Effective Diplomacy vs the Art of the Deal

Effective Diplomacy vs the Art of the Deal

Clearly, the Latter Does Not Work in a World of Competing Values… or Serve Us Well as a Nation

"Iran's Navy is at the bottom of the sea, their frigate class, their prized drone aircraft carriers, submarines, minelayers sunk… Iran's air force has been wiped out. We own their skies. Their missile program is functionally destroyed." 

Trump ventriloquism dummy, Secretary of Defense/War, Major Pete Hegseth, April 8th.

“Iran retains thousands of missiles and one-way attack [drones] that can threaten U.S. and partner forces throughout the region, despite degradations to its capabilities from both attrition and expenditure.” 

Lt. Gen. James Adams, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in a public question-and-answer document provided on April 16th to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations

“Trump’s ceasefire extension means nothing. The losing side cannot dictate terms. The continuation of the siege is no different from bombardment and must be met with a military response. Moreover, Trump’s ceasefire extension is certainly a ploy to buy time for a surprise strike. The time for Iran to take the initiative has come."

Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Baghar Ghalibaf, on X, April 22nd

There are rumors that Donald Trump is paying particular attention these days to the “nuclear football,” the briefcase carried by aides when the President is not at the White House. Formally, it’s called the “Presidential Emergency Satchel,” and it carries our launch codes with which the President can unilaterally order a nuclear strike. Whether you believe Trump is mentally incapacitated, was conned into war by Israel’s Prime Minister or simply does not know what he is doing, facts are facts. Iran’s does control passage through the Strait of Hormuz (which never happened before), is capable of shooting American military jets out of the sky, is able to launch sophisticated missiles to a distant target thousands of miles away, and it threatens US forces at sea with small fast-attack boats, cheap drones, mines and where they are willing to waste a more expensive weapon, sophisticated targeting missiles from elusive mobile platforms.

Whatever the underlying cause, one thing is for sure, while Trump may know how to negotiate monetary transactional business deals, he has zero ability to negotiate on a diplomatic level, where our values are at stake (not dollars) and where our goal is not to maximize hard dollar profits but reinforce bigger matters than mere money. The Trump’s continuing litany of mega-failures may manifest itself in hard dollars costs – out of control deficits and soaring consumer prices – but focusing on the dollars is all Trump seems to be able to do.

Or as attorney, Atom Ariola, states in an editorial in the April 22nd Los Angeles Times: “Stop confusing diplomacy with making ‘deals.’… That language may work in business, but such transactional thinking does real harm in geopolitics… Something strange has happened to the language of politics. Everything is now a ‘deal.’ Not a framework, not an accord, not a negotiated architecture — just a deal. The word appears everywhere, from headlines to cable news chyrons, as if it were the most natural way to describe diplomacy. But it isn’t natural. It is imported. And its quiet dominance marks a shift in how political events are not only described, but conceived: as transactions to be struck, rather than systems to be built.

“What looks like harmless shorthand is doing more work than it seems. Because “deal” is not just a word; it carries a set of assumptions. It suggests two sides, clear terms and a moment of closure. It implies that problems can be reduced to a negotiation and resolved with enough leverage and timing. That may work in business but it does not describe the reality of geopolitics, where multiple actors operate at once, where interests overlap and where outcomes depend less on a single agreement than on whether anything holds together over time.

“This is not a coincidence. It is the language of marketing — simple, repeatable, built to hold attention. It does not describe the events so much as it sells them, and this unsettling shift has spread into the tone of political language more broadly. Events are no longer just significant; they are ‘massive,’ ‘historic,’ ‘unlike anything we’ve seen before.’ Even commentators who are openly critical have begun to borrow the same phrasing, the same rhythm, the same constant escalation.

“Once that language takes hold, it reshapes our expectations. America’s ceasefire with Iran is no longer a fragile arrangement; it is a major and ‘historic deal.’ A negotiation is judged not by whether it creates stability, but by whether it produces an announcement. The headline becomes the outcome. And anything slower, more procedural, or less conclusive begins to look like failure, even when it may be the only real way to manage a complicated situation.” Writing for the same issue of the LA Times, contributing writer and former Naval officer, Jon Duffy, adds this dose of reality to the mix: “America is already diminished by this war…

“Supporters of this war often try to shut down criticism by suggesting that anyone who questions it is somehow siding with Iran. This is both lazy and wrong. Iran is a malign regime. But the issue was never whether Tehran posed a danger. It was whether this war would leave the U.S. and the world in a stronger position. Any serious strategy would have anticipated Iran’s response and accounted for the second- and third-order effects of attacking it. This one clearly did not. Once attacked, Iran moved to exploit disruption and uncertainty in ways that imposed wider costs on everyone else. This war made an already dangerous problem bigger and harder to contain.

“There is no clear sign that Iran is eager to accept favorable U.S. terms. Washington is trying to restart talks, but no U.S. delegation has departed for Pakistan and Tehran has not confirmed participation while the blockade remains in place. Even if some settlement is eventually reached, it will not reverse the military depletion, diplomatic damage, economic disruption or lost legitimacy this war has already caused. At this point, a settlement would look less like vindication than damage control.

