Longest New Year Ever

Two possible terror attacks on New Year's Day are an inauspicious beginning to 2025

Jan 02, 2025

After a long Substack hiatus, I’m back, and appreciate all of you who continued to support me here as a means of subsidizing my ongoing work on TikTok and YouTube, where I’ve been covering the war in Ukraine, and more generally, Trump’s return.

What to say about yesterday’s attacks? So far, I’m not convinced the attacks in New Orleans (where an ISIS-loving man ran a pickup into a crowd, killing at least 15) and Las Vegas (where someone appears to have intentionally burned a Tesla cybertruck in front of Trump’s Las Vegas hotel) are related. It’s a heck of a coincidence having both happen on the same day. So I’m open to a connection, but they seem like very different attacks. (The authorities are also saying the New Orleans guy had accomplices, and explosive devices may have been placed around the city).

Trump, of course, weighed in and lied about the New Orleans attack, in order to demonize immigrants. He claimed both yesterday and today that the attack was carried about by someone who came here illegally. It wasn’t. From what we know, the guy was born and raised in Texas. Trump didn’t know this yesterday, but didn’t care, and did know today, and still didn’t care. It still confuses me why Trump voters continue to embrace someone who routinely lies to them.

In other news, the war in Ukraine continues. Biden got what he wanted, a tie. I’ve been saying for a while that Biden wanted to ensure that Russia didn’t win and Ukraine didn’t lose — BUT, he never wanted Russia to lose or Ukraine to win. He wanted a tie, a stalemate. A result in which Ukraine would continue to survive and exist as an independent state (though missing a few limbs, figuratively and literally), and in which Russia didn’t succeed in occupying and annexing all of Ukraine, but where Russia also didn’t outright lose, lest nuclear-armed Putin throw a conniption fit, and a few MIRVs. And don’t take my word for it, Bob Woodward now confirms what I’ve been saying all along. Here’s a snippet from Woodwar’s new book, “War.”

Look, it’s not 100% wacky for Biden to worry about Putin’s nukes. I happen to think there’s no way Putin would use nukes in Ukraine, provided Biden, the French and the Brits (as the 3 European nuclear powers), along with our other top NATO allies, make clear that we will be at war if Putin does use nukes in Ukraine. So, I bristle at the notion of appeasing Putin to avoid a calamity that I don’t think would happen. But it’s not crazy to worry about those nukes. What I worry about is what comes next. The world is watching what we did in Ukraine, and here are a few takeaways that you’d better bet the Chinese, in addition to Iran, have learned:

Never give up your nukes. Ukraine gave up its nukes after the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, and it was a huge mistake. Russia would have been far less likely ever mess with a nuclear Ukraine. Now, Russia controls nearly 20% of the country.
Always seek nukes, if you can. Russia has gotten away with literal murder because it’s a nuclear nation. As Biden himself says, quoted in the Woodward book, we can only push Russia so far, and surely don’t dare make Russia lose in Ukraine, because they’ve got nukes. Every other currently- or wannabe- nuclear nation is watching and learning.
China is listening. All of Biden’s pronouncements about how we can’t risk going to war with a country that has nukes — don’t think for a minute that China hasn’t noticed, and isn’t adjusting its Taiwan policy accordingly. China now knows that the US — Biden, at least — not only fears war with China, but will pull punches in order to ensure that China doesn’t outright lose any future war with the US, or a US proxy (Taiwan).

What else? I, like everyone else, fear what’s to come with Trump’s re-inauguration. I honestly don’t know what happened with the elections. Why didn’t Democrats have a pro-choice blow out? While I’m not convinced Kamala was the best candidate — was America really ready for a Black woman? (we’re afraid to ask, but it’s a fair question) — I don’t agree that she was a bad candidate or campaigner. I like her. And thought she did a much better job this time around than in 2020. But she was hobbled from the beginning. Let’s face it: Biden screwed us/up. He should have announced he wasn’t running back in early 2023, at the latest. He should have let Dems have a year of primaries, to let the voters be reintroduced to the non-Bidens. But he didn’t. But that wasn’t the only problem….

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Biden was a shitty messenger. But that’s no different than Dems overall. We went into this election with voters thinking: inflation was STILL a problem, it wasn’t; the stock market was crashing, when it was/is at an all-time high; that the economy was sluggish, when it’s been doing great in terms of growth and employment. But inflation was the sticky problem — how do you explain it’s over when prices don’t come back down? (Mind you, they never come back down after inflation.) Part of the problem is that Dems didn’t preemptively blame Trump for all of this. Biden inherited an economy hobbled by Trump’s inaction on Covid. It wasn’t any great secret that inflation would be a problem once consumers started leaving their homes again, while supply chain problems (caused by Covid) remained. We should have blamed Trump from day one, but we didn’t. Because it’s not what Dems do. Trump, however, will be talking the next four years about the “disaster” that was Joe Biden, and the public will be convinced that Trump “saved” the economy, even though the numbers won’t be any different, and might even be worse, as multiple Trump plans could spike inflation significantly (e.g., tariffs and kicking out millions of illegals).

Que faire? Keep fighting. There’s really little choice. Is there any chance Trump will end up being less of a disaster than we expect? No. He’s gonna be bad. Especially now that he knows HOW to be president. But we have to keep fighting. We’ll have some successes. And might even have a blowout election in two years, if we can just get our messaging groove back. The guy really is the worst president in history. It shouldn’t be that difficult to get that message across.

And now a few tweets that crossed my eye:

Republicans are STILL messaging around Covid. They never stop. We do.

Vivek and Elon really pissed off MAGA by criticizing American culture, and claiming that they have to hire foreigners (Indians) because American workers suck.