Keaned Out?

Aye, a new week here at Stroock's Books. [It's a new week everywhere-Ed]. It is, Ed. It is. 

Bah! Another rough night. No idea why. 

Yesterday was our 28th (!) wedding anniversary. What can a man say? Neither one of us wanted to celebrate. Heck, for our 25th anniversary we went to the Cheesecake Factory; with the girls. We wouldn't have had it any other way. 

Holy Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. We knew Israel imported a lot of foreign workers, but not this many. The Jerusalem Post: 'Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been rapidly replacing its Palestinian labor force with foreign workers. 250,000 foreign workers are already in Israel, and their number is set to rise to 330,000.' Those jobs used to go to Gazans and West Bank People. Just another consequence of the war Hamas started.

Wow. A sign of good economic growth, no?  Israeli's economy is so strong it's got a labor shortage. Impressive, Bibi. Most impressive. Once again, we point out that only Bibi could have gotten Israel to where it is right now.

Report from New Jersey's 7th Congressional district. This race pits incumbent absentee Congresman Tom Kean Jr (he took off several months to check himself into the nuthouse and no one knew what was wrong or where he was)* against former Navy pilot Rebecca Bennett. Bennett is an excellent candidate, a clone of governor Mickie Sherrill, who won handily last year. 

Right now, Kean and Bennett are fighting the campaign on YouTube. We can't watch a video without seeing ads for both campaigns. Bennett is slamming Kean for taking a hundred days off while voting against paid leave (hard to argue with that). Kean is touting his work getting the SALT tax deduction limit raised (a big issue in affluent New Jersey). 

Also Kean is running ads pledging to defend Medicaid and Medicare. Which is an odd place for a GOP to be. Is this part of a national GOP strategy to claim the Dems/DSA will take away Medicaid and Medicare?

Anyway, the only poll we could find on NJ07 is from late June and shows Bennett winning 47-43. That's not bad for Kean, actually, given the circumstances. Kean, the GOP, and outside groups are certainly spending like he has a puncher's chance. Still, we think Kean's absence makes him extremely vulnerable. Bennett's ads on same are devastating. Advantage: Bennett. 

With Tom Kean after one of several phone bank sessions in 2020. He last that race.

From the Foreign Desk: Sir John A MacDonald

No Trade Deal for Canada

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney ran on a platform of getting a ‘fair’ trade deal for Canada, standing up to Trump and essentially portraying himself as Trump’s greatest rival. The Canadian Media have been falling all over themselves telling Canadians that Carney would easily get a deal and best President Trump. As of Saturday, that has not happened.

Trump told Canadians that he would impose a 50% tariff on a long list of Canadian products, including dairy, honey, certain automotive parts, furniture and wood products and…hockey equipment. It has long been a joke in Canada that Canada maintains a massive lead in Zamboni technology.

All joking aside, what does this mean for the Canada-US trade relationship? Quite a lot. Dairy products have long been an area in which the Canadian government provides massive tariffs against American products to protect the dairy industry in Quebec and, to a lesser extent Ontario. Most Canadians who live on the border with the US have a long history of buying milk and other dairy products in the US for the simple reason that they are cheaper. People farther from the border are stuck with the higher prices. This will cause severe problems for dairy producers in Quebec and Ontario, along with job losses.

In terms of lumber, there is a long and complicated trade dispute surrounding fees, crown land and whether Canadian industry is undercutting US producers. There is enough gray areas and differences in how the two countries manage the logging industry that an argument could be made either that the Canadian practices are unfair, or that American practices are. I’ll leave that to the international trade experts. With the caveat that even they can’t agree. Again, Canadian lumber and products are a huge export for Canada, but may not be anymore. More potential job losses.

Previously Trump also imposed tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, which is another area that will cause pain for Canadian producers. The same with many auto parts. While some auto materials are exempt, others are not and this could cause a lot of layoffs in Southern Ontario where many of the Canadian auto plants are based. Closed plants and thousands out of work are never a good look for politicians.

One area that I would note that Trump is NOT imposing tariffs is an important one. Oil, gas and energy (electricity). I think the reason is that Trump is very much in favour of increasing oil and gas production in both the US and Canada, while Carney and the Liberals are, at best, ambivalent. Justin Trudeau was dead set against any further expansion of oil and gas production.

