CRISES BY DESIGN: Biden’s sanctions hit USA hardest. “The war won’t have much of an effect on the price of Wheaties, but economic sanctions on Russia will blow back on us hard. Biden’s banking blockade already is diminishing the power of the dollar.”
Archive for 2022
March 27, 2022
OUT: DE-POLICING. IN: A loaded 9 mm pistol was found inside a city school this week, renewing cries for police to be allowed back patrolling the hallways.
A loaded gun left somewhere? Were there any Capitol Police visiting?
Plus, why is Boston such a cesspit of racism?
“If there are armed security at City Hall, the State House and Mayor (Michelle) Wu’s house — not to mention at elite, mostly white universities like Harvard and MIT — then the mayor needs to explain why white adults are protected while children whose only crime is being Black and poor are not,” said the Rev. Eugene Rivers, a vocal leader in Boston for neighborhood rights. . . .
“Mayor Wu uses as one of her marketing shticks that she’s a mother,” Rivers said. “So why would she deny children of color the same protection she wants for her own kids?”
The mayor’s office had no comment.
In 2020, police reform legislation ended the requirement for districts to have at least one resource officer in each school.
But no end to armed security for the mayor.
OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN AT WAR WITH TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE: Reporters and Pundits Rave Biden’s Warsaw Speech a ‘Tear Down This Wall’ Moment – Before WH Walkback.
President Joe Biden stunned pundits and politicians on Saturday when, at the end of a fiery speech in Warsaw, he seemed to endorse regime change in Russia, saying Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.”
His speech caused a huge reaction, particularly among members of the media and public figures in areas of foreign policy and politics. That included a lot of people on social media comparing his commentary to Ronald Reagan’s historic “Tear Down This Wall” speech in Berlin in June of 1987.
If it isn’t clear which part of the speech the verified users were reacting to, it was spelled out explicitly several times. They were reacting very directly to his saying that Putin cannot remain in power, which was widely discussed as meaning a call for regime change.
Exit quote: “WH official: When Reagan said ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,’ he did not mean to suggest any physical walls be torn down and certainly not in Berlin. He was referring to Pink Floyd’s album The Wall and was calling on Gorby to write a critical review.”
Heh, indeed.™
What happened to Seattle? The answer, of course, depends on your politics. In the news section of the Seattle Times, for instance, a reader is unlikely to see any consideration of a link between policing and public safety. “No single cause for 2021’s surge in gunfire in Seattle,” declared a typical recent headline over an article that points only to possibilities such as the pandemic or an unlucky cycle of “retaliatory violence”. But the majority view in Seattle appears to have shifted toward an acknowledgement that the unrest and destruction that occurred after the killing of George Floyd in 2020 marked a turning point and that the city’s policies toward its police force, whose ranks are now depleted, are relevant to understanding the story. What follows, based on interviews with a number of past and present police officers — five of whom are on the record in this article — is an attempt to offer an obvious but unheeded perspective. It is a cop’s-eye view of Seattle’s undoing.
Read the whole thing.
CERTAINLY IF THE POWERS THAT BE GET THEIR WAY: The Pandemic State is Here to Stay.
But nothing requires that they get their way.
March 26, 2022
NANCY PELOSI NOT EXACTLY WINNING OVER THE KIDS ON TIK-TOK:
@nursemelissa73official1 More to be posted soon.
