Well, That Is True ...

 ... to a very large extent, but let's not forget your first term in which arming 404 went into overdrive. 

Trump described the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as “Biden’s war.” “This is not my war. I’ve been here for a very short period of time... He gave them billions and billions of dollars. He should have never allowed – If he had any brain, which he didn’t have and doesn’t have… – that war to start.” “I think frankly he [Russian President Vladimir Putin] had so little respect for Biden that he started it for that reason. And obviously, he didn't get along very well with [Ukraine’s Vladimir] Zelensky or anybody else. And now you have millions of dead people, and those people – every one of them – should be alive right now,” Trump added.

But by the looks of it and by the yet another mess in your national security team still dominated by neocons and warmongers, you learned absolutely nothing in terms of foreign policy the first time around. Now, you are issuing risible "deadlines" being the head of a loser in this war and you are on your way of making this war yours.

Meanwhile, one of the greatest statesmen of our time responds:

MOSCOW, April 14 - RIA Novosti. Russia and the United States have not yet agreed on the key parameters of the agreement on the settlement in Ukraine during the contacts, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. "No," the minister said, answering a question from the Kommersant newspaper whether it was possible to formulate the main parameters of the agreement during Russian-American contacts. "The key components of the settlement are not easy to agree on... They are being discussed," he stressed.

You see, reality is a bitch and the only thing being discussed today, once all of the layers of diplomatic pigeon speak, pathos, protocols and PR are peeled off, is how much Moscow is willing to save whatever remains of the American face in this conflict which the US lost by a mile. 

James Kunstler gets to the heart of the matter:

Town and country, what human society at its best was composed of, has got to be rearranged. This is something that MAGA is not talking about. MAGA looks like it is seeking a reenactment of the years 1950 to 1964. That isn’t going to happen. What then? The tech broz propose something that looks like an A-I printed robotic future. They are drunk on their own Stanford University brand Kool-Aid, hallucinating a future that is little more than math dressed in spandex.

We live in the now, and no matter how we convulse--it is the COFM (Correlation of Forces and Means) which defines global dynamics. We better learn to live with this. Modern world is nothing but an entangled web of differential equations and probabilities thrown at us and we better grasp its complexity. 

For MAGA Crowd.

Keep in mind, America's greatness is not from what many view it to be today. But then...

Donald Trump has claimed that Russia made a technological breakthrough after stealing ‘super-duper’ missile plans from the US during the presidency of Barack Obama. Moscow has dismissed the allegation. The former US president made the suggestion during an election rally in New Hampshire on Monday, when he pledged to beef up American strategic defensive and offensive capabilities if he is returned to the White House next year. “Under my leadership, we will once again protect our own people with our own missile defense system capable of blasting China, Russia, Iranian missiles out of the sky. And we will in addition have offensive weapons that will be second to none,” he said. “You know, Russia stole the super, we call them the super-dupers, right? They go super fast. They stole that during the Obama administration,” Trump added. “They stole the plans and they built it.” Asked about the remarks on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was capable of developing advanced weapon systems on its own, and had several that no other nations could replicate. He added that he was not in a position to say whether they qualified as “‘super-duper,’ in Mr. Trump’s terms.”

Yes, Russians also stole Vostok capsule plans and launched Gagarin in it to become the first man in space from the US. Russians always steal American plans. Remember Stalingrad Battle and Operation Bagration plans? Russians stole those from America. Truth is, Russians defeating Napoleon? Stole those plans from America. Well, since Russians stole those plans of hypersonic missiles from America, we should reasonably expect American hypersonic weapons to be deployed right about now. Ah... wait.

Wet Dreams.

She is a mighty fine governor, but let's be honest--when she speaks with the straight face that "Trump's legacy" is what America "needs", like support (I mean licking boots) of Israel, tax breaks for filthy rich, "business deals" which accelerate American industrial decline and other anomalies, like cowardice, she is right--continuing to consider these "accomplishments" as a positive legacy and talking about why GOP "failed" is exactly the reason why it will continue to fail because GOP is a party of quislings  whose only function now is to negotiate with Democrats how main constituency of GOP, people who give money to it, may hold on to its riches for a little while longer. 

