25 years later, 73 Easting, the Reason why (it was a rout)

Back in 1991, I was a 17 year old military fan-boy who understood more about what was happening in Operation Deseret Storm than all the journalists put together. I played a few tabletop war games and read some Tom Clancy novels, that's all. God the media ignorance was astounding. Already I was writing novels, I still have the notebooks somewhere. Never thought I'd write A Line through the Desert.

Desert Storm can easily be divided into two phases, the air war and the ground war. Now the ground war lasted 100 hours and saw the coalition fulfill most of its objectives. Your author vividly recalls media reports on the eve of the ground war estimating 10,000 casualties.

Much of the Iraqi military ran. Those units that did fight were cut to pieces. The Iraqi army, certainly the Republican Guard, was a pretty good fighting force. Not like an American army, but still, it was battle hardened, trained and well equipped- in the Soviet fashion.

So why was an American armored cavalry regiment able to shred two Iraqi Republican Guard divisions?

The 2nd ACR was already highly trained and motivated when it got to the Gulf. In the six weeks or so it was in Saudi Arabia, it only got better. Simply put, with nothing else to do, the regiment trained and trained and trained some more. Not that the troopers weren't bored the rest of the time. They certainly were. I think this is another advantage they had. By the time they got the order to cross onto Iraqi the troopers of the 2nd ACR were itching to go, over eager. They were like caged animals.

Of course technology was the other American advantage. The U.S. Army navigated through open desert, thought impossible by the Iraqis with this new technology, GPS. The Battle of 73 Easting was fought in a sand storm. The Iraqis were blind, but the Americans were not because of their night vision equipment. And of course, the Sabot shells were a huge advantage. One hit, one kill with the Sabot.

In A Line through the Desert the reader sees Sgt. Jake Bloom experience all of this. Here's the scene depicting the initial meeting of the Ghost Troop and the Republican Guard:

“How’s the fight south going, L-T?” Jake asked.

            “We’re kicking ass” replied Lt. Drew “And now Eagle is…wait one…”

            While Jake was waiting for Lt. Drew to resume, Dan spoke. “Hey what do you make of this?”

            Jake dropped back inside the turret and asked, “What do I make of what?”

            He scanned the horizon with his TIS and saw a series of undefined splotches and right angles. He’d never seen anything quite like them before. Jake switched the resolution from white on black to black on white, but with the storm he still couldn’t make out any clear hotspots. He used his TC override to line up and laser the nearest target. Jake got back up in the cupola and peered through the storm but still saw nothing.  

Just as Jake was about to ask Lt. Drew what he thought, 1^st Platoon opened up with a barrage of TOW missiles.

            Lt. Drew shouted over the net, “Contact forward! Contact forward! Engage! Engage!”

            Jake dropped into the turret. “Fire Dan!” he shouted.

            “On the way!”

            Jake got his eyes on his site just in time to see the target explode and a turret flip through the air.

            “Engaged and destroyed!” he reported.

            Lt. Drew barked in Jake’s ear. “What did you take out, Bloom?”

            “I don’t know. A tank, I think.”

            “What do you mean, you think?”

            “Can’t see shit out there L-T.”

            Jake scanned the target area. “I found one!” He lased the target, “1300 meters!”

            “What the hell is it?!” Dan asked.

            “I can’t fucking tell!” He peered further. “Ahh, shit. Veras, Sabot!”

            Veras took a Sabot round from the ready rack and slammed it into the breach. “Up!”

            “Blast it!”

            “On the way!”

            Jake waited for a report but saw nothing. He reached down and slapped Dan on the back the head. “You missed! Re-engage!” he shouted.

            “Veras gimmie another Sabot.”

            Veras opened the ready rack took a round and slammed it home. “Up!”

            “Fire!” Jake ordered.

            Dan didn’t miss this time. The round penetrated an Iraqi tank with unimaginable kinetic energy, vaporizing the crew and exploding its ammunition. The turret spiraled through the air and landed 50 meters away.

