About Ukraine

(hat tip to Deplorable Bloggers Alliance for the video in this blog post)

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: 

Is Lara Logan correct, in part of in whole, about her assertions?

On the other hand, we have this...Volnovakha: America Closes Her Eyes.

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?

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down)

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:

 

Personal 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. 

Get it Off Your Chest 3/25/22 (Open Thread)

 Open Comments.

 

For jez. (I just couldn't help myself) :)

 

 

"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?

Is the Left Losing Its Grip?

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...

See Also...

The Red Pilling of Russell Brand

Ruy Teixeira: The Democrats’ Working Class Voter Problem

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down)

Over 740,000,000 YouTube views of one of my favorite songs (1982), a song which never grows old for me  — "Africa," by Toto:

[about the above song and worth your time]

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!

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 become

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)

Hurry boy, she'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
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: LyricFind

Songwriters: David F Paich / Jeffrey T Porcaro

Africa lyrics © Capitol CMG Publishing, Downtown Music Publishing, Spirit Music Group, Universal Music Publishing Group

Related reading: some insights related to the above.

Get It Off Your Chest (open comments) 3/18/22

 

Warren

"Dezinformatsiya"

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:  

Big bureaucracy fumbled COVID and our faith in institutions

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.

How a War on 'Misinformation' Led To a Coronavirus Tragedy

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?

War During Lifetime

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.

See Also...

Robert Reich: I am a naive fool

Why does India Support Russia?

21st Century Banana Wars

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.

We cannot protect the whole world, and we should stop acting like we can, most especially in light of our horrible string of failures since WWII. 

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:

Putin's Fall? Possible, but Unlikely

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down) 

"Sixteen Tons" — as recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1955:

As one commenter explains at YouTube: 

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.

[more about the song "Sixteen Tons"]

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.

 Watts Up With That?

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

An Imperfect World

Silverfiddle Rant!

"What we are experiencing is the psychological weaponisation of war — and its exploitation as a tool of indoctrination and statecraft in the hands of the establishment.

"Alternative views are now tantamount to championing tyranny." 

- How Western Elites Exploit Ukraine

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.

Ukraine, The New Right, And Defending the West

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?

Russia's War on Ukraine: A Roundtable

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.

Mark Steyn is in a cynical mood

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?

More Links:

Walter Russell Meade - Putin's War will get Uglier

Whatever happens in Ukraine, China will emerge the victor

Glenn Greenwald - War Propaganda About Ukraine Becoming More Militaristic, Authoritarian, and Reckless

Unbelievable, but some good commentary has been coming from MSNBC...

Russia's Ukraine invasion may have been preventable

Why a no-fly zone in Ukraine would be a catastrophically bad idea

Simple Soundbites for the Simple-Minded

Silverfiddle Rant!

The problem with the Infotainment Media Complex is that it deals in outrage and soundbites for indoctrinated patsies.  

Life is complicated and full of contradictions--the world is a complex and confusing place. The issues we face as individuals, as families, societies and as a nation cannot be addressed with soundbites and cartoonish blather.

Here in the Real World

The emotional sorority girl types on the left--who think they are so smart and all that despite the fact they have no real-world experience--have dusted off the Bush-Cheney era chickenhawk "with us or against us" taunts and cleverly turned them back on their former tormenters.

As Rod Dreher observes, the Americans (prog and con) spewing overheated, id-twitch rhetoric (from the comfy confines of western luxury) lack a "Tragic Sense," just like the rightwing warhawks of a generation ago. 

Have any of the pontificators--left, right or whatever--ever lived in the real world?  Hell, I bet none of them have even been in a fistfight.  Have any of them had to deal with difficult or even dangerous people? In the real world, nations and people have to negotiate and compromise with bad people, including predatory landlords, neighborhood bullies, creepy gropers, and the criminals and drug users down the street.

Cable TV as Emotional Therapy

The Progressive blathersphere is jumping around and hooting like rabid shitgibbons over propaganda video of Mike Pompeo's "praise" of Vladimir Putin.  Of course, none of the Pavlovian fools bothered to go watch the whole interview. 

This simple-minded Two Minutes Hate is an anti-intellectual rape of reason, and it discourages in-depth, frank discussions of the facts before us.

Pompeo's infamous comments came during a 45 minute interview with Harry Kazianis that was conducted before Russia attacked and invaded Ukraine.

Starting at the 13:00 minute mark, Pompeo deprecates and refutes Putin's fanciful atavistic dreams and goes on to make a clear and forceful case for how and why the west must frustrate Putin's military aggression.  

Q & A

The infamous "praise" come at the 26 minute mark.  The tastemakers driving the leftwing outrage machine purposely omit Kazianis' question that sparked the answer

Kazianis:  "Do you consider Vladimir Putin a shrewd or reckless leader overall?" 

As we now know, Pompeo commits treason by calling Putin smart and shrewd (He has made similar comments in the past.  Vlad's craftiness is no news to intelligence analysts).  

A quick logic lesson for the pinheads calling this praise:  

1. A thing cannot be two mutually-exclusive things at once. Hot and cold for example.  

2. Conversely, a person can be both evil and smart. They are not mutually exclusive.  Indeed, stupid evil people usually don't enjoy Vlad's longevity.

If you can't make honest assessments of the threats around you, you cannot safely navigate them.  My advice?  Don't be a willing patsy.  Stay away from the Red Team - Blue Team outrage bullhorns.  If you must indulge in Tucker or Colbert, take it with a grain of salt, do your own research and think for yourself.

Saturday Music: What Happened to Us?

Silverfiddle Rant!

Thanks to our good and erudite friend Farmer, I just became aware of this song and video, produced during the second or third covid panic wave, depending on how you reckon it...

Damn shame it didn't catch on.  

