Is Larry Correct...

 ... asking this question? 

Is Biden Trying to Start a War to Prevent Trump From Being Installed as President?

You can bet your ass on that--he is correct. So is George when speaking about my favorite description of European NATO countries--barking chihuahuas. 

Biden's minions turned puppeteers have a lot to answer for, and they panic. Can you imagine mama's boy Jake Sullivan or DNC operatives who played with the law facing Federal Prosecutors appointed by DJT--that will be a sight to behold. So, here we are. Poor, poor dears, they chose a very wrong country to fuck with, Russia that is, but then again--they don't teach anything useful in Ivy League humanities degree mills. They entered the wrong league in matters of war and geopolitics, they should have aspired for much lower one, where chihuahuas bark... 

Bordering On Surreal...

And I mean this:

I wrote in 2017 about the lead Russia was taking in anti-satellite weapons. The US has a larger satellite constellation, Russia by now has much more advanced anti-satellite weapons. S-500 and S-550 are fully capable anti-sat systems at orbits up to 1,000 km where most important US ISR assets, especially low orbit Keyhole satellites, are. Plus, of course, there are inspector-satellites capable to change orbits and do their thingy, like they did with the latest Keyhole optronic satellite by circling it and photographing its optic zooms. That means that in case, God forbid, of war just spraying it with special paint would be enough to turn it inoperable. Of course, there is always an option of exploding near it, but why lose good inspector capable of doing the trick on a number of enemy sats. So, now this:

WASHINGTON, Feb 15 — RIA Novosti. Washington is interacting with Moscow on the topic of a new "threat to national security" of the United States, allegedly related to Russia's deployment of anti-satellite weapons in space, said John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the White House National Security Council. "We are in the process of consulting with our allies and partners. We are in the process of interaction with Russia on this issue," he stressed. According to Kirby, US President Joe Biden is receiving the necessary information and has already "ordered preliminary discussions with leaders in Congress, direct diplomatic contact with Russia, allies and partners, as well as other countries of the world." At the same time, the official noted that the dialogue with Moscow will not reveal the "problem of trust," adding that there are opportunities for cooperation.

"Cooperation", really? How delusional those people are? Historic Russia once, in a feat of unjustified trust, extended the hand of friendship to the West--the hand was slapped away and attempts on demolishing Russia never stopped since then. Now, what we all observe--military impotence and incompetence of the West have been exposed and, as I am on record for the last 7 years, the US lost the arms race. The only which United States military has is its edge in the quantity of space-based assets. Russia is already starting to expand greatly her satellite constellation through SFERA project. 

 

P.S. Who knows what those Peresvets are capable of. 

Another One Bites The Dust...

... figuratively speaking.  

The Senior Director for Europe at the US National Security Council, Amanda Sloat, is about to vacate her position after three years in office, Politico reported on Friday. Sloat played a major role in coordinating the efforts of the US and its Western allies in aiding Kiev and countering Moscow amid the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, the media outlet reported. “It has been an amazing three years, but it’s time. I’m tired,” the official herself told Politico this week as she confirmed her impending resignation. Amanda Sloat has been a “quiet but key figure” behind the White House's efforts to improve relations with its European allies and oppose Moscow, the outlet said. She reportedly “spent months” coordinating a Western response to the Russian military campaign in Ukraine, which particularly translated into billions of dollars in military and economic assistance for Kiev, the report said. 

Well, what can I say, after looking at this young lady's background. 

Amanda Sloat currently serves on the National Security Council as the Senior Director for Europe. Previously, she was the Robert Bosch senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She was also a fellow with the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Sloat served in the U.S. government for nearly a decade. She was deputy assistant secretary for Southern Europe and Eastern Mediterranean Affairs at the State Department, where she was responsible for U.S. relations with Cyprus, Greece, and Turkey as well as for coordinating European engagement on Middle East issues. She also served as senior advisor to the White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and Gulf region and as senior advisor to the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. She previously worked as senior professional staff on the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, with responsibility for European policy.

Prior to her government service, Sloat was a senior program officer with the National Democratic Institute, including work in Iraq with the Council of Representatives. She was also a post-doctoral research fellow with the Institute of Governance at Queen's University Belfast. During this time, she held visiting fellowships at the Academy of Sciences in the Czech Republic, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, and the Jean Monnet Center at New York University Law School. She also served as a special advisor to the Scottish Parliament, Northern Ireland Assembly, and European Commission. Sloat holds a doctorate in politics from the University of Edinburgh and a bachelor's in political theory from James Madison College at Michigan State University. She has published a book, "Scotland in Europe: A Study of Multi-Level Governance" (Peter Lang Pub Inc, 2002). She has written widely on European politics in academic and foreign policy outlets.

