So Joe is leaving CA to go to Maui. Then back to CA and then maybe visit the flooded areas. Surprised that Maui is even mentioned now, it is so last week. Will Gavin get the George Bush treatment, or the Trump treatment or the DeSantis treatment? Ha Ha Ha, no cause he is a Dem.
Maybe the Gods are showing their anger at CA, floods and an Earthquake.
Andy McCarthy demonstrates he’s even more foolish about politics than he is about the true state of criminality in the FBI and DOJ. He seems unable to wean himself from conventional wisdom no matter how far his cheese has moved.
I don’t know him, but he seems to be obsessed with his hatred of Trump. Hatred makes all of us foolish. Of course, maybe he doesn’t hate so much as he simply loves all his NeverTrumper friends and can’t see past his tribe.
Over the last decade or so, I think I have noticed that those who live and work farther from DC, NY or the other centers of CW have a clearer view of what’s happening in the country.
I only know him from his writings and his public appearances, and in the last 20 years he has proven to be less and less reliable,
McCarthy’s analysis is, at times, interesting and valid, but he does not seem to understand the word “brevity” or the idea of getting to the point so that we have an idea where he is leading us. Unless that is the objective.
his premise is wrong, and then he tries to build evidence for it, ignoring the ‘elephant in the room’ the longstanding lawfare campaign against the right, not only in this country,
A) DeSantis calls MAGA supporters in Congress ‘listless vessels,’ says Trump didn’t drain swamp
B) DeSantis At NH Town Hall: Trump “running in 2024 on the things that he promised to do in 2016 and didn’t do”
C) DeSantis: ‘Of course’ Trump lost in 2020
• The key question is not: Are the DeSantis headlines unfair?
• And the key question is not: Is DeSantis getting the headlines he wants?
• The key question is: Why does DeSantis want these headlines?
RE” UFOs—The “threat narrative”
If members of Congress are being briefed with the observed capabilities of UFOs which appear on AATIP slide 9, which Lou Elizondo’s comment indicates is what AATIP actually concluded, I’d think that many of these congressmen would be scared shitless (I happened across a comment –which I can no longer find—that a member coming out of a UFO briefing had hands which shook so hard that he couldn’t hold a piece of paper), and would start to take the issue of UAPs seriously, thus the couple of recent bipartisan pieces of legislation dealing with UFOs, “off world technology,” and NHIs.*
By way of contrast, long time UFO “expert” Dr. Stephen Greer believes that all Aliens are peaceful—our “Space Brothers,” and that the “Alien threat narrative,” including some apparent Abductions, is a false flag operation which has been manufactured/staged by some elements within our government/military.
AATIP briefing Slide 9
“The science exists for an enemy of the United States to manipulate both physical and cognitive environments in order to penetrate U.S. facilities, influence decision makers, and compromise national security.”
Psychotronic weapons
Cognitive human interface (CHI)
Penetration of solid surfaces
Instantaneous sensor disassembly
Alteration/Manipulation of biological organisms
Anomalies in the space/time construct
Unique cognitive human interface experiences
DOD Advantages
DOD has been involved in similar experiments in the past
DOD has relationships with renowned subject matter experts
DOD controls several facilities where activities have been detected
“What was considered “phenomena” is now quantum physics.””
that guy – I’d say the key question is whether DeSantis is speaking truth. And he is, on all of those points.
Republican primary voters don’t seem to want truth, they seem to prefer comfortable lies. The hangover on November 13, 2024 is going to be massive.
seeing what our own rival powers are like, I wouldnt be guessing our distant adversaries would be any more benevolent, would they be the vikings, the conquistadors or the English and french colonizers,
I’m not saying hg wells was entirely right, but I’m not ruling it out, it is however an extraordinary set of claims, that requires equivalent levels of proof
who’s he trying to win over pence and hutchinson supporters, they are the ones who say the election system was totes solid?
miguel cervantes – “Trump lost the election” is not equivalent to “the election was ‘totes solid.'”
Do you sometimes confuse Naomi Woolf with someone else? People do sometimes. I have. Vanity Fair has an article by Naomi Klein lamenting the confusion.
I haven’t read the article yet, but the link that took me there, and the lead-in at the top, relate that Naomi W. is a paranoid conspiracy theorist, and Naomi K. is troubled by the association with her. “Paranoia” and “conspiracy theories” are hard to avoid nowadays, and maybe Naomi W. feels the same way about being confused with Naomi K.
_____
Mona Charen has an article at the Bulwark telling us that Joe Biden is not too old. Not only that, “the president’s personality appears to improve with age.”
Biden looks like a vegetable to me with no hope of improvement. His personality was never that great, but how can anybody say it’s getting better? Mellowed, less angry, less bragging, fewer lies? I don’t think so. Less media coverage. The MSM ignoring the gaffes and blow-ups. Mona not seeing or remembering Joe’s follies.
_____
Miranda Devine, referencing a Politico article, notes that Hunter Biden had a long interview with staffers for Trump’s first impeachment.
“And this curious fact: Hunter was involved in the Trump impeachment over Ukraine. In the summer of 2019, he tells an adviser he has an all-day meeting “with impeachment lawyers”. After 5 years, he still has not been interviewed by Weiss’ team or testified before the grand jury.”
was mona charen replaced with a seed pod, if captain oveurs full meltdown is not evident yet, of course the camarilla prop him up, because they have that much contempt for us,
miguel cervantes – Mona Charen is an add case. It’s very difficult to understand how any right-of-center person could render themselves that willfully blind about Biden.
that guy, A)
Apparently “that guy” gets his talking points from CNN. The “listless” quote was taken entirely out of context and CNN was caught red handed splicing the tape to get the quote. Must be too much work for “that guy” to actually read the entire transcript.
Troll.
oh it was the bulwinkle, is groveling to omidyar, require you to lose your self respect,
That guy:
“ The key question is: Why does DeSantis want these headlines?”
As stated above all are true.
Example: Trump would end every speech in 2016 saying that if elected he would build a wall on the border with Mexico, and that Mexico would pay for it. Did not happen.
To make it worse see this news story:
“White House auctioning off unfinished parts of border wall”
Here is the full “listless vessels” quote. DeSantis is clearly talking about people in Congress.
“So there will be people who are huge Trump supporters, like in Congress, who have incredibly liberal left-wing records that is really just atrocious, and yet they’re viewed by some of these folks as, like, really, really good. Then you have other people, you know, like a Congressman Chip Roy, who has endorsed me, Congressman Thomas Massie. These guys have records of principle fighting the swamp that are second to none. And yet they will be attacked by some of these people and called RINOs. So it’s just been totally detached from any type of substance. And ultimately, a movement can’t be about the personality of one individual. The movement has got to be about what are you trying to achieve on behalf of the American people. And that’s got to be based in principle. Because if you’re not rooted in principle, if all we are is listless vessels that are just supposed to follow whatever happens to come down the pike on Truth Social every morning, that’s not going to be a durable movement.”
It’s impossible for me to imagine a species of life capable of manipulating matter and time at the necessary levels for interstellar space travel that would need anything from us. Why bother to wage war or mount any aggression?
physicsguy @1:02pm,
Standard operating procedure for the Ever Trumpers. Truth doesn’t matter. They only care about winning. Except for those who are on the other team. They’ll stop caring about winning right after the GOP convention.
It’s politics, but I don’t appreciate President Trump deciding that he doesn’t have to participate in the GOP debates. Not good at all.
Rufus T. Firefly,
I think you are making a false assumption that interstellar travel would necessitate some version of ” faster than light travel, ” especially as it relates to the nearest stars.
Well stocked ” Multi generational ships” , , with extensive recycling systems, that could cross the void from the Centaur system in decades would not need to travel faster than light. They might even be able to ” Island hop” , jumping from the Oort cloud of one system to the Oort cloud of the next system.
Then throw in the possibility of species capable of long natural hibernation with a rotating crew system or species that can live hundreds of years like some Earth based species.
Rufus T. Firefly said: It’s impossible for me to imagine a species of life capable of manipulating matter and time at the necessary levels for interstellar space travel that would need anything from us. Why bother to wage war or mount any aggression?
Exactly. The Universe is vast. Once a species is able to master technologies like
– fusion power (and beyond that, anti-matter power) leading to practically infinite power generation from Universally enormously abundant hydrogen and helium isotopes
– combined with nanotechnology for manipulation of matter on a fine level leading to essentially infinite fabrication of almost anything imaginable
– not to mention artificial intelligence allowing for complex, high dimensional solutions to most problems
said species would effectively have infinite power, infinite production, and infinite resources. They would need nothing from us. We would be as consequential to them as a tribe of chimpanzees in the depths of some African rainforest is to you or I. We might be a curiosity in a similar way that the behaivor of chimpanzees are to us.
The other possibility is that humans first encounter with alien species might not be face to face, but via advanced AI drones, sent out decades earlier from near star systems.
I do not think this is too far beyond potential technology.
I haven’t been commenting here lately, partly because I’m trying to cut down on my online time, and am doing so now to say two things:
(1) I very much share the gloom that has been on display here recently, both from Neo and her commenters. That’s the other reason I haven’t been commenting. It’s all just too depressing.
I have to preface anything I say about our prospects with the statement that I’m by nature melancholy and pessimistic, but I just can’t see a likely future for the U.S. that isn’t somewhere on the scale from decline to disaster. The most fundamental reason is that too many of the country’s residents–“citizens” is not that widely applicable–simply have no interest in preserving the constitutional system. They don’t know what it is and they don’t care. Ancillary to that is the fact that what we broadly call the left is both very powerful and actively hostile to that system, and wants to replace it with something else: basically, rule by them.
