Another Day in Paradise, Sort Of

Slapping together a post late at night is a recipe for incoherence.  But that’s my claim to fame.  Fame?

Well, here we are again my old nemesis.  What shall we talk about?

I read a little about the continuing adventures of the Republican House representatives trying to select a new Speaker.  They tried another one of the establishment guys, Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the majority whip.  Trump posted, “Voting for a globalist RINO like Tom Emmer would be a tragic mistake!”  Well, that’s that.

Now the question that needs to be answered is can they agree on anyone as Speaker?  Maybe not.  It’s possible that the establishment would rather cause a government shutdown rather than allow someone outside of their club from controlling the purse strings in Washington.  At this point I think I’m okay with a government shutdown.  Sure, it would probably mean chaos and possibly bankruptcy for me personally but I think it might not be a bad way of getting the attention of the people running this madhouse.  Eventually the establishment Republicans will cut a deal with the Democrats and make Hakeem Jeffries Speaker.  And that’s fine.  It will demonstrate to the world that the Uniparty is a living, breathing reality.  But I have to admire the rebels in the Trump wing of the House Republicans for sticking by their guns and slapping the RINOs around like they’re doing.  It’s great theater.

It looks like mostly everybody admits that unless Donald Trump is forced off the primary ballot, he will win the nomination.  And once he’s in the general election he’s definitely going to get a crapload of votes.  Not to say fraud couldn’t beat him.  We know from sad experience it could.  But regardless of Trump’s towering lead in the primaries there are several candidates who want to stay in the race in case chicanery takes Trump off the ballot.  I’m guessing DeSantis and Haley are in it for the long haul.  I’m not sure anyone else has enough money coming in to stay in long term.  It’s just a little more than a year before that election but it will feel like forever, especially as the country falls apart around us on multiple fronts.  But it will be interesting.

And speaking of interesting, in a horrific way, the two hot wars continue unabated.  Israel is probing Gaza to see where the hostages are hidden and trying to figure out how to wound Hamas critically without losing hundreds, if not thousands of IDF lives.

And the Ukraine war grinds on.  The majority of the Ukrainian “spring” offensive is over and the Russians have taken to the offense.  The latest front is the fortified city of Avdiivka which the Russians have begun to encircle.  Today they managed to overrun, at very great cost, the high ground northwest of the city called Terrikon.  With the loss of this high ground the Ukrainians will be forced to move their artillery much farther west and north of the present positions and that will finally put an end to the artillery bombardment of Donetsk City which has been a humanitarian problem for the Russian Donbas since the beginning of hostilities in 2014.  But all indications are that conquering Avdiivka will be a slow painful grind for the Russian army in the same way as the Bakhmut campaign was earlier this year, but smaller.  I guess the wars will drag on for months and years but maybe there’s a chance we can put an end to the tens of billions of dollars that Biden keeps shoveling into Zelensky’s (and his own) off-shore accounts.  Well, we’ll see.

I won’t talk about the economy.  It’s too gruesome to dwell on.  We’re all being sent to the cleaners and we’ll all be a little poorer by and by but that’s just par for the course.  Of course, if Joe gets his $100 billion dollars for Ukraine maybe we’ll be a lot poorer and a lot sooner.  But leave that be for now.

So that’s my quick synopsis of where we are right now.  Everybody, do your best to hang in there.  Tomorrow belongs to the people with endurance.  Let that be us.