These babies take that “Please keep off the grass” sign very seriously:
Comments
Open thread 2/25/22 — 43 Comments
Seen online:
New Mexico just recommended that ALL schools stop masks. 338,200 Children LIBERATED !!
Nevada made masks optional. 493,000 Children LIBERATED !!
Virginia made it illegal for any school district to enforce masks now and forever. 1,265,419 Children LIBERATED !!
North Carolina passed a bill to STOP all mask mandates throughout all schools. 1,431,121 Children LIBERATED !!
Illinois just made masks optional for the entire state and districts were told that they were breaking the law by enforcing them!! 2,072,880 Children LIBERATED !!
That’s 5,600,640 Children LIBERATED !!
Working in a federal building I expect to be among the last liberated.
Who said that the Germans have no sense of humor? Certainly nobody from Ukraine.
Germany‘s 5000 helmets are finally on their way in two trucks. They will be given to the Ukrainian authorities outside their country, in order to avoid any risk for the German side, according to @dpa
10:23 AM · Feb 25, 2022 from Wiesbaden, Germany·Twitter for iPhone
Fog of war, Twitter version. What would Walter Cronkite say?
JimNorCal, I regret to tell you that our governor, a Democrat, vetoed the bill freeing all those NC children from masks. So only those in school districts that vote to stop the masks are free. Starting today, kids in my county can play and practice indoor sports without masks. Imagine practicing basketball with a face diaper! And starting tomorrow, I can dispense with the mask at my gym.
I expect that Biden will announce his win over COVID with his SOU address. Hope he lifts all mask mandates by the Feds, like for Health Care and Transportation, especially for flying. Then he will go on and say Ukraine is the reason we have inflation, high gas and NG prices, and empty shelves. Of course he will blame Trump for all of the above.
I forgot to add that he is being really tough on Putin, going toe to toe with him.
Shirehome, I can’t imagine anyone taking a bet against your predictions for the SOU. The Ds are so transparently obvious.
Biden will nominate Kentanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, SC Senators, now have clearance, I suppose, to vote against the nominee, since she was chosen over the SC favorite. She’s reliably leftist, of course.
New Mexico just recommended that ALL schools stop masks. 338,200 Children LIBERATED !!
JimNorCal:
Sadly not the children at UNM.
By my informal count, half the people still wearing masks in Albuquerque are twenty-something.
Unless the Dem leadership of New Mexico gets to feeling even more heat on masking, I bet UNM keeps the masks until the semester is over.
Kate, ah such Hope. OF course they will vote for the Nominee.
OK all, why is the Stock Market up 800+ points instead of down 800+ points.
Kate, so sad.
Huxley, yes I think that blaring set of assertions had to do with K-12
And if course, we all are in favor of voluntary masks.
SHIREHOME, as I understand it, the Fed may now be wobbling on raising interest rates, because of the international crisis. Not that that makes any sense. Also, in mid-morning there was a report that Putin told Xi he was open to negotiations on Ukraine. That might be a lie, given that it’s from Putin, but I have long noted that market swings don’t necessarily relate to hard facts. Rumors rule.
Ask your Democrat friends why with all the talk from Biden about sanctions is the United States still importing Russian oil?
Neo denies she referred to the French as ‘Germans with good food’.
AS I understand it, the major company I’m contracted to work for is planning on de-masking about a month from now.
}}} By my informal count, half the people still wearing masks in Albuquerque are twenty-something.
Hey, peeps can keep wearing masks until their noses fall off, as far as I care.
I only give a damn if they force ME to do so.
That’s the real thing about all this — YOU should choose the risk level YOU wish to implement for YOUR satisfaction… but you don’t get to mandate what OTHERS must do for YOUR risk avoidance.
My point about the young wearing masks is to note how obedient they are to the current liberal line.
When I was young, we were more “Question Authority”. Some of it was fashion then, but some of us were serious about it. I was.
}}} My point about the young wearing masks is to note how obedient they are to the current liberal line.
When I was young, we were more “Question Authority”. Some of it was fashion then, but some of us were serious about it. I was.
Oh, yeah, I Got It.
The chickenshit quality of the current crop of liberal Millenials is sad. They really should just admit they are French and move there.
@Cornflour:
Thanks for the MilitaryLand.net link.
