What wisdom do you have to share? Post that or anything else you like.
Off Topic and Wise
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44Posted on
44Wait, What? We Can’t Even Defeat Farking YEMEN?
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11THE US NOW WANTS A ‘DIPLOMATIC SOLUTION’ FOR YEMEN:
US Special Envoy to Yemen, Tim Lenderking, said on Wednesday that the US is seeking a diplomatic solution for the Yemeni Armed Forces’ blockade of the Red Sea.
This takes a turn from current US policy that has sought to solve… pic.twitter.com/wSJBmWiGAp
— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) April 3, 2024
Lord knows, I’ve been one of the chief Eyores around going on several years now, (more like Cassandra, actually), but even I would not have predicted this. At least not for a few more years.
One Damned Thing After Another
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5Cicada broods map: See the states where cicadas will appear.
The tsunami of cicadas will emerge this year in only two counties in Indiana.
One of them is mine.
Russia Is Just Worse That US At EVERYTHING, Apparently…
Russia and LGBTQIA+ Lunacy Just Don’t Mix
Instead of giving them national religious holidays, as a better nation would.
In Russia Mass Deportations Of Muslim Migrants Surge After Moscow Terror Attack | ZeroHedge
This trend is said to be the result of a significant uptick in raids by authorities on apartments and dorm complexes known to house Central Asian migrants, amid concerns that Islamic radicals could carry out more attacks.
Anti-immigrant sentiment surged after four gunmen — who were later identified as Tajik nationals — stormed Crocus City Hall last Friday, killing 144 people and injuring 382 in the shooting and massive fire at the popular concert venue.
Instead of demonizing these poor Muslim immigrants for just seeking a better life, why aren’t they celebrating their presence, defending them from dread Islamophobia, and trying hard to import as many more as possible, as a better country would?
I wonder what will be next on the horrific list of Reasons Why Russia Is A Bad Country…actually arresting and putting criminals in prison, as all better countries don’t do?
One Man’s Horror…
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2‘It’s Horrifying’: James Carville Sounds Alarm About Key Dem Voting Bloc Leaving Party In ‘Droves’ |
“I’ve been very vocal about this,” Carville said. “It’s horrifying our numbers among younger voters, particularly younger blacks, younger latinos … younger people of color. Particularly males. We’re not shedding them, they’re leaving in droves.”
Is another man’s joy.
Bottom Event of the Day
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2Artist stabbed over ‘blasphemous’ Jesus oral sex painting | World News
An artist whose painting depicts the lifeless figure of Jesus receiving oral sex was attacked inside a church hosting the controversial exhibition in Carpi, Italy. The assailant, armed with a spray can and a knife, injured the artist in the neck and targeted his painting.
Oh, no.
(Yawn).
Anyway…
Bridge to Nowhere?
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1It Could Take HOW LONG to Rebuild Francis Scott Key Bridge??? – PJ Media
Could it really take twice as long and four times as much money to replace the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge than it did to build it in the first place?
The Key Bridge was built at a cost (adjusted for inflation) of about $200 million. Replacing it could take a decade and cost $400 million to $800 million dollars, according to experts in what has become a dismal field.
I predict that twenty years from now, after spending five billion dollars, with at least that much more coming due for “cost overruns,” the bridge will still not be open for business, and, in fact, likely will never be.
Still, some very, very crooked people will get very, very rich out of the Insane Clown Circus it will become.
Is This Something?
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6After the ‘tougher-on-crime’ candidate lead by 10,000 votes in Chicago’s Cook County State’s Attorney race, 10,000 mail-in ballots were found due to ‘human error’
Now, the race is separated by only 1% of votes pic.twitter.com/TG4tlX7Ock
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) March 28, 2024
After the ‘tougher-on-crime’ candidate lead by 10,000 votes in Chicago’s Cook County State’s Attorney race, 10,000 mail-in ballots were found due to ‘human error’
Now, the race is separated by only 1% of votes
The normalcy-addled “normies” on the right have been cooing that even if there were a tiny bit of anti-Trump fraud in the 2020 election, that has all been cleaned up and safeguards have been put in place to make sure there will be no repetitions, and that America’s elections will continue to be the safest and most honest examples of “true democracy” on the face of the planet.
Normies are really stupid, aren’t they?
Baltimore Bridge Boondoggle Coming Right Up
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10The recent bridge collapse in Baltimore is an absolute nightmare, and our thoughts are with the victims and their families during this incredibly tough time. Beyond the heart-wrenching loss and the basic “whys” everyone’s dealing with, there’s one crucial question not many are asking: Can America rebuild the bridge?
