O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?...[T]hanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Header Image (book)
Sunday, April 17, 2022
Resurrection Day 2022
(For politics, please scroll down)
From Messiah, oratorio composed by George F. Handel (text):
Saturday, April 16, 2022
Holy Saturday 2022
(For politics, please scroll down)
Good Saturday, while our Lord lay in the tomb, should be a day of meditation. We should, most of all, contemplate our need for a Savior.
Isaiah 53:6, KJV:
From George F. Handel's Messiah (Isaiah 53:6, KJV)
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned every one to his own way;
and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
we have turned every one to his own way;
and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Friday, April 15, 2022
Monday, April 11, 2022
Unhinged Teachers
See the two relatively-mild examples embedded below:
Teachers are DESPERATE to talk to little kids about sex. It’s a disorder pic.twitter.com/6lWzpdWhBy
— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) March 27, 2022
Narcissistic Florida 1st grade teacher has breakdown over the thought of not being able to talk about her marriage pic.twitter.com/EZkG80z59U
— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) March 31, 2022
The madness is not limited to matters of "gender identity":
INSANE: Multiple parents have come forward with information on @WaunakeeCSD’s “furry protocol.” The school reportedly lets students identify and act like furries.
— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) April 1, 2022
I called the school and they immediately got hostile and refused to answer if they indeed have a furry policy. pic.twitter.com/x4BRsPpRqX
Child abuse in the name of "education"! Malpractice of education!
Sunday, April 10, 2022
Musical Interlude
(For politics, please scroll down)
Long-playing audio of serenity, desperately needed in today's world:
Index for the above:
0:00:00 J.S. Bach - Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068: II. Air 0:04:17 Brahms - Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90: III. Poco allegretto 0:10:17 Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor “Pathétique”: II Agagio cantabile 0:15:04 Marcello - Oboe Concerto in D Minor: II. Adagio 0:18:56 Ravel - Piano Concerto in G Major: II. Adagio Assai 0:28:15 Beethoven - Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68 “Pastoral”: II Andante molto mosso (Szene am Bach) 0:40:56 Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37: II. Largo 0:53:40 Brahms - Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77: II. Adagio 1:03:23 Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 12 in C-Sharp Minor “Moonlight”: I. Adagio sostenuto 1:09:06 Grieg - Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46: I. Morning Mood 1:13:18 Chopin - Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor Op.11: II. Romance. Larghetto 1:24:05 Fauré - Élégie, Op. 24 1:30:34 Mahler - Symphony No. 5: IV. Adagietto. sehr langsam 1:38:51 Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467: II. Andante "Elvira Madigan" 1:44:54 Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18: II. Adagio sostenuto 1:56:01 Mozart- Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra in A Major, K. 622: II. Adagio 2:03:21 Schubert - Symphony No. 5 in B-Flat Major, D. 485: II. Andante con moto 2:14:10 Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major K. 488: II. Andante 2:20:30 Tchaikovsky - Serenade for Strings, Op. 48: III. Élégie. Larghetto elegiac
Friday, April 8, 2022
Thursday, April 7, 2022
Political Snuff Porn
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| Silverfiddle Rant! |
"The Florida Congressman may one day be indicted and convicted. For now, this episode highlights the dangers and abuses of trying a person through media leaks."
I plead guilty to thinking Gaetz was all but convicted of child sex trafficking and drug use. The New York Times said so! I scoffed at Gaetz's claims that it was all part of an extortion scheme aimed at him and his parents.
Did you know this?
"A Florida developer and convicted felon “was arrested on a charge that he tried to extort $25 million from the father of Rep. Matt Gaetz in exchange for a presidential pardon that would shut down a high-profile, criminal sex-trafficking investigation into the Republican congressman.” In November, that developer, Stephen Alford, pled guilty to trying to extort $25 million from Rep. Gaetz and his family.In other words, the only component of this story that has thus far been confirmed — a full year after the NYT first trumpeted it — is the part of Gaetz's denial where he insisted that all this arose from an extortion attempt." (Glenn Greenwald)
Yes, "The Right" does it too...
Hunter Biden has not been charged with anything. Rightwing outlets dishing catty church lady gossip about his drug addiction and sad behavior--complete with cringy, voyeuristic pictures--are no less guilty than the mainstream Democrat sewage geysers.
Feeding the Addiction...
It's all purposely provocative and salacious, delivering a giddy limbic sugar high combo of sin and political ideology, today's sick version of snuff porn.