Have you seen Rubio’s tweet crowing over the Russian Il-76 loaded with paratroopers shoot down?
Imagine if that little closet case idiot had become President.
Imagine if that little closet case idiot [Rubio] had become President. — Z
Xi approved comment? Is that keeping Z out of handcuffs?
If people need a little break from US and global chaos, consider the movie “The Alpinist” on Netflix. It’s a documentary on the Canadian solo rock/mountain climber Marc-Andre Leclerc. I was going to link to the movie trailer, but don’t watch it. I watched the movie cold, and I think it is better that way. Most amazing.
TommyJay:
I read Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air” about the Mt Everest disaster in the 90s, then saw the movie and other climbing things. It’s nothing I would ever do personally, but I found the accounts fascinating.
As I recall, a person in reasonable health then could pay to join a commercial climb of Everest for $55,000 and the experienced staff would make it happen — if it all worked out.
@TommyJay:
Hi there… and top of the morning to you too!
So do you think it is becoming of a US Senator to be openly crowing about the death of Russian soldiers?
I’d be fascinated to know.
@Huxley:
I’m all for these Everest Incorporated Climbing Package Tours. They help cull the ranks of a certain personality type. And the ones who have a rough time and yet make it come back a little more in tune with Base Reality.
This last bit no small thing… as most of the folks who can afford it these days made bank by dealing in abstractions. And some of those ‘abstractions’ were you and me.
I’m not sure why, but I’ve been revisiting audio and film adaptations of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels, the most well-known being, “The Talented Mr. Ripley” with Matt Damon and Jude Law plus a great small role for Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Among fans the Ripley books are known as the “Ripleiad” — a collective name I find amusing.
Those who have seen “The Talented Mr. Ripley” know that Ripley is a sociopath at heart and Highsmith manipulates her audience artfully into rooting for him, perhaps reluctantly, but nonetheless rooting for him.
Others may know Highsmith, perhaps not by name, but through one of Hitchcock’s masterpieces, “Strangers on a Train.”
I read a bio of Highsmith and she is a curious character — an alienated lesbian from an unhappy childhood, who went to Barnard College, did her first commercial writing for comic books, then pulp mysteries, and eventually became an offbeat darling of European literary critics.
There is something very striking, as well as unwholesome, about her work that sticks with a person.
@Huxley:
“There is something very striking, as well as unwholesome, about her work that sticks with a person.”
cf. Woodley of Menie et al on the Social Epistasis Amplification Model.
Mentioned it before. Short version is that high IQ Spiteful Mutants can inordinately affect the mental state of more normal members of society. One Spiteful Mutant can mess up an entire village. In the modern technodystopia a spiteful mutant can mess with the minds of millions.
Shorter Version: Burn Witches.
Zaphod:
Looks like the Everest climbing packages are still on … and for the low, low price of $69,000.
Hey! Given inflation, that’s a great price. Maybe I should reconsider.
I still have “Do something insane, horribly strenuous and possibly lethal” on my bucket list.
@Huxley:
Well I won’t say “Break a leg!”
Imagine if that little closet case idiot had become President.
The little closet case has sired four children. His wife of 24 years was once employed on the cheerleading squad of the Miami Dolphins. When you’re done with your stroke books you can fantasize she’d ever have given you the time of day.
Re: Burn Witches
Zaphod:
Back in my San Francisco Mystic Street Poet days I used to go to a cafe called “Just Desserts” around the corner for coffee and a blondie.
I became friendly with one waiter, an immaculate muscular black man with a great smile and one gold ear ring. Turned out he was in Starhawk’s coven.
‘Course I knew who Starhawk was — the feminist turned witch who was a founder of the neopagan movement then.
I showed him one of my Goddess poems to Kali. He liked it, passed it on Starhawk et al. and it got published in the coven newsletter.
I take my honors where I find them.
@Huxley:
Fortunate is he who lives long enough to have had his cake and eaten it, too.
You’re a survivor and doubtless a net plus to humanity.
But what did the counterculture do to those less hardy, less intelligent, less *lucky* than you?
When I contemplate some hypothetical Torquemada, I think more on the weaker vessels his existence would have saved rather than heretics and witches burned.
I’ve got nothing against the Kali Yuga (coming soon to a place…), mind you… I’m just hoping it’s got nothing against me 😛
But what did the counterculture do to those less hardy, less intelligent, less *lucky* than you?