“That is the real verdict on this war. Trump may claim he was the first president with the ‘guts’ to confront Iran. But strategy is judged by outcomes, not bravado. So far, the outcome is that America has emerged from this war weaker than before. Hurting Iran may have been politically satisfying, but it was never enough. The question was whether doing so would leave the United States stronger, safer and better able to shape the world that follows. It has done the opposite.”

And for what’s worth, those in a position to right this sinking ship – cabinet officers and leaders of the majority party in Congress – are cowering cowards unwilling to step up and perform their constitutionally mandated duties. Americans are now victims of fearful quivering Trump sycophants unwilling to do what they know must be done. Many know the administration is fabricating outcomes and manufacturing “facts,” but that’s all they need to back a loser President.

I’m Peter Dekom, and that the United States of America may be brought down by fearful and stubborn mediocrity makes the pain of their inaction that much more horrible.

The Art of the Steal: Creating and Sustaining a Complete Alternative Reality

The Art of the Steal: Creating and Sustaining a Complete Alternative Reality

Victor Orbán did it slowly (over 16 years), amending the Hungarian constitution to increase his power, muzzling the press and forcing media to sell to his cronies, adopting police-driven repression against protestors and politicians opposing his mandates, pushing non-ethnic Hungarians out of the country, making billions with his family, nuzzling with Putin putting a wrench in the EU’s anti-Russian vectors, and blatantly redefining “illiberal democracy” to the delight of the American rightwing.

Orbán’s policies were codified in the US Project 2025 manifesto that became the backbone of Trump 2.0, in everything from brutal immigration policies, refusing to follow federal court orders, ignoring Congress, fostering white Christian nationalism, spending/tax cuts that slammed the economic well-being of most Americans, mounting blistering attacks on media as he favored media mergers and acquisitions that would replace neutral and liberal media with Trump-friendly reporting, indicting and prosecuting his political foes, making sure “Trump” was everywhere, feasting at the corruption trough, and erasing inconvenient historical realities from museum presentations to historical descriptors in our National Parks.

But eventually, Hungarians had enough, and in the last election, they decimated Prime Minister Orbán’s Christian nationalist and far-right Fidesz Party, a now marginalized and very unpopular political movement, that could not keep Orbán in power. Orbán had attempted to redefine “correct thinking” in his culture war against what he believed was his nation’s biggest enemy: anything liberal or even at the center of local political thought. Inconvenient facts were erased, and anyone objecting to these revisionist falsehoods was declared an enemy of the state and treated accordingly. Trump 1.0 was a mild tiptoe into ultra-right revisionism. Trump 2.0, following the Project 2025 Orbán-like manifesto, tried to replicate Orbán’s 16-year agenda in under two years… with similar accelerated negative reactions, internationally and domestically.

The big difference between Orbán’s Hungary and Trump’s America was our massive military capacity… and perhaps Trump’s “I passed the dementia cognitive 30-question test with flying colors” ego… even bigger than Orbán’s. Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill generated a very dangerous deficit increase via his tax cut for the rich, tanking medical affordability for millions of Americans in the process. Surrounding himself with “loyalists without competence”, “yes” men and women backed by a MAGA-controlled Congress which quivered in fear at being “primaried” out of office if they dared to defy cult-leader Trump, mediocrity and downright ignorance replaced a flawed but reasonably effective prior government.

But Trump’s hypersonic fall from grace, a self-inflicted coup de gras, began with his “I know better than my own genuine military experts” in accepting the failed, never-ending war admonitions – which had been rejected by every recent US president despite the Israeli PM’s efforts to persuade – Bibi Netanyahu’s insistence that Iran was a nuclear weapons threat (without actually having one) and that a joint military attack on Iran would be short, sweet and highly effective.

After all, Trump’s military genius was able to “shoot to kill” very small helpless, fast-boats, purportedly carrying drugs, in the East Pacific and the Caribbean, and extract Venezuelan Drug Lord/President Nicolás Maduro using our Special Forces, letting Cuba know it was next. These miniscule triumphs seemed to convince Trump and his ventriloquist dummy, Major Pete, of their supreme military expertise, which led to a voluntary leap into Netanyahu’s custom designed pool of inescapable quicksand.

Our military leadership, even the ones who were not fired, knew the risks, the impact that a closure of the Strait of Hormuz would have on oil and gas prices everywhere, that Iranian missiles could reach regional US military bases, and that this religious zealot-controlled nation would never surrender, accepting massive civilians losses as the cost of their rule. As our experts believed in 2018 when Trump terminated the functioning UN-sponsored nuclear containment treaty with Iran, Tehran still did not have a nuclear weapon … and with the earlier B2 bombing damage, was nowhere likely to have one anytime soon.

