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kaypeace21 · 5 years

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Ted Wheeler is a Russian Spy (Theory)

A lot of people make fun of Ted, saying how useless and unassuming he is but I honestly think this framing of his character is being done divert suspicion, not only from the viewers but from other characters in the narrative. So lets get into the possible evidence...

We are told by Mike that his father told him the Department of Energy is making “weapons to fight the commies”. Which is in fact proven to be the case . But how does Ted know the intentions of such a secretive government facility? We aren’t sure about What Ted does for a living but whatever it is- makes a considerable amount of money- possibly something in the technology sector. Mike’s interest in tech (being the leader of the AV club) and also him knowing all about the newest technologies to a similar aptitude as Bob, who's job is related to tech -could very well show Mike inherited/was taught such traits from his father. The first scene we see of Ted is with him finicking with a tv ... and being a tech wiz would be extremely useful as a spy.

Also, it seems like Ted generally misses a lot of social cues- I don't know much about Russia, but I suppose this could be due to cultural differences. Believe it or not, Ted has been shown to care about his kids. When Will dies he asks if he should “go talk to Michael”, and only doesn’t do so because of Karen’s advice. The next day Karen tells Mike “if you need anything, you call your father”- which implies not only did Ted tell Karen that’d he’d talk to Mike about his grief at work, but possibly go home early to help his son. Also, he helps Mike fasten his tie, and when Mike says “it’s too tight”. Ted just simply loosens it a bit and says with a smile “it has to be a little tight”. We then pan to Jonathan who can’t keep his tie on- because it not even a ‘little tight’ and is too loose.

Most of the things that people criticize about Ted seem to be due to Ted just not understanding social cues. In s1 when Mike is yelling, saying “I’m the only one who cares about Will!” And Ted says in a deadpan tone “That’s not fair son, we care too” and plops a piece of chicken in his mouth. Causing everyone to leave. He seems genuinely confused .And says “what did I do?” And then dejectedly drops his fork.

Generally, his tone and inflection come across as extremely deadpan/uncaring at times, which could simply be because this isn’t actually his first language- or because if he gets too emotional his accent will seep through .

Also in s2, when Mike is acting out and Ted is giving horrible advice filled with football/coach analogies, and the old phrase “if you’re friend jumped off a cliff would you do it too”, seemed so forced- like he was just repeating what he heard on tv. I MEAN, let’s be honest, does Ted come across as any type of ex football-star-athlete to you?! Or, does he come across, as someone who would of been a tech-obsessed nerd in high school (just like his son). Who, in cannon, is the least athletic of all the boys- he has terrible aim (he completely missed throwing a rock at a bully) and when the boys ran to the trashcan to see what Max threw in it (if you rewatch the scene, Mike is literally 20 paces behind everyone else, but the only one out of breath XD) and he canonically hates sports. We actually know nothing of Ted Wheeler’s highshcool or college days (as an athlete), only what he’s told his family- since Karen met Ted when he was already working.

Also if we’re supposed to genuinely believe Ted is supposed to be this macho dad who wants to force his son to be a stereotypical ideal of manhood-like his football pep talk implied. I find it interesting how other macho fathers responded to their sons not acting in lines with stereotypical masculinity. Billy and Will’s father’s were verbally and physically abusive calling them “fags and queers”. While Ted simply jokes “Impossible ... our son with a girl” laughing at his own joke. (Lol, he probably didn’t mean it like that ... but let’s just pretend it’s cannon that Ted is the least homophobic dad in Stranger things XD)

Also, him pretending to be a a Regan supporting republican makes a lot of sense, since it would of been the polar opposite ideology of communists. Regeanomics “was the belief that tax breaks and benefits for corporations and the wealthy would trickle down to everyone else”. While communism’s economic model (in theory,not practice) was “designed to allow the poor to rise up and attain financial and social status equal to that of the middle-class landowners. In order for everyone to achieve equality, wealth was redistributed so that the members of the upper class are brought down to the same financial and social level as the middle class.” Another caveat is the fact that republicans (and most people at the time) were extremely racist- and conservatives like Regean at the time deemed Nelson Mandela a “terrorist”. In opposition to this, the Soviet Union was at the forefront of the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid movements and the Soviet Union was also the biggest benefactor of the African National Congress (ANC)- that Mandela was a member of. During a state visit, Mandela even expressed gratitude for the “solidarity of the Russian people in the South African fight against apartheid and for freedom.”

So if Ted has an actual conservative ideology, and not the more communist one. Why does he have no problems with living right next door to a black family. And not only that, having Lucas be one of his son’s best friends who spends almost every weekend at their house for 8-12 hours a day? While Billy, who probably emulates his father (who seems old fashioned and conservative) said about Lucas “those aren’t the right people to be associating with”.If Ted was a communist who believed in the idea of a world “devoid of sexism, racism and other forms of oppression”, some of his contradictory behavior would make much more sense.

His good old “republican-patriotic attitude” almost seems like a characture of what a Russian would assume they’d be like. The fact that his first comment about seeing Eleven was “My god, is she Russian?” , without any proof, seems almost like he was trying to divert suspicion. Or, this is how he assumed a real republican would act amidst all the “Russian hysteria”. The fact that Ted says “They’re our government we can trust them”, may have very well been been a calculated maneuver on his part-if he assumed his house (like Hopper’s) was bugged. Also in s2, when the government says not to tell anyone of the incident, he salutes them (again very over the top). But, he later tells a coworker about “the Russian girl who stayed in their house”. Why would he do this if he’s an actual ‘over-the-top republican patriot’, who trusts his government ?

Well, I actually think he was taking a well calculated risk- exposing such government secrets would clearly be illegal, but why would a Russian spy talk to his coworkers about accidentally housing one? He may of even played it up talking about the ‘Russian threat’. He knew it would get back to the Government agents- and this would divert suspicion of him being part of a sleeper cell.

*Also, if Ted is a good old republican conservative, I find it interesting that we never see the family pray or see a single cross in their house.

Essentially I believe Ted does care for his family, but a lot of himself is a fake facade- his past as an athlete and his republican affiliation/values are all there to build the allusion of what Nancy describes as the perfect “nuclear family.”

#stranger things #stranger things 3 #mike wheeler #nancy wheeler #ted wheeler #karen wheeler #stranger things theory

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genelutz · 5 years

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ABSURD JUSTIFICATIONS FOR WAR

ABSURD JUSTIFICATIONS FOR WAR AND FALSE FLAGS USED BY THE U.S.

“The Spanish–American War was an armed conflict between Spain and the United States in 1898. Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of the USS Maine in Havana harbor in Cuba, leading to U.S. intervention in the Cuban War of Independence/. The war led to the emergence of U.S. predominance in the Caribbean region, and resulted in U.S. acquisition of Spain’s Pacific possessions. That led to U.S. involvement in the Phillipine Revolution and ultimately in the Phillipine American War.

The Phillippine-American War was an armed conflict between the First Phillipine Republic and the United States that lasted from February 4, 1889 to July 2, 1902. While Filipino nationalists viewed the conflict as a continuation of the struggle for independence that began in 1896 with the Phillipine Revolution, the U.S. regarded it as an insurrection. The conflict arose when the First Phillipine Republic objected to the terms of the Treaty of Paris, under which the United States took possession of the Philiippines from Spain, ending the short Spanish-American War. [WIKIPEDIA]

THE VIETNAM WAR

The ostensible reason for going to war against North Vietnam was to “free” the people of Vietnam from being “taken over” by Communists. The excuse was the Gulf of Tonkin incident, an event that never happened, and even if it had happened, that doesn’t give America some kind of moral justification to murder millions of Vietnamese and devastate their country, as American hubris seems to suggest.

The Vietnam war was started because some Viet Cong vessel supposedly fired at an American ship which really had no business being in the Gulf of Tonkin anyway…if it had been a commie Vietnamese ship cruising off the coast of California, how do you think we would react? The United States would freak out totally. By the same logic, if we fired at one of their ships off the California coast, would that mean the Vietnamese government now had the right to fly thousands of sorties into the U.S. and drop millions of bombs and chemicals? I should think not! But that’s what we did to them

IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN

President Bush somehow successfully convinced a lot of Americans that the country of Afghanistan should be considered an enemy of the United States, saying that any country that harbors terrorists would be considered an enemy of the U.S., so we moved our troops in and started a war there. The excuse given to start the war in Iraq was that they possessed weapons of mass destruction, along with the lie that Saddam was somehow involved in the destruction of the World Trade Center towers.

To illustrate how absurd this reasoning is, imagine if someone declared war against the United States because some American citizens set off a bomb or crashed a jetliner into a building in some foreign country, then the leader of that country says “any nation who harbors terrorists is considered our enemy, and we think that those terrorists are now living in the United States, therefore the U.S. is our enemy” and they fly a fleet of airplanes over New York City and start bombing—that is exactly what the U.S. did. Bush gave Saddam the ultimatum to “get outta town by noon” or the U.S. would start bombing. The U.S. didn’t even wait until dawn, but struck the city of Baghdad with what was dubbed “Shock and Awe” as if it was a fireworks display. A huge number of bombs were dropped, very large bombs, ostensibly in the hope that one of them would hit and kill Saddam, who must have either left town or gotten deep underground, anyway, he obviously survived the attack because he was captured alive later. An unknown number of innocent civilians were killed, wounded, maimed, or deafened in the attack. Bush then had the nerve to come on TV and say, “Gee, I wonder why the Muslims hate us so much. Must be they hate us because we’re Christians.”

GRENADA

The real reason for the war was to topple a Marxist government that the U.S. corporatocracy wanted to replace with a capitalism-friendly government. U.S. President Ronald Reagan's justification for the intervention was in part explained as "concerns over the 600 U.S. medical students on the island" and fears of a repeat of the Iran hostage crisis. (See “Invasion of Grenada” on Wikipedia)

ABSURDITY REPEATS ITSELF

Many democratically elected Socialist or Marxist governments in Latin America and the Caribbean have been overthrown in U.S. supported right wing regimes who commit multiple human rights abuses. These corporate-friendly dictators help protect American business interests and hegemony in the hemisphere and around the world, overthrowing democratically elected, justifying their coups by accusing the socialist governments of human rights abuses with or without evidence, that they themselves commit when they get in power.

...and what’s wrong with that? We’d like to know, ‘cause here we go...again…

Venezuela...

Libya...

Yemen...

AND NOW IRAN ...

Yeah sure, why wouldn’t Iran want to provoke a war with the US for no reason whatsoever, have millions of Iranian citizens killed and their infrastructure destroyed by American bombing raids? Must be because they’re Muslims, right? Those Muslims, always starting wars they know they have no chance of winning, just because they don’t like Christians.

HOW WE’LL BRING DEMOCRACY TO YOUR COUNTRY

STEP ONE. We bomb your country.

STEP TWO. We give you a choice of [one] candidate to vote for. You can vote for him or not vote for him, but if you don’t vote for him, you will be thrown in prison and tortured.

STEP THREE: We hire Halliburton to rebuild the sites we just bombed at a hugely inflated cost, and make the countries we bombed pay for it by giving us their oil.

#war #war profiteers #vietnam war #history #political satire #political blog #political humor

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buzzdixonwriter · 6 years

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Vietnam: There & Then, Here & Now

I just finished watching Ken Burns’ Vietnam War documentary.

Quite an experience.

Vietnam was my generation’s war, the baby boomers’ war (i.e., those born between 1946 and 1964). I lived through the era of most of the events of the war, being old enough and cognizant enough to follow what was going on in the world around me.

From a historical POV, the Vietnam War documentary offers little new information, mostly puts everything we already knew in perspective and fairly linearly.

A few things did surprise me, such as the revelation that Nixon in order to keep the war from becoming even more unpopular, wouldn’t let draftees be sent to Vietnam unless they volunteered.

People were still being drafted (I was) but instead of being sent unwillingly to a combat zone, we were sent to foreign bases to replace enlistees who went to fight in our place.

I feel bad about that.

Nixon’s political logic was sound -- enlistees and draftees who volunteered couldn’t say they were going against their will and thus the potential for desertion and the general populace turning against the war were lessened -- but it doesn’t make it any easier to bear.

It’s one thing if everybody’s name is put in a hat and assignments are handed out at random.

It’s another if the names are put into two different hats (but then again, nobody’s name went into the Vietnam hat without their consent…).

Watching the series, it struck me that people analyzing the current American political scene are wrong when they liken it to the Civil War or the rise of Nazi Germany.

No, it isn’t.

It’s like the 1960s all over again.

Let’s back track a bit and start afresh.

From time immemorial, there has been conflict between those who think for whatever reason they should be on top and those whom they think should be under them.

The average human being just wants to be left alone to live their own life. We really don’t care what kind of socio-economic political culture we live under so long as it’s reasonably stable, consistent, and fair.

We have no problem with some people being very, very wealthy.

We just don’t want their wealth to come at the expense of everyone else.

By the 18thcentury, the first trade guilds were beginning to appear in Europe.

They were crushed by the aristocracy of their day, both the nobility / landed gentry and the financiers.

In the early 19thcentury the working class tried again with various trade unions. Again the aristocracy (more industrialists this time) crushed them.

The working class tried a third time in the late 19thcentury with socialism , again it was crushed.

Finally in the early part of the 20thcentury, communism came forth, and it was successful…at least for the better part of the century.

(Yes, I am grossly over simplifying a lot of history here, but I’m doing so to make this point: Every time labor got slapped down, it came back with something stronger until finally it won and -- in an effort to forestall communism -- the rest of then world more or less adopted some for of socialism.)

We ignored the plight of the Vietnamese prior to WWII because we (i.e., the Western democracies) only cared about the political and civil rights of white skinned people. We begged their help during WWII to fight the Japanese again, but afterwards we reneged on our deal with them because the French threatened to go communist if they lost their lucrative colony (spoiler: They eventually did lose their colony and, no, they didn’t go communist).

When the Vietnamese defeated the French, the United States viewed this as another domino falling in communism’s plan for worldwide dominance.

Since our internal domestic politics were consumed with a paranoia against communism -- because communism would keep us from going to church or owning guns and cars and houses or reading books, etc., etc., and of course, etc. — we could not let them succeed anywhere.

We fought communist forces to a bloody standstill in Korea.

We faced them down in tense situations in Europe and the Middle East.

And we were damned if we’d let them topple the first domino in South East Asia.

So, even though we knew we had no popular support among the South Vietnamese people, and even though we knew their leadership was too corrupt and inept to defeat the North Vietnamese, we backed them with money, materiel, and men in the form of “advisors”.

It didn’t work.

The situation rapidly turned into a huge hot steaming turd pile and nobody -- NOBODY!!! -- in either party could see a reason for being there except if we weren’t there, the other side would blame them for “losing” Vietnam.

The same way the GOP blamed the Democrats for “losing” China…when it was never theirs to begin with.

We refused to deal with communist governments because we’d be damned if we were going to deal with the likes of “them”…not when we could prop up a puppet of our own to run the show.