            “Holy Shit, it’s like flipping God dam tiddlywinks out there!” shouted Jake.

            Jake tried to select another target, but every time he identified one it went up in a ball of flame. Ghost Troop fired and rolled forward against sporadic and ineffective Iraqi return fire delivered from the reverse slope of a wadi. By the time they came upon the edge of the wadi, Ghost Troop blasted the Iraqis right out their positions, reducing the Iraqi battle line to a hellish wreckage of flaming metal and flesh.

The Battle of 73 Easting

This, the 25th anniversary of the Battle of 73 Easting, seems like a good time to talk about my first novel, A Line through the Desert.

Of all the great armored battles of the 20th century, and I suppose Cambrai was the first, 73 Easting was the last.

Fought on 26 February 1991, 73 Easting pitted the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment against two divisions of the Iraqi Republican Guard.

The 2nd ACR had for days been advancing ahead of General Fred Frnak's VII Corps, Schwarzkopf's 'left hook' into Iraq. Not until the 25th did the 2nd ACR encounter major resistance, engaging Iraqi strong points here and there. The next day the regiment's lead element, in that case Ghost Troop, occupied a position atop a low ridge which opened before a long wadi. It was here at aproxamatly 1700 hours that the battle began in earnest. 

Night was falling and a storm coming in. Ghost Troop engaged two Iraqi armored divisions in a driving wind storm which hampered visibility. It didn't matter. Ghost Troop repelled four separate waves of Iraqi armor. Ghost troop destroyed hundreds of vehicles and took thousands of prisoners in exchange for one Bradley destroyed. Overall the 2nd ACR lost ten dead.

The battle was covered at the time, here is probably the best contemporary account:

Kick watched them get shot three minutes later. "Boom. Hit. Hit and kill. He hit it. That's revenge for Sgt. Moller. You sonuvabitching Iraqis. God, I hate them. Sgt. Moller was a good guy. We killed them. That's four Iraqi PC's killed for this track alone."
Garwick's scouts told him that 12 more tanks were coming. Possibly as many as 25. Iraqis down in the valley would just leap from their personnel carriers and run at Garwick's platoon, firing rifles. Getting killed.
All Kick could see was rounds going downrange.
It went on like this — total chaos — for nearly four more hours. At one point, Spec. Chris Harvey looked out from the back of his personnel carrier.
"All I saw were things burning," said the 24-year-old artillery observer from Virginia Beach, Va. "For 360 degrees. Nothing but action."

This of course was the setting for my first novel, A Line through the Desert.

Colonel Douglas MacGregor, a participant in the battle, wrote an excellent history, here.

Here is a link to the Greatest Tank Battles episode on 73 Easting.

Updates

Well (not) To Liberate Mars is 75,000 words and more or less complete. We'll be heading into the editing process next month sometime. The book will be available in the Autumn of this year.

To Liberate Mars will be written and some point, just not sure when. I am toying with a pair of other novel ideas in this universe and I suspect there will a third batch of short stories at some point.

Whatever Happened to Jake and Patricia Bloom, after a good start, is on hiatus. Ran into a block there (not writer's block(, I just don't know what happens yet.

So I turned back to World War 1990: Castro's Folly. 20,000 words and counting. Three stories for sure, Nicaragua, Angola and the Aussies at Cahm Ran Bay, I'll come up with a few others. Readers are invited to submit ideas.

(Not) To Liberate Mars stories

Ok, so with the new novel, here's a list and brief summary of the chapters:

-Arrival: the reader experiences the Jai invasion from the the perspective of a couple of suburban families.
-Sarah Jane Wayne: A brash, independent girl scout leader takes her girls to a mountain refuge. Is there a merit badge for self sufficiency and shooting?
-Federal Prepper: Agent Lara Yi, FEMA, head of federal preparatory efforts, refugee welfare division.
-Craziest Ivan: The Jai capture a Russian ship captain.
-Untitled: The small town of Livermore, KY endures the first cold winter after the war.
-Task Force Ceres: The Indian Space Navy attacks Jai positions in the Asteroid belt..Ayoooo Gurkha!