The economic havoc, the rapid rise of oil, gas, fertilizer, etc. prices are profound, and experts have warned that the war’s damage to oil fields, dozens of refineries and the shipping infrastructure would keep those prices high for potentially years even if the war ended tomorrow and the Strait were open wide. Add this obvious mistake to Trump’s misunderstanding that tariffs were economic depressants, de facto sales taxes, that not only slammed American consumers but were bully tactics that alienated our closest allies, perhaps beyond redemption. Sidestepping the Supreme Court’s rejection of most of Trump’s tariffs, Trump is now threatening Europe with a more than doubling of agreed tariffs. It never ends.

But Trump’s failures just seem to multiply; his latest in his “follow your ego, think later… if ever” response to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s chastisement of Trump’s being held into a stalemate by a Iran – super-weapons vs drones: pulling 5,000 US troops out what maybe our European/Middle Eastern most important series of bases. Our central military medical base, even our regional command focus and bastion against Russian aggression – Germany – may be our most important overseas situs for American military power.

The Trump administration tells us that our economy is strong, that prices will tumble soon, that our allies and enemies alike will succumb to our demands and that America’s “might makes right” policy will prevail. All false. Unless the just-announced Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana vs Callais, allowing partisan gerrymandering with virtually no limits but even the slightest reference to “race” is constitutionally unjustified, is able to justify a blatant mid-term election steal (which is possible), Trump’s MAGA candidates will at least loose the House and probably the Senate. Southern states are accelerating redrawing congressional election maps in a desperate attempt to keep Trump’s alternative and objectively false reality as the continuing law of the land. Meanwhile Trump and family are milking their relationships to make more billions before they are tossed from office.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as a practicing lawyer for decades, with respect for what was once a nation of laws and the US Constitution as it was envisaged by our Founding Fathers, I am appalled and ashamed of how Trump has managed to change our country into his personal (failed) fiefdom.

Standards Who Needs Standards? We Just Need Willing Bodies Loyal to Trump!

 

Standards? Who Needs Standards? We Just Need Willing Bodies Loyal to Trump!

We have a newly reconfigured and profoundly inferior federal government, where senior federal officials and firmly established federal agencies – particularly those created to protect ordinary Americans from toxic and predatory practices of mega-powerful corporate interests – have been terminated, hollowed out or replaced with “appointment by cronyism” without regard to true competence or necessary experience. All federal employees are charged to protect the Constitution as their most basic assignment. But to get a federal job today, only loyalty to Trump matters.

As we watch even some of these crony-driven appointments fired (forced to resign in some cases because they failed Trump as some level) – Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a literal army of seasoned FBI agents, weather/fire prevention/merger officials discharged, civil rights and environmental lawyers shown the door, top level Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials dismissed, our most senior generals and admirals relieved of duty, a litany of US Attorneys and Assistant US Attorneys - who have been unable to secure grand jury indictments against Trump’s clearly-identified “enemies” - gone, immigration “judges” (administrative appointments by the DOJ) who recognized statutory rights of asylum-seekers eliminated – we are watching objectively unqualified replacements (many in fear of losing their jobs that they are willing to do “whatever Trump wants” without regard to legality) run what’s left of our government.

Federal judges are nominated without academic or litigation experience. Diseases (like measles), ounce fully eradicated here, are breaking out under the antivaxxer leadership of RFK, Jr and his conspiracy theory/anti-science senior managers as HHS and the CDC. As allegations of misfeasance and substance abuse, coupled with charges of misuse of federal personnel and jet aircraft for personal use, are raging in the headlines focused on FBI director, Kash Patel, who has personally presided over the firing agents who, in the past, were part of investigation teams looking into Donald Trump’s misuse of classified files taken for personal use. Several recent articles in The Atlantic by Sarah Fitzpatrick have made powerful claims of in-office inebriation, Patel’s alleged inability to meet daily scheduled events, all purportedly documented through multiple sources. Patel’s response has been to file a $250M defamation action against Fitzpatrick and The Atlantic, which will subject the FBI Director to wide-open discovery that could be embarrassing to him. To endear himself to Trump and purportedly to keep his job, Patel has initiated a new investigation into the rehashed Trump’s 2020 election loss and pledged that arrests are imminent.

With a seriously depleted federal workforce, particularly within the Justice Department, the once-stellar standards that made prestigious lawyer candidates vie for appointments to into the highly-regarded corners of the federal legal community, are now having extreme difficulty in finding applicants – knowing that loyalty to Trump, a willingness to defy the Constitution and federal law to placate the President, is required to get and keep that job. Competence, law school achievement and experience are qualities that have fallen by the wayside.

Likewise, in the military, morale has plunged so low – by the seemingly whimsical firing of flag-rank leadership and the persistent hammering of fundamental Christian national conspiracy theories to his troop by a recovering alcoholic who never rose above the rank of major in the Army – that the military is unable to meet its recruitment goals, and there is a push to reinstate a very unpopular draft to meet these needs.

But the bottom line across these federal needs is a massive reduction in the quality level for people deemed acceptable to the Trump administration. ICE agents are among the least skilled recruited, many failing background checks (even after they have been hired). With about two months of training, these agents are released to administer Stephen Miller’s brutal immigration scheme, often arresting people without a judicial warrant, only using a very questionable administrative warrant that carries no legal weight. Masked and unidentified, these subpar agents are accorded power without meaningful accountability.

