Like Marriages, Wars are Easier to Get Into Than Out Of

I think General McChrystal has presented the most thorough and insightful analysis of Trump's Iranian fiasco of any out there. It is well worth your time to read https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/opinion/trump-iran-general-mcchrystal.html?smid=nytcore-android-share (if you hit a paywall, pay - this article is worth it!).

Without doubt, Iran has been a bad actor, supporting Hezbollah and oppressing people with sharia law.  Whether that warrants starting a war with no endgame is another question.

There are two reasons that Trump can't simply declare victory and go home: Iran and Israel. Iran is fighting an asymmetrical war; this is not WWI trenches or WWII tank battles. This can range from drone strikes to computer hacking to terrorist attacks and who knows what else.  Israel will do what Israel wants to do. Period. Neither Iran nor Israel is on Trump's timetable. 

                

There is a long history of distrust between the West and Iran, not just 1979 but 1953 and 1941. You might also listen the the four-part series from The Rest is History podcast about the fall of the Shah and the Iranian Revolution. https://therestishistory.com/episodes/fall-of-the-shah-part-1

Other thoughts ----

Cutting the head off  the hydra is poor strategy. Every time an Iranian leader is killed, a new one (or two) turns up. This is not Venezuela with a traditional central government.

Pete Hegseth talks about "silly rules of engagement". Throwing out rules is a two-edged sword and a very dangerous one in the Middle East. 

Make no mistake, this "preventative" strike is a war; it became that with the sinking of the Iranian ship off the coast of Sri Lanka. 

Trump's standard operating procedure of erratic behavior then moving on to the next reckless, ill-conceived project may be stuck in a real quagmire this time. Iran also is not Greenland.  Sadly, the global economy is impacted, and that means people and nations with less resource than the US are going to truly suffer, not just be inconvenienced.

        

Murder Most Foul

 Tackled, beaten, and shot - No other word for it than murder.

The jack-booted thugs in ICE costumes are shredding the Constitution daily and have no respect for human life.  Granted they are hastily recruited, ill trained, and poorly led, but that is not really an excuse.  They (and their  counterparts in  Border  Patrol, Homeland Security, etc) follow the lead of their master whose power "is limited only by his own morality", the life-long cheat, bully, adulterer, whoremonger, and grifter who sells autographed Bibles to his brain-washed minions. Our nation is imploding because of the demented and dementia-ridden Beast in the White House, who is friend of our enemies and enemy to our friends on a global scale. 

Heaven help us. 

The Madness of King 47: Wrecking the Republic

 

Looking to basic physics Newton’s Third Law of Motion states:  for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction force.  It would appear that politics in America adheres to physics rather than philosophy or morality. Neither party want to make things right but pushing back to the center and some semblance or normalcy after the other party has been too far in one direction or other.  This leads to increasing extremism. Beware the pendulum

Now the push is into sheer madness. At this point this should be visible now even to some of his supporters. There is no other word for the extremism of President 47. Do not say his name for he feeds on hearing it like fire feeds on oxygen. He thinks in terms of absolute power…but was already corrupt before he took office.

From the silliness to the Gulf of America to the vile comments on Rob Reiner’s death to strafing survivors of a boat struck by missile to ICE murdering a mother in her car.  It gets worse every day. This is  megalomania of the Nero/Caligula variety -  boundless evil.  There will be a judgment, possibly of  a  Nuremburg type, definitely of an eternal nature.

Brave Little Belgium redux

 Try to recall a White House press conference with the President and a visiting Head of State which included the VP chiming in? Ever hear rude interjections about the visitor's attire and the number of ‘thank you’s from you Walter Mondale, Dan Quayle, Al Gore, or Spiro Agnew? Me neither.

It was an ambush, a set up, a carefully planned trap.

As distasteful as was the proposed extortion of military aid for mineral wealth, it was ultimately just theater. Zelensky came hat in hand to accept that deal but was purposefully goaded into the confrontation that saw it evaporate.

From all appearances the “press conference” positions the US as the newest member of a restored Warsaw Pact. This is madness. What happened to “better dead than red”?

There’s no reason for the US to cave to a Russia so militarily weak that it has had to rely on first the Wagner Group mercenaries and now troops from North Korea.

The disrespectful humiliation piled upon Zelensky yesterday is horrid, but pales in comparison by the atrocities committed by Russian military upon Ukrainian civilians. Brave Little Belgium redux. Sadness beyond all measure.

