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China and North Korea
Over the Fence
On 21 December, another North Korean soldier successfully crossed the Demilitarized Zone and defected to South Korea. The location of the defection has not been given but it was not at the joint security area of Panmunjom.
The defector had been manning a North Korean guard post from which he escaped under cover of a thick fog. Both sides fired warning shots, but no one was injured. The North Koreans did not fire at the defector… they evidently could not detect him in the fog.
Chinese Face
Avoiding loss of face has become as important as other national interests in the Korean missile and nuclear crisis. This item is a commentary on remarks to the South China Morning Post by retired Chinese foreign ministry official Yang Xiyu,
Yang Xiyu is a senior fellow at the China Institute of International Studies. Previously, he was in charge of Korean peninsula affairs at China’s foreign ministry from 2004-05 and also was involved in the six-party nuclear talks. He is one of China’s top experts in Korean and US affairs.
Yang told the South China Morning Post that China would never accept North Korea as a nuclear power and that Pyongyang’s recent diplomatic slur had been humiliating for China.
The diplomatic slur is Kim Jong Un’s refusal to meet Chinese senior party official Song Tao, who traveled to Pyongyang as the Special Envoy of Chinese President Xi Jinping. This was the most recent in a series of actions by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that caused China to lose face.
Yang continues, “The deterioration of bilateral ties is rooted in the widening divergence on the nuclear issue. It is because North Korea changed, not China. The problem is that the once shared goal of China and North Korea to denuclearize the Korean peninsula had been shattered because Kim Jong Un reneged on the commitments made by his father Kim Chong-il and grandfather Kim Il-sung,.”
The agreement to denuclearize the Peninsula was aimed at the US. The purpose was to induce the US to remove nuclear warheads that had been stored in South Korea for use in another Korean War. The Chinese argument was that the US cannot use nuclear weapons because North Korea had none.
Kim Il-sung often bragged, as a result, that North Korea would never acquire nuclear weapons. Again, that boast was aimed at the US. The US withdrew its nuclear weapons from Korea by November 1991. Chinese patient pressure worked to make the Peninsula safer, as the Chinese see it. It took 33 years and worked because a second war did not occur.
Kim Jong Un’s betrayal of that agreement with impunity is another humiliation for China. North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons undermined a Chinese policy position that worked for more than 60 years.
Yang continues, “Now, China and North Korea do not have a shared position on the nuclear issue, because North Korea’s current leaders have completely abandoned Kim Il-sung’s initiative,” he saidYang said that while China needed to be prepared for different outcomes, its “dual suspension” approach – which calls for the US and South Korea to suspend their joint military drills in exchange for North Korea suspending its weapons program – was still the right way to go.“If we step back from the goal of denuclearization now, it would be a failure of the will of our nation.”“If the international community allows North Korea to develop nuclear weapons it is a collective failure … More importantly, it is a huge threat to China’s national security. Therefore, on this issue, China has no room for compromise.”“Developing nuclear weapons won’t guarantee North Korea’s security, and will only make things worse,” Yang said. He also judged that if Kim wanted to maintain his regime, he would eventually have to move money away from developing weapons and channel it into the economy.
A third loss of face to China is that its client, North Korea, has refused to accept the Chinese proposal for stabilizing the situation – the suspension-for-suspension proposal. Even worse, the former client – North Korea– now poses a threat to China’s national security.
Chinese leaders cannot compromise on denuclearization because it would signify a failure of will at a time when China is asserting its global leadership role. That would be the ultimate loss of face and prestige.
The Chinese leaders would be disinclined to change their proposal in any case because of the successful precedent in which patience and steadiness achieved the removal of US nuclear weapons after 33 years. They know that patience will succeed again, given enough time and if war can be avoided.
Yang’s comment about the need to develop the North Korean economy contains the judgment that the Kim Jong Un regime must change its policies if it wants to survive. Chinese commentators seldom hint at regime survival in this fashion.
The idea of loss of face applies to the US-led alliance, but especially to North Korea. Kim’s dignity will not countenance a backdown. The vice marshals and the generals would likely find a Kim family member to replace him, should he try.
Finally, this is the third important comment on the complexity of the Korean nuclear and missile crisis that provides the public with background information on the issues. Yang’s comments are part of the psychological preparation for a possible escalation of the Korean crisis.
Moments
Photos of War
Exhausted U.S. Army nurse Amy Stuart, 5th MASH unit in Saudi Arabia naps on a cot while hugging a teddy bear sent by her family during Operation Desert Storm. (Feb. 22, 1991)
A Gurkha of 1st Btn 7th Gurkha Rifle on anti air defense… June 1982, Falklands War
Sometimes Photos Pop Up
This photo was taken in Chicago, 19 years ago and my hair was white then (I’m second from the left). The ever dapper Mike W. who comments on this blog sometimes made the photo too. A friend posted it on facebook, and I said, “hey, I’m in the photo.”
