I picture dozens of rooms with serious clerks pushing plastic toy tanks and soldiers across massive terrain tables while obscure colonels in overhead windows nod sagely, take notes, and whisper into red telephones. And a mammoth cafeteria or two with delicious pies for dessert. And Austin Powers turning around his steam roller.
There’s a lot of reporting (which may or may not be accurate) that several Senators from the Uniparty wing of the GOP dislike the Hegseth nomination. They better vote to confirm him because Trump appears to be in no mood to take prisoners. Somewhere (I think maybe on Twitter) I saw Trump described perfectly as an apex predator hunting sheep.
My prediction is that if the GOP Senate refuses to confirm Hegseth, Trump’s next nominee as DOD Secretary will be General Michael Flynn. How much fun would that be to watch?
Trump doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the GOP Senators. Watching the Uniparty panic about his nominees is even more sweet than I thought it would be.
Next up will be Trump’s humiliation of Starmer, Macron, Scholz (or whomever replaces him), Trudeau and Von der Leyen.
So if the Senate fails to confirm Hegseth, Trump will nominate someone even less acceptable? A quixotic strategy indeed! But you may be right, Trump’s mercurial temperament might provoke him into a fratricidal war with his own party. Can you not see that such a course of action would seal the failure of Trump’s restoration before it got fairly underway?
Trump treats Uniparty members of the GOP with contempt because they are contemptible. I think he will appoint whomever he thinks will accomplish his goals which are the goals Americans voted for. When Americans voted for Trump they did it with eyes wide open. They knew exactly what they were getting.
Trump knows perfectly well that it’s not politically viable for GOP Senators to keep rejecting his nominees. Maybe, if they’re lucky, they can turn down one or two. After that, they will so infuriate their constituents that they will put their own jobs in jeopardy. The GOP only controls the Senate because of Trump’s shirt tails and they know it.
Trump’s nominees are making many if not most GOP Senators squirm. They were far happier in the good old days when they could vote for apparatchiks with a GOP gloss for Cabinet positions to replace the apparatchiks with a Democratic gloss from the previous Administration.
Trump is a disrupter. That’s why he nominated Hegseth in the first place. It’s why he’s made so many other controversial picks too. Like many of their Democratic senatorial colleagues, GOP Senators are firmly ensconced in the good old ways. They are as big a part of the problem as the tens of thousands of useless government bureaucrats that Musk and Ramaswamy are planning to exile.
Trump’s plan, which may or may not work in the long run, is to show the GOP Senators that he’s in charge; they’re not. He has a mandate to do things very differently than they’ve been done before and he believes that he has the political capital to bring the GOP led Senate to heel.
I believe all of this is a preamble to what comes next with our European allies. If Trump’s nominees are making GOP Senators squirm, just wait until he demonstrates what he has in mind for the impotent potentates of the UK, France, Germany and the EU. My guess is that he will mostly ignore Madam Von der Leyen; she’s not worth his time. Macron, Starmer and Scholz (or whomever replaces him) won’t know what hit them.
But he won’t have a bad relationship with all the leaders of Europe. He will get along just fine with Prime Minister Orban. He will also have a productive relationship with the most masculine leader of the major European nations, the very feminine Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni.
If Trump succeeds (a big if) the federal government will look substantially different when he leaves office than it does now. Our relationship with the major European powers (and I use the term powers advisably) will also look very different. Status-quo mongers won’t like it.
However, after retirement I helped out with Operation Code, which helps vets & spouses find tech careers. I learned a very useful distinction from those folks: there are Barracks Generals and Combat Generals. The latter aren't great at shuffling paper, but they're the ones you want with you in a fight.
We have lost the war fighting mindset that a good general officer needs. Exhibit A is the lack of consequences to any officer associated with the Afghan debacle.
Our ship builders have not delivered a ship on time or on budget in decades. A culture of incompetence is tolerated. As an aside, we have more admirals than ships - a sure sign of a bureaucracy run rampant.
Nobody seems to be doing any war planning beyond writing "papers". Where are our icebreakers as the Arctic becomes a potential site of conflict?
Worse, the institutional mendacity is accepted - look at the testimony over the past 10 years from the Coast Guard to Congress about the progress of the new icebreaker.
Ukraine has shown that modern conflict consumes huge amounts of material (as has every conflict since Cain looked for a rock). Our arsenals could not supply a modern war for more than a few weeks. And we do not have the means to build weapons quickly.
Apparently, we have excellent weapons, but we hand build missiles at the rate of a few hundred a year. We are falling into the same trap that the Germans fell into in WW2. Remember Stalin's adage about quantity.
We are facing the possibility of an Asian war. We should be preparing today for that war so that adventurers are discouraged.
As so often happens, American soldiers will be asked to pay in blood for our leaders' incompetence.
I always wondered what they did in the world’s biggest building. It never seemed to have much to do with fighting.
Well, the US armed forces do require bureaucratic support. But left to themselves, bureaucrats come to regard bureaucracy as an end in itself.
You think it's a sound move because he's a Zionist-owned neocon who will have no problem agitating for war with Iran. Just say that.