The whole Trump phenomenon is a tragedy. He had a pretty strong sense of what was wrong and an opportunity to begin reversing it. But he couldn’t and can’t do it.
(2) That Mona Charen piece is insane. Both Biden and Trump voters can reasonably say “My guy is bad but I’m voting for him because the other guy is so much worse.” But no one who can still at this point see Biden as anything other than, to quote (or maybe paraphrase?) Neo, “not very nice, not very smart, not very honest” is in that respect simply out of touch with reality. I would never attempt to argue with such a person.
She’s another instance of what we’ve often remarked on here: that Trump simply broke the minds of a certain kind of moderate conservative. I conjecture that a lot of them, being creatures of the NYC-DC world, really didn’t know much about the rest of the country and didn’t like what they saw when Trump forced them to see. Just a conjecture. I live far away in every sense from that world.
@ physicsguy
“Apparently “that guy” gets his talking points from CNN. The “listless” quote was taken entirely out of context and CNN was caught red handed splicing the tape to get the quote. Must be too much work for “that guy” to actually read the entire transcript. Troll.”
• 100% agree that all citizens should review the source – not just the headline or “reporting” – which I did (please see link below).
• It is true that there have been reports about how CNN edited the interview – truncated – and they have been challenged on that by the DeSantis campaign.
• It is also true that the headline I used captures key points that DeSantis made: Trump supporters in Congress + Listless Vessels (please see the link I provided or the transcript @Bob Wilson provided).
• To be fair, my questions are not from “CNN Talking Points”, and you did not respond to my actions – you responded to CNN’ actions.
• Still would be happy to review any thoughts you may have on my question: Why does DeSantis want these headlines?
could be like the probe in voyage home, that was searching for the hump back whales, and when it didn’t hear back, starting ionizing the atmosphere,
On the long faded salience of Andrew McCarthy (See TOP). His time working in the Southern District of the FIB was in the 1990s. IOEs, twenty-five years out of date. But YES, host insistence to ignore and deny the obvious is the very root of NRS downfall. It’s become ridiculous, Evil.
But is DeSantis’s description of Congress accurate? It communicates what he wants to communicate, but is it really true that Trump supporters in Congress have “incredibly liberal left-wing records” compared to other Republicans? Compared to NeverTrump Republicans in Congress and elsewhere?
Is it really the case that DeSantis supporters in Congress are truly more principled conservatives? And haven’t “principled conservatives,” real or self-described, had trouble over the years keeping to their principles, focusing on the important issues, and getting things done?
If Trump still has support, it’s because his voters don’t trust Washington insiders to do what they say. Maybe DeSantis will, but many of us still have less faith in DC Republicans than in Trump.
CORRECTION: the Southern District of the Manhattan FIB
Abraxas:
DeSantis is not saying this is true of all Trump supporters in Congress. He is saying there are some.
I believe that perhaps Nancy Mace would be one of them. She’s hopped on the truncated quote bandwagon, and when I looked her up it seems she has a somewhat liberal voting record.
Abraxas is on point-“But is DeSantis’s description of Congress true?
“Is it really the case that DeSantis supporters in Congress are truly more principled conservatives?”
One would need measurements. Quasi not Trumpish Rep. Nancy Mace (SC).
But MTG (GA) and Boebert (CO) are very Trump, regardless of their fights.
The fact that DiSantis cite something more subtle than really obvious tells us more about D-man, perhaps.
Trump’s power very much lies in saying the obvious hard Truth out loud – heedless of the effect.
Physicsguy takes easy dislike to Trump merely speaking. He ought to watch his head of state ceremonial events like Medal of Freedom awards on C-Span because his charm and manner and words are The BEST, all make me proud to be American — completely unlike ANY Biden ceremony. (Not that the propaganda media will let you know it.)
Neo replies to Abraxas – well, spot on my point about D-man asserting the subtle as somehow evident.
Mac:
I agree with most of what you say.
TJ and Stan – If you’re referring to his tweet about Trump being a sure loser, your slagging on McCarthy is yet another example of rejecting an inconvenient truth that you don’t want to hear.
Trump has consistently had 60-70% of the public opposed to his 2024 run. Those numbers are catastrophic. You don’t win an election by running a candidate that 65% of the public knows well and already opposes. No amount of “but Biden” argumentation overcomes that.
I just hope Republican primary voters wake up from their delusion before its too late.
miguel cervantes:
I’ll tell you exactly who he is trying to win over: people like me.
People like me who realized even before the 2020 election that the rules changes were a perfect set-up for fraud, but that it would be literally impossible to legally PROVE that fraud occurred or to correct it after the fact when the votes are already counted and certified. Those people realize that the only truth we know about that election is that, plus the fact that Biden was inaugurated and is now president. Refusing to acknowledge those truths, and continually talking and talking about how Trump is really the valid president, is a losing battle that has alienated a lot of moderate voters who originally would have supported Trump in 2024. I am not one of those “moderate” voters, by the way; I’m conservative. But those voters are needed, as are the conservatives Trump has alienated post-2020.
Bauxite:
See what I wrote in my comment right below yours.
Jon baker,
I understand the math, speeds and distances involved*. Let me correct my statement to include your theory. Does my statement make any less sense now?
It’s impossible for me to imagine a species of life capable of manipulating matter and biology to navigate and survive interstellar space travel that would need anything from us. Why bother to wage war or mount any aggression?
*The fastest artificial object (Voyager 1) currently known travels at about 61,500kmh. Let’s pretend we’re extremely fortunate and there happens to be a life form of advanced intelligence living in the nearest star system to Earth. The aptly named, Proxima Centauri. Just shy of 40 trillion miles away (your definition of proximate may differ). Traveling at 61,500kmh, the cryogenically hybernating Proxima Centauri Cosmonauts will reach Earth in about 73,000 years. Mutilate a few cows. Make a few crop circles. Maybe probe a few suburbanites. Then it’s back into the cryogenic sleep chamber for the 73,000 year trip back home to report the research findings to their leaders. Then the Proxima Centauri Space Force sends a million Martian Army on a 73,000 year journey to confiscate our vast aluminum resources (or, perhaps, precious fluids) and tow them back to Proxima Centauri. Seems likely.
neo writes,
“She’s hopped on the truncated quote bandwagon, and when I looked her up it seems she has a somewhat liberal voting record.”
That is, when her fiance doesn’t keep her “busy” and away from her Congressional duties.
“When I woke up this morning at 7 — I was getting picked up at 7:45 — Patrick, my fiancé, tried to pull me by my waist over this morning in bed, And I was like, ‘No, baby, we don’t got time for that this morning,’ Mace said she told her future spouse, Patrick Bryant. I gotta get to the prayer breakfast,” Mace told the crowd. “And I gotta be on time,” the 45-year-old lawmaker said, before adding, “A little TMI.”
“He can wait. I’ll see him later tonight.”
She’s another instance of what we’ve often remarked on here: that Trump simply broke the minds of a certain kind of moderate conservative. I conjecture that a lot of them, being creatures of the NYC-DC world, really didn’t know much about the rest of the country and didn’t like what they saw when Trump forced them to see. Just a conjecture. I live far away in every sense from that world.
==
I’m going to disagree with you. She was 58 years old in 2015, married 26 years, a mother of three. She was (and remains) something of a has been. She cadged a law degree but never practiced. She’d worked in public relations and topical commentary from the time she was 26 years old. She was at her peak professionally around 1995, when she had a weekly gig on CNN’s Capital Gang. The director of the Ethics and Public Policy Center gave her a multi-year contract in 2015, but declined to renew it in 2021. She should never have been employed there as she simply does not have the requisite skills to be a policy analyst.
==
I have located her home in Northern Virginia. No clue what the terms were when they purchased it, but if you were facing a historically normal service rate today, I’d advise you to avoid putting in an offer on it unless you could come up with a $200,000 down payment and the primary earner in your family has a take-home pay in excess of $32,000 a month. (Her husband is a partner in a Washington BigLaw firm, so they just might be that flush). Even at the abnormally low service rates borrowers have faced in recent years, a take home pay of $18,000 a month would be the advisable minimum.
==
Trump did not break her. He tore the mask off her face. Foundationally, she has the soul of Margaret Wade from Dennis the Menace. She didn’t have the integrity at any point in the last eight years to admit error, and has adjusted to that by making escalatingly absurd statements.
Neo —“ I believe that perhaps Nancy Mace would be one of them [leftish Trump supporter]. She’s hopped on the truncated quote bandwagon, and when I looked her up it seems she has a somewhat liberal voting record.”
She may indeed. I considered working for Rep Nancy Mace in 2021. Although I declined, I’ve tried to keep track of her.
She’s definitely NOT a Trump supporter. But she is an opportunistic one when the party needs her to be or else when DC-agreement looks too rancidly arch (eg, intolerant of Biden bribery and corruption).
In other words, flexible. Equivocal. Cf, Senator “Grahamnesty”.
It might be her own silliness and compromising belief system. Or it might simply reflect the Northern infestation of the most desirable places to be in the South – such as Myrtle Beach.
Her Congressional District runs along the Atlantic from Charleston to the South and thus her constituency reflects this. She reacts to the media lies and reflectsNational Review-moderate compromiser ideology by submitting to them (eg, Trump IS his mean tweets).