British Army Update
Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has announced the British Army will be reduced by 4,000 from the current size of 76,500 regular troops to 72,500 but will “not require redundancies”. There will be 148 upgraded Challenger 3 tanks. This blog reported (based on reliable sources) that the British would keep between 170 and 150 tanks. They dropped that number.
In 1930 the Indiana Bell building was rotated 90°.
Over 34 days, the 22-million-pound structure was moved 15 inch/hr… all while 600 employees still worked there. There was no interruption to gas, heat, electricity, water, sewage, or the telephone service they provided. No one inside felt it move.
A-400M Atlas
Slime Balls
The FBI and elements of the US Intelligence Community revealed themselves to be particularly slimy in their applications for four warrants (FISA Court not Title 3 wiretaps) to surveil candidate Trump. For a guy like me with little love for the FBI, and suspicion of government in general, I found this conduct to be unbelievably bad. Granted, the FBI is not known for ethical conduct by people who have had a lot of dealings with them (on their side, not the criminal side). There are reasons why this happens, but I am not going into it here.
I normally do not print out articles in their entirety, but I’ll do it this time because I think that it’s important.
What Bruce Ohr Told Congress
KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL AUGUST 30, 2018
If Mr. Ohr is only now under the spotlight, it’s because it has taken so much effort to unpack his role in the FBI’s 2016 investigation of the Trump campaign. Over the past year, congressional investigators found out that Mr. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS, the opposition-research firm that gave its infamous dossier, funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign, to the FBI. They then discovered that Mr. Ohr had numerous interactions of his own with Fusion chief Glenn Simpson and dossier author Christopher Steele, and that he passed on information from these talks to the bureau. So the G-men were being fed the dossier allegations from both the outside and the inside.
This week’s news is that Mr. Ohr’s deliveries to the FBI came with a caveat. Congress already knew that Mr. Ohr had been aware of Mr. Steele’s political biases. In notes Mr. Ohr took of a September 2016 conversation with Mr. Steele, he wrote that the dossier author “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.” Congressional sources tell me that Mr. Ohr revealed Tuesday that he verbally warned the FBI that its source had a credibility problem, alerting the bureau to Mr. Steele’s leanings and motives. He also informed the bureau that Mrs. Ohr was working for Fusion and contributing to the dossier project.
Mr. Ohr said, moreover, that he delivered this information before the FBI’s first application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for a warrant against Trump aide Carter Page, in October 2016. Yet the FBI made no mention of this warning in the application, instead characterizing Mr. Steele as a “reliable” source. Nor does the application note that a senior Justice Department official’s spouse was contributing to the dossier and benefiting financially from a document the FBI was using in an investigation. That matters both because the FBI failed to flag the enormous conflict and because Mr. Steele’s work product potentially wasn’t entirely his own.
No reference to Mr. Ohr—direct or cloaked—can be found in any of the four applications for Page warrants, according to those who have seen them. This despite his more than a dozen conversations with FBI agents over the course of the probe that addressed the content in and sourcing behind the surveillance applications. I’m told Mr. Ohr made clear that these conversations variously included all the heavyweights in the FBI investigation—former lead investigator Peter Strzok, former FBI senior lawyer Lisa Page, and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. So senior people were very aware of his role, information and conflict.
All this is what Republicans are referring to when they hint that the Ohr interview provided solid evidence that the FBI abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. “Before yesterday, we thought the FBI and DOJ had not disclosed material facts they were aware of in the FISA application. If Bruce Ohr testified truthfully, we now know that to be the case,” Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas tweeted Wednesday. (The Justice Department declined to comment, citing an inspector-general investigation.)
As for Mr. Ohr’s interaction with the FBI, he told congressional investigators this week that while initially he reached out to the FBI, the bureau also later came looking for information about Mr. Steele. That outreach happened after the FBI had terminated Mr. Steele as a source in October 2016 for violating bureau rules about talking to media. So even after having been warned of Mr. Steele’s motivations, even after having fired him for violating the rules, the FBI continued to seek his information—using Mr. Ohr as a back channel. This surely violates the FBI manual governing interaction with confidential human sources.
That Mr. Ohr came shopping the Steele info should have on its own set off FBI alarm bells. Mr. Steele was already in direct contact with the FBI by early July. Why would Mr. Steele then go to work on a Justice Department source, and refunnel the same allegations to the bureau? The likely answer is that the Fusion crowd wanted to exert maximum pressure on the FBI to act. Had the FBI bothered to try to find out what was behind such a pressure campaign, it might have stumbled upon the obvious answer: politics.
Unless it didn’t care. The evidence continues to mount that the FBI didn’t want to know about bias, or about conflicts of interest, or about the political paymasters behind the dossier—and it certainly didn’t want the surveillance court to know. It wanted to investigate Donald Trump.
Write to kim@wsj.com.
Ending the Week
From E-Mail
Q – What are you reading these days, LL?
