All posts by Steve Stern

The Russo-Ukraine War: Three Horrifying Years In

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If I meet Putin, I’ll say to him: “So you’ve finally given us back our territory, how much more are you ready to give as compensation money for taking away our land and helping those who took part in the escalation in Crimea and Donbas?” President Volodymyr Zelensky

Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending 350 Billion Dollars to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and TRUMP, will never be able to settle, President Donald Trump during an address before a meeting in Miami of business executives hosted by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

I’ve been trying to ignore most of what I read about Trump. But it is rough; the SOB is everywhere. All the time. He has a three-year-old’s need to be the center of attention, and he is good at getting it. Part of Trump’s superpower is that he has no connection with the truth. The more outrageous he is, the more attention he gets. Now his Mexico will pay for building the wall. assertion is Ukraine started the war, and they will pay us for the equipment we gave them. They won’t, just like Mexico didn’t.

Years ago, I wanted to sue a guy. I don’t remember why, but I do know that it seemed like a slam dunk suit, but I do remember that my lawyer said it was an easy-to-win suit but that the guy I wanted to sue was Judgment-proof, meaning that when we won, he didn’t have enough assets to pay for the legal fees, let alone our damages. In other words, we could win, but it wouldn’t be worth it. I think, on a national level, judgment proof is equivalent to conquest proof. Just like Afghanistan – or Algeria, Vietnam – Ukraine is conquest-proof.

If Putin’s Special Military Operation had succeeded, Ukraine would have probably fallen in a short time, like France in 1940. But Putin’s Special Military Operation was stopped by a combination of extraordinary resistance by the Ukrainian military and Russian ineptitude. I keep reading that now this is a war of attrition, as if both sides had the same to lose. They don’t, of course. If Russia loses, they go home. There might be a forced regime change, but maybe not. On the other hand, If Ukraine loses, Ukraine will cease to exist.

Russia is not winning this war; they are losing it. They are losing combatants at unsubstainable rates that are increasing. According to The Institute for the Study of War, At the current rate of advance, it would take Russian forces over 83 years to capture the remaining 80 percent of Ukraine, assuming that they can sustain massive personnel losses indefinitely. Still, Ukraine is not winning, either. They are on the defense everywhere, and partially because of that, their combatants are being killed at a rate much lower than Russia’s. But, they are still being killed, and their cities and infrastructure are being thrashed.

To quote myself from a year ago: All this butchery because of a violent sociopath who is still intent on destroying the whole of Ukraine rather than what? being wrong? being embarrassed? Pretty much all Putin has left is to continue to push untrained, poorly led, and under-equipped troops into the Killing Zone, where tens of thousands are being slaughtered by the better-trained and superbly led Ukrainian Army. According to David Petraeus, former CIA director and US Army general, Putin thinks that Russia can outsuffer the West. He can’t. The West isn’t really suffering that much; Ukraine is providing the suffering, and Ukraine will suffer until the Russian troops go home.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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Alexandria Ocasio Cortez being sworn in as a Representative in the House, 6 years ago.…A Getty Image

Nobody ever wins the first time they run for office. Nobody’s ever supposed to win their first bid for office. Nobody’s ever supposed to win without taking lobbyists’ money. No one’s ever supposed to defeat an incumbent. No one’s ever supposed to run a grassroots campaign without running any ads on television. We did all of those things. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

I’m not running “from the left.” I’m running from the bottom. I’m running in fierce advocacy of working-class Americans. A Tweet by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez after being elected as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress at 29.

There is no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed. Mocking lower incomes is exactly how those who benefit from + promote wealth inequality the most keep everyday people silent about one of the worst threats to American society: that the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. A tweet by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in response to a tweeted criticism of her inability to afford an apartment in Washington DC when she first moved there in 2019.

I so want to write about Trump’s tariff threats or his bragging about his malicious immigration policies, or his giving everybody in the government a bonus if they quit. But what good does that do to anybody? I don’t know anything about tariffs except what I read in the New York Times or the Washington Post, and I’m not sure they really know anything about tariffs either. What I do know – or remember, at least – is that both papers got hysterical when Trump put tariffs on Chinese imports in 2017 and then didn’t even bother to mention it when President Biden continued them in 2021.

With Trump, like almost everything he does, tariffs seem to be a way to fill the public communication space. Trump says something seemingly outrageous about tariffs, and then the mainstream media reacts by telling us that what Trump said about tariffs is outrageous. Then we’re all talking about Trump and how outrageous he is. But, and it is a big but, while the papers say that Trump is acting outrageously over tariffs, other news, often more critical, is pushed to the back page where, especially today in the new media environment, it is ignored.

As an aside, one of the things pushed to the back pages is how Trump fills the communication space – or flooding the zone – and how the mainstream media helps him with constant attention. End aside.