So, we have a humongous media double-standard in the handling of Gaetz and Biden. On both sides. The left has the upper hand only because they own the institutional flagships like the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, etc.
Please read the entire article. Greenwald--one of the few remaining real American journalists--thoroughly and concisely explains the issue, and the reader is much better informed at the end of this short read. A rarity in today's Infotainment Media Complex
Who's to blame for the debased condition of the media today?
We are. We are addicted to this crap. The Infotainment Media smut peddlers are just giving us what we crave.
Wednesday, April 6, 2022
Progressives Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste
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| Silverfiddle Rant! |
Tucker Carlson's right: Every time energy prices spike, giddy progressives rub their little hands together in anticipation of even higher prices, hoping that finally, this time, they can hijack trillion$ in government funds to "go green." See Ed Markey: Ditching fossil fuels makes even more sense now
It's all pie-in-the-sky BS. If green energy were cheaper, energy producers in the US would be fighting and trampling each other to abandon carbon fuels and provide this mythical cheaper green energy to US consumers. They are not.
To put your feet back down in Realityville, yahoogle Germany's Energiewende. That green initiative should have insulated them against gas and oil shocks. It has not. See: Germany's Energy Fiasco
After all the Germans' sacrifice, paying higher utility bills (doubled or more) to 'go green,' the German government is telling its citizens to brace themselves for higher prices and rationing.
Biden Owns the Gas Price Hikes
Biden Owns Rampant Inflation
Biden also owns rampant inflation. To be charitable, our US government owns it, including Trump, who was president when some of the 'stimulus' and 'covid relief' was disbursed in the form of trillions of newly-printed dollars. Look at this US Inflation Chart. Inflation spiked in 2021, the year Biden took office. Russia Invaded Ukraine in February of 2022.
Covid Relief Fraud
What say you?
Monday, April 4, 2022
The Actual Biden Agenda
The Biden Agenda for Green Energy as explained by Tucker Carlson. Even if you don't like Tucker Carlson, please watch and seriously consider what he says in the video below (about 13 minutes):
Sunday, April 3, 2022
Musical Interlude
(For politics, please scroll down)
Enjoy Alan Silvestri's Academy Award nominated "Feather Theme" from the 1994 film Forrest Gump, one of my favorite films and one of those rare films better than the novel of the same title, by Winston Groom. The images in the video below are unrelated to the film.
Read about the symbolism of the feather HERE. I concur with Sally Fields:
Sally Field compared the feather to fate, saying: "It blows in the wind and just touches down here or there. Was it planned or was it just perchance?"
More of the complete soundtrack for the film Forrest Gump. Golden Oldie's!
Friday, April 1, 2022
Wednesday, March 30, 2022
About Ukraine
(hat tip to Deplorable Bloggers Alliance for the video in this blog post)
Is Lara Logan correct, in part of in whole, about her assertions?
I find myself increasingly uneasy as I watch the push for intervening in Ukraine, because when I find myself in agreement with certain mainstream media and with certain politicians, I take a step back and ask myself, "AOW, what important facts are you missing?"
The YouTube blurb for the video below:
Lara Logan blows away every Liberal Sleepy DemonRat NWO Shill on earth with Truth about NWO/Fake News Liars/Political Liars/Medical Liars/Putin/Zelensky/Lies About Ukraine etc. Exposes the actual Nazi's operating out of Ukraine all wearing Satanic-Occult Nazi Regalia in the Azov Corps of Ukrainian. Gives people a glimpse of the real history of the region and why everything the 'news' is telling the world is a LIE...
About ten minutes and worth your time:
On the other hand, we have this...Volnovakha: America Closes Her Eyes.
Monday, March 28, 2022
Recommended Reading
See ’25th Amendment NOW’: White House forced to walk back THREE explosive Biden remarks in three days by Melissa Fine of American Wire (March 27, 2022). Excerpt:
In a time of crisis, you want a leader who is focused, articulate, and free from hyperbole, but when you’ve got Joe Biden, what you need is a team of Damage Control Coordinators, ready at the drop of a gaffe to run interference and spin statements that, left alone, could escalate an already explosive situation.Such is the unenviable task of White House officials, who have had to repeatedly walk back comments from the president since he departed Wednesday for Europe on what CNN characterized as “one of [the] highest-stakes presidential trips in recent memory.”Three times already, the Biden administration has had to step forward and explain what Joe Biden really meant, including a red-alarm rush on Saturday to assure the world that the President of the United States didn’t really call for a violent regime change in a nuclear-equipped nation....