In other words, Mace will never be a profile in courage.
(Reason enough to decline.)
Art Deco: you may be right. It’s not like I hung on her words back when she was just a common or garden pundit.
Postscript to my post above, re the “NYC-DC world”: I meant the people we commonly refer to as “swamp creatures” and such, especially in DC. I do know that there are solid people in both places and did not intend to blame them *all* for our dire situation.
Rachel Zegler, the Wise Latina playing Snow White in the new DEI Disney version, has outed herself in her own online video record as being singularly unfond of the classic 1937 “Snow White.” She “was scared by the original” and “never picked it up again.”
Furthermore, she trashes the original and is clearly quite proud of her worldly wisdom:
___________________________
I mean it’s no longer 1937 … This time Snow White is not going to be with the Prince. She’s not going to be dreaming about true love. She’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be….
___________________________
Yes. Never mind that Snow White is not some misogynist, white, patriarchal vestige of Jim Crow America circa 1937, but a European fairy tale going back a a couple centuries or more.
Make no mistake. Disney is not just spitballing “What if?” scenarios for the creative hell of it. This is a serious Gramscian move to kill off the old culture and substitute the Bold New Leftist Vision of Humanity.
It’s an impressive commitment, because Disney is killing itself financially, losing billions of dollars on movies, streaming, theme parks and cruise lines. It’s not all woke/broke, but much of it is.
The Critical Drinker, as would be expected, provides a wonderfully sharp cogent takedown from his drunken Scot in aviator glasses persona:
It’s impossible for me to imagine a species of life capable of manipulating matter and biology to navigate and survive interstellar space travel that would need anything from us. Why bother to wage war or mount any aggression?
Rufus T. Firefly:
I thought this was settled long ago, as such issues sensibly are:
___________________________________
About the Trump Indictments. SCOTUS and the Courts System are tied to the corruption — that’s what triggers High Court involvement — so argues Robert Barnes @1:08 or 9
I agree; historically that’s the case. We all know that under Roberts, dodgeball is his favor game. But there are limits to even prosecutorial farce. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfseib5n3Ww
Let’s try this again
People like me who realized even before the 2020 election that the rules changes were a perfect set-up for fraud, but that it would be literally impossible to legally PROVE that fraud occurred or to correct it after the fact when the votes are already counted and certified. Those people realize that the only truth we know about that election is that, plus the fact that Biden was inaugurated and is now president. Refusing to acknowledge those truths, and continually talking and talking about how Trump is really the valid president, is a losing battle that has alienated a lot of moderate voters who originally would have supported Trump in 2024. I am not one of those “moderate” voters, by the way; I’m conservative. But those voters are needed, as are the conservatives Trump has alienated post-2020.
I sort of agree. Admittedly I take the view that most of the votes were actually real but the rule changes, some of which were illegal, were designed to get the “right” result. IE make sure people voted “the right way”. I mean most of the time when an election is rigged this is what actually happens, IE places like North Korea, Iraq, and Venezuela. IE If you lived in North Korea you either voted the right way or something bad happens. I don’t doubt some people voted for Biden because they didn’t want the left to riot again and figured if they didn’t gave them what they wanted they would “rough up” the voters. Admittedly part of the rule changes were to let low effort voters vote but then have the media run Biden’s campaign for him. (Those voters dutifully voted the way they were told to vote, IE for Biden. They probably actually believed Biden stopped ebola and was going to stop covid. He stopped neither. Kind of like Venezuela where you vote for Maduro because everything you hear tells you he’s the only reasonable choice.) The problem is that Trumps actions make it too damn easy for the media to knock him down with the whole “fraud not proven” when he claims it was fraud that caused him to lose and then claim the election wasn’t rigged because there was no proven fraud. (I think I’ve mentioned this before but if your standard for “rigged election” is “fraud as found by a court of law changed the outcome of an election” then there has never been a rigged election in all of human history. What Trump did makes him look like a conspiracy nut. Yes I realize the media lies about him but he doesn’t have to help them making himself look bad.) Whining after an election is just not what American’s will put up with even if we agree with him that the election was rigged. (Of course any doubt to that was gone when the people who did it openly admitted that they did it in that time magazine article.)
Admittedly my extreme annoyance is the fact the republicans don’t seem to have a strategy to do anything about this no matter how many times it happens. (And after it happens it’s too late to do anything even if you could prove it which you can’t. You know, close the barn door before the horse gets out.) You’d think after they got screwed by Franken they’d have some plan but no. Of course we saw what happened later on when the dems got their chance to kick Franken out replace him with a regular democrat.(I figured they were happy to do that since they probably were worried at some point Franken might physically attack somebody again and lose the seat. I am of course referring to when attacked a heckler at a Howard Dean rally in case anybody forgot about that episode.) They’re so on message that Franken is still happy to shill for them even after they knifed him in the back.
huxley,
Since you’re fascinated with Disney’s decent to unprofitability I think this Mars movie is more your speed*: https://youtu.be/yBFUAW6jC_M
*Filmed in Robert Zemeckis creepy, craptastic Polar Express CGI.
Well stated, BigD. I believe there were myriad shenanigans in the last Presidential election, and the GOP failed miserably to battle rule changes in advance, but, at the end of the day, the Electoral College elects the U.S. President and, in 2020 that process elected Joseph Robinette Biden.
Well, it may be “impossible to imagine,” but unless a lot of pretty intelligent and well trained eye witnesses–what they saw quite often simultaneously tracked, as well, by electronic and video surveillance systems–are all hallucinating or deliberately lying–the increasing evidence demonstrates that UFOs are real (the DOD has already admitted that this is so), and apparently they are being directed/piloted by some sort of NHIs.
What I have been suggesting here is that our current “consensus reality” needs to be expanded, that the walls of the perceptual and conceptual box within which we live have to be pushed a lot further out to include a lot more presently unknown territory, and that things which were thought to be “incredible” or “out of the realm of possibility” will now to have to be reexamined and rethought.
oh they learned from the franken race, to challenge outsiders like joe miller, to keep murkowski in power, and we see why they did that, because this dauphin rubberstamped mayorkas austin and garland,
We all, along with Horatio, will have to learn that “there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies.”
Snow on Pine,
My comment was regarding a “War of the Worlds” or “Independence Day” scenario where an alien race wages aggressive war on us Earthlings. I didn’t write that no intelligent species could possibly know more about physics than us, or be more technologically advanced. I just questioned why a race of beings more intelligent than us would act less intelligently than we do.
We humans abandoned slavery and colonization long before we figured out powered flight and radio communication, let alone how to escape our planet’s gravity and survive in the vacuum of space.
P.S. –Aliens and their possible motivations
First, we must recognize that we have experience with exactly one species–ours– and that expecting a totally different intelligent species to think and behave and value as we do is likely a fundamental mistake.
It seems to me that it may be almost impossible to predict what might motivate, or be of interest or value to an intelligent entity which is the product of an entirely different environment and evolutionary history; we can’t just assume that they would think like us, value the things we value, or communicate in the ways that we do.
What may seem logical to us humans may not be at all to such an alien entity, whose way of thinking may be entirely different than ours, and perhaps things that we deem to be of little value or interest, may be on great value or interest to such a being.
Maybe we have some particular mineral or element that such aliens might need or prize, perhaps it could be some human Art or craft, perhaps it could be ancient Australian rock carvings, some particular plant or animal, hand rolled Cuban cigars, or handmade cuckoo clocks from the Black Forest, perhaps we are just entertainment, or the source of desperately needed genetic material.
The point is, we can’t, as yet, rule anything out, and in dealing with NHIs, there may be no easily discernable “common ground.”
P.P.S.–I believe that the various reported briefings, secret hearings, and testimony, and assessments, things like the pretty grim assessment of NHI capabilities from AATIP, are starting to wake up and alarm some members–perhaps a growing number–of members of Congress, to the fact that our view of Reality is too small, and that things aren’t as they believed them to be, that we have startling new things to consider, thus, the recent bi-partisan UAP legislation.
A new Reality is starting to sink in, apparently we aren’t in a good position vis-a-vis what has been assessed to be the capabilities of NHIs, and it isn’t just tin foil hats, fun, and games anymore.
Are the NHIs which apparently have been, and are visiting us humans here on Earth either benevolent, or hostile, or are we dealing with a bunch of different species of NHIs, some friendly–even benevolent–some neutral, some unfriendly, or even malevolent?
The point is that we need the government to “disclose” whatever information it has gathered and whatever conclusions it might have reached, so that we can make our own assessments of what the evidence shows.
RE: NHIs
This brings up the interesting question, who would you think would be “expert” in this area, anthropologists, archeologists, evolutionary biologists, philosophers, psychologists, experts in religions, hard scientists, science fiction writers, linguists, or a team comprised of all of them?
@ Snow on Pine
Note: meant to post this earlier on the Aug 19 Open Thread
***
“When I arrived in Japan in the early 60s at age 18, it was quite a culture shock…”
• OK, your memories made me laugh – WTH.
• Have to admit I am a little envious – both witnessing the rebirth of a nation, and doing so while it still had a dominant non-western identity.
• Have yet to have the chance to explore Japan – but always enjoyed my parent’ stories.
• They lived there in the early 50s – no kids – traditional house with rice paper walls, soaking tub, etc. – and they had many interesting & funny stories.
