Ukraine and Russia on Friday signed a deal that should release an estimated 22 million tonnes of wheat and other crops, allowing Ukrainian grain to be exported through a carefully planned mechanism that involves Turkey and the United Nations.
Russian missiles strike Ukraine’s Odessa port, a day after Moscow signed a grain deal. Odessa is crucial to the wheat exports and the agreement.
Ukraine says Putin ‘spits in the face’ of UN, Turkey with Odessa attack — AFP
UPDATE:
Russian air attack was carried out exactly where Ukrainian grain is located in Odessa says Yuriy Ignat, speaker of the Ukrainian air defense forces.
MORE: The port of Odessa, where the Russians launched a missile attack, contained grain that was being prepared for export in the coming days, the Ukrainian Ministry of Agrarian Policy says.
The article actually uses the phrase: “Wokeness has seeped into America’s education system. ” seeped??? More like a flood!
I’m glad this guy is taking a public stand, but he’s a bit behind the curve:
“Outside the anthropology department, UCLA as a whole is showing all the signs of Woke capture that typify the contemporary U.S. university,” Manson wrote, predicting that “leftist ideology” will only continue to grow throughout education.”
Continue to grow??? There’s no place for it to grow as it’s already taken over the entire structure. His stand and statements would make more sense if this was 2012 and not 2022. How clueless does one have to be to just “discover” this transition now?
The First Patient has evidently taken to meeting reporters via video feed: “[he] made a previously unscheduled appearance Friday afternoon as part of an apparent effort by the administration to demonstrate that he remains healthy enough to lead the nation during his second day of treatment for COVID-19. Biden, 79, gave a thumbs-up as reporters shouted questions about how he was feeling — moments after emitting a phlegmy cough as White House economist Cecilia Rouse spoke. Biden’s surprise event delayed the regular White House press briefing, where press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and the administration’s coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha took turns describing the president as being in good shape — while dodging repeated questions about why his physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, wasn’t directly fielding questions.”
sdferr — not surprising the Russian’s fired at Odessa. The Ukrainians have been recently pounding the only bridge across the Dnipro River to try to isolate the Russian forces north of the river around Kherson (which would put them in a very bad spot). I imagine firing on Odessa is a reply to the attacks on the bridge.
It’s well established that covid virus is not life threatening to the young and healthy, but very dangerous (still) to the old and chronically ill.
Cancer? Check (he said so this week).
Asthma? Check (ditto)
Heart disease: Check (atrial fibrillation- standard of care is to take anticoagulant to decrease risk of stroke, but the First Patient had to stop his Eliquis to safely take the Paxlovid treatment for the virus.
Old? Yes, and getting older by the day.
I think the original plan was for him to wait until early 2023 to resign “for health reasons” to give Kamala a chance for 2 full terms, but the unforeseen pitifulness of both of their performances is forcing a midcourse change in strategy.
The more he insists that he is in good health and wants to pursue a second term, the more I believe that the D leadership is planning his departure. He’s gone by the end of 2022, likely right after the Nov elections so D voters are not further dispirited and stay home more than they are already planning to.
The more he insists that he is in good health and wants to pursue a second term, the more I believe that the D leadership is planning his departure. He’s gone by the end of 2022, likely right after the Nov elections so D voters are not further dispirited and stay home more than they are already planning to.
West TX Intermediate Crude:
Agreed.
There’s also been so much, now open, discussion in the media of Biden’s deficits and Hunter’s dodginess that I suspect the backroom boys and girls are already moving on Biden.
Battlespace preparation. It will be tricky, but necessary. It doesn’t look like Biden will go willingly. However, I imagine they can threaten to expose his connections to Hunter’s crimes. It will have to be done delicately.
Neither Biden nor the Democrats can allow a House Select Committee to investigate Hunter and Biden if the House flips Republican after the midterms, as it likely will.
Joe isn’t running the show and the people running the show won’t be running the show if Joe goes so, it is “Death of Stalin” time. Again, the cleanest way to get rid of Joe is for Joe to die in his sleep.
It’s more likely that he announces he won’t run again but will serve out his term. This assumes there is no serious health episodes.
Only one person benefits from Biden resigning.
Great song.
I loved the Hollies. In those days, everybody I knew listened to lots of different kinds of music. I was a jazz fan, but there were even things I liked on the radio. Not sure what happened, but now I’m a cranky old man yelling at kids to get onto my lawn.
Local news story [no joke: I live about two miles from the shop in question]: The First Patient’s Doctor Wife was heckled when she visited an ice cream store in downtown New Haven: “First Lady Jill Biden was heckled by protesters during a visit to a Connecticut ice cream store. ‘Your husband is the worst President we ever had, you owe us gas money,’ an unnamed man told Biden Friday. . . . ‘You suck,’ screamed another man. . . . As her elderly husband recovered from coronavirus, the First Lady took in a visit to the nutmneg [sic] state with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona as part of a national summer learning tour to address pandemic-related learning loss.”
The Hollies three big post Graham Nash hits are all very different from each other. ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’, ‘Long Cool Woman’ and this one are all songs that stand the test of time.
neo:
Thanks for putting me on to Dances at a Gathering. I’ve found it a great help in trying to develop an eye for the Dance, without the distractions of costumes, scenery, and cliché.
“He ain’t heavy…”
When I lived in Nebraska, my sister was on the school pep squad and I went with her for a football game against Boys Town. I had no idea the place was real. There were so very many boys.
Outstanding song by The Hollies. I remember it well. 1974, I do believe.