The only conclusion I made was that she is not an ugly woman. But in terms of her competencies or rather lack thereof, she is a classic "product" of Western degree mills in what is known as "soft degrees" designed to teach academically credentialed Bullshit for good ol' boys and girls to get their degrees in order to be promoted into the all kinds of think-tank and government jobs in the West. So, she is an exhibit A of that. She may, however, qualify for barista position in Starbucks. I am on record--you see a Ph.D degree in political "science", international relations or "political theory" from Harvard, Oxford or Yale, and other degree mills with similar pseudo-academic courses--treat those as the red flags, since most of the time you will be communicating with utterly incompetent people. 

And here comes this issue--what this academic fraud could "coordinate", as Politico puts it:

Sloat’s tenure at the NSC was dominated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She spent months on little sleep coordinating a response with European allies and warning Ukrainian counterparts that Russian President Vladimir Putin planned for a full-scale assault. U.S. officials have said Sloat ensured the transatlantic response was aligned and robust, leading to billions in military and economic support for Kyiv. Not everyone is happy with the administration’s policy. They contend more advanced weaponry should have been sent to Kyiv in the war’s earliest days, pointing to Ukraine’s sputtering counteroffensive this year as evidence. And they also questioned the wisdom of the U.S. allowing the construction of the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 pipeline to finish, a decision that Germany reversed after the war started.

No, I really want to see itemization of this ensuring by this post-doctoral barista of this robust "transatlantic response". Of course, we will not get this itemization because any "ensuring" of anything in the transatlantic community is merely a single action of conveying the message from Washington--fall in line, or else. So, the whole idea that some relatively attractive bimbo who has zero professional skills in anything can "coordinate" something is down right preposterous. Starting from W's Administration after 9/11 US military-political top didn't present a single decent, forget about world class, diplomat, military leader or statesman. General Tommy Franks once clearly described what he had to deal with when communicating with Douglas Feith: "I have to deal with the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth almost every day."   

What is true today is that the types Tommy Franks described are the ONLY types required for work in the US Administrations. They are the ultimate product of pseudo-academic courses in Western humanities degree mills. The fact that this, obvious, affirmative action lowly bureaucrat is bowing out is merely an indication of the rats running from the sinking ship which is not just Biden Administration but the whole governance structure of the US. Of course, one shouldn't forget that the roles of many people in Biden Admin and US "academe" and media in unleashing a largest war crime since the WW II in what is now former Ukraine are well known, as are their identities and functional responsibilities in what amounts to killing and maiming of around 2 million people, primarily VSU personnel, not to mention atrocities committed by Kiev Nazi regime. 

So, this bimbo runs away because she may well be, most likely will be, identified as one of the "coordinators" of this atrocity, however not the main one, and she could be charged with war crimes as an active part of Administration which is fully responsible for war crimes of the scale not seen in Europe in almost 80 years. In this case, one has to almost envy Kamala Harris, because she is so stupid and unqualified for anything that her being a part of Biden Administration will be attributed to her mental feebleness and she will be left alone. Not the case with this "coordinator". Then the question arises, will the United States reach this phase which is described so aptly by James Kunstler:

So far, the collapse of suburbia has happened in slow motion, but the pace is quickening now and it’ll get supercharged when the bond markets go down, as they must, considering the country’s catastrophic fiscal circumstances. That will produce exactly the zombie apocalypse telegraphed in all those movies and TV series over recent years: normality overrun by demonic hungry ghosts. Every day in suburbia will be Halloween, and not in a fun way. All this is apprehended to some degree by the increasingly frightened public, though they have a hard time articulating it within any of the popular frameworks presented by politics, religion, or what appears lately to be extremely corrupt science. The people see what’s coming but they can’t make sense of it, and the stress makes a great many of them insane. Without a way to construct a coherent view of reality, or tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not, they behave accordingly: anything goes and nothing matters.

The US is already half-way there, and once the center refuses to hold anymore--this is in the progress as I type this--the inevitable question of who brought the United States to utter collapse will arise. Well, it is arising now, actually, and many who brought this about are well known. We just learned the identity of yet another one who helped America on her way out of normality. But then again, what do you expect from post-doctoral barista.