And we made this mistake again and again and again everywhere, refusing to cut deals or honor agreements because we weren’t going to bolster communism because we wanted to keep our God, our guns, and our gold.

Oh, yes, let’s talk about money.

When you analyze anti-communism, for all the high-falutin’ language about human dignity and freedom and whatnot, it really boils down to people being able to make money and not have to pay any of it to the government.

And if some people make more money, well, that just means they’re better people than those who make less.

Isn’t it?

So the U.S. fight against communism was to protect the rich, the corporations, the moneyed interests.

The Vietnamese were ancillary to this goal.

…if they were considered at all.

So we wound up digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a morass that we couldn’t win because our enemy, while quite easily defeated, simply couldn’t be beaten.

(The North Vietnamese were communists by default; there was no ideological purity to their struggle, at least not the beginning. They were nationalists first and foremost, and when the capitalist Western democracies ignored their desire for independence, they turned to the Russian communists. If Chicago baseball fans had offered them more support than the Bolsheviks, the North Vietnamese would have been Cubbies.)

This is all a long winded way of saying that even though every White House administration from Kennedy forward (and perhaps as early as Eisenhower and Truman) realized South Vietnam was a doomed proposition, they nonetheless kept funding the war because they feared they lose power if they didn’t.

Domestically, Americans were so terrified of communism and what they were told was its first cousin, socialism, that they would respond negatively to anyone accused of appeasing those God damned commie simp pinko bastards.

It was a recipe for disaster, as Ken Burns points out repeatedly.

But this post isn’t about the Vietnam era, it’s about what’s happening in the here and now, and to look at that we need to hit the major highlights of the Vietnam Was as perceived by the average American citizen (read average white Christian American citizen).

In the aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination -- and his killer being an on-again / off-again USMC deserter / defector to Russia who joined a bunch of iffy political movements when he returned to the U.S. sure didn’t help things -- Americans were shocked again when it was reported the North Vietnamese had attacked two U.S. destroyers.

To this day it’s still impossible to discern what really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin with any sense of accuracy.

Suffice it to say something happened and the North Vietnamese navy came out all the worse for it but nonetheless Johnson treated the incident as if the gawd damned commies were about to start invading New Orleans and the next thing we knew, the war had escalated from a few hundred American “advisors” to a couple of thousand active combatants.

This was in 1964.

The next big event to lodge itself into the American psyche was the Tet offensive of 1968.

The North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies (not one and the same!) launched a massive series of attacks across Vietnam in the hopes of spurring a popular uprising.

The tactical portion of the Tet offensive failed, but the strategic one worked perfectly (although it took seven years to see the payoff).

The reason the strategic part worked was that for the intervening 4 years between Tonkin and Tet, the U.S. had promised its citizens again and again and again that victory was just around the corner, we could see the light at the end of the tunnel, and we were winning by breaking the resolve of the enemy.

Well, Tet put the lie to that PDQ!

The most shocking thing about Tet was the photo and TV news footage of South Vietnam National Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan blowing the brains out of Nguyen Van Lem, a member of a Viet Cong assassination team who had just killed some police officers and their families.

Look, let’s be honest, Van Lem richly deserved his fate under the rules of the Geneva Convention since he had killed innocent civilians while disguised as a civilian, and as such had lost all protections under international treaty.

But it’s pretty damn shocking to see him being executed again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again thanks to the miracle of television, and while most Americans still supported the war, God love ‘em still supported the troops, and agree Van Lem deserved death for his war crimes, it’s still a pretty damn shocking scene to see.

Most Americans supported the war.

But most Americans also wanted it over.

About a year later, Americans were shocked even more. Information on the infamous My Lai Massacre, which occurred in the aftermath of the Tet offensive in 1968, became public, including photos of women begging for their lives and the lives of their children, and the revelation that Americans had gang raped Vietnamese women and children before killing them.

Again, predictably, most Americans sided with the troops who committed these crimes, and continued to support the war, but despite that, one can’t shake the images of weeping women futilely trying to protect their children, or the piles of bodies just a few seconds later.

The anti-war movement, which had aligned itself with the civil rights movement and the nascent feminist movement (and, boy howdy!, is that a tale to tell but not in this post; stay focused) began opposing the war in more and more successful, and in larger and larger protests.

American presidents Johnson and (soon-to-be) Nixon did not want to lose any elections, and since the majority of Americans still supported the war -- whatever doubts they might possess about it -- they weren’t about to give any serious attention to the protestors demands.

(And, truth be told, there were a lot of show boaters among the anti-war protestors, bozos who just wanted to watch things burn.)

As protests mounted, Nixon (who became president by sabotaging Johnson’s attempt to negotiate a peace agreement in time for the 1968 election which, if bigoted George Wallace hadn’t acted as a spoiler, would have gone to Hubert Humphrey) fought back in an increasing number of ways, some quite petty, others quite deadly.

Among the deadliest was the Kent State protests in 1970 which resulted in the deaths of four college students, two of them innocent bystanders walking away from the direction of the protest on their way to class.

While shocking, again the majority of Americans defended the National Guard troops who slaughtered four students and wounded a dozen more, crippling one permanently.

But you can’t unsee an image, and though Americans hardened their hearts, they couldn’t forget the image of Mary Ann Vecchio over the body of Jeffrey Miller anymore than they could forget the image of Nguyen Ngoc Loan killing Nguyen Van Lem.

Like the Tet offensive, the battle may have been lost, but the war was being won.

More shocking turns awaited the average American. Vietnam Veterans Against The War was a surprisingly effective antiwar movement. They, along with the Winter Soldier congressional hearings in 1971, put the lie to the claim that it was only hippies and communist agitators who opposed the war.

Nixon and his vice president Spiro Agnew went on the offensive, denouncing anti-war protestors and appealing to the so-called “silent majority” of law abiding, church going, conservative, and -- dare we say it? -- white Americans who continued to support the war.

Nixon and Agnew (who had to resign due to scandals entirely unrelated to his role as Nixon’s vice president) stirred up class animosity in America, pitting working class Americans against the so-called “liberal elite” including college students and professors, preparing the soil for the coming campaign of ignorance that would devour the country in the post-Vietnam era.

But even though the average “silent majority” American continued to support the war, the vocal protestors were gaining ground, winning hearts and minds, and the images were searing themselves into the American psyche.

Also in 1971, the Pentagon Papers were released, documenting mistake after mistake after mistake the U.S. had mad, all the while acknowledging that was simple no way we could possibly win in Vietnam.

But still the fighting continued.

Nixon’s paranoia and pettiness proved his undoing,

As he and his underlings committed more and more brazen crimes to solidify their base, the Vietnam war continued unleashing horror after horror.

In June of 1972, 9 year old Phan Thi Kim Phuc was photographed running naked down a road, screaming in pain after 30% of her body had been burned by a South Vietnamese napalm strike.

Try as they like, the pro-war apologists (same rat bastards as today’s trolls) could not find a way of blaming her for her own misery.

By January, 1973 the U.S. started withdrawing in earnest and for America the war of over for all intents and purposes.

On March 8, 1973 the last official U.S. ground troops left Vietnam.

On August 8, 1974 Nixon resigned.

On August 15, 1974, the U.S. congress said “Hold! Enough!” and effectively cut off military support to South Vietnam.

On April 30, 1975, Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) fell, and the end that everybody knew would arrive sooner or later finally came.

All that…for nothing…

As noted above, the Vietnam war did not occur in a historical cultural vacuum, and there was not only the dread of an existentialist threat of a grossly misrepresented communist bogeyman to what the average white conservative Christian American held near and dear, but also the much more palatable fear of losing white supremacy to racial equality with…with…negroes (to use the term of the day), not to mention the first stirrings of the feminist movement, the first hint of a gay rights movement, and the hippies themselves, perceived as a great unwashed mob of dope swilling anarchists.

As the song goes, the dirty fucking hippies were right.

Ken Burns’ Vietnam War presents Vietnam to us in that context, a major component of a much broader picture, a picture that threatened the very soul of America.

Small wonder the reaction was the disco era and yuppies replacing hippies and cocaine going through the roof and Reagan replacing Carter as the latter tried to struggle with the economic bill come due after decades of reckless military spending.

Reagan, of course, devastated American in his own way, the opposite of the Tet offensive, in which he seemed to win easy victory after easy victory only now that he’s dead and gone we see those so called “victories” were actually a betrayal of everything America used to stand for.

America, at least in part, has always been a progressive nation.

The founding fathers may have been slave holders, but they left a mechanism in place that could deal with the issue of slavery.

The reactionaries came back against the founding fathers, even while claiming to honor their spirit, with Andrew Jackson, as vile a racist as one could hope to imagine, but they were countered by the abolitionists of the Civil War.

The same progressive spirit that made abolition possible also made labor unions possible, and pure food and drug laws, and trust busting under Theodore Roosevelt.

And when bad reactionary / financier / industrial policies brought the U.S. and the rest of the world to financial ruin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt fought to use progressive policies to save the country.

The reactionaries have been waging a war against America since the end of WWII.

They lost ground in the 1950s and 60s despite their successful promotion of anti-communism, but regained that ground in the 1980s to 2008.

There were a few brief respites with Clinton, as flawed a human being as one could imagine, and Obama, who became the target of the mindless white racism simmering beneath the surface of what passes for conservative thought in this country.

Now, as we near the end of their era ///and they know it///, the reactionaries and the 1% want to stack the deck as much as possible against the march of progress.

The march of humanity.

The march of the future.

We are not in a second Civil War or a second Nazi movement (though there are elements of same present).

We are in a second 1960s, only there aren’t the obvious clear crusades of Vietnam or civil rights to rally around.

We have just had our Gulf of Tonkin incident with the election of Trump.

We may have had our Tet offensive public execution photo with the appointment of Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, a short term tactical victory that will spell doom for generations to come.

But I’m afraid we’re still quite a ways away from our My Lai, our Kent State, our Winter Soldier, our badly burned girl.

I want to tell you, as someone who lived through the 1960s, as someone who was drafted at the end of the Vietnam war, we will survive this.

And we, the decent people of the United States, the people who truly believe in liberty and justice for all, will prevail.

It won’t be pretty, and it won’t be easy, but we will win.

#Vietnam #communism #capitalism #Christianity #white supremacy #racism #history #GOP- Republicans #Trump #morals #ethics #politics

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phochs · 3 years

Video

youtube

Talking Vietnam

Sailing over to Vietnam Southeast Asian Birmingham Well training is the word we use Nice word to have in case we lose Training a million Vietnamese To fight for the wrong government and the American Way Well they put me in a barracks house Just across the way from Laos They said you're pretty safe when the troops deploy But don't turn your back on your house boy When they ring the gong, watch out for the Viet-Cong Well the sergeant said it's time to train So I climbed aboard my helicopter plane We flew above the battle ground A sniper tried to shoot us down He must have forgotten, we're only trainees Them Commies never fight fair Friends the very next day we trained some more We burned some villages down to the floor Yes we burned out the jungles far and wide Made sure those red apes had no place left to hide Threw all the people in relocation camps Under lock and key, made damn sure they're free Well I walked through the jungle and around the bend Who should I meet but President Diem Said you're fighting to keep Vietnam free For good old Diem-ocracy That means rule by one family And 15, 000 American troops, give or take a few Thousand American Troops He said, I was a fine old Christian man Ruling this backward Buddhist land Well it ain't much but what the heck It sure beats hell out of Chiang Kai-shek I'm the power elite Me and the 7th fleet He said, Meet my sister, Madam Nhu The sweetheart of Dien Bien Phu He said, Meet my brothers, meet my aunts With the government that doesn't take a chance Families that slay together, stay together If you want to stay you'll have to pay Over a million dollars a day But it's worth it all, don't you see? If you loose the country you'll still have me Me and Syngman Rhee, Chiang Kai-shek, Madam Nhu Like I said on Meet the Press 'I regret that I have but one country to give for my life’ Well now old Dien is gone and dead All the new leaders are anti-Red. Yes they're pro-American, freedom sensations Against Red China, the United Nations. Now all the news commentators and the CIA are saying, Thank God for coincidence

So this song is heavy and also it’s one that I could listen to over and over again all day long. I personally find talking songs, like this one, to be mesmerising. They’re usually simple and straight forward, using humour to get the point across.

That sarcastic anger is even heavier here with Vietnam being the focus of the song that makes a lot of sense, since Phil was probably best known for being outspoken against the War. This is a very topical song, it might be hard to get excited about it in the way people would have in 1964, but in other ways it’s easy to see why they did. He’s enthusiastic about sharing his outrage. Comparing Vietnam to Birmingham, and the civil rights issues going on there was a way to connect with the folk audience. Sailing over to Vietnam Southeast Asian Birmingham

(Ngô Đình Diệm) Diem was the president of Vietnam, he was corrupt and power-hungry, and biased . He was a Catholic and was strongly opposed to the Buddhist majority in the country. Leading to the repression of Buddhists in Vietnam in many ways. He had the military support from the United States, because he was anti-communist. Nepotism is often mentioned, specifically referring to his brother and sister-in-law, both of whom worked closely with him.

Chiang Kai-shek was an anti-communist leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party, he was backed by the United States for a time as well.

(Trần Lệ Xuân) Madame Nhu was Diem’s sister-in-law and the First Lady, she was very outspoken in her opinions, known for being harsh and quite aggressive with her Catholicism. She used the power that came with her position to advocate for morality laws, outlawing abortion, divorce, contraceptives and dance halls.

Syngman Rhee was the president of South Korea from 1948-1960. He is also seen historically as a corrupt dictator

So in the end Diem’s assassination played a huge part in getting the United States more deeply involved in the conflict in Vietnam.

Thank God for coincidence.

#Phil Ochs #All the news that's fit to sing #Vietnam War #Talking Blues #Talking Vietnam

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polsocmartikhoras · 6 years

Text

Crossposted from Digital Wild west

[QUOTE="Terthna, post: 4498, member: 138"]I'm sorry to say that I just don't have the same capacity for schadenfreude that you do; I'm just disgusted that none of those fools took their lose as a cue for some direly needed introspection. Even now in Whitehall, they rant about how they're the good guys, and how every loss is due to some unexpected wickedness on the part of their enemies; whom they define as basically everyone who isn't a vocal support of their cause, and are thereby called Nazis.

I like to believe that I'm a reasonable person, that I don't hold people's politics against them; but I've grown so fed up with all the bullhonky, that I cannot in good conscience pretend that's true anymore. I despise these people with almost the same fervor they likely direct towards me, and I'm quickly becoming convinced that a sharp rise in political violence on all sides is inevitable; because that's what a lot of people seem to want, seeing as they've rejected words as a way to settle their differences. The only thing left is violence; organizations like Antifa have already realized this (indeed, such has always been their goal; to legitimize their own efforts to strike down everyone they don't like), and I'm terrified as to what will happen if the current efforts to stop this madness at the brink fail.