Chases Eagles:
One of my favorite childhood memories was a trip to Boys Town. We went as Cub Scouts on a train, and my mother was the Den Mother. I spent the trip riding between the train cars, looking at the fields passing by, with the wind in my face. At Boys Town, I mostly remember all the animal husbandry barns.
Yes, I’m old, up all night with insomnia and alcohol, and I don’t mind. Is this still the internet? I can remember sending data to other scientists on the internet’s precursor, NSFnet. Downhill all the way. What would the boys of Boys Town say? I’m pretty sure they’d think I’m a spoiled jerk. Big surprise.
I am sure that the Russians knew that the NAZI Ukrainian deal to export grain from Odessa was part of the NATO plot to invade Moscow. You have to hand it to the Russians, they have always been in the forefront in the fight against tyranny. ( Sarcasm)
Re: Oz Witch
physicsguy:
🙂 I was shocked at how green the witch’s face was. My formative viewings of “The Wizard of Oz” were on B&W TV.
of course in maguire’s wicked, they make the witch misunderstood,
Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West. Classic.
I once went to a late night theatrical showing of the Wizard of Oz in a trendy CA beach community, and the lesbian crowd went nuts over the Hamilton scenes including the ones where she is not the witch.
Appeared in an episode of Sesame Street which aired February 10, 1976, reprising her role as the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz (1939). Reportedly, her performance scared so many children that their parents wrote in to CTW, saying their kids were too scared to watch the show anymore. As a result of the overwhelming reaction, this episode never re-aired, and as of 2014, no footage of it has surfaced on the Internet, and the only picture available is one with the Witch standing beside Oscar in his trash can. It is unknown whether or not any footage of it still exists.
There is also a story that I can’t find now about Hamilton being invited back to her old primary-secondary school as a guest speaker. After her little speech people begged her to do the WWotW. Some of the little kids ran out of the auditorium crying and shrieking.
Chases Eagles,
Do you really think that Obama would allow Harris to run things?
What do you suppose Newsom’s meeting at the W.H. right after Bidet left for the M.E…. was about?
miguel cervantes,
Starvation is unsurpassed as a non-violent means of population reduction.
they are stuck with her, like the ransom of red chief,
Starvation, famine and mass death are more often than not backed up and facilitated by governments taking food, restricting movement of people, or debasing means and methods of trade. Power, the ability and willingness to use violence, go hand in hand with mass starvation of populations and groups.
@ PA Cat: You wrote that Biden “made a previously unscheduled appearance Friday.” I initially misread that as “a grievously unscheduled appearance.”
Meanwhile, has anybody commented here yet on the defeat of Marilyn Mosby in her primary? It seems the AP just announced the results today, which is why I didn’t hear about her drubbing earlier this week.
Apart from the defeat of Hillary Clinton on 8 November 2016, Mosby’s downfall is the best political news I’ve heard in more than seven years.
Re: The Wizard of Oz
TommyJay:
Don’t know if you are up on the “Dark Side of the Rainbow.”
Someone noticed there is an odd correspondence if one plays the “The Wizard of Oz” on video with the audio turned off and Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” on the audio channel.
It’s fun. I’ve done it … under the proper experimental conditions.
Pink Floyd has denied *everything*.
Update to Thursday’s news about the attack on Lee Zeldin: The perp, who was initially released after the attack, was rearrested today on federal charges: “The troubled Army veteran who allegedly attacked US Rep. Lee Zeldin during a gubernatorial campaign stop near Rochester was hit with a federal assault charge Saturday, authorities revealed. David Jakubonis ‘willfully’ assaulted the congressman and Republican candidate for governor of New York ‘with a dangerous weapon’ in Perinton on Thursday evening, an FBI agent alleged in a criminal complaint filed in United States District Court. Zeldin, 42, was unhurt. Jakubonis allegedly violated a federal law against intentionally assaulting a federal lawmaker or member of the Executive Branch, according to the six-page affidavit written by Special Agent Timothy Klapec.”
They ruled that the injunction against him, his arrest, his jail time, the censorship order and fines against him were illegal.
PA+Cat: New Haven has a significant Italian-American population which may not be as blue as Connecticut’s reputation.
Here’s an interesting interview with Peter Thiel, billionaire tech guy, yet straddling liberal and conservative worlds — somewhat like Elon Musk. I’ve never had a good handle on Thiel, beyond that he couldn’t be pigeonholed easily like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg.
The title, “The Dangers of Progress,” is a bit misleading. Thiel is more concerned with the lack of progress, i.e. stagnation, and its dangers to the West.
_____________________________
More plainly: how does Peter Thiel view his own project?
The overarching answer seems to be: real as opposed to illusory progress. Post-liberal thinkers such as Patrick Deneen, author of the bestselling 2018 book Why Liberalism Failed, argue that many contemporary social ills are an effect of the way the liberal project cannibalises social goods, such as family life or religious faith, in order to pursue narrow metrics such as (on the Left) personal freedom or (on the Right) economic growth. Thiel sees many of the same ills as Deneen, but offers a strikingly different framing: we’re consuming ourselves not because the fixation on progress is inevitably self-destructive beyond a certain threshold, but because material progress has objectively stalled while we remain collectively in denial about this fact.
In Thiel’s view, this has been the case since the mid-20th century, except in digital technologies. “We’ve had continued progress in the world of computers, bits, internet, mobile internet, but it’s a narrow zone of progress. And it’s been more interior, atomising and inward-focused.” Over the same period, he tells me, “there’s been limited progress in the world of atoms”.
This bothers me too. Once upon a time we were going to the moon, wiring the world with increasingly better networks, building better vehicles and transportation systems, saving the world from starvation with Borlaug’s Green Revolution, and making exponential increases in computer performance.