• As a boy I was fascinated by a picture of their lawn being cut by a “dozen” gardeners – with scissors – and I was also fascinated by some of the art that they brought home.
• Happy to read any other memories that you wish to share.
that guy–
I have to admit that at 18 I was young and stupid and, so, spent a lot of my off duty time drinking in the local bars, and hanging out with bar girls, not soaking up the sights and culture of Japan.
Some of my fellow airmen told tales of one time wandering into some bars in Tokyo (I was told, past a high, wrought iron fence), and being told that these bars were for Japanese only, and to go to the bars down the road, on the other side of the fence, where foreigners were allowed.
Funny, though, that I had heard that the Japanese were still wary of our Air Policemen, who used to storm out of their barracks–billy clubs in hand and ready to use them–during the early years of our occupation.
Sometimes I worked the night shift and occasionally started to drink after I got off work at 7 am, and had gotten some breakfast–SOS is best.
I soon got to know which bars were open that early, and got to watch as the bartenders reached under the bar to pour booze from anonymous containers into the half empty bottles which bore very expensive labels.
Another culture shock moment was when I had just gotten situated in our heavily reinforced barracks—the windows were all framed in heavy metal and the glass had chicken wire sandwiched between the panes, and in the early morning hours I heard the clash of gongs and some first class screeching. It turned out that our barracks was situated on the perimeter of the base, and there was a cemetery on the other side of the fence.
This was a funeral ceremony and I thought, later on, that perhaps a traditional astrologer had determined that 2 or 3 A.M was the most propitious time for the ceremony.
At 18 I usually slept the whole night through (how I wish I could do that now) but in the week or so after the funeral service I noticed I was waking up during the night. Finally, one time during the night I woke up to a faint sound which I traced to the blinds hitting the reinforced window frame i.e. we were having a series of small earthquakes.
The few times I made the hour or two trip to Tokyo, I was amazed at the sheer sound of construction in the downtown area (I believe there was actually a large decibel meter up on one of the taller buildings to protect people’s hearing) and, when I got back to base, I was coughing and sneezing out dark particulate matter from all of the construction going on in Tokyo.
Also amazing was the change at Shinjuku station, where I saw Japanese commuters– stepping over, or even sometimes stepping on—the drunks who slept on the steps going up to some of the train platforms.
Our barracks was set up with rooms containing four beds each, and in the center were the toilets and showers. A couple of the old timers often came in totally hammered, mistook some of the rooms adjacent to the toilets for the toilets, barged in, and pissed on the wall of some other soldier’s apartment.
Naturally, the FNG’s who came in were given the rooms closest to the toilets–a prime location, one would think–on the surface (til they caught on) out of the kindness of the hearts of the guys who lived in them, and graciously moved further way from the toilets.
Re: “Mars Needs Moms”
Rufust T. Firefly:
Somehow I missed that one! Turns out it was a big Disney bomb. Of course that was nothing compared to “Indiana Jones 5.”
_________________________________
It grossed $39.2 million worldwide on a $150 million budget, becoming one of the biggest box-office bombs of all time, losing an estimated $100–144 million for Disney.
A shame. It looks like it might have been fun. It was based on a Berkeley Breathed “Bloom County” storyline. I’ll watch it, if I can see it for free.
@ Snow on Pine
• Thank you – good stuff.
• “18, young and stupid, spent a lot of my off-duty time drinking in the local bars, and hanging out with bar girls” – yep, checks out.
• “Japanese only” – oh yes, well acquainted with both where non-Asians fall in the racial/ ethnic pecking order in the Far East – hint: not near the top – and with the “feelings” that the citizens of Far East countries have for the citizens of other Far East counties, or even the different ethnic groups within their own country. You may have witnessed that too.
• Passed some Chinese trekkers along the Annapurna circuit (Nepal), while trekking behind a group that included my future Japanese GF Y, and one of the Chinese guys loudly said – in English – “I hate the Japanese”. I immediately shouted: “Hey, I’m Japanese”. You should have seen the look of shock on their faces. Then they had a very animated conversation amongst themselves – not in English – and we all knew that they were trying to figure out if that could be true. Then the Ozzi’s and I started laughing, and they figured it out – I think – and bolted away from us. I actually got a smile from Y that day; which is a long story – but the short version is she wanted nothing to do with me because I was an American.
• “I soon got to know which bars were open that early,…” – this made laugh – strikes me that you had the same Serviceman experience that every generation, in every country has had – and I am a little jealous.
• “…perhaps a traditional astrologer had determined that 2 or 3 A.M was the most propitious time for the ceremony.” – would not surprise me – my experience is much of Asia takes all of that very seriously – zodiac sign, moon phase, star phase, time of birth, etc., etc., etc. – assume you noticed the same.
• “I was amazed at the sheer sound of construction in the downtown area…” – wish I had been there – and that reminds me a little bit of the China I saw, every city was dotted with construction cranes – build, build, build. Remarked to the son of a Communist government official – who Y & I got to know and travel a little with – how surprised I was by all of the construction. He said: Me too, could not believe the change in just my lifetime (grad student).
• Barracks – more laughing – seems like I had similar experiences in my fraternity house.(with maybe a little bit more liquor & girls inside the house).
• One last story from me. My parents had a young Japanese housekeeper that they were very fond of – was very outgoing & a little zany – and she would tell them stories of her & her girlfriends trying to find husbands – tough times then – long-story-short, one of her GF became engaged to an Army Private and was moving to the USA – the engaged girl told my parents that she was both excited & worried. My parents told her they understood. She then went on to say that she was worried in part, because she did not even know how to pick out the “China & Silver”. My parents again said that they understood – and did not have the heart to tell her that that was not going to be a worry for her anytime soon (not knocking the Private). Now, if she had just gotten engaged to an Airman (I kid, I kid).
• Again, good stuff – and thanks for sharing.
that guy–
Discussing this has brought other memories to mind.
It was apparently routine for troops on arriving at the base to be given a briefing which included a warning strongly discouraging them from marrying Japanese women, and, if I remember correctly, the few prospective Japanese brides who came to our dispensary for a required physical all showed evidence of either having active TB, or scarring on their lungs indicating that they had had TB in the past. (We were also warned not to drink the water off base, and not to drink Japanese milk either, for fear of TB–a nice excuse to drink beer and hard liquor.)
One of the people in our barracks, probably an airman 2nd class at the time, ignoring the warnings, decided that he was going to marry a Japanese bar girl.
Well, after the ceremony, as the happy couple were exiting the church, what I presume was an officer drove past in a red sports car, an MG?, and the blushing bride turned to her new husband, and said some thing like, “when we get to the states you buy me car like that.” Little did she know.
Funny, this little walk along memory lane has also dredged up other, less salutary or funny memories of working in a military Hospital, dispensary, and Emergency Room in Japan, which I will not detail here.
Let’s just say that it was quite an education, and it left it’s scars.
that guy–
Here’s another memory for you.
At the major base where I was assigned to the Hospital all of the cooks in the mess hall were Japanese, and when something went wrong their command of English–which was usually OK–suddenly departed, and it was an apparently confused “nandesuka” i.e. what?
One of our rotating assignments was at the check in stand at the entrance to the mess hall, where we were responsible for signing in visitors and taking in military payment certificates from any military personnel who were not assigned to but happened to be visiting our base.
One day in comes a Korean jet pilot, an officer, who signed in, paid his money and went to get a meal.
Well, next thing I knew here was the head Japanese cook, telling me that “they would not serve a Korean.” (From what I gathered, to say that the Japanese generally did not like Koreans would be a great understatement.) In return, I told him that this pilot was from an allied country, and that if they didn’t serve him I would call the Air Police, and they would drag the cook out of there (who knows if they would’ve).
The Korean officer got his meal.
that guy-
Another memory, not dealing with Japan this time, but with China.
Happened upon someone who I went to library school with at the airport, a girl of Chinese extraction who was welcoming her grandfather who had come from China to visit her here in the U.S.
She introduced me to him and things were going well, until I mentioned that I did research for the government in Washington, D.C., at which point he stopped talking, and very noticeably started to edge away from me.
Thinking about this later, I presumed that, coming from the PRC as he did, he though that any interaction at all with someone who worked for the government was a recipe for disaster.
@ Snow on Pine
• Definitely not surprised by the Japanese cook staff’ reaction to the Korean officer – it was not just the Nazis that did criminal things.
• And that history was still fresh – wonder how much spit was in his food – and he would be lucky if it was only spit.
• Your warning about not drinking the milk reminded of the time we were visiting Paris – Summer after 2nd grade – and we could not get ice cream cones at the Eiffel Tower because my aunt – who lived in Paris – told my parents it was not safe.
• Not sure if it was due to TB, but I am sure we did not get any beer as a substitute. However, every time we visited Europe, I did get about two fingers worth of wine at dinner – which I always enjoyed.
• Understand his reaction – had a reason to fear government officials – and on a more serious note, we are headed in that direction too.
Lastly, I do not want to even imagine what you saw in a hospital that supported young Serviceman – especially in an overseas location.
@ Snow on Pine
• On second thought, realized I have your Japan & Korea scenario backwards.
• Still plenty of historical animosity.
• But good for the Korean officer for being fine with the Japanese cook staff.
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So Joe is leaving CA to go to Maui. Then back to CA and then maybe visit the flooded areas. Surprised that Maui is even mentioned now, it is so last week. Will Gavin get the George Bush treatment, or the Trump treatment or the DeSantis treatment? Ha Ha Ha, no cause he is a Dem.
