What is Trump’s Iran Strategy?

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The question arises from a WSJ article that talked about President Donald Trump’s (R) Truth Social post and instructions to Vice President JD Vance (R) to leave off negotiating with Iran and focus his attention on investigating corruption in Progressive-Democrat-run cities.

Trump’s announcement jumbles his current Iran strategy, which has already changed course several times since first launching the war in February. In recent days, he was considering three options: resuming airstrikes, maintaining the blockade on Iranian trade, or making a deal. He chose to tighten the blockade while allowing Vance to pursue an agreement to end the war.
But the president, who has claimed victory against Iran many times, for now seems willing to continue the military operation indefinitely without a diplomatic process in place.

No, Trump most assuredly has not changed course. He’s been steadfast in his goal of denying Iran the capability of obtaining nuclear weapons and, since Iran introduced the matter, reopening and keeping open the Strait of Hormuz. His strategy for achieving these ends has been constant, as well—physical denial of Iran’s ability to effect either nuclear weapons development or closing the Strait and economic denial of its ability to fund recovery of the wherewithal to regain either capability. What has been frangible, as is necessary with any conflict, whether kinetic, economic, or political has been his tactics for executing his strategy. Of course, he’s not going to telegraph those to our enemy, which he would be doing were he to explain his tactics to the press, which that enemy diligently reads.

In fine, Trump has a very clear strategy vis-à-vis Iran. It’s typical pressmen’s hubris that they conclusorily claim that their interpretation of his strategy actually is his strategy. This “confusion” is demonstrated by the present news writer’s “confusion.”

Do as I Say

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Progressive-Democrat Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa is wasting no time covering her iron fist with a velvet “conciliatory” glove. She spent her campaign bashing Elon Musk and his SpaceX company while campaigning.

Now she’s insisting that she can work with him and his businesses—so long as they operate on our terms.

We can have a strong working relationship with Elon Musk and his companies.
But it has to be on our terms.

Her terms include deals already nearly concluded for land purchases and swaps (Musk was trading 477 acres for 47 in one such deal), deals Hinojosa wants undone for no better reason than that the Progressive-Democrats are now in power, and she doesn’t like what Republican administrations in Austin had agreed with Musk and that were done under free market imperatives rather than Progressive-Democrat imperatives.

This isn’t government requiring businesses to operate within law’s boundaries. This is government dictating to a particular business how it must behave in order to be allowed to operate at all.

This is what Texans and Americans generally can expect from Progressive-Democrat rule for at least the next two years.

Democracy My Way—Not Yours

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The lede lays it out.

Voters in two Democratic strongholds approved restrictions on transgender participation in girls’ sports last week, delivering rare Republican victories amid a blue wave. But Democratic officials are already discussing ways to change the measures, drawing accusations of hypocrisy from Republicans who point to their support for the “No Kings” movement.

The citizens of Washington voted down, by a clear majority, an initiative to ban biological males from girls’ sports. In addition, the citizens of Colorado voted, also by a clear majority, an initiative to restrict gender-related surgeries that would otherwise be inflicted on children.

Colorado’s Progressive-Democrat Governor-elect Philip Weiser and Progressive-Democrat Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington have come out not just decrying those outcomes, but objecting to them and promising steps to cancel those citizens’ decisions. Weiser (as cited by Fox News):

suggested Colorado’s Democratic-controlled legislature could revisit the voter-approved measures, saying that it is “statutory…and a natural and I believe appropriate role for the legislature [to adjust.]

Jayapal has pledged to “take our state back” after voters approved the initiative.

“Our State.” Washington belongs to her Progressive-Democratic Party, not to the citizens of Washington.

Washington’s Progressive-Democratic Party Chair Shasti Conrad was even more direct. She

call[ed] the ballot measure “unconstitutional on its face” and indicating the party would “support [for] organizations planning to challenge it in court.”

The voice of the people is unconstitutional. Imagine that.

This is Progressive-Democrats shouting “King’s X” over American citizens’ democratically stated—that is to say, stated clearly at the ballot box—decisions and saying loudly that petty decisions of mere citizens do not count and are without effect.

First Things First

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The WSJ editors have outlined a number of Republican policies that would be good for our nation but that the Republican majority have not unacted on. Senate Republicans, especially, have much to answer for regarding the delays. Some of those are these:

  • Permitting reform. A pending bipartisan deal to reform the country’s byzantine permitting system would impose some discipline on never-ending environmental reviews that hold up oil and renewable energy projects.
  • Mr Trump proposed a $1.5 trillion defense budget that is realistic about the world’s rapidly compounding dangers. But $350 billion of that could be dead without a GOP budget bill.
  • Confirm judges. Democrats will block any Supreme Court and nearly all appellate court nominees come January. Three judges are awaiting a Senate floor vote, and 18 district judges and two appellate nominees are pending in committee. Those for the Fifth and Eighth appellate courts are especially important. Confirm them all.
  • Indexing capital gains for inflation. Republicans need a strong economy for the next two years or they’ll face even more losses in 2028.

John Solomon, Editor-in-Chief (and CEO) of Just the News, had salutary proposals of his own. Some of those are

  • within the reconciliation bill, a mandatory 15% reduction in each agency’s spending over the next two years but leaving it to the agencies on where to make the cuts
  • tax-exempt nonprofits that have ties to terrorism, anarchism, Communism, socialism, sex trafficking, abortion advocacy, medical harm to children too young to consent to transgender procedures, and/or engage in personal enrichment or overt political activity. Those all are violations of the requirement to be doing actual charitable work. Rescind their tax-exempt status
  • sue to block the Democrat-led state compact seeking to end the Electoral College. Interstate compacts are required by our Constitution to have Congressional approval before they can occur.