(Not) To Liberate Mars

Well, the sequel for To Defend the Earth is done(ish).

Six stories, an interlude, and 75 thousand words.

Now, I thought it would be fun to do a novel that takes place sometime after To Liberate Mars (the next in the series) where man kind is about to launch a hyperdrive capable ship. The Jai attack, the captain decides to jump to Pluto to get away, the HD is busted and said ship has to fight its way back to Earth.

This should sound like a familiar plot line to some of us.

Problem is, science. I was thinking about space fold, but if you can do that, why even bother with missiles and railguns?

My research has indicated that FTL travel is likely impossible and the whole hyperspace/Warp concept merely an entertaining theory without much science to actually support it.

I might have to use Handwavium here, but not Unobtainium. Not that.

Not Getting the Election Thing

I've gotten to the point that I read Jennifer Rubin's formerly indispensable Right Turn just for the laughs. Check it out, yo:

[Jeb Bush's} failed race demonstrated that money is not everything, and that, sadly, in this election, solid, innovative policy is not a ticket to the nomination.

Ah, yes. Policy. I too once thought that people wanted cogent arguments on school vouchers, Medicare reform, top marginal tax rates, and privatization of garbage collection (with respects to M. Buckley). Of course, I was 22.

Mrs. Rubin, we are in a culture war, and that is what we must fight. If the GOP (the morons) want to run the election on tax reform it will lose.

Of course, Mrs. Rubin is not all bad. I must say I agree with this:

Third, party insiders, including donors and elected officials, will soon rally to Rubio. Bush graciously freed them to do just that. The money and the sense of momentum their support will bring to Rubio will give him a lift going into Super Tuesday. If Rubio captures the lion’s share of Bush voters (and eventually the other marginal candidates’ voters), he should be able to pass Trump. At least, that is the theory.

Call me a tool of the establishment if you must, but I think Rubio is the best candidate.

A Few Thoughts on Bush and the Bush's

Jeb Bush ran an honorable campaign. Which was part of the problem. As Algore once said, 'You've got to rip their lungs out.' Jeb would have talked about top marginal rates and school vouchers in a race that would have required him to argue over and over 'Hillary! is worse than Hitler.' Which she is.

Jeb! was a fine candidate, for 2000.  The man hadn't run for elective office ins 2002. Think about that. No social media, no twitter, no algorithms...This was the era where the GOP had just figured out, 'Hey, you have to have a get out the vote apparatus. Who knew?' Remember, this is the man who lost his race for Florida Gov in 1994, this was the year of the Republican. Every Republican one that year, except Jeb. I feel like Carroll O'Connor in Kelly's Heroes holding up a photo of his German rival and saying, 'Now this guy is  a loser.'

Jeb! began the campaign at 20-25% and spent a hundred million dollars to get to 8%. He was the candidate of the investor class, the wall street class, the Chamber of Commerce types. These are the business men and they poured a hundred million bucks into Jeb! That was their judgement. Jeb! was a sound investment to them.

This is unsettling.

The Bush's are kind of an odd political dynasty, starting with the Patrician Senator Prescott Bush. Bush 41 was a pretty good president, winning the Gulf War, handling the S&L crisis, etc. I voted against him in my first presidential election. It was time. His son was an excellent president, and argument I have made here before. Interestingly father and son are two different types of Republicans. The father being an old tyme eastern establishment Republican, the son being more of a Southern Conservative. Jeb! was a wonkish 90's conservative filled with good ideas.

So that's the Bush dynasty. They're down but not out.

Don't get your hopes up, though, Bush haters.

George P. anyone?