The great and near great are lining up for the 2020 general election. Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters and other greats within the Democrat Party are making the circuit to try and get their names out there so you’ll put them in charge. The mainstream media will support their efforts. There’s even talk of Hillary (reset and improved Hillary) running in 2020 to win what she feels that Donald Trump stole from her.
Q – What are you reading these days, LL?
I just downloaded two books on Kindle: Fields of Fire by James Webb and G-Man by Stephen Hunter.
A – I recently finished The Malocchio Of Bodie by Jules Smith and Rimworld – Into the Green by Jim Curtis (both of whom comment on this blog from time to time).
Proof of Collusion (finally)
in other Domestic News
The Deep State has a narrative that they want us to swallow. Despite the shrill, hysterical, absurdities spouted by the corrupt, elite, lying mainstream media, I think that they’re being ignored. They think so too and it bothers them.
The great and near great are lining up for the 2020 general election. Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters and other greats within the Democrat Party are making the circuit to try and get their names out there so you’ll put them in charge. The mainstream media will support their efforts. There’s even talk of Hillary (reset and improved Hillary) running in 2020 to win what she feels that Donald Trump stole from her.
There are theories that people who aren’t attractive or talented enough to be Hollywood actors are drawn to politics. Many are lawyers who can’t make it in that profession. Some like Al Franken (D-MN) are failed comedians. Congressman Hank Johnson (below) is a lawyer. Watch and listen as he explains his concerns about US troop deployments to Guam that might cause it to capsize. He’d make a great talking head on MSNBC or CNN once he completes his term in the House of Representatives. But I don’t think that he’ll be leaving soon. In 2014, Johnson was named the 18th most effective Democrat in the 112th Congress [out of 204 Democratic members] according to a study by Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia (UVA). Yes, he’s among the brightest.
The amazing thing about America is that we do so well despite our leadership.
Navalny – In the News
Russia, the People’s Republic of China, the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States are each ruled by oligarchs now. They’re not the same oligarchs, and they have different, but global agendas. They support nations in much the way that people support professional sports. Supporting the Arizona Diamondbacks because I live in Arizona – doesn’t support anyone who is from Arizona, since the players are all professionals and are traded around. The regional identification is an artifice (not unlike Rollerball) that works. An oligarch living in Seattle, for example, might draw most of his wealth from China, or Cobalt mining in the Congo to build batteries for electric cars, or wherever.
Enter Alexei Navalny. A Russian court rejected an appeal today that Navalny mounted, to secure his release from jail.
Russian authorities recently detained several of his allies and warned social media companies about promoting more protests after tens of thousands rallied across Russia last weekend demanding his freedom.
Appearing in court by video link from jail, Navalny denounced the criminal proceedings against him as part of a government campaign to intimidate the opposition.
The real question you should ask yourself is which oligarchs support Navalny and which support Putin. Putin is reliable but he’s getting ready to fade into the sunset. Meanwhile, Navalny, his heir apparent is saying, “You won’t succeed in scaring tens of millions of people who have been robbed by that government,” he said. “Yes, you have the power now to put me in handcuffs, but it’s not going to last forever.”
The 44-year-old Navalny, the best-known critic of President Vladimir Putin’s government, was arrested Jan. 17 upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusations, but there is little doubt that they did it.
Is it all kabuki theater to convince the Russian people that he’s an outsider will fight for them. Meanwhile, who is paying his bills?
Navalny’s supporters are organizing another round of rallies for Sunday. Police on Wednesday searched Navalny’s apartment, a rented accommodation where his wife, Yulia, has been living and the residences of several of his associates and supporters.
If he wins, or when he wins, will the Russian deep state calm down and embrace him?
Problem Solving
Odin’s Raven
“Oft in the woods is a listener nigh.” – The Saga of Grettir the Strong
The Great Reset
(link) For decades, progressives have attempted to use climate change to justify liberal policy changes. But their latest attempt – a new proposal called the “Great Reset” – is the most ambitious and radical plan the world has seen in more than a generation.
At a virtual meeting earlier in June hosted by the World Economic Forum, some of the planet’s most powerful business leaders, government officials and activists announced a proposal to “reset” the global economy. Instead of traditional capitalism, the high-profile group said the world should adopt more socialistic policies, such as wealth taxes, additional regulations and massive Green New Deal-like government programs.
It’s about a world government, run by elites, administered by the UN and in order to make it work, you will need to disarm yourself. It won’t work any other way.
As you might expect, Joe and Ho support the Great Reset. …read more here
In Praise of Plastic Christmas Trees
I have a high ceiling in my living room. It lofts up to 24 feet above the slate floor. The price for a “real tree” plus the plastic netting for the tree and the tip you are expected to dole out to the guy who brokers your purchase and carts the tree to the truck came out to about $150.00 three years ago. Two years ago my family rebelled and in my absence, bought a fake tree – that is 8 feet tall and weighs about 200 lbs. I suggested they could have purchased a smaller tree, but they thought the King Kong tree (made in China) was a better choice.