Probably, especially if it looks to be a suitably huge source of graft for the corruptocrat grifters involved in such an undertaking. (Baltimore, right?)
Separate question, though: Will it actually be done?
My prediction – nope. They’ll squeeze every last dime of crooked juice out of the project they can, and then walk away, leaving taxpayers holding a billion dollar bag.
Most people have no idea how close the Oakland Bay Bridge extension came to never being built.
I Know I Am, But What Are You?
Biden-Harris campaign statement calls Trump ‘feeble’ | Blaze Media
The Biden-Harris campaign issued a statement on Monday describing the incumbent president’s top 2024 rival, former President Donald Trump, as “weak and desperate” as well as “feeble, confused, and tired.”
“Donald Trump is weak and desperate — both as a man and a candidate for President,” the statement declared. “America deserves better than a feeble, confused, and tired Donald Trump.”
This gang of has-beens and never-weres isn’t even lively enough to come up with something original, Instead, they just borrow everything Trump has been saying about Biden for years, and substitute Trump’s name.
I guess one shouldn’t expect anything better from a senile old man like Biden, whose go-to play since the beginning of his career has been plagiarism. After this many decades it’s become a reflex, nothing more. Which is why it’s probably the only strategy he can remember at this point.
Indie SciFi/Fantasy Recommendations
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8Here are some SF/F recommendations by independent authors:
Worm – Wildbow https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
Superheroes and supervillians and a worlds-ending danger. The opening chapters are pretty rough but get past them and he finds his stride.
Pact – Wildbow http://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/
Pale – Wildbow http://palewebserial.wordpress.com/
Fantasy with the viewpoint character dropped into things and having to figure them out to survive. I haven’t read Pale, the sequel, yet but Wildbow says that it was fun to write, so that’s a good sign.
Collective Thinking – Tower Curator https://www.towercurator.com/collective-thinking/
Is the world what it is or what we make of it?
Bitter – mooderino/V Moody http://royalroadl.com/fiction/10293 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078NK1GTV?binding=kindle_edition&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tkin
Isolated girl sneaks into a virtual world and levels up her life.
How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis – mooderino/V Moody https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/5288/how-to-avoid-death-on-a-daily-basis
A group of young adults are pulled into a fantasy world. Main character is a jerk, but he’s a pragmatic, survivor jerk. My only complaint is that the tenth book, the series finale, isn’t finished. He started it, threw it away, restarted, threw it away, restarted, gave up. Still, it’s good through the nine completed books.
Mother of Learning – nobody103 https://www.fictionpress.com/s/2961893/1/Mother-of-Learning https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHSJ19J9?binding=kindle_edition&searchxofy=true&ref_=dbs_s_aps_series_rwt_tkin&sr=8-1
Dropped into a time loop. Make the best of it. Recommended. Very highly recommended.
Super Powereds – Drew Hayes https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074CDM25G?binding=kindle_edition&ref_=dbs_s_ks_series_rwt_tkin&sr=1-1
Superhero also-rans, made good.
A Wand for Skitter – ShayneT https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/a-wand-for-skitter-worm-hp-complete.730018/
Fanfiction of Worm and Harry Potter. Very good, better than most original fiction. OK, I’ll admit that that’s damning with faint praise. Many Crowning Moments of Awesome, and a few humorous reactions to those moments.
Francis Porretto
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/fporretto
Couple dozen shortish novels, most of them vaguely tied together by reference to common characters. This hasn’t been a problem; just blerp over unrecognized names. Consistently high quality. Even with the couple that I didn’t much care for (romance genre just isn’t my thing) I could see the craftsmanship.
Bill Quick
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=william+quick&i=digital-text&ref=nb_sb_noss
https://www.amazon.com/s?i=digital-text&rh=p_27%3AW.T.++Quick&s=relevancerank&text=W.T.++Quick&ref=dp_byline_sr_ebooks_1
Good suspense/thriller books. I don’t much care for this genre but they’re well done. The older books are notable for predicting technology and social trends decades in advance. When I read Systems I kept going back to the copyright page to confirm that, yes, it was published in 1989. Just one example: After 9/11, Tom Clancy’s Debt of Honor was pointed at as evidence that someone had thought of flying a plane into a building. Well, Bill beat Clancy by five years.
William Palafox
I’ve read only Sands of the Undead and started another (don’t recall why I stopped reading; busy with work, probably) and was impressed. Genre shifted a couple times, so what it’s about isn’t what you think it’s about.
PS Power
https://pspowerbooks.com/
I have mixed feelings about this. He’s wildly imaginative and was spitting out a short novel every month for years … but the little mistakes drove me up a wall, especially in the earlier works. Also, his series tend to converge into one big universe and you need to read all earlier works to follow what’s going on. Still, they’re creative and mostly enjoyable.