Uh- huh…
I picture dozens of rooms with serious clerks pushing plastic toy tanks and soldiers across massive terrain tables while obscure colonels in overhead windows nod sagely, take notes, and whisper into red telephones. And a mammoth cafeteria or two with delicious pies for dessert. And Austin Powers turning around his steam roller.
Yes, I bet they have the world's largest selection of model soldiers...
There’s a lot of reporting (which may or may not be accurate) that several Senators from the Uniparty wing of the GOP dislike the Hegseth nomination. They better vote to confirm him because Trump appears to be in no mood to take prisoners. Somewhere (I think maybe on Twitter) I saw Trump described perfectly as an apex predator hunting sheep.
My prediction is that if the GOP Senate refuses to confirm Hegseth, Trump’s next nominee as DOD Secretary will be General Michael Flynn. How much fun would that be to watch?
Trump doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the GOP Senators. Watching the Uniparty panic about his nominees is even more sweet than I thought it would be.
Next up will be Trump’s humiliation of Starmer, Macron, Scholz (or whomever replaces him), Trudeau and Von der Leyen.
So if the Senate fails to confirm Hegseth, Trump will nominate someone even less acceptable? A quixotic strategy indeed! But you may be right, Trump’s mercurial temperament might provoke him into a fratricidal war with his own party. Can you not see that such a course of action would seal the failure of Trump’s restoration before it got fairly underway?
Trump treats Uniparty members of the GOP with contempt because they are contemptible. I think he will appoint whomever he thinks will accomplish his goals which are the goals Americans voted for. When Americans voted for Trump they did it with eyes wide open. They knew exactly what they were getting.
Trump knows perfectly well that it’s not politically viable for GOP Senators to keep rejecting his nominees. Maybe, if they’re lucky, they can turn down one or two. After that, they will so infuriate their constituents that they will put their own jobs in jeopardy. The GOP only controls the Senate because of Trump’s shirt tails and they know it.
Trump’s nominees are making many if not most GOP Senators squirm. They were far happier in the good old days when they could vote for apparatchiks with a GOP gloss for Cabinet positions to replace the apparatchiks with a Democratic gloss from the previous Administration.
Trump is a disrupter. That’s why he nominated Hegseth in the first place. It’s why he’s made so many other controversial picks too. Like many of their Democratic senatorial colleagues, GOP Senators are firmly ensconced in the good old ways. They are as big a part of the problem as the tens of thousands of useless government bureaucrats that Musk and Ramaswamy are planning to exile.
Trump’s plan, which may or may not work in the long run, is to show the GOP Senators that he’s in charge; they’re not. He has a mandate to do things very differently than they’ve been done before and he believes that he has the political capital to bring the GOP led Senate to heel.
I believe all of this is a preamble to what comes next with our European allies. If Trump’s nominees are making GOP Senators squirm, just wait until he demonstrates what he has in mind for the impotent potentates of the UK, France, Germany and the EU. My guess is that he will mostly ignore Madam Von der Leyen; she’s not worth his time. Macron, Starmer and Scholz (or whomever replaces him) won’t know what hit them.
But he won’t have a bad relationship with all the leaders of Europe. He will get along just fine with Prime Minister Orban. He will also have a productive relationship with the most masculine leader of the major European nations, the very feminine Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni.
If Trump succeeds (a big if) the federal government will look substantially different when he leaves office than it does now. Our relationship with the major European powers (and I use the term powers advisably) will also look very different. Status-quo mongers won’t like it.
Too bad for them.
Full disclosure: didn't serve.
However, after retirement I helped out with Operation Code, which helps vets & spouses find tech careers. I learned a very useful distinction from those folks: there are Barracks Generals and Combat Generals. The latter aren't great at shuffling paper, but they're the ones you want with you in a fight.
Yes and more.
We have lost the war fighting mindset that a good general officer needs. Exhibit A is the lack of consequences to any officer associated with the Afghan debacle.
Our ship builders have not delivered a ship on time or on budget in decades. A culture of incompetence is tolerated. As an aside, we have more admirals than ships - a sure sign of a bureaucracy run rampant.
Nobody seems to be doing any war planning beyond writing "papers". Where are our icebreakers as the Arctic becomes a potential site of conflict?
Worse, the institutional mendacity is accepted - look at the testimony over the past 10 years from the Coast Guard to Congress about the progress of the new icebreaker.
Ukraine has shown that modern conflict consumes huge amounts of material (as has every conflict since Cain looked for a rock). Our arsenals could not supply a modern war for more than a few weeks. And we do not have the means to build weapons quickly.
Apparently, we have excellent weapons, but we hand build missiles at the rate of a few hundred a year. We are falling into the same trap that the Germans fell into in WW2. Remember Stalin's adage about quantity.
We are facing the possibility of an Asian war. We should be preparing today for that war so that adventurers are discouraged.
As so often happens, American soldiers will be asked to pay in blood for our leaders' incompetence.
Exactly.
Bravo! I'm with you hoping this will bring overdue change. They also need to fix the VA. Our warriors deserve the best.
Well, we shall see. Pete Hegseth will have his work cut out for him, that’s certain.