December is my least favorite month. My brother, father and step-mother died in December. Memories of Christmas past are barbed and thorned with sweet memories that simply depress me because those people I love are not coming back. Can’t I simply dole out cash and have the month end? In addition I’m a year older this month. Nothing to celebrate once you’re over about 25 and I’m twice that.
Back to Christmas trees. Yes I love the smell of a real tree, but I don’t like the sap, needles and constant need to keep it watered so that it doesn’t dry up and burn up before the Big Day.
No matter how you position the tree in the stand and no matter how articulately you spin the tree so that the “good side” faces the public, if you’re a guy, and there is a woman in your life, it won’t be enough. I wonder if Jews have the same problem with the placement of the Menorah for Hanukkah (חֲנֻכָּה) Or the black people who celebrate Kwanzaa and have the black version of the Menorah that they use in their celebration of African culture? Do they have placement issues or not. Likely, you simply drop the candle holder on a table and pronounce it “placed”. Not so with a real Christmas tree.
The placement issue is solved with the fake tree. It also has lights embedded into it, so it’s plug and play. No stringing required.
Of all the holidays, the most placement, perfect is Festivus. There is just a pole. It’s easy to store from year to year (my plastic made-in-China tree stores in a box 2.5’x3’x6′ and occupies space in the garage that could be occupied by other stuff). Festivus, unlike Christmas, is a holiday where you simply sit in a circle with your loved ones and you tell each other how they have disappointed you in the previous year. Maybe it’s not that much unlike Christmas… Festivus is also a time for airing of other grievances and for feats of physical strength. The traditional Festivus meal is spaghetti. Unlike Kwanzaa, it takes place before Christmas on December 23.
If you use a Jewish Menorah, a Black person Menorah, a Festivus Pole, you’ll never truly appreciate the bother of traveling to where the trees are, selecting a tree to cut, cutting the tree, hauling it home, setting it up, caring for it during the holidays and disposing of it in a proper way after the holidays – so you have no idea what I’m talking about when I praise the plastic tree.
PS – I wonder what the Chinese factory workers think of all those plastic lighted noble fir trees they make for households?
Of Passing Interest
“Human beings are born with different capacities, if they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn
Cool Photo
Do you remember when we had a space shuttle?
Here is a link to your China Update
You can not change what you do not choose to confront…
Stay thirsty, my friends…
Don’t forget that the Donkey’s choice for President flew his son Hunter to China in Air Force Two, to pick up a US$1.5 billion bribe in addition to the Ukraine scandal. Naturally the corrupt, lying, mainstream media will ignore it.
Which Planet Loves You?
Those of you who follow this blog will recall that Virtual Mirage broke the story of the century with a genuine alien skull, found in the deep forest on Arizona’s Mogollon Rim. You’re welcome.
While I’m waiting for my Nobel Prize in Science for the discovery (patiently), I thought that we should delve deeper into the mysteries of the Solar System. Let’s us unlock some of the mysteries!
Mars, Olympus Mons Base. Some believe that this is a huge, extinct volcano. Others contend (including ancient alien theorists) that it is an active space hub for the Martian Armada. The “caldera” opens and they fly out to various destinations, including Earth. Martians are known to have engaged in unwholesome probing in the past, abducting cows and making crop circles. So, now you know.
The Jovian “moon”, Europa is actually a huge galactic egg that is cracking. Nobody knows what will emerge, but I expect that it won’t be good for mankind. Maybe we can get the huge space creature to eat China once it’s finished with Tokyo and New York cities.
No planet in the Solar System has been as unfairly maligned as Pluto, yet the planet still has a heart on it to let Earthlings know that while the other planets are orbited by huge galactic eggs or have armadas waiting to burst forth and overwhelm our puny defenses, Pluto has our back.
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Russians – A Menace in Moldova
On July 10, the Moldovan Defense Minister, Anatol Salaru, asked NATO to help withdraw Russian soldiers from the autonomous region east of the Dniester River, known as Transnistria.
“For 25 years, forces of the Russian Federation have been illegally based on the territory of the Republic of Moldova. We ask you to support our initiative to transform the mission in the Dniester region of the Republic of Moldova into a multinational civilian mission, as well as to withdraw the Russian army and its munitions in accordance with international obligations,” he said.
Salaru thanked NATO for its help in raising the defense potential of the Moldovan army within the framework of the DCB (Defense Capacity Building) and gave assurances that the republic “aspires to become a reliable partner of the alliance”. The Defense Ministry chief also invited NATO members to hold military training in Moldova.
Other officials in Chisinau have been making demands for the withdrawal of Russian forces and the transformation of the peacekeeping operation in the Dniester region into a civilian multinational mission, including President Nicolae Timofti. He confirmed that Russia assumed such obligations at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Istanbul Summit in 1999. Chisinau is also supported by Ukraine on this issue, having recently denounced the agreement with Moscow on supplying Russian troops in the Dniester region.
