Tennessee sent 700 National Guard to Kuwait the day Hurricane Helene blew in

 In Tennessee, on the day the hurricane blew in, 700 National Guard troops were deployed ...to Kuwait, to take part in some waste-of-time military exercise organised by a Pentagon that hasn't won anything since VJ Day and takes twenty years to lose to goatherds with fertiliser. Ukraine matters, union disputes in Yemen matter, the millions swarming across the Rio Grande to be resettled across the fruited plain matter. But Maui, East Palestine, and rural North Carolina don't matter. ... Unlike Katrina, this hurricane is nothing to do with whoever's running the executive branch of the United States. As to who precisely that is, all we can say for certain is that, of the more than seven billion people on earth, it's not Joe Biden, because he's focused on collective bargaining in Yemen, and Kamala Harris, because nobody would put her in charge of anything.

Well, except for half the voters in the United States.

If those numbers hold up, expect a lot more of western North Carolina in your future.

-- Mark Steyn, here 

Over 700 Tennessee National Guard Soldiers Deploy to Kuwait for Operation Spartan Shield :

Over 700 soldiers from the Tennessee Army National Guard's 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment are set to leave their home state for a deployment in the Middle East this Saturday. These service members, specifically from the regiment's 2nd Squadron, will spend a few weeks at Fort Bliss, Texas for final preparations before heading to Kuwait.

Trump request for 1 million barrel per day oil production boost from Saudis and others debated in Kuwait over the weekend

What's this? Trump has to ask the Arabs to do what American producers cannot?

The story is here.

The false question remains "Why did Trump win?"

Two examples from today.

Liz Peek of FOX reassured Steve Gruber this morning on his radio program in Michigan that Trump won in 2016 primarily because the voters were most concerned to ensure we had a Supreme Court seat filled by a Scalia clone.

And then Josh Brown assures his readers in the line up at Real Clear Markets that the most important reason was class warfare: a tax cut for the middle class and a big tax increase on rich speculators.

It's been five months since the election and we still can't agree about the political state of the country. Hint: libertarians don't agree about very much.

One could go on. Ann Coulter would tell you it was the promise of The Wall and an end to indiscriminate invasion by illegal aliens. Independent small business owners and self-employed people would tell you it was the promise of repeal of Obamacare. Veterans . . . veterans' affairs. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

These various opinions tell us more about the values of the individual coalitions Trump cobbled together to win, not why he won.

Meanwhile the narrow character of Trump's victory in key states, the result of former Democrat voters boycotting Hillary by the millions, goes underestimated by the winners . . . and the losers.

That's fairly typical, even for otherwise prudent presidents.

George Herbert Walker Bush thought victory in Kuwait made him golden, promptly raised taxes after we read his lips, and was shown the door.

The same will happen to Trump if he doesn't deliver on his program.

And because his program is a Duodetrigintapus, the question is really "How many of my twenty-eight legs can I get away with chopping off and still have enough left to strangle my opponent with in 2020"?

He's already cut off three. Repeal of Obamacare has failed. DACA has not been reversed (what, did they run out of pens in the White House?), and suddenly we have to burn $100 million worth of cruise missiles because someone used a politically incorrect weapon.

What's next, an assault weapon ban?

There's still plenty of time for Trump to prove that he isn't some suicidal sea monster.

But at the rate he's going he'll be a legless jellyfish by Christmas.

Rubio and Kasich both want to send US ground troops in large numbers back to the Middle East

From the debate in Detroit:

BAIER: Gentlemen, the next topic to discuss is terrorism. Senator Rubio, ISIS is a big topic of conversation on Facebook. We have a map that shows the conservation about ISIS around the country. You proposed sending a larger number of American ground troops to help defeat ISIS in Syria and Iraq...

RUBIO: That's correct, and Libya. ...

KASICH: Fortunately in Libya, there's only a few cities on the coast, because most of Libya is a desert. The fact of the matter is, we absolutely have to be -- and not just with special forces. I mean, that's not going to work. Come on. You've got to go back to the invasion when we pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. We have to be there on the ground in significant numbers. We do have to include our Muslim Arab friends to work with us on that. And we have to be in the air.

And we -- it should be a broad coalition, made up of the kinds of people that were involved when we defeated Saddam. Now, you've got to be on the ground and in the air both in Syria and Iraq. And at some point, we will have to deal with Libya. I am very concerned about ISIS getting their hands on the oilfields in Libya and being able to fund their operations. The fact is cool, calm, deliberate, effective, take care of the job, and then come home. That's what we need to do with our military foreign policy.

To end the Muslim ability to make war means dirty bombing their oil fields, not just setting them on fire