Since then — smart phones and increasingly addictive software. Meanwhile, as Thiel points out:
_____________________________
In this context, Thiel argues, much of what passes as “progress” in economic terms is actually an accounting trick. For example, much of what looks like GDP growth since the Fifties was simply a matter of changing how we measured the value bundled up in family life. If, he points out, “you shift an economy from a single-income household with a homemaker to one with two breadwinners and a third person who’s a child-carer, statistically you have three jobs instead of one and therefore you have more GDP, and you will exaggerate the amount of progress that’s happened”.
Suprisingly, Thiel, a gay more-or-less libertarian, sees this stagnation in cultural terms as a result of Christianity’s decline:
_____________________________
“I think [the argument we’ve reached limits of progress] sounds like a lazy excuse of people who don’t want to work very hard. It sounds too much like an excuse.” Far from being a matter of humans bumping up against natural limits, he argues, “I want to blame it on cultural changes, rather than on us running out of ideas”.
What, then, does he see as driving the cultural side of stagnation? Thiel thinks the decline of Christianity is a major factor. To him “a more naturally Christian world” was “an expanding world, a progressing world” that hit its apogee in late Victorian Britain. “It felt very expansive, both in terms of the literal empire and also in terms of the progress of knowledge, of science, of technology, and somehow that was naturally consonant with a certain Christian eschatology — a Christian vision of history. Then somehow the stagnant ecological world that we’re in is one in which there’s been a collapse of religious belief. I want to say they’re somehow sociologically linked.”
_____________________________
There’s much meat in the interview. It’s hard to pull quotes without just saying, “Read the whole thing.”
Al Gore, ““You know the climate deniers are really in some ways similar to all of those almost 400 law enforcement officers in Uvalde, Texas, who were waiting outside an unlocked door while the children were being massacred. They heard the screams, they heard the gunshots and nobody stepped forward.”
Gore is the worst person in the world.
huxley,
It’s been a while ago, but I read Thiel’s “Zero to One …” book. Some similar things in there, and it may be true.
Then somehow the stagnant ecological world that we’re in …
Was Ted Kaczynski the most influential person of the 20th century?? Is that a joke or not? I’m not sure.
Cornhead:
Al Gore is still speaking somewhere, to someone?
By the way, in the lengthy 77-page report by the Texas House, or in the McCraw presentation to the Texas Senate – I forget which one at the moment, or maybe both – it was made clear that there were no screams by the time the police arrived. There were many screams heard on the surveillance audio prior to their arrival (and they arrived very quickly), but none after. The perp worked fast.
The videos that have been released have those pre-arrival screams edited out, to protect the relatives of the victims and to reduce the sensationalism of the videos.
I think it highly likely that at least one person who was shot prior to the arrival of police might have been saved by a more timely rescue: teacher Eva Mireles, the woman who texted or phoned her husband, officer Ruben Ruiz, to say she was gravely wounded. Were there others in that same position? We don’t know. We do know that some doctors have said the wounds of many of the others were extremely severe and probably instantly fatal, but we don’t know if that represents 100% of those who died, or if some of them might have been saved. That same doctor was saying that children, being smaller, sustain more severe damage. There were five survivors from those two rooms, plus a sixth, Eva Mireles, who survived for a while. Four of the survivors were children (all in room 112, where Eva Mireles was), but none of them were shot – one smeared herself with blood and played dead and was never shot, and three were unseen because they were hiding under a table that apparently had some sort of cloth. So in room 112, every person who was shot died, and the only one we know survived for a while was an adult, the teacher. In the other room, 111, there were eleven children and they all were shot and all died. The only survivor was a teacher, Reyes, who was shot and badly injured but survived and is expected to fully recover. My point in going into all of this is that my strong suspicion is that most of the children who were shot died instantly, but two out of three adults who were shot lived for at least a while. That may be related to their larger body size.
I don’t know, but I think we will eventually find out if rescue earlier would have meant some of the others would have lived. McCraw said that a group of physicians is studying all the hospital notes and autopsies and will be issuing a report on whether the wounds were survivable if rescue had come earlier. I believe that sort of thing will be relevant in lawsuits.
“Willful assault with a dangerous weapon” — hmmm, sounds like attempted murder if the victim is a Dem or the perp is a conservative.
Neo:
Al Gore was on ABC. News person asked him if he was going to run for President. He declined.
Our country dodged a bullet when he lost the 2000 election.
Re: Peter Thiel
TommyJay:
Is “Zero to One” (the whole book) worth reading?
Then somehow the stagnant ecological world that we’re in …
As I take Thiel’s remark, the “ecological” world which environmentalists seek to maintain is one in which human progress must be severely constrained for ecological reasons. Thus, stagnation.
Christianity, on the other hand, is a vision of human progress towards God. We’re not here to keep the planet manicured as a beautiful garden and zoo. Which isn’t to say, we get to trash the planet either, but there is a larger goal.
I like this excerpt from Vatican II:
_______________________________
The Church … holds that in her most benign Lord and Master can be found the key, the focal point and the goal of man, as well as of all human history … all of human life, whether individual or collective, shows itself to be a dramatic struggle between good and evil, between light and darkness … The Lord is the goal of human history the focal point of the longings of history and of civilization, the center of the human race, the joy of every heart and the answer to all its yearnings.
huxley,
I liked the book, but wasn’t blown away; which is probably why I don’t remember a great deal of it. The basic thesis is fine and interesting, but there not a lot to say about it other than complain about how society seems to have given up on the idea of really major breakthroughs. I believe he asks, “Remember when people were interested in the ‘fountain of youth’.” Now we’re supposed to be happy to die in our 80’s because it will lighten the load on poor mother earth. Although I believe I read that Sean Parker is expecting to live to 120 years.
