Weekend Open Thread
[guest post by Dana]
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Let’s get started!
First news item
Unsurprising, if official policy:
One of Russia’s senior generals has said the country aims to capture not just the eastern Donbas region but all of southern Ukraine in its new stage of the conflict, a surprisingly broad public outline of the Kremlin’s aims for the war since refocusing away from Kyiv.
Major Gen. Rustam Minnekayev said the goal was to create a land bridge from Russia to the annexed Crimean Peninsula and another exit to the unrecognized pro-Moscow breakaway republic of Transnistria in Moldova, to Ukraine’s southwest.
Related:
A city official in besieged Mariupol says Russian forces are continuing to bomb a massive steel mill where Ukrainian fighters are holed up.
Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor, told The Associated Press on Friday that “every day they drop several bombs on Azovstal, despite false promises not to touch the defenders.” Andryushchenko added that “fighting, shelling, bombing do not stop.”
The Azovstal plant is the last stronghold of Ukrainian forces in Mariupol, which the Russians has blocked for nearly two weeks and declared victory over this week. Ukrainian authorities have estimated that 1,000 civilians are inside the plant along with the fighters.
I’ll leave you with this bit of mystery:
Questions look set to be asked after two Russian oligarchs, both linked to gas giants, apparently murdered their wives and daughters before killing themselves—within two days of each other.
Second news item
Facing a growing rebellion from within the Democratic Party, the White House is standing behind its decision to end on May 23 a Trump-era deportation policy for migrants encountered at the southern border.
That decision to end the use of the public health order known as Title 42 has placed President Joe Biden in a political bind. The president is attempting to balance his long-standing promise to revoke the policy — which, under the banner of fighting the Covid pandemic, justified the immediate expulsion of migrants without due process — right as Republicans weaponize immigration before the midterms and as a growing number of Democratic senators want restrictions to remain in place for fear that the administration is not prepared for a summer surge of migrants to the border.
So, who in the administration is very concerned about the lifting of Title 42? Why none other than the Secty. of the Dept. of Homeland Security:
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has privately told members of Congress he’s concerned with the Biden administration’s handling of its plans to lift Title 42 on May 23, sources familiar with the conversations tell Axios…Mayorkas has also indicated a level of frustration and unease with the repeal rollout, the sources said.
Third news item
Florida’s Surgeon General, Joseph Ladapo…issues a state guidance with a dramatically different perspective [than the Biden administration]. From, “Treatment of Gender Dysphoria for Children and Adolescents” (emphasis within the text):
Due to the lack of conclusive evidence, and the potential for long-term, irreversible effects, the Department’s guidelines are as follows:
• Social gender transition should not be a treatment option for children or adolescents.
• Anyone under 18 should not be prescribed puberty blockers or hormone therapy.
• Gender reassignment surgery should not be a treatment option for children or adolescents.
Based on the currently available evidence, “encouraging mastectomy, ovariectomy, uterine extirpation, penile disablement, tracheal shave, the prescription of hormones which are out of line with the genetic make-up of the child, or puberty blockers, are all clinical practices which run an unacceptably high risk of doing harm.”
• Children and adolescents should be provided social support by peers and family and seek counseling from a licensed provider.
Much more at the link.
Fourth news item
How is this whole attempt by DeSantis *not* an impending disaster for Florida?:
There’s a lot of misinformation and confusion about what the end of Disney’s Reedy Creek district means for the company and for taxpayers. Here’s what I know, after talking to lobbyists, lawyers and tax officials:
For those of you who haven’t heard, Reedy Creek is the special tax district of Walt Disney World. It’s essentially its own city. Disney pays taxes to Reedy Creek, which operates a fire department, planning department, sewer treatment plant and public works department. On the other hand, Disney controls Reedy Creek, which means if they want to build a new hotel or highway, they just have to ask themselves for permission. The biggest loss for Disney is the end of that control. It’s a lot easier to ask yourself for permission than to go to the county. While they already follow all laws and building codes and they’ll still get everything they want, it’s going to slow the process down. Potholes might develop on roads that they no longer pave themselves. They can’t just call a meeting or alter their comprehensive plan on a random Friday. They also can’t quickly finance new public projects like a fire station. The bigger issue for everyone else is the tax revenue. Disney already pays the same local property taxes as every other landowner. Reedy Creek added its own tax on top of that to pay for its projects. That tax – $163 million per year – is illegal outside of the district. When Reedy Creek goes away, that tax goes away, and Orange and Osceola Counties can’t do anything to get it back.
However, the counties will now be responsible for all of the services Reedy Creek provides and all of the debt it has accumulated. They can’t raise sales taxes or impact fees. So, the counties will have to raise property taxes. They must tax every property equally – not just Disney – and therefore it’s expected that property taxes in Orange County will rise as much as 25% next June…The residents, by the way, had no say in this vote, no say in their property taxes going through the roof, and no desire to have their communities staring at financial ruin
Fifth news item
Convincing Sweden, Finland, and maybe others to join NATO:
Russian Senator Andrei Klimov called NATO a “suicide club” and warned that Sweden and Finland could meet the fate of the Azovstal steel fighters in Mariupol if they join NATO. Klimov says Finland’s prosperity was caused by good relations with the Soviet Union. Klimov claims “good neighborly relations” persisted even under Stalin. No mention of the 1939 Soviet invasion of Finland and the Winter War. Klimov warns that Ukraine destroyed its potential through pursuing NATO and anti-Russian militarism, and cautions Sweden and Finland against following its path.
Sixth news item
Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the House, has been particularly vocal about the issue, backing legislation to crack down on tech companies.
“Diversity of opinion is the lifeblood of our democracy. And yet that fundamental American value is under assault by Big Tech — entities that have amassed more power and more control over more speech than any other institution in history,” the House minority leader lamented in a statement after Twitter “permanently suspended” [Marjorie Taylor] Greene this year.
“Their recent decisions to silence Americans — including a sitting member of Congress and renowned physicians — who share views different from the political and media elite have real world costs,” he added.
But McCarthy seemed to hold the opposite view a year earlier, in the days following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
According to an upcoming book by two New York Times reporters, McCarthy privately told fellow GOP lawmakers that he wanted social media companies to strip more Republicans of their accounts, as Twitter and Facebook had done with Trump.
“Can’t they take their Twitter accounts away, too?” McCarthy is quoted as saying.
Seventh news item
Where did all the moderate Republicans go? Long time passing…:
GOP Rep. Fred Upton’s announcement last week that he was retiring from his western Michigan district after 35 years means that moderate Republicans are now almost entirely extinct from the U.S. Congress. Twenty to thirty years ago, Republicans like Upton were more plentiful. There were northeastern Republicans like Nancy Johnson, Chris Shays and Rob Simms from Connecticut, Amo Houghton and Sherwood Boehlert from New York, and midwesterners like Upton, Steve Gunderson in Wisconsin, and Mark Kirk from suburban Chicago. They often broke with their party on social issues like abortion, guns and the environment but were fiscally conservative and pro-business.
Like conservative Blue Dogs who were once plentiful in southern and rural America, these so-called Rockefeller-Republicans have disappeared, as Democrats now represent their once solidly red suburban districts.
With these members gone, goes the narrative, so has the civility and functionality of Congress. Without their counterweight, the leadership in both parties is now captive to the wishes and wants of the extremes like those in the GOP Freedom Caucus or the Democratic Progressive Caucus.
Upton, in an interview with Meet The Press’ Chuck Todd last weekend, argued that unless Republicans pick up more than 15 seats this fall (for a total of at least 230 GOP-held seats), “it will be very hard to govern for Republicans… knowing that we’ve got the MTG [Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene] element that’s really not a part of a governing majority.”
Eighth news item
To mask or not to mask is still the question:
Philadelphia is ending its indoor mask mandate, city health officials said Thursday night, abruptly reversing course just days after city residents had to start wearing masks again amid a sharp increase in infections.
The Board of Health voted Thursday to rescind the mandate, according to the Philadelphia health department, which released a statement that cited “decreasing hospitalizations and a leveling of case counts.”
And:
LA County’s public health department reinstated part of its COVID mask mandate Friday, meaning a patchwork of rules for masks on public transit and at airports in Southern California. The decision announced Thursday came just days after a federal judge overturned the Centers for Disease Control’s mask mandate on public transportation.
Initially, local transit agencies went along with that Florida judge’s ruling, allowing the federal rule enforcing masks on planes, trains, buses and other ways of getting around to lapse. Masks became optional.
But that changed with Thursday’s announcement from the county health department. LA County’s own public health director apologized in making the announcement, saying the change will likely create confusion among residents feeling a sense of mask “whiplash” due to the back-and-forth.
Ninth news item
Gov. Newsom not so golden in California:
Six weeks after Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a far-reaching effort to push more people into court-ordered treatment for severe mental illness and addiction, homeless advocates are calling it legally misguided and immoral as the proposal’s first public hearing at the state Capitol has been delayed.
More than three dozen organizations and individuals, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Disability Rights California and the Western Center on Law and Poverty, signed an April 12 opposition letter raising serious concerns with Assembly Bill 2830, one of two nearly identical measures moving through the Legislature to implement Newsom’s Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Court. The groups often have significant sway among liberal legislative Democrats, the kind of influence that could hinder Newsom’s hopes for a new law to be in place by July 1.
Newsom touted the CARE Court framework last month as an innovative strategy to guide an estimated 7,000 to 12,000 people into housing and much-needed treatment. Under the proposal, family members, behavioral health care providers and first responders, among others, could petition a civil judge to initiate a CARE plan for eligible individuals who lack medical decision-making capacity.
MISCELLANEOUS
Camille Pissarro, ‘Rue Saint-Honoré, dans l’après-midi 1897
Note:
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday to revive a years-long lawsuit over the rightful ownership of a painting by French impressionist Camille Pissarro surrendered to the Nazis in 1939. The court’s ruling opens an opportunity for the heirs of Lilly Cassirer, the painting’s original owner, to reclaim it from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, where it has been on display for decades.
The Spanish museum has argued that Pissarro’s 1897 Rue Saint-Honoré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie, was acquired in good faith. The Cassirer family maintains that it was sold under duress to a Nazi art appraiser. The painting is believed to be worth today tens of millions of dollars.
Details about how the lawsuit came to be:
The Pissarro painting, a depiction of a rainy Parisian street, was exchanged by Lilly Cassirer in exchange for $360 and her family’s safe passage out of Germany. She never received the money and, though she and her husband escaped persecution, her sister was killed at the Theresienstadt concentration camp. In 1948, the Cassirer family filed an appeal with a tribunal organized by Allied forces to recover the painting, but it had already been sold at a Gestapo auction in Berlin. Believing the painting was lost forever, the family accepted a $13,000 settlement from the German government.
In 1976, Swiss collector Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza purchased the Pissarro from the Hahn Gallery in New York for $275,000. Seventeen years later the baron’s art collection was acquired by Spain for $338 million. The 775 works comprising the acquisition formed the foundation of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation in Madrid.
Litigation began after Claude Cassirer, Lilly’s grandson, found the painting at the Thyssen in 2000. His requests for its return rejected, he sued the foundation in California court in 2005. After his death in 2010, his on David Cassirer carried on the court battle.
Have a great weekend!
–Dana
Happy Friday!
Dana (5395f9) — 4/22/2022 @ 11:12 amQuestions look set to be asked after two Russian oligarchs, both linked to gas giants, apparently murdered their wives and daughters before killing themselves—within two days of each other.
Couldn’t leave any witnesses to the suicide.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/22/2022 @ 11:29 amI read somewhere that historians will debate who killed more Russian generals; Putin or Ukraine.
Up until now, Putin held a monopoly on that.
Best guess on lower tier oligarchs getting hit is someone is picking up their business interests on the cheap.
steveg (e81d76) — 4/22/2022 @ 11:55 amRevisit the slight of hand anti-union and shell company creator ol’conservative Republican, Walt Disney, used to created his Florida Magic Kingdom:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reedy_Creek_Improvement_District
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 4/22/2022 @ 12:11 pmThanks, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Tucker Carlson:
Carlson is the more interesting of the two, since I can’t stop suspecting that, despite what he says, he secretly got vaccinated. But perhaps I am too cynical. What do you people think?
(A reminder: The Golden Rule implies that we should try to avoid getting COVID, by getting vaccinated and taking other precautions, in order not to transmit the disease to others, not just to protect ourselves.)
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/22/2022 @ 12:35 pmFortune magazine says what needs to be said: Commercial deals with autocrats are not just morally dubious; they are often risky
The authors remind us that:
(I have begun trying to do what little I can, by avoiding products from nations hostile to the United States.)
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/22/2022 @ 12:47 pmFor the umpteenth time thanks to gerrymandered districts first the tea party and then the white trash former democrats populists primaried them or they retired so they wouldn’t get primaried This also answers the title 42 question. Again thanks to gerrymandering moderates in swing districts are trying to save themselves by keep title 42 ;however progressives in deep blue districts don’t fear the 2022 election and will be around to punish biden if he doesn’t get rid of title 42. So it devolving into when the republicans have power the police will be able to shoot young black men for resisting arrest and when AOC and the squad are in power the police will have to shoot old white conservatives for resisting arrest or AOC and the left will make them wish they had.
asset (f7154f) — 4/22/2022 @ 12:53 pmHere is a puzzle for all of you. (For which I have a tentative answer which I will not reveal, now):
Suppose Elon Musk comes to you and says he has decided his Mars colony will have homes owned by individual families. He then asks you to decide whether those homes should:
1. Decline in value over time, as most consumer goods do, either because of entropy or because of technological advances making them cheaper to construct.