I keep coming back to an article I read that talks about the book "Days of Rage"; in the book, Bryan Burrough recounts several stories of leftwing political violence in the 1970's that everyone seems to have forgotten. One particular quote at the top of the article by a retired FBI agent by the name of Max Noel stands out to me; “People have completely forgotten that in 1972 we had over nineteen hundred domestic bombings in the United States.” Maybe the relative domestic peace we've enjoyed since then was only temporary; maybe the pendulum is finally swinging back.[/QUOTE]

Damn that article is prophetic in places

Am I beingg indoctrinated?

Hehehe

[QUOTE]So if you tell me that I’m a Nazi, and tell me people I respect are Nazis, and tell me you’re in favor of going out and beating up Nazis, guess what? I am suddenly very interested in the physical safety of Nazis.

And I’m Jewish.

Lemme tell you a true story.

In 209 BC, two Qin Dynasty army officers, Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, were ordered to lead their troops on a march to provide reinforcements. Massive flooding delayed them. They couldn’t make their rendezvous time. In the Qin Dynasty, this carried the death penalty. No excuses.

“What’s the penalty for being late?”

“Death.”

“What’s the penalty for rebellion?”

“Death.”

“Well — we’re late.”

And that’s the story of the Dazexiang Uprising.

How does full-on streetfighting start in the United States of America? My guess is: pretty much like that. “What’s the penalty for kicking the living shit out of Leftist protestors?” “Oh, Jesus, we’d be demonized as Nazis.” “…what’ll they do if we don’t kick the living shit out of Leftist protestors?” “They’ll — hmmmmmmm….”

So, what’re the odds of Righties kicking the living shit out of Lefty protestors actually happening? Depends on what happens January 20th, and after. Before the inauguration, the movement DisruptJ20 announced plans to screw up the inauguration.

Here’s a pre-inauguration article on DisruptJ20. Notice the variety of things they had on the agenda at that point.

Now reread that article, and think about how the national press would react if instead of a commie it were Richard Spencer.

The thing about commies is you have to pay attention to what they don’t say: “This is a nonviolent protest and we will not attack anybody.” Instead, it’s: “We are preparing for the possibility of sporadic fights breaking out because people are very emotional about this.” Cute, huh[/QUOTE]

Damn. A little harsh seguing report on book to modern stuff. But this was written in 2016

#days of rage #political violence #not all protest was right

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randomnoteforfuturereference · 7 years

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Aftermath: Bombshell

With Business Dealings showing off the Nurses’ response to the Zimbits kiss, I thought it nice to have a counterpoint piece with the perspective on Dex. Though “nice” may be stretching things a bit in regards to this one. Continued thanks to my awesome beta @kleeklutch.

Warning: this fic contains explicit homophobic language, bullying behavior from someone twice the age of the bullied, allusion to past physical trauma, anxiety, and allusion to the current opioid crisis.

With that said, I hope you find this to be an engaging story.

It’s late, and half the village is either asleep or getting ready to sleep.

The rest of us? Well, the rest of us are crammed into Aunt Trish & Uncle Jim’s diner and focused on the diner’s new sixty-inch OLED screen, just as we’ve done for the previous six games of the Stanley Cup.

Except now we’re no longer at the edge of our seats and filled with the tension that typified all seven games. Fucking seventh game overtime…

Now we join the cheers coming out of Providence.

Jack raises the Cup, and we all raise our drinks and let out another collective holler that’s probably loud enough to be heard from Bar Harbor.

As everyone else goes from watching the broadcast to chatting with each other, I keep my eyes glued to the television to see if I can find anyone familiar.

And there he is.

Bitty runs across the ice right into Jack’s arms. Because of course. Still, even as I roll my eyes, I smirk and raise my bottle to them. Jack not only deserves the Cup; the two deserve all the happiness they can get.

I bet Ransom and Holster have to resist pulling out the sin bin. Because the way those dramatic saps are hugging, they’re probably close t—Oh.

My smile fades as blood drains from my face. They aren’t actually going to… They wouldn’t be so reckless… They wouldn’t… Would they?

Bitty leans back and stares straight into Jack’s eyes. Something’s said, and the serious look between the two turns into smiles.

Oh fuck. OH FUCK.

I scramble for the remote. Everyone’s having fun celebrating, so nobody should notice me turning off the television.

Gotcha! As I mash the remote’s buttons, the room goes silent.

They’ll probably tell me off for messing with the controls. I don’t care. It’s not like there’s anything to watch now since it’s just the post-game. All I’m doing is keeping the electricity bill down.

Then I see the blue light reflected off the countertop. No. This isn’t happening. Nonono…

As I raise my head, my stomach drops.

In grabbing the remote, I hadn’t turned off the television. I merely muted it.

On screen, my captains are kissing. Not the affectionate pecks that garnered so many fines. No, it’s the intense lip-locked version that they indulge in whenever they’d think nobody is nearby; their expectation is frequently not the reality, but it’s not like we’ve let them know that.

The camera hasn’t moved on but instead is zooming in on them. In the background, other cameras are focusing in as well.

Leave them alone, you fucking seagulls!

Of course, they don’t. As there’s no way in hell the media’s going to look elsewhere, I turn away for them.

I immediately regret my decision.

Everyone in the diner has their widened eyes locked onto the screen. There’s no more joy on their faces.

Only shock.

I steel myself for what will come after that shock. I hope that they’ll accept Bitty and Jack, whom they were cheering just minutes beforehand. I prepare for the possibility that they may not react well to the news. To be honest, a cowardly part of me just feels relief that the matter will be settled one way or the other, and it’s not brought up by me.

Finally, Pa breaks the silence:

“Huh.”

… What.

I wait for the elaboration on that. Any kind of elaboration. Anything. Anything!

Uncle Miguel looks in my direction. Dammit, anything but focusing on me.

“The blond boy…” he notes, “that’s your captain next year, aye?”

I almost gag in my attempt to get my throat unstuck. “A-ayuh.”

“… Huh.”

Oh for FUCK’S SAKE!

Aunt Meg chimes in: “I mean, from what you told us about the blond one, I can kind of see it? Didn’t you say he’s a bit…?” She makes a limp-wrist gesture.

I’m saved from answering that by Uncle Jeremy saying, “Yeah, no surprise there. But Jack Zimmermann?”

By now, the whole diner is overcome by a low chorus of discussion, bafflement, and speculation. As well as those damn noncommittal grunts. Not to mention a bucketful of confusion from my younger cousins; one’s just asking me if that means Bitty is the girl.

The whole while, I’m trying and failing to make sense about the reaction.

While there are some comments of disapproval about how Bitty and Jack are making a scene, nobody’s explicitly disparaging or condemning the two. Which I guess is good? But nobody’s offering notes of support or at least acceptance either; though I suppose the comments about the “gutsiness” of the move count as a positive.

Overall, nobody seems to know what to think about this. If they do know, they certainly aren’t letting their thoughts be heard.

It’s pissing me off.

“So Zimmermann’s gay,” states a cousin.

“Bi,” I correct.

“Huh.”

Okay, that’s it! I all but throw my hands up as I move for the exit.

“You knew.”

The hissed accusation stops me in my tracks as I realize that there’s one person who would have a stance, and I turn to have Uncle Owen glaring right in my face.

“I… I—“

“You knew those two were screwing each other.”

Uncle Owen punctuates his statement by jabbing his finger into my chest.

In this moment, it doesn’t matter how much hockey has built me up. I feel like I’m a scrawny ten-year-old again, and each jab forces me backwards. Except for those in the immediate vicinity, most of the crowd is still too deep in conversation to notice.

“How long, boy?” he spits.

“Since…” I hate how small my voice sounds. I hate how those around me, even though they don’t like Uncle Owen, are curious for an answer. I hate how part of me wants to give more information than they expect but… can’t. “Since December.”

Actually longer, but nobody needs to know.

Nobody needs to know anything.

“Only two years in that libtard ‘school’, and you’re just full of surprises,” Uncle Owen muses. “Wasn’t the captain elected unanimously by the team?”

“Yes.” Shit! My answer comes out just as I realize why he asked that question. But it’s too late to take it back.

“So you knew the little shit’s a pervert and still voted for him?”

“He’s not a pervert.” I grit out as my hands ball into fists.

“So you say,” he sneers. “And I hear you’re spending the next year in the same house.”

A small part of me feels relief that he doesn’t know that I’m going to room with Nursey. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to control myself right now if the shit he spews goes in that direction. “The rent’s better.”

“Hah. Of course that’s your excuse: ‘The rent’s better.’” There’s a gleam in his eyes that’s too knowing for my liking. “What other faggoty secrets—“

“That’s enough, Owen,” Pa growls while shoving his way through the now-silent crowd. “Leave my son alone.”

My father may be leaning his cane, and he may have kept his right arm back home. But in this moment, he looks ready to kick any able-bodied asshole’s ass.

Uncle Owen sputters, “You’re willing to let this Cultural Marxism—“

“I don’t give a flying fuck if Billy has a Little Red Book in his back pocket. You say another goddamn word to him tonight, and I’ll convince Shannon to finally cut you out of her life for good.” Pa doesn’t even raise his voice, but it’s enough to make everyone take a step back. “That will be after I rearrange your face to be as ugly as mine.”

I don’t know how long the standoff lasts. I only know that Uncle Owen is the one to back down and storm out… and that the bloody crescents in my palms are probably going to last a bit.

As if to enforce a sense of normalcy, the collective conversation picks right back up where it left off. This is despite the subject of the conversation being anything but normal. Still, Pa and I spend a few more minutes milling around before he nods to the door. Then the two of us take our leave and begin the walk back home.

As the sounds of the diner fade, I finally check my phone. Surprise surprise, the chat feed is on fire. Right now it’s mostly incomprehensible gibberish; also Nursey’s making cryptic suggestions to check the national business news in the coming week.

Once everyone calms down, the team should discuss how to proceed from here.

Finally, I look up from my phone and back at Pa to state, “… You do know I’m no tankie, right?”

Pa chuckles, “I know. Just making a point.”

Heh, yeah. A point. He’s just saying that he’d love me no matter what. But would his love really be so unconditional if I actually started spouting commie, nazi, or beardie propaganda? I know mine wouldn’t.

So then why did he bring it up?

Uncle Owen was the one who said ‘Marxism’ first, and Pa was just taking the statement to its logical conclusion. Don’t think too much of it.

But did Pa rebuke Uncle Owen because what was being said was wrong? Or was it just because I was attacked?

If Uncle Owen made his language just focused on them gaysexuals, would Pa make the same statement except with the Little Red Book replaced by a rainbow flag? If he did, would that mean he considers being queer as bad as a communist?

I know that I should really be giving my father more credit than that, and there’s a weight in my stomach at the fact that I’d even have doubts. But still…

Pa nudges me. “Something on your mind?”

“Just… thinking about the coming year.” Which is technically the truth.

That gets a nod from him. “It will be interesting. No doubt about that.”

Yeah… interesting. I can just see the attention Bitty will get between him being Jack’s boyfriend and the first out NCAA ice hockey captain. Media may even come to Samwell.

People will know Bitty lives at the Haus. People will know where the Haus is; even if the media doesn’t divulge the location, it’s not like it’s hard to find due to all the damn kegsters.

What if we get paparazzi waiting for Jack to come to Samwell? What if there is paparazzi obsessed with Bitty himself? What if we get assholes who decide that spewing shit in a comment feed won’t cut it?

We don’t even keep the door locked. But even if we get the Haus secure, we have to walk to campus. Even in school, it’s not like they gate off the campus and limit access.

We should put in new locks and give out a limited set of keys. Convince the frats to install a surveillance system along the whole street. Maybe we’ll even have to stop hosting kegsters so often.

We should do something. We need to do something. We need to do something now! We need to try to keep several steps ahead of them even though they’ll keep trying to find a new way. That includes at our games.

The away games. Fuck. I forgot about the away games. FUCK!

Shit. We’re fucked. We’re so f—

“Billy!”

Pa’s voice forces me to stop walking, and it’s then that I see that I’m at least twenty yards ahead. Billy, you fucking idiot. Hell of a son you are.

“Shit,” I blurt out while rushing back. “I-I’m so—”

Pa cuts me off: “Enough of that. Right now, I just need you to breathe.”

It’s only at his request that I realize my breaths come in rapid gasps and that the hand I’m offering shakes violently.

I try to do as I’ve been taught, but I can’t seem to get anything under control. Pressure builds behind my eyes. Oh, now you’re going to cry about it?

A hand firmly clasps my shoulder, and I look up to see Pa heaving deep even breaths for me to focus on. It’s not easy, but eventually I force myself back on track.

Once stability’s restored, Pa tentatively asks, “What’s the matter, Billy?”

This time, I don’t have to make the truth a technicality: “Just wondering how the school’s going to deal with the media and security issues.”

Pa nods and thankfully doesn’t ask me to elaborate. “I’m sure they’ll figure something out.”

I’m also thankful that he leaves it at that and doesn’t try to further any reassurance as we continue walking in silence.

A silence which only lasts for another few minutes. “So… your captains are together.”

When Pa comments like that, without the crowds around, the situation feels even more naked than before.

Maybe I can get something out of it though.

“Ayuh,” I mutter. “What do you think about it?”

Pa looks off at some unspecified point. “Well, I can say that my bombshell doesn’t compare to the one they set off,” he remarks with a wry smile and a waving of his forearm stump around the right side of his face.

Jesus Christ… “Jesus Christ, Pa.” It’s not like he hasn’t made similar jokes before, but I still fail to find them funny.

Pa rolls his eye and thumps me on the back. “To answer your question… I don’t know what to think. Though it’s not like it affects us,” he states with a shrug.

It affects us more than you think. “You do know that a lot of queer folk come Downeast, right?”

“Ayuh, and I know they help keep Mount Desert’s economy afloat. Make great music too. They still just pass through at most.”

So is that how it will be okay? As long as distance is maintained?

“Well one of them is going to be officially leading me.”

Pa creases his brow. “Yeah, he is, isn’t he.”

“The other did lead me, and it’s not like he became magically bi after graduation.”

“Hm…”

My jaw clenches. At least it’s not fucking “huh”.

Our porch light shines into view and guides us inside. Once we get to the kitchen, Pa takes his prescribed painkillers while I watch; I know it’s irrational of me as he hasn’t gotten hooked so far, and it’s not like I’m here all the time, but I can’t help it after a few recent cases.

As he sets his glass down, Pa sighs, “Look, Billy. I know they’re your friends. So maybe I don’t get it. Doesn’t matter. I trust your judgement.”

It does matter. But still… “Thank you.”

“Hell, they’re welcome to stop by.” Pa barely finishes his statement before barking out a laugh and shaking his head. For a brief moment my stomach clenches until he murmurs, “Like a Falconer would come here…”

I hide my relief with a huff: “You never know. You saw how full of surprises they are.”