Sarah Hoyt
She’s gone indie so I’m including her here. No introduction should be needed.
“Logic” In the Eye of the Beholder
The Moscow massacre: who are the perpetrators? – The New Neo
This sort of m.o. bears the signature of Islamic terrorism, which has struck in Russia before. And quite quickly the terror group ISIS-K claimed responsibility:
Within hours ISIS put out a statement of responsibility through its propaganda outlet, Amaq News Agency.
But such is the state of the world today that the immediate response of many people – and this most definitely includes many commenters on blogs on the right – is to reject the idea, despite its having the force of logic. I’ve seen a lot of insistence that the true culprit was the CIA or in particular the Ukranians; the latter claim is from many people in the anti-Ukraine wing of the right.
Why would the notion that Ukraine is behind the Moscow Slaughter be considered lacking in “the force of logic?”
Moscow is at war with Ukraine, a war that Ukraine is now losing badly. This is a state that has a ten year history of lobbing cluster munitions into civilian neighborhoods of Donbass cities and towns, and is now doing likewise in Belgorod.
Nor was it all that long ago that Ukranian “patriots” burned dozens of “Russian sympathizers” alive in an Odessa union hall:
Ukrainian rightists burn alive 39 at Odessa union building
Some 1,000 Ukrainian rightists, led by the notorious Right Sector, surrounded, stormed, and burned the House of Trade Unions in Odessa last Friday, killing 39 pro-Russia demonstrators in the building.
Nor does Ukraine’s government suffer from any lack of ISIS fighters, if they need to put their hands on any:
On the other hand, we might query the US intel community, which (somehow) seems to have deep access to ISIS-K’s terror planning, and hands out warnings well in advance of their major attacks:
US warned Iran that ISIS-K was preparing attack ahead of Kerman blasts, official says | AP News
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government privately warned Iran that the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan was preparing to carry out a terrorist attack before bombings in Kerman earlier this month that killed 95 people, a U.S. official said Thursday.
The official, who was not authorized to comment and insisted on anonymity to discuss the intelligence, said the U.S. was following its longstanding policy of a “duty to warn” other governments against potential lethal threats.
We’re nice like that. I can’t imagine why nobody seems to trust our warnings.
Perhaps they think they don’t carry the “force of logic.”
Spending Gap
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7You’ve heard of the gender wage gap. Unless you’ve just woken up from a thirty-year coma, you’ve had “seventy-nine cents on the dollar!” shoved in your face almost daily since about 1990.
It’s a lie, and everyone except children and imbeciles knows it’s a lie. (Side note: if you find someone who isn’t simply repeating the line for her own benefit but truly believes it, ask which one she is.) But set it aside.
There’s another economic gap, a real one, in the US and most of the Western world. No, I’m not talking about the racial earnings gap. That’s another lie. Nor am I talking about the savings gap, the retirement income gap, or the home ownership gap. Lies, all lies, once you control for factors other than sex, race, and such.
I’m talking about the spending gap.
Women in the US control about 75% of discretionary spending. The exact number is debatable because of fuzziness around the definitions. However, the exact number doesn’t matter. The basic fact is not in dispute. In fact, a number of women’s magazines and business journal tout it. “Women control most of the family’s spending. And that’s as it should be.” “Women drive the consumer economy. Your business plan must recognize this.”
(Another side note: Isn’t it strange how large swathes of law, business, and public policy must be distorted for the tiny fraction of the population which is intersex, nonbinary, or post-op transsexual, but when it comes to studies like these, everyone is either a man or a woman; if there’s any other category, the numbers are too small to affect the results. Strange!)
If we need non-stop ad campaigns and blaming and working groups and corporate promises to “do better” because of a (fictional) 21% pay gap, then surely we need to do something about a (real) 66% gap. Unequal outcomes are plain evidence of discrimination.
I call for a public awareness campaign to call attention to this situation. An inequity has already become an iniquity. We need to stop it before it gets worse. This campaign should be funded to thrice the level of the past forty years of “wage gap” campaigning, to reflect the relative injustice.
I call for a government watchdog commission to monitor floor space in retail outlets, advertising, and number of products in both physical stores and online shops.
If the spending gap is not rectified in a timely fashion, I call for regulation of commerce. It is unlikely that merchants will willingly reduce their profits in the name of equity, so they must be forced. Quotas may be needed if guidelines do not result in equality. If every corporation had men filling at least 50% of its board, executives, and C-suite, this would give a voice to those currently discriminated against. There is no acceptable reason not to mandate this.
