On this week’s Curmudgeon’s Corner the main topics are the end of the SCOTUS filibuster, the US attack on Syria, a Trump-Russia update, and infighting within the administration. Ahead of that, we do squeeze in a little on the pace of the news these days, healthcare, “the wall”, and the latest audiobook Sam finished. A full and busy show!
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Show Details:
Recorded 2017-04-08
Length this week – 2:24:17
- (0:00:35-0:38:13) But First
- Agenda
- Pace of News
- Healthcare Debate
- The Wall
- Book: With the Night Mail (1905) and As Easy as ABC (1912)
- (0:38:59-1:05:50) SCOTUS Filibuster
- Oops on odds
- Democratic strategy
- Impact on the court
- Better without filibuster?
- Legislative Output
- Checks and Balances
- Fate of Legislative Filibuster
- Gold Coffee Table
- (1:07:06-1:32:39) Syria
- Different Kinds of Death
- US not innocent
- Why did Assad do it?
- How does airstrike help?
- Why did Trump do it?
- Telling the Russians and Syrians
- What is the strategy?
- (1:33:19-1:59:12) Russia Stuff
- Corruption story
- Nunes story
- Unmasking
- Obama handling
- Flynn immunity
- Mark Cuban theory
- Who will they get?
- The Pee Tape
- (2:00:55-2:23:57) Administration Infighting
- Sirens in Dallas
- Method of management
- Presidential Ages
- Seating Arrangement
- Alt-Right Unhappy
- Trump the Mastermind?
- Moderating Influences?
- Self Dealing
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Your discussion of Donald Trump’s strategy re Syria makes clear what I was attempting to point out in a FB post discussing strategic planning. Before anything else is done, the leader of strategic planning must state a clear cut mission for the plan. That mission statement must be clear and understandable and in general should be an end type result. For example, the mission of Gulf War II appeared to be (although never clearly stated to the nation) was to depose Hussein. That is easy to understand but clearly was not an end result. Deposing him led to chaos and increased war, death, and destruction plus the emergence of ISIS. A better mission would have been “To establish a government in Iraq that promotes freedom of Iraqi citizens.” One of the objectives to achieve that would have been to depose Hussein. However, that would have been only one of six to eight objectives. The others would have included items such as establishing an effective military and police force with leadership supporting the new government, establishing a government acceptable to the majority of Iraqis and that accepts the rights of subgroups such as the Kurds, and reestablishing an economy of businesses and trade. Since none of those appeared in planning, none were given attention and instead just sort of occurred happenstance leading to major instances of fraud, suppression of subgroups, and other bad outcomes.
Donald Trump has not even gone so far as to make any sort of mission. He simply reacted to a bad event with a military action that has been ready for months as a means of supporting a strategic plan. As a stand alone strategy, military actions are simply killing exercises with minimal likelihood of benefit. If Mr Trump was hoping that this action would get the attention of Premier Xi with whom he was dining as the attack occurred, I doubt it got that man’s attention.