There is also bit about the left-wing globalist culture of silicon valley. I don’t recall much discussion of religion, though the book was published a number of years ago.
_______
One of my high school memories is of the fine biology course I took which was taught by a nun. My impertinent best friend once asked her after class, “How do you reconcile your scientific knowledge with your belief in God?” or something like that. At the time I didn’t know that her answer was something of a doctrinaire response. She certainly delivered it with enough genuine feeling.
She said roughly this: Because if people are to better themselves they should strive to become closer to God. The more we understand about our world the better we understand God’s creations and thereby become closer to Him.
I read a highly opinionated book entitled “How the West Won” by Rodney Stark. I don’t have the breadth of knowledge to know how many truths or falsehoods are contained in it, but he is very convinced that the progress of the West over the last 2K years has been because of Christianity and Catholicism in particular. The first big universities such as the University of Paris, with big scientific research efforts were Catholic institutions. I supposed it could be argued that if you wanted to do scientific research in that place and time, it was a requirement that you hooked up with the Catholic church.
As one of many contrasting examples, Stark notes that if a person is a fundamentalist Muslim, then the Quran, Sunnah, and Hadith contains the sum total of all that a person is allowed to know and do. Well, that’s kind of limiting isn’t it?
Cornhead and Neo,
[Bing dictionary] gold·en hour
[golden hour]
NOUN
photography
the period of time just after sunrise or just before sunset when the light is infused with red and gold tones:
“most of the film looks like it was shot during the golden hour” · [more]
medicine
the first hour after the occurrence of a traumatic injury, considered the most critical for successful emergency treatment.
From Merriam Webster: Medical Definition of golden hour
the hour immediately following traumatic injury in which medical treatment to prevent irreversible internal damage and optimize the chance of survival is most effective
…the progress of the West over the last 2K years has been because of Christianity and Catholicism in particular.
TommyJay:
I can go there. I believe I’ve been fairly vivid in this blog regarding my dissatisfaction with the Roman Catholic Church, but I can take that point.
Likewise I would note that, when it comes to progress, Hinduism and Buddhism don’t get you very far either. Humans are trapped in a near-endless cycle of births and deaths and the point is to get off that Cosmic Wheel.
“Life is suffering,” the Buddha said. So the main goal is to learn not to suffer. There are ways to understand that which don’t negate progress, but overall it’s not exactly inspiring. And the East was not the source of the vast leaps of progress and the relief of much human suffering we have seen in the past 500 years.
I’m familiar with the term and what it means. My point is that the golden hour doesn’t matter and is in fact irrelevant if the injury isn’t survivable – for example, if it is instantaneously or almost instantaneously fatal. Without my getting too graphic here, I’ll repeat that some doctors in Uvalde described the children’s injuries as not survivable, period.
Cornhead:
I bet Gore would run if they begged him. They need his young blood!
“…So the main goal is to learn not to suffer….”
Hmmm. ‘Twould appear that for the DPUSA, in march step with elites around the globe, suffering is in fact extremely ENNOBLING…at least for wide swaths of the population.
So clearly GOOD—nay, excellent!—for one’s soul….
(Would that make them Neo-Jesuits? Neo-Buddhists? Neo-Georgian-Orthodox seminarians? Certainly NOT Neo-Penitents, alas….)
Actually, they are Neo-Flagellants—that is, of OTHERS, not of SELF—peculiarly PIOUS types, spiritual “seekers” who no doubt intone with each enthusiastic stroke of the rod or lash of the whip that “This hurts us more than it hurts you”.
Well, let us hope so….
huxley,
Yes, I’m not a really religious person but I can appreciate the positive historical aspects of Christianity as well as the child rearing benefits.
Rodney Stark does also talk about a variety of other religions including the ones you mention.
______
Neo,
Sorry, I was going to add more to that to qualify it and didn’t. I’d wager that there were one or two at Uvalde that could have survived if they were attended to in the golden hour. I’m sure there were several at the Pulse nightclub massacre that fall into that category. Though the police were handed an extremely tough situation in Orlando; a perp with police training and terrorist style planning.
The police must know about the golden hour and yet … What? I don’t quite get it.
I suspect that police incident commanders are very fearful of the stain of police deaths under their command. You can prove what happened in the after analysis, but you can’t prove any kind of counterfactuals. Maybe that type of thinking either consciously or unconsciously makes commanders willing to trade several civilian lives for one police life. A hypothetical trade, because one never knows what the other options would have yielded.
The Hollies? Long Cool Woman–the rest was pure top-40 pop.
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Ragip Solyu, MiddleEastEye, 7/22/22: Russia and Ukraine sign breakthrough grain deal brokered by UN and Turkey [ https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/russia-ukraine-grain-deal-breakthrough-sign-turkey-backed ]
20 Hours Later
Ragip Solyu, Twitter thread, 7/23/22:
[ https://mobile.twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1550783185981767682 ]
Mike Doran, Twitter, 7/23/22:
[ https://mobile.twitter.com/Doranimated/status/1550830687674155014?cxt=HHwWjIC-2eaS1IUrAAAA ]
I had to laugh a bit at this article this morning:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2022/07/22/professor-quits-over-woke-curriculum-takeover-n2610630
The article actually uses the phrase: “Wokeness has seeped into America’s education system. ” seeped??? More like a flood!
I’m glad this guy is taking a public stand, but he’s a bit behind the curve:
“Outside the anthropology department, UCLA as a whole is showing all the signs of Woke capture that typify the contemporary U.S. university,” Manson wrote, predicting that “leftist ideology” will only continue to grow throughout education.”
