OTB relies on its readers to support it. Please consider helping by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. Thanks for your consideration.
Tuesday’s Forum
23
Comments
Categories
Tags
23 responses to “Tuesday’s Forum”
-
-
Kushner is an interesting case. He’s not technically an employee of the administration, is he? I wonder how that works.
In any case, there’s a deep pool of candidates from which to choose. Hegseth and Patel are top choices of mine. I remain concerned about Hegseth’s firing of pretty much any member of the top brass who would stand up to unlawful orders. He’s creating a military that would perhaps stand idly by as this team runs roughshod over the Constitution.
My biggest concern is that they will try something really off, like refusing to seat new members of Congress.
Creative brains can head to some unsettling places. :-/
Kennedy has done a lot of damage too.
-
Well, he may not be an employee, but he is acting as a representative and negotiator.
The US seems to have a habit of doing so; iirc House in WW1 and Hopkins and Donovan in 1940/41 were not employed by the US administration at the time.
I suspect that if any of those had been using their positions in pursuit of personal gain, Congress would have come down on them like a ton of bricks.
-
I found a use for Copilot on MS Word: replace all underlined words with italics.
It works. It can be done manually with the search and replace function, which has been embedded in word processors for decades, but then you need to find the codes or symbols for underline and italics.
This might come in handy on Hell Week, when sometimes the products listings in Word cells have line breaks that don’t translate well to Excel.
I still don’t let it rewrite my writing.
-
Aaron Rupar, who deserves massive kudos for subjecting himself to the administration’s song-and-dance nonsense, from press briefings to watching Trump’s rallies, described Katie Zacharia’s first presser as “brutally bad,” and says she makes “Karoline Leavitt seem like Ronald Reagan” (presumably his Great Communicator period).
I could only stomach a small clip, but assuming this wasn’t just first-day nerves, she’s terrible at this.
-
So I’m plotting a book about the decline of democracy and rise of authoritarianism in a fictional world. I struggled about it for a while, then I thought, “how about if there were trickle down economics, climate change, and powerful oligarchs aided by the state?” In other words, just transpose today’s real world to the fictional one.
Now I’m sad.
-
It might also be worth considering other examples of the replacements of democracy by authoritarian rule.
Germany 1930’s, Italy and Japan 1920’s, France 1850’s and 1800’s.
Common factors in those seem to be basic political cleavages, economic discontent, and regional Power ambitions of various degrees.
-
-
-
In NYT today law prof, and Chris Hayes wife, Kate Shaw offers a critique of the Supreme Court and a four point plan:
– Term limits, maybe 18 years.
– Binding ethics rules.
– Restrict the shadow docket. Perhaps require reasons be given, limit cases eligible for emergency consideration, require a court supermajority to overturn a lower court, and a supermajority to invalidate an act of Congress.
– Somehow regularize appointments across prez terms, maybe each term gets two, and enlarge the Court.This list is just a start. If Democrats win the upcoming midterm elections handily, there will be much debate about the specific shape a reform package should take. But for the future of the court and the country, it’s critical that the discussions begin now.
Works for me, but she didn’t suggest how to get any of this past the Supreme Court.
-
Christ. The American general who is NATO’s commander has given a speech pledging that we will be there for them in opposing Russian attacks. That he has to. . .
If some reporter puts it to Trump, what are the odds he disavows the statement? Might Senate Republicans find maybe as much as a single vertebra and stop him?
-
Is that the speech by Grynkewich?
I wonder how far up the chain of command in Washington it was cleared, and if the sign-off included Trump, will he renege if asked when he’s having a moody one, or has simply forgotten?In part, this may be passing on a message to Moscow from European NATO:
Even if the US is absent, Europe will fight.
Do you feel lucky, Vova?Americans sometimes forget the main NATO forces facing Russia in Europe are now, and always have been, European, not US.
“For my country, fighting with Russians is with or without Americans,” said a separate senior European defense official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely. “We expect (the US) to come, but if they won’t, we will fight anyway.”
-
The majority of the forces are and always have been Europeans. But how many truly competent militaries are we talking about. France, Poland, UK, Sweden, Finland? If we’re saving Estonia it’s serious force projection. How strong are the Europeans at long range logistics?