Zaphod:
I’ve seen plenty of the less hardy, less intelligent and certainly less lucky crushed by straight society.
How about all the guys who got jobs, got married, had children, then got divorced and lost half or more of everything, and maybe their lives or sanity, because they played the game the way they were spozed to?
I won’t say the risks are equivalent, but life ain’t safe and no one gets out alive anyway.
You’re an Evo guy. Counterculture is standard Evo diversity — try stuff on the periphery and maybe new answers are found or old answers preserved which become crucial when things change or the mainline hits a dead end.
@Huxley:
“How about all the guys who got jobs, got married, had children, then got divorced and lost half or more of everything, and maybe their lives or sanity, because they played the game the way they were spozed to?”
Modernity and Progressivism (of which Counterculture was/is a part) messed with the time-honoured evolved social rules which maximised social utility — albeit at the expense of a few grumpy women who had to launder socks instead of having brilliant careers in advertising or HR before becoming childless cat ladies.
“Counterculture is standard Evo diversity — try stuff on the periphery and maybe new answers are found or old answers preserved which become crucial when things change or the mainline hits a dead end.”
You make a very good point! I’m not in favour of squashing all creativity and dissent. I just happen to think that creativity and dissent should carry some risk and not be too easy. By all means be Galileo… But be prepared to suffer for your art. You have to really believe it’s worth dying for before you get to throw random new stuff out into the noosophere (now there’s a weird and wonderful heretical word.)
There is NO upside to Piss Christ when we cannot also burn the artist.
You can’t do Optimisation without a good Cost Function.
…just happen to think that creativity and dissent should carry some risk and not be too easy.
Zaphod:
Careful. Us creative types might like that…
I remember some poet in the 70s (Robert Bly?) complain that in America no one cares one way or another about poetry.
But in Russia, poets are feared and persecuted.
Lucky Russian poets!
@Huxley:
“Careful. Us creative types might like that…”
I can only take so many Cuckoo Clocks, too. There’s an optimal balance between Cuckoo Clocks and Cuckoos in one’s nest. Hard to get right. Maybe impossible… but usually quite apparent when the pendulum has swung too far either way.
It’s gotta be real and not virtual. Otherwise no better than Wokesters LARPing that they’re the Real Dissidents fighting the Big Scary Fascist Man.
“Lucky Russian poets!”
How they ever got by without grants and creative writing programs, we’ll never know.
^— Third Man allusion for those who didn’t get it.
Z is troubled because Senator Rubio cheered that a Roosian plane carrying paratroops was shot down while attempting to invade Ukraine. That stuff happens in war, soldiers die, and if you aren’t allied with Vlad that is seen as consequence of Vlad’s behavior. For Z those paratroops should have been welcomed with flowers and nubile virgins. For Z those 13 Ukrainian border guards on Snake Island should have drowned themselves and saved Roosia from expending ordnance.
But for Z, Senator Rubio must be denigrated and debased, after all, he questioned Vlad. The shill for despots knows his spin.
Z:
Here’s a link for you about the Russians killed trying to invade Ukraine:
There seems to be a common denominator in these situations and it ain’t NATO. Finland mentioned something about being a sovereign nation in it’s negative response to Vlad. Funny that, eh, Bunge and Z.
There seems to be a common denominator in these situations and it ain’t NATO.
Well, recapitulating what the moderatrix has said, the complaint is that NATO is a cartel inhibiting VP from bullying Europe’s small countries one-by-one.
Note, from 1902 to 1934, the U.S. government had treaties with Cuba and Panama the provisions of which included a promise by the governments of each to refrain from ratifying treaties with other countries absent the approval of the U.S. government. One of the Roosevelt Administration’s policy initiatives was abrogating these treaties. You’ll notice that VP is asserting the Russian government has similar authority over comparatively populous and affluent countries over which it has never heretofore had such discretion. We can check the text of the Treaty of Co-operation that Finland concluded with Soviet Russia in 1948; it may have had some similar provisions or it may not have. The effrontery is rather arresting. (I’m going to wager the Chinese autocrat will be making similar demands in the Far East).
One other thing you likely won’t hear from Geoffrey Britain or MBunge is that the number of American troops deployed abroad has since 1963 declined by 75%. We have about 60,000 troops in Europe. Putin’s objection is to the presence of tripwire forces.
