Wednesday, March 11, 2026
Tuesday, March 10, 2026
From Slate:
There are many appalling things about the ongoing war in Iran, but one of the worst so far is President Donald Trump’s persistent avoidance of responsibility for the missile attack that hit a girls’ school, killing at least 175 Iranians, most of them grade-school children.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/03/iran-trump-war-school-bombing-missile-strike-tomahawk.html
Video footage clearly shows the damage was done by a Tomahawk cruise missile. In his press conference Wednesday, Trump said that the Tomahawks are “generic” weapons (untrue, they are quite distinctive) and that many countries have some, including Iran (very untrue), suggesting—even stating explicitly—that Iranians themselves might have fired the missile.
There are precedents for how to handle these sorts of incidents. During the war in Afghanistan, when U.S. troops accidentally killed a civilian (a frequent occurrence), they went to the dead person’s family, apologized, and gave them some money. In 1999, during the war in Serbia, when U.S. planes mistakenly bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three employees and injuring 20, President Bill Clinton phoned Chinese President Jiang Zemin to apologize, stressing that it was an isolated error, not a deliberate attack on China.
In other words, it is possible—under previous presidents, it has been policy—to admit to making horrific mistakes in wartime, and even to compensate for the damages. A soldier, even a president, can do so without appearing weak or suggesting doubts about the wider war. In fact,
Day 11, Malcolm Nance and Jacob Kaarsbo from Substack
Malcolm Nance and Jabob Kaarsbo--full of facts, really up to the minute, balanced, serious analysis.
Sorry, can't post the link--you have to get on Substack and look for it yourself.
Brief? fall in oil prices due to Trump remarks--
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/10/oil-prices-drop-trump-iran-war?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
1000 oil tankers still stuck outside Strait of Hormuz--
Temp storage facilities limited.
Monday, March 09, 2026
This is a good one, but almost like JoJo Moyes' bestselling, Me before You, except here the man is less disabled.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n7sCDVWG44
However, Maintenance will come in to install mandatory fire alarms, mandated by the state--not the nation state, the state state.
And I hate it but I always have to move my boxes of books and my "trays" of works in progress.
Watch the movie online (Me before You)--the lovers are super cute, but the ending is sad.
Moyes's 3 novels are a trilogy.
Maybe I should watch the movie again, but I can't bear it when someone dies.
It was just too much for "Will Traynor."
I guess movie-makers can make these look alike movies if they change things around a lot.
Another (depressing) memoir I am reading is Karl Ove Knausgard's My Struggles, which was published in 2000.
I bought it around then, and now 26? years later, I am reading the 2nd half.
His father, an alcoholic, dies, and he goes to his grandmother's to find the house full of junk--excrement, urine, empty liquor bottles.
The detail is incredible.
It makes me think I can write the painful parts after my father died.
"Granular detai" as Rachel Maddow always says.
After all, I remember it all.
Must try not to die like that. In Knausgard "Kah-nausgard"
the grandmother's dementia is very well depicted--she says the same sentence like "IGN brought her baby into the classroom," every 5 minutes.
I don't have dementia but if I don't take B12 and D3 regularly, I have to struggle more to remember--
Kyi May Kaung
3-9-2026.
Iceland crochet scarf--my own design. Kaung.
Sunday, March 08, 2026
Colonial wars of aggression and expansion--based on Peter Shaffer's famous play--Royal Hunt for the Sun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qguC_ZlESEc
Now that Hegseth is giving another reason for the US-Israel attack on Iran, this time a religious war.
Saturday, March 07, 2026
Peter, Paul and Mary--Blowing in the Wind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RlnYC7skbI&list=RDbRe648clNjg&index=3
As saw them live in Colonial Williamsburg when we Fulbright Scholars were invited.
They included my late friend "Yasmine" --a Japanese man, a Sri Lankan Monk and Nelson Mandela's daughter.
We were treated to a great lunch in a tent, which included a lobster salad, a fireworks show and a fife and drum band.
Friday, March 06, 2026
Correction--the entire family was in a Japanese concentration camp. Empire of the Sun is fiction
but obviously informed by what he experienced in the camp.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._G._Ballard
It might be disturbing for some--war scenes--fall of Shanghai to the Japanese--as a boy
J D Ballard was separated from his parents--this is his true story.