South Carolina Blues

Back in 2000 my man John McCain walloped W. in New Hampshire kicking off a two week circus in the next primary state, South Carolina. Bush in turn walloped McCain. That was the beginning of the end of John McCain and McCainism, at least my support for it. McCain pulled out a surprise victory in Michigan, dragging things out for another month or so.

I'm on the record here as supporting Rubio (I could go Cruz) and I hoping for a strong finish from both. I have no idea what's going to happen. Polls seem to show some downward movement for Mr. Trump both in SC and nationally. Rubio seems to have gotten his bearings.

Polling seems broken of late, though, not only in Iowa but internationally, with pollsters getting all kinds of elections wrong, Britain and Israel for example.

We'll see tomorrow, won't we?

Thoughts on the state of things

A few days ago my friend Ty Bomba (Counterfact, Decision Games) asked for my summation of the brewing conflict in the Middle East and Israel. This is what I told him:

Since the 2006 cock-up Israel has fought and trained against terrorist non-state actors with emphasis on urban warfare, media management, minimizing civilian casualties and relying on technology like Iron Dome, Trophy, this new anti-tunnel gizmo they have, etc. Remember the standing army is 10 brigades, the rest reserves. In 2006, Cast Lead, the Gaza war, its the regular army that goes into enemy territory. The thing that impressed me about the Gaza War was that the Israelis were ready for Hamas dirty tricks, the tunnels, sea borne commandos, etc.

Now, this necessarily has come at the expense of training and prowess in old fashioned stand up warfare. Israeli armor is probably less capable than it was in say 1973 (of course they got their clocks cleaned in the early stages on the Sinai). But honestly, I doubt it makes much difference. That Counterfact article of mine coming out basically morphed into 8000 words on Arabs not being able to fight. With the exception of the Jordanians, Arabs can't fight for a variety of complex reasons. Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah are another matter, as they are motivated in a way no Egyptian soldier ever has. It is impossible to know how badly Hezbollah has been hurt in the Syria debacle, but hurt they have been. Which doesn't change the fact they have an arsenal of 100,000 missiles.

Israel enjoys a staggering technological and competency edge against all its enemies who make up for that with nihilistic savagery. I expect an existential conflict in Lebanon which will result in hundreds if not thousands of Israeli civilian deaths. At some point they may start to ask themselves why they should bother avoiding civilian losses.

Of course the question arises, will the Israelis stand it. Of course they will. Remember, these are Jews. Every Jewish holiday can be summed up thusly, 'They tried to kill us, they failed. Let's eat.' The destruction of the 2nd Temple in 70 AD is living memory. Remember also, if your an 18 year old Israeli, you've lived your entire life under the threat of Hamas and Hezbollah terror. The peace movement in Israeli is as old and musty as they peace movement here, damn hippies.

Professor Stroock's President's Day Spectacular

Well it's President's Day again. I've been traveling all day so I'ma bit late getting to this. Every year, regardless of which class I'm teaching, I like to take 15 minutes or so to talk about presidents and rankings.

For my money, the top 4 in chronological order are:

Washington: Set precedents, treaty with Great Britain, smart enough to hire Hamilton, etc.
Lincoln: Won the Civil War, not to mention the Homestead and Land Grant Act, two of the most important pieces of legislation in American history.
FDR: Come on, conservatives, you're not really still taking up this cudgel are you? Social Security, AFDC, FDIC, etc, not to mention World War II.
Reagan: Come on, Liberals, you're not really still taking up this cudgel are you? Economic reform, restoration of pride, overhauling the tax code and rates, not to mention winning the Cold War.

Four underrated presidents:

Polk: Tariff he wanted, settled the Oregon Dispute, annexed Texas, and the War with Mexico.
Bush the Elder: The Gulf War, obviously, handling the savings and loan and BCCI crisis.
Coolidge: Peace and Prosperity in the 20's.
McKinley: Won the war with Spain and later,the Philippine Insurgency.

Overrated Presidents:

Jackson: The man was a fiend, spoils system, Indian Removal Act, war on the bank, Specie Circular.
Adams: Alien and Sedition Act, 'nuff said.