Continue to grow??? There’s no place for it to grow as it’s already taken over the entire structure. His stand and statements would make more sense if this was 2012 and not 2022. How clueless does one have to be to just “discover” this transition now?
The First Patient has evidently taken to meeting reporters via video feed: “[he] made a previously unscheduled appearance Friday afternoon as part of an apparent effort by the administration to demonstrate that he remains healthy enough to lead the nation during his second day of treatment for COVID-19. Biden, 79, gave a thumbs-up as reporters shouted questions about how he was feeling — moments after emitting a phlegmy cough as White House economist Cecilia Rouse spoke. Biden’s surprise event delayed the regular White House press briefing, where press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and the administration’s coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha took turns describing the president as being in good shape — while dodging repeated questions about why his physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, wasn’t directly fielding questions.”
https://nypost.com/2022/07/22/joe-biden-speaks-virtually-with-covid-cough-deeper-voice/
And he’s still telling lies.
sdferr — not surprising the Russian’s fired at Odessa. The Ukrainians have been recently pounding the only bridge across the Dnipro River to try to isolate the Russian forces north of the river around Kherson (which would put them in a very bad spot). I imagine firing on Odessa is a reply to the attacks on the bridge.
It’s well established that covid virus is not life threatening to the young and healthy, but very dangerous (still) to the old and chronically ill.
Cancer? Check (he said so this week).
Asthma? Check (ditto)
Heart disease: Check (atrial fibrillation- standard of care is to take anticoagulant to decrease risk of stroke, but the First Patient had to stop his Eliquis to safely take the Paxlovid treatment for the virus.
Old? Yes, and getting older by the day.
I think the original plan was for him to wait until early 2023 to resign “for health reasons” to give Kamala a chance for 2 full terms, but the unforeseen pitifulness of both of their performances is forcing a midcourse change in strategy.
The more he insists that he is in good health and wants to pursue a second term, the more I believe that the D leadership is planning his departure. He’s gone by the end of 2022, likely right after the Nov elections so D voters are not further dispirited and stay home more than they are already planning to.
The more he insists that he is in good health and wants to pursue a second term, the more I believe that the D leadership is planning his departure. He’s gone by the end of 2022, likely right after the Nov elections so D voters are not further dispirited and stay home more than they are already planning to.
West TX Intermediate Crude:
Agreed.
There’s also been so much, now open, discussion in the media of Biden’s deficits and Hunter’s dodginess that I suspect the backroom boys and girls are already moving on Biden.
Battlespace preparation. It will be tricky, but necessary. It doesn’t look like Biden will go willingly. However, I imagine they can threaten to expose his connections to Hunter’s crimes. It will have to be done delicately.
Neither Biden nor the Democrats can allow a House Select Committee to investigate Hunter and Biden if the House flips Republican after the midterms, as it likely will.
Joe isn’t running the show and the people running the show won’t be running the show if Joe goes so, it is “Death of Stalin” time. Again, the cleanest way to get rid of Joe is for Joe to die in his sleep.
It’s more likely that he announces he won’t run again but will serve out his term. This assumes there is no serious health episodes.
Only one person benefits from Biden resigning.
Great song.
I loved the Hollies. In those days, everybody I knew listened to lots of different kinds of music. I was a jazz fan, but there were even things I liked on the radio. Not sure what happened, but now I’m a cranky old man yelling at kids to get onto my lawn.
“It will have to be done delicately.”
Huxley, that immediately made me think of this:
https://www.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/6eee1062-6e0f-4bf9-b88a-333201cdcad1
🙂
Local news story [no joke: I live about two miles from the shop in question]: The First Patient’s Doctor Wife was heckled when she visited an ice cream store in downtown New Haven: “First Lady Jill Biden was heckled by protesters during a visit to a Connecticut ice cream store. ‘Your husband is the worst President we ever had, you owe us gas money,’ an unnamed man told Biden Friday. . . . ‘You suck,’ screamed another man. . . . As her elderly husband recovered from coronavirus, the First Lady took in a visit to the nutmneg [sic] state with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona as part of a national summer learning tour to address pandemic-related learning loss.”
https://nypost.com/2022/07/23/jill-biden-heckled-outside-connecticut-ice-cream-shop/
If “Dr.” Jill could be publicly heckled in the bluest city in a deep blue state, that says a lot about JoJo’s ongoing decline in the polls.
‘The Air That I Breathe’ was co written by Albert Hammond and was originally on his album that featured this song that I have always liked.
‘It Never Rains In Southern California’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meDpNwem0Vo
The Hollies three big post Graham Nash hits are all very different from each other. ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’, ‘Long Cool Woman’ and this one are all songs that stand the test of time.
neo:
Thanks for putting me on to Dances at a Gathering. I’ve found it a great help in trying to develop an eye for the Dance, without the distractions of costumes, scenery, and cliché.
“He ain’t heavy…”
When I lived in Nebraska, my sister was on the school pep squad and I went with her for a football game against Boys Town. I had no idea the place was real. There were so very many boys.
Outstanding song by The Hollies. I remember it well. 1974, I do believe.
Chases Eagles:
One of my favorite childhood memories was a trip to Boys Town. We went as Cub Scouts on a train, and my mother was the Den Mother. I spent the trip riding between the train cars, looking at the fields passing by, with the wind in my face. At Boys Town, I mostly remember all the animal husbandry barns.
Yes, I’m old, up all night with insomnia and alcohol, and I don’t mind. Is this still the internet? I can remember sending data to other scientists on the internet’s precursor, NSFnet. Downhill all the way. What would the boys of Boys Town say? I’m pretty sure they’d think I’m a spoiled jerk. Big surprise.