That gets a much warmer laugh from him. “Ayuh. They really don’t do anything halfway, do they.”

For once, I allow myself to join in on the laughs. Maybe things can be alright. Maybe they will be alright.

Maybe… just maybe… “Pa, I—”

“Though I’m not sure if I can handle any more surprises,” Pa chuckles before looking up at me. “You say something?”

… it will be a disaster. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

I say goodnight, Pa pulls me in for a one-armed hug, and I make the obligatory noises of protest when he kisses my forehead.

Then I walk to my room and shut the door to let darkness envelop me.

“Nothing at all.”

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thedistantone · 4 years

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Defunding the Police

A series of posts came across my dash about how the Left fails because it refuses to compromise on messaging and names of things. While I was writing a response, it fucked off into the void. However, I already wrote all this shit down, so, with minor adjustment, here’s why the argument presented is incorrect. There were actually a variety of good tactics in the above posts about how to do one-on-one communication with people who know you personally, and who will actually listen to things you’re saying and think about them. It’s always best to appeal to a person’s values and the way they frame and see the world when trying to introduce them to new ideas and/or change their mind, when engaging personally.

That said, these tactics are known not to work very well at scale, because people have been politely trying to use them that way for decades. With very little success. They work great when you’re working one-on-one or in small groups where everyone is operating in good faith. They do not work when you are talking about mass messaging and you’re dealing with a cut throat opposition that will outright lie about your message/goals/platform.

(Also, as an aside Joe Biden probably didn’t win because of his tender, centerist messaging. More people voted for Donald Trump in 2020 than in 2016, and it appears that an even higher percentage of Republicans voted for Trump this time (94%) than last time (88%). Joe Biden won because Black people put in work in Georgia, and because Native folks voted their asses of in Arizona, and that pattern holds across the country. Organizers and communities of color put in huge effort against systemic suppression to vote Trump out of office. White “moderates” did very little to win this election, and we need to stop fucking centering the delicate sensibilities of white “moderates” in the national discourse. MLK told us that 50 years ago, maybe we should learn.)

Note that using these types of approaches at scale can also amount to deception, in some cases. A politician shouldn’t just “never talk about raising taxes” and then go and do it. That’s literally the opposite of how our systems should work. Political leaders, if they are actually leaders (and not all of them can be or should be), have the job of pushing things forward, and that can mean confronting people with ideas they are not entirely comfortable with. So about changing “Defund the Police” specifically... you know what happens when you try to do this in mass messaging?

Two things, typically:

First, people who oppose the goals behind the name sneak in fake reform under the guise of the new name. This is literally happening in Seattle right now, as the mayor’s office threw a bunch of money at “investing in community safety and development” and hired a bunch of white consultants from across the country to lead it, rather than centering the (black led) grassroots community justice orgs in the city, of which there are no shortage.

Second, people who opposes the goal will simply demonize the new name. “Compromising on the name” doesn’t actually produce any change in behavior on the part of the people opposed to the work. They’re still going to call you commies, anarchists, etc. etc. and do their damnedest to poison the public discourse against you. It doesn’t matter how much work you put in being polite, Fox News doesn’t give a shit. They don’t like dealing in substance, but they will if they have to. And literally all they have to do is ask “does this program involving taking money from the police to support teaching poor children to read?” and you’re back to being an evil socialist trying to destroy the police.

Black, Latine, and Indigenous folks know this perfectly well, which is why they don’t compromise on names. They know it’s a tactic that is intended to derail the conversation (and the work) in the first place. Tone policing always is.

And honestly, “Defund the Police” is a compromise already. “Abolish the Slave Patrol” is where a lot of people are actually at. “Defund” as a message is already catering to coddled white people’s fears and tender feelings.

0 notes

rauthschild · 4 years

Photo

Trump Throws “Q Bomb” As “Commie Fest 2020” Ghost Convention Dumpster Fire Burns

By: Sorcha Faal,

A thought-provoking new Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) report circulating in the Kremlin today discussing some of the highlights from day three of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, that’s otherwise been branded as “Commie Fest 2020” and the “Ghost Convention”, says as expected it “showed the socialist Democrats love Obama, hate Trump, and have no new ideas”—a fact evidenced by these socialist Democrats starting day three of their convention by launching an assault on gun owning Americans, as detailed in their platform that calls for the banning of online ammunition sales and the licensing of all gun owners.

After which Kamala Harris was officially nominated to be Joe Biden’s vice presidential running mate—an official nomination coming just 9-days after Biden choose the Asian woman Harris with a slave owning heritage to be his running mate—and while virtually accepting this nomination on video, saw Harris doing so against a backdrop of fake supporters double-imaged into the crowd shot behind her—but did see it being correctly observed that “It's Kamala's Party Now”, as everyone knows Biden is so senile he in no way can be president of anything—though to protect both of them, Amazon has now banned the sale of the popular “JOE and the HOE” t-shirts.

Events that were then followed by a “crazy eyed” Hillary Clinton spewing forth her conspiracy theories about President Trump, while still claiming she actually won the 2016 election—a bizarre performance followed by former President Obama shredding President Trump’s “reality show presidency”, while comically claiming that Biden will save democracy in America and solve all of its problems—though to be noticed, it’s Obama and his wife Michelle that have a multi-million-dollar reality show deal with Netflix, not Trump.

A shady deal President Trump has previously called for an investigation into—and makes sense to do as Netflix has just debuted an actual demonic trailer for a new reality show that sexualizes 11-year-old girl children wearing basically underwear—that puts into greater context what happened earlier yesterday when President Trump was asked about the QAnon movement and whether he was saving the world from pedophiles and satanists, and saw him responding with the question: “I Haven’t Heard that But is that Supposed to Be a Bad Thing?”.

A “Q Bomb” throwing moment for President Trump he followed with an all-cap Twitter firestorm against Obama writing such things as: “WHY DID HE REFUSE TO ENDORSE SLOW JOE UNTIL IT WAS ALL OVER, AND EVEN THEN WAS VERY LATE?...WHY DID HE TRY TO GET HIM NOT TO RUN?” and “HE SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN, AND GOT CAUGHT!”.

A firestorm seen by President Trump’s 85.4-million followers on Twitter—as opposed to barely anyone who saw what Obama said at a convention whose ratings have now “entered into dumpster fire territory”—a “Commie Fest 2020” convention whose day one ratings across 10 television networks saw only 19.7-million watching it, as opposed to the 26-million that watched day one of this convention in 2016—and whose day two viewership plunged even further to a paltry 6.13-million.

Though this is an explainable collapse of ratings of American people not wishing to have forced on them any more socialist Democrat Party hypocrisy—and as best documented by popular YouTube personality Conservative Mama in her just released epic video “The Party of “Unity” and “Empathy”. [

According to this report, most remarkable to notice about the “Commie Fest 2020” ghost convention is not what its socialist Democrats are talking about, but what they’re not even mentioning—such as the hoax impeachment of President Trump, and as explained by Melissa Michelson, a professor of political science at Menlo College, who noted the fact: “They don’t want to remind voters about the impeachment fight — first of all, because they lost...And because a lot of people felt that impeachment was the wrong thing to do”—and while ignoring, also sees these socialist Democrats still failing to denounce their own leftist rioters whose violence has now killed 30 innocent human beings—deaths that now include innocent animals, as demonically just demonstrated by the radical leftist Black Lives Matter who deliberately ran over a raccoon and beat this terrified animal to death while proclaiming that only white people worry about animals—and as one would expect to occur from supporters of a socialist Democrat Party convention that omitted the words “Under God” from The Pledge Of Allegiance.

And with President Obama’s former White House doctor now shockingly admitting “Biden is Just Lost…He Can’t form Sentences…He Can’t Complete a Thought”, this report notes, most dangerously not being mentioned at the “Commie Fest 2020” ghost convention is anything having to do with Communist China—and if mentioning, would then see these socialist Democrats having to explain to the American people why Communist China’s most powerful English language newspaper, the Global Times, just endorsed Joe Biden for president, because they say “Joe Biden Is Smoother to Deal with than Donald Trump”—a shocking interference in the American election President Trump has just countered with the withering video “Joe Won’t Stand Up For Us” exposing Joe Biden and socialist Democrat Party crimes with Communist China against the American people, that in the past 24-hours alone has had an astounding over 1.9-million views.

Most critical to notice as the “Commie Fest 2020” ghost convention enters into its fourth and final day, this report concludes, was yesterday top FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith entering his guilty plea in a US Federal Court admitting to the crime he committed in the overthrow coup plot against President Trump—a guilty plea obtained by feared US Attorney John Durham striking terror into the very heart of socialist Democrats—and is why all of them are screaming that US Attorney General William Barr must obey the “60 Day Rule” and not issue any more criminal indictments against these coup plotters that would interfere with the upcoming election—a “60 Day Rule” that Attorney General Barr has already declared he has no reason to abide by—which would mean that when US Attorney Durham starts issuing his criminal indictments against top former Obama-Clinton Regime officials, the socialist Democrats will explode and call them all political—a claim that yesterday might have meant something, but as of a few hours ago means nothing—because that was when Attorney General Barr ordered the arrest of former Trump campaign manger Steve Bannon, along with US Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato and President Trump’s Acting Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration Timothy Shea for conspiracy to commit wire fraud—arrests being met with unrestrained glee by socialist Democrats—but who fail to notice the reality that President Trump would have had to personally sign off on such a high-profile arrest during an election season of someone like Steve Bannon—which President Obama failed to do against Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election—and proves to the American people that when US Attorney Durham begins making his arrests, they are in no way political—thus showing, once again, that when dealing with a President Trump who ominously once said “Go for the jugular so that people watching will not want to mess with you”, everyone coming against him should have listened—and equally as important, should have learned by now that master chess strategist President Trump always knows how and when to sacrifice his pieces.

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5llowance · 5 years

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Rant: overall quality of reddit comments/discussion about China is very low. via /r/China

Rant: overall quality of reddit comments/discussion about China is very low.

For all the spotlight that China has (justifiably) gotten in 2019, most comment threads on highly upvoted China-related posts on reddit have been absolutely atrocious IMO. The police brutality in HK, atrocities in Xinjiang, election interference in Taiwan, and other issues re: Chinese politics/society are all worthy of in-depth discussion but there is very little substantive discussion, or at least very little that's visible (talking especially about in "mainstream" subs like news, worldnews, etc.).

It's like all nuance goes out the window when the subject is China; no one gives a shit about sharing real insights or constructing arguments with attention to logical validity. Instead, shallow comments dominate the upvote cycle. Irrational emotion and the entrenchment of preconceived notions reign supreme. Which I guess is to be expected given the circlejerky dynamic of reddit in general, but still. Here are some examples of the things I see most frequently:

The obligatory karma farming "fuck China" comment, with no attached discussion points. Cool. Understandable sentiment, but adds nothing of value whatsoever.

The subsequently obligatory reply of "Fuck the Chinese government, the people are all right." Thus creating the same predictable thread every time. (Next replies: "But the people support the CCP so they're complicit. Fuck China." "No they don't." "Yes they do." ad nauseum.)

/r/sino squad with its fragile ego and toxic nationalism

Random wumao and/or obsessive nationalists defending the CPC to the death despite eating up downvotes (see above)

Random alt-righters who don't know shit and don't give a shit about HK or China but love taking every opportunity to toss around the word "Commie" despite understanding neither Communism as a general concept nor the meaning of the word in the context of China's political/economic structure.

Thinly veiled racism and xenophobia - people taking potshots because they hate yellow people, not because they (aforementioned bigots) have any genuine concern for the human rights of yellow people. Alternatively, jingoists who see the Big Red Menace as a threat to Murican interests and influence (see above)

Comment from random dude who taught English for 2 years in China and is now chiming in as an expert authority on all things China, sharing sweeping generalizations about the collective psyche of 1.5 billion people. Never mind that maybe just maybe the sooooo many people they talked to did not cover such a wide gamut as they thought and maybe just maybe cannot be reliably extrapolated into axioms about the world's largest nation. That's not to say there aren't accurate or useful generalizations one could make, but holy shit are there some presumptuous claims out there that get beaucoup updoots.

Surface-level whataboutism. E.g. "sure what China's doing to Uygurs is bad, but what about Murica destroying Iraq." I don't think it's inherently wrong to discuss similar situations/policies from other countries - in fact I think it's a very interesting point to explore. But very rarely does this kind of thing seem to be brought up in good faith - instead of discussing how oppressive governments' use similar/unique tactics or how our biased media portray different countries' oppression differently, it's just a peen-measuring contest of which government is the bigger baddie.

Gross simplification of issues as black-and-white; a lack of effort/desire to understand context and drivers behind why certain people think/react as they do; inability to acknowledge people on "our side" as capable of any wrongdoing.

All right, I'm gonna stop there. Not even gonna get into the somewhat interesting (imo) evolution of this subreddit as a hub for disgruntled expats to...whatever it is now lol.

Ehh, guess I just wanted to vent a bit. /shrug

Submitted January 02, 2020 at 09:19AM by Bundesraketenliga via reddit https://ift.tt/36uTV5y

#IFTTT #reddit

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lesliecafferty · 4 years

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Correct.

The People (P): What is happening?

Answer (A): A virus has come.

P: Is it dangerous?

A: Very dangerous. But not dangerous to most. It strikes the elderly most viciously. But it can kill the middle-aged, the young, the thin, the healthy.

P: What should we do?

A: Stay away from others. Stay inside.

P: And then we won’t get the virus?

A: Absolutely you will get it. Everyone will get it.

P: Wait. No one told us this. They’re telling us to stay inside and we won’t get it.

A: Well, I’m telling you now. Almost everyone will get it. Seventy percent of you, give or take. Think about it. It’s everywhere, and there’s no vaccine. But we want everyone to get it at different times. Like on a schedule of getting it. At least five million people already have it in the United States.

P: Wait. Five million? Everyone says one million.

A: That’s the known, confirmed cases. We just started testing in earnest like, an hour ago. For every case we know, there’s five, 10, 50 that we don’t know. Maybe they got it and were asymptomatic. Maybe they got sick but not sick enough to go the hospital or get tested. Five million is an extremely low estimate of how many cases there are. It’s probably more like 20 million.

P: Twenty?

A: That’s good news! In a way. That means it’s less deadly to most people than we thought. And it proves the inevitability of you getting it yourself. So stay inside till it’s your turn to get it.

P: How long should we stay inside?

A: I’m thinking two months. No, three. Six? No, 12. Yes, 12!

P: Then it will be gone?

A: The virus? Lord no. It could be 18 months till we get a vaccine. But by then you’ll have already gotten it, so the date doesn’t really matter. Especially given that the virus will come back double-strong in the fall.

P: So it’s less potent in the summer?

A: Absolutely not. Who told you that?

P: You just said it’ll come back stronger in the fall. Which implies its power is dissipated in the summer.