2. Stay constant in value, providing they are maintained, or increase if they are improved.
3. Increase in value, providing good investments.
4. Some other possibility.
(We can find examples of the first three, here in the United States, now.)
He asks you to explain why your answer is best for families, and the community.
(I designed this thought experiment so that people could think about the problem abstractly, rather than in terms of what would be best for themselves, now.
I should add that there will be no shortage of living space for the colony since, for many decades, colonists will live in Mars, not on the surface. (The same would be true for a moon colony, by the way.) Since gravity on Mars is about a third of what it is on earth, living areas could go down for miles, with no problems.
Despite the differences, I think this thought experiment might shed light on what our policies should be here on earth.)
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/22/2022 @ 1:46 pmWorth Reading: Jeff Greenfield explains why Democrats are losing the working class by appealing to George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier:
For example, a miner might have to walk, stooped, underground, more than a half mile before he reached the coal face where he could actually begin digging coal. Conditions were so bad that, during World War II, Britain assigned one out of every ten draftees to work in the mines, because they were unable to get enough workers in them, otherwise.
But many of those sufferers found socialism unattractive because, like the modern Democratic Party, the British Labour Party had attracted so many kooks, people like those who now insist on “Latinx”, in spite of the fact that almost no one who speaks Spanish desires to be called by that recently-invented word.
(Here’s a reasonably accurate description of the book for those who have not read it.)
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/22/2022 @ 2:39 pmwhen AOC and the squad are in power the police will have to shoot old white conservatives for resisting arrest or AOC and the left will make them wish they had.
Which is why you Nazis will never see power.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/22/2022 @ 3:05 pmSince gravity on Mars is about a third of what it is on earth, living areas could go down for miles, with no problems.
I see that you have never had a touch of claustrophobia.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/22/2022 @ 3:07 pmJim Miller @ 10,
Omg, I had that article as a news item for today and then removed it because I thought it would just get lost in the wash. It really deserves to be read and considered. Thanks for bringing it up! Next time, I’ll trust my instincts.
Dana (5395f9) — 4/22/2022 @ 3:11 pmJim, who owns the land?
steveg (e81d76) — 4/22/2022 @ 3:11 pmDemocrats are losing the working class
To be fair to Mr Trump, the turn he forced on the GOP has a lot to do with this. Until 2016, both parties were pandering to the investing classes and even the Democrats turned a blind eye to the hollowing of the American workforce. Somewhere, Dick Gephart is whispering “I told you so!”
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/22/2022 @ 3:16 pm#11 Kevin – I think it is generally accepted that the immigrants would be subject neither to claustrophobia, from months in a small space ship, nor acrophobia, from having space all around them, during that time. But, to answer your question, again because of the low gravity, it would be relatively easy to excavate large caverns. You could then add screens to provide “sky” views in the caverns.
#13 steveg – Good question. I am assuming that the “plots” would go with the homes, but should have made that specific.
By the way, Robert Heinlein discussed living in the moon in his short story, “It’s Great to Be Back”, and Isaac Asimov discussed living mostly underground on Mars, in his novella, “The Martian Way”. Both, as I recall, assumed many (all?) of the colonists would be living in apartments.
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/22/2022 @ 3:38 pmI would what DeSantis would about this.
Paul Montagu (5de684) — 4/22/2022 @ 3:40 pm#12 Dana – Well, having read The Road to Wigan Pier many years ago, it was a natural for me.
And I would really like both of our parties to be at least acceptable to almost all Americans.
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/22/2022 @ 3:42 pmOne more try…
I wonder what DeSantis would say about…
Kevin Rothrock, Meduza:
This sounds closer to the truth than what Putin is officially reporting.
Paul Montagu (5de684) — 4/22/2022 @ 3:47 pmJim@8
He then asks you to decide whether those homes should:
Okay, I’ll bite. It depends what you mean by “should”.
Is it a predictive should, as in what is my best guess as to what will happen with the home prices based on market conditions?
Or is it a prescriptive should, as in a planned economy, where the government sets wages and prices, including the price of homes, and therefore I’m to decide what the price of the home should be?
norcal (68b459) — 4/22/2022 @ 4:07 pm#19 norcal – I am assuming that home prices are set by supply and demand, but that the local government regulates, for example, the supply of “plots”, so that it can create any of those possible conditions. In other words, I am assuming something like what we have, right now, in different parts of America.
So, which of those 3 possibilities is best for families, and communities?
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/22/2022 @ 4:17 pmSo I am to assume Mars is run like an HOA?
I think a system that rewards vision and risk raises the level for everyone.
Personally I d get a value added plot. Water? Minerals? View? Still within easy trip to services.. near to a spaceport
Since Mars will be like a giant HOA, there will be a limit on where you can build how how big you can build and due to regulation there will not be unlimited space
Steveg (acc927) — 4/22/2022 @ 4:35 pmFourth news item:
— Who’s the leader of the club made for you and me?
nk (1d9030) — 4/22/2022 @ 4:35 pm— M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E!
— R-O-N D-E-S-A-N-T-I-S!
— Mickey Mouse!
— Ron DeSantis!
— What’s the difference?
Zelensky advisor Arestovych claims the Ukraine hit a Russian command post with 50 officers inside today.
Steveg (acc927) — 4/22/2022 @ 4:42 pmHe is a bit of a troll if you recall his sly take on the Moskva early on
@8. Property values ’round Mars, Pennsylvania should reach the moon when Disney moves the Magic Kingdom there from Orlando; not much competition from Conneaut Lake Park nor Kennywood down Pgh., way. ‘Course it won’t be a sweet a deal as at Hershey Park, but then that’s on the other side of the state. 😉
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 4/22/2022 @ 5:02 pmKinda funny though to see Florida(D) folks flocking to support tax breaks, special treatment for a corporation. Imagine if Disney World was owned by Koch Industries
steveg (e81d76) — 4/22/2022 @ 5:06 pm@8. ‘One of the biggest dangers to humans when planning a mission to Mars is something invisible: Radiation. Without the Earth’s magnetosphere to protect them, astronauts would be bombarded with radiation while visiting Mars. Most people know that being exposed to too much radiation can make you sick, but the levels of radiation we experience on Earth are nothing compared to those that astronauts would be exposed to on the journey to Mars. Space radiation is much more harsh and damaging than the radiation experienced by people living on Earth.’ -space.com/nasa.gov
Perhaps Zelensky could interest you in a 3 bedroom split level in Chernobyl, instead; plenty of “space” ’round town and the schools aren’t overcrowded. 😉
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 4/22/2022 @ 5:11 pm“ Petitioner tries to get MTG to accept that any reference to 1776 is a call to violence.
She points out that 1776 is on the state seal hanging in the courtroom.
Judge laughs.” – Matt Gaetz
Obudman (4ad822) — 4/22/2022 @ 6:34 pmHere’s a reasonable discussion of the radiation problems of a trip to Mars:
That could be reduced, especially in emergencies, simply by orienting the space ship to provide the maximum shielding.
As the author says, the radiation problem of a trip to Mars is “completely solvable”.
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/22/2022 @ 6:44 pmObudman – Do you know whether Gaetz has been charged yet, and, if not, why not?
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/22/2022 @ 6:46 pmEven though they did it for the wrong reasons, I think it’s good democracy for DeSantis et al to have cancelled Disney’s fiefdom. I don’t think anyone should get their own zone of control outside of regular order.
Nic (896fdf) — 4/22/2022 @ 6:46 pmPaul-
steveg (e81d76) — 4/22/2022 @ 6:48 pmSome of those Tankers in the T72 that cook off and blow the turrent up onto the 5th floor and then burn are going to be hard to ever ID in a war zone
Expropriated property should be returned to the owners. The Pizzaro painting should be returned. Yes, museums are full of precious stuff taken by shady means and returning them will be very difficult. However, justice should be the first exhibit of any respectable institution. Elgin marbles…back to Greece!
fred (cfb084) — 4/22/2022 @ 6:53 pmTrue. I’m glad you mentioned Darth Putin, steve. I’ve been following him for several weeks. Funny guy.
Paul Montagu (5de684) — 4/22/2022 @ 7:34 pmHere’s another interesting development.
@28. Real Martians: How to Protect Astronauts from Space Radiation on Mars
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/real-martians-how-to-protect-astronauts-from-space-radiation-on-mars
Lest you forget, this is a nation full of fussbudgets who get pissy merely when asked to wear a cloth mask amidst a pandemic. Wait ’til they’re issued lead-lined Jockey shorts. 😉
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 4/22/2022 @ 7:52 pmKinda funny though to see Florida(D) folks flocking to support tax breaks, special treatment for a corporation. Imagine if Disney World was owned by Koch Industries
steveg (e81d76) — 4/22/2022 @ 5:06 pm
Jared Polis’s offer to bring Disney World and Twitter’s HQ2 to Colorado was particularly hilarious. As if the Front Range hasn’t become enough of a hyper-scaled, traffic-choked, ultra-polluted, tent city-mired, uber-expensive cesspool–bringing those places to the Front Range would unleash social, economic, and environmentally maladaptive forces that the smug neoyuppie potheads in the state house can’t even imagine. I honestly hope they take him up on his offer.
Factory Working Orphan (a6f340) — 4/22/2022 @ 8:31 pm@20 Jim, in that case, I would go with 2 if you’re talking inflation-adjusted dollars, and 3 if you’re not. 😛
norcal (68b459) — 4/22/2022 @ 9:52 pmwhen Disney moves the Magic Kingdom there from Orlando
Just when you thought there was no worse weather than Orlando.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/22/2022 @ 11:11 pmImagine if Disney World was owned by Koch Industries
Old Walt could have taught the Kochs something about being rich bastards.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/22/2022 @ 11:12 pmkevin m: If trump can get elected AOC can get elected. Second That is what bernie sanders (and now AOC’s) fight with the clinton/biden corporate establishment wing of the democrat partys is all about. Read “whats the matter with kansas.” by thomas frank.
asset (4ecfab) — 4/23/2022 @ 2:03 amAm praying the draft dodging, gonadless mittens opens his pie hole in his lying about L.C. Tulsi. She knows he is a shill for anti constitutional b.s.
mg (8cbc69) — 4/23/2022 @ 2:40 amBrother Lover Omar/mittens/2024
mg (8cbc69) — 4/23/2022 @ 2:43 amWould love to ask the head teachers hack Randi Weingarten- If sexuality isn’t being taught in K-3, and no grooming is taking place, why do you object to the law?
mg (8cbc69) — 4/23/2022 @ 3:16 amhttps://theaspenbeat.com/2022/04/22/criminals-roam-free-while-god-is-put-on-trial-and-his-son-is-branded-a-border-jumper/
mg (8cbc69) — 4/23/2022 @ 3:35 amKevin, I’d hold my tongue…in addition to your current home becoming the easternmost abortion hub for Southern state women in the post-Roe America, bet you all those Tink and Princess shirt wearing fools love dry heat over humidity.
urbanleftbehind (c073c9) — 4/23/2022 @ 4:54 amIf trump can get elected AOC can get elected.
When she’s 70? Will you still be sending her sweet Valentines, birthday greetings, bottles of wine? Will you still need her, will you still feed her, when she’s 70?
nk (1d9030) — 4/23/2022 @ 5:18 amIf Disney can make money in China, it can make money in Florida.
nk (1d9030) — 4/23/2022 @ 5:51 amIf Disney can make money in China, it can make money in Florida.
nk (1d9030) — 4/23/2022 @ 5:51 amFrance and Germany have some ‘splaining to do.
Paul Montagu (5de684) — 4/23/2022 @ 8:49 ambet you all those Tink and Princess shirt wearing fools love dry heat over humidity.
Who doesn’t?
The Democrats have attempted to gerrymander themselves into a permanent majority here. We will see how that works out. Trump is an albatross in NM, but it also elected a libertarian governor once. Gun control remains the third rail and the governor has touched that more than once. A lot of rural areas voted Dem last time and won’t this time.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/23/2022 @ 9:06 amAs far as the TX abortion law is concerned I hope that 1) it falls and 2) the state has to pay punitive damages for it, along with anyone who attempted to cash in on that terrible law.
California is going to pass a gun control law with the same crowd-sourced provision for harassing gun owners. Thanks, Texas.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/23/2022 @ 9:09 amin addition to your current home becoming the easternmost abortion hub for Southern state women in the post-Roe America
I won’t be performing them, so why is it my problem? Besides, I don’t have any real problem with first trimester abortions (other than considering it rather sloppy birth control).
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/23/2022 @ 9:13 amWhat strikes me with this current Disney stuff is how we got our knickers in a twist when it started doing business in China just a few years back, when it had been in Florida since 1967 and in California since 1923.
nk (1d9030) — 4/23/2022 @ 10:18 amRelated:
Rip Murdock (cbadfd) — 4/23/2022 @ 10:23 amRe: Robert Morse
DCSCA, one of the most bizarre movies to feature Robert Morse was The loved one. It took me forever to remember the name, but then, everything, for me, takes forever now.
felipe (484255) — 4/23/2022 @ 11:56 am@50 I was warning about this when the texas law passed. As for abortion if you don’t like it don’t have one! This will be another dred scott decision by the supreme court. If you anti choicers think the majority of the country who supports abortion rights are going to say well thank you very much sir! May I have another. You are wrong! Dred scott decision led to harpers ferry and civil war. The anti choicers on the supreme court are likely to get post natal abortions with their ruling.
asset (08a955) — 4/23/2022 @ 1:38 pmThose “Profile in Courage” awards sometimes go to someone who deserves one:
He’s termed out, but running for a seat in the state senate. Good luck to him in that race.