In a nation where “rule of law” (vs “rule by law” created by a privileged and extreme elite) is the most fundamental building block for our democracy, the hollowing out of our experienced and neutral federal lawyers, has left our constitutional guardrails in shambles. Trump, as truly unpopular as he is, has been able to push autocratic edicts while fostering election rigging for the upcoming 2026 and 2028 elections with the support of new federal lawyers unwilling to challenge obviously unlawful Trump orders. But the Trump restaffing efforts are not restocking that legal staff with competent, ethical and appropriate lawyers. Writing for the April 22nd Associated Press, Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer explain the depth of the problem:

“The FBI and Justice Department are scrambling to rebuild a depleted workforce after a wave of departures over the last year, with leaders easing hiring requirements and accelerating recruitment in ways that some current and former officials see as a lowering of long-accepted standards… The FBI has turned to social media campaigns to attract applicants, offered abbreviated training for candidates from other federal agencies and relaxed requirements for support staff seeking to become agents, according to people familiar with the changes and internal communications seen by the Associated Press. At the same time, the Justice Department has opened the door to hiring prosecutors right out of law school to help fill vacancies in U.S. attorney’s offices across the country… Some current and former agents also say the FBI is promoting into positions of leadership employees with less experience than would be customary for the jobs…

“Elements of the regimen have been periodically tweaked to fit the bureau’s needs, including over the last year under the leadership of FBI Director Kash Patel… With a mantra to ‘let good cops be cops,’ Patel announced last fall that transfers from other agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration would be able to complete a nine-week training academy instead of the traditional academy that spans more than four months. The change rankled some current and former officials who say the FBI’s protocols, professional culture and diversity of cases it handles help to distinguish it from other agencies.” Simply, the new agents are undertrained, significant requirements are waived, and the entry-level standards significantly lowered.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you had to pick a pattern of recruitment that would erode democracy the most, Donald Trump and his cronies seem to have hit the motherlode of destructive mediocrity and cronyism.

Hey Kid, Wanna Buy a Drone?

 

Hey Kid, Wanna Buy a Drone?

Teaching our enemies how to fight us; our military’s weaknesses are increasingly clear.

“The Iranian arena serves as a living laboratory to test the effectiveness and efficiency of Chinese technology and data against advanced Western and American weapons.” 

Nadia Helmy, a China expert at Egypt’s Beni Suef University.

Aside from our most obvious vulnerabilities – failed leadership from a mercurial President and an arrogant and profoundly inexperienced Secretary of Defense/War – our strategic misunderstanding of how asymmetrical warfare can wear down our most expensive and rather sophisticated weapon systems has led us to a stalemate in our war against Iran. All this notwithstanding our battlefield experiences with cheap weapons against our state-of-the-art military in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan (conflicts we lost). China has nurtured sophistication alongside its development of cheap drone technologies that are defining a new era of combat.

Finally catching up with Russia and China, the United States is about to deploy its own hypersonic missile: the $15+ million Dark Eagle, which, together with its specialized launching platform can cost upwards of $2.7 billion. But the good news (?), is that it can reach those retained Iranian missiles and launching pad 1700 miles from its Persian Gulf coast, cruise at absurd speeds, hugging the ground, sneaking up on those Iranian sites that we “totally obliterated.” Major Pete has new ways to run up the costs of the war, if and when we resume full attacks.

Writing for the May 2nd Wall Street Journal, Timothy W. Martin, Thomas Grove and Chun Han Wong explain what the Iran War has taught our true enemies about how to combat the United States: “The Iran war has offered China, Russia and North Korea—the U.S.’s biggest security threats—a rare opportunity to learn about the capabilities and limitations of the U.S. military… The three powers have witnessed certain new American weapons in combat for the first time, including lightning-fast precision airstrikes assisted by artificial intelligence. But they have also seen how quickly the U.S. depleted key munitions, especially stockpiles of long-range Tomahawk missiles and Patriot interceptors.

“And they have watched how Iran’s low-cost drones have been able to threaten the U.S.’s heavily fortified Gulf allies—a potential advantage for China in a Taiwan contingency… Asked what China is taking away from the Iran conflict, Adm. Samuel Paparo, the commander of American troops in the Pacific, told Congress: ‘I think they see the power of small, low-cost munitions.’” You simply have to do a side-by-side comparison between the Trump/Hegseth braggadocio of total military victory with the obvious Iranian pragmatic triumph: by closing the Strait of Hormuz with low tech weapons, Iran has strangled global oil prices and brought much of the world to its knees.

Unless the Strait can be reopened in the next two months, expect oil and fertilizer prices to bring the entire planet into recession. Iran has not, nor is it likely to, surrender. They still have their enriched uranium stash (albeit under rubble), maintain their surrogate state attacks, have inflicted major damage on regional US military bases, and their stocks of ballistic missiles and cheap drones appear intact. The only regime change we have seen is a much more hostile, entrenched and still very capable armed leadership, hell-bent on defying US pressure. And the world blames Trump for all these missteps… and the resulting oil and gas price spiral.