A: Are you a doctor? No? Good. Then pay attention. The virus is everywhere, in every city and state, but we’re flattening the curve. Then it’ll very likely come back with a vengeance in the fall. Winter, too. Also, in the meantime, it’ll be with us all summer with probably no change in its potency. Capiche?

P: No one’s giving us this information.

A: Well, you know how we’re stretching out the cases over a longer period of time? Flattening the curve? We’re also flattening the truth. So just stay inside, and you’ll be fine. Order stuff online. Support your local restaurant.

P: Whew. OK. We can do that.

A: But do so knowing that you are putting the lives of everyone at risk — the cooks, the clerks, the delivery people. I’m actually a bit shocked by your selfishness and the cavalier way you’re sacrificing the lives of people who have no choice but to expose themselves to grave danger during a pandemic.

P: It sounds like you’re saying we shouldn’t order stuff to be delivered.

A: You shouldn’t. Unless you want local businesses to die.

P: So we should support local businesses …

A: Absolutely. While risking their workers’ lives. Yes. Order food, eat it, watch the news about the pandemic that can’t be stopped. Get plenty of sleep, and start smoking. Turns out smokers are less likely to get sick. Which only makes sense! So remember to exercise. Go for a run!

P: Where should we go for a run?

A: Ideally some place where you can spread out, where you aren’t in close proximity to other people.

P: Like the beach? A park?

A: Sure. Beaches and parks are wide-open spaces. They’re about as safe as you can be.

P: We just went to the beach and the park. There were hundreds of other people there.

A: You went to the beach? The park? What were you thinking? There are hundreds of people there! Go home. Be with your kids. Do you have kids?

P: Yes.

A: Well, make sure they keep up with school. Keep up with their worksheets and Zoom, and check their work, and keep them off screens, and go outside, and don’t worry about school. It’s a pandemic, after all.

P: Um. Many of the things you just said sound contradictory.

A: Not at all. I’ll rephrase: Your kids are living through a crisis. It’s all right if they feel anxious, or if you can’t maintain routines or keep up with regular school schedules. Just make sure they don’t fall behind, and remember that kids thrive on routine. So stick to a schedule, but give them space, and stay inside, and go outside, and use technology to connect with teachers and friends, and limit screen time.

P: Wait. So …

A: But enjoy some downtime together! Relax and watch a movie. Cook some food! Just don’t go to the stores, because that’s dangerous to everyone. Order in! But don’t. Stay home. Move to the country. And stay in the city. If you get sick, go to the hospital. But don’t get too sick, because you wouldn’t want to be going to one of those hospitals now! They’re full of sick people!

P: When did you say this would all end again?

A: Eighteen months. That said, the soonest we’ve ever come up with a vaccine was four years.

P: But everyone’s talking about reopening stores and everything now. How does that square with 18 months?

A: That’s easy. People will die.

P: Wait. What?

A: Oh sure. So many more. Oceans of people. Even just 1,500 a day for eighteen months means 800,000 in the U.S. alone will die from this virus. That’s what the Minnesota scientist says. Osterholm. He’s one of the foremost experts in the world. He’s been right every step of the way so far.

P: What? 800,000?

A: That’s if things stay more or less steady. It could be higher, much higher. With the easing of restrictions and all.

P: But isn’t the rate of death declining?

A: Friday was one of the deadliest days yet! And that’s after everyone’s been inside for a month. Once everyone goes back to work, it’ll probably go up significantly. Total blood bath.

P: So why are we easing restrictions?

A: Something something the economy?

P: Excuse me?

A: Mumble mumble the economy maybe?

P: We don’t understand.

A: Listen. People are fatigued. They want to go back to work. They want to shop. More than anything, they want to roll balls toward white pins and make loud bang-bang sound. And then possibly end up with a tube inserted in their trachea, helping them breathe while their lungs cease to function, until they almost invariably die and die alone.

P: Why don’t we just freeze the economy? Just close most businesses and have the government give everyone a living wage while we wait until there’s a vaccine?

A: Hmm. First of all, ridiculous. Second, that would take significant coordination between local, state and federal governments.

P: Can we do that?

A: Well. I don’t know … I mean … OK. For starters, we’d need superadvanced ways to coordinate everyone. We’d certainly need phones. Maybe email. We might even need spreadsheets and/or computers.

P: Do we have all those things?

A: I think we … might? But there are still so many questions. Like, how would we know who to give money to? We’d have to have a national database with all the salaries of all the nation’s workers.

P: Don’t we have that? Seems like we could get that.

A: Here’s another plan: We promise money to pretty much every person and every business. We give this money to maybe half the people, and to a very small percentage of businesses. We let big banks control most of this money meant for small businesses, and the big banks can funnel it to their biggest clients.

P: That sounds terrible.

A: Those big banks sure know how to handle cash!

P: It seems it would just be easier to give people the exact salaries they had before they lost their jobs to one of the deadliest viruses in 100 years. Just freeze everything. Just mutually agree to pause, together, so we don’t have to lose 730,000 more souls.

A: First of all: boring. Where’s the intrigue? The drama? With our system, you have wave after wave of unemployment, with no end in sight. Every week brings something new: business closures, bankruptcies and ruptures of the supply chain — a never-ending, cascading, domino-orgy of lost savings, empty storefronts and shattered dreams. That’s much more exciting than some boring old guaranteed income that would allow everyone to simply ride out the pandemic knowing their jobs and businesses would be there when the virus was defeated.

P: So there’s no plan.

A: Having no plan is the plan! Haven’t you been listening? Plans are for commies and the Danish. Here we do it fast and loose and dumb and wrong, and occasionally we have a man who manufactures pillows come to the White House to show the president encouraging texts. It all works! Eighteen months, 800,000 deaths, no plan, states bidding against states for medicine and equipment, you’re on your own, plans are lame.

P: I’m going to lie down. I don’t feel good.

A: Should we sing a patriotic song? I feel like our forebears would be so proud of us now. It’s just like how we all pulled together in World War II, every element of society, from the White House to Rosie the Riveter, with common purpose and shared sacrifice. This is just like that, except instead of coordination, we have competition, and instead of common cause, we have acrimony and chaos. Instead of fireside chats, F.D.R. and Churchill, we have tweets, Lysol and Ron DeSantis. Other than that, it’s exactly the same. —Eggers

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anthonybialy · 5 years

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Burning Flag-Burning Bans

Flag-burning is useful for self-identifying undeserving jackasses. Thank those miserable haters who don't even realize they're being helpful. Pyrotechnicians so lame that Great White wouldn't hire them destroy the representation of the very liberty they exploit. But the exhortation to get angry enough to legally prevent the distasteful inferno is inadvertently symbolic itself, too. Don't let those who mock your embrace of rights lure you in to altering principles to impede them.

Only a president who thinks pink marble represents classy success could bring back such an '80s issue. Donald Trump's caricature of conservatism now includes a call to restrict using private property in an unseemly manner, namely by using a lighter to use American flags as a heat source. There seems to be more efficient ways to generate energy. But that's no reason to interdict on personal repulsive temperature preferences.

Never learning should also remain legal even if unpalatable. There will apparently be an entire term of an indolent salesman crudely stating what he thinks being a Constitution fan means. We're truly enduring the Sean Hannity presidency and associated intellectual flourishes. A flag reflected in a crying bald eagle's tear is the only true way to represent oneself on Twitter.

It turns out many purported conservatives just wanted their own bully. Slapping a sheen of patriotism on vigorous federal pushiness is the defining characteristic of the wholly restrained Trump era. Opposing the ability to ignite fabric is not quite an open-minded concept no matter what the item in question represents. But restricting anger is how other furious people now cope. Oh: are you against America, comrade?

There are better ways to express fondness for this nation than by wrecking its values. The First Amendment, which to reiterate doesn't create a right but codifies it, extends to the grossest humans you can imagine. I hate flag-burners more than I do Tom goddamn Brady lifting the Lombardi Trophy. But I hate taking the option to be awful even more. I'm the last person I would think embodied lenience, but the longtime Democrat serving as a Republican president has twisted countless aspects.

Lousy ideas are legal. That includes banning flag-burning. Could you incinerate a copy of the amendment? Would it be lawful to torch that picture of smirking Donald hugging the flag that couldn't be parodied?

It's the worst uses of free will that need the most shelter. You're allowed to cheer for the Holocaust, claim September 11 was staged, and call for wings to be dipped in ranch. It's not only that idiots with atrocious ideas should get to proclaim how doltish they are so the decent-minded can avoid them: the ability to praise the worst opinions is exactly what makes the concept work.

Be tolerant for the right reasons. Take those who think hate speech should be banned, who usually seem to also claim anyone who opposes gun control is guilty because they hate living kids. Guess who would get to define what constitutes unacceptable words? I'm the one who determines if my salary is high enough.

The woke patrol seems a little too cool with burning flags. It's almost like those calling America the most oppressive place on this planet think brats with matches have a point. Take a poll to see how many would support banning pride flag burning to find vigorous endorsement.

Feel free to exercise the right to ignore those who say awful things. Nothing ticks off grown babies who bitch about America like depriving them of attention. Sanctimonious burners want a reaction. Depriving them of oxygen as they give it to flames takes away that thrill. Those embodying petulance are too dim to realize they're condemning the very freedoms they use. The one thing uglier than a burning flag is the sort of person who thinks it's a gutsy statement.

Good luck to those seeking a flag-lighting to ban, as the ungracious hobby seems as outdated as a payphone. A prohibition is helpful if you're out to create martyrs, which seems inadvisable. Indulging in outrage is like freaking out over pasty white supremacist rallies. Those craving provocation hate the eye-rolls they deserve. Instead of furrowing brows and yelling back about hating hate, shrug and laugh as you walk away thinking about how few push-ups the doughy members of the alleged master race could manage.

Contemporary commies can despise the very thing that allows them to say and do rotten things like waste lighter fluid. Everything they use to make ashes is the byproduct of mutual voluntary exchange. But the 28th Amendment shouldn't be used to ban irony.

It's not like a tariffs fan would propose something counterproductive. I know it's complicated, but we allow awful twits to engage in crummy activities unless they cause genuine harm. Feelings don't count unless you're trying to create a right-wing version of social justice warriors, which actually sounds like a key Trump reelection bloc.

Permitting disgusting activities doesn't mean we must be hasty to inform authorities about accidents. An entire crowd might happen to look away at the moment a flag-burner slips and runs into a veteran's stationary fist. Please don't get any accelerants on yourself, flag immolator, as it'd be awful to see a pinko cretin ignite like a Ford Pinto backing into a fireworks factory. That'd be a heck of a patriotic display.

Those who hate what our nation represents benefit the most from it. Safeguards are what make this place so magical. America-loathing schmucks enjoy rights precisely because they're awful people. America even protects the ingrates. Now, that's a nation whose flag deserves to stay intact. You don't even need a law for it.

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7r0773r · 6 years

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Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Nostalgic for Life Under Tyranny by Witold Szablowski, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

“Before the war, a Gypsy was a nobody. It’s entirely thanks to the Communists that after the war we were given rights, jobs, and apartments, that our people learned to read and write, and that the Bulgarians started to give us a bit of respect.” (p. 13)

***

“They’re going to their life of freedom in cages,” someone remarked, but this subtle piece of spite didn’t spoil the atmosphere of triumph and success. (p. 27)

***

“And then he adds something that I find way out of line--he says he knows what’s best for the bear. He says his corn and bread are better than our nuts and apples, and that a Gypsy’s chain and gadulka are better than our thirty acres.

“But what bugs me most is when he says he loves the bear, and that we’re trying to take away a member of his family.

“ ‘Man,’ I think to myself, ‘you’re hurting that animal. You’re degrading it. You’re forcing it to behave in a way that’s totally contrary to its nature. You’re making a laughing stock out of a proud wild animal! You’re making a fool of it!’

“But what would a Gypsy understand even if I said all that to him?

“They’d been hearing for years that they’d have to hand over the bears, and they were used to the idea. But they thought it would just end in talk again. They didn’t understand that we weren’t going to let them off. We were building a nature reserve. We had the support of important people--politicians, actors, and journalists. And as soon as they sat down at the same table as us--with food, rakia, and gifts--they were in the losing position, because everyone else was on our side, and they were just Gypsies carrying on traditions from a world that no longer exists.” (pp. 38-39)

***

For days on end, Vela kept touching her nose, looking for the ring. Although it had caused her pain throughout her life, she couldn’t cope with its removal, as if she’d grown so used to being a slave that she regarded her sudden freedom as a threat and feared it more than the pain.

The same thing happened with Mima, one of the bears taken from the Stanev family.

But there are also bears who feel fine in a few minutes and never wonder where the piece of metal that always caused them pain his gone.

That’s what happened with Misho and Svetla. They reacted to the removal of the ring as if losing it were the most ordinary thing in the world. They immediately got on with fighting for their place within the group, and later with love affairs. The lack of the ring never bothered them in the least. (pp. 58-59)

***

“Nobody has tried anything like this before. Nobody has managed to restore nature to animals that have lived with people for whole generations. I do have some concerns. I can’t be sure we’re not opening Pandora’s box. We could be unblocking other things in their minds--who knows where that will take us? Wild bears would find a way to get out of here in two days flat. They wouldn’t have the least problem, not even with the electric fence. They have far greater self-confidence and they’re more creative. Perhaps one day our bears will go for the electric fence too, destroy it and be off into the forest. That would be a success for us, but on the other hand it would also be our failure. Why? Because our bears wouldn’t survive as much as a week at liberty. I’ll be happy to tell you about it, but right now it’s feeding time. They guys have brought the bread. Come on, you can help us to scatter it.” (pp. 66-67)

***

“But you can’t just let a bear go and expect it to cope with everything for itself. Freedom is a terribly complicated business. You have to give it to them gradually, in small doses. And the fact that they’re hibernating means our bears are making progress on the road to freedom. They’re no longer living from one day to the next. They’ve learned to prepare for tougher times.” (p. 72)

***

And when the citizens add up all those large sums, they come to the unpleasant conclusion that far more care is taken of the bears than of them. While the animals are being taught resourcefulness, conflict solving, and hibernation, while pools are being built for them and playgrounds adapted to their needs, the people of Belitsa are being left to fend for themselves. Although they’ve been learning freedom for longer than the bears, they don’t have a team of experts to help them with the transformation.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t born a bear,” the former mayor of Belitsa, Hasan Ilan, once said bitterly, as he compared the park’s budget with the town’s. (p. 80)

***

“In the wild, a bear cub spends the first two years of its life with its mother, who teaches it everything. Scientists in Alaska have recorded entire bear lessons, during which the mothers take their cubs to the riverbank and show them how to position their paws in order to catch fish.

“But what could our mother bears teach their offspring? Maybe just that when a truck comes along, there’s going to be food. Or that if you can’t manage to dig yourself a pit to hibernate in, a hairy-faced human will come along and build you a kennel out of planks.