Although Moldova is not a NATO member, its leaders are trying to benefit from NATO’s anti-Russia resurgence to remove the 1,200-man Russian regiment in Transnistria. The Russian troop presence is a remnant and holdover from the Soviet Army that was based in Moldova in the1980s and in the early 1990s.
Transnistria declared independence from Moldova after a war of secession in 1992. Since then it has been self-governing. The armed intervention by the Russian 14th Guards Army in Moldova at that time was critical to Transnistria’s de facto secession. The Transnistrian region remains pro-Russia and uses many Soviet-era symbols and practices.
In 2014, Transnistria sent a delegation to Moscow to request recognition and support for secession from Moldova at the time Donetsk and Luhansk announced their secession from Ukraine. Russia denied their request
The Russians consider the soldiers to be peacekeepers. Moldova wants the Russians to withdraw and to be replaced by a civilian peacekeeping mission. Moldovan leaders judge that the Russian military presence encourages Transnistrian intransigence and prevents reunification. The status and future of the Russian regiment is a potential flashpoint between NATO and Russia.
I’ve discussed this issue on this blog before. This is merely an update.
Cultural Shifts
Predicting Jeffrey Epstein
Coffee Served On Porch Of Ante-Bellum Mansion, At Party For Cadets From Local Army Flying School, Mississippi, US, 1943
This photo from Life Magazine reflects a very different time, nearly 80 years ago. How times have changed. Not all for the better, not all for the worst.
A group of cowboys lay out a blanket and throw the dice, a common game of chance in the Old West. Money was often at stake—or tobacco or other small items.
This colorized photo shows another view of change, cultural dynamics before the onset of the information age. People haven’t changed but the situations of life certainly have become more complicated.
MARILYN MONROE
The Prince and the Showgirl (1957)
Barbie Shoes and Leggos
As the father of four girls, it was always the Barbie shoes, waiting in the carpet on the stairs.
As a grandfather, it’s Leggos.
Phoenix (AZ) has Changed
Good then, Good now, Just plain good.
Alabama
Characteristics of the Obama White House
In America today, the single-minded pursuit of the irrelevant by the self-important progressive movement has a poster child in President Obama. America’s “golden age” of personal responsibility has been trashed; reason and truth trivialized in our society where the celebration of victimhood is the pinnacle of self-empowerment and self-actualization.
Between the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, a fundamentally fascist (i.e., anationalistic socialist) movement; and with the second wind that has been given to the remnants of the 20th century’s failed socialist and communist ‘experiments’ (in which millions of people were slaughtered by the compassionate and progressive left), we have truly entered a golden age of narcissism.
(H/T Dale – for the graphic – right)
Consider the characteristics of the malignant narcissist:
1. Shamelessness: Shame is the feeling that lurks beneath all unhealthy narcissism, and the inability to process shame in healthy ways.
2. Magical thinking: Narcissists see themselves as perfect using distortion and illusion known as magical thinking. They also use projection to dump shame onto others.
3. Arrogance: A narcissist who is feeling deflated may reinflate by diminishing, debasing, or degrading somebody else.
4. Envy: A narcissist may secure a sense of superiority in the face of another person’s ability by using contempt to minimize the other person.
5. Entitlement: Narcissists hold unreasonable expectations of particularly favorable treatment and automatic compliance because they consider themselves special. Failure to comply is considered an attack on their superiority, and the perpetrator is considered an “awkward” or “difficult” person. Defiance of their will is a narcissistic injury that can trigger narcissistic rage.
6. Exploitation: Can take many forms but always involves the exploitation of others without regard for their feelings or interests. Often the other is in a subservient position where resistance would be difficult or even impossible. Sometimes the subservience is not so much real as assumed.
7. Bad boundaries: Narcissists do not recognize that they have boundaries and that others are separate and are not extensions of themselves. Others either exist to meet their needs or may as well not exist at all. Those who provide narcissistic supply to the narcissist are treated as if they are part of the narcissist and are expected to live up to those expectations. In the mind of a narcissist there is no boundary between self and other.
The ideology of the political left in all its various iterations–socialist, communist, radical environmentalism, progressive; call it what you will — is, at its core an essentially narcissistic and self-indulgent pursuit of power, with all the unhealthy psychological attributes that implies.
This is not to suggest that narcissism or sociopathy exit merely within the political left. Clearly it does not. But, having made that qualification, today’s progressive leftist is steeped in and encouraged by an ideology that rewards only feelings and not critical thinking or truth; fantasy and not reality; and good intentions instead of actual outcome in the real world. The narcissists of this world (characterized above) lead the the poor, innocent and unsuspecting lefist into cognitive dissonance in his thinking patterns and wreak all sorts of misery and spiritual destruction on the people who are the targets of the leftists’ supposed goodwill.
But they neither care nor notice, since the primary determinant of why they do what they do is to make themselves feel good; to escape for one brief moment the emptiness of their own individual souls and the self-hatred and rage that motivate them.