GOP reminds of a crack addict who tries to act normally while having a severe case of coming down, by means of dressing in tuxedo,  while trying to convince oneself that the condition he is in is just a passing one. GOP "elite" is as treasonous as radicals from Dems and if the average Joe dies tomorrow, they will not care. Of course, they will continue to massage abortion issue and pledge allegiance to Israel, but they will do nothing for people who actually, diminishing as their numbers are, provide a residual functionality to this country. 

For starters, let's drop the pretense that GOP is a "conservative" party--I am on records for years, there is nothing conservative about GOP. It is not and hasn't been since the times William Buckley "sold" himself as intellectual, same goes for a neocon cabal, which in a classic rabbinical tradition demagogued its way into the Republican pseudo-intellectual Parnassus pushing the only button which matters for main GOP contributors--greed, and tawdry sloganeering which passed for decades as "conservatism". Evidently rooting for New England Patriots, or Texas Cowboys, being addicted to laissez faire and peeing one's pants  (or wetting eyes, or both) from seeing innocent countries and scores of innocent people being killed is considered somehow "conservative". As Kristi Noem proved in her interview, this is precisely what GOP intends to do, while feeding deplorables all those "issues" of abortion, Israel and "trade deals" which somehow should address their unenviable fate. Remarkably, MAGA and Trumpism is exactly the vehicle which may break the Republican camel's back and stop its gravy train of congressional dealings, which is ironic, really--one fraud being broken by another. But then again, normal people in America have no political and ideological sanctuary to run too. One chapitaue, left from the road, populated by Democratic Party, is the one containing Room 101 and face recognition check-points, where straight white humans need not apply or approach, until they brought there in shackles and on their knees. The other one is a circus of political treason, corruption and pathos-ridden BS being sold as a virtue, which, in the end, is merely another stop before being delivered into the "rehabilitation" camp being built behind first chapiteau --your choice, America, of how you commit suicide.

So, while I respect governor's farming background and her hard work at getting her degree in political "science" and then getting elected to US Congress and governorship, I have to really question her grasp of the current situation and how GOP will continue--it is not even for a debate--to betray its main constituents who still believe that GOP somehow represents their interests. Poor people. So, MAGA is perfect for separating GOP from power, which it doesn't need anyway, since it is the party of deserters, plus, considering the "intellectual" level of its "top" and what passes for its ideological machine--no hope for it to do anything what benefits the core of the American people. MAGA, for it also being a fraud and populist demagoguery, at least breaks, for now, the ideological impasse to which GOP led majority of its constituency, trying to sabotage any change of direction towards substantive questions about America's nationhood, real economy, GOP helped to obliterate, declining wages, loss of jobs, violence, dramatic social stratification, unchecked immigration, debilitating and criminal foreign wars, corrupt political discourse, insane cultural practices and destruction of educational system. You know, all those secondary, to support of Israel, tax cuts and abortion, issues which have absolutely no bearing (wink, wink) on lives of the majority of people. I see NO people with enough intellect, integrity and awareness in the so called Republican cultural milieu, who can provide any viable definition of conservatism and lead the party between Scylla of neocon foreign policy and neoliberal economics of GOP establishment and Charybdis of MAGA populist bullshittery, which, in the long run, is even more damaging because it cannot deliver, as Trump's presidency demonstrated so vividly, even when adjusted for DNC and media's sabotage of his chaotic reality TV show. There are NO people in GOP which can defeat democrat's insanity, because they cannot generate ideas without betraying the real nature of GOP--a party of good ol' boys who are into it to make money. Or serve Israel, like popular "conservative" Ben Shapiro, who, and you guessed it, is a lawyer and political "scientist"--a precise category of people who led the United States down the road of ruin. As Thomas Sowell succinctly put it:" Road to hell is littered with Harvard degrees." 