Maybe the Gods are showing their anger at CA, floods and an Earthquake.
Andy McCarthy demonstrates he’s even more foolish about politics than he is about the true state of criminality in the FBI and DOJ. He seems unable to wean himself from conventional wisdom no matter how far his cheese has moved.
I don’t know him, but he seems to be obsessed with his hatred of Trump. Hatred makes all of us foolish. Of course, maybe he doesn’t hate so much as he simply loves all his NeverTrumper friends and can’t see past his tribe.
Over the last decade or so, I think I have noticed that those who live and work farther from DC, NY or the other centers of CW have a clearer view of what’s happening in the country.
I only know him from his writings and his public appearances, and in the last 20 years he has proven to be less and less reliable,
Should Neo demonstrate more appreciation for Herb Alpert, or will that cut unacceptably into BeeGees time?
==
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7O3eYJptTc
McCarthy’s analysis is, at times, interesting and valid, but he does not seem to understand the word “brevity” or the idea of getting to the point so that we have an idea where he is leading us. Unless that is the objective.
his premise is wrong, and then he tries to build evidence for it, ignoring the ‘elephant in the room’ the longstanding lawfare campaign against the right, not only in this country,
A) DeSantis calls MAGA supporters in Congress ‘listless vessels,’ says Trump didn’t drain swamp
B) DeSantis At NH Town Hall: Trump “running in 2024 on the things that he promised to do in 2016 and didn’t do”
C) DeSantis: ‘Of course’ Trump lost in 2020
• The key question is not: Are the DeSantis headlines unfair?
• And the key question is not: Is DeSantis getting the headlines he wants?
• The key question is: Why does DeSantis want these headlines?
RE” UFOs—The “threat narrative”
If members of Congress are being briefed with the observed capabilities of UFOs which appear on AATIP slide 9, which Lou Elizondo’s comment indicates is what AATIP actually concluded, I’d think that many of these congressmen would be scared shitless (I happened across a comment –which I can no longer find—that a member coming out of a UFO briefing had hands which shook so hard that he couldn’t hold a piece of paper), and would start to take the issue of UAPs seriously, thus the couple of recent bipartisan pieces of legislation dealing with UFOs, “off world technology,” and NHIs.*
By way of contrast, long time UFO “expert” Dr. Stephen Greer believes that all Aliens are peaceful—our “Space Brothers,” and that the “Alien threat narrative,” including some apparent Abductions, is a false flag operation which has been manufactured/staged by some elements within our government/military.
AATIP briefing Slide 9
“The science exists for an enemy of the United States to manipulate both physical and cognitive environments in order to penetrate U.S. facilities, influence decision makers, and compromise national security.”
Psychotronic weapons
Cognitive human interface (CHI)
Penetration of solid surfaces
Instantaneous sensor disassembly
Alteration/Manipulation of biological organisms
Anomalies in the space/time construct
Unique cognitive human interface experiences
DOD Advantages
DOD has been involved in similar experiments in the past
DOD has relationships with renowned subject matter experts
DOD controls several facilities where activities have been detected
“What was considered “phenomena” is now quantum physics.””
*See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPLJJRxdq98
that guy – I’d say the key question is whether DeSantis is speaking truth. And he is, on all of those points.
Republican primary voters don’t seem to want truth, they seem to prefer comfortable lies. The hangover on November 13, 2024 is going to be massive.
seeing what our own rival powers are like, I wouldnt be guessing our distant adversaries would be any more benevolent, would they be the vikings, the conquistadors or the English and french colonizers,
I’m not saying hg wells was entirely right, but I’m not ruling it out, it is however an extraordinary set of claims, that requires equivalent levels of proof
who’s he trying to win over pence and hutchinson supporters, they are the ones who say the election system was totes solid?
miguel cervantes – “Trump lost the election” is not equivalent to “the election was ‘totes solid.'”
Do you sometimes confuse Naomi Woolf with someone else? People do sometimes. I have. Vanity Fair has an article by Naomi Klein lamenting the confusion.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/08/naomi-klein-naomi-wolf-book
I haven’t read the article yet, but the link that took me there, and the lead-in at the top, relate that Naomi W. is a paranoid conspiracy theorist, and Naomi K. is troubled by the association with her. “Paranoia” and “conspiracy theories” are hard to avoid nowadays, and maybe Naomi W. feels the same way about being confused with Naomi K.
_____
Mona Charen has an article at the Bulwark telling us that Joe Biden is not too old. Not only that, “the president’s personality appears to improve with age.”
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/bidens-age-might-not-be-a-problem
Biden looks like a vegetable to me with no hope of improvement. His personality was never that great, but how can anybody say it’s getting better? Mellowed, less angry, less bragging, fewer lies? I don’t think so. Less media coverage. The MSM ignoring the gaffes and blow-ups. Mona not seeing or remembering Joe’s follies.
_____
Miranda Devine, referencing a Politico article, notes that Hunter Biden had a long interview with staffers for Trump’s first impeachment.
“And this curious fact: Hunter was involved in the Trump impeachment over Ukraine. In the summer of 2019, he tells an adviser he has an all-day meeting “with impeachment lawyers”. After 5 years, he still has not been interviewed by Weiss’ team or testified before the grand jury.”
was mona charen replaced with a seed pod, if captain oveurs full meltdown is not evident yet, of course the camarilla prop him up, because they have that much contempt for us,
miguel cervantes – Mona Charen is an add case. It’s very difficult to understand how any right-of-center person could render themselves that willfully blind about Biden.
that guy, A)
Apparently “that guy” gets his talking points from CNN. The “listless” quote was taken entirely out of context and CNN was caught red handed splicing the tape to get the quote. Must be too much work for “that guy” to actually read the entire transcript.
Troll.
oh it was the bulwinkle, is groveling to omidyar, require you to lose your self respect,
That guy:
“ The key question is: Why does DeSantis want these headlines?”
As stated above all are true.
Example: Trump would end every speech in 2016 saying that if elected he would build a wall on the border with Mexico, and that Mexico would pay for it. Did not happen.
To make it worse see this news story:
“White House auctioning off unfinished parts of border wall”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/white-house-auctioning-off-unfinished-parts-of-border-wall/ar-AA1fxkNP
Here is the full “listless vessels” quote. DeSantis is clearly talking about people in Congress.
“So there will be people who are huge Trump supporters, like in Congress, who have incredibly liberal left-wing records that is really just atrocious, and yet they’re viewed by some of these folks as, like, really, really good. Then you have other people, you know, like a Congressman Chip Roy, who has endorsed me, Congressman Thomas Massie. These guys have records of principle fighting the swamp that are second to none. And yet they will be attacked by some of these people and called RINOs. So it’s just been totally detached from any type of substance. And ultimately, a movement can’t be about the personality of one individual. The movement has got to be about what are you trying to achieve on behalf of the American people. And that’s got to be based in principle. Because if you’re not rooted in principle, if all we are is listless vessels that are just supposed to follow whatever happens to come down the pike on Truth Social every morning, that’s not going to be a durable movement.”
https://www.theblaze.com/news/cuccinelli-calls-out-edited-video-densantis-cnn
miguel cervantes,
It’s impossible for me to imagine a species of life capable of manipulating matter and time at the necessary levels for interstellar space travel that would need anything from us. Why bother to wage war or mount any aggression?
physicsguy @1:02pm,
Standard operating procedure for the Ever Trumpers. Truth doesn’t matter. They only care about winning. Except for those who are on the other team. They’ll stop caring about winning right after the GOP convention.
It’s politics, but I don’t appreciate President Trump deciding that he doesn’t have to participate in the GOP debates. Not good at all.
Rufus T. Firefly,
I think you are making a false assumption that interstellar travel would necessitate some version of ” faster than light travel, ” especially as it relates to the nearest stars.
Well stocked ” Multi generational ships” , , with extensive recycling systems, that could cross the void from the Centaur system in decades would not need to travel faster than light. They might even be able to ” Island hop” , jumping from the Oort cloud of one system to the Oort cloud of the next system.
Then throw in the possibility of species capable of long natural hibernation with a rotating crew system or species that can live hundreds of years like some Earth based species.
Exactly. The Universe is vast. Once a species is able to master technologies like
– fusion power (and beyond that, anti-matter power) leading to practically infinite power generation from Universally enormously abundant hydrogen and helium isotopes
– combined with nanotechnology for manipulation of matter on a fine level leading to essentially infinite fabrication of almost anything imaginable
– not to mention artificial intelligence allowing for complex, high dimensional solutions to most problems
said species would effectively have infinite power, infinite production, and infinite resources. They would need nothing from us. We would be as consequential to them as a tribe of chimpanzees in the depths of some African rainforest is to you or I. We might be a curiosity in a similar way that the behaivor of chimpanzees are to us.
The other possibility is that humans first encounter with alien species might not be face to face, but via advanced AI drones, sent out decades earlier from near star systems.
I do not think this is too far beyond potential technology.
I haven’t been commenting here lately, partly because I’m trying to cut down on my online time, and am doing so now to say two things:
(1) I very much share the gloom that has been on display here recently, both from Neo and her commenters. That’s the other reason I haven’t been commenting. It’s all just too depressing.