Democrats and those on the left HAVE NO MORAL OR ETHICAL STANDARDS TO BEGIN WITH (that’s what moral relativism is all about), hence when their reprehensible behavior is exposed for all to see, they are utterly shameless about it. They have managed to convince themselves that they are, on the whole, morally superior to the common riff-raff (and certainly compared to evil Republicans and conservatives they perceive themselves to be virtual saints; champions of the poor and oppressed and leaders in goodness). For such a person how can any traditional rules of behavior apply? When you subscribe to an ideology that emphasizes how loving, compassionate, and caring and “reality-based” you are as its central theses, then you are home free! So, even when your reprehensible behavior is made public, then you are not mandated to feel any shame–shame is for losers. Think back for a moment to former Congressman Weiner, sending photos of his part to ladies nationwide from his chair on the floor of Congress.
Many Democrats and certainly most leftists are completely shameless in the sense that they will never ever, for as long as they can possibly get away with it, going to admit to bad behavior. And in those rare cases where they simply cannot wiggle and maneuver and lie and deceive; or self-righteously tell you how wonderful they really are and all the wonderful things they have done for the ‘little people’; they will simply pretend they are still virtuous and have been victimized in some way. What’s sad is that they often believe it themselves.
Mid-Week Muse
$600 Trigger
You’ve probably heard about the latest proposal that financial institutions be REQUIRED to turn over and report ALL bank or brokerage accounts to the IRS where the yearly transactions total more than $600. Assuming the account holder isn’t deceased, that would probably include every financial account in the USA held by every person or taxpaying entity.
This seems ludicrous and wastefully expensive when the supposed purpose of the bill is to ferret out unreported taxable income and capital gains of the “wealthy”. Apparently, someone at the IRS seems to think wealthy tax-evaders are hiding their assets in accounts where the yearly activity might hover just above $600.
The cost of this reporting wasn’t really explored in the proposal, and the privacy issues were actively scoffed at in public interviews of the Treasury Secretary and other administration folks.
Just trying to locate this particular provision is difficult because it is buried in the 107-page Dept. of the Treasury proposal which encompasses a broad variety of reforms and new proposals including a new top tier tax bracket and corporate tax percentages, “green energy” incentives, etc.
Most of the proposal seems to hover between leftist fluff and idiotic.
It is an example of the clustering of items that each deserve separate examination, public debate, and separate votes in Congress. Instead, we get a package which only the most steadfast tax-nerd could read through and understand or leastwise not fall asleep. If you would like to try to wade through it, here is the link.
Identify the Tanks
In Seattle
354 police personnel have refused to submit vaccination records by SPD’s deadline of October 5.
Interim Seattle police chief, Adrian Diaz, gave the department a deadline of October 5 to submit vaccination records. That timeline has now come and gone. The final date to submit records to the city is October 18; however, these stats provide a close estimate as to how many officers the Seattle Police Department is predicted to lose.
This comes on the heels of a record-breaking number of officers – about 300 — leaving the agency last year in response to the Democrat “defund the police” movement, which destroyed morale and facilitated horrific treatment from the Seattle City Council. Moreover, they’ve lost another 100 so far in 2021, according to the Post Millennial. What’s another 350? I’m sure that the citizens won’t care.
Scamming at Sea
WHALE WARS is ENTERTAINMENT for the Green Agenda,
it’s NOT a DOCUMENTARY.
 |
| Capt. Paul Watson |
(TMZ) Paul Watson, the star of the reality show “Whale Wars” LIED about the fate of the show’s most famous ship … falsely telling the media it sank due to a crash with Japanese whalers, when in fact he secretly SABOTAGED the boat himself for publicity … this according to a new lawsuit.
Ady Gil, owner of the ship, Ady Gil, (see video above) sued Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Gil claims in his suit that he let Watson’s organization use his boat, so long as they took care of it. Following the incident recorded by a Japanese whaling vessel (above), Gil says that Watson sabotaged his ship in order to generate more publicity (and to spur contributions to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society – and his own pocket book). As a result of the sabotage, the Ady Gil sank even though it was reparable.
(Fox News) Gil claims Watson’s motive was to spur outrage over the ship’s sinking and urge people to donate to his anti-whaling organization. Gil alleges he only allowed Watson to use his ship for “Whale Wars” under the condition that Watson keeps it in the best condition possible. Now, Gil is suing for $5 million saying the destruction of the boat violated their agreement.
Watson recently resigned from his post as the head of the Sea Shepherd society.
Discovery announced on Saturday that “Whale Wars” would be renewed for a sixth season, according to Deadline.
For the record, I am personally opposed to whaling to harvest “sushi” for Japanese consumption. Whales and aquatic mammals do ‘think’ and whether or not they are fully sentient, I feel as if their slaughter is ‘wrong’ at just about every possible level.