Zaphod @ 12:15am,
I think the myth of barefoot and pregnant women chained to a stove is overblown, at least in America’s past. Truly bold and adventurous women had outlets and American history is full of them and their stories. My own mother was no shrinking violet. She always worked and even ran her own business for awhile. She graduated High School in 1955, the very pinnacle of the ’50s that are so often caricatured as forcing folks into boxes.
There were almost always wars, so a lot of women lacked suitors when they reached maturity. Some went to the frontier as schoolmarms. Some went to the big city to work in industry. Madam C.J. Walker, a black, American woman born in 1867, made millions founding her own cosmetics company.
Re: “Third Man” allusion
Zaphod:
I just re-viewed “The Third Man” a few weeks ago and even looked up Welles’ famous cuckoo clock speech. He added it to Graham Greene’s script and took a flack because the cuckoo clock is more German than Swiss.
_________________________________
The lines became lodged in the mind because they encapsulated an uncomfortable and at the same time compelling idea. His history may not have been factually accurate – the Swiss were a major military power in Renaissance times and the cuckoo clock originated some time later in Bavaria – but the idea that culture thrives in conditions of war and tyranny has an undeniable basis in fact.
The challenge of our current discussion is that it’s not a binary choice, but where does a society draw the line and how, when it comes to creativity, dissent and chaos. Not simple.
BTW, the Harry Lime villain was sufficiently popular with audiences that Welles did a radio show in which the episodes were prequels to “The Third Man.” I listened to a couple dozen of them with enjoyment during Covid.
Seen online:
New Mexico just recommended that ALL schools stop masks. 338,200 Children LIBERATED !!
Nevada made masks optional. 493,000 Children LIBERATED !!
Virginia made it illegal for any school district to enforce masks now and forever. 1,265,419 Children LIBERATED !!
North Carolina passed a bill to STOP all mask mandates throughout all schools. 1,431,121 Children LIBERATED !!
Illinois just made masks optional for the entire state and districts were told that they were breaking the law by enforcing them!! 2,072,880 Children LIBERATED !!
That’s 5,600,640 Children LIBERATED !!
Working in a federal building I expect to be among the last liberated.
Who said that the Germans have no sense of humor? Certainly nobody from Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/hemicker/status/1497230857207263239Tweet
Lorenz Hemicker @hemicker
Germany‘s 5000 helmets are finally on their way in two trucks. They will be given to the Ukrainian authorities outside their country, in order to avoid any risk for the German side, according to @dpa
10:23 AM · Feb 25, 2022 from Wiesbaden, Germany·Twitter for iPhone
Fog of war, Twitter version. What would Walter Cronkite say?
https://twitter.com/Militarylandnet
JimNorCal, I regret to tell you that our governor, a Democrat, vetoed the bill freeing all those NC children from masks. So only those in school districts that vote to stop the masks are free. Starting today, kids in my county can play and practice indoor sports without masks. Imagine practicing basketball with a face diaper! And starting tomorrow, I can dispense with the mask at my gym.
I expect that Biden will announce his win over COVID with his SOU address. Hope he lifts all mask mandates by the Feds, like for Health Care and Transportation, especially for flying. Then he will go on and say Ukraine is the reason we have inflation, high gas and NG prices, and empty shelves. Of course he will blame Trump for all of the above.
I forgot to add that he is being really tough on Putin, going toe to toe with him.
Shirehome, I can’t imagine anyone taking a bet against your predictions for the SOU. The Ds are so transparently obvious.
Biden will nominate Kentanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, SC Senators, now have clearance, I suppose, to vote against the nominee, since she was chosen over the SC favorite. She’s reliably leftist, of course.
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/25/breaking-biden-announces-his-supreme-court-pick-and-lindsey-graham-is-mad-n527764
New Mexico just recommended that ALL schools stop masks. 338,200 Children LIBERATED !!
JimNorCal:
Sadly not the children at UNM.
By my informal count, half the people still wearing masks in Albuquerque are twenty-something.
Unless the Dem leadership of New Mexico gets to feeling even more heat on masking, I bet UNM keeps the masks until the semester is over.
Kate, ah such Hope. OF course they will vote for the Nominee.
