To begin…the surge in views and visitors abated a great deal on Sunday and Monday, but did not disappear completely. Again, these were views of the Home Page referred from Guck Foogle. A few people clicked on a post with a link to John Kraman’s bio on the Mecum Auctions website. He has been absent from the TV coverage for the last two auctions. I hope he is well on the way to recovery.
This book is a sign of the times in that early next year I will officially be enrolled in Medicare. I have already received my card for Part A and Part B in addition to my card for my Medicare Supplement plan. I am still waiting for my Part D card as a snafu occurred during enrollment. No, my Part D/Prescription coverage is not with United Health.
Far from tangentially…the arrest of the suspected shooter/murderer of United Health CEO Brian Thompson just reeks of narcissism to me. “I don’t like what your company does so I can kill you.”
For not the first time, and again in my very strong opinion, the US lagging behind other developed countries in life expectancy has FAR more to do with poor lifestyle choices than with delivery of health care. Oh, don’t forget this:
You’re entitled to your own opinions, but are not entitled to your own facts.
The chance that I would have attended the same high school as the suspected shooter (obviously not at the same time) was not zero. Somehow, my father knew the President (Chancellor?) there and bragged about me to him on more than one occasion. The head of the school said that I should attend.
Remember that my father was neither born nor raised in the US. He did not understand that particular high school was private; he also didn’t understand we probably would have qualified for reduced or waived tuition based on financial need. Yes, anti-Semitic assholes, a Jewish family without money. Anyway, I did not attend, but everything worked out well.
This is my senior section in high school. David Banner (not his real name) and I are in the photo. The brilliant TI is also pictured. I doubt the collection of achievements of any analogous group at the private high school could exceed those of this august group.
******************
Also a sign of the times is that much, or all, of the rest of today’s post will be about Syria.
The Free Press (I think it’s worth the $80/year to subscribe) has devoted much space to Syria. First, from foreign correspondent Dexter Filkins:
“The fall of Assad is a pivotal event in the history of the modern Middle East, for two reasons. First, even though we don’t know yet what the immediate future will bring, it’s a great moment for the Syrian people. The Assad imperium, which began with the ascension of Bashar’s father, Hafez al-Assad, a former army officer, in 1971, lasted 53 years. (Bashar took over in 2000.) From the start, the Assads were brutal and corrupt and ruinous, tolerating no dissent; they immiserated the Syrian people. The second reason the fall of Assad is so important is that it represents the collapse of the long Iranian campaign to dominate the Middle East. Only 18 months ago, Iranian power was at its peak, with its local allies dominating a broad swath of the region and nearly completing the encirclement of Israel: Assad in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shi’ite militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hamas in Gaza. The Iranians called it the “Axis of Resistance.” It was primarily aimed at Israel; the clear threat was that any Israeli attempt to attack Iran, particularly its nuclear weapons program, would be met by a rapid and devastating response by Iran’s allies. At the same time, the Axis of Resistance was a vast looting exercise; Assad, the Shi’ite militias in Iraq, and Hezbollah in Lebanon were parasites, sucking and draining the wealth from the countries they inhabited and crippling the states and governments where they lived. And now, after only a few months, the Iranian project lies in ruins. Hamas has been destroyed, Hezbollah is crippled, Assad is gone, and the Iranian regime itself is severely weakened.
It should be said: Most of the credit goes to Israel, which, by destroying Hamas, decapitating Hezbollah’s leadership, and leaving Iran’s leaders exposed, kicked away the support struts of Assad’s regime. The Ukrainian army deserves a nod, too. It was the Russian military that led the effort to save Assad when he was teetering in 2015; they bombed rebels and civilians indiscriminately. And now, eight years later, the Russians are tied down and bloodied in Ukraine, where they have sustained some 600,000 casualties. The Ukrainians, too, played an important role in Assad’s demise.”
This CNBC piece by Holly Ellyatt offers opinions on who the winners and losers are from the events in Syria. In the article, Holger Schmieding–chief economist at Berenberg Bank–is quoted, “The great losers are Iran and Russia, without whose support Assad would have lost the almost 14-year civil war long ago. Iran has likely lost its major route to send weapons to the Hezbollah terror militia in Lebanon. Despite a potential power vacuum in parts of Syria for a while, the Middle East could eventually be a little less unstable as a result.”
This piece from The Times Of Israel is an interview with a Druze (not Jewish, not Muslim) who is a former IDF intel officer. Anan Wahabi believes that,
“The modern nation state in the Middle East has failed. All the different communities in Syria could not live together in one national state. The best option is for Syria to follow the model of the Kurdistan region in Iraq.”
Wahabi is not completely pessimistic, though:
“Little by little, Hezbollah is going to lay down its weapons and integrate into the Lebanese state and will participate in the reconstruction of Lebanon. It is already part of the Lebanese state and the government. Eventually, it will abandon its strategy of liberating [Jerusalem]. And then later on Lebanon will be part of the normalization deal with Israel, just like Syria…If we look back at the history of Syria, we see that Syrians are much more free and liberal than Islamists. Syria has historically been a diverse country with many ethnic groups. This multiculturalism can be the wealth of Syrian society once again, and ensure that the next state will be democratic and liberal.”
Like I wrote yesterday, one can hope but should not act based on that hope. The Middle East has been too hot for too long to cool down immediately, if at all.
#ASignOfTheTimes