Strongmen

Surprising his State Department, Our President got it into his head to invite the irrepressibly murderous Rodrigo Duterte for a White House sleepover.  To Tr*mp's surprise and chagrin, I'm certain, Duterte said he might be "too busy" to come over and play.

So what is it with Tr*mp and his passion for authoritarian bad boys like Duterte, al-Sisi, Ergogan and, of course, Vladimir Putin?  Hell, he was even saying nice things about North Korean meatball Kim Jong-un the other day!  Is it time for our Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to have a peek at the Presidential brain?

It's hard to believe there isn't something psycho-sexual involved in Tr*mp's bizarre infatuations, uncomfortable as it may be to entertain the imagery afflicts the imagination while entertaining such thoughts.  Fred Trump, one imagines, was the kind of father who could generate psychiatric fortunes over the generations — except that none of his sons ever could be so weak as to need a therapist.

I hope we don't have to bomb the Philippines.

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More shit, quoted from the Times:
In a discussion last year about the cost of the Marines in Darwin, The Australians came in with a data-heavy presentation asserting that United States Marines eat more that typical Australian soldiers, and therefore strain sewage systems more, and argued that the Americans should pay more of the costs of improving wastewater lines on military bases.

Elsewhere

The Levant
So Erdogan is supporting our Kurdish allies in Iraq, where he's not wanted, while killing them in Syria, where he is wanted?  With friends like that...

Yemen
The role the US is playing in Yemen is not quite the same as the role Russia is playing in Syria, but the parallels are too close to ignore.

Venezuela
Thanks to the drop in oil prices and the incompetence of the Maduro government, the class war in Venezuela is heating up; but the US blew its leverage back while Chavez was alive.

Nigeria
Nobody is sure exactly why Boko Haram released 20 of the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls.  Meanwhile, President Mohammedu Buhari is having marital problems.

The Philippines
Rodrigo Duterte is a prime example of what you get when you elect an insane populist president.  One wonders if Xi Jinping will manage him any better than Obama can.  Not likely.

Some Brief Thoughts

Haiyan

What can you do but cry and send money?  I sent an extra hundred bucks to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), because I've vetted them, and know they're efficient and low overhead.  With corpses rotting on the streets and little safe water, the need for medical care only can increase.  Be careful about who gets your money.  When CEOs of charities are paid like CEOs of megabanks, find another place to contribute.

$142 million?

Mind you, I like Francis Bacon's tryptych of Julian Freud, albeit I would be unlikely to hang a print in my living room — but the price indicates only that some people just have too much goddamned money.

Record Afghan Opium Crop

I don't know how many recall this, but the lowest opium production by Afghanistan was in the last year of Taliban control.  The Taliban had moral problems with opium, and the total output was zero.  Now, we're told, they're profiting from the trade.  So much for morality.

Syria

What can you do but cry and send money?  Sadly, the people sending money live in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, and they're sending it to Al Nusra and other Al Qaeda linked groups.  With allies like that, who needs enemies?