I have to preface anything I say about our prospects with the statement that I’m by nature melancholy and pessimistic, but I just can’t see a likely future for the U.S. that isn’t somewhere on the scale from decline to disaster. The most fundamental reason is that too many of the country’s residents–“citizens” is not that widely applicable–simply have no interest in preserving the constitutional system. They don’t know what it is and they don’t care. Ancillary to that is the fact that what we broadly call the left is both very powerful and actively hostile to that system, and wants to replace it with something else: basically, rule by them.
The whole Trump phenomenon is a tragedy. He had a pretty strong sense of what was wrong and an opportunity to begin reversing it. But he couldn’t and can’t do it.
(2) That Mona Charen piece is insane. Both Biden and Trump voters can reasonably say “My guy is bad but I’m voting for him because the other guy is so much worse.” But no one who can still at this point see Biden as anything other than, to quote (or maybe paraphrase?) Neo, “not very nice, not very smart, not very honest” is in that respect simply out of touch with reality. I would never attempt to argue with such a person.
She’s another instance of what we’ve often remarked on here: that Trump simply broke the minds of a certain kind of moderate conservative. I conjecture that a lot of them, being creatures of the NYC-DC world, really didn’t know much about the rest of the country and didn’t like what they saw when Trump forced them to see. Just a conjecture. I live far away in every sense from that world.
@ physicsguy
“Apparently “that guy” gets his talking points from CNN. The “listless” quote was taken entirely out of context and CNN was caught red handed splicing the tape to get the quote. Must be too much work for “that guy” to actually read the entire transcript. Troll.”
• 100% agree that all citizens should review the source – not just the headline or “reporting” – which I did (please see link below).
https://youtu.be/aE3rwy83Lx4?t=174
• It is true that there have been reports about how CNN edited the interview – truncated – and they have been challenged on that by the DeSantis campaign.
• It is also true that the headline I used captures key points that DeSantis made: Trump supporters in Congress + Listless Vessels (please see the link I provided or the transcript @Bob Wilson provided).
• To be fair, my questions are not from “CNN Talking Points”, and you did not respond to my actions – you responded to CNN’ actions.
• Still would be happy to review any thoughts you may have on my question: Why does DeSantis want these headlines?
could be like the probe in voyage home, that was searching for the hump back whales, and when it didn’t hear back, starting ionizing the atmosphere,
oh
https://twitter.com/AuronMacintyre/status/1693628651256909939?t=YWCUeavnoqha7cwK4e2qcQ&s=19
On the long faded salience of Andrew McCarthy (See TOP). His time working in the Southern District of the FIB was in the 1990s. IOEs, twenty-five years out of date. But YES, host insistence to ignore and deny the obvious is the very root of NRS downfall. It’s become ridiculous, Evil.
But is DeSantis’s description of Congress accurate? It communicates what he wants to communicate, but is it really true that Trump supporters in Congress have “incredibly liberal left-wing records” compared to other Republicans? Compared to NeverTrump Republicans in Congress and elsewhere?
Is it really the case that DeSantis supporters in Congress are truly more principled conservatives? And haven’t “principled conservatives,” real or self-described, had trouble over the years keeping to their principles, focusing on the important issues, and getting things done?
If Trump still has support, it’s because his voters don’t trust Washington insiders to do what they say. Maybe DeSantis will, but many of us still have less faith in DC Republicans than in Trump.
CORRECTION: the Southern District of the Manhattan FIB
Abraxas:
DeSantis is not saying this is true of all Trump supporters in Congress. He is saying there are some.
I believe that perhaps Nancy Mace would be one of them. She’s hopped on the truncated quote bandwagon, and when I looked her up it seems she has a somewhat liberal voting record.
Abraxas is on point-“But is DeSantis’s description of Congress true?
“Is it really the case that DeSantis supporters in Congress are truly more principled conservatives?”
One would need measurements. Quasi not Trumpish Rep. Nancy Mace (SC).
But MTG (GA) and Boebert (CO) are very Trump, regardless of their fights.
The fact that DiSantis cite something more subtle than really obvious tells us more about D-man, perhaps.
Trump’s power very much lies in saying the obvious hard Truth out loud – heedless of the effect.
Physicsguy takes easy dislike to Trump merely speaking. He ought to watch his head of state ceremonial events like Medal of Freedom awards on C-Span because his charm and manner and words are The BEST, all make me proud to be American — completely unlike ANY Biden ceremony. (Not that the propaganda media will let you know it.)
Neo replies to Abraxas – well, spot on my point about D-man asserting the subtle as somehow evident.
Mac:
I agree with most of what you say.
TJ and Stan – If you’re referring to his tweet about Trump being a sure loser, your slagging on McCarthy is yet another example of rejecting an inconvenient truth that you don’t want to hear.
Trump has consistently had 60-70% of the public opposed to his 2024 run. Those numbers are catastrophic. You don’t win an election by running a candidate that 65% of the public knows well and already opposes. No amount of “but Biden” argumentation overcomes that.
I just hope Republican primary voters wake up from their delusion before its too late.
miguel cervantes:
I’ll tell you exactly who he is trying to win over: people like me.
People like me who realized even before the 2020 election that the rules changes were a perfect set-up for fraud, but that it would be literally impossible to legally PROVE that fraud occurred or to correct it after the fact when the votes are already counted and certified. Those people realize that the only truth we know about that election is that, plus the fact that Biden was inaugurated and is now president. Refusing to acknowledge those truths, and continually talking and talking about how Trump is really the valid president, is a losing battle that has alienated a lot of moderate voters who originally would have supported Trump in 2024. I am not one of those “moderate” voters, by the way; I’m conservative. But those voters are needed, as are the conservatives Trump has alienated post-2020.
Bauxite:
See what I wrote in my comment right below yours.
Jon baker,
I understand the math, speeds and distances involved*. Let me correct my statement to include your theory. Does my statement make any less sense now?
*The fastest artificial object (Voyager 1) currently known travels at about 61,500kmh. Let’s pretend we’re extremely fortunate and there happens to be a life form of advanced intelligence living in the nearest star system to Earth. The aptly named, Proxima Centauri. Just shy of 40 trillion miles away (your definition of proximate may differ). Traveling at 61,500kmh, the cryogenically hybernating Proxima Centauri Cosmonauts will reach Earth in about 73,000 years. Mutilate a few cows. Make a few crop circles. Maybe probe a few suburbanites. Then it’s back into the cryogenic sleep chamber for the 73,000 year trip back home to report the research findings to their leaders. Then the Proxima Centauri Space Force sends a million Martian Army on a 73,000 year journey to confiscate our vast aluminum resources (or, perhaps, precious fluids) and tow them back to Proxima Centauri. Seems likely.
neo writes,
“She’s hopped on the truncated quote bandwagon, and when I looked her up it seems she has a somewhat liberal voting record.”
That is, when her fiance doesn’t keep her “busy” and away from her Congressional duties.
https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/4123527-nancy-mace-tells-prayer-breakfast-she-told-fiance-we-dont-got-time-for-that-this-morning/
She’s another instance of what we’ve often remarked on here: that Trump simply broke the minds of a certain kind of moderate conservative. I conjecture that a lot of them, being creatures of the NYC-DC world, really didn’t know much about the rest of the country and didn’t like what they saw when Trump forced them to see. Just a conjecture. I live far away in every sense from that world.
==
I’m going to disagree with you. She was 58 years old in 2015, married 26 years, a mother of three. She was (and remains) something of a has been. She cadged a law degree but never practiced. She’d worked in public relations and topical commentary from the time she was 26 years old. She was at her peak professionally around 1995, when she had a weekly gig on CNN’s Capital Gang. The director of the Ethics and Public Policy Center gave her a multi-year contract in 2015, but declined to renew it in 2021. She should never have been employed there as she simply does not have the requisite skills to be a policy analyst.
==
I have located her home in Northern Virginia. No clue what the terms were when they purchased it, but if you were facing a historically normal service rate today, I’d advise you to avoid putting in an offer on it unless you could come up with a $200,000 down payment and the primary earner in your family has a take-home pay in excess of $32,000 a month. (Her husband is a partner in a Washington BigLaw firm, so they just might be that flush). Even at the abnormally low service rates borrowers have faced in recent years, a take home pay of $18,000 a month would be the advisable minimum.
==
Trump did not break her. He tore the mask off her face. Foundationally, she has the soul of Margaret Wade from Dennis the Menace. She didn’t have the integrity at any point in the last eight years to admit error, and has adjusted to that by making escalatingly absurd statements.
Neo —“ I believe that perhaps Nancy Mace would be one of them [leftish Trump supporter]. She’s hopped on the truncated quote bandwagon, and when I looked her up it seems she has a somewhat liberal voting record.”
She may indeed. I considered working for Rep Nancy Mace in 2021. Although I declined, I’ve tried to keep track of her.
She’s definitely NOT a Trump supporter. But she is an opportunistic one when the party needs her to be or else when DC-agreement looks too rancidly arch (eg, intolerant of Biden bribery and corruption).
In other words, flexible. Equivocal. Cf, Senator “Grahamnesty”.
It might be her own silliness and compromising belief system. Or it might simply reflect the Northern infestation of the most desirable places to be in the South – such as Myrtle Beach.
Her Congressional District runs along the Atlantic from Charleston to the South and thus her constituency reflects this. She reacts to the media lies and reflectsNational Review-moderate compromiser ideology by submitting to them (eg, Trump IS his mean tweets).
In other words, Mace will never be a profile in courage.
(Reason enough to decline.)
Art Deco: you may be right. It’s not like I hung on her words back when she was just a common or garden pundit.
