Memorial Day Monday

Good morning, Stroock's Books congregants and Happy Memorial Day. If you don't hear The Longest Day theme in your head and see that upturned helmet on the beach in your mind's eye right now, well, there's something wrong.  

We barbequed last night, most patriotically so. 

We'll be making a sojourn across the dread Hudson River today. 

We see no new headlines on Iran negotiations this morning. This from Trump is good. This is also good and here's a late summary. 

We're reminded of the Gaza negotiations, in which Israel got just about everything it wanted and the only bitter pill was prisoner release, which is Israel's own damn fault. 

We find the above terms acceptable and a far cry from the doomer gloom we were reading on Saturday. No, these terms are not perfect, but they are good enough. We're in 'are you such a loser that you don't know you've won?' territory.

Question for our fellow hawks? Does the proposed bridge and powerplant campaign make any sense? We don't think so. What's left to bomb, exactly?

It seems Iran pushed Trump for a maximalist deal and Trump said 'your fired'. Now Trump is pushing the Iranians. Bismarck said that in any negotiation there's a horse and a rider. Right now, Trump's the rider. We're paying an extra dollar and a half for gas. There economy is shutdown. See 'leverage' in your diplomacy handbook. We remain circumspect, cautious even. 

That's a lot more then we meant to write on that. 

DOGE report. 

We began work on the BAOR chapter in the 5th nuke novel. The grognard is hard at work, gathering much needed info as only he can. He's pestering us this very moment; FB messenger keeps dinging. 

We also wrote the rough draft of a short personal piece we pitched to a Substack guy.