Read the rest HERE, which includes video snippets.
What say you?
Sunday, March 27, 2022
Musical Interlude
(For politics, please scroll down)
Personal story....
YouTube blurb for the video in this blog post:
Soundtrack from the 1990 Penny Marshall film "Awakenings" with Robert De Niro, Robin Williams, Julie Kavner, Penelope Ann Miller & John Heard. Based on the true story of Dr. Oliver Sacks who, in a Bronx hospital in 1969, used a new drug in order to revive patients who had been catatonic for decades.
Such poignant movie music, especially if you know the compelling story:
My father's sister, only seven years old, died of "the aftereffects" of the Great Influenza of 1918-1920 — even though flu deaths in her age group were quite rare. Therefore, long before COVID-19 came along, I've had great interest in the award-winning film Awakenings, which depicts part of the story of institution-confined patients suffering from the 1915-1927 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica, one of the aftereffects believed by some scientists to have been caused by the Great Influenza.
My family never discussed exactly the specific "aftereffects" that killed Dad's sister, and I've always wondered if she, too, had encephalitis lethargica. Perhaps Dad's didn't know; after all, he was only eight or nine years old when his sister died.
The family story I heard several times was limited to Dad's unforgettable and blunt words:
"Because of the flu outbreak, the undertaker came to the house to embalm Chrissy — and dumped the blood behind the barn."
I have always wondered if Chrissy slipped into a Parkinsonian-like catatonia similar to that shown in the film Awakenings, one of those rare films better than the book.
Friday, March 25, 2022
Get it Off Your Chest 3/25/22 (Open Thread)
Open Comments.
For jez. (I just couldn't help myself) :)
Wednesday, March 23, 2022
"The Home of the Not Especially Brave"
(with thanks to Silverfiddle, Blogger Extraordinaire, who kept Always On Watch running during Warren's and my prolonged near-total absence, and who recently emailed me the link below)
The first part of the above Viking saying appears to be not so true for many of today's Twenty-first Century Americans, yet which, I think, was mostly true in the early days of the Twenty-first Century, when we were still reeling from the Islamic terror attacks of 9/11.
From "Why are so few Americans willing to defend their country?" (by Lionel Shriver at the Spectator, dated March 19, 2022):
For many of us war voyeurs watching the news with a glass of sherry, admiration of the little-engine-that-could Ukrainian fighters is underwritten by unease. As families escape to safety, plenty of feisty Ukrainians are remaining behind to battle a far more powerful aggressor, and they’re not all men, either. The question nags, then: in the same circumstances, would we stick around to defend our homelands, or would we cut our losses and get out?
Earlier this month, that’s precisely what a Quinnipiac poll asked Americans. Some 7 per cent answered ‘Don’t know’. But an astonishing 52 per cent of Democrats predicted that they’d skedaddle. Among Republicans, a full quarter would carpool with the hightailing ‘to hell with this!’ Democrats, while 68 per cent would stand their ground – or think they would. Among all respondents, 55 per cent would stay and fight, while 38 per cent would flee. Scaled up, that would be 125 million Yanks storming from the Land of the No Longer Free and the Home of the Not Especially Brave....
Read the rest HERE — after you have, as honestly as possible, answered these questions...
1) Why did so many Americans polled choose to flee our country?
2) Would you be among those who stand and fight, or would you be among those who flee? And why would you make that choice?
Monday, March 21, 2022
Is the Left Losing Its Grip?
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| Silverfiddle Rant! |
Why has the left become so brittle, humorless and fragile?
Progressives love crowing that "white people" will soon be a minority, and that realization is driving "white people" to fearful, hate-filled extremism. There is no evidence to support this pseudointellectual cotton candy. Unfortunately, we do have a blessedly small and mostly powerless number of neo-nazi and white supremacists among us. Always have. When I was a teen living in Denver in the 80's, white supremacists from the Silent Brotherhood killed Jewish talk show host Alan Berg in front of his home.
If "white people" were really that unstable and angered that they were being replaced, our nation would be suffering a sharp increase in "white people" violently attacking and murdering "people of color." We are not, thank God.
"The Truth Will Not Replace Us!"