The Chamber Man

 

February 6 is the birthday of the late David W. Cooley, president of the Memphis Chamber of Commerce from 1968-73 and then again from 1984-95. I went to work for him in 1987. I was 25 and reasonably sure that I was pretty fair PR hand. He assured me that I was not nearly as good as I thought I was, taught me a good deal, and recognized other talents in which he encouraged me (large scale event planning being one).  No Gen X or Millennial could last a day with Mr. Cooley; they would simply wither, die, and melt down to a small pile of ash after one of his inspired chewings out. A Marine who rose to the rank of corporal, he was no nonsense. “Your turn in the barrel”,  “the hog  is in the ditch”, or “that don’t get it walkin’ or ridin” were frightening phrases but not nearly as much as a note on his special blue notepad. 

He could also praise and mentor.  He was an excellent communicator. I learned a lot about public speaking from him. I’m not talking about the sanitized TED Talk pablum that passes for speaking these days. I am talk about a stump speech. Cadence is a lost art. Most important of all, a speaker must watch the reaction of his or her audience. About 75 % of public speakers I hear are just tone deaf and canned.  It’s a waste of everyone time really. Oh,  I can tell you from experience that you have not lived until you encounter a skeptical or hostile audience. That’s a wake up call unlike any other.

Cooley was a lifelong chamber man. It was a career path and required an interesting skill set – part researcher, part preacher, part negotiator, coalition builder, and driven competitor.  Civic pride on a scale befitting the town you worked in and for. He had a favorite short poem he would sometimes work into speeches,  a little doggerel verse called “The Kind of a Town” or something like that; wish I could remember the words. If he had been preaching to a congregation, this would have been his benediction.

International Paper came to Memphis on his watch. There were other notable accomplishments in that era as well. It was a good time for Memphis and the Mid-South.

He was rough on my in my youth and he wonderfully kind decades later when he would check in with me periodically to see how Memphis was faring from his retirement in South Carolina. A chamber man through and through.  David W. Cooley 1929-2022.

Stuck in the middle

 

MSCS Board is a third world dumpster fire, and it looks as if the White House hired Judge Bill Anderson to review sentencing.

Remember the names of the School Board 6 when they apsire to higher office. Remember to turn in your Blue Lives Matter sign if you support the blanket pardons.

No need to comment; just defriend me or not and we'll call it a day.

If you need me, I'll be in the middle, besieged and pondering snow in NOLA as, hopefully, a sign of the end times. Hurry it up!!

Be careful -- not part of the problem - on social media

 

We need to talk. It’s not you, it’s …well actually it is you or at least some of you.

Okay it is pretty pathetic that Mark Z has turned out to be a cowtowing bootlicker but the reality is that facts went out the window on FB some time ago. Oh not as quickly and blatantly as Twitter but that bar is pretty darn low.

Did you ever share a post about a lost elderly person or injured dog posted in a buy-sale-trade group? Then you are part of the problem

Have you @highlight all your friends to get a chance to win a new Chevy Corvette and a year’s supply of chicken sandwiches with extra pickles? Then you have sent bad guys to prey on your friends. Shame!

Have you accepted a friend request from a person you were pretty sure was already your friend? Sucker!

Did you like and repost any of the following – "45th anniversary of the Vietnam War", "Zuckerberg has outlawed the Lord’s Prayer", "an attorney on Ch. 17 said I have to state Meta can’t use my posted pictures", or any such copy & paste blatantly false drivel? Oh c'mon.

Did you share that cute photo the Merrymobile selling ice cream in Whitehaven Plaza….which was posted the I Grew Up in the MidSouth group by Zrlinhawmji Jphngrnisi? Great nostalgic photo but exactly who is your pal Mr. (or Miss or Mrs. or Rev.) Jphngrnisi?

Guys, that hot babe from Singapore sending you a friend request out the blue is probably NOT your future soulmate. Sorry.

Play it smart. You don't have to get hacked, cloned, and spammed constantly. Be careful what you like. Stop sharing ANYTHING at all on your timeline with the public, go friends only. Don’t stay in any groups which have lax administrators letting just any charlatan in.

Unfollow or if you must defriend people who continually do stuff like this…it is not that we don’t like them but they are putting you in danger. Seriously, there are some very bad people on social media who would like to take your money or worse.

And yes , things are about to get worse now and what passes for fact will astound anyone with half a brain, but we are all pretty much doomed now anyway with AI creating batsh!t crazy content.

So before you punt on FB altogether maybe try and clean house a bit. I’d hate to miss out on pics of your pets, kids, and great meals.