I am sure that the Russians knew that the NAZI Ukrainian deal to export grain from Odessa was part of the NATO plot to invade Moscow. You have to hand it to the Russians, they have always been in the forefront in the fight against tyranny. ( Sarcasm)
Re: Oz Witch
physicsguy:
🙂 I was shocked at how green the witch’s face was. My formative viewings of “The Wizard of Oz” were on B&W TV.
of course in maguire’s wicked, they make the witch misunderstood,
https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabrication-research-images-threatens-key-theory-alzheimers-disease
is there any aspect of medical research not fraught with fraud,
Vlad signed an agreement? It was good for 13 minutes.
Those two bridges have to come down, one for Kerson, the other from Russia to Crimea (both road and railroad spans).
whose tool is trudeau, multiple choice question
https://torontosun.com/news/national/trudeau-pushes-ahead-on-fertilizer-reduction-as-provinces-and-farmers-cry-foul
“Birx’s Book Damages Trump and Disqualifies Pence” https://spectator.org/birxs-book-damages-trump-and-disqualifies-pence/
Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West. Classic.
I once went to a late night theatrical showing of the Wizard of Oz in a trendy CA beach community, and the lesbian crowd went nuts over the Hamilton scenes including the ones where she is not the witch.
There is also a story that I can’t find now about Hamilton being invited back to her old primary-secondary school as a guest speaker. After her little speech people begged her to do the WWotW. Some of the little kids ran out of the auditorium crying and shrieking.
Chases Eagles,
Do you really think that Obama would allow Harris to run things?
What do you suppose Newsom’s meeting at the W.H. right after Bidet left for the M.E…. was about?
miguel cervantes,
Starvation is unsurpassed as a non-violent means of population reduction.
they are stuck with her, like the ransom of red chief,
sobering view
https://twitter.com/SteveDeaceShow/status/1534161244407713792?s=20&t=3XSLI6RZNW3IP8KkqV18Hg
Starvation, famine and mass death are more often than not backed up and facilitated by governments taking food, restricting movement of people, or debasing means and methods of trade. Power, the ability and willingness to use violence, go hand in hand with mass starvation of populations and groups.
@ PA Cat: You wrote that Biden “made a previously unscheduled appearance Friday.” I initially misread that as “a grievously unscheduled appearance.”
Meanwhile, has anybody commented here yet on the defeat of Marilyn Mosby in her primary? It seems the AP just announced the results today, which is why I didn’t hear about her drubbing earlier this week.
Apart from the defeat of Hillary Clinton on 8 November 2016, Mosby’s downfall is the best political news I’ve heard in more than seven years.
Re: The Wizard of Oz
TommyJay:
Don’t know if you are up on the “Dark Side of the Rainbow.”
Someone noticed there is an odd correspondence if one plays the “The Wizard of Oz” on video with the audio turned off and Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” on the audio channel.
It’s fun. I’ve done it … under the proper experimental conditions.
Pink Floyd has denied *everything*.
Update to Thursday’s news about the attack on Lee Zeldin: The perp, who was initially released after the attack, was rearrested today on federal charges: “The troubled Army veteran who allegedly attacked US Rep. Lee Zeldin during a gubernatorial campaign stop near Rochester was hit with a federal assault charge Saturday, authorities revealed. David Jakubonis ‘willfully’ assaulted the congressman and Republican candidate for governor of New York ‘with a dangerous weapon’ in Perinton on Thursday evening, an FBI agent alleged in a criminal complaint filed in United States District Court. Zeldin, 42, was unhurt. Jakubonis allegedly violated a federal law against intentionally assaulting a federal lawmaker or member of the Executive Branch, according to the six-page affidavit written by Special Agent Timothy Klapec.”
https://nypost.com/2022/07/23/suspected-lee-zeldin-attacker-david-jakubonis-arrested-on-federal-assault-charge/
Geoffrey Britain, I believe DOCTOR Jill will not go quietly.
Some good news from Canada.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/07/the_persecuted_canadian_pastor_has_finally_been_vindicated.html
The Alberta Court of Appeal just destroyed Jason Kenney’s two-year persecution of Pastor Artur Pawlowski.
They ruled that the injunction against him, his arrest, his jail time, the censorship order and fines against him were illegal.
PA+Cat: New Haven has a significant Italian-American population which may not be as blue as Connecticut’s reputation.
Here’s an interesting interview with Peter Thiel, billionaire tech guy, yet straddling liberal and conservative worlds — somewhat like Elon Musk. I’ve never had a good handle on Thiel, beyond that he couldn’t be pigeonholed easily like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg.
The title, “The Dangers of Progress,” is a bit misleading. Thiel is more concerned with the lack of progress, i.e. stagnation, and its dangers to the West.
_____________________________
More plainly: how does Peter Thiel view his own project?
The overarching answer seems to be: real as opposed to illusory progress. Post-liberal thinkers such as Patrick Deneen, author of the bestselling 2018 book Why Liberalism Failed, argue that many contemporary social ills are an effect of the way the liberal project cannibalises social goods, such as family life or religious faith, in order to pursue narrow metrics such as (on the Left) personal freedom or (on the Right) economic growth. Thiel sees many of the same ills as Deneen, but offers a strikingly different framing: we’re consuming ourselves not because the fixation on progress is inevitably self-destructive beyond a certain threshold, but because material progress has objectively stalled while we remain collectively in denial about this fact.