Discrimination of any kind cannot be tolerated. The difference in consumer spending is proof of discrimination. Any steps necessary to eliminate it are not only justified but required.
Uh Huh. Say It!
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3The disturbing video shows the girl repeatedly smashing the other student’s head into the concrete while repeatedly calling her a “bitch,” and then leaving her having a seizure on the ground.
A group of students then began an all out brawl before police were called to the scene close to the school this past Friday.
“The Girl.”
“Students.”
James Clark, vice president of public safety and community response at the Urban League, described the incident as “a glimpse into the mentality and the culture of our young people.”
“The social pressure is to be socially dysfunctional,” he told KSDK, adding “Who can be the loudest? Who can be the most disruptive?”
The attempted murderess was a black girl.
The students were black students.
The mentality is a black mentality.
The culture is the culture of black young people.
The social dysfunction is the dysfunction of black society.
Who can be the most violent? Who can be the most barbaric?
Who can be the most criminal?
Who can be the most cancerous on the body of the larger society and culture?
We already know the anwers to all of these questions. Which leaves only the most important question remaining: When are we going to effectively enforce the laws of a decent, safe society against the criminals who break those laws, no matter what color their skin happens to be?
Until that happens, we will continue to face the savagery of barbarous cannibals eating at the foundations of our society and culture from within the body politic itself.
SOTU Success
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3President Joe Biden set aside immigration, inflation and crime to lead his 2024 State of the Union speech with a trio of issues that hardly register in polls of the American people.
Whether you like it or not, FJB did what he needed to do in his SOTU speech, that is, make it through without any brain freezes, unavoidably obvious bits of garble gabble, or crapping his britches. It was deliberate, I think, that his speechwriters waited until the waning moments of his speech to have him bring up the questions about his mental and physical abilities and his age.
Biden tried to, but he botched Riley’s first name and instead referring to her as “Lincoln.”
“Lincoln. Lincoln Riley,” Biden said, holding up a pin with the late female’s name. “The innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal. That’s right.”
The slip-up was the only major flub for Biden, who saved the final moments of his speech to address his age, another key concern for voters.
If that was his only “major” flub, I’d say he did just fine. Her name is a stupid one for a woman, “Laken,” and more than a few Boomers might have trouble getting it right every once in a while.
“Now some other people my age see a different story. An American story of resentment, revenge, and retribution. That’s not me,” Biden said, before going on to tout the experience his age gives him.
The GOP may try to gaslight this into some sort of disaster for Biden, but it wasn’t. Okay, he was shouty here and there. But America currently has one-half of the political population shouting at the top of their lungs at the other half, so it’s going to be pretty hard to cast that as some sort of disqualifying outlier.
In fact, there are some on the right who might admit that they’d like to see their leaders a bit more “in their face” when dealing with their lefty oppo than they actually are.
The nominal public leader of the GOP, Speaker of the House MIke Johnson, says that Biden was “overly partisan.” Again, I doubt either side will view that as much of a crime, and certainly not evidence of Biden’s unfitness for office.
As I say, he did what he needed to do. Now he can go back to his bed and crash on Xanax and Trazadone, and then get ready to wage a campaign from the White House set.
Take a Number and Get In Line
More Hot Water for Hunter Biden: Chinese Ex-Client Demands Return of $1 Million
A former Chinese government official, businessman and Hunter Biden client who spent three years in a U.S. prison for bribery on a grand international scale is threatening to sue President Joe Biden’s troubled son, New York Post columnist Miranda Devine reported Sunday.
It appears $1 million doesn’t go far when it comes to Hunter.
The Chinese client is Patrick Ho, a one-time secretary of home affairs for Hong Kong and a top executive for the now-defunct Chinese energy giant CEFC.
Ho was arrested in November 2017 after landing at New York’s JFK airport, as CNN reported after Ho’s conviction in 2018.
Many Americans might remember that upon his arrest, Ho called James Biden, the now-president’s brother. That was apparently a mistake — James Biden told The New York Times in December 2018 that the call was intended for his nephew.
Ho and Hunter finally hooked up, though, and Ho paid Hunter a $1 million retainer for “counsel to matters related to U.S. law and advice pertaining to the hiring and legal analysis of any U.S. law firm or lawyer,” according to documents found on Hunter’s laptop.
And, according to Devine, Ho wants that money back on the grounds that Hunter did nothing for him. And he’s given Hunter seven days to respond.
I suppose Hunter could mount a defense based on the concept of caveat emptor, considering that by 2018 everybody in the world knew he was crooked as his dad’s third leg. Might be funny if all the funny money benefactors chose to sue Hunter en masse. What a class action suit that could be.