Republican Rep Gonzales drops out of TX race after admitting affair with aide--this seems o be a thing these days.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tony-gonzales-drops-out-of-house-runoff-race-after-admitting-affair-with-aide/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
From Axios -Senate GOP cheers Noem's firing.Looks like MAGA split is accelerating. War in Mid East can only widen.
Mullin is "pretty well vetted around here, so hopefully we can get the process going because I think that's a position that's going to need to be filled quickly," Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said.
utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-u
https://www.axios.com/2026/03/05/senate-gop-cheers-trumps-decision-to-dump-noem?s
State of play: Democrats, while declaring good riddance to Noem, insisted that a change at the top would not unlock funding for DHS, which has been shut down since Feb. 14.
"No one person can straighten this up until the president changes the whole agency," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). "This is not an issue of personnel. This is an issue of policy."
"I'm not going to vote for $1 more for that agency as long as they are body-slamming American citizens, barging into American homes without warrants or murdering Americans," Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said.
Still, Booker acknowledged that Mullin's confirmation is likely a foregone conclusion.
"If it's a 50-vote threshold, I would imagine he will be confirmed," Booker told Axios. Cabinet nominations require only a simple majority.
The intrigue: There's a serious beef between Mullen and Sen. Ran Paul (R-Ky.), the chair of the Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, which will handle Mullin's nomination.
"Rand Paul's a freaking snake," Mullin told a group at home in Tulsa last month. "And I understand completely why his neighbor did what he did," he said, apparently referring to a 2017 assault on Paul that left him with five fractured ribs.
"And I told him that to his face," Mullin said.
Thursday, March 05, 2026
Dubbing--double u aitch what? for "wh-what?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnX3GTp6zwQ
How can anyone be this stupid?
Who are going to-bring the wrongly deported people back??? How are they and their families to be compensated?
What punishment will Noem face ???
Trump fires Kristi Noem--it wasn't a rumor--it's true--Partial copy and paste.
At the start of her second year on the job, Noem faced bipartisan criticism over her leadership of an immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis, where she deployed 3,000 officers and where two U.S. citizens were killed. Some of the loudest voices on the right for her resignation came from Sens. Thom Tillis, N.C., who is not running for reelection, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/05/nx-s1-5667546/kristi-noem-homeland-security-fired?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
Other Republicans denounced Noem after she referred to 37-year-old Alex Pretti, who was shot by two Border Patrol agents, as a "domestic terrorist" before any investigation had begun. Following the event, Congress, amid opposition from Democrats, failed to pass a budget to fund DHS and attempted to negotiate immigration enforcement reforms.
Noem was asked to testify before the Senate and House judiciary committees in early March — as her agency was in the third week of a shutdown. She said 100,000 employees were furloughed, including those who work in cybersecurity and disaster relief.
Noem was the face of the mass deportation agenda
During Noem's time helming the 250,000-person agency, DHS was at the center of an ambitious effort to arrest, detain and deport 1 million people without legal status per year. DHS data released in the fall shows the department deported 605,000 people and has a historic high number of people in immigration detention.
As secretary, Noem oversaw the start of a hiring surge to bring on thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and the proliferation of Border Patrol agents as enforcers throughout the country.
Record prices--David Hockney's English Garden--
David Hockney’s ‘English Garden’ Could Net Its Consignor a 700 Percent Return
The 1965 painting, considered the artist's first English landscape, returns to the block at up to 30 times its 1997 price.
A David Hockney landscape that last sold at auction for £89,500 ($149,116) in 1997 is returning to auction with a £2.5 million–£3.5 million ($3.4 million to $4.7 million) estimate at Sotheby’s London, marking a dramatic leap in value for the 1965 canvas.
Titled English Garden, the lush green-hued work was made while Hockney was briefly teaching at the University of Colorado, Boulder, shortly after he left the Royal College of Art in London. It’s considered the artist’s first English landscape.
https://news.artnet.com/market/work-of-the-week-david-hockney-english-garden-2748979
Ex-prince Andrew surrenders lease on another royal residence--
https://www.aol.com/articles/ex-prince-andrew-surrenders-lease-162629682.html
Been on the gravy train too long--since birth, actually.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)