Tornado Alley (PROG)

[janice shell]

Here's what The Economist has to say today:

After Alaska

Fear of a new Oval Office fiasco over Ukraine
Officials worry Trump backs the Kremlin’s land grabs and fantasies

https://archive.is/20250817140502/https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/08/17/fear-of-a-new-oval-office-fiasco-over-ukraine#selection-1027.3-1035.66

I think the TV people did a VERY poor job on Friday. They made it sound as if everything went well. It did not. Trump literally rolled out the red carpet for Putin, who--to say the very least--does not deserve it. Trump should have been unanimously condemned for that, by our people and by our one time allies in the EU. Instead, everyone's tiptoeing around, trying not to offend the guy who, again inappropriately, is playing "historian" and "curator" today. I would be willing to bet he didn't take a single history or art history course in college. He knows nothing about culture. Someone needs to tell him that The Apprentice was not culture.

It just makes no sense and it's like you said awhile back. China will be the future. We have handed Lady Liberty's torch to them in a matter of 6 months and we still have morons cheering for this on a daily basis.

You're right. The Chinese do have their own problems: a flagging economy, and anxiety about who Xi's successor will be. But they'll work it out, and probably whatever they do, it won't be to our advantage. At least it probably won't be to Putin's advantage, either. Xi, unlike the servile Trump, knows how to handle him.

At least the EU will be showing up in force tomorrow to show support for Zelensky. Rubio says "we have a peace plan", and so what difference does it make whether we have a cease fire or not? The difference, Rubio admitted, was that Putin doesn't want a cease fire. He also admitted that "there have to be some security guarantees". Yes. Rubio understands this, but I'm pretty sure the idiot in the Oval does not. Rubio says further that tomorrow's talks may take six or seven hours. But didn't they say that about Friday's negotiations?

We're so uneducated that nobody can play the long game.

We do have people who can do that. We have tons of people who've spent their lives studying this stuff. Trump doesn't like smart people. He doesn't understand what education is, and what value it offers. As for the politicians, some of them understand how to deal with Russia. Right now, though, they're mostly Dems. If Trump were removed from office, I think some Republicans would defy Vance and insist of having their own way about some things. But the Republicans are terrified of their constituents.

Aren't they supposed to be LEADERS?? I'm not seeing any Republican leadership at all.

And I still want to know what went wrong Friday. Something did, because they didn't eat lunch.

Watching TV. Miles Taylor is saying "it looks a lot like 1938". And he is correct. Trump probably heard of Neville Chamberlain for the first time this past week.