Progressives are the ones growing more sweaty and desperate, like meth heads backed into the corner of their kitchen screaming at the snakes swarming out of the kitchen cabinets.
Their angry lectures, loud scolding, and cajoling everyone to get on the "right side of history," belies a quivering insecurity.
Why is the left so hell-bent on silencing and controlling people?
Why are they so quick to hurl the racism label? Most importantly, and disturbingly, why are people on the left so eager to dox people, wreck people's lives, and get people fired from their jobs? It is a sick and poisonous urge to want to destroy people and take away their livelihoods forever.
People on the left have gone beyond trolling and now actually believe all the nasty and demeaning snipes they direct at the right: anti-science, pro-Russian, white supremacist, disseminators of disinformation, etc.
The left's increasing shrillness and love of corporate censorship stems from fear and insecurity. They are losing their sweaty, totalitarian grip on society. Even worse, they have dictated to the rest of us for so long, they have forgotten how to debate and persuade, which is why their rhetoric becomes shriller and louder.
Progressive totalitarianism is under attack from thousands of blogs, twitter accounts, websites, podcasts, and worst of all, word of mouth among people experiencing the stench of progressivism's rotten fruit with their own five senses.
Progressives have lost control
They are no longer the gatekeepers because the gates have been smashed and the old institutions discredited. They are losing control of the courts, information dissemination, and even their citadels of academia are under attack, with many good liberals fighting back against the narrow-minded progressive pogroms that chase down dissidents and free-thinkers.
Free-Thinking and Departing from Orthodoxy Unhinges the Left
The left is becoming increasingly unhinged. Solid liberal free-thinkers like Jon Stewart, Glenn Greenwald, Bill Maher and Russell Brand skewer the latest progressive illiberal stupidities, and the left strikes back by casting a cloud of suspicion over them or even labeling them "rightwingers."
Progressive Establishmentarians are asking, Why Don't They Believe Us Anymore?
Answer: Because the CDC is hiding data. They have to figure out how to spin it before releasing it. Wouldn't want all those data scientists taking it and providing everyone the plain facts without an establishment-approved narrative...
Wouldn't want somebody saying something crazy like, "SARS-CoV-2 RNA can be reverse-transcribed and integrated into the genome of human cells," would we?
Progressivism is looking more and more like the final days of the Ceausescus...
Sunday, March 20, 2022
Musical Interlude
(For politics, please scroll down)
In fact, when Warren and I first hooked up our DVD/CD player, with sound bar, after we moved into this house, "Africa" was the first song I played to test the system. Wonderful! A feast for the ears!
Related reading: some insights related to the above.
Over 740,000,000 YouTube views of one of my favorite songs (1982), a song which never grows old for me — "Africa," by Toto:
Lyrics:
I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She's coming in, 12:30 flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation
I stopped an old man along the way
Hoping to find some old forgotten words or ancient melodies
He turned to me as if to say
"Hurry boy, it's waiting there for you"It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had (ooh, ooh)The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless, longing for some solitary company
I know that I must do what's right
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti
I seek to cure what's deep inside, frightened of this thing that I've becomeIt's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had (ooh, ooh)Hurry boy, she's waiting there for youIt's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
I bless the rains down in Africa
(I bless the rain)
I bless the rains down in Africa
I bless the rains down in Africa
I bless the rains down in Africa
(Gonna take the time)
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had (ooh, ooh)Source: LyricFindSongwriters: David F Paich / Jeffrey T PorcaroAfrica lyrics © Capitol CMG Publishing, Downtown Music Publishing, Spirit Music Group, Universal Music Publishing Group
Friday, March 18, 2022
Thursday, March 17, 2022
"Dezinformatsiya"
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| Silverfiddle Rant! |
"That's the problem in America, is there is one view, one true opinion and everybody else can go sit in the corner"
-- Bill Maher
Bad news for Medical Faucism and the Branch Covidian cult:
Seven in 10 people agreed with the statement “It’s time we accept that Covid is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives” in a recent Monmouth University poll. Acceptance of the virus as a part of normal life varied by political affiliation, with 89% of Republicans agreeing versus 71% of independents and 47% of Democrats
Karol Markowicz sums it up perfectly:
The jig is almost up for the petty dictators who have herded, shamed and tortured us these past two years. Most egregious is how they abused our nation's children. They will look us in the eye and tell us they never said what they said. They'll try to save their asses but it won't work. When the hypnotic spell is broken, furious true believers will burn down the kebab stand.