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/23/2022 @ 1:52 pmMost Democrats polled still think the 2016 election was stolen from Hillary.
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/april_2022/democrats_still_believe_russia_changed_2016_election
They rioted rather than accept a peaceful transfer of power.
I am predicting:
Rioting starting mid to later this summer and lasting until midnight mid term election day.
Rioting starting late spring 2024 and lasting until either Presidential election is settled with Democratic victory or until late 2025 when protest tiredness sets in after GOP win
This last election cycle from 2016 to 2020 is the new blueprint for how the USA is going to do national elections.
steveg (e81d76) — 4/23/2022 @ 1:57 pm@54. Yeah. Seen it. It is definitely a quirky film- very 1960s Hollywood, California. Has an ‘against character’ cast along w/him.
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 4/23/2022 @ 1:58 pm@40. My favorite Pierre Delecto tale is when the safe-in-France-from-Vietnam-spreading-Mormonism twit insisted he was chasing his Lady Anne through an airport at Christmas, 1968 when the entire frigging world was focused on Apollo 8 circling the moon. Decades later, dining on frog legs w/Trump didn’t help, either.
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 4/23/2022 @ 2:07 pmTwo good news environment stories in today’s Washington Post: A pictorial on the Monarch butterfly, which has hit the highest numbers since 2016, partly because people are planting milkweed plants for them.
And an article on the big comeback of the wild turkey in the Northeast, including DC. It is mating season, and one of the toms has attacked people in a DC park.
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/23/2022 @ 2:08 pm@52. You outta revisit Herr Disney’s management of the ‘slave labor’ at ‘the happiest place on Earth’ back in the 40s when animators wanted to unionize for descent wages and reasonable work hours at ‘Mousewitz.’
https://www.historynet.com/1941-disney-strike-picket-lines-paradise/
https://animationguild.org/about-the-guild/disney-strike-1941/
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 4/23/2022 @ 2:20 pmThe difference here is that abortion rights is a legal fiction whereas gun rights is a “black letter” law.
whembly (7e0293) — 4/23/2022 @ 2:43 pmAh, so “pedophile” can function as a synonym for “RINO,” which now means “A Republican who is not abjectly subservient to Donald Trump.”
Radegunda (da788f) — 4/23/2022 @ 3:14 pm50 years ago today, when America was truly great— and made this look ‘easy’ to the world… for the fifth time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdW6eVb_dmc
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 4/23/2022 @ 4:01 pmThe anti choicers on the supreme court are likely to get post natal abortions with their ruling.
Yet another call for assassinations from asset. This is why you Nazis will never get power. You all like killing people. Maybe you can round us all up and put us in camps, but, well, we have all the guns.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/23/2022 @ 4:04 pmI was warning about this when the texas law passed.
So was everyone else. It’s a no-brainer. But here’s the thing: The right to keep and bear arms is ac actual, enumerated right. Has its own amendment — everything else has to share one.
Abortion is not listed anywhere.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/23/2022 @ 4:07 pmIn the 1960s and 70s, when the Supreme Court was 7-2 liberal, and making all kinds of controversial rulings, the Left said: “We must respect the Rule of Law.”
Fifty years later, when the Court is 6-3 conservative and undoing the worst of the Berger court crap, the Left says: “Let’s kill all the Justices!”
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/23/2022 @ 4:11 pmDred scott decision led to harpers ferry and civil war. The anti choicers on the supreme court are likely to get post natal abortions with their ruling.
asset (08a955) — 4/23/2022 @ 1:38 pm
No, the introduction of popular sovereignty did that. Northern politicians such as Daniel Webster were actually okay with the New Mexico territory being classed as a slave-holding area because 1) plantation-style slavery as it was practiced in the South was a lot more difficult in the desert southwest due to the environment, and 2) peon slavery had already been going on there in some form for centuries.
Factory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 4/23/2022 @ 4:37 pmBill Barr was the Bondo, John Durham is the spray paint. No gubmint hacks will be touched. Only outside gubmint clinton campaign hacks will be questioned. Baker-pfft.
mg (8cbc69) — 4/23/2022 @ 4:55 pmThe Civil War was inevitable after the Mexican Cession. When the Congress nearly passed the Wilmot Proviso, barring slavery from any of the Cession territory, it was only a matter of time. Millard Fillmore’s brilliant (yes) maneuvering to get the Compromise of 1850 put it off for a while, but the Republican victory in 1860 forced the South’s hand.
The Dredd Scott decision, if it did anything, gave the South a respite (as it ruled for them). BUt the divisions were so bad (the were two Democrat Parties (North and South), if not 3, and the Whigs had destructed since they really had never had a platform except hating Jackson. So, when the Northern Whigs, the Free-Soilers and anti-slavery Democrats joined to become the Republicans, the South knew slavery would be done soon enough. SO they tried to quit.
Lots of reasons, actually, but Dredd Scott only contributed in stiffening the backbone of the new GOP.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/23/2022 @ 5:13 pmhttps://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-aud-nw-twitter-climate-change-20220423-cmt7g2gke5b4zmw7zcmx5av7qq-story.html
When you control what information can be posted and disseminated you control what can be thought and believed.
NJRob (eb56c3) — 4/23/2022 @ 5:13 pmArmed protesters gathered outside his house and screamed that he was a pedophile.
I’ll agree with a lawyer who represented one of them:
nk (1d9030) — 4/23/2022 @ 5:59 pmRIP former Senator Orrin Hatch (88).
Rip Murdock (862eba) — 4/23/2022 @ 6:00 pmTrumpWorld thankful.
Rip Murdock (862eba) — 4/23/2022 @ 6:51 pmshort-bus people
A diminished-capacity defense is a tried and true one. Too bad no Twinkies were involved.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/23/2022 @ 7:02 pmSince there are no residency requirements before election day, keeping someone off the party primary ballot for residency issues seems questionable. IIRC, there were some party-primary rules that were struck down in the 60s for more basic discrimination; not sure if the cases would apply here. I’m guessing that we will get a case like that out of this election, in TN or OR.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/23/2022 @ 7:07 pm“When you control what information can be posted and disseminated you control what can be thought and believed.”
Amazing you were able to find this out what with all the information being controlled.
Davethulhu (da3c71) — 4/23/2022 @ 7:18 pmhttps://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2022/04/24/how-america-became-la-la-land-n2606272
mg (8cbc69) — 4/24/2022 @ 1:59 amrino season-no bag limit
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/jeff-reynolds/2022/04/23/whats-with-all-the-food-processing-plants-blowing-up-lately-n1591921
mg (8cbc69) — 4/24/2022 @ 2:02 amanyone cooked a rino?
What are those Tennessee Republican?
mg (8cbc69) — 4/24/2022 @ 3:38 amProbably chamber of commerce, cheap labor, open border republicans. Or chinese communist factory republicans like the local poohbaha bringing the Fufeng corn milling factory to Grand Forks, N.D.
Brother Lover Omar/Pierre Delecto/2024
mg (8cbc69) — 4/24/2022 @ 4:04 amBad faith arguments is all you ever provide. How comfy you must feel in that leftist bubble.
NJRob (eb56c3) — 4/24/2022 @ 5:08 amI perused Victor Davis Hanson’s article linked @79. Certainly the Biden record is a mess….especially the reckless exit from Afghanistan and certainly the spastic and largely pointless lurch leftward in policy proposals that had little chance to get through an evenly divided Senate. But Hanson’s piece doesn’t read like the careful detailed-oriented prose of a military historian with a Stanford pedigree. It’s not designed to persuade with meticulous facts and incisive argumentation, but to enflame and give partisans a reason to howl. I guess it pays the bills and keeps him relevant for the Hillsdale cruise circuit. But like eating a bunch of twinkees for lunch, it left me hungry for something nutritious, actual thoughtful analysis on the burning topics of the day. Energy and immigration policy deserve serious discussion…..but Hanson’s piece ain’t that….by intention.
But the real eye-popper in mg’s link was not Hanson’s predictably partisan yawn-worthy piece, it was the comment section at Townhall. Good G*d, I see where mg gets validation for his schtick. It’s a whole site of people hurling invective and being as partisan and derisive of “the other” as possible. Like RedState, it gives me little hope for our country actually solving any of its pressing problems. We seem content with reenacting a Three Stooges episode of eye-gouging, pie throwing, and board-across-the-head whacking. The Golden Rule has been supplanted by a nastiness that invariably ends with one commenter calling for breaking the country apart…and cutting loose the big cities. Is the American democratic experiment over? Does Hanson see it that way and does he see any personal responsibility to elevate the discussion and calm the mob? I suppose this is politics at its core….apocalyptic….hyperbolic….coarse….simplified. How’s it working?
AJ_Liberty (3cb02f) — 4/24/2022 @ 5:38 amWell said, AJ. Yes, there’s a lot of batsh-t in Townhall comment sections and the like.
In Russia, you know it’s to protest when they’re arrested for holding invisible signs.
Paul Montagu (5de684) — 4/24/2022 @ 6:20 am#79 and #80 Those two brief comments appear to be advocating murder and cannibalism. Is that what you intended to say?
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/24/2022 @ 6:38 amPutin, of course, would approve of #79 and #80, as would Xi.
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/24/2022 @ 6:39 amAJ_Liberty @ 84,
I haven’t yet read the VDH piece yet but what a generally spot-on review you’ve provided of the endless loop of angry accusation/self-congratulation of the we’re patriots, they’re evil crowd. These pundits skillfully convince their audience that their anger is a righteous one because somehow they are always being persecuted by one boogeyman or another. Now there may actually be a real issue that is worth fighting for/against, but if you look at what DeSantis is doing post-Don’t Say Gay law, it becomes clear that there is no limit to the perceived evil coming from outside their camp. And if “protecting” themselves from whatever boogeyman it is means ignoring the Constitution, so be it.
That the hard right is the flip side of the hard left is lost on these Americans.
At last night’s rally where he endorsed J.D. Vance, Trump evidenced this mindset by manipulating the crowd with untrue claims:
Dana (5395f9) — 4/24/2022 @ 7:49 amSounds like comments I have read elsewhere
Rip Murdock (862eba) — 4/24/2022 @ 8:24 amThere remains the “nuclear” sanctions option:
Rip Murdock (862eba) — 4/24/2022 @ 8:57 am#88 While Putin’s Russia is invading Ukraine and murdering Ukrainian civilians by the thousands, because they elected someone he doesn’t like, Trump says the biggest threat to democracy is the Select Committee.
Amazing, absolutely amazing.
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/24/2022 @ 9:01 amIs the American democratic experiment over? Does Hanson see it that way and does he see any personal responsibility to elevate the discussion and calm the mob? I suppose this is politics at its core….apocalyptic….hyperbolic….coarse….simplified. How’s it working?
AJ_Liberty (3cb02f) — 4/24/2022 @ 5:38 am
How is one long-time pundit even capable of “calming the mob”? I know I have to keep repeating this, but this is what happens every time there’s a political realignment. Read Bryan Burroughs’ “Days of Rage” sometime, or read up on the labor wars of the turn of the 20th century. “The American democratic experiment” has always been a pretense, because at some point, any “experiment” has to yield measurable, tangible results.
Lament the partisan divide all you wish, but the reality is that there are two primary competing visions for how this country and its culture should be, and as distasteful as you might find those fights, it’s something that happens every couple of generations or so. Man cannot live by bread alone, and what you consider to be burning topics doesn’t register in politically existential conflicts. If the right wants to start fighting against the cultural Overton window dragged continually to the left YET AGAIN, they’re going to look for politicians that will resist it. And that’s going to compel moderates figure out what their principles actually are, and what kind of country they actually want to live in.
That the hard right is the flip side of the hard left is lost on these Americans.
Political moderation NEVER comes in to play during a political realignment. It’s one side against the other until one side either prevails, or like the last 50 years, conducts a long march through the institutions while disingenuously deflecting from complaints against that takeover as “pointless culture war issues” to convince the other side not to resist it.
Factory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 4/24/2022 @ 9:08 amLol at the liberal take from the David French kissers. Have you checked out the price of food. I know whats going on in farmland, we are trying to secure fertilizer for the next few years and its a biotch. The rails won’t ship fertilizer because some morons wants to starve us.
mg (8cbc69) — 4/24/2022 @ 9:48 amHaving grown up around these food plants, I don’t remember so many having issues so close together. But hey vote mittens.
@88
There is no limit when:
a) Disney flat-out joins with the left in perpetuating the lies about the Parental Rights bill
b) Disney articulated that they will spend money to vote out the current politician to overturn this bill, a bill enjoying massive support.
c) All the while Disney is enjoying a special, unique carve out that allowed them to run their own fiefdom to make billions in revenue.
Joining with the side that wants to be able to teach your very child about gender identity and sexual orientation without the parent’s approval, is the literal definition of grooming.
That is evil and there should be ZERO limiting principle in this fight.
