I tried to convince President Obama to go to war with Iran, but Obama was too smart. From the war games his generals ran, he knew that Iran would close oil shipments through the Strait and cause immeasurable damage. He also knew they wouldn’t surrender. So instead, the U.S. and all the other nations in the Security Council, including Russia and China, agreed on a no-nukes treaty, with strong inspections.The treaty was working, just as we hoped. Our inspections were thorough and deep. Iran had stopped producing weapons-grade uranium. An unnecessary and costly (in money and lives) war was averted. And as they showed good faith, we were going to bring Iran into the group of rational nations, where it was in their best interests.As I always have said, I know more than the generals, so I fired all our best, most experienced military leaders, and replaced them with inexperienced, incompetent “yes-men.” That way, I could be sure there would be no military coup to replace me. One of my best “yes-men” is Pete Hegseth, who has less experience and training than an army buck private. He’s perfect because he never will disagree with me and won’t try to overthrow me. Hey, who else would hire him except maybe someone like Fox News? He and Netanyahu convinced me that Iran would fall quickly and easily. My hand-picked military leaders — especially Hegseth — agreed. I went along with them. So, the war, which we are winning, is not my fault (unless somehow it all works out, in which case it was my idea).I’m just a Fox News talking head. I have no idea how to run the biggest, most powerful military in the history of the world. I told President Trump we had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capability, and then I told him we were in imminent danger. Is that a problem? I was amazed that Iran would close the Strait and not give up immediately. I never ran war games because I thought that if we had muscular white soldiers with tattoos– no gays or women — that would be enough to scare any enemy. Drones? Those are just tiny airplanes, aren’t they? What we need are a bunch of billion-dollar battleships (all named “The USS Trump”). What? A battleship can be taken out by a $50 thousand drone? I didn’t know. Yes, thousands of people have died, but most of them are Iranians, so they don’t count. Please tell me how to run a war game. Is it like checkers?
Things couldn’t have turned out better. An aging, mentally weak egomaniac in the White House is wasting America’s military supplies on a pointless war. They certainly can’t criticize us about Ukraine or Taiwan.Actually, things have turned out great. People stopped asking me about Epstein’s underage girls; though inflation is crazy, my family and I are raking in billions, and Republicans are naming stuff after me. What more can I ask? How about a 3rd term? I’ll raise tariffs, and when the market sinks, I’ll buy stocks on the cheap, then cut the tariffs. That’ll be more billions in my pockets. I hear Texans just voted for my man. And, here’s another $1.5 billion I won for suing my own administration. Life is good.
One thought on “Why we are stuck in a war we promised not to wage”
An in keeping with Trump’s need to elect incompetents, who won’t disagree with him or overthrow him, we give you this from Paul Krugman:
Texas Republicans have, by a huge margin, rejected Sen. John Cornyn, a hardline conservative whose great failing, from Donald Trump’s point of view, was that he occasionally took stands on principle. To replace him they chose the scandal-ridden, deeply corrupt Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, who received Trump’s endorsement precisely because of his vices. Paxton’s rottenness makes him a Trump kindred spirit and also guarantees that he will be dependent on Trump’s goodwill and hence slavishly loyal.
So much the better for the Democrats, who now may — may — have a chance at winning Cornyn’s Senate seat. However, despite Paxton’s utter unfitness for any public office – let alone Senator — knowledgeable observers of Texas politics consider the race between Paxton and the Democratic nominee, James Talarico, no better than a tossup.
What will be at stake in the general election, beyond the question of just how much personal awfulness Texans will overlook? To an important extent it will be a referendum on healthcare.
Texas’s healthcare policy stands out, even among red states, for its cruelty.
Texas has refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. That is, it has turned down federal money that would have provided essential healthcare to hundreds of thousands of its residents, at almost no cost to Texas taxpayers, and injected large amounts of money into the Texas economy. Texan politicians have tried to justify their adamant opposition to expanded healthcare as a matter of principle, a way to prevent dependence on government programs. But in reality there’s no way to make sense of this choice except as a reflection of the drive to keep low-income people desperate and subservient.
