Author Archives: eehines

Endless War Retreat

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There are endless wars, and there are endless wars. Our nation’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seemed endless because of mission drift by a sequence of American administrations. Our goals in Iraq were, initially, limited and specific; although with hindsight, President Bush the Elder’s goals might have been too limited, a condition which led to the second phase of that war, the move to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime. That goal, though, was nebulously defined, then it “evolved” across successive administrations, leading to continued combat involvement over too many years in Iraq.

Our war in Afghanistan began as a move to punish and destroy the al Qaeda that had executed the terror attacks in 11 September 2001. That mission was largely accomplished promptly, although it took a few more years to track down bin Laden and deal with him with finality. That tracking didn’t benefit overmuch by our continued warring in Afghanistan, though; instead that mission continually “evolved,” also, and we stayed in that fighting for some twenty years.

Those were two unnecessarily endless wars.

There is another war, though, that truly is endless, and the Biden-Harris administration is rapidly retreating from it, making that war increasingly dangerous to us and to our friends and allies. That’s the war terrorists—especially the rump al Qaeda and a rapidly regrowing Daesh—are fighting against us.

…Islamic State poses a growing threat to the US and its interests. You wouldn’t know it based on the Biden administration’s withdrawal from terrorist hot spots across South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

And [emphasis added]

Over the past year alone, Islamic State has been linked to terrorist attacks and plots in Afghanistan, Austria, Belgium, Germany, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, Switzerland, and Turkey, among others. On July 25, the day before the opening ceremony of the Paris Summer Olympics, Belgian authorities arrested suspected members of ISIS-K for planning a terrorist attack. And in June, US law enforcement arrested eight suspects with possible Islamic State ties who had crossed the border from Mexico.
Yet the US has cut and run from terrorist sanctuaries. This month the US military turned over control of its final base in the African country of Niger even though the Islamic State and al Qaeda are on the rise in the region.

The latest example of this endless war, which is a direct outcome of our administration’s retreat, was the terror threat against a popular singer and her audience at a concert in Vienna.

Thanks to intelligence the US collected, Austrian law enforcement arrested three suspects for their involvement in an alleged plot to explode bombs and use knives against concertgoers at the Ernst Happel Stadium [where Taylor Swift had intended to hold an Eras Tour concert].
The alleged plotters had both the intention and capabilities to conduct a major attack. One of them, a 19-year-old Austrian, had recently pledged loyalty to ISIS. According to the head of Austria’s Directorate of State Security and Intelligence, he was aiming to kill “as many civilians as possible” in a suicide attack. He and one of his alleged accomplices, a 17-year-old man, had apparently radicalized online.

Maybe it’s time for the Biden-Harris administration, and for subsequent administrations, to learn the difference between endless wars and endless wars, stop running away from all of them without discrimination, and get after the terrorists who are fighting their otherwise endless war against us and against our friends and allies.

Another Example

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Lots of folks—pundits who should know better—expend a lot of ink and pixels commenting on the stock market’s behavior and how that’s a powerful indicator of our underlying economy. I, on the other hand [ahem] have commented on the stock market’s firm tie to our underlying economy, but with a lot of slack in that connection: there is a lot of highly variable time lag between the private, real economy in which all of us must live and operate and the stock market in which investors (which includes far more of us than those same pundits seem to understand) operate, with the real economy, which drives the stock market, making its moves and the stock market, eventually, responding, or the stock market betting on an upcoming real economy move that may or may not happen within a useful timeframe, or at all.

Here’s an example of that essential temporal disconnect:

They [investors] built over months: big bets on the Japanese yen. Complex cryptocurrency wagers. Investments in hot tech companies.
Common to all the trades were heavy doses of leverage, or borrowed money, which investors used to amplify expected gains. As markets rose through the first half of 2024, the investments generated windfall profits, inspiring copycat traders to get on board and pushing prices higher.
Now the tide has turned. Unrest has returned to global markets over the past month, and investors are now in retreat from these once-unstoppable trades.

Very few of those moves had any direct connection with the underlying real economies as they were behaving in the moment or had been behaving for some time. They were moves in anticipation of those real economies’ future behavior.