One of the most fascinating developments in this fundamental asymmetrical mainstay – air, land and sea drones – is the ability to eliminate over-the-air or satellite transmissions to control drone movement. Those transmissions facilitate tracking and downing these mobile and inexpensive weapons. While such traditional controls are still mostly in place, for example, the ability to use fishline thin fiber optic cables – unspooling for up to thirty miles from launch site to detonation target – is both cheap and quite effective. Russia and Ukraine have using such drones effectively.

“Many drones are susceptible to electronic jamming by air defenses. Jamming can cause a drone to crash or return to its point of origin… Fiber-optic drones are not piloted via, for example, GPS signals or radio control. They have a thin cable that connects an operator directly to the drone, making it impossible to electronically jam.

The drones are not infallible because the wind — or other drones — can cause the cables to tangle… But, ‘if you know what you’re doing, it’s absolutely deadly,’ said Robert Tollast, a drone expert and researcher at the Royal United Services Institute in London, explaining how the drone can fly low and creep up on a target… Experts say militaries must either intercept the drones, which is difficult due to their small size and short flight path, or find a way to snip the nearly invisible cable…

“An Israeli military official told AP the fiber-optic drones are a relatively new threat during the latest round of fighting with Hezbollah. Hezbollah seems to have turned to them because Israeli air defenses have been successful against larger and more powerful rockets, missiles and other drones, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with military guidelines.

“Israel believes the drones are made locally and are easy to produce — requiring little more than an off-the-shelf drone, a small amount of explosives, and transparent wire that is readily available on the consumer market, he said… He called the drones the biggest threat to troops inside Lebanon but said the Israeli military is working on technological solutions. In the meantime, Israel is taking measures on the ground to defend troops, such as adding nets and cages to military vehicles. The fiber-optic drones are the latest part of a cat-and-mouse race as Israel’s high-tech defenses race to intercept new threats, especially ones that are less sophisticated.

“Ran Kochav, a former head of the Israeli military’s air defense command, said Israel is failing in its attempts to defend against the fiber-optic drones… ‘They fly very low and very fast, and they are very small, it’s very difficult to detect them, and even after they’re detected, they are really hard to track,’ he said… Ali Jezzini, a journalist specializing in security and military affairs who closely follows Hezbollah’s capabilities, estimated that the drones used by the group cost between $300 and $400 each. He added that they appear to be manufactured locally using 3-D printing technology, in addition to readily available electronic components typically used for civilian purposes but capable of dual-use applications.” Associated Press, May 1st. And yes, this same technology is beginning to be deployed by Iran, many using Chinese designs.

I’m Peter Dekom, and in the end, our mismanagement of the war against Iran, our failure to anticipate the obvious tactical and strategic choices that have been and often still are available to Iran has led to a war that defies the Trump/Hegseth cabal of historical, military and cultural ignorance, pretty much leaving Iran calling the shots.

Mega-Wealthy Americans Are Having the Best Time; Most Americans Aren’t

Mega-Wealthy Americans Are Having the Best Time; Most Americans Aren’t

“It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things… They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.” 

Donald Trump, April 1st at a private Easter week luncheon at the White House

The Big Beautiful Bill provided huge tax cuts to the rich, requiring offsetting reductions in Medicaid, SNAP, Medicare and some belt tightening in Social Security. Still, this fully unjustified windfall to the wealthiest in the land added trillions to the national deficit, which bears a rolling interest rate that all taxpayers absorb. For those with investments in the right places, war is good for business. Already, investors have enjoyed share boosts from chip shortages and the AI frenzy, but Trump’s demand for more “defense” spending (a half trillion dollar additional “wartime” increase), sent clear message to military vendors and their shareholders. We’ve used up massive munitions of every sort in Trump’s unilaterally-initiated WAR against Iran – which seems to have allowed a low-tech foe (Iran after the bombing campaign) to bring the US to its knees in a stalemate. Good for the rich, bad for the nation as whole.

Red and Blue State governors were privately wincing at the mere thought of having to shift the massive cost of federal social programs to dwindling state coffers or add trillions to an already-bloated federal deficit. Given China’s push to replace the US dollar (maybe with a euro blend) as the primary global reserve currency, we’re not too far off from being unable to place our deficit debt into the international financial system. That would be an economic catastrophe that would wreak havoc on an already beleaguered American public.

As I have blogged many times before, the stock market has not been a good indicator of our national financial well-being for a long time. Volatility is a disease that has infected the market based on a President who changes policies, introduces major new cost variables on a daily basis, with no coherent or consistent explanation other than an ever-changing litany of factually suspicious claims. Whim vs demonstrated need. Even our GDP metric is more an indicator of how well the rich are doing rather than what the economy’s reality remains for most of us. And please don’t expect interest rates and the price at the pump to drop back to February numbers anytime soon. Optimists pray for that to occur by 2027, but don’t hold your breath. The WAR would have to end with a beneficial reality of a fully open Strait of Hormuz.