I'd love to see a similar effort going after the Canadian government for bravely supporting protests in other nations, while punishing protesters in Canada by taking away their livlihoods.  

Our "leaders" stink, and the people know it.  Please crank it up and enjoy "Jesus... What happened to us" by Five Times August...

Lies, Lies, Lies

Silverfiddle Rant!

Remember the left breathlessly informing us Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump praised Vladimir Putin?  The tastemakers lied--out of malice or ignorance--and the ignorant Lumpen Blue Blob echoed it far and wide, like the unthinking mynah birds they are.

Note to the humorless, willfully-ignorant literalists on the left : Tone and context matter. Comments ripped out of context provide daily rocket fuel to the leftwing outrage machine.

Praising Putin?

Trump didn't say what the leftwing liars and parrots said he said, and neither did Pompeo. Byron York reveals the lying liars and their willing patsies it in two short podcasts. You can hear the comments for yourself, in context.

Smearing Mike Pompeo

Time for Trump to Pipe Down

For bonus points, who is the following quote from?

“Now, in regards to Russia, Putin is a murderer and he should never have invaded Ukraine. What he is doing is completely wrong. I stand with our Nato member allies and I’m completely against this war. Everything that he’s doing is wrong. He’s killing people over and over so I’m staunchly against it and I’m staunchly against Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine.” (The Guardian)

Check out this headline...

Anger as Lauren Boebert heckles Joe Biden while talking about death of son Beau at State of the Union

Now go look and listen to the 31 second video in this article.

Biden mentions flag draped coffins, Boebert pipes up, "13 of them!" and then Biden invokes the name of his deceased son Beau.  

That headline is typical, in that it leads one to believe she disrespected the memory of his son.  Watch the clip and it is clear she did not.

This is where we are

People who know better--the pontificating tastemakers with cable news shows, twitter feeds and podcasts--spread blatant lies.   Millions of Democrat followers eagerly gobble up the lies with a logic-free, animal-like instinct because the information came from "authoritative sources" on high.

We are in a bad place.  If Donald Trump said it got dark at night, Democrats would not only deny it, they would pass laws forbidding the use of car headlights during nighttime hours.

Ukraine, SOTU, Open Thread

Silverfiddle Rant!

Please share your thoughts...

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Silverfiddle Rant!

What we’re doing is encouraging the Ukrainians to play tough with the Russians. We’re encouraging the Ukrainians to think they will ultimately become part of the West... The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path & the end result is Ukraine is going to get wrecked.”  -- John Mearsheimer in 2016

The West Could Have Prevented The Russo-Ukrainian War, But Chose Not To

"President Biden and our European allies closed every off-ramp for Russia while misleading Ukraine into thinking we would defend it."
-- John Davidson, The Federalist

Russia Directly Threatens Sweden and Finland

As Putin prepares to take Kiev and set up an illegitimate puppet government, his foreign ministry threatened Sweden and Finland (and implicitly, all NATO nations):

Russia threatened “military and political consequences” against Finland and Sweden on Friday if they attempted to join NATO.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova warned against other countries attempting to join NATO after Russia started a war with Ukraine Thursday.

“Finland and Sweden should not base their security on damaging the security of other countries and their accession to NATO can have detrimental consequences and face some military and political consequences,” Zakharova said in a viral clip of a press conference. (The Hill)

What Now?

President Biden avers "Putin will be a pariah on the international stage." 

No he won't.  Russia will continue being an influential international player.  And Vlad will fund it all by orienting Russia to the east and becoming China's gas station, removing the last shreds of western leverage over neo-czarist Russia.

Sumantra Maitra wrote an excellent and wide-ranging essay in The National Interest. He repeats the ad nauseum call for European nations to open their wallets and get serious about training serious militaries to seriously take up their own defense.

The era of peace is over. Hard power is in, soft theories are out. Gazillions spent in universities should be rechanneled to research on deterrence and military. If this invasion does not lead to Europeans paying for their own defense and increasing hard power, then the future is going to be dark. America cannot take the security burden of both the Atlantic and Pacific, with a rich continent doing nothing for its own security. 

I agree with the author, but that drum is broken from decades of futile banging.  Anyway, it's too late. Olde Europe is in a demographic death spiral, too turned in on itself and its disorienting cocktail of progressive blue sky dreams and me-first shoulder shrugs to events around them.     

I don't know how much blood and treasure we should be expending on people who won't help themselves, or stated more charitably, who increasingly do not share our values and goals. 

LINKS:

Ukraine Demands a Transatlantic Course Correction

Politico: Putin was playing Biden all along

Russian invasion of Ukraine scrambles Middle East diplomacy

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

- Mike Tyson's comment on his upcoming fight with Evander Holyfield

Musical Interlude

(For a recent post about Coronavirus, please see Reading Roundup below)

Back in the day, when I had a good mezzo soprano voice, at the request of the minister, I occasionally sang this piece as a solo in the church where I was the church organist and music director (1972-1975). 

This is a song for every generation of a silent or ignored group of people (performed below by Pentatonix)

From this critical analysis of this song, when it was first released:

...The poem can be interpreted as a bitter satire towards the materialistic tendency of the people in the modern world. People have forgotten the real meaning and value of life....The poem presents a frightening picture of the modern world doomed by the lack of spirituality and true meaning of life. It is the voice of a visionary asking such people to be serious towards the true meaning and goal of life.

Read the entire essay HERE.

Today, in the 21st Century, interpretations of the song may differ: the "words of the prophets" are written elsewhere besides "the subway walls and tenement halls" — or may be actions ("people talking without speaking"), both actions and words ignored or twisted by the media.  

Consider the entirety of the lyrics HERE, and come to your own interpretation of "The Sound of Silence." 

What is your present-day interpretation?  If you care to share it, that is.