Month: August 2026

Unlike Trump, MBS has learned from his mistakes. He didn’t encourage Trump to start the war, because he now prefers a stable to a volatile Middle East. Trump followed Bibi’s advice rather than his, however, and the current chaos ensued.

Over the past few months, Trump has bounced like a ping-pong ball between MBS and Bibi. He made a deal to sell nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia but then added an unacceptable condition the next day at the behest of the Israelis. He repeatedly threatens to escalate to appease Bibi but then backs down and promises to negotiate in order to satisfy American public opinion and the Saudis.

Has MBS figured out that, for all of Trump’s admiration of his political style and his aesthetic, the current administration simply cannot be trusted? Probably.

The root cause of the smoke from Canadian wildfires that plagued us last week is climate change. Donald Trump doesn’t accept that, of course; he maintains that climate change is a Chinese hoax. He says he plans to punish the Canadians for imposing their smoke on us in some as yet undetermined way. It is fair to assume it will include tariffs.

Personally, I think Trump’s ambitions are way too limited here. What about the cold fronts from Canada that make our lives miserable in the winter? Don’t they deserve a tariff, too?

According to the NYT, Trump is angry at the oil companies because they haven’t given him enough credit for their record profits. At the same time, he is annoyed that they haven’t reduced prices for consumers.

Makes sense to me. I can’t imagine why the oil companies won’t express their gratitude to Trump for enriching them by starting his stupid war. That would certainly go over well with the public.

Both Governor DeWine and Senator Husted say they have been promised there won’t be a massive immigration raid in Springfield. That answers one of the questions I raised in a previous post.

For now, at least. Minneapolis showed Trump that shows of force to demonstrate dominance don’t appeal to swing voters. They do, however, make the base happy, so don’t be surprised if the Springfield Haitians are targeted shortly after the election.

Rubio and Ratcliffe told Trump that Bibi’s plan to force regime change through bombing alone was ridiculous. J.D. never supported the war. Even Hegseth just followed orders. No, the responsibility for the unsuccessful war rests solely on the president’s shoulders, which makes him a loser. Since he can’t tolerate being viewed as a loser, someone will have to pay for his mistakes. Who will it be?

To fire any of his principal advisers would be an admission of failure, so I don’t see that happening. Trump will be concerned that his domestic political opponents–even the lukewarm members of his own party–will get the message from the Iranians that it is possible to stand up to him. He can’t permit that, so you can expect him to become even more capricious and autocratic at home.

J.D. likes to tie “Heritage American” status to the Civil War, which raises a question: how does he feel about the Confederacy?

From the reviews of his latest book, the answer is pretty clear. He will concede that slavery was wrong and that the Confederacy was fighting for a bad cause. Individual Confederate soldiers, on the other hand, were as brave and noble as those fighting for the Union. After the war, they came together to inhabit and develop the West and to build the country we know and love today. They consequently bear no blame for slavery or the war. Whatever sins they might have committed have long since been redeemed.

Really? They actually built a new South that was as close to the old one as possible. It was a backward, Third World land with a plantation economy premised on cheap labor, low taxes on landowners, the denial of political rights to black people, agriculture, and the extraction of natural resources. As I’ve noted before, that economy still exists in some areas of the former Confederacy today.

The Civil War, regardless of what J.D. thinks, was about treason and slavery, and he is siding with the traitors for reasons of political expediency. Were they really better Americans than today’s immigrants? Not by any reasonable standard.

For decades, the Republican brand has been built on distrust of government. If the electorate thinks the government is corrupt and inept, the thinking goes, they will vote to limit its powers and return money and freedom to the people. In practice, of course, the primary beneficiaries of this were wealthy businessmen, who welcome the tax cuts and the deregulation.

The problem now is that populists from both the left and the right are opposed to Trump’s dream of data centers from sea to sea. How can the GOP leadership turn off the public’s cynicism just in this particular field? So far, by making backroom deals to avoid public scrutiny until the last possible moment and by running bait-and-switch campaign commercials about AI regulation, it seems.

In the long run, that will only make the problem worse. It also presents an opportunity for the Democrats, if they can figure out how to use it.

He was a charismatic, larger than life figure with a childlike enthusiasm for war. He was an open and passionate imperialist who believed the world was the beneficiary if his country expanded its political and cultural influence. The media adored him, as did some of the public; the rest saw him as volatile and dangerous.

Is it TR or Churchill? It’s both, of course.