Data giant ATTOM posted an increase of 26% in mortgage foreclosures in the first quarter, and that’s just one piece of bad news. An interesting piece by Dina Sartore-Bodo, writing for the April 20th Realtor.com, presents one of the best summaries of the plight of the majority of Americans under Trump’s second administration: “First-time homeowners are constantly reminded that having an emergency fund is essential. [Even renters face surprise costs, from car repairs, medical costs, rising insurance costs, higher interest on credit cards, etc.]

“But the reality is that these days, it’s easier said than done to put money aside. In fact, routine house problems like a broken dishwasher or a leaking pipe are pushing some people into debt… By the end of 2025, 2 in 3 consumers were living paycheck to paycheck, according to a recent PYMNTS Intelligence report.

“Additionally, the percentage of consumers living paycheck to paycheck out of financial necessity rose significantly, from 29% in December 2024 to 40% in December 2025, according to the findings. This indicates that a growing number of households are dedicating their entire income to essential expenses, leaving little for discretionary spending and saving.

“But perhaps most unsettling of all was the finding that just under half (48.5%) of all consumers expressed being very or extremely confident that they could manage an unexpected $1,000 expense without incurring debt or falling behind on other bills… And as most homeowners will tell you, $1,000 doesn’t cover much these days when it comes to repairs and surprise maintenance… Historically, experts have recommended that emergency savings represent three to six months of living expenses, which include rent and/or mortgage payments, utilities, and food… But clearly, and at the very least, homeowners [and renters] should strive to save enough money to deal with a major, unexpected cost of at least $1,000.”

If average Americans are struggling with the cost of living, almost half living paycheck-to-paycheck, billionaire Trump should have the discipline to rein in his addiction to military expenditures, having made a severely miscalculated “go to WAR” decision without input from Congress or our major allies.

His illegal tariffs were bad enough (as the federal government begins to figure out how to implement refunds following the Supreme Court’s rejection of most of Trump’s executive ordered tariffs), but his WAR against Iran – one where his Department of Defense/WAR has only been able to deliver statements of victory where in reality Iran has more leverage now than it has ever had against Trump’s demands, simply by closing the Strait of Hormuz – is an unmitigated economic disaster for most Americans.

Further, Trump’s immigration policies, under the radical extremes embraced by his senior advisor, Stephen Miller, have cost the treasury tax dollars, and slammed small businesses reliant on low-cost, hard-working undocumented labor (particularly in agriculture, construction, hospitality, restaurants and child/elder care). While arguments that ICE is just removing criminals and securing our border continue to be made, instead billions have been allocated for cruel detention centers, US citizens have been killed, our legal system has stepped far away from constitutional requirements and virtually all of this immigration activity has taken place hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from the border. Of course we need a secure border, but we are wasting billions resulting in our economic detriment. DOGE was also a disaster, saving virtually nothing. The Epstein debacle is anything but gone. So why is Trump so arrogant?

I’m Peter Dekom, and in the end, to save the Republican Party, which has enabled Trump’s litany of failure, from going down in flames in the looming midterms, Trump is trying every trick in the book to rig the elections, keep as many Democrats from voting or having the ballots count, the greatest admission that Trump knows his presidential legacy is toast.

Which Superpower is Damaged More?

 

Which Superpower is Damaged More?

Hint: It’s the one in North America

Xi Jinping had to fire virtually every senior military flag ranked officer of his Peoples Liberation Army. The PLA, which is technically a branch of the Communist Party and not directly part of the Chinese government itself, houses all military branches of the nation. The uniform announced reason for the firings: corruption. Many were sentenced to death (often suspended), but simply, Xi didn’t trust them at all, and while these senior officers may have presided over the accelerated modernization of every facet of China’s war machine, Xi determined that he could not trust them to lead, to follow his policy directives… and clearly annexing Taiwan was still his major focus.

While both superpowers are lumbering with various levels of failure, Trump’s domestic unpopularity, America’s isolation from its (former?) major allies, his embarrassingly cruel immigration policies, his decimation of popular federal agencies, his proclivity to self-aggrandizing projects and garish and obviously wasteful pet projects, his scandal-ridden and obviously incompetent cabinet and his effort to negate that unpopularity by asking red states to redistrict their congressional maps to purge Democrat-friendly voters (mostly Black Americans) into powerless ballot choices… a march into Victor Orbán’s failed notion illiberal democracy. Through all of this is Trump’s established policy vacillation, so bad that world leaders may react to his ill-considered idiotic statements, but at the bottom line, they do not trust a word he says. Bad reputation for a President intending to negotiate with another world leader.

But nothing can be compared with his nation-busting, unilaterally declared WAR against Iran, kowtowing to an equally unpopular leader (especially here in the US) – Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu. But as much as US consumers join a global inflationary spiral directly related to Iran’s firm control of the Strait of Hormuz (Tehran’s powerful response to Trump’s failing massive military assaults), the longer term economic damage to the United States will come from the deficit exploding wartime cost overruns, the potential of our losing the power of the dollar’s being the major reserve currency on Earth (the dollar is the major valuation reference point for most global commodities), the potential for being unable to place our fiscal debt (which bears current interest paid by taxpayers) and the pressure to raise taxes to feed our increasingly depleted military. As recovering alcoholic, DOD head, Major Pete Hegseth is demanding an extra half a trillion dollar increase to our military budget, clearly the Trump administration does not fully appreciate the financial impact that will shackle America’s future, saddling Americans with huge cost burdens.