In Thiel’s view, this has been the case since the mid-20th century, except in digital technologies. “We’ve had continued progress in the world of computers, bits, internet, mobile internet, but it’s a narrow zone of progress. And it’s been more interior, atomising and inward-focused.” Over the same period, he tells me, “there’s been limited progress in the world of atoms”.
https://unherd.com/2022/07/peter-thiel-on-the-dangers-of-progress/
_____________________________
This bothers me too. Once upon a time we were going to the moon, wiring the world with increasingly better networks, building better vehicles and transportation systems, saving the world from starvation with Borlaug’s Green Revolution, and making exponential increases in computer performance.
Since then — smart phones and increasingly addictive software. Meanwhile, as Thiel points out:
_____________________________
In this context, Thiel argues, much of what passes as “progress” in economic terms is actually an accounting trick. For example, much of what looks like GDP growth since the Fifties was simply a matter of changing how we measured the value bundled up in family life. If, he points out, “you shift an economy from a single-income household with a homemaker to one with two breadwinners and a third person who’s a child-carer, statistically you have three jobs instead of one and therefore you have more GDP, and you will exaggerate the amount of progress that’s happened”.
Suprisingly, Thiel, a gay more-or-less libertarian, sees this stagnation in cultural terms as a result of Christianity’s decline:
_____________________________
“I think [the argument we’ve reached limits of progress] sounds like a lazy excuse of people who don’t want to work very hard. It sounds too much like an excuse.” Far from being a matter of humans bumping up against natural limits, he argues, “I want to blame it on cultural changes, rather than on us running out of ideas”.
What, then, does he see as driving the cultural side of stagnation? Thiel thinks the decline of Christianity is a major factor. To him “a more naturally Christian world” was “an expanding world, a progressing world” that hit its apogee in late Victorian Britain. “It felt very expansive, both in terms of the literal empire and also in terms of the progress of knowledge, of science, of technology, and somehow that was naturally consonant with a certain Christian eschatology — a Christian vision of history. Then somehow the stagnant ecological world that we’re in is one in which there’s been a collapse of religious belief. I want to say they’re somehow sociologically linked.”
_____________________________
There’s much meat in the interview. It’s hard to pull quotes without just saying, “Read the whole thing.”
Al Gore, ““You know the climate deniers are really in some ways similar to all of those almost 400 law enforcement officers in Uvalde, Texas, who were waiting outside an unlocked door while the children were being massacred. They heard the screams, they heard the gunshots and nobody stepped forward.”
Gore is the worst person in the world.
huxley,
It’s been a while ago, but I read Thiel’s “Zero to One …” book. Some similar things in there, and it may be true.
Then somehow the stagnant ecological world that we’re in …
Was Ted Kaczynski the most influential person of the 20th century?? Is that a joke or not? I’m not sure.
Cornhead:
Al Gore is still speaking somewhere, to someone?
By the way, in the lengthy 77-page report by the Texas House, or in the McCraw presentation to the Texas Senate – I forget which one at the moment, or maybe both – it was made clear that there were no screams by the time the police arrived. There were many screams heard on the surveillance audio prior to their arrival (and they arrived very quickly), but none after. The perp worked fast.
The videos that have been released have those pre-arrival screams edited out, to protect the relatives of the victims and to reduce the sensationalism of the videos.
I think it highly likely that at least one person who was shot prior to the arrival of police might have been saved by a more timely rescue: teacher Eva Mireles, the woman who texted or phoned her husband, officer Ruben Ruiz, to say she was gravely wounded. Were there others in that same position? We don’t know. We do know that some doctors have said the wounds of many of the others were extremely severe and probably instantly fatal, but we don’t know if that represents 100% of those who died, or if some of them might have been saved. That same doctor was saying that children, being smaller, sustain more severe damage. There were five survivors from those two rooms, plus a sixth, Eva Mireles, who survived for a while. Four of the survivors were children (all in room 112, where Eva Mireles was), but none of them were shot – one smeared herself with blood and played dead and was never shot, and three were unseen because they were hiding under a table that apparently had some sort of cloth. So in room 112, every person who was shot died, and the only one we know survived for a while was an adult, the teacher. In the other room, 111, there were eleven children and they all were shot and all died. The only survivor was a teacher, Reyes, who was shot and badly injured but survived and is expected to fully recover. My point in going into all of this is that my strong suspicion is that most of the children who were shot died instantly, but two out of three adults who were shot lived for at least a while. That may be related to their larger body size.
I don’t know, but I think we will eventually find out if rescue earlier would have meant some of the others would have lived. McCraw said that a group of physicians is studying all the hospital notes and autopsies and will be issuing a report on whether the wounds were survivable if rescue had come earlier. I believe that sort of thing will be relevant in lawsuits.
“Willful assault with a dangerous weapon” — hmmm, sounds like attempted murder if the victim is a Dem or the perp is a conservative.
Neo:
Al Gore was on ABC. News person asked him if he was going to run for President. He declined.
Our country dodged a bullet when he lost the 2000 election.
Re: Peter Thiel
TommyJay:
Is “Zero to One” (the whole book) worth reading?
Then somehow the stagnant ecological world that we’re in …
As I take Thiel’s remark, the “ecological” world which environmentalists seek to maintain is one in which human progress must be severely constrained for ecological reasons. Thus, stagnation.
Christianity, on the other hand, is a vision of human progress towards God. We’re not here to keep the planet manicured as a beautiful garden and zoo. Which isn’t to say, we get to trash the planet either, but there is a larger goal.
I like this excerpt from Vatican II:
_______________________________
The Church … holds that in her most benign Lord and Master can be found the key, the focal point and the goal of man, as well as of all human history … all of human life, whether individual or collective, shows itself to be a dramatic struggle between good and evil, between light and darkness … The Lord is the goal of human history the focal point of the longings of history and of civilization, the center of the human race, the joy of every heart and the answer to all its yearnings.