Frankly, Disney got off extremely light and the FL legislature/DeSantis knows what they’re doing. All they’re doing is statuatorily ending Disney’s fiefdom next year. That gives both sides enough time to renegotiate, and hopefully Disney going back to maximizing shareholder values.
whembly (7e0293) — 4/24/2022 @ 9:58 amFactory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 4/24/2022 @ 9:08 am
Absolutely correct, FWO. I am an independent, and at one time, was considered by both sides to be moderate. Today, my same positions are viewed by one side as right of center because the window has been dragged to the left of me. I have not picked a side, I’ve been placed there. If we (the previously defined moderates remain complacent, then the window is dragged further left, until an extreme reaction will take place in order to restore some semblance of balance.
felipe (484255) — 4/24/2022 @ 9:59 amoops forgot to close ()
(the previously defined moderates)
I had best sit down before I injure myself.
felipe (484255) — 4/24/2022 @ 10:01 ammg (8cbc69) — 4/24/2022 @ 9:48 am
I know! It’s almost like someone wants to make good on Biden’s “There will be food shortages!”
felipe (484255) — 4/24/2022 @ 10:04 amI don’t know what the “liberal take” is, but here’s French’s latest and y’all can come to your own conclusions. I liked the following.
Perhaps someone can explain to me why these words enrage the Trumpist right.
Paul Montagu (5de684) — 4/24/2022 @ 10:29 amLet’s see, Ukraine is known as the “breadbasket of Europe”.
When you see the war photos from the countryside, you can tell Ukrainian farmers have invested in seed and have planted.
You can see the pock marks from shelling, the tracks from armor and trucks.
Acres of productive land will need remedial earthwork so farm machinery can have a smooth surface.
https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/rssiws/al/up_cropprod.aspx
When you look at the maps in the link you will see there will be shortages of human consumption wheat, corn. Animal feed will take a hit, as will cooking oil.
When you look at a bag of fertilizer the three numbers are Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium
Nitrogen is very important and the process takes natural gas. It is also used in chicken feed
The other two use fossil fuels to mine and process.
Diesel prices to run farm equipment, create fertilizers, process and ship crops will be more than double
How can there not be shortages and higher prices?
steveg (e81d76) — 4/24/2022 @ 10:36 amhttps://www.fertilizerseurope.com/fertilizers-in-europe/how-fertilizers-are-made/
Forgot the link
steveg (e81d76) — 4/24/2022 @ 10:37 amPutin, of course, would approve of #79 and #80, as would Xi.
I have no doubt that there is rhino meat for sale somewhere in China.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 10:57 amJeremy David Hanson
No relation.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 11:00 amRelated:
Utilities Want to Convert Coal Plants to Nuclear; Skeptics Abound
More crony capitalism. The development of SMRs will require billions in federal loan guarantees.
Rip Murdock (862eba) — 4/24/2022 @ 11:01 amJoining with the side that wants to be able to teach your very child about gender identity and sexual orientation without the parent’s approval, is the literal definition of grooming.
It is imposing the State’s moral code on students and denying (even “othering”) their parents moral and/or religious beliefs. This is the kind of behavior the first amendments religious protections were designed to prevent. Just because you leave “God” out of it does not mean you are not promoting a religion.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 11:04 amFWO: “Lament the partisan divide all you wish, but the reality is that there are two primary competing visions for how this country and its culture should be, and as distasteful as you might find those fights, it’s something that happens every couple of generations or so.”
Partisanship does not have to be disingenuous, hyperbolic, toxic, and incessantly hateful. Arguments should be in good faith and should be based on objectivity and evidence. The other side’s values and priorities should not be dismissed out of hand. In a pluralistic society, you have to persuade people if you want to make political change and, the tougher nut, cultural change. You can’t force people to accept your priorities and values…especially if you style your opponents to be existential threats with opinions unworthy of respect. The real fear is that the GOP is trending toward a belligerent authoritarianism….as evidenced by the (now slightly retreating/retrenching) Putin wing but also the grudging admiration for Orban in Hungary….where corruption and propaganda rule in a population barely the size of NYC….not exactly the model for the U.S.
There is a growing unhealthy sentiment that lying, cheating, and even violence is suddenly necessary…or at least excusable. Trump can lie and lie and lie and it only triggers what-aboutism and shrugs of “at least he fights”. You fail to paint a path to success….or outline solutions that can stand. You seem to think enough toxic rhetoric will achieve lasting change….or lead to some epic showdown and manic split. You’re advocating for a death struggle without clearly identifying a stable coherent end state (a bubble where BLM and CRT can never penetrate?). How far have you thought through this culture war? What exactly are you willing to leave to your kids? Right now we’re trending toward a legislature that is paralyzed, a Court that is increasingly overtly political, and an executive branch that is filling in the gaps with increasingly questionable executive orders. Maybe we need a leadership that narrows the divide and dials back the rhetoric. I just don’t see our current path as sustainable.
AJ_Liberty (ec7f74) — 4/24/2022 @ 11:05 amEmmanuel Macron will win France’s presidential election, pollsters project
Rip Murdock (862eba) — 4/24/2022 @ 11:08 am……..
President Macron is expected to take 58.2% of the vote to Le Pen’s 41.8%, according to an analysis of voting data by pollsters Ipsos & Sopra Steria conducted for broadcasters France Televisions and Radio France.
………
More crony capitalism. The development of SMRs will require billions in federal loan guarantees.
Hardly unique to energy/climate policy. Solar panels, wind farms, electric cars, naval protection for the oil trade. Doesn’t matter; it’s how they roll.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 11:10 amEmmanuel Macron will win France’s presidential election, pollsters project
This will be as self-fulfilling as they can make it. Putin has nothing on pollsters when it comes to manipulating voters.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 11:12 amI can appreciate those words from French, probably because nowhere in there is he judging me or telling me what I should be doing.
steveg (e81d76) — 4/24/2022 @ 11:15 amWhen French declares himself the arbiter of “virtue” or lack thereof, he can FO.
I’m not going to let a sanctimonious prick tell me I lack virtue because I supported Trump over equally deeply flawed Hillary and Biden or now because I’d support DeSantis over Biden.
French can say what he wants and I can tell him he can be a good writer but is a sanctimonious prick…. David please try to choose the virtuous path of not being a judgemental harpy
Here’s a good story on the Belarusian railway workers who stymied Putin’s invasion.
Paul Montagu (5de684) — 4/24/2022 @ 11:20 amFrance just said “no” to LePen and, by extension, Putin.
Paul Montagu (5de684) — 4/24/2022 @ 11:24 amA Historical Example of Inflation: Early in Frederick Lewis Allen’s Part of Our Time, he described the sharp increases in prices caused by World War I.
In May of 1919, the prices for four common food items were:
milk: 15 cents a quart
sirloin steak: 42 cents a pound
butter: 61 cents a pound
eggs: 62 cents a dozen
If we correct for inflation, with a handy, dandy inflation calculator, we find that we should multiply those prices by 16.62 to get the prices in today’s dollars.
Now that doesn’t tell the whole story, since all of those products are worth more now, because they are safer. For example, now nearly all our milk is both pasteurized, and enriched with Vitamin D. So perhaps we should multiply by 25 or 30, instead of 16.62.
Even at the lower multiplier, three of the four items are cheaper now than they were then, and the sirloin steak might be if we allowed for the increase in quality.
(Exercise for the ambitious: How many hours would a person earning an average wage in 1919 have to work to buy those products. How does that compare to now, using the federal minimum wage, or whatever wage you think appropriate.)
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/24/2022 @ 11:44 amAnd if you chose January 1934, you probably would have the opposite result. If you want to show that price increases can be temporary, well, all right. But they can also be permanent. Even if they fluctuate some, the trend is always upwards.
Are today’s gas prices permanent? That will depend a lot on political decisions. In fact, they already do, as Biden’s attempts to strangle the US oil production business have changed the supply equation dramatically. Another administration might change that.
Housing is probably a better and more constant trend. While house prices drop some every recession,
the demand for housing is highly inelastic. Right now, the inflation in housing is well into double digits in places (location, location, location), even here in New Mexico. The house I sold in LA has gone up over 50% in the last 3+ years. Those prices are unlikely to subside much.
And prepare for sticker shock next time you buy a car.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 12:08 pmplus bon et plus dur
urbanleftbehind (60b23c) — 4/24/2022 @ 12:20 pm108, are polls still open in the Caribbean possessions or are they yet to open in the South Pacific?
urbanleftbehind (60b23c) — 4/24/2022 @ 12:24 pm108, are polls still open in the Caribbean possessions or are they yet to open in the South Pacific?
urbanleftbehind (60b23c) — 4/24/2022 @ 12:24 pm
No. Apparently though Le Pen won in the overseas territories that she had previously lost.
Rip Murdock (862eba) — 4/24/2022 @ 12:43 pmsteveg: “French can say what he wants and I can tell him he can be a good writer but is a sanctimonious prick…. David please try to choose the virtuous path of not being a judgemental harpy”
Wow, that’s not at all what French was writing about. You should give it a read. Voting for Trump is not even alluded to. The biggest head nod I got was French recommending to people to get away from Twitter (and other unhealthy online forums designed only to make us angry and desperate) and get back to reconnecting with family, friends, and neighbors. It’s also interesting who he identified as the most extreme partisans poisoning the well on both sides…that one got a head nod as well. I’m sure French wants the GOP to push away from Trump, reject some of his politics of division, and broaden its message/agenda. That’s a challenge, especially for people with 5 years invested in minimizing, rationalizing, and trying to change the subject. We use to be the party more comfortable with discussing traditional values. I hope we get back to it.
AJ_Liberty (ec7f74) — 4/24/2022 @ 12:45 pmPartisanship does not have to be disingenuous, hyperbolic, toxic, and incessantly hateful. Arguments should be in good faith and should be based on objectivity and evidence. The other side’s values and priorities should not be dismissed out of hand.
If the other side’s priority is to manipulate grade-school kids in to questioning the biological reality of their gender, then dismissal is the least I can do. If the other side’s priority is to continually pick the scab of racial animus, then dismissal is the least I can do. If the other side’s priority is to cram their political agenda down my throat while whining that resistance to it is “divisive,” then dismissal is the least I can do.
I don’t have to take these kinds of priorities or their ideological underpinnings in good faith at all. I consider them to be thoroughly immoral, decadent, and fundamentally flawed to their core.
You fail to paint a path to success….or outline solutions that can stand.
Your path has failed for 50 years, and the proof is in the current state of academia, the corporate boardroom, and mass media. Time to try something different. If these institutions want to be explicitly political in their daily operations, and push the agenda of a particular political side, then I’m obligated, as someone who despises their agenda, to push back against it, and hard. The left certainly doesn’t stop until they get what they want; there’s no reason for the right to not reciprocate such aggressive political hegemony. And if that makes the nannyscolds in the media and their allies in the Cathredal uncomfortable, then good.
You seem to think enough toxic rhetoric will achieve lasting change….or lead to some epic showdown and manic split. You’re advocating for a death struggle without clearly identifying a stable coherent end state (a bubble where BLM and CRT can never penetrate?).
I think the left shouldn’t be allowed to assume that they can steamroll their agenda down my throat without resistance. I don’t take their complaints about such resistance seriously because they’ve never been sincere.
How far have you thought through this culture war? What exactly are you willing to leave to your kids?
Hopefully a society that doesn’t treat racism against white people as a positive good, lionize mental illness as “stunning and brave,” or excuse the torching of cities and riots as socially healthy as long as it advances the purposes of the left.
Maybe we need a leadership that narrows the divide and dials back the rhetoric. I just don’t see our current path as sustainable.
You’re missing the point. The left NEVER dials back the rhetoric. EVER. The last 100 years should be evidence enough of that, but you can go all the way back to the French Revolution to get the full picture, or just look at their actions post-Occupy. You continually underestimate their will to power, and that’s why the moderate right doesn’t hold much sway over the GOP base right now.
Factory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 4/24/2022 @ 12:54 pm#113 Kevin – Using the same inflation calculator, I get a multiplier of 21.46 for 1934.
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/24/2022 @ 1:00 pmI see some people remain really really mad that schools won’t let Tommy be mean to Jason for having 2 dads or Sally because her mentality doesn’t match her physicality today.
I also notice that some people don’t know the definition of either literally or grooming.
Nic (896fdf) — 4/24/2022 @ 1:26 pm#113 Kevin- Since you asked, I was trying to gently make two points: During war time (and soon after), inflation is likely, almost inevitable, so blaming Trump (becaue of his immense deficits) or Biden, rather than Putin, seems like a mistake to me.
Second, thanks to scientific progress, we should expect the prices, corrected for inflation, of most consumer goods to fall — especially in free markets.
There are costs to those gains: We need far fewer farmers, miners, and factory workers, proportionately, than we did.
And smaller costs, as well: A hundred years ago, few would have believed you if you told them that, in 2022, obesity would be a serious problem among America’s poor.
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/24/2022 @ 1:33 pmI see some people remain really really mad that schools won’t let Tommy be mean to Jason for having 2 dads or Sally because her mentality doesn’t match her physicality today.
Speaking as someone who was actually bullied through most of school, you’re doing a great job of continuing to convince me why people like you are an actual threat to my children’s well-being.
Factory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 4/24/2022 @ 1:35 pmPutin muse Macron wins.
…and Vladimir smiled.
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 4/24/2022 @ 1:36 pmA better way to say is that Putin-sponsored LePen lost. Macron hung that war criminal moniker around her neck, and she paid for her affinity to the guy.
Paul Montagu (5de684) — 4/24/2022 @ 1:42 pm@FWO@122 Why do you think the topics of either gender identity or sexual orientation come up in grades below 4th grade?