“Unfortunately, our bears not only hav the smell but also the mentality of captives. For twenty or thirty years they were used to having somebody do the thinking for them, providing them with an occupation, telling them what they had to do, what they were going to eat and where to sleep. It wasn’t the ideal life for a bear, but it was the only one they knew.” (pp. 86-87)

***

to this day,

almost all the bears still

dance.

When they see a human being, they stand up on their hind legs and start rocking from side to side. As if they were begging, as in the past, for bread, candy, a sip of beer, a caress, or to be free of pain. Pain that nobody has been inflicting on them for years. (p. 90)

***

When spring comes, Misho wakes from his lethargy and goes to find Svetla. He circles her like a shy teenager. Now he goes closer, now he moves away again. He roars, rubs against a tree, and goes up to her again. Svetla patiently watches the performance.

Until they come together.

Their attempt to continue the species doesn’t last long. Once it’s over, Svetla plunges into a state of bliss for several weeks. Only after a month or two does she realize something hasn’t gone right. Then both she and Misho start to dance, each in a different corner of the park for dancing bears at Belitsa, the park that’s like something out of a tourist brochure. (pp. 98-99)

***

“Everyone goes to Poland for their shopping, because in Ukraine, even though we’ve got the best earth in Europe, it lies fallow. You tell me, Witold, where’s the sense in that? Ukraine could be Europe’s granary. You could eat our black earth with a spoon--there’s no soil like it anywhere in the world. But what happens? It just lies fallow. People are only interested in opportunities to earn money abroad. Or to get something for nothing, just as they got used to doing under the Commies. My old man doesn’t meet any of the EU standards. He’s never seen face cream in his life. Whatever cash I send him, he drinks away. I keep telling him: ‘We were given two and a half acres when they closed down the collective farm. you could take just a little bit of it and sow some carrots, cucumbers, and tomatoes. You could raise hens. Why not have something of your own?’”

“And wha does he say to that?”

“He says he won’t do it! Because he doesn’t feel like it. Unfortunately, the whole Ukrainian nation is just like our marriage. Either they work hard, but abroad, like me. Or they sit in their village and whack a stick against a tree in the hope that a pear might fall. I pray for the EU to come to us too. For the Dutch and the Germans to come here, and the Poles too, and plough that land for us. The collective farm will start up again, but this time it’ll be privately owned.” (pp. 135-36)

***

“When I went to the bazaar in Kabul with my air force pals,” says Viktor, “one of the stallholders said to us in Russian, ‘Good cabbage, very shitty!’ Someone had taught him to prattle that nonsense. It’s the same thing with the Russian youth. Someone has told them they have to defend the Bronze Soldier. So that’s what they’re doing.” (p. 154)

***

“What does Memed think about the Serbs in Kosovo?”

“He can tell the difference between criminals and regular people. Wars are not fought between races. They’re fought between criminals from one side and the other. He understands that. After the declaration of independence, he could see that I was out of sorts. ‘Tatiana,’ he said, ‘we’re just pawns on the chessboard. The Americans are playing against the Russkies. It’s sheer chance that you’re a black pawn and I’m a white one.’” (p. 200)

***

“Until 2004 there wasn’t a single Serb left in our village. They’d all run off with the army. They were afraid we’d take revenge on them. But now time has passed and not all of them have made a life for themselves in Serbia. Now Belgrade is protesting against our independence, but they don’t treat the Serbs from Kosovo well there. So they’re starting to come back. In the past four years twelve families have returned--almost fifty people. The UN gives us money. We’re building houses for them. We’re helping them to get set up. But it’s not enough, because they don’t have jobs. So we had the idea of giving them chickens. They’ll be starting up miniature farms, selling eggs and meat. They’ll have something to eat. We’ve bought a small hut for one of them, and he’ll have a greengrocer’s store there. Tomorrow we’re going to fetch the first hundred chickens. Maybe this will allow us to attract a few more Serbs.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“So the government in Belgrade won’t go saying they’re badly treated here. Besides, there’s money provided for it. Why not take advantage of that?”

“Aren’t the Albanians protesting?”

“I have a neighbor. A great Albanian patriot. Ask him about the Serbs, he’d say he’d shoot the lot. But when they started to come back, it reminded him that he used to have a good friend called Goran, who was a Serb. And now he runs after me to ask if I can get his pal Goran to come back. Because he’d like to see him again before he dies.” (pp. 205-06)

***

“I used to work at a clothing factory. In the personnel department too. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the factory collapsed with it. And everything was looted--even the glass was stolen out of the window frames. In Stalin’s day something like that wouldn’t have been possible. The culprits would have been punished. So these days when I hear the stories they tell about him, I say, ‘People, you’ve lost your minds. Remember the Soviet Union. Everyone had work. The children had a free education. From Tbilisi to Vladivostok.’ If it weren’t for Communism, I, for example, would still be living in the countryside. I would never have thought of occupying a managerial position, because only men had those jobs before then. No system has ever given women as much.

“Since its collapse, everything is worse. In the past, the doctors couldn’t refuse to help a poor person. Now the health service is private, and even if you break a leg you have to pay. It’s the same with education. A retired person used to have the phone for free, and paid less for electricity. But now? You get a pension of twenty dollars, and the prices are like in the West.

“And life gets worse and worse for women. In the USSR men had a good life. There were no wars. And if a man hit you, you could go and complain to the party committee. The committee informed the party cell at the factory, and the abuser could get into big trouble.

“These days the men has no work and they’re frustrated. And when one of them hits you, you’ve no one to defend you.” (pp. 212-13)

***

“What do I think about Stalin? Here, in Gori, it’s customary for parents or grandparents to take their kids to the museum and tell them about him. I brought my toddler here too. And I told him, just like it says in those American guides to success, ‘He was much worse off than you are. His father drank, his cottage was falling down, and the other kids were good-for-nothings. But he was hardworking, thanks to which years later he ruled the entire country. If you study, you can achieve a lot too.’” (p. 218)

#witold szablowski #book quotes

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everettwilkinson · 7 years

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NBC/WSJ: Trump at 38 percent approval — POTUS to lunch with Sessions Monday — SPOTTED at Hillary Clinton’s 70th birthday party — JOE LOCKHART and JUSTIN MUZINICH profiles — WEEKEND READS — BDAY: Tony Sayegh

BULLETIN — “NBC NEWS /WSJ POLL: TRUMP’S JOB APPROVAL RATING NOW AT 38 PERCENT, LOWEST OF HIS PRESIDENCY”. http://nbcnews.to/2yUQMyM

— STATE OF PLAY: The stock market is through the roof. Jobless numbers are low. And the president still has a 38-percent approval rating. A charge in the Mueller investigation is likely coming tomorrow. Control of the House is up for grabs. … ANOTHER DATA POINT FROM THE POLL: “48 percent of registered voters in the poll say they prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress, while 41 percent want a Republican-controlled Congress.”

Story Continued Below

WHAT’S ON THE PRESIDENT’S MIND — @realDonaldTrump at 9:12 a.m.: “As usual, the ObamaCare premiums will be up (the Dems own it), but we will Repeal & Replace and have great Healthcare soon after Tax Cuts!” … at 9:53 a.m.: “Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?),….” at 10:02 a.m.: “…the Uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 plus deleted Emails, the Comey fix and so much more. Instead they look at phony Trump/Russia,….”

… at 10:09 a.m.: “.’collusion,’ which doesn’t exist. The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics, but the R’s…” at 10:17 a.m.: “…are now fighting back like never before. There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING!” at 10:48 a.m.: “All of this “Russia” talk right when the Republicans are making their big push for historic Tax Cuts & Reform. Is this coincidental? NOT!”

— TRUMP’S WEEK: MONDAY: TRUMP is meeting with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, lunching with VP Mike Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, then meeting with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. WEDNESDAY: Trump has another cabinet meeting, and lunch with Pence, Tillerson and Mattis.

**SUBSCRIBE to Playbook: http://politi.co/2lQswbh

BUZZFEED: “FBI Probe Of Paul Manafort Focuses On 13 ‘Suspicious’ Wire Transfers,” by Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier: “The FBI’s investigation of Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, includes a keen focus on a series of suspicious wire transfers in which offshore companies linked to Manafort moved more than $3 million all over the globe between 2012 and 2013. Much of the money came into the United States.

“These transactions — which have not been previously reported — drew the attention of federal law enforcement officials as far back as 2012, when they began to examine wire transfers to determine if Manafort hid money from tax authorities or helped the Ukrainian regime close to Russian President Vladimir Putin launder some of the millions it plundered through corrupt dealings.” http://bzfd.it/2xw8X9O

Happy Sunday. SPOTTED at HILLARY CLINTON’S SURPRISE 70TH BIRTHDAY PARTY yesterday afternoon at Elizabeth Frawley Bagley’s house in D.C. (Hillary was indeed surprised, and champagne, finger food and chocolate cake were served): Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Madeleine Albright, who spoke to the crowd, Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), former Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Tom Nides, Ron Klain, Dennis Cheng, Mike Taylor, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), Philippe Reines, Brian Fallon and Katie Beirne Fallon …

… Kiki McLean, Adrienne Elrod, Karen Finney, Bob Barnett and Rita Braver, Capricia Marshall, Lona Valmoro, Tony Podesta, John Podesta, Maya Harris and Tony West, Heather Samuelson, David Kendall, David Brock, Sidney Blumenthal, Huma Abedin, Maria Cardona, Guy Cecil, Lauren Peterson, Neera Tanden, Karen Dunn, Judy Lichtman and Allida Black.

NEW – AP at 11:02 a.m.: “SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – Puerto Rico governor demands cancellation of $300M Whitefish contract amid scrutiny of Montana company after hurricane.”

GETTING READY FOR THE BIG DAY — “Trump team’s response to Russia news: Focus on Clinton, leaks or anything else: Caught off guard by reports of criminal charges in the Russia probe, Trump advisers sought to keep up their political attacks and divert attention from allegations of Russian collusion,” by Annie Karni: “Two of Trump’s top lawyers were traveling out of town when the first report broke Friday night that a federal grand jury had approved the first indictment in the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. One of Trump’s personal attorneys, Ty Cobb, was relaxing on his deck in South Carolina, while the entire team was still working to confirm the veracity of the CNN report over the weekend. The lack of information, on a case that could have major ramifications for the president, left many current and former Trump advisers livid, focusing their rage on how the information leaked and on a forever target: Hillary Clinton.” http://politi.co/2zWCFXc

— “Trump lawyers scramble to prepare for new stage of Russia probe,” by Darren Samuelsohn: “Several attorneys who said they were in touch with the Manafort and Flynn lawyers said they had not been notified of any matter related to an indictment — which is customary in a white-collar criminal investigation — leading them to believe it wasn’t either of those two former high-ranking Trump aides. … The attorneys close to the case also said they wouldn’t be surprised if the charges were targeting Flynn or Manafort family members, or a longtime accountant or lawyer.” http://politi.co/2gUGN5x

— “Gowdy hits grand jury leaks in Russia probe,” by Victoria Guida: “House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy said on Sunday Special Counsel Robert Mueller should crack down on leaks, pointing to reports over the weekend about grand jury charges having been filed in Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. ‘It is kind of ironic that the people in charge of investigating the law and executing the law would violate the law,’ Gowdy told host Chris Wallace on ‘Fox News Sunday.’ ‘Make no mistake, disclosing grand jury material is a violation of the law. So, as a former prosecutor, I’m disappointed that you and I are having the conversation because somebody violated their oath of secrecy.” http://politi.co/2icJEDj

ON TAX REFORM …

— “House GOP tosses conservative playbook in bid for tax reform,” by Brian Faler: “House Republicans are so desperate for a win on taxes that they’re agreeing to proposals that would have caused internal party warfare just a year or two ago. They’re considering forgoing a big cut in the top income tax rate on the rich, offering moderate-income Americans so many tax breaks that many would be excused from paying taxes entirely and passing a potentially 1,000-page tax bill few have seen within a matter of weeks.” http://politi.co/2zgBXH1

— THIS IS BIG: “House Tax Writer Gives Ground on a State and Local Tax Break,” by Bloomberg’s Ben Brody: “Bowing to concerns from Republican House members in high-tax states, the chamber’s chief tax writer said he’ll preserve a federal income-tax break for property taxes. ‘At the urging of lawmakers, we are restoring an itemized property tax deduction to help taxpayers with local tax burdens,’ House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady said in a statement Saturday afternoon. …

“But in a sign of the complex balancing act that Brady must perform to produce a tax-overhaul bill this week, the property-tax announcement came on the same day that the National Association of Home Builders pulled its support for the legislation. The group’s chief cited concerns that the bill might undermine existing tax breaks that support the housing market. Likewise, a coalition that includes the National Association of Realtors said in an emailed statement that it ‘will vigorously oppose this plan.’” https://bloom.bg/2ybPkbI

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BIG — “Ryan loses key ally on tax reform after switch on breaks for homeowners,” by Lorraine Woellert: “The National Association of Home Builders on Saturday accused House Speaker Paul Ryan of abruptly reversing course on a mortgage tax credit proposal and announced it would oppose the tax-reform proposal that GOP lawmakers expect to unveil on Wednesday. The about-face by the housing-industry lobbying group strips Republicans of a powerful ally. … ‘All the resources we were going to put into supporting are now going to go into opposing the plan,’ NAHB Chief Executive Officer Jerry Howard told POLITICO.

“Home builders and other groups had been working with Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) on a plan to preserve tax breaks for homeowners. House Republicans have been planning to weaken the deduction that home mortgage borrowers currently get for the interest they pay on their mortgages by raising the standard deduction, leading much of the housing lobby to line up against the plan.” http://politi.co/2zg86P6

— WAYS AND MEANS CHAIRMAN KEVIN BRADY: “At the urging of lawmakers, we are restoring an itemized property tax deduction to help taxpayers with local tax burdens. The homebuilders have been great partners in developing a new home credit that helps more Americans with both their mortgage and property taxes, by expanding this tax relief to homeowners who don’t itemize. I hope members of Congress will examine it closely to determine if they want it included before tax reform heads to the president’s desk.”

— THE HOMEBUILDERS and the REALTORS opposing House Republicans’ tax bill is a major blow. The groups will give cover to other industries to ratchet up pressure on individual lawmakers to vote against the bill. And unlike other industries — every lawmaker has homebuilders and realtors in their district.

YOU’RE INVITED — KEVIN BRADY, the chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, will sit down with Jake and Anna FRIDAY (Nov. 3) at noon to discuss the Republicans’ tax plan. The bill will be introduced this week, so we’ll have plenty to talk about. The event will be at THE NEWSEUM (555 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW). RSVP http://bit.ly/politicobrady Outside cameras welcome!