"Disinformation" is the hot topic on the corporate-sponsored left. All the cool kids are talking about it, so I'll jump on the bandwagon.
Here is some major misinformation:
This January, 100,000 children were hospitalized on ventilators with Covid
"The facts are in: Mask mandates work"
Thousands of unarmed black men are murdered by police every year.
Jason Blake was unarmed
Kyle Rittenhouse was hunting and shooting black people
The Russians stole the 2016 election for Trump
The 2020 election was stolen by an unholy cabal of bad actors including Sharpies, bamboo ballots from China, Dominion Voting Systems, turncoat GOP state officials, and the ghost of Hugo Chavez
Young people are at serious risk from covid
Lockdowns halt the spread of covid and the good outweighs the harm
Early treatment doesn't work
The covid pandemic could not have been the result of gain of function research or a lab leak.
The Covid saga began with orchestrated misdirection. On January 31, 2020, some of the world’s top virologists told Dr. Anthony Fauci they believed the SARS-CoV-2 virus was probably “engineered” and they “can’t think of a plausible natural scenario.”Within weeks, however, these same scientists insisted in the Lancet and Nature Medicine that the virus was natural and to question its origin was spreading “misinformation” and “prejudice.”Last week we learned Fauci’s National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) granted these scientists $50 million in 2020 and 2021 alone.
Bonus Reading: 'Fact Checking' is a scam
Finally, Matt Taibbi (one of the few actual journalists left in the US) details how "Fact Checkers" are more an ideological praetorian guard than guardians of the truth.
As Thacker details below, firms have successfully manipulated reporters and Internet platforms into seeing a binary reality in which all critics are conspiracy theorists.“We don’t have main and minor [points of view] anymore,” he says. “What we have is truth, and conspiracy. Or vax, and anti-vax. There are only two possibilities you can go through. Do you know where you find that kind of black-white thinking? In people who have major personality disorders. And psychopaths. Psychopaths and people with narcissistic personality disorder engage in black-white thinking. America right now is in this weird situation in which it’s a country that to the outside looks psychopathic or disordered.” (The British Medical Journal Story That Exposed Politicized "Fact-Checking")
What say you?
Tuesday, March 15, 2022
War During Lifetime
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| Silverfiddle Rant! |
See the world now? The state of our union?
This is what happens when you let kids with fancy university degrees and no real-world experience run things.
Matthew Syed is optimistic:
They know that the West has finally noticed what Gibbon called “the poison introduced into the vitals of the system”: the torrent of dirty money in our financial centers, the infiltration of universities and think tanks, and the broader corrosion of our values. Some pundits described last week as a “reset” for western policy, but what we are seeing is, I think, infinitely more consequential. This is a reawakening of the West.
We had our UniPolar Moment, and we Blew it
The first signs of the crumbling of the unipolar order came in the rubble of the feckless wars of moralistic regime change usually referred to as the “War on Terror.” The hubristic, militaristic excesses of the neoconservative elements of the Right (namely, Afghanistan and Iraq) and the humanitarian internationalist Left (namely, Libya), the failures of which were clearly evident at least a decade ago but which nonetheless were encapsulated by last year’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, have taken a huge toll on the American citizenry. (The End of the Unipolar Moment)
The best of all worlds, the worst of all worlds
We are now weaker, poorer and more fractured that we were when the Berlin Wall fell.
What have we learned?
China has already gone to school: While Russia smashes and crushes its way to "victory" in Chechnya, Crimea and Georgia, China takes Hong Kong--quietly and deliberately--without firing a shot. Taiwan will be trickier, but China has the US and this current situation under a microscope, and they are taking notes.
Will the US and western governments learn from this current crisis (that was 30 years in the making) and apply lessons learned going forward? Doubtful.
Our 'elites' and foreign policy 'experts' here in the US will learn nothing, because they are so smart they already know it all. Just ask Jen.
Iran's Terror Mullahs have learned that if they get functioning nuclear missiles, they can terrorize and murder with impunity.
Western Europe will go back to business as usual. Germany will still be sucking Vlad's gas pipe, and the Olde Continent's militaries will continue to be glorified jobs programs.
Eastern Europe has learned that the Western partners they once looked up to are feckless pontificators, good at talking and not much else. I wouldn't be surprised one day to see the Eastern European nations leave NATO, keep the gear, and go to war and defeat Old Man Russia.