Nic (896fdf) — 4/24/2022 @ 1:47 pm@FWO@122 Why do you think the topics of either gender identity or sexual orientation come up in grades below 4th grade?
Nic (896fdf) — 4/24/2022 @ 1:47 pm
Why are you and your colleagues so insistent on encouraging elementary school kids to deny biological reality?
Factory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 4/24/2022 @ 1:51 pm@FWO Here is why those topics come up in lower grades:
Jason has two dads, Tommy is telling him he can’t have two dads, he has to have a mom and a dad. Jason says he doesn’t have to, he has two dads. Tommy tells him he has a bad or wrong family. The teacher says there are a lot of different kinds of families and that some people have a mom and a dad and some people have just a mom or just a dad or two moms or two dads or that some people have a g’ma and g’pa or some people have an auntie and their cousins and none of them are wrong or bad.
Sally feels like a boy today and wants to be called Jimmy. Sally’s parent arrives at school early to talk to the teacher and explain the situation and ask her to call Sally “Jimmy.” Class starts and Sally tells Tommy that her name is Jimmy and she’s a boy. Tommy says that’s stupid and he’s not going to play with a giiiiirrrrrllllll. Teacher tells Tommy that he doesn’t have to play, but he can’t call names either. The teacher tells the class that Sally wants to see what it’s like to be a boy today and so we are going to call Sally “Jimmy”.
Nic (896fdf) — 4/24/2022 @ 2:06 pmNic (896fdf) — 4/24/2022 @ 2:06 pm
Or, the teacher says that parents who don’t go along with their child’s desire to act like the opposite gender are evil, and that the teachers “are their parents now,” craft policies that say parents have no right to know about their child wanting to be the opposite gender and that knowledge must be “earned,” or the teacher says she’ll teach her kids to “pledge allegiance to the queers.”
Funny, when I was younger, we were warned that adults insisting “Don’t tell your parents about this, it’s our special secret” were actually quite dangerous and looking to harm us.
Factory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 4/24/2022 @ 2:21 pm@FWO@128 Yeah, that’s not really a thing that happens. The closest you might get to that is a student who has gender identity issues might also report abuse that results in a CPS report or they might report significant and immediate suicidality which results in a 5150 for mental health evaluation due to danger to self.
(the story about the pledge of allegiance to the queers is both dumb and about high school.)
However, as a student gets older (usually middle school and up) there are confidentiality rules that come into play (increasingly more and more as the student gets older) that say a child has a right to confidentiality because they are people who do have some rights independent of their parents and one of those rights is confidentiality in mental health concerns. (except under 4 specific circumstances in which legal/physical safety concerns come into play)
Nic (896fdf) — 4/24/2022 @ 2:44 pm@FWO@128 Yeah, that’s not really a thing that happens.
Yeah, it really is.
(the story about the pledge of allegiance to the queers is both dumb and about high school.)
So what? It’s still a radical leftist promoting a radical leftist agenda. That means it should be resisted.
However, as a student gets older (usually middle school and up) there are confidentiality rules that come into play (increasingly more and more as the student gets older) that say a child has a right to confidentiality because they are people who do have some rights independent of their parents and one of those rights is confidentiality in mental health concerns. (except under 4 specific circumstances in which legal/physical safety concerns come into play)
This is just circular self-justification. We give you our kids, and when you insert yourself between them and us, that makes you an adversary.
Factory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 4/24/2022 @ 2:50 pmChina’s Moon Base to Rival NASA Advances After Russia Deal
‘China will this year begin work on the next phase of its lunar program to build a base on the Moon for research, its space agency announced, a project in cooperation with Russia that will rival NASA’s own efforts to establish an orbital facility. Phase 4 of China’s program will carry out scientific examination of the Moon’s south pole with a view to constructing a research base there, state media reported.
Wu Yanhua, vice administrator of the China National Space Administration, told CGTN they hoped to survey the area and build some facilities within a decade… Russian ambassador to China Andrey Denisov told Russia’s state news agency Tass: “The Russian side is ready to cooperate with Chinese friends and it will constantly assume efforts to contribute more to the promotion of joint space exploration projects.”‘ -newsweek.com
You can’t teach an Old Joe new tricks.
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 4/24/2022 @ 3:11 pm@FWO@130 No, it isn’t really a thing that happens and if something weird occurs, it gets investigated. According to the news, it was a joke response to a comment a student made.
Hipaa applicable law:
And even that Florida law acknowledges that there are some situations in which an educator does not need to report a student’s identity or other concerns due to possible abuse. Students are people and have rights.
What do you object to in the situations I gave in 127?
Nic (896fdf) — 4/24/2022 @ 3:13 pm@124. Macron news: French President accused of ‘shining Putin’s Boots’
Emmanuel Macron has been accused of “shining Putin’s boots”, with an expert describing the French President as the “most pathetic European leader”.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1599975/emmanuel-Macron-news-French-President-Putin-russia-ukraine-war-nile-gardiner
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 4/24/2022 @ 3:16 pm@DCSCA@133 Viktor Orban.
Nic (896fdf) — 4/24/2022 @ 4:12 pm#133 Someone’s just mad because he hasn’t been allowed to shine “Mad Vlad’s” boots, recently.
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/24/2022 @ 4:25 pmMarine Le Pen, the Harold Stassen of French politics.
Rip Murdock (862eba) — 4/24/2022 @ 5:46 pmViktor Orban is a cautionary tale about not being in too big a hurry to recruit new members into NATO. Marry in haste, repent in leisure, like they say. Unreliable allies are worse than enemies.
And “Who has a Hungarian for a friend does not need an enemy” did not originate with Kurt Vonnegut. It has been around for as long as there have been Hungarians. On the other hand, not everybody is Hungarian, so like for what it’s worth.
nk (1d9030) — 4/24/2022 @ 5:51 pmI liked Marine Le Pen five years ago, but things-a change.
nk (1d9030) — 4/24/2022 @ 5:54 pmWith school finals creeping up, here’s a picture parents and teachers might find a use for.
nk (1d9030) — 4/24/2022 @ 5:59 pmWhat could possibly go wrong?
Rip Murdock (862eba) — 4/24/2022 @ 6:06 pmI thought it was obvious that I was saying I liked that bit from French in part because it did not come with his other BS found in his other recent work.
steveg (e81d76) — 4/24/2022 @ 6:06 pmMarine LePen’s party is a pit of holocaust denying vipers (and I don’t mean that in an “everyone I disagree with is fascists” way, I mean literal holocaust deniers.) Look up the Front National some time. It’s her current party, they renamed it due to the vile reputation of the Front National.
Nic (896fdf) — 4/24/2022 @ 6:08 pmRip @140. Didn’t we already do that like before there were cordless phones even? It was certainly the basis of L. Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth (1982). The aliens liked the metal sample and the map to the mine.
nk (1d9030) — 4/24/2022 @ 6:16 pmFrench, to me, looks like a wannabe Elisha. “Go to heaven, baldy” is the best response I have and I am confident this time the mama bear won’t wake up from her nap
steveg (e81d76) — 4/24/2022 @ 6:18 pm@FWO@130 No, it isn’t really a thing that happens and if something weird occurs, it gets investigated. According to the news, it was a joke response to a comment a student made.
No, the teacher was a radical left ideologue who bragged about pimping her politics to her students.
Every state has laws that allow minors to give their own consent for some kinds of health care—including emergency, general health, contraceptive, pregnancy-related, HIV or other STD, substance abuse and mental health care. (emphasis mine)
Yes, how convenient that left-wing educators can encourage students to deny biological reality in the service of their own ideology, using “mental health care” as justification.
What do you object to in the situations I gave in 127?
Nic (896fdf) — 4/24/2022 @ 3:13 pm
That your side thinks it’s entitled to shove its political agenda down everyone else’s throat without resistance.
Factory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 4/24/2022 @ 6:42 pmWarren calls McCarthy a ‘liar’ and ‘traitor’ over Jan 6 tape
But he can’t call her a “pseudo-socialist termagant” cause that ain’t no way to talk about a lady in the first place, and it’s worth more politically for his people to think that she’s a real socialist.
nk (1d9030) — 4/24/2022 @ 6:50 pmThe biggest head nod I got was French recommending to people to get away from Twitter (and other unhealthy online forums designed only to make us angry and desperate)
This is exactly why I stopped watching FNC or CNN. I want news, not rant contests. Both news networks (and probably MSNBC, although I have no data) are organized around getting people angry.
Same with many blogs. I don’t want to live inside someone else’s resentments.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 6:51 pmFactory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 4/24/2022 @ 12:54 pm
Shorter FWO:
The Left: “Grrrrr!”
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 6:54 pmFWO: “GGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!”
Not to mention that half his people would call in to tell him that she’s not from Pseudan, she’s from Somalia.
nk (1d9030) — 4/24/2022 @ 6:55 pmAnd smaller costs, as well: A hundred years ago, few would have believed you if you told them that, in 2022, obesity would be a serious problem among America’s poor.
Nor would they believe that the diet they thought to be healthy was what the poor were eating (and getting fat on), while the affluent were eating MUCH healthier food and living 20-30 years longer on average.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 7:04 pmIn #8 I posed this problem to you:
Thanks to those who responded. You helped me clarify my own thinking.
Now, here’s my answer: A mixture of 1 and 2, achieved by the use of factory-built homes, such as those by Boxabl. If they are good enough for Elon Musk, they are good enough for me.
Now, let’s consider the possibilities, with a little simple arithmetic: The unit Musk is renting costs about 50K, and includes everything. Now let’s suppose we want a larger unit for a family of four. We add two bedroom-only units at 30K each, and a bedroom/bathroom unit at 40K. So, the total cost would be 150K, which they could pay at $750 a month. If another child, or children, come along, then you could add another bedroom unit, or units.
Let’s suppose the family does well and that they get an attractive offer in another state. They could then trade in their home to the company, which could either sell it to another family in the same place, or pick it up and move it to somewhere where the demand is greater. Naturally, we would expect such used homes to sell for less than new ones.
Over time, with competition, I would expect gains from productivity, spurred by competition, to reduce the inflation-adjusted price of these homes, and an improvement in their quality.
This isn’t a fundamentally new idea; you can find some precedents in Levittown, and even more in kit homes from Sears:
Boxabl has added one clever idea: Their units have a hinge in them, so they can be shipped folded, on an ordinary truck.
As of now, I suppose that almost everwhere near our large cities, these units would be illegal, but the company is attempting to get around that by selling them as “Accessory Dwelling Units”. Which may work in some places.
Good luck to them. I think American families would be more likely to form, and more likely to have children, if such such modestly priced homes were widely available. And that wuld be good for them, and good for the community.
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/24/2022 @ 7:06 pmWhy should schools teach per-pubescent children about sex at all? What right do they have to instruct children on moral behavior if that differs from their parents traditional religious moral instruction?
The latter seems a basic 1st Amendment issue, although both of them also land squarely on the 9th amendment protections of unenumerated “rights reserved to the People”
The fact that this has become an issue should inform everyone about the ground on which is being trod. There’s a reason the Founders put these limits on government, and it should be no surprise that when government goes ahead anyway that there will be strong opposition.
This isn’t about someone “having two dads” — and anyone who says that is clueless or dishonest. This is about getting the State between the child and their parents, and substituting the State
religionbelief-system and moral judgements in place of those of the parents.If you think I’m wrong, consider how those two dads would feel if the State came and instructed their little kids that homosexuality was perverse, wrong and/or criminal. The argument “but we’re right!” doesn’t hold much water here.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 7:14 pmRip @140. Didn’t we already do that like before there were cordless phones even? It was certainly the basis of L. Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth (1982). The aliens liked the metal sample and the map to the mine.
From the article:
Think Contact.
Rip Murdock (862eba) — 4/24/2022 @ 7:16 pmYou can’t teach an Old Joe new tricks.
Joe Biden came to DC as they were shutting down Apollo and turning away from the Moon.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 7:17 pm@FWO@145 You don’t appear to have any argument other than you don’t like gay stuff or trans stuff mentioned in school regardless of how age appropriate such a mention might be. I would advise home schooling, because even if no teacher or staff member ever mentioned either gay stuff or trans stuff to students, they talk about it among themselves (the internet exists). I have never, ever brought up either subject with a student, but sometimes they want to talk with me about it.
@Kevin@148 I’m not even The Left, I’m just the mid. Most teachers range from moderate republicans to mainstream Democrat anyway. I think I only know two teachers who voted Bernie (and one of them is a former drill sergeant :P).
Nic (896fdf) — 4/24/2022 @ 7:21 pmI look forward to Nic’s response to Kevin @ 152.
Dana (5395f9) — 4/24/2022 @ 7:25 pmMarine Le Pen, the Harold Stassen of French politics.
A bit hyperbolic, as Governor Stassen never got nominated, and never came closer than 3rd in balloting. After 1952, he never came close at all. Yet he persisted.
Le Pen has the vote of more than 4 out of 10 French. No one on the Right will replace her soon, and Macron will continue to be a stooge for the establishment. I don’t see her diminishing at all. I do see her transforming further. I think it’ll be even odds next time.
As for Putin, neither candidate was covered in glory. Macron’s loan accusation was mostly a convenient charge — the French banks refused to serve her (a violation of “fair and free” election standards) and both were vague about how they viewed Russian integration into Europe. Both were probably more on Ukraine’s side than Orban or Scholz. Macron’s history with Putin is collegial.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 7:30 pmWhen Gerda Weissman met Kurt Klein, she was not looking for romance.
