Two headlines I thought I would never see…

Luka traded to L.A. and Trump pushing cuts in Pentagon spending.

WASHINGTON (AP)—President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants to restart nuclear arms control talks with Russia and China and hopes all three countries will eventually agree to cut their massive defense budgets in half.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump lamented the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in rebuilding the nation’s nuclear deterrent and said he hopes to gain commitments from the U.S. adversaries to cut their own spending.

“There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons. We already have so many,” Trump said. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”

My first thoughts…

Trump is right as nuclear rain about building new nukes. Like building new giant battleships, they make no sense in modern warfare. If it’s not just another Trump head-fake, this proposal makes some sense. The US currently spends more on defense than the next nine countries combined.

Cutting military spending in half is unlikely. It’s not about percentages. There’s no way China is going to halve its military budget when the US would still be spending three to four times more in order to support 750 foreign military bases spread across 80 countries. China has one, located in Djibouti. Russia has 20, nearly all in the former Soviet republics.

Meanwhile, by putting this proposal out first in the press, Trump also gets to shore up his base of isolationists and libertarians while, at the same time, giving a wink and a nod to his defense contractor friends who know they will always get their cut right off the top.

As was the case with the Gaza “ceasefire,” the Panama Canal and Greenland gambits, and the tariff threats, real or bluff, Trump gets to act powerful and autocratic, thereby distinguishing himself from the weak, incapacitated Democrats. What a gift they were (are)!

But even beginning discussions about cutting back on the arms race is a welcomed alternative in the midst of Cold War.2.

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As for the Luka trade…

A bad deal for the Mavs, engineered by the new owner, Las Vegas casino heiress Miriam Adelson. She’s an anti-Muslim war hawk Zionist and a huge financial backer of Netanyahu, who wants to expand Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Why did she approve of such a crazy deal that sent Luka Doncic, a young generational superstar, to the rival Lakers? I have no idea. But some say she wants to sell off the team’s assets and move its bare bones to Vegas. I have no way of knowing if there is any truth in this, but…

According to my favorite sports analyst, Dave Zirin, writing in The Nation:

The speculation is that Doncic was really traded to demoralize the fan base so that Adelson could move the team to Las Vegas and make them the centerpiece of one of her tacky casinos. Or at least, with Vegas as a viable option, she could put pressure on the Texas state legislature to make casino gambling legal and hand her huge sums of public money for her new Dallas gambling police.

I’ll go with that for now.

A rotten metaphor…

When Trump speaks of Gaza as a new “riviera” being populated by luxury hotels, [Adelson] is one of the people who would likely be building them.

Why would a new self-governing Palestine want Gaza to be turned into a “Riviera of the Mideast?” I don’t think so. The French Riviera is an overpriced, overcrowded tourist spot for the elite. Normal visitors aren’t welcome and its few nice sandy beaches are privatized. See “The Ugly Side of the French Riviera: Overcrowding, Elitism, and Hidden Costs.”