So, why did Canada not get an agreement to avoid tariffs? There are several reasons. To start with, as I have said, Carney has portrayed himself as Trump’s rival, and the Liberals are very much on board with this portrayal. Since Trump came into office, the Liberals have wrapped themselves up in the Canadian flag and claimed that they are great patriots. This despite the fact that when Trudeau was in office, they called the Canadian flag a symbol of hate, division and colonialism and claimed Canada was a “Post National Nation”. Whatever that is supposed to mean. Put simply, the Liberals have made it clear that they are Trump’s enemies, and are now very surprised and upset that he has begun treating them that way. This is not the way that other US President’s have behaved in the past. Even George W. Bush was…quite indulgent of this attitude.

Second, I think Trump has run out of patience with Canadian attitudes and behaviour. Which means for him there really isn’t a downside of imposing tariffs. From my own reading, I do see a change in attitude among many Americans towards Canada and Canadians.

Carney, I think, has decided that he can simply wait Trump out. Put simply, Trump will be out of office in two and a half years (despite the claims on the left that he will make himself a dictator for life). Should the Republicans lose heavily in the midterms in November, Carney may only have to hold out a few more months. He is betting that someone more “reasonable” will be in office shortly. What he has not considered is what to do if that does not happen, or if Trump’s successor is also a Republican and….not as friendly to Canada. In that situation, there is a long term threat to Canadian stability and the Canadian economy. And no one has said that these are the only tariffs Trump will impose.

There is another factor to consider. While the trade talks have been big news in Canada (front page news pretty much every day) until a trade deal wasn’t reached, it really wasn’t a very big deal in the US. The tariffs are on about $20 billion in Canadian products and affect somewhere between 5 and 10% of Canadian trade to the US. Which is 80% of the Canadian economy. So, this is 10% to 20% of that trade. Carney has announced he will match those tariffs. The problem for Canada is that while trade with the US is 80% of all Canadian trade, for the US trade with Canada is only around 10%. And reciprocal tariffs will affect far less than that. Maybe only 2% or so. The US can accept that loss. Canada cannot.

So, why didn’t Carney make a deal? The last reason. While the trade talks were underway, there was a poll in Canada. That poll (apparently) stated that if Carney got a trade deal with Trump, Canadians wanted an election on the deal. Try to imagine the Liberals, and Carney, running an election stating that Canadians should accept a trade deal with the person they have spent the last decade portraying as a huge threat to Canada. They wouldn’t do it. They wouldn’t even accept the pressure to run an election on such a platform. Canadian premiers (with the exception of Alberta) have made great hay out of removing US booze from Canadian shelves and refusing to put it back on even if there was a trade deal. The so called “Laurentian Elite”, those that most people are convinced really run Canada have made it clear that they are completely opposed to the deal.

Put simply, Caney refused a trade deal because a trade deal with Trump would have destroyed him and too many others politically. Carney would rather stay in power while destroying the Canadian economy and calling it “Patriotism”.

Saturday Updates

Baaaah. We swipe the air and drink our coffee. We're groggy and sluggish. Last night we awoke half an hour after falling asleep with the sweats and just a hint of a night terror. You know the scene in Apocalypse Now where Kurtz describes a snail crawling along a straight blade? That. Otherwise, we've no way to describe the feeling and sense of one of those things. We got to sleep though, and slept in. 

Baaaah again.

Chipotle last night, the girls insisted. We had too many chips, as one does. Honestly, we prefer the tacos and burritos Mrs. Stroock and Oldest Daughter make. 

Let's get to the Things, shall we? [Why do you sound like the Critical Drinker?'-Ed] Dunno. [There you go again-Ed]. The Critical Drinker is always right. 

We have read through the first half of World War 1990: Thatcher's War, again. We are not as pleased as we were with the first read through last week. 

The first half of Thatcher's War shows the World War 1990: Ireland aftermath, new violence of the Catholic and Protestant variety, crackdowns on both, invasion prep, and Bush administration machinations. That's just the kind of crap we find interesting. 

Right now we're approaching the second half of the novel with...[Great fear and trepidation?-Ed] great fear and trepidation. 

The Soviet submarine story is coming along just fine. The 5th nuke novel is 50,000 words. 

Friday Title Held on Request

Good Shabbos, Stroock's Books kibbutzim. 

We are sore from yesterday's workout, the second back of a back-to-back. Rower, elliptical, rope pulley. We are unsatisfied with this routine. Should we add a fourth? Maybe. But what? 

Yesterday we saw a young man at the gym wearing a Robotech T-shirt. We almost wept. Not kidding [You sure you didn't get your period?-Ed]. We wanted to hug him, but he probably would have thought that was weird. 'I'm sorry, sir. You're going to have to come with us,' said the officer. 

We had quite the deluge of rain yesterday with another such deluge coming this weekend. Good. The state still needs the rain. The drought situation has vastly improved though. Here are the latest drought numbers.