Well, Too Bad.

NYT is in lament mode. 

WASHINGTON — After four weeks of terror and retaliation in Israel and the Gaza Strip, and 20 months of war in Ukraine, President is confronting the limits of his leverage in the two international conflicts defining his presidency. For 10 days, the Biden administration has been urging Prime Minister to allow for “humanitarian pauses” in the bombing of Gaza, hoping that the $3.8 billion a year in American security assistance would carry with it enough influence over the Israeli leader’s tactics. It has not. Netanyahu rebuffed Biden’s push for greater efforts to avoid civilian casualties in a phone call Monday. And he has pushed ahead with what he has called “mighty vengeance” for the Oct. 7 attacks, using huge bombs to collapse Hamas’ network of tunnels, even if they also collapse whole neighborhoods in Gaza.

Well, that is an expected result for administration which merely simulates professional activity in fields were it has none. And if Gaza atrocity hasn't been enough. There is this:

So now, Biden is trying to channel fatigue and frustration with the war in Ukraine, born of the growing sense that billions of dollars in American arms, aid and intelligence collection has simply failed to overcome the assembled weight of the dug-in Russian army. “What I worry about,” Douglas Lute, a retired general who was central to putting together the Afghanistan strategy in the Bush and Obama administrations, said at an event at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point last week, “is that we are giving them enough to stay in the fight, but not enough to win.”

What can I say--General Douglas Lute wouldn't be allowed to command a company in Russian Army, of which he has about zero knowledge (expected from the guy who lost in Afghanistan), but then again, US general with a record of winning any campaign, let alone war is a unicorn of sorts nowadays. A suffocating professional envy drives many of them to profuse verbal diarrhea of platitudes and militarily meaningless statements designed for domestic consumption. Something tells me that Lute, judging by his brilliant "strategy" in Afghanistan wouldn't know how to calculate what constitutes  this "enough to win". Does he even know what winning in war is? I doubt it. What kind of an officer can you bring up when teaching them fake military history while removing the West Point from the engineering school it once was further and further away. 

Looking at Petraeus, Lute or Ben Hodges one can safely conclude that the process has started long time ago. Just take a look at the "academics" at West Point.  Majors, minors? Here is a typical academic program. English? Really? Pre-Calculus? Calculus II as a "required" course. Biology? For what? How's fucking biology can form an officer? For biological weapons, I guess. Literature? This is Bologna system at its worst. I wonder what they teach them today in History of Military Art. Ah, wait, I know... So, no wonder. 

No Wonder It Is 7%

7% being the approval rating of the US Congress. Even when one allows for "American statistics"--an unknown branch of mathematics specializing on pulling numbers out of one's ass depending on ideological preferences--there is very little doubt that the US Congress is very unpopular. 

The Senate unanimously approved a nonbinding resolution on Wednesday calling for Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism for actions in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria and Ukraine that resulted “in the deaths of countless innocent men, women and children.” A similar measure had been introduced in the House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to be a strong supporter of its passage. However, the power to designate a state sponsor of terror resides with the State Department. Nevertheless, the Senate’s passage of the resolution puts yet more congressional pressure on the Biden administration to add Russia to a list of state sponsors of terrorism that includes Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Syria. Congress has approved more than $50 billion in aid to Ukraine.

Russians do not really care, but considering the mental state of Biden and who runs State Department, I wouldn't put past them for such measure being approved. The same rag, the New York Times, citing same American "statistics" and "intel"--a euphemism for BS--also states that:

On Thursday, The New York Times reported that the Biden administration believes that Russia had lost as many as 75,000 soldiers killed or wounded in action during the Ukraine conflict. As a source, the outlet cited an anonymous legislator that had allegedly seen a classified briefing from the State Department, Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.  

In related news, the United States also won in Afghanistan and is about to colonize Jupiter. Moscow nonchalantly called this a BS but Peskov made one mistake in doing so, namely:

“This is not a statement by the US administration, this is a newspaper report,” he said. “These days, even the most reputable newspapers do not shun spreading various fakes. Unfortunately, such practices have become increasingly common. This is the way we should treat it.”

implying that NYT is somehow related to "most reputable newspapers". Calling this tabloid "reputable" is akin to stating that, well, US economy is in great shape. While Biden Admin squabbles about the method of how to react to the recession while not calling it such, the reality, of course, is this:

U.S. economic activity contracted for the second consecutive quarter in Q2, data from the Commerce Department showed Thursday. The Bureau of Economic Analysis' advance estimate of Q2 U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) showed a 0.9% annualized decrease in economic growth for the three-month period ended June 30. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expected data to show the U.S. economy grew at an annualized pace of 0.4% last quarter. The decline in GDP comes after U.S. economic activity unexpectedly fell 1.6% during the first quarter, the first negative reading since the second quarter of 2020. Two straight negative GDP prints meets the unofficial definition of a recession.

