Showing posts with label Singapore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Singapore. Show all posts

Thursday, June 14, 2018

More "Diplomacy"



Our President has advised us that we can "sleep well tonight" because "There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea."  Presumably, that means he will ignore entreaties from John Bolton and refrain from a first strike: there never was any threat that North Korea would begin a war with the US.

While Tr*mp is deciding where to display his Nobel Peace Prize, most of the world is trying to figure out just what the US may have gained from the strikingly nebulous Singapore agreement.  Kim achieved his primary objective: China and Russia now can gracefully back out of the US imposed sanctions regime.  As a surprise added bonus, he got an end to the annual joint military exercises the US has conducted with the South.  (Tr*mp accurately described those as "war games.")

As for the "Great Negotiator," one more opportunity to strut across the screens of Fox News viewers seems hardly worth the trip.  One wonders whether North Korea's famously skilled hackers may have penetrated Russian computers and secured a copy of the Piss Tape.  And wouldn't it be wonderful if Canadian, French, or German hackers could do the same?


Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Short Stuff


Ted Cruz?

I know I said I'd give up predictions, but I will comfortably predict that Ted Cruz will never be the our President.  There are a great many profoundly stupid Americans, but not enough so profoundly stupid as to elect Ted Cruz.  Also, he'd have to lose that insufferably smug expression permanently camped out on his face, and he's just too insufferably smug to look otherwise, even with expert coaching.

Hooray for Utah!

Utah has decided that in the absence of appropriate drugs to carry out capital punishment, it will use firing squads instead.  Well, why the hell not?  If we're willing to shoot members of wedding parties in the Mideast and unarmed black men in the Midwest, why not shoot convicted murderers?  It's fast, cheap, and (assuming the squad can shoot straight) almost as humane as the guillotine.

Lee Kuan Yew

I just watched a Charlie Rose interview with Lee Kuan Yew from some years back, and I was very impressed — by both of them.  Rose asked very tough, direct questions with complete civility, and Lee answered in kind.  Find the show online for an eloquent, entertaining, and totally unselfconscious defense of authoritarianism.