George W. Bush...was a good president:

Handling 9/11, keeping us safe after, liberating Afghanistan, overthrowing Saddam, winning the insurgency, 53 straight months of economic growth, and intervening to handle the financial crisis via TARP, which is 100% repaid.


Wronged by history:

Nixon: After 7 + years of Barry, no Democrat ever gets to tell me how awful Nixon was. The man's record speaks for itself. Clean Air Act, shuttle diplomacy, opening China, SALT I. Watergate? Don't make me laugh.

My the Technology Marches

I'm up here in the Berkshires (current temp -8, Fahrenheit for all you goddamn foreigners) working on the sequel for A Line through the Desert.

One of the subplots involves Jake being in college ROTC, about which I know nothing.

Now, back when I was researching A Line through the Desert I went to an alumni website to get info about Jake's unit, the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, I bought old manuals on Ebay, I trolled the depths of the interweb looking for info.

This was 2004. The internet as it exists today was just starting to jell. Amassing this info took months and months.

So last night I was trying to plot Jake's time in the ROTC. I knew nothing about it. So I popped over to amazon and looked around. In a few minutes I had two short guides to ROTC which detailed everything I needed to know.

Bam! Plotted!

Wither the whermacht

Recently I got into a back and forth on FB with my friend Ty Bomba (Decision Games, Counterfact, Command Magazine) who is designing a game to simulate a modern conflict between NATO and Russia.

I noticed he gave the German armored division (think about that THE German armored division) a really strong combat strength. I pointed out to Ty that I thought he was severely over-estimating German capabilities. His reply, not unreasonable I should ad was, 'C'mon, Will, we're talking about the Germans.'

Well, I recently read this:

However, the army is forced to do so with a record low number of soldiers, and outdated and malfunctioning equipment.
"We are short of almost everything," said the SPD politician. "The army is at the turning point. It cannot take more cuts."
Germany currently has 177,000 soldiers, down from some 600,000 at the end of the Cold War. In 2011, Berlin decided to save money by providing only 70 percent of required equipment for some branches of the military, such as armored divisions.

My, how far Germany has fallen.

Look, I'm a Jew, so the idea of a military prostrate Fatherland has a certain appeal to me. Still, we're talking about the Krauts here. As I once explained to my class, Germans are the best at everything. If the Germans decided they wanted to sell shower flipflops, within 5 years they'd be making the best shower flipflops in the world.

I mean, even after WWII the Germans had the best army in Europe, both East and West Germany. They just couldn't help themselves. They're Germans. That's what they do.

No longer, I guess.

New Hampshire Negs

Well, the NH primary didn't turn out like I expected, with Trump finishing second and Rubio coming in first.

My man, Marco, who has already received the coveted Stroock endorsement, seems to be wilting at exactly the wrong time.

My consolation prize is that Jeb! finished 5th.

Rubio is a candidate 20 years in the making, and I don't just say that because we're roughly the same age, grew up during the same political time, and I know a couple of people who went to school with him.

Rubio was/is a young policy-wonk, like I was/am. He came of age during the Gingrich Revolution when young conservatives went about sighting optimal tax rates, advocating school choice and Social Security reform. We were an army of conservative policy-wonks talking about ideas.

Only problem is those ideas were carried by Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole and coy.

Rubio watched this and understood it. He is young, good looking, articulate, smart, well read, and married to an ex-Dolphins cheerleader (these are the facts I need to know). He was invented to run in the Gingrich-Clinton-Bush-Obama era.

Trouble is Trump and Sanders seem to have inaugurated a new era.

Cruz anyone?

So, you say you want to freelance

Sometimes its hard to get publishers to accept your stuff. Sometimes its hard to get publishers who accept your stuff to actually remember they ever accepted it in the first place.