OK all, why is the Stock Market up 800+ points instead of down 800+ points.
Kate, so sad.
Huxley, yes I think that blaring set of assertions had to do with K-12
And if course, we all are in favor of voluntary masks.
SHIREHOME, as I understand it, the Fed may now be wobbling on raising interest rates, because of the international crisis. Not that that makes any sense. Also, in mid-morning there was a report that Putin told Xi he was open to negotiations on Ukraine. That might be a lie, given that it’s from Putin, but I have long noted that market swings don’t necessarily relate to hard facts. Rumors rule.
Ask your Democrat friends why with all the talk from Biden about sanctions is the United States still importing Russian oil?
Neo denies she referred to the French as ‘Germans with good food’.
AS I understand it, the major company I’m contracted to work for is planning on de-masking about a month from now.
}}} By my informal count, half the people still wearing masks in Albuquerque are twenty-something.
Hey, peeps can keep wearing masks until their noses fall off, as far as I care.
I only give a damn if they force ME to do so.
That’s the real thing about all this — YOU should choose the risk level YOU wish to implement for YOUR satisfaction… but you don’t get to mandate what OTHERS must do for YOUR risk avoidance.
My point about the young wearing masks is to note how obedient they are to the current liberal line.
When I was young, we were more “Question Authority”. Some of it was fashion then, but some of us were serious about it. I was.
}}} My point about the young wearing masks is to note how obedient they are to the current liberal line.
When I was young, we were more “Question Authority”. Some of it was fashion then, but some of us were serious about it. I was.
Oh, yeah, I Got It.
The chickenshit quality of the current crop of liberal Millenials is sad. They really should just admit they are French and move there.
@Cornflour:
Thanks for the MilitaryLand.net link.
Have you seen Rubio’s tweet crowing over the Russian Il-76 loaded with paratroopers shoot down?
https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1497348285333389313?cxt=HHwWgoCyxaGV08cpAAAA
Imagine if that little closet case idiot had become President.
Imagine if that little closet case idiot [Rubio] had become President. — Z
Xi approved comment? Is that keeping Z out of handcuffs?
If people need a little break from US and global chaos, consider the movie “The Alpinist” on Netflix. It’s a documentary on the Canadian solo rock/mountain climber Marc-Andre Leclerc. I was going to link to the movie trailer, but don’t watch it. I watched the movie cold, and I think it is better that way. Most amazing.
TommyJay:
I read Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air” about the Mt Everest disaster in the 90s, then saw the movie and other climbing things. It’s nothing I would ever do personally, but I found the accounts fascinating.
As I recall, a person in reasonable health then could pay to join a commercial climb of Everest for $55,000 and the experienced staff would make it happen — if it all worked out.
@TommyJay:
Hi there… and top of the morning to you too!
So do you think it is becoming of a US Senator to be openly crowing about the death of Russian soldiers?
I’d be fascinated to know.
@Huxley:
I’m all for these Everest Incorporated Climbing Package Tours. They help cull the ranks of a certain personality type. And the ones who have a rough time and yet make it come back a little more in tune with Base Reality.
This last bit no small thing… as most of the folks who can afford it these days made bank by dealing in abstractions. And some of those ‘abstractions’ were you and me.
I’m not sure why, but I’ve been revisiting audio and film adaptations of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels, the most well-known being, “The Talented Mr. Ripley” with Matt Damon and Jude Law plus a great small role for Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Among fans the Ripley books are known as the “Ripleiad” — a collective name I find amusing.
Those who have seen “The Talented Mr. Ripley” know that Ripley is a sociopath at heart and Highsmith manipulates her audience artfully into rooting for him, perhaps reluctantly, but nonetheless rooting for him.
Others may know Highsmith, perhaps not by name, but through one of Hitchcock’s masterpieces, “Strangers on a Train.”
I read a bio of Highsmith and she is a curious character — an alienated lesbian from an unhappy childhood, who went to Barnard College, did her first commercial writing for comic books, then pulp mysteries, and eventually became an offbeat darling of European literary critics.
There is something very striking, as well as unwholesome, about her work that sticks with a person.
@Huxley:
“There is something very striking, as well as unwholesome, about her work that sticks with a person.”
cf. Woodley of Menie et al on the Social Epistasis Amplification Model.
