https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/08/the-smirnoff-principle/

Back in 1981, “Fort Apache, the Bronx” hit the big screen starring Paul Newman and Ed Asner, a political and physical lookalike of Jerrold Nadler. In this drama, police toss an innocent Puerto Rican youth to his death from the roof of a building. Leftist critics viewed the film as cinéma vérité about conditions in Reagan’s America, but they got some pushback from Russian actor-comedian Yakov Smirnoff.

“This is nothing,” Smirnoff said. “In Russia, KGB throws guy off roof to hit guy they really want.”

Re William Buckley, the story going around in intelligence and military circles at the time was that several Russians from their embassy had been kidnapped at the same time. The KGB grabbed the brother of one of the kidnappers and started sending pieces of him back to the kidnappers. The Russians were released. I don’t know whether this really happened, but everybody believed it, and I don’t recall any Russians being kidnapped in Lebanon during that period..

I’ve seen reports that say that the Iranian’s “negotiators” never even actually put any of their signatures on the deal, signed off on it.

What the hell kind of non-deal “deal” is that?

It appears that the odious Kerry-led Obama crew were “negotiating” with themselves–and sitting on both sides of the negotiating tale–giving away stuff until the terms of the “deal”–our acts of capitulation, and Jizya payments–were acceptable to the Iranians.

The whole supposed point of this “deal” was, of course, to halt Iran’s progress toward building nuclear weapons.

However, according to reports, one major part of this supposed “deal” specifically banned our inspectors from having access to several key Iranian facilities where such research could have been carried out.

Finally, keeping it real, given their statements, their behavior–and their decades long, relentless drive to acquire nuclear weapons–does anyone really trust or believe that, even if the Iranians say that they will halt their efforts, that they really will?

I don’t think so.

If you have any sense at all, you don’t and won’t believe whatever they say, supposedly “agree to,” or even supposedly “sign” unless any formal signed agreement gives you full, complete, and unfettered access to their entire country, the ability to locate, and to thoroughly inspect any and all of their facilities, to verify things fully, repeatedly, and on the ground, and to dismantle and remove any nuclear material or related equipment you find.

According to reports, this supposed “deal” did not give us anything even remotely close to this.

But they seem quite relieved Trump isn’t moving towards war vs Iran at this time.

I don’t believe Iran is a proxy for Russia. But I do believe the commies have a lot of influence. Plus, I love pistachios, but we pay for US ones now that we can’t buy any from Iran. (We got 4 pistachio trees for my desert-living sister for her B-day)

artfl clearly identifies what we want, by claiming we never have it:
never a decent analysis that leads to a predictable outcome or knowledge of what happens next.

I’m very interested in predicting the near term outcomes and “what happens next”. I actually haven’t seen much of that from artfl.
What will Trump / USA do next (in the next week? next 4 weeks? next 3 months?) For the next week (to Jan 15), here are my quick predictions:

a) No Iranian/Iraqi killing action (35%)
b) A few specific actions that kill a total of less than 100 (43%)
c) Some significant action that kills more than 100 in one place (20%), which can include other (b) actions
d) Very significant actions that kill more than 1000 (2%)

Analysis that leads to much higher probabilities would be welcome. For instance, somebody who thinks Trump won’t do anything right now other than twitter and meetings might think:
a-80%, b-15%, c-5%, d-0% (gotta add up to 100%, that’s why 2% & 43% above)

Since this is NOT a “prediction site”, seldom are alternatives so clearly delineated.

Predictions are really hard, especially about the future.

Which is why he said they needed “U-Haul”.
* * *
Fair enough. A little bit of conflation in the memory banks.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/10/mobility-globalization-poverty-solution/

It was the right thing to do. Some towns are better off dead.

Hey! Ta-Nehisi Coates says he reads Kevin Williamson regularly. That’s got to count for something…

Williamson used as his exemplar Kentucky’s poorest county, which has a population of < 7,000 people. (Chris Hedges' preferred exemplar was McDowell County, WVa, which has a population that's 75% off-peak consequent to employment declines in coal mining). If you wanted to be overly charitable, you'd put this down to innumeracy, a vice of people who prefer story to data. I'm not inclined to cut these characters any slack; this is rhetorical gamesmanship.

Williamson grew up in Lubbock, Tx. He's made no secret of his contempt for his mother and for the culture of which she was a part. Lubbock's not an affluent town. Personal income per capita in the Lubbock commuter belt is about 20% below the national mean. However, the employment-to-population ratio in the City of Lubbock was in 2017 0.62, which is higher than the national mean. SNAP enrollment nationwide in 2017 encompassed 12.9% of the population in the country at large; in Lubbock County, Tx, it wasn't very different at 13.6%, in spite of the fact that lower incomes generally would mean that a higher share of the population would meet eligibility criteria. The homicide rate in the city has bounced around 5 per 100,000, which is the national mean. The robbery rate, at about 175 per 100,000 is about 75% above the national mean, but this is a densely-settled metropolitan municipality, and you would expect that given how infrequent are robberies in exurbs, small towns and rural areas (however, the frequency of rape, aggravated assault, burglary, and car theft is quite elevated in Lubbock – burglary especially). It's a place that could be better than it is, but I'm not seeing coarse-grained evidence of severe dysfunction.

Williamson's also been known to sneer at non-exotic populations for their deficient entrepreneurship in comparison with our gorgeous immigrant populations. If that were so, you'd expect self-employment income to be more prevalent among hispanic and asian populations (which are quite immigrant rich) than among white and black populations (which are immigrant-poor). Self-employment income is about 1/2 as prevalent among blacks as it is among the other coarse categories, but hardly differs between the other three. I don't doubt that there are ethnic subcultures more entrepreneurial than others, but this notion that whites are a bunch of slackers who should be ashamed at the commitment and energy of 'Americans-by-choice' is just calumny. By the same token, employment-to-population ratios hardly differ between coarse racial categories, bar some mild depression among blacks.

By the way, the IRS 990 forms National Review has filed over the years have made plain the fiduciary failures of NR‘s board. Both Richard Lowry and Williamson were paid absurd salaries (at one point > $200,000 a year) to work atop a donor-dependent NGO with a staff of fewer than 50 (and, nb, neither held the title of ‘publisher’ or ‘managing editor’). His contemptuous disposition toward people being paid market wages in Lubbock is distasteful.

You have to work at it to be unjust to this obnoxious Anton LeVay lookalike.

/ rant off.

JimNorCal: I sure haven’t forgotten. Blood-chilling.