubt that the US could take Greenland militarily fairly easily.
The issue would be the consequences.
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@Michael Cain:
One might hope so.
But this is the sort of situation that could go sideways very unpleasantly, very fast.For instance: Trump just orders some ships up for “exercises”, sends troops to “reinforce” Pituffik, and orders “extended security patrols”.
It might be managed down by local liaison.
But on the other hand, it might not.
This is bloody dangerous territory.If Congress had any sanity and integrity, Trump would be impeached tomorrow.
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@JohnSF:
If Congress had any sanity and integrity, Trump would be impeached tomorrow.
Bwa ha hahahahahahahahahahah,,,
Le sigh… and le sob
unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in.
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@Steven L. Taylor:
In summer, pretty certainly.
Unless Europe deployed an aentire expedtionary brigade and support.In the Arctic winter, it might be a bit dicey, even for the US military.
Scandinavian Arctic warfare trained forces are trained for such conditions.
Air operations are very difficult.
And surface ships also have issues. -
The issue would be the consequences.
I’ve said before that Trump certainly sounds like the goal is an Empire of the Americas, with a unified US/Canada/Greenland running it — Greenland only territorially — and everything from Mexico south as vassal states. And the rest of the world can go to hell on its own. I’m fairly sure he thinks Putin is building a Russian Empire with Europe as vassal states. And Xi a Chinese Empire with assorted vassal states. Trump’s not consistent about it, but seems headed in that general direction.
Before WW2, the official defense policy in Canada was they would depend on the UK if there was something they couldn’t handle themselves. That changed when the UK told them (secretly) that if Germany invaded across the Channel, the UK would move the royals and government to Canada. Since the prior assumption of UK protection was no longer valid, Canada immediately began making arrangements with the US. Those agreements are still in force today. NORAD, for example, is done under that umbrella rather than NATO. Trump seems to regard Greenland the same way: Denmark can’t defend it against an outside empire, so Greenland should be inside the US sphere, not Europe’s.
Some leaders in Western Europe have made post-NATO noises that would have seemed bizarre only a few years ago. I think it’s sinking in that even if Trump’s successor is sane and reaches out, the US is only one election away from Trump’s path again. This seems like a reasonable thing for the Europeans to worry about. I have no idea which way the UK might jump in that scenario. Being part of a US/Canada/UK deal seems a really strange thing for them to do, but so did Brexit.
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@JohnSF:
It would not be one ship. MEU’s (the one in the Atlantic is the 22nd MEU) are a small fleet of ships, primarily three assault vessels with however much “fleet” the Navy thinks is appropriate. Might be just a few destroyers/frigates, might be an entire big-flattop task force. Depends on what they expect to run into.
One of the three assault ships will be an assault flat-top, like a Wasp class, but the other two will be amphib dock ship and usually a heavy landing vessel. Each of those three ships is fitted out to be capable of holding the entire Marine battalion (about 2000 people -the compliment of a Marine Expeditionary Unit), but they split all the sections up and put only a third of the battalion in each of those three ships. Can’t have the entire ground force of an MEU go down in one ship, and having an entire battalion in one ship is mighty cramped. Not going to see that except during a major war.
Greenland is not going to be stupid enough to try to light up a US Navy vessel. If Trump does this it’ll be fait-accompli, and the world will wait and hope that in a few years the US becomes sane again which is more likely than not. Trump isn’t getting more popular, not by a damn sight.
The only question in my mind is if the US has the balls to punish the man after he’s out of office. I doubt that we do.
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@dazedandconfused:
I’m aware that it would not be a single ship.
It might also not be a single submarine.
And the ground forces are likely to have infantry missiles capable of serious damage to ships in a fjord, and being outside a fjord in the Arctic winter is perilous.
As are helicopter operations.
Even more so when MANPADS might be around.
Denmark has already stated that standing orders are for forces to engage any invader.
Assuming they will not is a very big assumption. -
I’m sure they can. They did take Afghanistan, too. These are also consequences.
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That guy, Sohrab Ahmani, I think his name is, that said that ICE was 70-30 for Rs. Is he just another one of these “black is white” guys? Or is he wrong for some other reason than that?
It is gratifying, though, to see support for this stuff cracking up. Maybe that will drive Trump’s numbers lower? I make 70 percent disapproval the threshold for impeachment. We aren’t there and it’s going to be a slog. Best I can tell all the lying is meant for the media channels they own/dominate and they hope that their supporters won’t hear anything else, or will discount it.
The way through this isn’t legal, it’s political. So anyway, that’s good news.
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“…a Russian Empire with Europe as vassal states”
This is the folly of some in the MAGA-sphere.
Europe (including the UK in that category) have absolutely zero intention of becoming vassals of Russia.
And have the military and industrial capabilities to do so, regardless of the US opinion on the matter. Many Americans seems to think Europe is somehow irrelevant due to some law of God or nature. They are mistaken.
It will not be cheap, but Europe has the potential for Power which dwarfs Russia.The UK now, despite Brexit, is economically and culturally deeply linked to continetal Europe.
And as per our entire history, we cannot permit an adversary to dominate the continent.
The EU is not an adversary (just periodially annoying).
Russia is.Incidentally, the Danish-US defence agreement re Greenland is also a separate treaty outside NATO, similar to the US-Canada agreements re NORAD.
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@JohnSF:
This is the folly of some in the MAGA-sphere.
Europe (including the UK in that category) have absolutely zero intention of becoming vassals of Russia.
And have the military and industrial capabilities to do so, regardless of the US opinion on the matter. Many Americans seems to think Europe is somehow irrelevant due to some law of God or nature. They are mistaken.They internalized the propaganda about Europe being a bunch of collapsing socialist/communist states being overrun by brown people. As always, there variations to these views, but that broadly captures much of it.
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@Kurtz:
Indeed.
It’s a “Europe” that seems to exist mostly inside their own, rather cramped, headspace.If you look at X-itter, the timelines are full of MAGA screeching that Europe is collapsing under a wave of Muslims crossing open borders, the US funds NATO and Europe has no military capability, and “socialist welfare” makes European countries incapacitated.
Oh, yes, and we are all “soy boys”
(What is it with this MAGA thing about soy? Weird.)They seem to be all getting high on their own supply.
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@JohnSF:
(What is it with this MAGA thing about soy? Weird.)
They seem to be all getting high on their own supply.
The soy boy thing derives from the belief that the phytoestrogen in soy products feminizes men.
High on something, they are. But it’s no drug I’ve ever tried. Nor does it sound like a pleasant experience.
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@Kurtz:
Ah, so that would explain, in the MAGA-verse, the well known effeminancy of the samurai.
Given the prevance of soy in Japanese diets.
lol
My lord, but they are just so silly.