CNN’s Kristie Lu Stout (May 15th) drills into the true cost of Trump wartime folly in Iran: “The Pentagon says the cost of the Iran war is $29 billion, a figure that’s higher than the $25 billion price tag it issued to Congress two weeks ago. But according to one war budgeting expert, the conflict will ultimately cost US taxpayers at least $1 trillion.

“On Tuesday [5/14], a senior Pentagon official said the new cost of the conflict included updated repair and replacement of equipment, along with operational costs… CNN previously reported that the earlier $25 billion estimate was a lowball figure that did not include the cost of repairing damage to US bases in the Middle East… Linda Bilmes, a public policy expert at the Harvard Kennedy School, projects that the conflict with Iran will cost American taxpayers at least $1 trillion.” The dollar, which has already lost 10% of its value, will continue to decline. But it is useful to appreciate all the major issues dominating or at least hovering over the Xi/Trump meeting.

David Sanger, cited by Sam Sifton writing for the NY Times‘ The Morning newsfeed (May 15th), presented this summary of the main issues in Trump’s China meeting: “Six weeks ago, Trump pushed off his summit meeting with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, because of the war in Iran. He’d thought the conflict would be over by now, showing Beijing that reports of America’s demise as a superpower were premature. Instead, David writes, Trump starts the meeting today [5/15] ‘bogged down by a far lesser power in a war he started.’

“But Xi’s in a tough spot, too. China gets more than 30 percent of its oil from the Persian Gulf, which is now cut off. Economic growth there is falling as energy prices rise. ‘The result is that this is a summit like few others,’ David writes. It features the world’s two dominant superpowers looking hobbled. Experts aren’t optimistic the sides will announce a major economic deal or resolve their differences.

Smaller nations across Asia are worried about that, my colleague Damien Cave reports. As the summit looms, they’re ‘behaving as if they are stuck in ‘Godzilla’ or ‘Dune’ — moving quietly in small groups, trying not to provoke the wrath of petulant giants.’

Here’s some of what Trump and Xi may discuss:

Trade: Trump hopes China will buy lots of American soybeans, beef and Boeing airplanes. Xi is likely to push for an extension of last year’s trade truce between the U.S. and China, and for the right to import more A.I. computer chips.

Taiwan: Currently, the U.S. says it ‘does not support’ Taiwanese independence. China wants Trump to actively oppose it — and to stop selling Taiwan weapons. (That’s unlikely. But it’s Trump. He could always go off script.)

Iran: Trump will ask Xi to persuade Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Xi’s administration has prodded Iranian officials to negotiate with the U.S., but Beijing sees the war as Washington’s problem.

In the meantime, Trump’s other war – against climate change technology adaptations and AI growth – includes a battle over AI guidelines, chip access and most of all, alternative energy. Trump has effectively relegated Detroit to a “drill baby, drill” uncompetitive automotive policy that almost no one on Earth wants, ceding global car-making outside the US (where EV dominates) to China. What’s worse for American industry is the impact of skyrocketing pricing at the pump, such that most of the rest of the world has all but abandoned oil as the fuel of the future (it will take time to wean much of the planet from oil and gas) and has zero interest in buying energy technologies that rely on coal, oil and gas. This rising economic pressure is over and above the mounting decimation that climate change has already wrought in almost every corner of our world. Trump just may be the wrong leader at the worst time.

I’m Peter Dekom, and Donald Trump seems to be lost as a time-warp anachronism with contemporary military hardware, a 17th century monarch will little or no feeling for functioning effectively in the 21st century.

A Weak US President Looks the Other Way as Buddy Putin Hits US Targets in Ukraine

 

A Weak US President Looks the Other Way as Buddy Putin Hits US Targets in Ukraine

Sometimes you have to wonder. Is the world run by a coterie of autocrats with special relationships to each other? Or subunits where they just “hang out” (virtually anyway), until they have to grapple with conflicting needs? Or do they operate on one more visible level for public consumption, while making “wink-wink” side deals that seriously conflict with what their public expects? You have to be an idiot if you don’t appreciate that Trump admires the mega-rich and ruthless dictators, the latter who dispense with problems Trump struggles with (lawsuits, legislators, judges and harsh media critics) by “removing them” – one way or the other, practices which a mega-unpopular President… who could not win a full and fair national election if his life depended on it (so his only tool seems to be rigging whatever elections still exist to minimize or extinguish) – can only sit back and jealously admire… from a distance.