SITUATIONAL AWARENESS — “Trump Unlikely to Name Top Two Fed Officials at Same Time, Mnuchin Says,” by NYT’s Alan Rappeport in Abu Dhabi: “‘I think for the moment we’re focused on the Fed chair decision. That’s really the focus at the moment,’ Mr. Mnuchin said. He added that market reaction to the pick was not a ‘primary consideration’ in whom Mr. Trump plans to choose to lead the Fed.” http://nyti.ms/2yUIIhu

THE LATEST ON OBAMACARE — “Confusion clouds open enrollment with Republicans still eager to dismantle Obamacare,” by Paul Demko, Rachana Pradhan, and Adam Cancryn: “Obamacare is about to have its worst open-enrollment season ever — and that’s no accident. President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress still aim to dismantle the 2010 law. Making it look bad helps their cause, even as they’ve failed repeatedly to repeal or replace Obamacare. The new theory for Republicans: If fewer people enroll in Obamacare, there will be less of a constituency to save it.” http://politi.co/2gLNnYl

TRUMP INC. – “Trumps set to launch two real estate projects in India, despite conflict-of-interest concerns,” by WaPo’s Annie Gowen in Kolkata, India: “President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr., is expected to launch two residential projects in India for the Trump Organization in the coming weeks, continuing the family’s promotion of the Trump empire despite concerns over the president’s potential conflicts of interest with foreign governments. The Trump Organization vowed early on there would be ‘no new foreign deals’ during Trump’s tenure as president; these two projects in India were inked before his election. But the high-profile launches demonstrate that the pledge comes with an asterisk — agreements made years ago can move forward or be revitalized, such as the Trumps’ 2007 deal to build a luxury beachfront resort in the Dominican Republic that may be revived.” http://wapo.st/2zgCAk2

BOSTON GLOBE’S ANNIE LINSKEY: “The Mercers bring their politics, and millions, to Massachusetts”: “The radio attack spots, played during Red Sox games, attempt to sow some doubt. Does Senator Elizabeth Warren discriminate against women? Does Warren really care about student debt and bankruptcy?

“They attempt to paint Massachusetts’ populist senator as phony and an elitist, a go-to playbook for her political opponents. But this time the attacks are coming from someone new: Robert Mercer, a New York billionaire who is trying to remake American politics and who bankrolled former Trump chief strategist Stephen Bannon’s Republican revolution.” http://bit.ly/2zYbJ9y

FOR YOUR RADAR – REUTERS: “White nationalists stage anti-refugee protests in Tennessee,” by Bryan Woolston in Shelbyville, Tennessee: “About 300 white nationalists and neo-Nazis held back-to-back rallies in two small Tennessee cities on Saturday to protest refugee resettlement in the state, which sued the federal government over the issue earlier this year. The ‘White Lives Matter’ rallies in Shelbyville and Murfreesboro, organized by some of the same groups involved in a Virginia march that turned violent in August, drew an equal number of counter-demonstrators and a heavy police presence. The protesters started in Shelbyville, then traveled about 35 miles north to Murfreesboro for a second rally. Both towns are near Nashville, center of a metropolitan area has become home to refugees from Somalia, Iraq and elsewhere.” http://reut.rs/2z2DwYx

BIG JOE LOCKHART PROFILE — NYT — KEN BELSON: “In interviews with about a dozen league and team executives — all of whom refused to speak on the record — several owners seemed pleased with his approach to addressing the anthem controversy, which was to strive for a way for the N.F.L. to appear patriotic while respectful of its players who were kneeling to raise awareness of racism and police brutality toward African-Americans.

“But there has been friction. Some owners were upset with a comment by Lockhart a few days after President Trump criticized the league and its players for kneeling during the anthem. Lockhart told reporters that players talking about police brutality is ‘what real locker room talk is.’ The statement was viewed as a flagrant jab at the president, who had dismissed as ‘locker room banter’ comments he made about forcing himself on women, heard in a video leaked during the campaign. In a meeting at N.F.L. headquarters the next day, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder confronted Lockhart to tell him his remarks would inflame an already fiery issue.” http://nyti.ms/2iH2ypI

SUNDAY BEST — GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS interviews REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CALIF.) on ABC’S “THIS WEEK”: STEPHANOPOULOS: “I want to begin with this question that Governor Christie raised here, the idea that the president is not under investigation. Is that your conclusion?” SCHIFF: “I can’t comment on that, George, I can’t answer that one way or the other. STEPHANOPOULOS: “One way — you wouldn’t know whether Robert Mueller is investigating the president?” SCHIFF: “I can’t comment on that at all.” …

STEPHANOPOULOS: “How about this question of the president’s pardon power and whether or not it would be appropriate for him to issue preemptive pardons before a trial?” SCHIFF: “Now, I don’t think the president’s power is all that absolute, as people have been suggesting. The president cannot pardon people if it’s an effort to obstruct justice, if it’s an effort to prevent Bob Mueller and others from learning about the president’s own conduct. So, there are limitations. If it were truly unlimited, it would have the effect of nullifying vast portions of the constitution. The president could tell Justice Department officials and other law enforcement to violate the law and that if they did, and it was ever brought up, they were brought up on charges, he would pardon them.”

JAKE TAPPER speaks to GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE on CNN’S “STATE OF THE UNION”: TAPPER: “Some of President Trump’s allies in the media and on Capitol Hill are calling on Bob Mueller to step down as special counsel. I’m not really sure where you stand on this issue. Have you seen any concrete evidence, or concrete reasons why Bob Mueller should step down?” CHRISTIE: “Well, listen, I think that he has to be very, very careful about making sure that the public believes that he has no conflicts and that his integrity is unquestioned. And I think that, you know, Director Mueller has to continue to review that with his own legal staff. And I have not yet seen anything that makes me think that he must step down as an absolutely indisputable conflict. But I think he’s got to be careful and be watching this all the time.”

— CHRIS WALLACE talks with OHIO GOV. JOHN KASICH on “FOX NEWS SUNDAY”: WALLACE: “I do want to pursue this question of the philosophy of the Republican Party because Steve Bannon and his supporters say, well, look, sure, Flake and Corker made tough speeches, but they basically — the bottom line is that they announced that they are quitting, and that there was silence for most other Republicans. So can’t one argue that what you call the inward-looking, the populist, nationalist wing of the Republican Party is taking over?”

KASICH: “No, I don’t think so. I think the bulk of the Republican Party, and I’ve been in the Republican Party since I was a college student, is one that believes in the fact that America has a place in the world. You know, Reagan talked about it, advances in humanity. I agree. I think the bulk of the Republican Party does believe that immigration provides energy to our country. I think that the bulk of the Republican Party believes that America is special and has a place in the world at which to advance freedom and free enterprise and all those things.

“I think that this move towards nationalism or looking inward, a lot of loud voices, but I don’t happen to think it’s — it’s the bulk. And we — we will have to see over time. But for those — that debate, that debate, to some degree, is going to be settled by the demographics in the near future. Maybe not today, not tomorrow, but soon it’s going to be decided by that new wave of new thinking by these young people who can bring a lot of energy to the Republican Party and the conservative movement.”

— CHUCK TODD spoke with SEN. CLAIRE MCCASKILL (D-MO.) on NBC’S MEET THE PRESS”: CHUCK TODD: “You recently bragged about not supported Harry Reid when he was the Senate Democratic leader. And you did that in 2014 because you thought maybe there was a leadership problem in the Democratic Party. I’m curious, do you still think the Democratic Party has a leadership issue?” MCCASKILL: “Well, I think it’s hard when we are the minority party, that we have lots of folks that are leaders and want to be leaders. We have so many people that are trying to position themselves to run for president I think it’s hard to say who is the leader. And there’s a lot of angst about that. I, frankly, don’t worry about any of that.”

SPORTS BLINK — “Dodgers pull even in World Series by defeating Astros 6-2 in Game 4,” by L.A. Times’ Andy McCullough: http://lat.ms/2zgBB3s

PHOTO DU JOUR: The South Portico of the White House is covered in decorations for Halloween on Oct. 28. | Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images

WORTH THE CLICK – “Inside Pyongyang, the Loneliest City in the World” – Politico Magazine: “Eddo Hartmann spent four years photographing North Korea. Now, as tensions rise with the United States, he finds a city on edge.” 11 pix http://politi.co/2gLwtZM

THE BIG QUESTION FOR DEMOCRATS — “Nancy Pelosi isn’t going anywhere. Will it help or hurt Democrats in 2018?,” by WaPo’s Michael Scherer: “After three decades in Congress, Pelosi, 77, makes an unlikely general to lead the troops into another change election. Her party, deemed elite and out of touch in 2016, is struggling to win back Midwestern working-class voters, and anger at Washington’s entrenched leaders is pretty much the only thing that unites the country. But rather than shrink from the spotlight, Pelosi is once again in control — her party’s top fundraiser, senior midterm election strategist and top legislative negotiator, in partnership with Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). …

“‘I am a master legislator. I just love it,’ she said of her inherited appetites. ‘I consider myself a weaver, like I have a loom. And I bring all these different threads together.’” http://wapo.st/2yZYVBw

TRUMP’S ADMINISTRATION — “HUD Explores Temporarily Housing Puerto Ricans on U.S. Mainland,” by Bloomberg’s Joe Light: “The Trump administration is exploring ways to relocate tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans to the U.S. mainland for an extended period as parts of the territory remain devastated more than a month after Hurricane Maria. Officials at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development late last week started to develop a plan to provide housing to some of Puerto Rico’s displaced population … And given the shortage of available options on the island, the possibility of evacuating large numbers to the mainland has emerged as an option. … [U]sing large commercial cruise liners had been suggested to move residents en masse.” https://bloom.bg/2zOK75X

— “AP sources: DeVos may only partly forgive some student loans,” by Maria Danilova: “The Education Department is considering only partially forgiving federal loans for students defrauded by for-profit colleges, according to department officials, abandoning the Obama administration’s policy of erasing that debt. Under President Barack Obama, tens of thousands of students deceived by now-defunct for-profit schools had over $550 million in such loans canceled. But President Donald Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, is working on a plan that could grant such students just partial relief.” http://bit.ly/2lqR36Q

JUSTIN MUZINICH PROFILE — “The Little-Known Pragmatist Who Is Shaping the Trump Tax Cuts,” by NYT’s Alan Rappeport: “Justin Muzinich, a top aide to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, was deep into writing the administration’s tax plan this fall when he got an email from his high school math teacher imploring him to remember his old lessons and not deliver a giveaway for the rich. ‘He quickly wrote back and immediately said, ‘It’s great to hear from you,’’ recalled Hoyt Taylor, a retired teacher and squash coach at the elite Groton School in Massachusetts. ‘He didn’t respond on the taxes.’

“With President Trump’s revamping of the tax code taking center stage in Washington, key figures within the administration who for months have been toiling in obscurity are increasingly in the spotlight and under pressure. Scrambling to get a tax bill passed by the end of the year, they are juggling the competing forces of a fractious Congress, frenzied corporate lobbyists and even voices from the past.

“Mr. Muzinich, a 39-year-old newcomer to Washington, has emerged as a central player in the Trump administration’s tax overhaul effort. The former investment banker and hedge fund manager is the Treasury point man on taxes, accompanying Mr. Mnuchin into ‘Big Six’ meetings with top Republican lawmakers drafting the tax plan and laying out the administration’s positions on which taxes and deductions to cut or preserve. His task is about to get even tougher as the House, which plans to release its bill this coming week, and the Senate begin the difficult process of hashing out the details and negotiating with the administration over the final legislation.” http://nyti.ms/2iJJsQ1

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MORE HARASSMENT FALLOUT — “When men with power go too far: After years of whispers, women speak out about harassment in California’s Capitol,” by LA Times’ Chris Megerian, Melanie Mason and Jack Dolan: “It started with a dinner invitation from a former assemblyman more than twice her age. He had offered his services as a mentor, but his hand reaching for her knee under the table revealed other intentions. Then came the late-night phone calls and unexpected appearances at events she had to attend for her job in the Capitol. Fresh out of college, Amy Brown did what she thought women were supposed to do in these situations — she reported him.

“The former assemblyman accused her of slander, an experience that left her so humiliated that she left Sacramento for a new job in San Jose. … The stories are flooding into public view after an open letter raising the alarm about sexism and harassment around the Capitol. Emboldened by the downfall of Harvey Weinstein, the famed Hollywood producer toppled by allegations of sexual assault and harassment, more than 300 women have signed the letter, double the original tally.” http://lat.ms/2ibJTP9

BONUS GREAT WEEKEND READS, curated by Daniel Lippman:

— “Orbiting Jupiter: my week with Emmanuel Macron,” by Emmanuel Carrère in The Guardian: “Is France’s new president a political miracle, or a mirage that is already fading away?” http://bit.ly/2ya3vht

— “The Jared bubble,” by Kyle Pope in the Columbia Journalism Review: “What my 18 months as Jared Kushner’s first editor [at the N.Y. Observer] taught me about the Trump family and the press.” http://bit.ly/2ze26Gs

–“Twenty years ago, in Moscow, Matt Taibbi was a misogynist a***ole—and possibly worse,” by Aimee Levitt in the Chicago Reader: In “The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia,” Mark “Ames and Taibbi additionally write about how they also mercilessly sexual harassed and occasionally assaulted the women they encountered, both their colleagues in the Exile office and Russian women—some as young as 15—they met socially.” http://bit.ly/2ycK3R5

— “Pushing the Limit,” by Alexandra Starr in Harper’s: “What the U.S. Olympic Committee can — and can’t — do about sexual abuse.” http://bit.ly/2ybgqPZ (h/t Longreads.com)

— “A hesitant radical in the age of Trump: David Brooks and the search for moderation,” by Jason Cowley in the New Statesman: “‘Public conversation is over-politicised and under-moralised. We analyse every movement in the polls, but the big subjects — relationships, and mercy, and how to be a friend – these are the big subjects of life and we don’t talk about them enough. Or we have our moral arguments through political means, which is a nasty way to do it because then you make politics into a culture war.’” http://bit.ly/2i9ehcJ (h/t TheBrowser.com)

— “Four Quitters Walk Into a Bar…,” by HuffPost’s Lydia Polgreen: “To swap war stories from an administration they couldn’t serve for one more minute.” http://bit.ly/2iCiklH

— “Serving as targets,” by Margaret Carlson in the N.Y. Daily News: “Think women get harassed and assaulted a lot in Hollywood and New York media circles? The military is worse.” http://nydn.us/2z1FwzV

— “The Body Trade: Cashing in on the donated dead: In the U.S. market for human bodies, almost anyone can dissect and sell the dead,” by Reuters’ Brian Grow and John Shiffman: “When Americans leave their bodies to science, they are also donating to commerce: Cadavers and body parts, especially those of the poor, are sold in a thriving and largely unregulated market. Grisly abuses abound.” http://reut.rs/2zbmrfz

— “Wackadoodles, Establishment Hacks, And The Big, Ugly, Local Battle For The Heart Of The GOP,” by BuzzFeed’s Anne Helen Petersen: “The ‘whiteopia’ of North Idaho has become one of the most desirable places in the West for conservatives to relocate. So why is the local Republican party tearing itself apart — and who’s responsible?” http://bzfd.it/2yZggKZ