–Second Vatican Council’s “Gaudium et Spes” (1965)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_of_God
_______________________________
Well, one can take or leave Vatican II, but I think this excerpt is accurate about the Big Picture of Christianity.
Humanity has meaning and a destination. We’re moving towards something. I agree with Thiel that this makes a difference.
Stagnation MEANS destruction.
Slow, drawn out, lengthy, agonizing destruction.
(The leaders and elites will be fine, though….)
– – – – – – –
BTW,
“COVENANT & CONVERSATION;
“Environmental Responsibility”—
https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/shoftim/environmental-responsibility/
huxley,
I liked the book, but wasn’t blown away; which is probably why I don’t remember a great deal of it. The basic thesis is fine and interesting, but there not a lot to say about it other than complain about how society seems to have given up on the idea of really major breakthroughs. I believe he asks, “Remember when people were interested in the ‘fountain of youth’.” Now we’re supposed to be happy to die in our 80’s because it will lighten the load on poor mother earth. Although I believe I read that Sean Parker is expecting to live to 120 years.
There is also bit about the left-wing globalist culture of silicon valley. I don’t recall much discussion of religion, though the book was published a number of years ago.
_______
One of my high school memories is of the fine biology course I took which was taught by a nun. My impertinent best friend once asked her after class, “How do you reconcile your scientific knowledge with your belief in God?” or something like that. At the time I didn’t know that her answer was something of a doctrinaire response. She certainly delivered it with enough genuine feeling.
She said roughly this: Because if people are to better themselves they should strive to become closer to God. The more we understand about our world the better we understand God’s creations and thereby become closer to Him.
I read a highly opinionated book entitled “How the West Won” by Rodney Stark. I don’t have the breadth of knowledge to know how many truths or falsehoods are contained in it, but he is very convinced that the progress of the West over the last 2K years has been because of Christianity and Catholicism in particular. The first big universities such as the University of Paris, with big scientific research efforts were Catholic institutions. I supposed it could be argued that if you wanted to do scientific research in that place and time, it was a requirement that you hooked up with the Catholic church.
As one of many contrasting examples, Stark notes that if a person is a fundamentalist Muslim, then the Quran, Sunnah, and Hadith contains the sum total of all that a person is allowed to know and do. Well, that’s kind of limiting isn’t it?
Cornhead and Neo,
[Bing dictionary]
gold·en hour
[golden hour]
NOUN
photography
the period of time just after sunrise or just before sunset when the light is infused with red and gold tones:
“most of the film looks like it was shot during the golden hour” · [more]
medicine
the first hour after the occurrence of a traumatic injury, considered the most critical for successful emergency treatment.
From Merriam Webster:
Medical Definition of golden hour
the hour immediately following traumatic injury in which medical treatment to prevent irreversible internal damage and optimize the chance of survival is most effective
…the progress of the West over the last 2K years has been because of Christianity and Catholicism in particular.
TommyJay:
I can go there. I believe I’ve been fairly vivid in this blog regarding my dissatisfaction with the Roman Catholic Church, but I can take that point.
Likewise I would note that, when it comes to progress, Hinduism and Buddhism don’t get you very far either. Humans are trapped in a near-endless cycle of births and deaths and the point is to get off that Cosmic Wheel.
“Life is suffering,” the Buddha said. So the main goal is to learn not to suffer. There are ways to understand that which don’t negate progress, but overall it’s not exactly inspiring. And the East was not the source of the vast leaps of progress and the relief of much human suffering we have seen in the past 500 years.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11044677/Ghislaine-Maxwell-moved-prison-Florida-life-luxury-Epsteins-Palm-Beach-mansion.html
TommyJay:
I’m familiar with the term and what it means. My point is that the golden hour doesn’t matter and is in fact irrelevant if the injury isn’t survivable – for example, if it is instantaneously or almost instantaneously fatal. Without my getting too graphic here, I’ll repeat that some doctors in Uvalde described the children’s injuries as not survivable, period.
Cornhead:
I bet Gore would run if they begged him. They need his young blood!
“…So the main goal is to learn not to suffer….”
Hmmm. ‘Twould appear that for the DPUSA, in march step with elites around the globe, suffering is in fact extremely ENNOBLING…at least for wide swaths of the population.
So clearly GOOD—nay, excellent!—for one’s soul….
(Would that make them Neo-Jesuits? Neo-Buddhists? Neo-Georgian-Orthodox seminarians? Certainly NOT Neo-Penitents, alas….)
Actually, they are Neo-Flagellants—that is, of OTHERS, not of SELF—peculiarly PIOUS types, spiritual “seekers” who no doubt intone with each enthusiastic stroke of the rod or lash of the whip that “This hurts us more than it hurts you”.
Well, let us hope so….
huxley,
Yes, I’m not a really religious person but I can appreciate the positive historical aspects of Christianity as well as the child rearing benefits.
Rodney Stark does also talk about a variety of other religions including the ones you mention.
______
Neo,
Sorry, I was going to add more to that to qualify it and didn’t. I’d wager that there were one or two at Uvalde that could have survived if they were attended to in the golden hour. I’m sure there were several at the Pulse nightclub massacre that fall into that category. Though the police were handed an extremely tough situation in Orlando; a perp with police training and terrorist style planning.
The police must know about the golden hour and yet … What? I don’t quite get it.
I suspect that police incident commanders are very fearful of the stain of police deaths under their command. You can prove what happened in the after analysis, but you can’t prove any kind of counterfactuals. Maybe that type of thinking either consciously or unconsciously makes commanders willing to trade several civilian lives for one police life. A hypothetical trade, because one never knows what the other options would have yielded.
The Hollies? Long Cool Woman–the rest was pure top-40 pop.