Mentioned it before. Short version is that high IQ Spiteful Mutants can inordinately affect the mental state of more normal members of society. One Spiteful Mutant can mess up an entire village. In the modern technodystopia a spiteful mutant can mess with the minds of millions.
Shorter Version: Burn Witches.
Zaphod:
Looks like the Everest climbing packages are still on … and for the low, low price of $69,000.
https://www.adventureconsultants.com/expeditions/seven-summits/everest/
Hey! Given inflation, that’s a great price. Maybe I should reconsider.
I still have “Do something insane, horribly strenuous and possibly lethal” on my bucket list.
@Huxley:
Well I won’t say “Break a leg!”
Imagine if that little closet case idiot had become President.
The little closet case has sired four children. His wife of 24 years was once employed on the cheerleading squad of the Miami Dolphins. When you’re done with your stroke books you can fantasize she’d ever have given you the time of day.
Re: Burn Witches
Zaphod:
Back in my San Francisco Mystic Street Poet days I used to go to a cafe called “Just Desserts” around the corner for coffee and a blondie.
I became friendly with one waiter, an immaculate muscular black man with a great smile and one gold ear ring. Turned out he was in Starhawk’s coven.
‘Course I knew who Starhawk was — the feminist turned witch who was a founder of the neopagan movement then.
I showed him one of my Goddess poems to Kali. He liked it, passed it on Starhawk et al. and it got published in the coven newsletter.
I take my honors where I find them.
@Huxley:
Fortunate is he who lives long enough to have had his cake and eaten it, too.
You’re a survivor and doubtless a net plus to humanity.
But what did the counterculture do to those less hardy, less intelligent, less *lucky* than you?
When I contemplate some hypothetical Torquemada, I think more on the weaker vessels his existence would have saved rather than heretics and witches burned.
I’ve got nothing against the Kali Yuga (coming soon to a place…), mind you… I’m just hoping it’s got nothing against me 😛
But what did the counterculture do to those less hardy, less intelligent, less *lucky* than you?
Zaphod:
I’ve seen plenty of the less hardy, less intelligent and certainly less lucky crushed by straight society.
How about all the guys who got jobs, got married, had children, then got divorced and lost half or more of everything, and maybe their lives or sanity, because they played the game the way they were spozed to?
I won’t say the risks are equivalent, but life ain’t safe and no one gets out alive anyway.
You’re an Evo guy. Counterculture is standard Evo diversity — try stuff on the periphery and maybe new answers are found or old answers preserved which become crucial when things change or the mainline hits a dead end.
@Huxley:
“How about all the guys who got jobs, got married, had children, then got divorced and lost half or more of everything, and maybe their lives or sanity, because they played the game the way they were spozed to?”
Modernity and Progressivism (of which Counterculture was/is a part) messed with the time-honoured evolved social rules which maximised social utility — albeit at the expense of a few grumpy women who had to launder socks instead of having brilliant careers in advertising or HR before becoming childless cat ladies.
“Counterculture is standard Evo diversity — try stuff on the periphery and maybe new answers are found or old answers preserved which become crucial when things change or the mainline hits a dead end.”
You make a very good point! I’m not in favour of squashing all creativity and dissent. I just happen to think that creativity and dissent should carry some risk and not be too easy. By all means be Galileo… But be prepared to suffer for your art. You have to really believe it’s worth dying for before you get to throw random new stuff out into the noosophere (now there’s a weird and wonderful heretical word.)
There is NO upside to Piss Christ when we cannot also burn the artist.
You can’t do Optimisation without a good Cost Function.
…just happen to think that creativity and dissent should carry some risk and not be too easy.
Zaphod:
Careful. Us creative types might like that…
I remember some poet in the 70s (Robert Bly?) complain that in America no one cares one way or another about poetry.
But in Russia, poets are feared and persecuted.
Lucky Russian poets!
@Huxley:
“Careful. Us creative types might like that…”
I can only take so many Cuckoo Clocks, too. There’s an optimal balance between Cuckoo Clocks and Cuckoos in one’s nest. Hard to get right. Maybe impossible… but usually quite apparent when the pendulum has swung too far either way.
It’s gotta be real and not virtual. Otherwise no better than Wokesters LARPing that they’re the Real Dissidents fighting the Big Scary Fascist Man.
“Lucky Russian poets!”