But she found it in Klein, who had come to rescue the remaining women in her group. She survived, he visited her in the hospital, and they slowly negotiated the bureaucratic, and personal, obstacles. (She did not understand that he had fallen in love with her for some time, until he blurted it out.)
On her passing, the Post published this happy ending story of their lives together:
May she rest in peace.
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/24/2022 @ 7:37 pmI mean literal holocaust deniers.
Now who’s abusing the word? Are you saying that 4 out of 10 french are Holocaust deniers? I think that’s wrong. Are you saying that the party Le Pen’s father started was fascist? Well, yes, it was. And the Democrat Party was founded by slave-owners who persisted in their beliefs well into living memory, but I’ll bet that you think it’s different now.
I think that it’s instructive that the press calls her “far-right” while calling the French communists “hard left.” Far is a relative word, after all.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 7:42 pm@Kevin@152
We don’t. That’s my point. The situations I mentioned in my comment @127 are the type of situations that come up regarding either sexuality or gender identity for young children. Disney teaches more about sex in “The Little Mermaid”.
If a parent has an issue with anything being taught in 7th grade family life unit, the parent has the right to sign them out of that section of the unit or the entire unit itself. A parent has a right to that for any of the school topics. We used to occasionally get those requests for the history unit on the expansion of the Islamic Caliphate unit as well, but not in probably almost 10 years.
For the schools it literally is about bullying and meanness and drama and a kindergartner having two dads and a 6th grader whose body is being weird at her and wouldn’t it be nicer if she were a boy and the 8th grade boy who wears ballet flats and the 10th grader who thinks they might like both boys and girls and the 12 grader who just flat out isn’t interested in sex and is she weird because she doesn’t want a boyfriend. Our kids in the bible study club can’t go around telling our gay kids they are going to hell and our gay kids can’t go around telling our bible study club members that they are bigotted religious freaks. Both things are Not Allowed.
The argument outside of the schools is a socio-political one, but that isn’t what we are concerned with when we are talking to 5 year olds or 12 year olds and it may be one our 16 year olds are concerned about, but we don’t teach anything in family life or health class other than that this thing exists and you can’t be mean about it.
Nic (896fdf) — 4/24/2022 @ 7:42 pmNic @155:
FWO was not just aiming at you, and his view of “the Left” may not be the same as yours.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 7:43 pmNic, that may be the reality in your school district, but it would seem that isn’t the reality everywhere. Just as there are doctrinaire Christians on a mission, there are other activists for other causes.
If, as you say, this is just an anti-bogeyman law, then what’s the issue that forces huge corporations to pick sides? It makes one believe that the bogeymen are real. If it is just BS, why the attempt to demonize those passing this meaningless law? “Don’t Say Gay!” is an obvious misrepresentation, yet it keeps coming up. When one side continues to misrepresent, why should anyone believe their other denials?
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 7:52 pmI should point out that I believe that School and State should be as separate as Church and State, for nearly identical reasons.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 7:53 pm@163 Good point, Kevin. Perhaps even more so. After all, religion is mentioned in the Constitution. I can’t think of one reference to schools.
norcal (68b459) — 4/24/2022 @ 8:05 pmThis story of the “Russian” tractor should amuse everyone. Everyone who isn’t hoping to lick Putin’s boots some time, that is.
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/24/2022 @ 8:05 pm@Kevin@159. Oh for the love of God, Kevin, it’s not even hard to find. National Rally party (formerly Front National) Jean Marie Le Pen, the founder of the party Which he led until 2011 and Marine’s father, has multiple court conviction of holocaust denial. Benoît Loeuillet, once the head of the FN in Nice until the late 2010s said that there weren’t mass deaths in the holocaust. Jean-François Jalkh, the National Front’s interim president in 2017 while Marine ran for president of France last time, and who had been the parties vice president, said the didn’t think the Nazis used zyklon b to kill jews in extermination camps. Their leadership is filled with people who used to belong to violent anti-Israel organization, people who have visited and learned from former SS officers.
Nic (896fdf) — 4/24/2022 @ 8:08 pm@Kevin@162
I’m in California. I don’t think I can believe that my school is less liberal than the schools in Pensacola FL. It’s theoretically possible, but I don’t think it’s at all likely.
Red meat gets votes from both sides and the schools are in the middle. The argument benefits both the far left and the far right and nobody loses but the schools and the students. (The “Don’t say Gay” part is the part of the law that requires school staff to notify the parents of any students struggling with sexual orientation or identity unless the staff member believes it will result in the abuse of the student. It isn’t that the staff member isn’t allowed to say gay it’s that they don’t want to the student to actually say they are gay unless they are ready for the staff member to notify their parents.)
Nic (896fdf) — 4/24/2022 @ 8:22 pm@166: I’m not disputing the history, I’m disputing your assumption that Jean-Pierre has any influence over his daughter, who has repeatedly kicked him (and his stalwarts) to the curb.
It is also not hard to find how “good liberals” like JFK voted to gut anti-lynching and voting-rights laws in the 50’s. Parties change.
If anything, Le Pen has moved her party from antisemitic to anti-immigrant. French-identity nationalism is not particularly unusual in France and inside the (undemocratic, elitist, unresponsive) EU old-style nationalism is spreading elsewhere. Britain, Czechoslovakia (oops) Czech Republic and Slovakia, Hungary, Austria. Iceland, Switzerland and Norway never joined, and Sweden doesn’t use the Euro.
The Eurocentric parties attempt to brand all others as fascists, but that does not make it so.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 8:39 pmMaybe Le Pen’s party isn’t a very good credit risk:
This article is vague, but seems to say that the party just began paying back the loan “as part of a settlement it reached in 2020”.
(Not having the gift of mind reading, I don’t know whether Le Pen’s move to more moderate positions in some areas is because she has different views from her father, or because she is more, shall we say, “pragmatic”, than he is, but I am inclined to think it is more the latter than the former.)
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/24/2022 @ 8:43 pmNot having the gift of mind reading,…
you will, however, read minds and cast aspersions that suit your biases.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 8:45 pmOK, sorry, I was in Europe during the last big Le Pen period (though it was Jean Marie, rather than his daughter at that time) and the rhetoric was really gross.
I should probably say something about European racism. There is a lot. A Lot. They don’t usually talk much about it and it looks differently than ours does, so it’s not always obvious to us. One of the reasons that so many Jews were found and killed in WWII and that it was acceptable enough to enough people that their Jewish neighbors were just kind of disappearing is that there was a hell of a lot of antisemitism across most of Europe. There’s still a hell of a lot of it today, though mostly at a low level rather than the virulent obviousness of the WWII period. There is also a lot of anti-whatever-their-colony-was-ism. In the Netherlands, frex, the Indonesians have a hard time even today getting business or military promotions. France doesn’t like their North African population much and there are a lot of stereotypes and discrimination against them. Italy is unfond of the Ethiopians in their midst. Germany got flooded with E. Europeans after the wall fell and there was a big backlash against Poles and Hungarian and Romanians. Nobody likes the Romani tribes. England has, over the years, had a lot of discrimination against Indians, Pakistanis, and E. Asians, though I’m told it’s better than it used to be.
Most of the time it’s at the level of being vaguely unhappy about people “not like us” so no, I don’t think 40% of the French population are holocaust deniers, however I would guess that probably 40% of almost any country in Europe has at least some unhappyiness with people “not like us” (like us being people with hundreds of years of ancestry from their own state/province/county/local administrative area and maybe extending to most of their own country, but only maybe) and a willingness to vote on that.
Nic (896fdf) — 4/24/2022 @ 8:48 pmJoe Biden came to DC as they were shutting down Apollo and turning away from the Moon.
Old fart Joe was elected a month before the final Apollo moon landing, but was in the U.S. Senate for the Apollo Applications program – aka Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz flight in 1975 -and had to take votes on the development of the shuttle. Squinty McStumblebum represented Delaware– not exactly a huge, powerhouse state, but it is home to one very special firm vital to America’s space program:
‘ILC Dover, LP is a special engineering development and manufacturing company, globally headquartered in Newark, Delaware. ILC Dover specializes in the use of high-performance flexible materials, serving the aerospace, personal protection, and pharmaceutical industries. Best known for making space suits for NASA, ILC Dover outfitted every United States astronaut in the Apollo program, including the twelve that walked on the moon. ILC also designed and manufactured the Space Suit Assembly portion of the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU), worn by astronauts during performance of extra-vehicular activity (EVA) on Space Shuttle missions and on the International Space Station.’
In April 1972, it was projected by NASA managers that a RTM would take 15 years– that is, by 1987. It is now April, 2022–no thanks to Ol’Delaware Joe; the master of mediocrity made no push to support any subsequent lunar program; he is a follower; not a leader. And today, his VP, head of the Space Council, feckless.
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 4/24/2022 @ 8:51 pm@140/@153What could possibly go wrong?… Signals from radio and television broadcasts have already seeped beyond our planet over the last century or so, Dr. Werthimer said, though he doesn’t consider those signals the same as actively transmitting messages intended for aliens.
Noisy neighbors tend to let you know they’re there. But it’s a little late to ‘worry’ in 2022. Radio and TV signals from Planet Earth have been zipping across space since broadcasting began [but you’d be surprised how small a distance they’ve travelled in century even at the speed of light given the size of just our little corner of the Universe: — https://www.planetary.org/articles/3390 ]. Reception depends on the intergalactic rabbit ears at the other end, too. No doubt a pale, grey, monochromatic Milton Berle in drag and a grape-stomping Lucille Ball is a curious life form to behold- and Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds’ Halloween caper shows Earthlings to be EZ-pickings, too. And if you’ve seen Sagan’s ‘Contact’– a drab yet dapperly dressed man in uniform with a moustache opening the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936 is certain to be an attention grabber.
‘On November 16, 1974, the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico [now decommissioned] was used to send the most powerful broadcast ever deliberately sent into space, with the intention of contacting alien life. The broadcast formed part of the ceremonies held to mark a major upgrade to the radio telescope. Some applauded this event as a mind-expanding attempt to remind people in 1974 that Earth is likely not the only planet where an intelligent civilization has evolved. At the time, others expressed concern. They felt we shouldn’t be attempting to reveal Earth’s location in space to unknown alien civilizations.
Designed by Cornell astronomy professor Frank Drake with input from other scientists including Carl Sagan, the broadcast itself was simple and elegant. It consisted of a pattern of binary numbers. This message contained information about the basic chemicals of life, the structure of DNA, Earth’s place in our solar system and even a stick figure of a human. It took three minutes to send 1,679 bits of information, a snail’s pace compared to modern computer modems. The 1974 signal went out in the direction of M13, a globular star cluster orbiting the center of our Milky Way galaxy. It was chosen mainly because it’s a large collection of stars that was available in the sky at the time and place of the ceremony. Globular star clusters are very far away. M13 is about 23,000 light-years from Earth. The 1974 signal is now 48 light-years away from us.
https://earthsky.org/space/this-date-in-science-first-radio-signal-beamed-to-space/
But by far the best messaging on this remains the sights and sounds record affixed to the Voyager 1 & 2 spacecraft, both launched in 1977— and the superbly hilarious take on it by Steve Martin and the cast at Saturday Night Live in ’78:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwCidO_xJRw
“Send more Chuck Berry!”
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 4/24/2022 @ 9:30 pmnic,
I’ve spent some time in Europe and the UK, and I don’t doubt that you’re right. The French are terrible with people who aren’t French and even Macron’s people treat the Muslims badly. I remember once in England where my Irish last name got someone trying to blame me for the IRA. The Japanese are pretty bad here, too, so it’s not just Europe.
If I had to guess at a principle, I’d say that many people are cultural chauvinists. Even here in the good ol’ USA.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 11:24 pmAnd today, his VP, head of the Space Council, feckless.
Jerry Pournelle said once that the only decent VP on the Space Council (at least since LBJ) was Dan Quayle.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 11:27 pmNoisy neighbors tend to let you know they’re there. But it’s a little late to ‘worry’ in 2022. Radio and TV signals from Planet Earth have been zipping across space since broadcasting began [but you’d be surprised how small a distance they’ve travelled in century even at the speed of light given the size of just our little corner of the Universe
Inverse square law says “So what?!”
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/24/2022 @ 11:29 pm‘The End of Astronauts’ Review: One Small Step for Robots
Everyone loves astronauts. Whether actual or fictional—Buzz Aldrin or Buzz Lightyear—astronauts embody what most of us see as the best and bravest aspects of humankind. So you have to admire the mettle of authors Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees who argue that, in almost all cases, space exploration is too important to leave to fallible, vulnerable human beings. Robots, they write, “can go boldly where humans rightly fear to tread.”
……….. In “The End of Astronauts: Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration,” they challenge the three most commonly cited rationales for putting humans in space.
First is the assertion that “humans in space can do more, and more efficiently, than robots can.” …….. The second and third rationales have less to do with efficiency than with “aspiration and inspiration.” To wit: “Humans must satisfy their impulse to explore new frontiers,” and “Humans in space add to our understanding of the cosmos and ourselves.” As scientists, the authors don’t have much patience for arguments based on vague impulses. They are cool to the idea that colonizing space has much intrinsic value to humanity, at least in the near term.