What We Should be Learning:
A few old chestnuts:
* Peace through strength
* Trust but verify
* Real Military Partnerships where our partners take primary responsibility for their defense
* Don't economically beggar thy friendly neighbors - What strengthens them strengthens you
Also, some global Zig Ziglar wouldn't hurt: Peace Corps, International goodwill activities, bribery, friendly cajoling, and a big dose of anti-globalist respect for local cultures and the will of the people.
Monday, March 14, 2022
21st Century Banana Wars
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| Silverfiddle Rant! |
George Bush--and latterly, Obama-Biden Democrats--have done the equivalent of the following: Cosy up to nations or peoples living in very bad neighborhoods and encourage them to poke their dangerous neighbors in the eye, maybe stick their tongues out and brag that they are friends with the US.
I agree with retired Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor, who said something to the effect that if we become friendly with a nation that sits next to a more powerful, and perhaps dangerous nation, we should help that nation work out a modus vivendi. Our empty promises did not work for Georgia or Ukraine, while failed projects like Libya, Syria and Afghanistan lie bleeding.
United Fruit Company - Eastern Europe Branch
Obama-Biden imperialists (and, we could argue, the Clintonistas and Bushites) have sparked their very own Banana Wars in Eastern Europe (Maybe we can call them the Pipeline Wars...)
Obama's State Department ran its own business investment brokerage out of the Kiev embassy, linking up well-connected global elites with preferred Ukrainian Oligarchs. If a Ukrainian leader got out of line and started gumming up the money-making, they plotted his ouster.
Now Ukraine has learned that buddying up with Democrats and their preferred foreign lobbyists and investors is just as dangerous as buddying up with Republican chickenhawk warmongers.
Americans have learned, thanks to Senator Rubio questioning State Department poobah Victoria Nuland, that...
“uh, Ukraine has, uh, biological research facilities. We are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to, uh, gain control of [those labs]” (Glenn Greenwald)
Echoes of Iraq
The gullibility of our ruling class and its media minions to Ukrainian information operations is no confidence-builder either. No one can blame Ukraine for trying to convince the West to join its fight – its survival is on the line. But we can blame our best and brightest – ugh – for believing every too-good-to-be-true story. There’s a sucker born every minute, and a bunch of them will eventually attend Harvard.No, we’ve sacrificed enough to the foreign policy screw-ups of Ivy League incompetents. Who got us into the Vietnam War? Who got us into Iraq? Not a lot of guys with high school diplomas, but those guys got asked to fight those wars. The same is true here. I see a lot of Twitter tough guys with the yellow and blue flag in their bios and not a lot of them seem to be accepting Ukraine’s appeal for fighters and enlisting in the Bill Kristol Brigade. (Kurt Schlichter - No Sacrifices for Ukraine)
The next quote from George Soros calls to mind Dennis Prager's statement that if he found an article in the New York Times that agreed with a position he held, it would force him to rethink the position.
We can only hope that Putin and Xi will be removed from power before they can destroy our civilization. (George Soros - Vladimir Putin and the Risk of World War III)Finally, Bill Maher (a dangerous turncoat rightwinger, in the eyes of the progressive left) lampoons Americans who view international events through their parochial political lenses.
"Don't make world war 3 all about you," Maher said as he got into it. "Watching the reactions to war in Ukraine these past few weeks, it's become obvious that America in this age suffers acutely from a particular disease of the mind, which is: Everything proves what we already believed and everything goes back to the thing we already hate."All issues today: Pandemic, war, whatever, become a stress test for our reflexive partisanship," he continued. "Can you take a vastly complex situation that is 100% not about your thing and somehow still make it about your thing? Our answer is, 'watch me.'"
What say you?
Related Links:
Sunday, March 13, 2022
Musical Interlude
(For politics, please scroll down)
"Sixteen Tons" — as recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1955:
In case anyone's wondering what this song's about: In the 19th and early 20th centuries, due to the lack of transportation technology, it wasn't plausible for workers at industries in isolated areas like mines or mills to get up and get to work from home on time and back every day. This issue was solved by the creation of company towns, little villages built around such industries where the workers could live, complete with stores selling living necessities. However, many of them paid workers in scrip, which was only good at the company town stores, so the workers had to buy goods from these stores, which could gouge prices as much as they wanted. At some of the worst, buying the bare necessities costed more than a man could earn, leaving the workers there perpetually and ever-increasingly in debt to the companies.