However, the Sea Hippies/Sea Shepherds’ conduct is usually so outrageous that I cheer for the Japanese whale killers every time I happen to drift across their program on the Discovery Channel when I’m surfing the airwaves. From what I saw in the video above, the Sea Shepherds stopped their tiny boat in front of a large Japanese ship underway in international waters in a situation where the Japanese vessel couldn’t stop or turn fast enough so as to make it appear to be an intentional ramming.
Paul Watson and his coterie of “soft touch donors” such as television personality Bob Barker, and the late crocodile hunter, Steve Irwin, have collected an interesting group of volunteer ‘sea hippies’ to support his cause – and to enrich his personal fortune.
Who is Paul Watson?
(The New Yorker Magazine) When Watson is separated from land, he tends to behave like Captain Nemo, which is to say that he does what he thinks is right, even if it involves a violation of custom or the destruction of property. There are a number of rules belonging to civilization that outrage his sense of morality, among them the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which asserts that sovereign states alone are the ocean’s enforcers. If such rules interfere with his agenda, then, as far as he is concerned, rules be damned.
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| Japanese Whaling/Research Ship |
A diplomat might say that the Japanese whaling fleet is technically complying with the rules of the I.W.C., and that to stop it one must first upset the status quo that permits the fleet to hunt whales. Watson, who cannot be bothered with the legal nuances of international regulations, insists that the Japanese fleet is breaking the law, and that, because the I.W.C. refuses to act, he and his crew must. He calls his fleet Neptune’s Navy, and he regards it as a law-enforcement agency. Moments before ramming a vessel, Watson will radio its captain and say something that sounds very official, such as “Please remove yourselves from these waters. You are in violation of international conservation regulations.” At times, he loses his cool. “We’re no protest ship,” he once told an intransigent captain. “Now, get out of here.” His sense of urgency, his impressive ego, his argumentativeness, his love of theatrics, his tendency to bend the truth, his willingness to risk lives or injury for his beliefs (or for publicity), and his courage (or recklessness) have earned him both loathing and veneration from those who are familiar with his activism.
And that reckless disregard for the law brought Captain Paul Watson to a decision to sabotage one of the ships in his fleet and sink it — while blaming the Japanese. The strange followers of Watson stand on the high ground of their own personal morality which they feel trumps the rule of law. It reminds me more of Reverend Jim Jones and the People’s Temple than it does any legitimate effort. One can only wonder if Watson’s next move will be to offer his crew Kool Aid in lieu of grog so that he can blame their deaths on the Japanese fisheries vessels.
Paul Watson has a lot in common with former Vice President Al Gore, ‘creator of the Internet’ and the neo-champion of the green agenda, who just sold out his followers for a large check from Al Jazeera.
Grief Counseling
If you take progs at their word, they all have therapists that help get them through the day. I’m not going to take a shot at therapy, but my generation found release in other ways. Frankly, it sounds a little ‘pink’. Never the less, here are some obligations on what the progs are going through. The five stages of grief are in full swing among progs this holiday season. The five stages are, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
1 The first stage manifest on election night with news commentators openly weeping as they announced that Clinton lost to Trump and that the Senate, the House and most governorships also with the the Republicans as America spoke. The day after the election began with the cry – mainly led by people who pretend for a living in Hollywood, who said, “not my president!” University students, egged on by liberal professors took up the chant.
2 The second stage went off like a bomb with the angry “not my president protests”, burning cars, defacing buildings and looting that I maintain were racist because Donald Trump is white. (#whitevotesmatter)
3 The third bargaining phase was launched by progs, who poured money into Jill Stein’s recount scam. Yes, it was a scheme to fund raise and it worked, but progs bargained that if the recounts were done, Trump would lose. Second, third and fourth recounts of the same votes were attempted but judges shut them down.
Then CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post, which is more of a blog than a newspaper, sprung #fakenews, as if presenting fake news was a concept new to them.
The phase continued with the Washington Post claiming that Russia had influenced the outcome of the election, and that the Trump campaign had colluded with agents of the mysterious East to beat Hillary Clinton, who the Post had anointed president previously, before a single vote was cast. That rant is still going on with Hollywood making desperate (and funny) pleas to members of the electoral college to change their votes to anyone but Trump.
4 Sometime around New Year’s Day it will set in that Donald J. Trump was freely and fairly elected and will be the 45th President of the United States of America. That will lead to depression that will stretch long into year and well past the inauguration.
5 Donald Trump will never be accepted by the progs. But they harbor a secret fear the overrides all others. What if by some miracle, he’s able to bring jobs back – particularly to inner cities? What if the ghettos are no longer progressive paradises of dependence and people go to work instead of taking hand-outs? Nothing could be as corrosive to the Democrat cause than that.
What if America joins Russia in fighting common enemies: Radical Islamic Terrorists? What if the rapprochement works and even though regional differences continue to exist, Washington DC and Moscow confront problems shared by both power centers?
That would upset a lot of people including the Marxist professors in the USA, who contend that the Soviet dream was destroyed by Vladimir Putin.