They are more open to the idea that spaceflight might aid in deepening our understanding of the human species. But to what end? After all, they write, sending humans on a long, arduous journey to Mars might end up teaching us little more than that humans can survive a long, arduous journey to Mars. In terms of hard science, they argue, almost anything humans can do, robots can do faster, cheaper and—increasingly—better. ………
…………
While we civilians might thrill to the thought of human footprints on a distant orb, astronomers care more about getting data they can work with. So, at its heart, “The End of Astronauts” is an argument about return on investment: For the cost of a single human expedition to Mars, the authors point out, NASA could launch dozens of uncrewed missions. Robotic probes will have even bigger cost advantages when it comes to more distant space missions, such as looking for exotic lifeforms on the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. ……..
………. The authors note the new boom in space entrepreneurship. And they credit (Elon) Musk with helping NASA slash the costs of putting cargo and people in orbit. But they can’t help being a bit dismissive of “wealthy individuals whose past history might have led them to believe that they can overcome anything.” And they worry about the new space barons mucking up the heavens. Careless explorers might pollute Mars with earthly microorganisms, for example.
Rip Murdock (862eba) — 4/25/2022 @ 7:38 am………..
In the days when budgets for space exploration were strictly limited by what taxpayers would bear, it made sense to intensely focus on getting the biggest scientific bang for our federal buck. “The End of Astronauts” makes a solid case that robots win that debate almost every time. But those days are ending. ……….
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/22/2022 @ 3:38 pm
Isaac Asimov also wrote “The Caves of Steel” where people lived indoors, and he also had a character named Wendell Urth, a detective who never went anywhere, and who was based on Nero Wolfe.
When I read :”The Martian Way” in 1970 I was reminded of McCarthyism, which I had managed to find out about, and indeed Isaac Asimov wrote in a book I read later (in “Opus 100” I think) that that was exactly what he had in mind, although nobody noticed. Today people would see it as a parody on environmentalism or sustainability.
Sammy Finkelman (bfe3de) — 4/25/2022 @ 8:10 amA description of the perverse economics that raises the cost of insulin to impossible to meet prices for some people:
There seems to be a problem with the web page,
https://fortune.com/longform/insulin-cost-diabetes-treatment/
Sammy Finkelman (bfe3de) — 4/25/2022 @ 8:15 amWhat this means is that the Russian military have been told not to stop at least until they occupy Odessa. It’s like Germany in 1914. Their first offensive having failed, they didn’t seek peace.
President Biden is drifting into a strategy of prolonging the war, because he is afraid both of defeat and victory, and by victory he doesn’t mean occupying Moscow but just chasing the Russian army completely out of Ukraine or the part of Ukraine it did not control on February 23, 2022. Biden is afraid of escalation, Maybe Zelensky in his meeting with Blinken and Austin changed some minds – or rather came up with some arguments to pass on, since Biden is probably alone in this. Putin is clearly afraid of escalation since he is careful to avoid crossing anything that could be a red line for NATO, The Russian idea of Escalate to de-escalate is a stupid and risky doctrine and Putin knows it.
Sammy Finkelman (bfe3de) — 4/25/2022 @ 8:28 am“The California Republican Party endorsed state Sen. Brian Dahle for governor on Sunday…..”
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 4/25/2022 @ 9:02 amWho? Throwing in the towel pretty early by endorsing someone from rural Northern California with absolutely no name recognition.
President Biden is drifting into a strategy of prolonging the war, because he is afraid both of defeat and victory, and by victory he doesn’t mean occupying Moscow but just chasing the Russian army completely out of Ukraine or the part of Ukraine it did not control on February 23, 2022.
Source
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 4/25/2022 @ 9:26 am@174. I remember once in England where my Irish last name got someone trying to blame me for the IRA.
Hell, I remember literally being “arrested’ w/some school chums under suspicion as IRA bombers there. They were pretty touchy ’bout ‘The Troubles.’
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 4/25/2022 @ 9:50 am@177. Rubbish.
“People have always gone where they have been able to go.” – Michael Collins, CMP, Apollo 11
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 4/25/2022 @ 9:51 am#181 ‘. . . candidate Rachel Hamm told delegates on Saturday that despite what they may have heard, she was not a “Satanic witch.”’
That’s good to hear — though it does leave open the possibility that she is some other kind of witch.
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/25/2022 @ 9:59 amRip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 4/25/2022 @ 9:02 am
The California Republican Party now probably mainly exists as an organization to provide income or consumption (of dinners say) to some of its members, either in the form of campaign spending or whatever patronage they can dispense.
The endorsement probably doesn’t mean much, since there is a jungle peimary there.
Sammy Finkelman (bfe3de) — 4/25/2022 @ 10:29 amSad!
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 4/25/2022 @ 10:43 amWho? Throwing in the towel pretty early by endorsing someone from rural Northern California with absolutely no name recognition.
Absolutely no negatives, either. Anyway, this is a rebuilding year, not a pennant year.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/25/2022 @ 10:46 amEvery year is a rebuilding year for California Republicans. They were trounced when Gov. Newsom was elected and trounced again in the recall. The California Republican party has no base to build on. The party holds 10 out of 53 US House seats; zero out of 2 US Senate seats (last (appointed) Republican held a Senate seat in 1992, lost in special election); zero out of 8 statewide elected offices (no Republican elected since 2006); 1 out of 5 Board of Equalization seats (in the minority since 1970); 9 out of 40 State Senate seats (in the minority since 1970); and 19 out of 80 State Assembly seats (in the minority since 1996). Three mayors in California’s ten largest cities (Fresno, Bakersfield, and Anaheim) are Republicans. Source
Even Rick Caruso, a Republican under any definition, changed his registration to Democrat in his current run for Los Angeles Mayor.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 4/25/2022 @ 11:19 amYoung minorities in ca. hate republicans and love AOC. Latinx are the fastest growing population in ca. In az 100 latinx turn voting age every day and hate republicans even more then in ca.
asset (fedf25) — 4/25/2022 @ 12:05 pm179. The problem was only with one computer or browser.
https://fortune.com/longform/insulin-cost-diabetes-treatment
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 4/25/2022 @ 1:38 pmNot only is China counting Covid deaths differently (only where Covid was said to be the cause of death) and never released statistics on excess deaths, it wasn’t being honest and at one point they were reporting just 17 deaths from Covid in Shanghai (and that probably only because reporting 0 would be implausible.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/20/world/asia/covid-shanghai-china-deaths.html
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 4/25/2022 @ 1:43 pm187. Could be there’s some top secret help from the United States or the United Kingdom.
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 4/25/2022 @ 1:45 pm187. Could be there’s some top secret help from the United States or the United Kingdom.
Again Occam’s Razor suggests that it was a Ukrainian attack.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 4/25/2022 @ 2:26 pmFrom Powerline: The college admissions sausage factory
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/04/the-college-admissions-sausage-factory.php#disqus_thread
Not Bismarck.
It claims there is legislative pressure, there is the Ford Foundation and there are accrediting agencies.
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 4/25/2022 @ 2:39 pmThe party holds 10 out of 53 US House seats
This will drop down to about 4 as the result of the new gerrymander.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/25/2022 @ 3:08 pmAJ Liberty
Thanks for your reply earlier.
steveg (e81d76) — 4/25/2022 @ 5:09 pmI wasn’t trying to be dismissive of you personally and appreciate you took the time.
Chrissy Wallace/da View/2024
mg (8cbc69) — 4/25/2022 @ 7:47 pmWhere is the social and humanitarian consideration for our own people. The American people?
The Ukraine gubmint request/demand is just so matter-of-factly stated as if it’s just another day in the life of a group of people who have no concept they are discussing the distribution of your earnings. They don’t even have the mental association or reference point for who and what the golden goose is that creates the baseline for them to even talk about it.
The American taxpayer is reduced to some weird, disconnected entity that was scraped from their loafer as they entered the boardroom.
At gas stations across the nation, people in real economic pain, psychologically draining and worrying anxiety, are pulling out thirty bucks to put a few gallons of gas to get them to their job where what?….
…Where they are expected to use their calloused hands to generate the payments for Ukrainian government officials to spend on their “social responsibilities of the state?”… Think about that the next time we set down the hamburger meat at the supermarket because it costs too much, or we try and figure out how to make the kids shoes last just a few months longer.
The level of rage this geopolitical disconnect is creating is entirely unsustainable.
Americans generally do not like being angry, we are the most charitable and kind people in the history of all assembled nations on this planet, but this level of being taken for granted needs to come to an end, in a hurry.
mg (8cbc69) — 4/25/2022 @ 8:00 pmYou speak for yourself. Americans generally aren’t angry, much less rageful at Ukraine. Neither do they feel taken for granted by Ukraine. If anything they favor our doing even more to support Ukraine’s defense against Putin’s genocidal aggression.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 4/25/2022 @ 10:09 pmThere’s a reason you America Firsters should care about Ukraine, and it’s because the Xi regime is watching. The Republic of China on Taiwan has the electrical components we need for our high-tech industry. That, and US policy is to generally support democratic countries as they are natural allies.
Paul Montagu (5de684) — 4/25/2022 @ 11:28 pmBoys and girls, I would be the neighbor you could count on. Need food, need water, need help, my family is there for you.
mg (8cbc69) — 4/26/2022 @ 2:47 amHow many billions should we print for the ukrainian gubmint? Why don’t you and lurker fund the fiasco, Paul Montagu?
mg (8cbc69) — 4/26/2022 @ 2:55 amBleeding America as we wait for elections.
mg (8cbc69) — 4/26/2022 @ 3:14 am81 million voted for the money presses to operate 24-7-365.
mg (8cbc69) — 4/26/2022 @ 3:16 amCommies.
FWO: “If the other side’s priority is to manipulate grade-school kids in to questioning the biological reality of their gender”
First, I don’t see the “other side” as a monolith. That seems to be the rhetoric of the propagandist that needs everything to be black and white to foment outrage. We see the same thing with CRT where precisely everything or nothing is CRT, depending on the ideologue’s perspective. Most people are rational and there is a healthy spectrum of opinions.
Second, how many families would identify transgender indoctrination as a serious concern at their local school? Maybe I’m blithely ignorant, but I know of no one that is struggling against the liberal educational complex on this issue. Sure, those that are naturally skeptical of the public school environment already home school or send their kids to Catholic schools, but this is not a raging controversy in my area. That doesn’t mean that it never happens anywhere or that it’s not aggravating for those that question the appropriateness of school policies related to sexuality, it’s just that my perception is that most people are far more reasonable than you suggest and that conflating exceedingly rare situations into a national outrage misses the mark.
Third, this is a quintessential local issue that parents should monitor and question. Again, most parents are NOT liberal hippie ideologues that are eager to over-sexualize their 8 year olds. Can I imagine a Berkeley or Boulder enclave where the number of activists is higher? Sure, but to say that parents have no say or political power ignores that the San Fran school board just got recalled. If your local parents are not persuaded that the problem is significant, then vote with your feet. Choose another schooling option or move to a new district that has different policies.
FWO: “Your path has failed for 50 years, and the proof is in the current state of academia, the corporate boardroom, and mass media.”
Again, I reject the monolith characterization, as if conservatives have absolutely no venues to hear conservative ideas or see them in practice across society. If you want more conservative movies, then go make them or encourage others to do so. If “my path” is being civil, reasonable, and tolerant in a pluralistic society…with a government of limited powers….with explicit checks and balances and a federalist structure….with explicit rights for the political minorities, then so be it. I don’t want us to get seduced into authoritarianism, where corruption is used to bludgeon the unpopular thinkers. We’re not Hungary…and nor should we aspire to it.
AJ_Liberty (3cb02f) — 4/26/2022 @ 4:14 amWe already have billions available from Biden’s Afghanistan Surrender Dividend, mg, but I note your side-stepping wrt the Xi regime.
Paul Montagu (5de684) — 4/26/2022 @ 6:29 ambut this level of being taken for granted needs to come to an end, in a hurry.
Yeah, those Ukrainians got it so good, milking us for billions for this phony war! Why, hardly one out of a hundred was raped and murdered last week!
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/26/2022 @ 7:24 amHere’s a good story on the anatomy of the backfilling of Trump’s Big Lie, emphasis on story because of all the tall tales about electoral fraud, and it’s a story that won’t die because Trump and his supplicants like Perdue won’t let it.
Paul Montagu (5de684) — 4/26/2022 @ 7:42 amFifth columns take many forms and “America First” is not even particularly original. They were Hitler’s bumboys, publicly, before Pearl Harbor sunk them.
nk (1d9030) — 4/26/2022 @ 8:03 am81 million voted for the money presses to operate 24-7-365.
Commies.
mg (8cbc69) — 4/26/2022 @ 3:16 am
Yeah, Donald Trump, deficit hawk.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 4/26/2022 @ 9:21 amThis is classic. Israeli Jews are joining Ukrainian “Nazis” to fight against the Russian fascists.
Paul Montagu (5de684) — 4/26/2022 @ 9:27 amThis is classic. Israeli Jews are joining Ukrainian “Nazis” to fight against the Russian fascists.
Sadly, their country is doing the opposite.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/26/2022 @ 9:34 amTrump blames deaths in Ukraine war on ‘rigged election’ in the US: ‘It’s a shame all those people are dead’
Former President Donald Trump has again touted baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen, this time blaming the “rigged election” for the number of war dead in Ukraine.
“It’s a shame all those people are dead, all because of a rigged election,” said Trump during an interview with British TV host Piers Morgan that aired on Monday. “Because if our election wasn’t rigged, you would’ve had nobody dead.”
………
Asked by Morgan about what he would do in Ukraine if he were president, Trump said he would emphasize that the US has “better weapons” than Russia.