Reading Jewish/Israel news means seeing at least one story about a Juden hass attack here in the United States; every day. Here's the latest attack, this time in Florida. We really don't know what to do about this. Or what we should do if the unthinkable happens. Punch back, we guess. 

Related Jewiness...At the Jewish News Syndicate, Jonathan Tobin talks about the failure of Groyper and anti-Israeli candidates in the GOP primary. J.D. Vance should take note, Tobin says. Quite right. This blog remains committed to Ron DeSantis, who has almost no chance of winning the GOP presidential nomination. Oh well. In 35 years of voting, the candidate we supported has never won the nomination....Tsongas, Alexander, McCain, Giuliani, Rubio, Desantis...Hmmm we can't remember who we initially supported in 2012. Which does not speak well for him. Rick Perry?

DOGE report.

E-book sales are down but KU pages read are up. Make it make sense. Reminder, book sales are an art, not a science. 

Another chapter in World War 1990: Thatcher's War read through. One more to go before the invasion. Next week.

The Soviet sub story in the 5th nuke novel is coming along. A retired law enforcement officer reminded us that in the modern USA, counties have sheriff's offices, not small towns. Horror movies always get that wrong, he says. Small-town sheriffs are a 19th century thing. See for example. 

A Ruski friend who is reading The Great Nuclear War of 1975 series would like to see a story about an average Ruski. No cosmonauts. No sub skippers. Just your average Ruski. Now that is not a bad idea.

Thursday Downer

Good afternoon, everyone who reads Stroock's Books, you hearty band, you. 

We awoke tired and sore, baaaaah! Good session at the gym, though. 

War of the ants. New ant colony, new ant poison. And we saw the ants taking the poison yesterday. We shall terminate this colony, terminate with extreme prejudice. 

America's national debt has crossed the 40 trillion threshold. Congratulations. We came out of the respectable 90s GOP that was interested in reforming government, cutting costs, and balancing the budget. They said we would starve children and throw old people into the street. Sorry America, we tried. One day the debt will blow up the economy. When that happens we'll say we told you so. 

Ben Shapiro talks about Lindsey Clancy, the crazy Massachusetts woman who murdered her three children. Shapiro sounds to us like a man who has dealt with post-partum depression and mental illness before. The episode fascinated us. Clancy sought mental help, was in therapy, was institutionalized, was medicated. Hoo-boy was Clancy medicated. And still she...

Long term reader(s) will recall we ourselves are bi-polar, what used to be called manic depressive. In 2005 we were diagnosed by a doctor with medical degrees and everything. Manic depression (we hate the term bipolar) means one is up, and one is down, often randomly and joltingly.  In our experience the highs are never as high as the lows are low. Our first episode was probably 1986. We were 12. then 1988. Again and again...Boy did Ozzie ever get it right. 

When we heard Clancy was on a lot of meds we got the willies, the yips. We used to be on a lot of meds. An anti-depressant, a mood regulator*, another anti-depressant...At one point the doctor wanted to put us on one of those 'enhancers' or whatever they're called that are supposed to boost the other three. And that's when we put a stop to it. Where three pills failed four is not the answer. We're still on one pill. It's hard to quit. 

Lindsey Clancy took some of the stuff we took, and that's terrifying. No, we've never been tempted to strangle our children.   No, we've never heard voices in our head [Hey what about me?-Ed] You're not even real, Ed. We made you up and at one point fired you over Me-Too concerns. So no, we've no sympathy for Lindsey Clancy. She should be locked up at an institution for the criminally insane. For the rest of her life. 

DOGE report. 

We had a decent enough day with both projects. The things are coming along. We are making progress. 

*Because on top of the manic depression god thought it'd be fun to give us a hair-trigger temper. And proving he is nothing if not persistent, god gave us dyslexia too. We insist reader(s) click on over and read that. 

In Which Will Stoops to Conquer

At last.

Colin Salt has stopped blogging at Fuldapocalypse, it seems. He posted sporadically, making one wonder what the point was. And Salt had a knack for writing posts that were at once too short and too long. Where a sentence would do he often wrote a paragraph. Other times he would stop at one paragraph when he had fodder for a couple of more paragraphs - and a decent length post approaching 800 words - standard article length. 

Salt reviewed a few of our books. He didn't like them. Here's some of what he had to say about us at Sea Lion Press's forum (his publisher): 

That's good of him.

One sided, huh? What's the other side in the Israel/Iran conflict?

Maybe not, but we have a good reputation amongst the reading public. And that's what matters. 