We are in a new media environment, and Trump is one of the few people who understand how to prosper in that environment. Most of the Democrats, maybe all of them except about eight, are still following the old rule book. Look good, and don’t say anything controversial. Think about it, then think about it again. It is better not to be seen than being seen in the wrong place or saying something controversial. It was better to move cautiously. .

Ok, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I want to write about Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. What I really want to write about is that I think AOC will be our first female President. I’ve been thinking this for a long time, and then I thought I was wrong because I thought Vice President Harris would win. And I thought the Vice President had an excellent chance, too. I still think she could have won, but she lost her nerve and started playing it safe. Playing it safe is what the Democratic establishment wanted her to do, but when running against Trump in 2024, playing it safe is a losing strategy.

Playing it safe is not something that New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez does. She started her political career in 2018 by running against Joseph Crowley, who, according to the New York Times, was once seen as a possible successor to Nancy Pelosi because his seat was so safe.

I don’t know when I first became aware of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez or even why, but it was after she was elected and before she became AOC. I fell in love with her as a politician immediately, and I mean politician in the best possible sense, in a politics as public service way. The only two other times I have felt that way were with Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. I was sure that Carter and Obama would both become president even when all the evidence said they wouldn’t be. I feel the same way about AOC.

Our politics is changing because our media is changing. The old politics, the pre-2016 politics, television politics, rewarded looking professional and not making waves. That politics required immense amounts of money and rewarded non-controversial positions. Everything was well thought out, which made for slow reactions.

The new politics, the post-2016 politics, the internet politics, rewards being seen, being everywhere, filling the news space, getting attention, and it rewards authenticity. In this new political space, exposure is everything. In the television world, Harris’es handlers didn’t want her to go on FOX News, but in the post-2016 world, that just seems crazy. Trump is a master of the post-2016 political space. He is everywhere. When the Democrats come back at him for, say, renaming Denali National Park, they help Trump in two ways: they keep Trump’s name in the center of the political space, and they answer two days later, which is two days after Trump has moved on. They seem behind the times (and they are).

I’m sure that some Democrats understand the new media landscape, but most don’t. Watching Minority Leader Schumer rebutting Trump’s 25% tariff on anything from Mexico while holding an avocado like it was going to bite him was embarrassing. And then he said that the tariff would raise the price of our Super Bowl Quack. Why did he get the job of rebutting? Not because he was good at presenting a case but because he was the senior Democrat. Meanwhile, Trump had moved on to turning Gaza into a resort after the pesky Palestinians moved to Eygpt.

Of those few Democrats who do understand the new world, nobody is better at communication than AOC. Even her tag, a very recognizable AOC, which she got very early in her political career – before she took office. shows her awareness of the power of Social Media. She is sincere, not afraid to be unabashedly herself, and relatable. She is both staggeringly young and staggeringly self-confident.

Don’t take my word for it; watch the video below. It’s long but worth it (if you are into this kind of thing and, maybe, even if you are not).

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Thinking About #47 While Trying Not To

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“I was saved by God to make America great again,” President Trump, in his inaugural address.h

“We shouldn’t be in a position where you have tumbleweed that’s dry as a bone. Even tumbleweed can be nice & green & rich & it’s not gonna burn. You don’t even have to remove it. It’s not gonna burn. But it’s just dry. So I hope you can all get together & say I’m so happy with the water.” President Trump at a firehouse in LA.

Mr. Hegseth, like many of President Trump’s nominees, represents a break from the status quo. His nomination directly challenges the internal culture, decision-making process, and politicization of the Department of Defense that the Biden Administration has propagated for the last four years. Horace Cooper in the National Center for Public Policy Research (which bills itself as a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think tank).

I don’t know what to make of Trump. I told myself I wouldn’t react like I did his first term. Then I watch a clip of him doing, almost anything, really, and it’s so full of casual assholery that I lose all objectivity.

However, I’m not as depressed as I thought I would be about Donald Trump winning the presidency again, but, listening to Trump bloviating every day, I’m getting there. Part of why I’m not that depressed, I think, is that I don’t think the Democrats are doing that great a job, and part of that is because I didn’t think Trump would be as bad as the New York Times thinks. Maybe the second part of my complacency is a pipe dream; Trump is undoubtedly a narcissist and a disrupter. But he has proven to be incompetent at almost everything he has tried. I think the last two personality traits will cancel each other out in a way.

Donald Trump will make a lot of waves, but he is not going to invade Canada (I don’t think). We liberals get hung up in what he says, and a lot of what he says is just filling space, just staying in the limelight. During his first term, Trump repeatedly said that he was going to release his Obama Care replacement in two weeks, strangely – it was always two weeks – and it never happened. This time around, he was going to end the Russo-Ukrainian War on day one; of course, he didn’t. He didn’t even try. It was all just talk.

