Friday Thoughts

Why are neoconservatives so eager to tick off Putin?

Neoconservatives support worse dictatorships, including many Islamic states.

Who benefits from this? Neoconservatives have little leverage in Russia, but Russia has the ability to inflict severe pain on the the West and Israel. Russia is still the greatest nuclear power.

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A helpful heuristic when reading the mass media: assume their economic main conclusions are almost always wrong because they are almost always wrong in the direction of supporting rent seeking, usually Randism, neoconservatism, and third wayism, but also often in the direction of economic Marxism.

Assume their other issue main conclusions are also almost always wrong because they are wrong, often because of rent seeking and cultural Marxism. Thus, mass media treat global warming as far more important than deforestation and nonwhite overpopulation due to the malign influence of cultural Marxism and habitat destroying industries in environmental movements.

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I doubt the GOP will give a skybox with a banner to Al Jazeera at this year's convention.

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In cultures drowning in hedonistic temptations, too much time must be wasted fighting temptations and suffering the consequences of giving in, including negative externalities of others' hedonism.

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World War II blunders by the Western Allies (1931-1945):

1. failure to assassinate Hitler prewar.
2. promising to defend Poland in 1939.
3. lack of eugenic and pro-natal policies in decades prior to war.
4. failure to use massive anti-austerity military spending to escape the Great Depression.
5. slow, inadequate mobilizations in 1939, 1940, and 1941.
6. infiltration by thousands of Axis and Soviet agents, treating enemy agents as if they were participants in a game. (If you demand your own citizens suffer hells, enemy agents better suffer many times the hell.)
7. poor training, especially before 1943.
8. overinvestment in strategic bombing.
9. underinvestment in infantry, submarines, mine warfare, skip bombing, convoy protection, fighter aircraft, and medical research.
10. failure to thoroughly test weapons in a variety of situations, then fanatically resisting reports of failure from front line forces, especially regarding defective torpedoes.
11. over garrisoning Wake, Guam, Burma, Malaya, Shanghai, Singapore, Aleutians, Philippines, and Hong Kong.
12. under garrisoning Java, Borneo, Midway, and Sumatra.
13. shortages of shared sacrifice.
14. underuse of teen labor.
15. poor reconnaissance, especially long-range recon, and, most especially, regarding the HMS Glorious, HMAS Sydney, and the French bocage terrain.
16. failure to send the best and most equipment to front line forces.
17. poor strategic planning for postwar world.
18. Douglas MacArthur and the Southwest Pacific campaigns.
19. Ernest King and other 1942 Battle of the Atlantic failures.
20. 1943-1945 Italian mainland campaign.
21. Huertgen forest.
22. Market Garden and the failure to use more forces to quickly capture the Scheldt estuary
23. Greece, including Crete.
24. failures to heed Ardennes warning signs.
25. sending supplies to China.
26. lack of Pigouvian taxes.
27. too many immobile defenses.
28. Lloyd Fredendall.
29. Norway.
30. lack of a good assault rifle.
31. divided Pacific commands.
32. general overconfidence.
33. Churchill's false analogy thinking style.
34. Arctic convoys.
35. underpowered bazookas.
36. hiring nonwhite mercenaries.
37. Peleliu.
38. Okinawa.
39. Doolittle raid.
40. Makin raid.
41. Halsey's typhoons.
42. Pearl Harbor.
43. shooting down Yamamoto's plane, which predictably led to Japan figuring out their military codes were compromised.
44. using Marines to defend Iceland.
45. premature counteroffensives, including invading Guadalcanal with inadequate air and sea power.
46. the USS Isabel mission off Indochina (fortunately the Japanese did not take the bait).
47. resistance to better tactics, especially better fighter tactics.
48. Ledo Road, Burma Road, and Alaska Highway.
49. The HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales debacle. 
50. Dieppe raid.
51. inadequate lend-lease to Britain in 1940 and 1941.

A few of the many notable successes by the Western Allies during World War II: sonar, radar, hedgehogs, antibiotics, code breaking, synthetic rubber, Hugh Dowding, Raymond Spruance, Andrew Cunningham, Troy Middleton, Joseph Lawton Collins, the Battle of Britain, 100 octane aviation fuel, Rolls Royce Merlin engines.