My point here is not to stay out of the stock market altogether and forever. It is, contra the above, always a good time to invest in the American stock market. Just don’t constantly chase the latest hot tip or gee whiz fad. Don’t assume, either, that what the real economy does will be promptly reflected in the stock market or vice versa. The former likely will occur, but only eventually; the latter is a crap shoot on the house’s table.

Instead, have clearly defined—and written down, so memories can’t fade or impressions can’t distort memories—goals and a clearly defined—and written down, so memories can’t fade or impressions can’t distort memories—plan for getting there.

Do the research necessary to understand investing and investment plans and development, do the necessary research into the companies under consideration for investment and/or into the stock selection algorithms you intend to use, and then stick to your plan. That plan, too, cannot be impossible to change, but it should be very difficult to change.

Yes, it takes work. But that’s the nature of success in any endeavor.

Jokes, Again

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Because it’s time….

I saw a sign that said “watch for children” and I thought, “That sounds like a fair trade.”

I don’t have a girlfriend; I just know a girl who would get really mad if she heard me say that.

My resolution was to read more, so I turned on the subtitles on my television.

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.

When I was ten, my family moved to Downers Grove, IL. When I was twelve, I found them.

A man cut his thumb off with the bandsaw in his home workshop. Some responses by family:

Visiting him in the hospital, his wife says, “You just gonna lay there and twiddle your thumbs all day?”

Daughter: Rule of thumb: look before you cut.

Son: Doc says it shouldn’t affect your hand, but don’t count on it.

Wife again: Everyone makes mistakes. Hell, you could count how many times this happened on one hand.

 

Q. How can you tell the difference between an elephant and a blueberry?
A. The blueberry is blue.

Q: How can you tell the difference between and elephant and a marshmallow?
A. The elephant won’t float when you put it into a cup of hot chocolate.

Q: What’s large, grey, and you can’t see it?
A: An elephant around the corner.

And finally—or maybe at last:

They all laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian; Well, they’re not laughing now.

As Predicted

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Early on in the Progressive-Democrat Biden-Harris administration’s mandates and other pushes of our nation’s car and truck assemblers* to stop producing ICE vehicles and switch over to producing battery vehicles exclusively, some folks were predicting that the transition from ICE vehicles to battery vehicles would be a net “green job” loser rather than grower.

Stellantis now is living that prediction.

On Friday the auto maker announced plans to lay off 2,450 workers in Michigan as it ramps up electric-vehicle production. As consolation, the laid-off workers will receive a generous parting gift.

The fact is that battery cars and trucks have fewer parts and so need fewer employees to assemble them. Upstream, battery vehicle components have fewer parts, and so upstream component manufacturers need fewer employees to make them. Look for those component manufacturers to reduce their hiring needs and then to start laying off employees that are no longer needed.

My added prediction: with the electricity grid becoming more unstable with the accelerating Biden-Harris administration and Progressive-Democrat-run State governments pushes to “green” energy production in parallel with their push to shut down fossil fuel-powered electricity generation, our national power grid is becoming more unstable. That instability, coupled with our industrial base dependency on our power grid and with the expected battery vehicle very large demand on that same power grid, will lead to downstream layoffs as those industrial companies’ ability to produce becomes increasingly hampered and those companies begin their own sequence of layoffs.

*Too much of the components which car and truck companies operating in the US use are manufactured overseas and imported for these companies to be considered manufacturers.

Press Arrogance Confessed

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The AP has confessed press arrogance, even though it likely didn’t intend its statement to be that. In David Bauder’s article concerning journalist efforts to downplay Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ ducking interviews at every opportunity, Brauder wrote

[F]or journalists, the larger lesson is that their role as presidential gatekeepers is probably diminishing forever.

Bauder then cited Republican communications strategist Kevin Madden:

For the teams behind candidates, “the goal is to control the message as much as possible[.]”

Of course. They’re wresting that control away from an intrinsically mendacious guild.

Gatekeepers. Because men of the journalist guild Know Better what us average Americans should know about the political doings in our nation. These Wonders presume to censor gatekeep that information, to decide for us what we should hear and how we should understand what we hear, and they’re distressed that there are so many other means through which politicians talk to us.