INDEED:
Says it all… pic.twitter.com/KdiecGAsME
— Tammy Bruce (@HeyTammyBruce) March 26, 2022
Related, from the comments to an earlier post:
But the real difficulty was, and will be again, to obtain an adequate number of good soldiers. We tried almost every system known to modem nations, all with more or less success —voluntary enlistments, the draft, and bought substitutes — and I think that all officers of experience will confirm my assertion that the men who voluntarily enlisted at the outbreak of the war were the best, better than the conscript, and far better than the bought substitute. When a regiment is once organized in a State, and mustered into the service of the United States, the officers and men become subject to the same laws of discipline and government as the regular troops. They are in no sense ” militia,” but compose a part of the Army of the United States, only retain their State title for convenience, and yet may be principally recruited from the neighborhood of their original organization. Once organized, the regiment should be kept full by recruits, and when it becomes difficult to obtain more recruits the pay should be raised by Congress, instead of tempting new men by exaggerated bounties. I believe it would have been more economical to have raised the pay of the soldier to thirty or even fifty dollars a month than to have held out the promise of three hundred and even six hundred dollars in the form of bounty. Toward the close of the war, I have often heard the soldiers complain that the ” stay-at-home ” men got better pay, bounties, and food, than they who were exposed to all the dangers and vicissitudes of the battles and marches at the front. The feeling of the soldier should be that, in every event, the sympathy and preference of his government is for him who fights, rather than for him who is on provost or guard duty to the rear, and, like most men, he measures this by the amount of pay. Of course, the soldier must be trained to obedience, and should be ” content with his wages ; ” but whoever has commanded an army in the field knows the difference between a willing, contented mass of men, and one that feels a cause of grievance. There is a soul to an army as well as to the individual man, and no general can accomplish the full work of his army unless he commands the soul of his men, as well as their bodies and legs.
–Memoir of General William T. Sherman, Vol II, pg 387.
Indeed. Related thoughts here.
OPEN THREAD: Did you ever look at the news and wish we could erase and rewind a few years?
WARNING LIGHTS ARE FLASHING DOWN IN QUALITY CONTROL: This recession indicator is flashing a warning sign.
I’d cure it soon — abolish Monday mornings, and Friday afternoons.
Plus, a prophecy.
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Terran Orbital stock cleared for trading on NYSE.
FACEBOOK AND GOOGLE MUST BE SHUT DOWN TO SAVE THE PLANET!!!! Digital Data Could Be Altering Earth’s Mass Just a Tiny Bit, Claims Physicist. “In fact, in 350 years, some experts predict the weight of our digital bits could outweigh all the atoms on Earth.”
#PANIC
#DOOM
I wonder what actual percentage of people in those age groups actually feel that way.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY:
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: With Babylon Bee Off Twitter, Users Forced To Get Fake News From CNN.
EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Biden’s Cognitive Decline Proved to Be REALLY Dangerous This Week.
And that story was written before Biden ad-libbed calling for regime change in Russia: White House Rushes To Clean Up Disastrous Remarks Biden Made About Putin During Speech.
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Tonight is Earth Hour. Here’s how you can participate.
DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! AND TRYING TO AVOID WORLD WAR III: In a Stunning Reversal, White House Walks Back Biden Statement That Putin ‘Cannot Remain in Power.’
AND THE ANSWER IS NONE. NONE MORE GRAUNIAD: I let a baby bird nest in my hair for 84 days. He fell asleep in my palm. As far as he was concerned, I was his mother.
THIS IS EFFECTIVELY A THREAT TO KILL PUTIN, SINCE HE CAN’T SURRENDER POWER AND LIVE: Biden goes there: For God’s sake, Putin cannot remain in power.
That seems unwise. “If unrest in Russia over the war ever does begin to boil over, it’ll be child’s play now for the Kremlin to convince Russians who are on the fence that anti-Putin demonstrators are stooges of the U.S. government. The specter of western-backed regime change isn’t just propaganda aimed at exploiting Russian patriotism, though. Putin fears it to his marrow. Reportedly he was haunted by the scenes of Moammar Qaddafi being killed by his subjects in Libya during an uprising supported by the U.S. and Europe.”
Well, and given that we had previously guaranteed Qaddafi’s safety, it means we can’t credibly promise anything here. Plus: “A few days ago, Putin’s spokesman was asked under what conditions he would consider using nuclear weapons. His answer: If Russia is facing an ‘existential threat.’ Putin might not distinguish an existential threat to Russia from an existential threat to his own power, though.”