The Democrats had a lot of schemes to promote Hillary Clinton: Everything from the “Madam Secretary” TV show on NBC to The Wikileaks emails showing that officials within the DNC attempted to secretly promote what they called “pied piper candidates,” which included Donald Trump, because they thought they’d be easier for Hillary Clinton to defeat.
The fake (corrupt, elite) news media, which we know from other leaked emails, was a subset of the DNC and the Clinton campaign, gave Donald Trump at least $1 billion in free coverage during the primaries. While this was partly due to his own savvy of playing them like a fiddle, we do have suggestions (that go beyond empty speculation) that it may not have been entirely so.
The circular firing squad continues in progressive circles as they attempt to explain why their catastrophic loss up and down the ticket was not Hillary Clintons’s fault. (hahaha)
Who should Teach your Children?
I’m the father of four daughters and I always considered that the primary responsibility for educating them was mine/my family’s. I know that’s not a collectivist view, thus not very progressive one. If you met my daughters, you’d be blasted with their views of duty, honor, God, country and family. None of those are progressive values. When they see the flag raised, they stop, remove headgear if they are wearing a hat and put their hands over their hearts. If you look closely, you may see their lips move slightly as they sing the national anthem to themselves.
Grandparents have a role in raising grandchildren too and the concept of a nuclear family, while fading in America, still has pockets of people who feel that it has value.
In California your children will be taught about the politically correct nature of having two mommies or two daddies (or two gender optional transexuals) in public school and how abortion is not only a “right” but how it’s a very good option for a promiscuous teen who ends up in a family way. In California schools, a fetus is not a human being. It’s something else. You won’t learn much about American history and you won’t learn much about what it takes to be a man or a woman. You’ll learn to pass the national standards tests.
Take just a moment to view the progressive view as MSNBC Hostess, Melissa Harris-Perry discusses the collective responsibility of education, relieving parents of that job.
“LEAN FORWARD”
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| LL’s daughter, son-in-law and grandsons |
In Aldus Huxley’s classic, Brave New World, all children were raised by the state. That’s true in many communist utopian states such as North Korea. There are people in America who buy off on the collective raising of children so that parent’s don’t have to invest their valuable time in this endeavor. The Biblical concept of honoring your father and mother are hopelessly out of date in the progressive utopian agenda of state-raised and educated children.
In order to create an Orwellian State, the first thing that one must do is to separate children from their parent’s teaching. Parents are not always politically correct. Neither are traditional values. Those values need to be moderated through collectivized education that is overseen by the state. It’s all part of fundamentally transforming America.
The progressive agenda calls for an educational system tightly coupled with the political system such that education is subordinated to the political system. This requires tight administrative controls of schools by the national administrative system. Collectivistic activities as a major part of the learning process will be stressed to facilitate the internalization of socialist collective norms and culture. There is no place for the family in this.
Power, for its Own Sake
Following a staggering loss in Massachusetts recently, the Party of Barack Hussein Obama struck out in interesting and somewhat terrifying ways to retain power. There have been posts CLICK HERE that indicate the Obama Nation is working hard to recruit high school students in Ohio (and perhaps elsewhere) into their own particular cult of politics.
Maybe it’s time to return to the world of 1984 for a moment and read what George Orwell wrote about the utopian socialist view of power – and if you choose to make that leap, to apply it to the world we live in.
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”
Quite Small
Particle Physics – the study of very small things and the mathematics that predicts them and how they make up everything is a hobby of mine and I’m not very good at it. The Standard Model lacks a graviton and possibly other particles, but the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland in 2012 is included and it’s one of the fundamental achievements in advancing the realm of Physics in the last 100 years.
These are the legos of the universe. Everything is made of them. Are there smaller particles? Strings but we’re still working on these. And while we’re not going to discuss string theory here if an electron (very very small) was the size of the Earth, a string would be a mote of dust) Neutrinos are so small and have such little mass that most of those generated in the core of the Sun rip through the planet Earth without encountering other mass and keep on going.
When I was in high school this chart didn’t exist and some of the current periodic table didn’t exist either. Never the less, everything we see, touch, taste or feel is made up of the particles in this chart. The starlight that pours from the heavens is comprised of them.
As a high school and college chemistry student, I was taught that electron shells were stable, and they are – sometimes. But now we know that sometimes the electrons that help make up everything (including electricity) are in “this dimension” and sometimes they are not. Of the ten theoretical dimensions that exist, three (X, Y, Z axis) are familiar to us. The others are not and comprise ‘weird science’.
Why do I even mention this in the blog? It’s easier to use simple math: Angle of the dangle is equal to the heat of the meat, etc. However I encourage you to dig deeper and think about how the universe really works. If for no other reason, it can be interesting.
That’s it, just sharing an interest at Planck Length.
The Planck length is the scale at which classical ideas about gravity and space-time cease to be valid, and quantum effects dominate.
We’ll go back to notions of good and bad government, power and petty machinations on the morrow. But I’ll still keep my hobby, thank you.