Still, he is a disrupter, and he will be disruptive. All indicators indicate that he either doesn’t believe in Climate Change or doesn’t give a shit. Either way, President Trump will be terrible for the planet, but Vice-Presendent Harris wouldn’t have been appreciably better. Vice-president Harris might want to start reacting to Climate Change like it is a real threat, but the Democratic establishment does not want change the status quo. Harris would be better than Trump for sure, for sure, but still not what the world needs.

I do think that Trump will do a lot of damage to a variety of governmental agencies and a lot of people who work for them. He is a vengeful son of a bitch and it will not be pretty. Still, I don’t think he will turn us into a copy of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. I don’t think he will for two reasons: one, Trump is not competent enough to pull off a coup, and, two, the only countries that have slipped from being democracies to being ruled by autocrats were democracies that had been democracies for a short period of time. The German Weimar Republic, even the idea of being a German democracy, actually was only about fifteen years old when Hitler destroyed it.

The United States has been a democracy for about 236 years, and democracy is deep in our blood and deep in our bones. OK, we aren’t really a democracy. We started with the vote being only for White Men who owned property, and it has slowly gotten better. I don’t know when the property qualification was dropped, but Black men were not allowed to vote until 1870 (and for a large portion of Black people, not until the mid-60s). Women were not allowed to vote until 1920.

However, our national myth is that we are a democratic country, and even people who are unable to vote are willing to die for that myth. People like the Tuskegee Airman during World War II. That makes it much more difficult to overturn the United States government compared to, say, Hungry or Russia.

I’m not trying to say that everything is going to be great for the next four years, it won’t be. I don’t think, however, that it will be the end of democracy.

I Don’t Know What to Say Except Poor LA

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LA Fire

Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The winds shows us how close to the edge we are. Joan Didion in Slouching Towards Bethlehem

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husband’s necks. Anything can happen. Raymond Chandler in Trouble is My Business

…very scary, very stressful, very strange week here in L.A., where we work, where we live, where our kids go to school. Jimmy Kimmel

I looked at IRS data and learned that in 2021 (the most recent year for which there was data) LA County paid more in income taxes than all but four states. Philip Bump‬ on Blue Sky

Poor LA, it is a place of so many disasters, and now three devastating fires at once. It is heartbreaking.

And I think it is part of what makes LA so captivating. Michele and I love Los Angeles; it is so alive and so vibrant. It’s a sprawling wonderfulness that can’t be contained; LA covers the flat desert valley floor and climbs into the mountains that surround it. It is a place with a feeling of impermanence that insists its occupiers take both intellectual and artistic risks because, “What the hell, why not try it? We might not be here tomorrow.”

Living in LA is living on the edge; it is earthquake country, where the San Andres Fault bends east. LA is not even on the North American Plate; it is on the Pacific Plate that, here, is banging into the North American Plate as it grinds by. And – and this is a big and – LA is Santa Ana country.

People I know or meet who have moved here from the East or Midwest complain that there are no actual seasons in California, especially Coastal Southern California. They claim that the climate is blandly warm, blandly almost perfect. That is partially true; the climate doesn’t have the extremes of most of the world, but mixed in with that hospitable weather are weather catastrophes.

When it rains, it is often a torrential subtropical rain that lasts days. Washing out the hills and sending houses sliding toward the valley floor. Then there are the Santa Anas, strong dry winds that dry out the land, making it susceptible to fire that it whips up into firestorms. When I lived in the LA area during the late 50s and early 60s, it seemed like the hills were on fire every year; sometimes, huge fires like Malibu in 1956 and Bel Air in 1961. The fires make the place feel violent and unpredictable.

It is a place that probably should be inhabited by, I don’t know, maybe 50,000 humans, max, living in the canyons and along the river. But Los Angeles has a population of over eighteen million people. Eighteen million people that have dug in to stay. It is one of the most culturally dense places on earth, with 98 symphony orchestras, 200 professional theater companies, and about 780 museums, including the California African American Museum, the US Navy Seabee Museum, the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology – which has the largest collection of bird nests in the world – and LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art). It has the Finnish Folk Art Museum and the First Original McDonald’s Museum. And, of course, there are the vanity museums founded by local billionaires: The Broad, the Armand Hammer Museum, and the J. Paul Getty Museum (two J.Paul Getty museums). 

We love LA because it is so big and so glamorous. When the chairman of Jaguar Cars was asked why they were bringing Jaguar back to the United States when the crash and pollution standards were so strict, and it would be so costly to meet them with a European car. He answered, “Because there are more people in L A County who can afford our cars than people in all of Europe.” What he didn’t say is that LA is full of the kind of people who buy Jaguars.

Michele and I love Los Angeles because of our love for plants. Los Angeles is a city of plants, with lush private gardens and even lusher public botanical gardens. Almost anything grows in Los Angeles; it is a plant paradise. However, this is a paradise that is almost all man-made, just like the millions of flammable buildings that cover the flat valley and steep hills.