Behold, Decision Games, purveyors of Strategy&Tactics, Modern War and other fine magazines:

Hi Will,

This is the list of articles I currently have scheduled for you:

Hunter Ligget_FYI_S&T 301_November 2016

Tarleton_FYI_S&T 309_March 2018  

American Revolution Strategy_Feature_S&T 310_May 2018

Canadians at Vimy_FYI_S&T 312_September 2018

...

Got that little nugget from the editor yesterday. No big deal really until one considers the fact that the lead time for these pieces is astonishing. Below are the submission dates, in order, for those articles:

2008
2003
2003
2008

They forgot they had them. They freakin' forgot they had them. What's worse is the new editor found them again. I said go ahead and publish them. Why not? Yeah sure.

Two thousand and freakin' three. Can you believe it? George W. Bush was in his first term. Facebook did not yet exist. No one yet knew what a blog was. The IPhone was still four years away. I was living in a rented, rustic farmhouse in Peapack, NJ where I had recently rediscovered Led Zeppelin. That's like being in 2003 and someone saying your article from 1988 is going to be published this year.

Oh, they also stiffed me $400 for designing the Meuse-Argonne Folio game

'Not a problem Will. Thanks for your contributions and excellent articles!'

I bet.

Notes on a Spectacle

The Superbowl:

-A great game? No. A good game, a tension filled game? Yes.

-Nice to see some defense for a change.

-The two greatest Superbowl defenses I've ever seen are the '85 Bears and the 2000 Ravens. The Bronco's defense is not on that level, probably akin to the '86 Giants, a lot of attacking, a lot of bruising the QB.

-Peyton Manning managed the game very smartly, playing to his strengths, or avoiding his weaknesses, anyway.

-Peyton Manning can't throw anymore. Amazing.

-When a behemoth like Carolina gets punched in the mouth early they don't usually know how to respond.

-Cam Newton looked baaaaaaaad in so many ways.

Anyway, we're still in this streak of good to great Super Bowls with a few exceptions here and there. When I was a kid they were almost always blowouts beginning with the '85 bears through to Broncos in 1997. Heck, I remember when John Elway was the guy who lost three Super Bowls.

Speaking of, as a Giants fan I've gotten to see four Super Bowl victories.  Super Bowl XXI was a lot of fun. Denver had a moment like this last night too. Its great, just wonderful, actually, when the game is still on and you know you're going to win. Most of the 4th quarter of SB XXI was a victory celebration. If you're not a fan of the team its brutal, but when its your team, its the greatest feeling in the world.

Congrats to Peyton Manning, who I can no longer call 'Eli's less successful older brother'. 

New Features

I'm adding to the blog. We have a new page over there on the right, Future Projects. Check it out and you'll see some brief summaries of what's in the works. 

Please feel free to chime in.

I'll be adding some more maps this week as well.

Debate This!

They say Marco Rubio (who has already received the coveted Will Stroock endorsement) stumbled last night. I dunno, I never watch those things.

So maybe he is a canned, scripted version of Tracey Flick. He's entered what is probably the toughest phase of the campaign for him. We'll see if he's up to it.

The thing I like about Ted Cruz is that he fights. He was doing it against last night with one of the questioners. Also, he was a really sharp mind. I mean, I looked up his CV and we're talking about one of the top legal minds in the country. Alan Dershowitz no less sings his praises. That's quite an endorsement.

For me right now the issues are reigning the Feds, by which I mean executive orders, the IRS and the like, illegal immigration and the repeal of Obamacare. At the moment I don't trust Rubio to do it. Now, I don't buy that he's the establishment guy. I remember when the establishment wanted Charlie Crist for Senate and Rubio was the Tea Party guy who beat him in a tough race. But he seems to be wavering. Cruz is combative and I love that.

I'd vote for him.

But you got to get in the door first and the best chance for that is Rubio. For my money I think he's unbeatable.

New ideas!

Now here's something interesting.

What if Algore wins the election in 2000?

I posit that absolutely nothing would be different, right down to the invasion of Iraq, with similar consequences.