Always keep in mind, we are talking here about American "statistics", which also is very good at reporting on the financial, speculation that is, markets, but not that great at understanding real economy. But then again, Western economic "science", supported by a new brand of American "statistics" still thinks that the US is the largest economy in the world. Hence 75,000 "casualties" of Russia in Ukraine, hence no recession in the US, hence all these fake economic indices one can "interpret" anyway one wants. 

In the world, where the truth is not defined and is the matter of the interpretations--hence the aversion to precises sciences--it ALL what we face today is not surprising. And here is where I want to convey this:

Listen attentively for the first minute of MacGregor describing the situation with Mattis' appointment by Trump. Douglas MacGregor knows this situation from the inside and when explaining reasons for Mattis' appointment, he encapsulates the way the whole system operates and it DOES NOT operate on substance. It is all about appearances, in this particular case Trump "being enamored by Mattis' image". Needless to say that same Mattis, as any contemporary US general, has a non-existent record of military accomplishments other than self-promotion, PR and advancing own career within the Beltway. This applies across the board of American contemporary governance, or whatever passes for it anyway, and gives us a very good glimpse into purely PR and image driven state machine, which is desperate to cover up this massive clusterfuck they created out of the United States in the last 20 years.

If Not For the US Nuclear Weapons...

Russia, at this stage, wouldn't give a flying fvck about what Biden and his Administration think about Russia. But when even the inventor of non-existent "Gerasimov Doctrine" and polymath in wide-range BSing without any real life and professional qualifications in issues he tries to cover, such as Mark Galeotti, has to react to Biden's utterances about Russia as having only oil wells and nuclear weapons (you know, the gas station masquerading as a country), it tells you something. Galeotti writes:

First of all, it’s bad analysis. Presumably Biden, aware of the continued anti-Russian sentiment in his Democratic party and concerns about his recent decision to acquiesce to the completion of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, wanted to throw his base some red meat. However, if he actually believes this, then perhaps it is unsurprising that the Kremlin has so often managed to outmanoeuvre the world’s last ostensible superpower. While Russia is still over-dependent on hydrocarbons, its service sector actually accounts for the largest share of its GDP, and there are all kinds of bright spots, including software and IT (it’s not all hackers and ransomware).Even in military terms, Russia has demonstrated its capacity to project its forces into Syria against everyone’s expectations, and it has sustained that commitment.

Galeotti, being a humanities "educated" hack still doesn't get the message though--he should read up on that, but I don't hold my breath--that THE issue here is the fact that Russians are afraid of America's weakness which is not recognized and that eventually, when considering a precipitous decline of mental faculties and professionalism of the Western "elites" (Galeotti is an Exhibit A of such a decline, despite his prolific writing on subjects he doesn't understand), the US will decide to, as Galeotti himself suggests:

When the Kremlin demonstrates aggression or perfidy, this needs to be called out. But over-heated rhetoric encourages woolly-thinking at home, and a backlash in Russia. By all means let us make sure we carry a big stick – then we can also speak softly.  

And here is the problem, neither Galeotti not his ilk of alleged "Russia experts" have any ability to assess this proverbial "stick" nor establish the causality (it is there, alright) between increasingly hysterical tone of anti-Russian rhetoric in the West with this "stick" which long ago lost any capacity to realistically hit anyone and if not for nuclear weapons, nobody would pay attention to it. So, when Galeotti states that Russians will be "annoyed", he doesn't know what he is talking about. Russians are intimidated by a bunch of monkeys with grenades who run the combined West and that requires an extreme caution on Russia's part in handling this menagerie of mental pathology exhibits in order to avoid a war in which this combined West will cease to exist. Why I am positive about it? Well, because...

Unlike Galeotti, Commander Salamader is a military professional and, unlike Galeotti, has a required background to pass judgements on matters of war and of this proverbial "stick" which allegedly allows its carrier to "speak softly". I do not frequent Sal's blog anymore as I used too, but somebody sent me a link to Sal's last post and it is an outburst (objectively justified) in response to this piece of news.

