A sign that Trump is flailing with his war with Iran can be seen in his wildly shifting positions in order to avoid conceding that things are not going well. After declaring that the US had won the war within the first few hours, and then claiming that it would last at most a month or five weeks or six weeks (it kept changing), he now says that we should compare it with the Vietnam war that lasted for years so that critics were too quick in suggesting that the US was again stuck in an unwinnable war. The idea that a suitable measure should be in years rather than weeks was hardly comforting, So he occasionally reprises the idea that the war is in fact over or that it is not a war at all.

Then there are his abruptly shifting tactical moves. It is clear that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a big problem, not just for him, but for the global economy and that Iran is calling the shots on it. So what does he do? He first declares that the Strait is in fact open, then he orders Iran to open it, then he declares that the US is blockading it, as if that makes things any better. Then just on Sunday, he grandly declared Project Freedom in which US warships would provide safe passage to ships to pass through the Strait and on Monday, he claimed success in that US warships had escorted two ships out. But according to the International Maritime Organization there are roughly 2,000 ships with about 20,000 crew that are stranded in the Persian Gulf as of April 21, and it was obvious to knowledgeable observers that there was no way that US warships could provide escorts for that many. So on Tuesday, Project Freedom was summarily ditched, with Trump going back to that old standby that has not worked before, of threatening indiscriminate bombing of Iran (obvious war crimes) unless they allow free passage.
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I am reposting this song by Tom Waits that I first heard over 15 years ago because it seems particularly apropos now about the greed and selfishness-infested state of the US in our time, especially the first stanza, where I take ‘the ship is sinking’ as a metaphor for the US.

I’d sell your heart to the junk-man baby for a buck, for a buck
If you’re looking for someone to pull you out of that ditch, you’re out of luck, you’re out of luck
The ship is sinking, the ship is sinking, the ship is sinking
There’s a leak, there’s a leak in the boiler room
The poor, the lame, the blind
Who are the ones that we kept in charge?
Killers, thieves and lawyers
God’s away, God’s away, God’s away on business.




Someone noticed the remarkable similarity between the voices of Waits and Cookie Monster and made a mashup of Cookie’s scenes from Sesame Street with Waits singing the song. For me the words carry even more weight when seemingly sung by the beloved muppet.

Since it is hard to make out the words sometimes, here are the lyrics.
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The US has very little in the form of safety nets for people who are struggling. One of the few things is the Supplemental Security Income program that “provides monthly payments to people with disabilities and older adults who have little or no income or resources.” Like most government social programs in the US, it does not cover the actual needs but at least it provides something.

Many of the people on SSI cannot live on their own because of mental or physical disabilities so it makes sense if they can find family members or other people with whom they can stay. This not only provides some emotional relief it actually relieves the burden on the state to fully cover the costs. But now ProPublica reports that the Trump administration is seeking to reduce the benefits paid to such people simply because they have families to help share the burden of care.
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Jerome Powell has announced that even after his term as chair of the Federal Reserve ends in May of this year, he will continue to serve on the body until his term as a member expires in January 2028 around the same time as Trump leaves office. While the terms of office on the board and being the chair are not the same, usually the chair leaves the board as well when they stop being the chair.

Powell was very clear that his decision to stay on was prompted by Trump’s attacks on the board.

Jerome Powell said Wednesday he plans to remain on the board of the Federal Reserve after his term as chair ends next month “for a period of time, to be determined,” saying the “unprecedented” legal attacks by the Trump administration have put the independence of the nation’s central bank at risk.

“I worry these attacks are battering this institution and putting at risk the things that really matter to the public,” Powell said in remarks at a press conference after the Fed announced its decision to keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged.

Powell’s decision to stay — the first time a Fed chair will remain on the board as a governor since 1948 — denies President Donald Trump a chance to fill a seat on the central bank’s seven-member governing board with his own appointee. The Senate Banking Committee earlier approved Powell’s successor as chair, Trump appointee Kevin Warsh, on a party-line vote. Powell will continue as a Fed governor, possibly until January 2028. Warsh, if confirmed, will take a seat currently held by Stephen Miran, a previous Trump appointee, whose term ended in January.

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The director the FBI seems like someone who never successfully made the transition from frat boy to adult. One example is his antics in the locker room of the US hockey team during the Olympics where he whooped it up it up in a manner that would have embarrassed even John Belushi’s over-the-top character Bluto in Animal House.

So it was hardly a surprise to me when The Atlantic magazine for published an article by Sarah Fitzpatrick about his heavy drinking that seriously impaired his job performance. He was already in trouble with his bungling and impulsive prior behavior that had prompted speculation earlier this month that he would be fired around the same time as Pam Bondi was, because Trump was annoyed with all the distractions surrounding him.

The charges made against Patel are pretty serious. His paranoid behavior and rashness was visible when he panicked when he could not log on to his computer and frantically told many people that he had been fired, when all the time it was just technical issue of the kind that happens to all of us. As Fitzpatrick writes:

The IT-lockout episode is emblematic of Patel’s tumultuous tenure as director of the FBI: He is erratic, suspicious of others, and prone to jumping to conclusions before he has necessary evidence, according to the more than two dozen people I interviewed about Patel’s conduct.

They said that the problems with his conduct go well beyond what has been previously known, and include both conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences. His behavior has often alarmed officials at the FBI and the Department of Justice, even as he won support from the White House for his eager participation in Trump’s effort to turn federal law enforcement against the president’s perceived political enemies.

Several officials told me that Patel’s drinking has been a recurring source of concern across the government. They said that he is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication, in many cases at the private club Ned’s in Washington, D.C., while in the presence of White House and other administration staff. He is also known to drink to excess at the Poodle Room, in Las Vegas, where he frequently spends parts of his weekends. Early in his tenure, meetings and briefings had to be rescheduled for later in the day as a result of his alcohol-fueled nights, six current and former officials and others familiar with Patel’s schedule told me.
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It is becoming very clear that Trump has no idea of how to get himself out of the mess he got himself into with starting the war with Iran. He seems to be increasingly disengaged with fewer unhinged posts about the war on his social media site. This may be because after oscillating back and forth between threats and calls for negotiations, between bombing and ceasefires, between demands that the Strait of Hormuz be opened to blockading it himself, between sending incompetent negotiators to talk with Iranian negotiators and then calling them back at the last minute, he seems to have run out of ways of reversing himself without seeming to look even more ridiculous. His latest announcement that he has extended the ceasefire indefinitely looks like he wants to get the war out of the headlines, like the way he stopped talking about Greenland when it became clear that his threat to take it over was going nowhere and he looked like a fool.

The Vietnam war has been analyzed extensively and many lessons drawn from it, the main one being that getting involved in a war in a distant country, especially a ground war, leads almost inevitably to a quagmire from which one cannot extricate oneself easily. But what is notable is how successive administrations tend to think that the next time will be different, with the Trump administration falling into the same trap. Each time they start out hoping for a quick victory, and quickly discover that that is not going to happen and end up in a stalemate, desperately looking for a way to extricate themselves without looking humiliated. Each time they launched massive bombing campaigns (Operation Rolling Thunder in Vietnam and Operation Epic Fury in Iran) thinking that it will destroy morale and lead people to overthrow their leaders or cause them to surrender, only to find that bombing only arouses local anger and nationalist sentiment and causes people to rally round their government however much they may have disliked it before.
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