Trump’s role model, and the darling of the MAGA right – the politician who inspired Project 2025 as the going forward template for his second term – was Hungary’s Viktor Mihály Orbán, who seemed to have perfected corruption, whose opponents were either prosecuted (successfully), imprisoned, bankrupted (with their assets going to Orbán’s cronies) or somehow “disappeared.” But Orbán had so infuriated the Hungarian electorate with a brutal and failed economy, cozying up to his personal buddy, Vladimir Putin, that the Hungarian PM was unable successfully to manipulate the recent parliamentary election. The landslide, that ripped Orbán from office and decimated the ranks of his Fidesz Party into a small minority, seems to have reflected a litany of cruelty, autocracy and seriously failed economic policies that parallel Trump’s much worse missteps in recent policy decisions. Does Trump see his future in Orbán’s severe plunge in power?

I’d say Putin is smiling, but the Russian head of state is facing the once-repressed wrath of the Russian people that is now exploding. Ukraine is hitting targets even a thousand miles away. Moscow itself is not immune from missiles and drones launched from Ukraine. Even as oil prices should have been a massive boon to Putin (and Russia has made more than a few new bucks from the Iran War oil price spike), Ukraine strikes have destroyed Russian oil refineries (pictured above), storage depots and even active oil fields, putting a serious dent in Russia’s petroleum production capacity. Orbán’s demise has also pushed Hungary back towards Europe, eliminated the perpetual Orbán veto of EU support for Ukraine as Hungary looks to reduce oil total oil and gas dependence on Russia.

Russia has recently lost more territory in Ukraine than it has gained. Its supply of draft-fodder soldiers is struggling to restaff his military, sophisticated missile supplies are seriously depleted, and ordinary Russians are facing shortages and very expensive basics. Rumors of Putin’s expressed fear of being assassinated, his living increasingly in underground bunkers, are undermining the former macho swagger of this brutal dictator. Still, there is this invisible connection between Trump and Putin… perhaps a once deep subtext of Trump’s having a place with Western amenities to escape to if he were to become an indicted war criminal. But even as Trump’s support for Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Ukraine has all but vaporized, European ardor supporting Ukraine seems to be returning.

So, what does Putin do? Oddly, his recent military focus against Ukraine appears to be against major US corporate targets operating in Ukraine. Writing for the May 5th New York Times, Constant Méheut, explains: “The Russian drones slammed into the American-owned warehouses one after another… Each announced its arrival with an eerie whine. Then came the blasts, ripping through a vast grain terminal in southern Ukraine and lighting up the night sky.

“Seven drones in three minutes. The target, according to a video of the mid-April attack recorded by a truck driver, was the U.S. farming giant Cargill… ‘This is insane,’ the driver is heard repeating in the video, which was obtained and verified by The New York Times. ‘This is insane.’... The attack was one of the latest in a series of Russian strikes on major American companies since last summer, including facilities tied to Coca-Cola, Boeing, the snacks maker Mondelez and the tobacco giant Philip Morris… The corporations have largely avoided publicizing the strikes, wary of alarming investors and insurers. While Ukraine has disclosed several attacks on American assets, the strikes on Cargill and Coca-Cola have not been previously reported.

“Russia’s motivation for striking U.S. companies is unclear. Some Ukrainian business figures say the attacks are part of a broader campaign targeting all types of assets, regardless of companies’ nationality, aimed at choking off the country’s economy. Others see a more focused goal: to deter U.S. investment just as Kyiv is trying to deepen business ties with a deal-making White House… The companies have quietly raised concerns with U.S. officials about what they see as a deliberate and escalating campaign against American business interests in Ukraine. The White House, despite its pledge to defend U.S. commercial interests abroad, has been muted in its response.

“The Trump administration has not condemned any of the attacks that Ukraine has made public this year. After U.S. diplomats in Kyiv and Ukrainian business figures and officials warned about the attacks, the administration offered a response that amounted to little more than an acknowledgment of the concerns, according to three people familiar with the exchanges, who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters.” After all, Putin is one of Trump’s “good old boys.”

You’d think this laissez faire attitude, Trump’s looking the other way as Russia focuses on blasting US targets in Ukraine, would alienate Republicans in Congress facing reelection as Trump’s popularity is almost gone. But Trump’s success at gerrymandering following the Supreme Court’s handing red states a carte blanche to purge major Democratic supporters (like Black voters) from having their votes count. But once “maybe jumpers” in Congress have suddenly realized that Trump’s election moves have been successful and may seriously impact their elect election results. As NBC News (May 12th) observes, some of these skeptics are jumping back towards Trump:

“The key is a change in Louisiana election law that has turned Saturday’s [5/9] contest into a closed primary, meaning only registered Republicans may vote. Before this, Louisiana had long conducted ‘jungle’ primaries, with candidates from all parties appearing on the same ballot and the top two vote-getters advancing to a runoff. The shift will have the effect of narrowing the voting universe to committed Republicans, among whom loyalty to Trump runs deep.” Those redistricting maps are being drawn faster than ever before. And so it seems that no matter what Trump does, unless and until his loyalists are voted out (very much in question), his sycophants are an infection that just might linger.

I’m Peter Dekom, but perhaps looking that this coterie of brutal autocrats and total autocrats wannabes, a club in which Donald Trump appears to be a sold member, just might tell most voters that Donald Trump is most definitely not on their side.