Postscript to my post above, re the “NYC-DC world”: I meant the people we commonly refer to as “swamp creatures” and such, especially in DC. I do know that there are solid people in both places and did not intend to blame them *all* for our dire situation.
Robert Barnes interviewed on the last two Trump indictments — livestream!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfseib5n3Ww
Re: Disney / Snow White live action update
Keeps getting funnier….
Rachel Zegler, the Wise Latina playing Snow White in the new DEI Disney version, has outed herself in her own online video record as being singularly unfond of the classic 1937 “Snow White.” She “was scared by the original” and “never picked it up again.”
Furthermore, she trashes the original and is clearly quite proud of her worldly wisdom:
___________________________
I mean it’s no longer 1937 … This time Snow White is not going to be with the Prince. She’s not going to be dreaming about true love. She’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be….
___________________________
Yes. Never mind that Snow White is not some misogynist, white, patriarchal vestige of Jim Crow America circa 1937, but a European fairy tale going back a a couple centuries or more.
Make no mistake. Disney is not just spitballing “What if?” scenarios for the creative hell of it. This is a serious Gramscian move to kill off the old culture and substitute the Bold New Leftist Vision of Humanity.
It’s an impressive commitment, because Disney is killing itself financially, losing billions of dollars on movies, streaming, theme parks and cruise lines. It’s not all woke/broke, but much of it is.
The Critical Drinker, as would be expected, provides a wonderfully sharp cogent takedown from his drunken Scot in aviator glasses persona:
–The Critical Drinker, “Snow White – How To Destroy Your Own Movie”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7diarukx4M
Oops! NOT live —streamed 7 hours ago – SORRY.
Re: “Over the Hill”
Was written by Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, folkish musicians, who were married for a time and had children together.
They are both special to me. I recommend seeking out their catalogs. Kate was half of the duo, “Kate & Ann McGarrigle.” Sadly, Kate died in 2010.
If you have a moment, perhaps listen to this unlikely McGarrigle hit in French(!):
–“Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Complainte pour Ste-Cathérine • TopPop”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mc8DTJ1DUg
For sheer heartbreak IMO they also beat Linda Ronstadt on “Heart Like a Wheel”:
–“Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Heart Like A Wheel – 1975”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8cQFdFezXc
It’s impossible for me to imagine a species of life capable of manipulating matter and biology to navigate and survive interstellar space travel that would need anything from us. Why bother to wage war or mount any aggression?
Rufus T. Firefly:
I thought this was settled long ago, as such issues sensibly are:
___________________________________
Is Earth to be ravished because…
–“Mars Needs Women — Official Trailer #1 (1967):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNmwwz07ftA
About the Trump Indictments. SCOTUS and the Courts System are tied to the corruption — that’s what triggers High Court involvement — so argues Robert Barnes @1:08 or 9
I agree; historically that’s the case. We all know that under Roberts, dodgeball is his favor game. But there are limits to even prosecutorial farce. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfseib5n3Ww
Let’s try this again
I sort of agree. Admittedly I take the view that most of the votes were actually real but the rule changes, some of which were illegal, were designed to get the “right” result. IE make sure people voted “the right way”. I mean most of the time when an election is rigged this is what actually happens, IE places like North Korea, Iraq, and Venezuela. IE If you lived in North Korea you either voted the right way or something bad happens. I don’t doubt some people voted for Biden because they didn’t want the left to riot again and figured if they didn’t gave them what they wanted they would “rough up” the voters. Admittedly part of the rule changes were to let low effort voters vote but then have the media run Biden’s campaign for him. (Those voters dutifully voted the way they were told to vote, IE for Biden. They probably actually believed Biden stopped ebola and was going to stop covid. He stopped neither. Kind of like Venezuela where you vote for Maduro because everything you hear tells you he’s the only reasonable choice.) The problem is that Trumps actions make it too damn easy for the media to knock him down with the whole “fraud not proven” when he claims it was fraud that caused him to lose and then claim the election wasn’t rigged because there was no proven fraud. (I think I’ve mentioned this before but if your standard for “rigged election” is “fraud as found by a court of law changed the outcome of an election” then there has never been a rigged election in all of human history. What Trump did makes him look like a conspiracy nut. Yes I realize the media lies about him but he doesn’t have to help them making himself look bad.) Whining after an election is just not what American’s will put up with even if we agree with him that the election was rigged. (Of course any doubt to that was gone when the people who did it openly admitted that they did it in that time magazine article.)
Admittedly my extreme annoyance is the fact the republicans don’t seem to have a strategy to do anything about this no matter how many times it happens. (And after it happens it’s too late to do anything even if you could prove it which you can’t. You know, close the barn door before the horse gets out.) You’d think after they got screwed by Franken they’d have some plan but no. Of course we saw what happened later on when the dems got their chance to kick Franken out replace him with a regular democrat.(I figured they were happy to do that since they probably were worried at some point Franken might physically attack somebody again and lose the seat. I am of course referring to when attacked a heckler at a Howard Dean rally in case anybody forgot about that episode.) They’re so on message that Franken is still happy to shill for them even after they knifed him in the back.
huxley,
Since you’re fascinated with Disney’s decent to unprofitability I think this Mars movie is more your speed*: https://youtu.be/yBFUAW6jC_M
*Filmed in Robert Zemeckis creepy, craptastic Polar Express CGI.
Well stated, BigD. I believe there were myriad shenanigans in the last Presidential election, and the GOP failed miserably to battle rule changes in advance, but, at the end of the day, the Electoral College elects the U.S. President and, in 2020 that process elected Joseph Robinette Biden.
Well, it may be “impossible to imagine,” but unless a lot of pretty intelligent and well trained eye witnesses–what they saw quite often simultaneously tracked, as well, by electronic and video surveillance systems–are all hallucinating or deliberately lying–the increasing evidence demonstrates that UFOs are real (the DOD has already admitted that this is so), and apparently they are being directed/piloted by some sort of NHIs.
What I have been suggesting here is that our current “consensus reality” needs to be expanded, that the walls of the perceptual and conceptual box within which we live have to be pushed a lot further out to include a lot more presently unknown territory, and that things which were thought to be “incredible” or “out of the realm of possibility” will now to have to be reexamined and rethought.
oh they learned from the franken race, to challenge outsiders like joe miller, to keep murkowski in power, and we see why they did that, because this dauphin rubberstamped mayorkas austin and garland,
We all, along with Horatio, will have to learn that “there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies.”
Snow on Pine,
My comment was regarding a “War of the Worlds” or “Independence Day” scenario where an alien race wages aggressive war on us Earthlings. I didn’t write that no intelligent species could possibly know more about physics than us, or be more technologically advanced. I just questioned why a race of beings more intelligent than us would act less intelligently than we do.
We humans abandoned slavery and colonization long before we figured out powered flight and radio communication, let alone how to escape our planet’s gravity and survive in the vacuum of space.
P.S. –Aliens and their possible motivations
First, we must recognize that we have experience with exactly one species–ours– and that expecting a totally different intelligent species to think and behave and value as we do is likely a fundamental mistake.
It seems to me that it may be almost impossible to predict what might motivate, or be of interest or value to an intelligent entity which is the product of an entirely different environment and evolutionary history; we can’t just assume that they would think like us, value the things we value, or communicate in the ways that we do.
What may seem logical to us humans may not be at all to such an alien entity, whose way of thinking may be entirely different than ours, and perhaps things that we deem to be of little value or interest, may be on great value or interest to such a being.
Maybe we have some particular mineral or element that such aliens might need or prize, perhaps it could be some human Art or craft, perhaps it could be ancient Australian rock carvings, some particular plant or animal, hand rolled Cuban cigars, or handmade cuckoo clocks from the Black Forest, perhaps we are just entertainment, or the source of desperately needed genetic material.
The point is, we can’t, as yet, rule anything out, and in dealing with NHIs, there may be no easily discernable “common ground.”
P.P.S.–I believe that the various reported briefings, secret hearings, and testimony, and assessments, things like the pretty grim assessment of NHI capabilities from AATIP, are starting to wake up and alarm some members–perhaps a growing number–of members of Congress, to the fact that our view of Reality is too small, and that things aren’t as they believed them to be, that we have startling new things to consider, thus, the recent bi-partisan UAP legislation.
A new Reality is starting to sink in, apparently we aren’t in a good position vis-a-vis what has been assessed to be the capabilities of NHIs, and it isn’t just tin foil hats, fun, and games anymore.
Are the NHIs which apparently have been, and are visiting us humans here on Earth either benevolent, or hostile, or are we dealing with a bunch of different species of NHIs, some friendly–even benevolent–some neutral, some unfriendly, or even malevolent?
The point is that we need the government to “disclose” whatever information it has gathered and whatever conclusions it might have reached, so that we can make our own assessments of what the evidence shows.
RE: NHIs
This brings up the interesting question, who would you think would be “expert” in this area, anthropologists, archeologists, evolutionary biologists, philosophers, psychologists, experts in religions, hard scientists, science fiction writers, linguists, or a team comprised of all of them?
@ Snow on Pine
Note: meant to post this earlier on the Aug 19 Open Thread
***
“When I arrived in Japan in the early 60s at age 18, it was quite a culture shock…”
• OK, your memories made me laugh – WTH.
• Have to admit I am a little envious – both witnessing the rebirth of a nation, and doing so while it still had a dominant non-western identity.
• Have yet to have the chance to explore Japan – but always enjoyed my parent’ stories.