‘It Failed Miserably’: After Wargaming Loss, Joint Chiefs Are Overhauling How the US Military Will Fight. In a fake battle for Taiwan, U.S. forces lost network access almost immediately. Hyten has issued four directives to help change that.

Apart from some wowsers of operational "thought" in this piece, one thing which attracted my attention was the use of...spaceships in  US Navy's operations around Taiwan. I am not screwing with you, read it yourself:

Contested logistics. Creating new ways to deliver fuel and supplies to front lines. U.S. Transportation Command and the Air Force are working on using rockets and a space trajectory to get large cargo spaceships into and out of battlefields. 

No shit. I had to read several times and go and research the issue before being able to move my popped out eyes back in their sockets. This is desperation. Sal, however is not so polite, he has the right to be:

This is just painful. First of all, logistics in warfare has always been contested. Also - how about we invest in airlift, sea lift and land transport what can support and sustain a long war with attrition west of Wake by mid-decade first ... then ... for the love of Pete ... who lets this get proposed .... just look at it again.  I'm sorry, but go fire yourself. That is along the lines of the worst ideas of the post-Korean War nuclear Army.  

Sal also uses such terms as good ol' "Bullshit" plus other  strong wording but he is ultimately correct:

I'm sorry, but in spite of all the warnings provided about building an exquisite Tiffany force and shoveling billions in to critical peacetime capabilities that in war immediately are converted in to critical vulnerabilities with zero benefit and uncounted risk ... we are shocked? Study for 20 years? Bullshit, you can see our vulnerabilities in open source in 20 minutes. If we had a culture that allowed aggressive critique as opposed to obsequious agreement, we wouldn't be here. We let the military industrial complex sell of a bill of peacetime-only concepts about networks, real time video, invulnerable satellites, the whole transformational offsetting grabassery that no intelligent person expected to survive any near peer adversary.

Moral and judicial issues of situation around Taiwan apart (that is another story altogether), the United States simply has no resources to fight modern war, especially with naval force which will be detected, tracked, the targeting developed and it will be annihilated even before its properly deployed. One can play with CONOPS whatever he wants but you cannot fight without having proper weapons and enablers. Modern war tactical-operational truism is simple, even Galeotti can grasp it--if you are seen by the enemy with advanced weapons, you will be killed. ANY US force is seen today across the whole electromagnetic spectrum and that means it becomes a target, EMCON or not. The US Navy still deals in weapon systems which reached their modernization limits already by early 2000 and if it thinks that launching good ol' Harpoons and their longer-range subsonic iterations such as LRASM will provide the edge, I have a bridge to sell. 

With 3M22 Zircon finishing its state tests this August, it enters IOC and then in early 2022 it begins to be deployed to the first line ships and subs. But that is not all, Russia tested few months ago an item which is known as GZUR, it is a 1500 kilometer range Mach=6+ missile and a single TU-22M3(M) is capable to carry 20 (twenty!!) of those. Do you know how many SU-34 capable to do the same out there? The 3000 kilometer range M=12 version of this weapon is in works. Make your bet on how fast the first version of this weapon will end up in Chinese hands. Good luck developing air-defense system which can handle such a salvo, granted it even is capable to detect it. I totally understand when US officer has issues, but reading some British subject with degree in economics and history, bloviating on some stick, with UK being a secondary, if not tertiary, military and economic power is risible. That is why he doesn't understand the issue, that is why I write my books and post in this blog--to warn that what the combined West knows about Russia is mostly propaganda BS and when it will have its ass handed to it militarily, which will happen, if it decides to commit a suicide due to hubris and ignorance, the only thing which will be left to this loser is to launch nukes, and that will be it. 

I know how hard it is to face the reality of own weakness and obsolescence, it takes real courage to do so, and there is a huge deficit of this courage in the West. But it is better that such admission is made by real professionals than leave this necessary step to people who have no understanding of this subject at all and have no business in passing their judgements on this matter in the first place. For Galeotti, however, some news, selling hydrocarbons accounts today for only 15% or Russia's budget, but, as Sal concludes his angry rant:

As a military, we have learned absolutely nothing.

No Sal, the problem is much deeper than that, West as a civilization learned absolutely nothing, and that is a much-much bigger problem. Like this:

I don't know how to react or comment on that. Maybe we should get scared all.

What A Shock... Not Really.