In related news, another wowser from Boeing: 

But it's not just the pandemic that is dragging down Boeing. The company is facing a huge challenge with its new 777X, a longer variant of the widebody 777, taking a $6.5 billion write-off on the still unfinished aircraft. Test flights of the 777X began a year ago, but safety regulators are demanding design changes to address safety concerns. And with the market for such giant, long-haul jets evaporating during the pandemic, Boeing is now pushing back the plane's entry into commercial service into late 2023. Boeing has also had a slew of other design and production problems with the 787 Dreamliner and the KC-46 midair refueling tanker for the Air Force.

Read the whole thing. Honestly, my heart bleeds for Boeing's commercial division, for people who worked there, in the end for company itself which was a leader in commercial aviation for such a long time. Now it faces a de facto financial ruin and I don't know what is the outlook. I doubt  that even the term "foggy" really applies to its future as is true to the whole United States. Just to confirm that things proceed apace. Aw, poor-poor dear Teddy Cruz as if he didn't know what was coming. 

“The first week in office, what has Joe Biden done? He’s signed an executive order ending the Keystone pipeline, destroying 11,000 jobs,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in a Tuesday interview on Fox News.

No shit, genius. Ask your party what it was busy with the last five years. Or fifty, for that matter. I am sure GOP's sterile "conservative intellectuals" will explain it to you. Or not. 

MAGA All The Way.

As was expected: 

The Trump administration is poised to announce Friday that it is withdrawing from a treaty that has been a centerpiece of superpower arms control since the Cold War and whose demise some analysts worry could fuel a new arms race.An American withdrawal, which has been expected for months, follows years of unresolved dispute over Russian compliance with the pact, known as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, treaty. It was the first arms control measure to ban an entire class of weapons: ground-launched cruise missiles with a range between 500 kilometers (310 miles) and 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles). Russia denies that it has been in violation.

Obviously Russia is not in violation of that treaty, she simply has better missiles and because of that this whole thing, the INF Treaty that is, is dead. But not only that--the US needs similar weapons around China. So, all pretense of abiding by treaties and international law is thrown out, but we knew and anticipated this anyway. What is most fascinating, however, is how Trump's Administration became one of the most neocon-infested admins in recent history with even W having his doubts on such specimens as Bolton, not to mention a crooked psychopath such as Elliott Abrams. And here is how Daniel Larison assesses Trump:

The framing of this New York Times article on Trump and Venezuela is all wrong:

Mr. Trump’s forceful challenge to Mr. Maduro is the first such intervention in his anti-interventionist presidency, a sharp departure from an “America First” foreign policy aimed at extracting the United States from overseas quagmires and staying out of the internal affairs of other countries.

The analysis here is wildly misleading. The Trump administration has previously taken a keen interest in meddling in the internal affairs of several countries, including Yemen, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela, and he has publicly threatened to attack most of those countries along with North Korea. The latest decision to recognize the opposition leader as Venezuela’s interim president is an outgrowth of the administration’s consistent hawkish position over the last two years.

I have to agree with Larison here--it is not just bellicose rhetoric, Trump completely out of his own volition turned his MAGA into MAAA--Make America Aggressive Again. Not that it was very difficult to do to start with. In fact, he succeeded greatly by laying down the foundation for further American decline and loss of any respect. I have no reasons to like Maduro and all those South American "lefties" but if the regime change in Venezuela does occur (with Trump recognizing some young globalist stooge as legitimate president of the sovereign nation), one has to seriously think about American elites being completely unhinged. Trump is turning into proverbial American war-monger (narcissism was always with him as a malt) and one has to admit--he turned out to be no contest for the cabal of even moronic neocon shysters any person with even rudimentary knowledge of international system and geopolitics would have no problem figuring out. But not Trump--a NYC real estate hustler and TV personality. In general, he betrayed MAGA the same way he gave up on General Flynn, not understanding that if one wanted to change America's (and possibly world's) course away from oblivion one had to learn slightly more than how to built casinos and upscale (and grossly overpriced) condos. But in the end, one has to ask now the question--are there any normal and competent people left in D.C.? Call it a hunch, but I don't think there are any, anymore. And Trump comes across today as defeated and totally corralled by people he thought he was smarter than them. Boy, was he wrong and that is bad news for what remains of American Republic.