This is the same drive that has led to Texas’s remarkably regressive tax system. Texas conservatives like to say that they rule a low-tax state, but taxes there are only low for the affluent. They’re quite high for the middle and working classes, and very high for the poor and near-poor:
Even among states that rejected the ACA Medicaid expansion, Texas’s Medicaid program is exceptionally harsh. As one summary explains,
In Texas, adults without children are not eligible for Medicaid coverage regardless of their income, and parents are eligible only if they earn less than 13 percent of the FPL [federal poverty line] (an annual income of less than $3,900 for a family of four).
The result is that Texas has worse health insurance coverage than any other state. Moreover, as the chart at the top of this post shows, the big improvement in coverage as a result of the ACA mostly bypassed Texas. Notably, 13.7% of Texan children are uninsured, compared with a 5.9% rate nationwide and 2.5% in New York.
High rates of uninsurance combined with a weak social safety net and, in recent years, growing rejection of vaccines largely explain one striking aspect of Texas’s evolution since 1980: its lagging life expectancy.
In 1979-81 life expectancy in Texas and New York were almost identical. But since then a wide gap has emerged, with New York state residents outliving Texans by an average of nearly 3 years:
Part of this gap in life expectancy reflects death by violence. Texas is a big law-and-order state, in which politicians love to talk tough about crime. But big Texan cities have much higher crime than big blue cities, New York in particular.
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
An in keeping with Trump’s need to elect incompetents, who won’t disagree with him or overthrow him, we give you this from Paul Krugman:
Texas Republicans have, by a huge margin, rejected Sen. John Cornyn, a hardline conservative whose great failing, from Donald Trump’s point of view, was that he occasionally took stands on principle. To replace him they chose the scandal-ridden, deeply corrupt Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, who received Trump’s endorsement precisely because of his vices. Paxton’s rottenness makes him a Trump kindred spirit and also guarantees that he will be dependent on Trump’s goodwill and hence slavishly loyal.
So much the better for the Democrats, who now may — may — have a chance at winning Cornyn’s Senate seat. However, despite Paxton’s utter unfitness for any public office – let alone Senator — knowledgeable observers of Texas politics consider the race between Paxton and the Democratic nominee, James Talarico, no better than a tossup.
What will be at stake in the general election, beyond the question of just how much personal awfulness Texans will overlook? To an important extent it will be a referendum on healthcare.
Texas’s healthcare policy stands out, even among red states, for its cruelty.
Texas has refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. That is, it has turned down federal money that would have provided essential healthcare to hundreds of thousands of its residents, at almost no cost to Texas taxpayers, and injected large amounts of money into the Texas economy. Texan politicians have tried to justify their adamant opposition to expanded healthcare as a matter of principle, a way to prevent dependence on government programs. But in reality there’s no way to make sense of this choice except as a reflection of the drive to keep low-income people desperate and subservient.
This is the same drive that has led to Texas’s remarkably regressive tax system. Texas conservatives like to say that they rule a low-tax state, but taxes there are only low for the affluent. They’re quite high for the middle and working classes, and very high for the poor and near-poor:
Even among states that rejected the ACA Medicaid expansion, Texas’s Medicaid program is exceptionally harsh. As one summary explains,
The result is that Texas has worse health insurance coverage than any other state. Moreover, as the chart at the top of this post shows, the big improvement in coverage as a result of the ACA mostly bypassed Texas. Notably, 13.7% of Texan children are uninsured, compared with a 5.9% rate nationwide and 2.5% in New York.
High rates of uninsurance combined with a weak social safety net and, in recent years, growing rejection of vaccines largely explain one striking aspect of Texas’s evolution since 1980: its lagging life expectancy.
In 1979-81 life expectancy in Texas and New York were almost identical. But since then a wide gap has emerged, with New York state residents outliving Texans by an average of nearly 3 years:
Part of this gap in life expectancy reflects death by violence. Texas is a big law-and-order state, in which politicians love to talk tough about crime. But big Texan cities have much higher crime than big blue cities, New York in particular.
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