• They lived there in the early 50s – no kids – traditional house with rice paper walls, soaking tub, etc. – and they had many interesting & funny stories.
• As a boy I was fascinated by a picture of their lawn being cut by a “dozen” gardeners – with scissors – and I was also fascinated by some of the art that they brought home.
• Happy to read any other memories that you wish to share.
that guy–
I have to admit that at 18 I was young and stupid and, so, spent a lot of my off duty time drinking in the local bars, and hanging out with bar girls, not soaking up the sights and culture of Japan.
Some of my fellow airmen told tales of one time wandering into some bars in Tokyo (I was told, past a high, wrought iron fence), and being told that these bars were for Japanese only, and to go to the bars down the road, on the other side of the fence, where foreigners were allowed.
Funny, though, that I had heard that the Japanese were still wary of our Air Policemen, who used to storm out of their barracks–billy clubs in hand and ready to use them–during the early years of our occupation.
Sometimes I worked the night shift and occasionally started to drink after I got off work at 7 am, and had gotten some breakfast–SOS is best.
I soon got to know which bars were open that early, and got to watch as the bartenders reached under the bar to pour booze from anonymous containers into the half empty bottles which bore very expensive labels.
Another culture shock moment was when I had just gotten situated in our heavily reinforced barracks—the windows were all framed in heavy metal and the glass had chicken wire sandwiched between the panes, and in the early morning hours I heard the clash of gongs and some first class screeching. It turned out that our barracks was situated on the perimeter of the base, and there was a cemetery on the other side of the fence.
This was a funeral ceremony and I thought, later on, that perhaps a traditional astrologer had determined that 2 or 3 A.M was the most propitious time for the ceremony.
At 18 I usually slept the whole night through (how I wish I could do that now) but in the week or so after the funeral service I noticed I was waking up during the night. Finally, one time during the night I woke up to a faint sound which I traced to the blinds hitting the reinforced window frame i.e. we were having a series of small earthquakes.
The few times I made the hour or two trip to Tokyo, I was amazed at the sheer sound of construction in the downtown area (I believe there was actually a large decibel meter up on one of the taller buildings to protect people’s hearing) and, when I got back to base, I was coughing and sneezing out dark particulate matter from all of the construction going on in Tokyo.
Also amazing was the change at Shinjuku station, where I saw Japanese commuters– stepping over, or even sometimes stepping on—the drunks who slept on the steps going up to some of the train platforms.
Our barracks was set up with rooms containing four beds each, and in the center were the toilets and showers. A couple of the old timers often came in totally hammered, mistook some of the rooms adjacent to the toilets for the toilets, barged in, and pissed on the wall of some other soldier’s apartment.
Naturally, the FNG’s who came in were given the rooms closest to the toilets–a prime location, one would think–on the surface (til they caught on) out of the kindness of the hearts of the guys who lived in them, and graciously moved further way from the toilets.
Re: “Mars Needs Moms”
Rufust T. Firefly:
Somehow I missed that one! Turns out it was a big Disney bomb. Of course that was nothing compared to “Indiana Jones 5.”
_________________________________
It grossed $39.2 million worldwide on a $150 million budget, becoming one of the biggest box-office bombs of all time, losing an estimated $100–144 million for Disney.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Needs_Moms
_________________________________
A shame. It looks like it might have been fun. It was based on a Berkeley Breathed “Bloom County” storyline. I’ll watch it, if I can see it for free.
@ Snow on Pine
• Thank you – good stuff.
• “18, young and stupid, spent a lot of my off-duty time drinking in the local bars, and hanging out with bar girls” – yep, checks out.
• “Japanese only” – oh yes, well acquainted with both where non-Asians fall in the racial/ ethnic pecking order in the Far East – hint: not near the top – and with the “feelings” that the citizens of Far East countries have for the citizens of other Far East counties, or even the different ethnic groups within their own country. You may have witnessed that too.
• Passed some Chinese trekkers along the Annapurna circuit (Nepal), while trekking behind a group that included my future Japanese GF Y, and one of the Chinese guys loudly said – in English – “I hate the Japanese”. I immediately shouted: “Hey, I’m Japanese”. You should have seen the look of shock on their faces. Then they had a very animated conversation amongst themselves – not in English – and we all knew that they were trying to figure out if that could be true. Then the Ozzi’s and I started laughing, and they figured it out – I think – and bolted away from us. I actually got a smile from Y that day; which is a long story – but the short version is she wanted nothing to do with me because I was an American.
• “I soon got to know which bars were open that early,…” – this made laugh – strikes me that you had the same Serviceman experience that every generation, in every country has had – and I am a little jealous.
• “…perhaps a traditional astrologer had determined that 2 or 3 A.M was the most propitious time for the ceremony.” – would not surprise me – my experience is much of Asia takes all of that very seriously – zodiac sign, moon phase, star phase, time of birth, etc., etc., etc. – assume you noticed the same.
• “I was amazed at the sheer sound of construction in the downtown area…” – wish I had been there – and that reminds me a little bit of the China I saw, every city was dotted with construction cranes – build, build, build. Remarked to the son of a Communist government official – who Y & I got to know and travel a little with – how surprised I was by all of the construction. He said: Me too, could not believe the change in just my lifetime (grad student).
• Barracks – more laughing – seems like I had similar experiences in my fraternity house.(with maybe a little bit more liquor & girls inside the house).
• One last story from me. My parents had a young Japanese housekeeper that they were very fond of – was very outgoing & a little zany – and she would tell them stories of her & her girlfriends trying to find husbands – tough times then – long-story-short, one of her GF became engaged to an Army Private and was moving to the USA – the engaged girl told my parents that she was both excited & worried. My parents told her they understood. She then went on to say that she was worried in part, because she did not even know how to pick out the “China & Silver”. My parents again said that they understood – and did not have the heart to tell her that that was not going to be a worry for her anytime soon (not knocking the Private). Now, if she had just gotten engaged to an Airman (I kid, I kid).
• Again, good stuff – and thanks for sharing.
that guy–
Discussing this has brought other memories to mind.
It was apparently routine for troops on arriving at the base to be given a briefing which included a warning strongly discouraging them from marrying Japanese women, and, if I remember correctly, the few prospective Japanese brides who came to our dispensary for a required physical all showed evidence of either having active TB, or scarring on their lungs indicating that they had had TB in the past. (We were also warned not to drink the water off base, and not to drink Japanese milk either, for fear of TB–a nice excuse to drink beer and hard liquor.)
One of the people in our barracks, probably an airman 2nd class at the time, ignoring the warnings, decided that he was going to marry a Japanese bar girl.
Well, after the ceremony, as the happy couple were exiting the church, what I presume was an officer drove past in a red sports car, an MG?, and the blushing bride turned to her new husband, and said some thing like, “when we get to the states you buy me car like that.” Little did she know.
Funny, this little walk along memory lane has also dredged up other, less salutary or funny memories of working in a military Hospital, dispensary, and Emergency Room in Japan, which I will not detail here.
Let’s just say that it was quite an education, and it left it’s scars.
that guy–
Here’s another memory for you.
At the major base where I was assigned to the Hospital all of the cooks in the mess hall were Japanese, and when something went wrong their command of English–which was usually OK–suddenly departed, and it was an apparently confused “nandesuka” i.e. what?
One of our rotating assignments was at the check in stand at the entrance to the mess hall, where we were responsible for signing in visitors and taking in military payment certificates from any military personnel who were not assigned to but happened to be visiting our base.
One day in comes a Korean jet pilot, an officer, who signed in, paid his money and went to get a meal.
Well, next thing I knew here was the head Japanese cook, telling me that “they would not serve a Korean.” (From what I gathered, to say that the Japanese generally did not like Koreans would be a great understatement.) In return, I told him that this pilot was from an allied country, and that if they didn’t serve him I would call the Air Police, and they would drag the cook out of there (who knows if they would’ve).
The Korean officer got his meal.
that guy-
Another memory, not dealing with Japan this time, but with China.
Happened upon someone who I went to library school with at the airport, a girl of Chinese extraction who was welcoming her grandfather who had come from China to visit her here in the U.S.
She introduced me to him and things were going well, until I mentioned that I did research for the government in Washington, D.C., at which point he stopped talking, and very noticeably started to edge away from me.
Thinking about this later, I presumed that, coming from the PRC as he did, he though that any interaction at all with someone who worked for the government was a recipe for disaster.
@ Snow on Pine
• Definitely not surprised by the Japanese cook staff’ reaction to the Korean officer – it was not just the Nazis that did criminal things.
• And that history was still fresh – wonder how much spit was in his food – and he would be lucky if it was only spit.
• Your warning about not drinking the milk reminded of the time we were visiting Paris – Summer after 2nd grade – and we could not get ice cream cones at the Eiffel Tower because my aunt – who lived in Paris – told my parents it was not safe.
• Not sure if it was due to TB, but I am sure we did not get any beer as a substitute. However, every time we visited Europe, I did get about two fingers worth of wine at dinner – which I always enjoyed.
• Understand his reaction – had a reason to fear government officials – and on a more serious note, we are headed in that direction too.
Lastly, I do not want to even imagine what you saw in a hospital that supported young Serviceman – especially in an overseas location.
@ Snow on Pine
• On second thought, realized I have your Japan & Korea scenario backwards.
• Still plenty of historical animosity.
• But good for the Korean officer for being fine with the Japanese cook staff.