Will's News Whip Around

Okay...we finished reading World War 1990: The Weser. A couple of beta readers have it now, including a former army tank battalion commander. He's good. This clears the mind for work on The New American Order today and tomorrow. Let's see if we can hit the weekly projected word count. 

After reading Chris Kennedy's Titans (look who reviewed it!), we've spent a lot of time thinking about how to expand our readership.  We looked over sales data yesterday and realized that our fifth best selling market is...Deutschland. The other four are D-Day + Australia. We did some magazine advertising with der Krauts five years ago, and they worked. Not bigly, but we have a small fan base in the Fatherland. Sales in other European markets are very weak though.

This blog believes the best way to get more readers is to write more novels. The best way to expand into Europe, rather than blowing a lot Euros on some magazine ads (man, you should see the rates the Kraut krieg magazines are charging) we should write a novel that would appeal to a European market. [Really? Nederland didn't help you break into the Dutch market, knobhead-Ed]. Still it's worth another try. Maybe the summer sneak in novel should be...Esertcito Italiano. As Spirit said in the island cave with Storm Shadow, we must dwell on this.

Israeli politics makes Italian politics look stable. Says The Times of Israel: 'Idit Silman’s surprise resignation as coalition chair and defection to the opposition is a dramatic turning point for the coalition. The most politically diverse government in Israel’s history had, until Wednesday, clung to power by the slimmest possible parliamentary majority. The loss of Silman marks the loss of that majority.' 

So the Bennett government may collapse leading to...new elections!  This blog would prefer if Naftali Bennett and his center-right coalition survived. That said, Bibi returning to power would piss off all the right people. Heh. As Small Dead Animals likes to say, mischief is important. 

Speaking of bellicose Jews, President Zelensky vows Ukraine will become even more based. The Jerusalem Post reports. 'Ukraine plans to model itself after Israel and not Switzerland in the aftermath of the Russian invasion when it comes to issues of national security, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday. "I think all our people will be our great army. We cannot talk about 'Switzerland of the future' — probably, our state will be able to be like this a long time after," Zelensky said. "But we will definitely become a 'big Israel' with its own face." 

Smart. Of course, reader(s) of this blog know Switzerland is totally based as well. But we all get Zelensky's point. And why wouldn't he point to Israel as an example for Ukraine? The Jews stick together. For the Imams say, the Jew is clever. Five years ago this blog lamented Ukraine's inability to arm itself like it's next to Russia, since it's next to Russia. Now Ukraine is acting like it's net to Russia. The nation's future border along the Dnieper will be much easier to defend.

Moving on to the Continent, France will hold its preliminary presidential election this weekend. Nationalist Marine le Pen is in a virtual tie with current president Francois Macron and will almost certainly face him in the runoff. Vive le Pen! Hmmm...did Orban's landslide victory help le Pen, and since polls underestimated Orban's support are they also underestimating le Pen's support? Pray to the god of your choice. 

Will's Good Idea for Memorial Day Weekend

On Friday we went to the gym, sans mask.  We did a 15 minute trainer run starting at 4.2 and going up to 4.5. We thought the mask was holding us back and we were right. We ran, we glided, we floated. We added 15 minutes of exercise bike just to use some time. It was glorious. Yesterday we hit the treadmill with great hubris and paid the price. We should have given ourselves a day, but no. Our other mistake was listening to AC/DC. Their songs tend to be on the short side, so we listened to ten and were 35 minutes in when our brain thought we were 45 given the number of songs. We cut off the run at 50 minutes. Damn.

Very few at the gym wore masks. Nice to see those pretty faces again (heh). We got on a rowing machine next to a man who was wearing one.. We asked if he'd like us to move over one, for distance. He said no, don't worry about it. The Thai restaurant we got take out from last night asked nicely to wear a mask when entering. No problem, man. Politeness goes a long way.

The Times of Israel reports they finally drove old Bibi down: 'The government would bring together parties from the right (Yamina, Yisrael Beytenu, New Hope), center (Yesh Atid, Blue and White) and left (Labor, Meretz), with support from the Islamist Arab Ra’am party (apparently from outside the coalition), in a unity government that would seek to extract Israel from two years of political chaos, spearhead the country’s recovery from coronavirus and heal societal rifts in a deeply divided nation.' Don't worry, Labour and Meretz aren't getting any cabinet posts anyone cares about. The big ones are going to the right and center parties.

There are no Haredi parties in the coalition. This will give Bennet and company the space they need to do something about the religious/secular divide. They should start with introducing secular marriage, that will be a pretty good blow to the Haredi's control of religious life in Israel. And Remember, half the guys in the coalition think Bibi is soft on Hamas. 

Oh, meet Ayelet Shaked, one of Yamina's rising stars and power brokers. The below photograph is provided for informational purposes:

Gal Gadot is no fluke, gentlemen. Israel produces just as many Mediterranean beauties as Italy or Lebanon. Next week will be Ayelet Shaked Week. 

[I'm sorry, folks. He's a knobhead, that's just all there is to it.-Ed]

Meanwhile Syria's Bashar al Assad won 95.1 percent of the vote last week, which is still more believable than Joe Biden beating Trump.

Okay, okay, we're writing World War 1990: The Weser. Here's the release plan: The Great Nuclear War of 1975, World War 1990: The Final Storm, The Great Salvation of 1976, World War 1990: The Weser.  Fall, winter, summer, fall. For the Weser, we'll plan on one scene a day for June. At the same time we'll go back through 75 and start getting it ready. It's time. We plan and god laughs. For as it is written in the Torah, we plan and god laughs. 

*Shaked photo: By ניצן חרמוני - ניצן חרמוני, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15802392