News Vérité

Department of My Bad: Oops, yesterday I gave Donald Trump too much credit. I actually believed, and put my belief into print, that Trump had had an epiphany about the Iran War mess, and that penance was near, to be revealed in his actions going forward. This assessment germinated in — as you can see from my original post — his comment about no all-out bombing on the Islamic Republic unless they killed one of ours. This, I thought, indicated a wake-up call that could result in a cleansing of Trump’s political soul. Wrong! After watching Trump on TV today, I realized that he could never feel or admit that he had ever done anything wrong, nor think that he has to make any kind of amends. He will simply, in all circumstances, blame someone else, starting with the nation’s media, which he calls the Fake News. Therefore, I am now concluding that Trump is merely in a political pickle of his own making, but one with deep and foreboding consequences. Simply put, the entire world is now worse off than when the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran began. Not only is the Strait of Hormuz closed, choking off oil and

This is a follow-up to my news item yesterday about President Trump getting Israel and Hezbollah to agree to quit killing each other. Reports have it that Trump used some foul-mouthed language to convince Bibi Netanyahu to forego plans to invade Beirut as a final step to eradicate the terrorist cell operating in Lebanon at Iran’s behest, i.e., the aforementioned Hezbollah. According to Axios (believe them if you like, but I see no reason not to), Trump, in his call with the Israeli Premier yesterday, told him: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.” By way of backdrop, Iran has demanded that any ceasefire include Hezbollah and Israel. Otherwise, Iran says, there can be no moving forward on a peace deal, let alone a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to open the Strait of Hormuz and continue further negotiations. Netanyahu, by many accounts, is the force that got Trump involved in the Iranian conflict to begin with. Following a public uprising in Iran, for which Trump promised that “help is on the way,” the president saw an Iranian bombing campaign as the

When Dwight D. Eisenhower entered the White House in 1953, the United States was deeply polarized. The country was locked in the Cold War abroad, and at home, fierce debates raged between New Deal Democrats who wanted to expand government programs and conservative Republicans who wanted to completely dismantle them. Eisenhower’s solution was The Middle Way (sometimes called “Modern Republicanism”). It was a political philosophy that rejected extremes on both sides. He described it as a path where “the government does not avoid its responsibilities to the human individual,” but also “does not assume that the federal government is the only instrument for solving all human problems.” In short: be conservative when it comes to money and the economy, but liberal when it comes to human beings. The Core Pillars of the Middle Way To understand how Eisenhower balanced these competing ideas, it helps to look at how he handled the biggest issues of his presidency: Reining in Government Spending Eisenhower was a fiscal conservative. He believed that a runaway national debt and high inflation were just as dangerous to national security as a foreign military threat. Balancing the Budget: He worked hard to balance the federal budget, successfully achieving

The ceasefire with Iran, so-called, has now been going on longer than the combat, but from all looks and purposes, it’s still a stalemate. President Trump, as is his style, continues to play a broken record, to wit, that a deal is at hand — while Iran says no deal is at hand. For starter number one, we know that you take Iran at its word at your own peril, that is, when it makes promises it has no intention of keeping. In this case, however, the IRGC is making no promises. The Praetorian Guard wants only to stall everything until Trump is forced to cave in because of the midterm elections and ongoing inflation. For starter number two, unfortunately, Donald J. Trump has been known to twist the facts to suit his narrative, and in his case, he must be playing Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” on his gramophone. He’s twisting the facts every time the subject of peace with Iran and opening the Strait of Hormuz comes up. Another interesting twist: When the combat started, the official narrative seemed to be regime change. Now it’s making sure Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. The problem here is, as