The shock is not that Biden appointed Vicki Nuland to the position of the Undersecretary for Political Affairs, it is this: 

Biden also announced his plan to name the former head of policy planning at the State Department, Jon Finer, as deputy national security adviser. These are, by the low standards set by the Biden transition, sensible appointments. The same, however, cannot be said for Biden’s nominee for Sherman’s old job, that of undersecretary for political affairs, Victoria Nuland.

It is absolutely shocking to learn that some standards, however low, actually do exist anywhere in the US political top. No way, this cannot be true. And it is not true, the only "standard" which exists at the American political top is ideological purity, professional qualities be damned. Especially in the American so called "diplomacy" which does not exist as such anymore. But even more shocking is this:

As Biden’s undersecretary of political affairs, Nuland will have immense influence over policy and personnel. Progressives in Congress and their partners in the media, think tank world, and among grassroots activists should join forces with the growing caucus of anti-interventionist Republicans on the Hill and vigorously oppose her nomination.

Seriously? There are "anti-interventionist Republicans" in existence? You mean in the party which sold America to the left and to the right and still pretends that it is a viable political entity? Oh, please. Let's admit that the United States of America is run by neocons-liberal-interventionists and that is the only political party the United States has. Republican Party is dead, it was dead for some time, but now its decomposing neoliberal and neocon corpse begins to poison already putrid atmosphere of the American political discourse. GOP is done--it is the party of treason and this is not a political construct America needs to survive. The US needs a true conservative party with a clear national(ist) ideology which cannot be conceived by the America's modern "conservative thought", which is a simulacrum of "conservatism" and has no intellectual staying power nor courage to stand up to a sanctimonious woke neoliberalism of the so called "left". For starters, "conservatives" cannot formulate what American nation is or they simply don't have courage to do so, nor are they capable to overcome rigid ideological and bankrupt economic views, since corruption is at the heart of the American political discourse. Everyone is for sale, it is just the matter of price. Plus, "conservatives" do not know history. Yes, there is this thing in America with the history. I don't know, something in the water, maybe, but there are issues with historical awareness of the US "conservatives",  the issues with cause and effect, let's put it this way. Hence cartoonish and garrulous "exceptionalism".

Note, I again do not discuss the democrats--I am on record who they are and what a deadly danger their policies represent for the United States--this goes without saying. But let's face it, GOP's face is not some "caucus" of anti-interventionist Republicans, but that of Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnel, late John McCain, and Ted Cruz. I don't think that "return" to paleo-conservatism of Pat Buchanan is the answer either. Pat's ideas about history and those very same important historic causalities are, putting it politely, a very shaky ground for development of a viable political ideology, which can unify forces who do care about what happens to the United States. Such an effort requires a serious thinking, or, rather, rethinking, and while "conservatives" have a lot of people with Ph.Ds in history and political "science" in their ranks, those people are still blood and flesh of the system which produced an astonishing number of neocons, interventionists, exceptionalists and shallow doctrine-mongers who dominate America's governing and so called "intellectual" class. So, who will formulate something, instead of bankrupt tired talking points for GOP, something which may resonate with people on the fundamental level, including those who Trump betrayed? Anybody? If not, then expect radicals and fanatics taking the lead and, please, spare me those "historic" parallels, say with Germany of 1933--Hitler, actually, was a genuinely courageous man, who went through WW I with distinction and finished it decorated with some notable orders usually not bestowed on servicemen of his lower rank. Expecting some Ivy League humanities graduate, whose only difficulty in life was in deciding what type of dormitory to choose, being able to formulate an ideology which can save the country. Right. And I am about to get at Yamaha I have at home and compose something which will make Tchaikovsky's music sound amateurish in comparison. What do you say? Ah, I cannot play and do not know notes--yes, true. But that is just a minor detail. After all who said standards? What standards? Let's compose... 

In related news, the only remaining pr. 941 Akula (NATO: Typhoon) SSBN Dmitry Donskoi (news in Russian), the largest sub ever constructed, will remain in service for another at least 5 years. I think such an engineering marvel deserves to be preserved as a museum once this monster retires. I am sure there will be no shortage of visitors wanting to experience an awe from a probably deadliest weapon humanity ever constructed. The scale of these ships is simply mind-boggling. They are also very graceful-looking subs. 

Here is Dmitry Donskoi in person. I am sure Russia can afford such a museum. I would put it in St. Petersburg. In fact, once retired, I am positive Donskoi will be able to provide a sizeable cash-flow for its own maintenance as a museum. Who wouldn't pay an equivalent of $10 to get onboard. I would.