Friday, March 11, 2022
Jen Psaki: “There are 9,000 approved oil leases that the oil companies are not tapping into currently”
While that statement may or may not be technically correct, nonetheless, it's a huge lie by omission. It's intentionally misleading and marketed toward a gullible and ignorant segment of the population and also ruinous to our economic and strategic security.
So Jen, exactly which leases are the “oil companies are not tapping into”?
- Are you so ignorant that you think an “oil lease” has oil & gas just because it’s an “oil lease”?
- Are you so dumb that you think we can just “tap into it” because it’s an “oil lease”?
Yes, those were rhetorical questions…
Oil leases are, in fact, the mineral rights to geographical tracts of land/seafloor. They don’t have oil because the government designates them as “oil leases.”
Facts and figures at the above link. Please read the whole thing before you post.
Off topic posts will be deleted.
Warren
Tuesday, March 8, 2022
An Imperfect World
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| Silverfiddle Rant! |
"Alternative views are now tantamount to championing tyranny."
Another bit of wisdom from the essay labeled by some as Russian propaganda:
"War is not sports-betting, where one can feel good about siding with the underdog from the comfort of a couch or a bar. It is geopolitics in its most visceral, existential form: wagers have real costs involving human lives, and they are settled only with power and political will."
I have never taken Krystal Ball seriously, but I do now...
"...we have with very little debate committed ourselves to all-out economic warfare."
Andrew Bacevich: Peak Thomas Friedman Bullshit?
Friedman figures prominently among those claiming to have divined the essential character of the present age. His key finding: tech-driven globalization has rendered old-fashioned power politics obsolete.That Vladimir Putin has somehow not received the memo or has chosen to ignore its dictates is beyond flabbergasting.What Friedman ought have written is this: “By invading Ukraine, Russia has demolished what little remained of the lucrative line of bullshit that I have been peddling for the past twenty or so years.” But don’t count on any such admission to be forthcoming.
Ben Domenech rejects both the neocons and the neo-isolationists...
As in so many areas of American life, in the realm of foreign policy we have placed our trust in the experts, and see them squander and abuse it, leaving Americans feeling ignored and disrespected. It is time to listen to them, and in so doing, chart a path toward a clear-eyed foreign policy that maintains order, security, and peace, while seeking our national interest above all.
Remember how people used to get upset when presidents shared intelligence with our enemies?
Bari Weiss invites Niall Ferguson, Walter Russell Mead and Francis Fukuyama to her podcast to discuss Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Excellent discussion and erudite commentary from Ferguson and WRM. Ignore Fukuyama. Every time he speaks he sounds like a foolish twit.
Ukraine confirms that America's post-Cold War unipolar moment is dead: over the weekend, the talk shifted (again very Corona-like) from fifteen days to flatten the Tsar to an acceptance that this is a long-term thing - that, for a while at least, "a gas station masquerading as a country" (in John McCain's characteristically stupid sneer) has succeeded in rolling back the great European liberations of three decades ago.
Fifth Column Podcast #348 w/ Matt Taibbi "Richard Perle in New Jersey, Putin in Hell, Ukraine in Crisis"
The first twenty minutes or so is an interesting and unique discussion of the situation's background. Taibbi lived in Russia for years and has been all over Eastern Europe. They discuss the implications and potential fallout from supranational corporations and global financinal institutions "canceling" and "deplatforming" nations. I know nobody's in the mood for such "Russian propaganda" from libertarians and old school liberals, but they are in no way defending Russia. Taibbi is a dedicated pacifist, but he admits he wants to see Putin and his army smashed, humiliated and defeated.
"Russia... If you're listening..."
Neocon simpletons hammered John Mearsheimer because he turned out to be right, and the Russian Ministry of Defense quoted from his clear-eyed and prophetic 2014 essay.
This triggered the Chickenhawks of Couchistan to fire off unimaginative, low-yield tweets like this:
“Now wondering if the Russians didn’t actually get their narrative from Mearshimer et al. Moscow needed to say West was responsible for Russian invasions (Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Ukraine), and not their own greed and imperialism. American academics provided the narrative.”
Brace yourself. The pro-Ukraine Euphoria will fade into rage as the clumsy but cruel Russian machine overwhelms the brave Ukrainians. I pray I am wrong.
What say you?
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Unbelievable, but some good commentary has been coming from MSNBC...
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