Anyway, we out sell Salt, massively as shown by rankings and number of reviews. Obviously. We're up here with The Titans and Colin Salt is not. 

2006: the third day

Well, well, well. Guess what showed up this morning [Your period?-Ed]. Very funny Ed, you newt. No. We got gout. It's minor, so far, but nevertheless. [Nevertheless what? And what do you mean by newt?-Ed] Just nevertheless, and think about it. Newt...King Knutson or Knut...start playing around with the letters, babe.

The Israelis held their political primaries last night. The Jerusalem Post reports that Israeli politics remain deadlocked. The great Hugh Hewitt interviewed an Israeli journalist on the upcoming election. We learned a lot, and recommend reader(s) click on over. Personally, if we had a vote, we'd be persuadable, meaning we're up for grabs. 

On the one hand Bibi's done well and seeing him back in office would piss off all the right people. On the other hand the nation needs new leadership and a Haredi draft law. Only Gadi Eisenkot can deliver that. On the gripping hand neither bloc has a majority. Our guess is that were Eisenkot to beat Bibi head to head, President Herzog would give him first crack at forming a government and he could peel off a few Likud members. Who knows? We shrug and drink our coffee. 

Exit question: is it possible that Israeli polls are as broken as American polls?

In the wake of serial plagiarizer and fabulist Jasan Arday's suicide, many in the Yookay are calling for press regulation, censorship and 'Jason's law'. Quite right. The media is the enemy of the people. The media needs federal regulators, federal content editors, and a five day waiting period before filing a story. And ban anonymous sources. Reminder, fellow MAGA hats, there is no reason for the right to defend the media, even in this case. No reason whatsoever. Know your class enemies.* 

2006...Huh we weighed more then than we do now. This was the summer we began putting on weight. Eating a dozen perogies for lunch and chasing them with half a bag of Doritos will do that. We noticed that September on our first substitute teaching gig. We buttoned a nice pair of khaki pleats we wore the previous spring. Uh oh, we thought. We'd hang on to that weight for more than a decade.  By the time of our heart thing in 2015 we were pushing 270. 

This was also the summer we were really into the fall of the Philippines in 1942. We'd outlined a story about an teacher [Big surprise-Ed] with a legit 4F who lies his way into the army and ends up being in the Corregidor airborne assault (Rock Force) in 1945. Huh again. Maybe that's our stand-alone novel idea. 

Otherwise we were kinda bored and just waiting for the school year to begin. 

DOGE report. 

We did some work on the Soviet sub short story. Things were going fine and then we got stuck. We dunno. 

The World War 1990: Thatcher's War readthrough continues apace. We are nearing the, 'It is What it is, inshallah,' phase. [Meaning?-Ed] This is it. This is the novel. 

*If we saw, say, an ABC or NYTs reporter drowning, while we would throw [insert pronoun] a rescue buoy, we wouldn't jump in the water to help. We're not getting wet for those bastards. Enemy of the people. 

2006: the second day

Baaaaah! We swipe the air and drink our coffee. That late summer humidity has settled in here, bringing with it morning overcast, fog, and general dankness. While one has a few summer things left, this morning one finds oneself looking forward to the pastoral splendor of Yankee autumn. 

Envy us, Johnny Rebs. 

Three days in a row at the gym. We've done all of our exercise routines but have not yet decided how to reorganize and reorder them. After looking at summer beach pics though, we're cutting out crunches, leg lifts and the like. What's the point? They ain't gettin' results. 

2006...What was in the news? The Israelis were fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon and blew it. The Iraq War was raging. Little did we know the tide was already turning. That June the US killed AQI head Abu Zarqawi. Anbar Awakening had formed. The Dems were getting ready to romp in the midterms. History rhymes, they say. 

We'd finished A Line Through the Desert and were about to have a bunch of military history magazine articles in print. We decided to submit short stories to sci-fi and fantasy magazines and began doing so in the summer of 2006. We never even came close.** It was for the best. We'd written a very Mary Sue sword and sorcery short story and we're glad it's never seen the light of day. We dodged a bullet there, or a dagger anyway.

DOGE report.

We read through a couple of chapters of World War 1990: Thatcher's War. We're getting bored. Which means we're getting to where we need to get.

We did some research and scut work on the Irish Army Ranger Wing raid on Heath House. Soon?*

We read through the DEW Line story. Still not sure where things are going. 

We are plugging along on the Soviet sub story. This one will be interesting as it's the first time we've bounced between POVs in this universe. 

*This should not be as epic as the SAS raid on Moscow, but something more than the Norwegian army's raid on the Soviet held airstrip. 

**We have five short stories in print now [Show off-Ed].