“I would say, ‘We have far more than you do, far more powerful than you, and you can’t use that word ever again. You cannot use the nuclear word ever again. And if you do, we’re gonna have problems,'” he added.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 4/26/2022 @ 9:56 am………
Trump also lamented that Ukraine was a “country that was working” despite having “lots of problems.” “And people were happy. I guess a lot of them were happy because they’re certainly fighting for it,” he said.
………
I think we should cut a deal with Putin. Ukraine goes free and they can have Trump.
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/26/2022 @ 1:12 pm#215 – Actually, Russia has far more tactical nukes than we do, and slightly more strategic nukes:
We really need to choose presidents who are able and willing to listen to military briefings — and understand them.
Though Biden is no genius in such matters, he is better than Obama, and way better than Trump, as that quote shows.
Jim Miller (406a93) — 4/26/2022 @ 1:46 pmWith a serious drug epidemic running across the country for a decade killing our young, you people want me to worry about other schiff bum countries. You people don’t get it. China Russia China Russia Mueller.
mg (8cbc69) — 4/26/2022 @ 2:28 pm#215 – Actually, Russia has far more tactical nukes than we do, and slightly more strategic nukes
I have pointed this out in several posts here. I still predict that if Putin is danger of a complete loss, he may use one or two as demonstrations to cow NATO and Ukraine.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 4/26/2022 @ 2:30 pmhttps://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/04/26/joe-bidens-unexplained-income-starts-to-connect-the-dots-to-his-degenerate-son-n556356
mg (8cbc69) — 4/26/2022 @ 3:01 pmNo issues here at home for the flock of 81 million.
Why cant we stay at home fix our problems and keep the crimaleins from crossing our borders with drugs? And letting them vote with you people.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/04/philosophizing-disgrace.php
mg (8cbc69) — 4/26/2022 @ 3:09 pmwhen will people be held accountable?
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-gas-storage-emptied-by-exports-europe-asia-kemp-2022-04-08/
mg (8cbc69) — 4/26/2022 @ 3:13 pm81 million……
no gas
mg (8cbc69) — 4/26/2022 @ 3:16 pmno food
nothing you need
acapulco gold is bad as- weed
Actually, Russia has far more tactical nukes than we do, and slightly more strategic nukes:
Of 1980s vintage. They fell for Reagan’s SDI and neutron bomb bluffs, and it was one reason they went bankrupt. Meantime, we build the Patriot and the Iron Dome.
Now, with the help of the pro-pedophile America First crowd (Hello, Congressman Gaetz, getting any?), Putin is trying to peddle his hypersonic missile fairy tale to us, so that we make the same mistake the Soviets made.
nk (1d9030) — 4/26/2022 @ 3:39 pm220. From RedState:
That is not accurate. Joe Biden never picked up the keys. I think Hunter Biden was lying to the Chinese about his father’s involvement. Then the Chinese businessman got purged and his company was destroyed.
As far as we know, nothing substantive was discussed. Hunter was playing a scam ion his father and the Chinese. Both.
The most Jow Biden ever did was sign a letter of recommendation for admission of both a son and daughter of some Chinese person to two colleges. As could have been predicted it had no effect.
He seems to have paid Hunter Biden’s legal fees – throughout. That looks like support. Joe Biden got a lot of money after he left office – but probably not from any of Hunter’s dealings. With all the money he could get from book deals and speaking engagements and other things from U.S. sources, why would he want that?
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 4/26/2022 @ 3:53 pmJim Miller (406a93) — 4/26/2022 @ 1:46 pm
Oh, Trump was probably lying – and could have lied to the Russians (it wouldn’t matter if the Russians thought it was a lie) – about having more nukes than they did. It would cause Putin to wonder. This was an echo of what he replied to North Korean dictator Kim JOng Un about having abigger button than he did.
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 4/26/2022 @ 3:57 pmHunter, Hunter, Hunter! The losers’ mantra.
While they ignore that what Natalia Veselnitskaya tried to bribe Donald Trump Jr. with, at the Trump Tower meeting in 2016, in the presence of Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, was Russian children.
nk (1d9030) — 4/26/2022 @ 3:59 pm215. Between one quarter and one third of what Trump says is a lie. He always has to claim he really won the election, and that he would do/would have done a better job than Joe Biden – and always gives answers. But he tries (too hard) to give good answers (why not?)
So here’s his thought:
https://nypost.com/2022/04/25/trump-blasts-putins-use-of-the-n-word-on-piers-morgans-new-show
Not bad.
Notice he leaves the “or else” vague. Of course Trump has probably been hearing from numerous people that Putin is using the nuclear threat or hint because people indicate they are afraid of that.
But Putin was careful not to bomb the train stations until Blinken and Austin had left Ukraine. He’s not taking any chances of hitting them.
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 4/26/2022 @ 4:04 pmOf 1980s vintage……..
Not necessarily true.
Source: Russia’s Nuclear Weapons: Doctrine, Forces, and Modernization CRS Report R45861
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 4/26/2022 @ 4:05 pmFootnotes omitted.
https://theaspenbeat.com
mg (8cbc69) — 4/26/2022 @ 4:46 pmSo true.
I still predict that if Putin is danger of a complete loss, he may use one or two as demonstrations to cow Russia.
FIFY
Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 4/26/2022 @ 5:56 pmI already am. As is Paul Montagu. As are, I’m delighted to say, you. If you don’t like it, maybe declare yourself a sovereign citizen and refuse to pay your taxes. I have plenty of popcorn.
Lol. Thanks to you this word is now meaningless. Well done.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 4/26/2022 @ 6:24 pmPony up some more, man. Be a hero, empty your bank account citizen lurker.
mg (8cbc69) — 4/26/2022 @ 6:41 pmA victory garden is what you 81 million need.
It’s interesting to try to puzzle out circumstances in which Putin would halt the war.
Sammy Finkelman (bfe3de) — 4/26/2022 @ 6:48 pmWhat I do privately to help Putin’s victims is of course my business. As for military assistance, I’m happy to share that burden with my fellow taxpaying citizens, even those who resent their part.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 4/26/2022 @ 7:42 pmIt’s interesting to try to puzzle out circumstances in which Putin would halt the war.
More and more people are saying he has Parkinson’s. The fate of Sennacherib if his cohorts consider him weak enough, or of Herod Agrippa if the disease progresses fast enough.
nk (1d9030) — 4/26/2022 @ 8:09 pmFix America First, citizen lurker.
mg (8cbc69) — 4/27/2022 @ 12:35 amNext thing NATO countries will be emptying their museums and sending Ukraine trebuchets and suits of armor.
mg (8cbc69) — 4/27/2022 @ 12:45 amGermany to send sauerkraut.
Most Americans aren’t that selfish. We’re willing to spend a few bucks helping a democracy defend itself from the predations of a genocidal dictator, even while our own country has problems to work out.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 4/27/2022 @ 1:54 amFixing America first. Should be the Republicans election motto. It will never happen with dolts like McConnell and Luntzes dunce Kevy at the helm.
mg (8cbc69) — 4/27/2022 @ 3:46 amhttps://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/04/dont_be_afraid_to_call_it_grooming.html
mg (8cbc69) — 4/27/2022 @ 3:46 amAbolish the NEA.
CBS news poll…….
mg (8cbc69) — 4/27/2022 @ 3:52 ama few bucks?
Afghanistan- how did that work out. Our military needs new leadership. Going to war means kicking azz and WINNING. Not fleeing with ones head between his azz.
mg (8cbc69) — 4/27/2022 @ 4:00 amAmong the the ironies of you calling everyone who disagrees with you a Commie is that the real Commies are a pillar of the far-left far-right coalition that shares your SCR*W UKRAINE!!! sentiment. Center, center-right, and center-left Americans overwhelmingly understand that supporting Ukraine is required by both our values and our interests.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 4/27/2022 @ 4:02 amAnother great moment in Russian Propaganda
https://twitter.com/i/status/1518916591299309569
“Russian state TV says it has discovered an “organisation of gays and lesbians” in a building in Mariupol where Ukrainian “nationalist battalions” had been based
It was apparently “funded by USAID” and “virtually under the patronage of the US President and Congress”
steveg (e81d76) — 4/27/2022 @ 8:15 amGermany to Send Heavy Weapons to Ukraine Following Allied Pressure
………
Antiaircraft cannon tanks known as Flakpanzer Gepard, or Cheetah, that have been decommissioned by the German armed forces will now be refurbished and sent to Ukraine, Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said Tuesday.
Germany will provide about 50 of the German-made self-propelled guns in what will mark a major delivery of non-Soviet weapons systems by a Western country to Ukraine, two government officials said.
………
While several European allies have pledged to send Soviet-era armored vehicles to Ukraine, this would be one of the first examples of a country providing Western-made equipment.
………
The Gepard self-propelled antiaircraft cannons were removed from service more than a decade ago and are now stored by their manufacturer, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann GmbH, a German company military experts say makes some of the most advanced tanks in the world.
………
“Our tanks are in good shape, and they can be delivered very, very quickly,” a KMW spokesman said.
……..
“The Gepard is a very efficient system…but it is also one of the most complex ones, with two radar devices,” said Gustav Gressel, a military expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations.
This complexity means providing training and maintenance logistics to enable the Ukrainians to effectively use the Gepards would take longer, but they would ultimately be very useful in what is shaping up to be a prolonged conflict, Mr. Gressel said.
In addition, he said, the decision to allow the export of the Gepards could pave the way for further transfers of German heavy arms to Ukraine because it does away with Berlin’s previous objections.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 4/27/2022 @ 9:16 am………
(German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s) continued resistance threatened to destabilize the coalition after the opposition Conservatives said they would request a parliamentary vote in favor of sending heavy weapons to Ukraine—an initiative some coalition members hinted they might support.
……….
Securing our drug infested border is more important to our survival as a nation than throwing billions at another biden blunder brought to us by 81 million.
mg (8cbc69) — 4/27/2022 @ 9:41 amThey;v stopped talking about fentanyl in connection with the border in the last couple of days. It’s an organized campaign and this angle has been dropped. I suspect because there’s some rebuttal to the claim that that’s making that worse.
Probably because either it has no connection with the migrants, or they’re prioritizing migrants over drugs – chasing migrants rather than what that is distracting them from.
As I read a WSJ editorial yesterday, the remain in Mexico policy has nothing to do with Covid.
Sammy Finkelman (bfe3de) — 4/27/2022 @ 12:47 pmTwo hundredth birthday if U,S. Grant today.
Sammy Finkelman (bfe3de) — 4/27/2022 @ 12:50 pmYesterday was the 200th anniversary of Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of Central Park and numerous other public parks across the country.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 4/27/2022 @ 1:58 pmFalse choice. The $2 billion we’ve committed to Ukraine assistance is around .03% of annual federal spending. If you think that expenditure is why the southern border is porous, I can’t help you.
Enjoy your alliance with the actual Commies.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 4/27/2022 @ 5:02 pmMediocre moments in Russian propaganda
https://twitter.com/i/status/1519363697583525890
At the end of the two minute video, you can see the Z painted on the tank that is portrayed as captured from the Ukrainians… I say mediocre because it may actually be a tank that has changed hands a few times, but both sides probably act quickly after capture to paint over or re-badge equipment to avoid fratricide.
steveg (e81d76) — 4/27/2022 @ 6:21 pmnk
I get “what about Hunter”, but you’ve got to admit that sending a text to your brothers widow/paramour “GET TESTED FOR HIV IMMEDIATELY” belongs in the Trainwreck Hall of Fame of First Family texts.
steveg (e81d76) — 4/27/2022 @ 6:31 pmGreat moments of Russian media;
Notes that in the ever more likely (in their view) event of nuclear war, Russians would all go to heaven and we’d all “croak”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1519754376256139264
Somehow I think they wanted to scare me… but I was laughing too hard
steveg (7a27c0) — 4/28/2022 @ 1:48 pmIt’s a lot less than World War III – Predident Biden has so far deliberately not sanctioned Vladimir Putin’s youngest mistress, the gymnast. They deliberately kept her off the sanctions list.
https://nypost.com/2022/04/25/why-putins-alleged-lover-alina-kabaeva-hasnt-been-sanctioned
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 4/28/2022 @ 2:33 pmAbout HIV — there’s fake anti-HIV medicine — and of all things the pharmaceutical company went into civil court!
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/jj-sues-block-sales-dangerous-counterfeit-hiv-drugs-2022-04-26
The supply chain is not secure. Not just with this, probably.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1544319120302296
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 4/28/2022 @ 2:38 pmRip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 4/27/2022 @ 1:58 pm
And then there was someone born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln. When southerners read his book, it may have made them more opposed to ending slavery.
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 4/28/2022 @ 2:40 pmOldest certified person died at 119, after about 3 years of being the oldest person in the world
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 4/28/2022 @ 2:50 pmhttps://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/28/the-books-of-jacob-defenestrate-civil-rights-queen-and-the-naked-dont-fear-the-water
This is not why governments were instituted.
https://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document
If it wasn’t self evident, and contrary t all history before about 1880 or even 1914, you wouldn’t have so many ordinary people trying to break the law.
Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 4/28/2022 @ 4:15 pmPower Line blog guest poster on the exceeding level of Kamala Harris’ incomeptence:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/04/thoughts-from-the-ammo-line-425.php
According to her, Kamala Harris spoke about “land mines” in West Virginia (although that may have been a poor choice of words)
Sammy Finkelman (b434ee) — 4/29/2022 @ 7:06 am