Will they be willing to take on Kaliningrad, because they can’t have that at their back. What naval assets can they bring to bear assuming the Baltics are the target? It may mean sinking Russian subs up there, attacks on the naval port at Vladivostok. Are they up for that?
Above all, can France, Poland, UK and Germany all agree on a plan and a CinC?
I don’t know the answers, these are legit questions.
-
Germany is pretty competent, also Italy and Greece.
The main point of the NATO command structure is that smaller countries slot into an overall command and logistic structure and cover pre-allocated missions within it.Within NATO the US dominates long range heavy airlift and seaborne logistics, for obvious reasons.
For equally obvious reasons, European forces don’t need intercontinental airlifts to get to Poland.
The US operates some 900 transport aircraft; European NATO (excluding Turkey) about 450.In Baltic naval operations the US Navy has never been expected to have significant role. That mission is for Germany, Poland, Sweden, Finland and Denmark.
The main US areas of dominance within NATO, aside from intercontinental logistics, are deep strike capability (where Europe is catching up), area-air defence missile systems (ditto), satellite intel/coms (US runs about 1400 vs Europe 384) and (above all) “tactical” nuclear weapons.
The main operational plans will all have been staffed-out in advance. If the American SACEUR bows out DSACEUR would replace him (that currently being UK Air Chief Marshal Stringer).
Other senior officers within SHAPE are Chief of Staff General Laubenthal (German) and DCoS Lt General de Quincy (French), Commander,
Allied Joint Force General Gerhartz (German) Commander Allied Joint Support Lt General Rohrschneider (German), Allied Reaction Forces Lt General D’Addario (Italian) and Lt General Elviss (UK).
In other words, the command structure is already in place.
The US staff walking out would cause problems obviously, but like most military command systems, redundancy is built-in.If it was Euro-NATO against the full capability of Russia, absent the US, it would be iffy.
But given war in Ukraine, Russia is not currently able to direct anything like its full capability westward.
-
-
-
-
Fed governor Lisa Cooke declines to appear before a kangaroo court.
The news item begins: “Lisa Cook, the US Federal Reserve governor Donald Trump(sic) has been trying to fire with the persistence of a cartoon coyote,…”
-
As President Trump weighed endorsing Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn of Texas this spring, he was told that damaging revelations were likely to surface about Paxton, according to people familiar with the conversations. Trump was dismissive and said there would be more negative material about Democratic nominee James Talarico.
Trump plowed ahead and endorsed the scandal-plagued Texas attorney general, helping him win the Republican-primary runoff in May. Months later, that decision is looking like Trump’s biggest gamble of the midterms.
. . .
Meanwhile, damaging revelations about Paxton continue to emerge. A new scene that could join the list: a previously unreported New Year’s Eve 2024 celebration where Paxton partied in Dubai with two fugitives from U.S. justice and a woman who wasn’t his wife.
As fireworks exploded over the Burj Khalifa skyscraper to welcome 2025, Paxton and his girlfriend Tracy Duhon watched from a luxury high-rise balcony full of people, according to a video of the gathering viewed by The Wall Street Journal, details of which were contained in court filings and confirmed by people familiar with the matter.
Among those at the event with Texas’ top law-enforcement official were two Americans who had been indicted months before on federal healthcare-fraud charges but failed to return to the U.S., Anosh Ahmed and Sameer Suhail, according to the court records and people familiar with the matter. Ahmed, a healthcare executive, had donated $190,000 to Paxton, campaign-finance records show, including $25,000 days after he was indicted.
-
The Guardian’s staff is not impressed with the new press secretary. The headline says it all:
Enter the Zachbot: Trump’s new press secretary malfunctions on podium debut
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Latest Posts
-
Brooks and Meritocracy
-
Trump Denies Russia and China Helping Iran
-
Denzel Washington Never Met Anyone Braver or Smarter Than Trump
-
Musk Has Donated Over a Quarter Billion Dollars to Republicans This Cycle
-
“American Values”
-
DOJ Targeting Media Outlets Over Press Pool
-
The Decline of the West
-
Trump Makes Diesel Deal with Russia