Which Troubles?

We're bored and thought we'd do an afternoon post. We don't have laundry to do. We must not needs straighten up. Only emptying the dishwasher awaits. So why not?

What, you people didn't know we take care of most of the housework? We're an indy author. Mrs. Stroock is a corporate suit. Do the math. 

[Why don't you just bite the bullet and start writing magazine articles again if you're bored?-Ed] Meh what's the point? [What's the point of doing a second daily blogpost?-Ed]. Don't know.

First, we'd like to report a death. General Natan Nagid, known on Twitter, was killed this morning when the author decided that with the Gaza ceasefire, he no longer needed to follow certain Israeli accounts. The author was overdosing on punditry, anyway.  Rest in peace, semi-ironic fictional Israeli general. 

More New Jersey smoldering aftermath. We went back and checked to be sure. Sure enough, we were highly skeptical that NJ would or even could go red, the month after the election:

We dunno, man. New Jersey is in the New York and Philly metro areas with its own urban enclave, Newark, not to mention Camden right across the Delaware from Philly, Trenton, and Cherry Hill. That map shows large swaths of red. But a lot of those red counties were pretty close, and the blue areas are dense, especially Essex County. This blog suspects 46 percent is the GOP's presidential ceiling.

Jack got 43 percent. However, Powerline notes. 'Ciattarelli improved his performance this year, getting 1,378,405 votes, compared with 1,255,185 in 2021 [Which explains all the Jack signage]. But Democrat Mikey Sherrill massively outperformed, getting 1,792,793 votes compared with the 1,339,471 that Philip Murphy got in 2021.' So the GOP actually came out to vote. But so did the Dems. Bigly. Now hear this: New Jersey is a blue state. 

Well, the obits are coming in for Dick Cheney. Devotees will recall that when we started this blog, waaaay back in 2015 ,we were calling ourselves an unreformed Neocon. We no longer describe ourselves thusly. Lapsed Neocon? Reformed Neocon? Heck, we had nice things to say about Patrick J. Buchanan in our previous post. 

But even after a decade of rightwing upheaval, we're not prepared to turn on the Bush Administration, despite W's mistakes. W's accomplishments include rallying the nation after 9/11, liberating Afghanistan, winning the Iraq War and handling the Financial Crisis. And that ain't nuthin'.

Okay, we think we have the concluding chapter of World War 1990: Thatcher's War I, or whatever we're calling it. London, Stormont, Dublin, obviously. Washington, Moscow...where else? 

We had been thinking that the concluding chapter needed to lead to other books in the series. But it really only needs to lead to the World War 1990: Thatcher's War II, or whatever we're calling it. 

World War 1990: The Troubles does have a certain ring to it. And our man on the ground in Ireland gave us permission to use it, because he obviously speaks for everyone else on the island. But the first post-WWIII book in the series needs to sound bigger, no? Ireland is nothing if not narrow and parochial. And also, 'Oh, World War 1990: The Troubles is it, Yank? You deigning to write about the Troubles, are you? Anything else about our wee island you want to tell us, Yank?'