— “The Ironic History of Mar-a-Lago,” by Michael Luongo in Smithsonian’s Nov. issue: “A deep dive into an obscure archive reveals that the Palm Beach property had once been envisioned as a ‘Winter White House.’” http://bit.ly/2xuJVrA

— “How the Horrific 1918 Flu Spread Across America,” by John M. Barry in Smithsonian’s Nov. issue: “The toll of history’s worst epidemic surpasses all the military deaths in World War I and World War II combined. And it may have begun in the United States.” http://bit.ly/2ll82ay

— “Inside the Mind of Thru-Hiking’s Most Devious Con Man,” by Brendan Borrell in Outside magazine: “For more than two decades, Jeff Caldwell has lured in hikers, couchsurfers, and other women (and they’re almost always women), enthralling them with his tales of adventure. Then he manufactures personal crises and exploits their sympathy to rip them off. Our writer corresponded with Caldwell while he was still on the run, and came away with an intimate look at the life of a serial scammer who’s found his easy marks in the outdoor community.” http://bit.ly/2yamzw0 (h/t Longform.org)

— “How the Liberty Bell Won the Great War,” by Stephen Fried in April’s Smithsonian: “As it entered World War I, the United States was politically torn and financially challenged. An American icon came to the rescue.” http://bit.ly/2hi5UMB

— “The Army of Silicon Valley Activists Trying to Elect Dems,” by Lauren Smiley in Wired: “In the wake of Trump’s election, signs of a grassroots activism in the tech industry have been everywhere: management-endorsed Googleplex protests; tech workers participating in their first political marches; executives from Tesla, Intel, and IBM leaving the president’s advisory councils.” http://bit.ly/2iEPtgS

— “Can Alphabet’s Jigsaw Solve Google’s Most Vexing Problems?” by Austin Carr in Fast Company: “Jared Cohen, CEO of Google offshoot Jigsaw, is taking on ISIS, fake news, and toxic trolls.” http://bit.ly/2yS3Q5p

— “The Yahoo With The Microphone,” by Martin Amis in Esquire: “Ranting in the rust belt with Donald Trump’s perpetual-validation machine.” http://bit.ly/2zb8HS4

— “The Primal Scream of Identity Politics,” by Mary Eberstadt on the cover of the Weekly Standard: “Conservatives have missed something major about identity politics: its authenticity. But liberals have missed something bigger: that it is a legacy of the sexual revolution.” http://tws.io/2ze2TXW

SPOTTED: President Donald Trump, Melania Trump and Barron dining at Trump Hotel last night — the President and First Lady also stopped by the “Trump Townhouse” suite in the hotel for a small surprise birthday dinner for Ivanka. She and Jared also celebrated their eighth anniversary on Wednesday — Instapic http://bit.ly/2z0oanf … Bob Costa in the balcony at last night’s Gavin DeGraw concert at the historic Sixth and I Synagogue …

… Alan Greenspan and Andrea Mitchell having dinner at the Inn at Little Washington last night — Instapic http://bit.ly/2zPDccO … Jose Andres speaking last night at Buck’s at a dinner for Alice Walters’ new book “Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook” — cavatelli pasta, steak and bone marrow was served.

SPOTTED: Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist who met with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and Natalia Veselnitskaya last summer at Trump Tower (NYT profile http://nyti.ms/2wgcKuL), last night getting a drink with a friend visiting from Europe at the back room at Capo Deli on Florida Ave. near 8th Street.

WEEKEND WEDDINGS — Tyler Daniel, political director for House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, married Lila Nelson, a speech-language pathologist at Carriage Hill in Bethesda, on Saturday in Shreveport at St. Mark’s Cathedral with a reception at the Petroleum Club of Shreveport. The couple met at Ole Miss while Tyler was getting his MBA and Lila was an undergrad. Pics http://bit.ly/2iIHfUE … The couple with Scalise http://bit.ly/2yWJOt0

SPOTTED: Scalise and his wife Jennifer Scalise, Brett Horton and Maggie FitzGerald, Jenny and David Drucker, Bart Reising, Brenda Becker, Chris Hodgson and Liz Cumberpatch, Megan Becker, Ben Napier, TJ Tatum, Stephanie Belk, Colton Malkerson, Chris Marroletti, Grafton Pritchartt, Sean Houser, and Watson Horner.

— Sacha Haworth, communications director for Arizona Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema’s campaign for Senate, on Saturday married Will Mitchell, legislative director for Rep. Rick Nolan (D-Minn.). The ceremony and celebration were held at Woodend Audubon Mansion and Sanctuary in Chevy Chase, MD. Pic http://bit.ly/2ycYdSn

SPOTTED: Christie Stephenson, Meredith Kelly, Jason Bresler, Tyler Law, Tyrone Gayle, Jeb Fain, Sophie Shipman, Reid Hohlman, Sasha Baker, Sam Baker, Dan Schory, Jake Stokes, Ethan McClellan, Bryan Lesswing.

— Jessica McCreight, a VP at SKD Knickerbocker and Obama WH alum, married Scott Brown, CEO and co-founder of the customer relations management firm xRM Studio. “The two exchanged vows on Saturday surrounded by friends, family and fall foliage at a mountain retreat just a stone’s throw from Lexington, Va. McCreight and Brown met in 2014 after matching on no fewer than three dating apps.” Pics http://bit.ly/2xxUj1M … http://bit.ly/2yViyZs

REMEMBERING WILLIAM COLEMAN – Pool report from the National Cathedral: “Saturday morning VIPs from the political, legal, civil rights communities came to honor the life of former Secretary of Transportation, Medal of Honor recipient, personal friend to Justice Thurgood Marshall, African American Republican lawyer, William T. Coleman, Jr. He graduated first in his class at Harvard Law and was the first African American to clerk at the Supreme Court and served as a lawyer on the Warren Commission before being on the team that won Brown V. Board of Education. Service participants included: Justice Stephen Breyer, Vernon Jordan, General Colin Powell, and Opera singer Denyce Graves.”

AMONG THE ATTENDEES: Vice President Dick Cheney, former VA Secretary Togo West, former Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, former HHS Secretary Louis Sullivan, Justices Clarence Thomas and Elena Kagan, former Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick, Marian Wright Edelman, Sherrilyn Ifill, Andrea Mitchell, Paris Dennard, Ken Chenault, Cecilia Marshall, former Sen. Chuck Robb (D-Va.) and Lynda Johnson Robb.

BIRTHDAYS: Tony Sayegh (hat tip: Molly Meiners) … Jim Messina is 48 (h/t Ty Matsdorf) … David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, is 59 … Bob Stevenson … N.Y. Daily News’ Robert George … Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is 79 … Connie Mack III is 77 … Jamie McIntyre, senior writer on defense and national security at the Washington Examiner … Nelson Cunningham, president and co-founder of McLarty Associates … Rep. Marcia L. Fudge (D-Ohio) is 65 (h/t Ajashu Thomas) … Geoff Turley … Kerry Hannon (h/ts Jon Haber) … Andy Weitz, Aon’s chief marketing officer … Dirk Kempthorne, former Secretary of the Interior, now president and CEO of the American Council of Life Insurers, is 66 … WaPo’s Dave Clarke … WSJ editorial writer Kate Bachelder Odell … Isabelle James, political director at Americans for Responsible Solutions … Mike Saccone, comms director at the Keystone Policy Center … EPA’s Daisy Letendre (h/t Amy Graham) …

… Kate Bedingfield, VP of comms at Monumental Sports & Entertainment … Politico’s Steve Heuser, Diana D’Abruzzo, Nick Yaeger, and Safi Majid … Max Yoeli, law clerk to SDNY Judge Jesse Furman (brother of Jason), is 27 (h/t Alex Halpern Levy) … Leigh Helfenbein (hubby tip: David Helfenbein) … Sonia Colin-Reed … Peter Albrecht, senior associate at Bully Pulpit Interactive … Gary Gould … Nick Powell … Michael Slaby … Turkey turns 94 on its Republic Day (h/t BCIU) … Noah Dion, manager for Debra Rodman’s Delegate campaign in Virginia (h/t Morgan Finkelstein) … Jeff Hillery … Yangyang Cheng … Bill Jaffee … Aaron Jacobs, comms. director for Sen. Hassan … WSJ’s Samantha Zeldin … Lily Caroline Dorton … Kerry Hannon … Thompson Warren … Mark Olingy … Laura Jarrett … Rachel Barinbaum … Ruth Vilmain … Steve Lynch … Sophie Bauer (h/ts Teresa Vilmain)

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frankfallon-blog · 7 years

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#6 Footballs fortunes

We are about to embark on the start of the new football season. Pre season games have come and gone. Football banter has started again, whether Arsenal can make it back in to their 4th spot, whether Jose will give us a smile, can Daniel Sturridge remain injury free and so on. Sky Sports have released the new, stylish looking Premiership channel and, more importantly, knocked the price down so we can all stop streaming live football, maybe! Side note - I just watched the emirate cup on a freeview channel. Twas exactly the same as watching it on Sky... I love football. When I was 8 I got a blue dinosaur teddy and a red one. Nothing to do with the Arsenal colours and Mam has no idea about the 8ft Gunnersaurus being the Arsenal mascot since 1994. In today's world of sponsored football stadia, you wonder if Peter Lovell would have another opportunity to enter a competition to name the club mascot! My brother, 4 years older than I, and I both supported Arsenal but he didn't care too much for footy and told me one day that he supported Man. U. He didn't. It wasn't even a test but it tested me and I stayed true. He embarked on a journey dabbling in Nirvana and roller blades and I watched Ian Wright at any opportunity! Even then we couldn't afford Sky Sports, so it was FA Cup games and watching at friends houses. I played a bit. Ashley Young was one of the regular starters for Barclay sixth form team. I didn't play a bit. I ran the line a couple of times and supported from the sidelines but if it wasn't for the 3 or 4 better players in front of me we would have regularly played together. He's a lovely bloke. He was down to earth. He's on £110,000 (this was £70,000 only a few season ago) a week now playing at Manchester United FC. Ashley, as I believe the story goes, was at Watford until 16 and then they let him go for having a smaller frame. Quick, but no strength. So old (young) Youngy went back for a year, for free, with Watford and trained and eventually broke in to the first team where he lit up the flank and went to Villa for £10 million pound. Now he's mixing it up with some proper wonga and regularly plays, gracing our TV screens with his natural ability and the talent that he put so much effort in when he was released as a 16 year old! The hard work paid off, there is a story of talent that was so close to being let go, as so many others around, that ends with a young individual making a real story. Where did we pluck £10 million pound from though? My Dad likes to wind me up occasionally and says I'm a 'Commy'! That I believe everyone should get an opportunity to earn the same and, like Marx, wealth should be distributed fairly. "Some people work harder." "Some people achieve more!" Lots of useful counter arguments that I like to take in (wondering how some of our characteristics and views are so similar, and some can be so opposite?) and some I can completely agree with and comprehend. I don't praise people with equal measure for food they've cooked if one is not as nice as the other. If someone works out how to fly whilst I procure equipment from one end of the country to the other, I'm not suggesting we should earn the same. Neymar. Brazilian bloke. 25 years old. He's a quality footballer! Scores goals, looks average sometimes playing alongside Suarez and Messi but in most teams he would play and do well! Arguably one of the worlds greatest but some people still believe Ali is better Ozil and some people believe Chelsea are where they deserve to be. The matter of opinion on whether this 25 year old, Brazilian geezer, is worth a reported (Evening Standard) €222 million! Well! That's not really anyone's matter of opinion, surely?! I read some social media statements - a funny one about Manchester City spending more on their defence than some countries such as Colombia and Honduras! People were posting smiley face emojis at the thought of the Saudi royals over at the Ethiad swanning about talking about their defence in the same money bracket as a country! I don't agree with that nonsense either! I've worked in countries where poverty is rife, education isn't readily available and we've spent money on 'defending' countries from Imminent attacks. Well... if any nation attached France, Neymar (an attacking forward) should be able to defend a whole country (smiley face, wink face, laughing emoji)! For what's it worth I understand this is a complex issue. However surely it's simple in the terms that someone, somewhere has whacked a ridiculously high value on something with no actual factual reasoning? Ashley Young trained with Watford for x number of years, he had coaches supporting him being paid x amount and he played x number of times, journeys to and from, stadium utility bills for every time he was there and maybe in several years of training they feel that £10million was a worthy sum. Did they do that though? I work in a job where we put figures on a young person, starting on a course, how much it costs to accommodate them and feed them and provide resources and equipment to use, providing them with new skills... We then request a certain amount per young person. Every successful young person gets funds back upon completion of the programme. Standard business plan. Supply and demand. If fruit is demanded all year round we ship it from climates that grow it, so when the UK can't grow it, people can still eat it! It's a multiplex issue because that in itself is problematic but at least we have cause. People need to eat. I'm a fan of football but, and how hypocritical is it that Sanchez was £35 million, Ozil £40 million and Lacezette £53 million, but Pogba - a French geezer was 'worth' £93 million and I still watched. £200 million for a bloke that does something well, really well, I don't know if I can support that. I try to eat less meat and sometimes I fail and I know that if we didn't eat meat the world would, arguably, all be able to eat using the grain that the meat eats! I like meat and I like football. In a perfect world I would eat meat a couple of times a fortnight and I would pay a couple of quid to watch a local team play. You all probably have faith in the armed forces, you probably support one of the big five (except you Bailey, up the Gills!) and you probably eat meat everyday. Well, continue but I can't sit back and feel comfortable that Neymar is swanning about getting £650,000 tax free a week!! Without feeling hard done by being priced out of watching that team I chose to follow as an 8 year old. We should be watching it. We should be bantering on whether Super Sol won more trophies at the Spurs or Arsenal, whether Champs league is bigger than the Europa, we should all have been able to watch Liverpool and Gerard's, literal, slip on the race for the Premier League title. We should also have the right to pay an acceptable amount of money to do so and if wages and transfers were capped that amount would trickle down. Everything would be cheaper. Flat prices in London are higher than anywhere else, food prices and rent don't match inflation but that is a separate issue. I can't watch another premier league season where this money being spent continues to grow and only the fortunate reap the reward. Call me a Commy. Tell me Ashley Young and many others like him deserve the amount they're paid because of the work they put in. But don't tell me that the warden looking after my Nan, or the nurses that were looking after my Grandparents can't afford to watch the likes of Neymar because they are priced out of a ticket. With all the things wrong in the world we can choose certain rights. Recycle. Grow veg. Sack off Neymar and Pogba because they are not worth anything like the sickening amount that's been thrown around from one rich bloke to another rich bloke, with a rich bloke in the middle getting paid too just for holding a phone and buying the coffee. Frank Full by Frank Fallon

#NoOneIsWorthThatMuchMoney #SickeningMoney #200Million?!#ArsenalSupportersTrust #Neymar #football #Leo #FrankFull #FF

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