2018 into 2019

If there is one thing we have learned from 2018, it is how the "educated elite" are really idiots.  Take it easy today, and then tomorrow,go out and change the world.  I plan to hit hard and hit fast.  The idiots will be hung over....:-)

Merry Christmas!

Leaving Syria

The US intervened in Syria in 2015 and now American soldiers are leaving. What does this mean?

One less headache for starters.

The reason they were ever there to begin with is because of the Russian intervention in the same year. Syria plunged into its multi sided civil war in 2011 and it took us four years to even notice.ISIS is destroyed and the best way to keep it from coming back to like is to keep it out of our borders.  Keep alleged "immigrants" with terrible records out and things get easier.  The people of Syria need to determine their own future, not run from it.

The US sought to overthrow Assad and that is not happening.  Russia and Iran have seen to that.  NATO "ally" Turkey saws it will take up the fight against any ISIS remnants.  A lot of people are afraid they will go after the Kurds again. It might happen. 

Others think the Turks are going to take over Syria and Iraq and start some sort of neo-Ottoman Empire.  Well, the last time the Middle East was stable was when one power controlled the whole region...ie The Ottoman Empire in 1914.  Let the Turks have the joys of running the madhouse a while.  The US has been running in circles in Afghanistan since 2001 and this is our THIRD trip into Iraq. Let the lunatics kill each other.

Do you realize that an US Army recruit going into boot camp this year was not even born when the first troops set foot in Afghanistan?

Let that sick place eat itself too.

The real losers are the "merchants of death" who make money off of wars, so that is where the real outrage is coming from along with a clearly unhinged Democratic party that hates everything Trump does despite their progressed dislike for any intervention anywhere.

Let them eat each other.

1777-Irony

 

On December 17, 1777, the Bourbon monarchy of France granted the USA diplomatic recognition.  It was probably more to irritate Britain more than anything else....LOL

The irony was that the French decision to intervene in the American Revolution exacerbated the French debt crisis that led to the French Revolution.  Then after the monarchy was destroyed, a wildly unstable democracy was set up, chopping heads off left and right until it collapsed and Napoleon set up his empire.

Throw a rock in a pond and you never know where the ripples end up going.

It just shows that the people in charge have no idea what they are doing....especially in France.

French Revoltuion?

I always said that the next revolution in Europe would come in France.  It perpetually runs on the edge of chaos to begin with, so it does not take much for France to go off the rails.

It is off the rails now....89,000 security forces (not totally sure what that means) and 8,000 cops are protecting the Presidential Palace to keep it from being stormed. Some commentators wondered why the French Army has not been mobilized..

Remember 1789?

That's why.

In 1789, the Revolution started over the price of bread.  Yes,there were other reasons, but that is what pushed everything over the top.  In 2018,it was a proposed--now rescinded--30% gas tax.

It has now expanded into a dislike of the tyrannical EU, a demand for a constitution that is "for the people and by the people",  and calls for Macron to resign.

The last kind of violence on this scale to rock the French capital was in 1968, leading to the fall of Charles De Gaulle's government.

1789, 1830, 1848, 1870, 1944, 1968....yeah, looks like France is due for a revolution.  It is just one of those things that happens from time to time.  And it is spreading all over the country and apparently spilling over into Belgium.

Socialism works great until you run out of other people's money. The truth is that Socialism does not work and tends towards heavy-handed regulations and dictatorial behavior, especially when it begins to fail.

The French people are out of money and patience.

But there are plenty of Yellow Vests.

And there are even more of them than yesterday.