How they ever got by without grants and creative writing programs, we’ll never know.
^— Third Man allusion for those who didn’t get it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cydkTy6GmFA
Z is troubled because Senator Rubio cheered that a Roosian plane carrying paratroops was shot down while attempting to invade Ukraine. That stuff happens in war, soldiers die, and if you aren’t allied with Vlad that is seen as consequence of Vlad’s behavior. For Z those paratroops should have been welcomed with flowers and nubile virgins. For Z those 13 Ukrainian border guards on Snake Island should have drowned themselves and saved Roosia from expending ordnance.
But for Z, Senator Rubio must be denigrated and debased, after all, he questioned Vlad. The shill for despots knows his spin.
Z:
Here’s a link for you about the Russians killed trying to invade Ukraine:
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/02/25/ukraine-scores-a-major-hit-proves-a-big-putin-claim-false-n528153
Sucks to be a soldier for Vlad.
And Z you must remember this incident
https://www.benzinga.com/news/22/02/25798721/airlines-advised-to-not-fly-over-all-of-ukraine-over-extreme-risk-russia-shuts-down-eastern-ukrainia
Z, Geoffrey, Bunge:
As reported earlier by Tim Pool here is a link to Vlad’s threats against Finland and Sweden:
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/25/russia-threatens-two-more-countries-with-military-and-political-consequences-n528213
There seems to be a common denominator in these situations and it ain’t NATO. Finland mentioned something about being a sovereign nation in it’s negative response to Vlad. Funny that, eh, Bunge and Z.
There seems to be a common denominator in these situations and it ain’t NATO.
Well, recapitulating what the moderatrix has said, the complaint is that NATO is a cartel inhibiting VP from bullying Europe’s small countries one-by-one.
Note, from 1902 to 1934, the U.S. government had treaties with Cuba and Panama the provisions of which included a promise by the governments of each to refrain from ratifying treaties with other countries absent the approval of the U.S. government. One of the Roosevelt Administration’s policy initiatives was abrogating these treaties. You’ll notice that VP is asserting the Russian government has similar authority over comparatively populous and affluent countries over which it has never heretofore had such discretion. We can check the text of the Treaty of Co-operation that Finland concluded with Soviet Russia in 1948; it may have had some similar provisions or it may not have. The effrontery is rather arresting. (I’m going to wager the Chinese autocrat will be making similar demands in the Far East).
One other thing you likely won’t hear from Geoffrey Britain or MBunge is that the number of American troops deployed abroad has since 1963 declined by 75%. We have about 60,000 troops in Europe. Putin’s objection is to the presence of tripwire forces.
Zaphod @ 12:15am,
I think the myth of barefoot and pregnant women chained to a stove is overblown, at least in America’s past. Truly bold and adventurous women had outlets and American history is full of them and their stories. My own mother was no shrinking violet. She always worked and even ran her own business for awhile. She graduated High School in 1955, the very pinnacle of the ’50s that are so often caricatured as forcing folks into boxes.
There were almost always wars, so a lot of women lacked suitors when they reached maturity. Some went to the frontier as schoolmarms. Some went to the big city to work in industry. Madam C.J. Walker, a black, American woman born in 1867, made millions founding her own cosmetics company.
Re: “Third Man” allusion
Zaphod:
I just re-viewed “The Third Man” a few weeks ago and even looked up Welles’ famous cuckoo clock speech. He added it to Graham Greene’s script and took a flack because the cuckoo clock is more German than Swiss.
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The lines became lodged in the mind because they encapsulated an uncomfortable and at the same time compelling idea. His history may not have been factually accurate – the Swiss were a major military power in Renaissance times and the cuckoo clock originated some time later in Bavaria – but the idea that culture thrives in conditions of war and tyranny has an undeniable basis in fact.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19202527
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The challenge of our current discussion is that it’s not a binary choice, but where does a society draw the line and how, when it comes to creativity, dissent and chaos. Not simple.
BTW, the Harry Lime villain was sufficiently popular with audiences that Welles did a radio show in which the episodes were prequels to “The Third Man.” I listened to a couple dozen of them with enjoyment during Covid.
https://www.oldradioworld.com/shows/Lives_of_Harry_Lime.php
There were almost always wars, so a lot of women lacked suitors when they reached maturity.
Where?