Imagine this. Election 2000, the war in Iraq is going badly, Algore is floundering and its an open GOP nomination. With a national military emergency, whose the best GOP candidate? C'mon, you know the answer. John McCain.

Now lets try to thresh out a bit who is in the primaries. I'm going to go out on a limb and say Cheney. Probably Gingrich,  as well as the usual assortment of vanity candidates ad senators deciding, 'what the hell'. Maybe a guy like Tom Ridge jumps in. Probably Rudy Giuliani. I figure the race comes down to a battle royale between McCain and the 'maverick' and Cheney as the 'establishment' guy. McCain wins, and I think beats Algore by a decent margin. 53-45?

McCain is the man in the oval office managing the Iraq war.

A Line through the Desert

Ahhh, my first novel.

Anyway...Ever wonder what ever happened to Jake and Patricia Boom?

I've spent the last 10,000 words trying to answer that question.

We'll see, why not?

Mysterious Advertising

My grandfather, yes the old bastard's still alive, was an ad man for 50 years. Ever see Mad Men? That was him. He says they nailed Madison Ave ca. 1960 perfectly, except for one thing. By then the firms were run by Italian art directors and Jewish copy men. 'Talent' he explained.

Anywho I was going over my recent ad campaign with him and he told me how Ed Ney, who used to run Young and Rubicam told him, 'Half the money I spend is going to be wasted. Trouble is I can never figure out which half.'

This is so true.

Advertising is an art not a science. My first really successful book, Israel Strikes, flew off the shelves, digitally speaking, based on ads in magazines. Israel Strikes did so well I decided to write a sequel, War of the Red Sea. I advertised in the exact same way and only saw about 2/3rds of the sales. Still a success, mind you, but not a smash.

Right now Operation Eastern Storm is selling great. Better than Arctic Storm did. A lot better. And Arctic Storm did pretty good. Same ads, same schedule. Why would the sequel do better than the first one? Ok, obviously people who bought Arctic Storm are buying Eastern Storm but there's something more.

Honestly, I wonder if it isn't just because Eastern Storm is blue (USA/NATO) and Arctic Storm was red (Soviet).

Like I said, an art not a science.

Caucus That!

Well, we're all surprised I guess. Cruz came in first, Trump second, and my man Rubio a surprisingly strong third.

Personally, these are the best results I could have imagined.

Fearless and risk-less prediction: Trump loses a squeaker in NH and fades fast after that, finishing perpetually 2nd and 3rd as Cruz and Rubio battle it out with Rubio gradually amassing primary victories.

Well, we'll see, wont we?

Caucus This!

Well, the American Silly Season is upon us. That's right, it's party primary time.

God, this ritual has become so stupid.

For any of you goddamn foreigners reading this, here is how it works. To get the D or R nomination for president, candidates go from state to state winning votes and amassing delegates. The candidate with the most delegates wins.

Tonight the first primary, or caucus is in Iowa. Iowa only became important because in 1976, Jimmy Carter, the then unknown governor of Georgia placed 2nd behind 'no preference'. From then on its been a race to see who can win Iowa and then New Hampshire.

I swear, half the problem with American politics is the primary system. No one is actually trying to win votes anymore. Rather they are trying to win the news cycle where a primary or caucus win builds momentum and shows inevitability.  After Iowa and New Hampshire comes South Carolina, where both party establishments have built political firewalls in case the hand-picked guy loses the first two. This worked for Bob Dole in '96 and W. in 2000.

Changing the nomination process would go a long way, I think, toward making American politics less stupid. Nix Iowa and New Hampshire. Instead of these patchworks of primaries have a regionals like the Southern Primary or the California Primary, etc. Make it an actual election on not this stupid media momentum circus.

I've never picked the winner myself, having voted for Paul Tsongas, John McCain, Mitt Romney (08) and Ron Paul (why not?).

If you must know, I'm a Rubio man. Kiss of death, right?