Pass the full $1.5 trillion for Defense. No further cowardly dithering. Do it through reconciliation, and structure permitting reform to fit within the reconciliation parameters. Do it as part of a multi-year budget in parallel with the 15% reductions in allocations to individual non-Defense agencies, and do these before the current (idiotic, driven by Republican timidity) Continuing Resolution expires early next month.

Those judges should have been confirmed months ago. Senate Republicans have been hiding under their desks long enough on these.

I’ll add one. Pass the SAVE Act, or at least put it to a vote in the Senate. Force Republican Senators face, up close and personal, the consequences of their timidity for not sooner forcing a vote over Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s (R, SD) timidity.

This would create a busy schedule, but Republicans still have nearly two months in which to do them. Nor do their Senate days need to be kept to banker hours. They just need to get to work.

As somebody once said, repeatedly, during an earlier Presidential campaign, “What the hell have you got to lose?” Thune has a lot to answer for with his lack of leadership.

The first thing Republicans need to do, though, is as a group grow the hell up, stop their toddler-esque internal bickering, and work together. If they continue acting like children, then Senate Republican senior leadership (I know, a contradiction in terms in this session) must cancel the Christmas break and keep the Senators in town until they pass these measures, or at least go on the record with floor debate and votes.  Absent that, they’ll just commit another egregious failure on the heels of their collapse in the just concluded elections.

Action may not always be happiness, but there is no happiness without action.
–Benjamin Disraeli

 

Veteran’s Day

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I first posted this in 2011; I added to it in 2014.

Thank you for all who have, and are, serving.  And because I couldn’t have said it better, I’ll let Mike Royko, late of the Chicago Tribune, via Coastal Courier, say it from his 1993 column.

I just phoned six friends and asked them what they will be doing on Monday.

They all said the same thing: working.

Me, too.

There is something else we share. We are all military veterans.

And there is a third thing we have in common. We are not employees of the federal government, state government, county government, municipal government, the Postal Service, the courts, banks, or S & Ls, and we don’t teach school.

If we did, we would be among the many millions of people who will spend Monday goofing off.

Which is why it is about time Congress revised the ridiculous terms of Veterans Day as a national holiday.

The purpose of Veterans Day is to honor all veterans.

So how does this country honor them?…

…By letting the veterans, the majority of whom work in the private sector, spend the day at their jobs so they can pay taxes that permit millions of non-veterans to get paid for doing nothing.

As my friend Harry put it:

“First I went through basic training. Then infantry school. Then I got on a crowded, stinking troop ship that took 23 days to get from San Francisco to Japan. We went through a storm that had 90 percent of the guys on the ship throwing up for a week.

“Then I rode a beat-up transport plane from Japan to Korea, and it almost went down in the drink. I think the pilot was drunk.

“When I got to Korea, I was lucky. The war ended seven months after I got there, and I didn’t kill anybody and nobody killed me.

“But it was still a miserable experience. Then when my tour was over, I got on another troop ship and it took 21 stinking days to cross the Pacific.

“When I got home on leave, one of the older guys at the neighborhood bar — he was a World War II vet — told me I was a —-head because we didn’t win, we only got a tie.

“So now on Veterans Day I get up in the morning and go down to the office and work.

“You know what my nephew does? He sleeps in. That’s because he works for the state.

“And do you know what he did during the Vietnam War? He ducked the draft by getting a job teaching at an inner-city school.

“Now, is that a raw deal or what?”

Of course that’s a raw deal. So I propose that the members of Congress revise Veterans Day to provide the following:

– All veterans — and only veterans — should have the day off from work. It doesn’t matter if they were combat heroes or stateside clerk-typists.

Anybody who went through basic training and was awakened before dawn by a red-neck drill sergeant who bellowed: “Drop your whatsis and grab your socks and fall out on the road,” is entitled.

– Those veterans who wish to march in parades, make speeches or listen to speeches can do so. But for those who don’t, all local gambling laws should be suspended for the day to permit vets to gather in taverns, pull a couple of tables together and spend the day playing poker, blackjack, craps, drinking and telling lewd lies about lewd experiences with lewd women. All bar prices should be rolled back to enlisted men’s club prices, Officers can pay the going rate, the stiffs.

– All anti-smoking laws will be suspended for Veterans Day. The same hold for all misdemeanor laws pertaining to disorderly conduct, non-felonious brawling, leering, gawking and any other gross and disgusting public behavior that does not harm another individual.

– It will be a treasonable offense for any spouse or live-in girlfriend (or boyfriend, if it applies) to utter the dreaded words: “What time will you be home tonight?”

– Anyone caught posing as a veteran will be required to eat a triple portion of chipped beef on toast, with Spam on the side, and spend the day watching a chaplain present a color-slide presentation on the horrors of VD.

– Regardless of how high his office, no politician who had the opportunity to serve in the military, but didn’t, will be allowed to make a patriotic speech, appear on TV, or poke his nose out of his office for the entire day.

Any politician who defies this ban will be required to spend 12 hours wearing headphones and listening to tapes of President Clinton explaining his deferments.

Now, deal the cards and pass the tequila.

– Mike Royko

Next, because this is a day of remembrance and of honoring our surviving veterans, take another moment to visit here and take in Mark Toomey’s piece.

And follow his advice at the end.