Monday Morning Smile

Short video depicting the nauseating, rude, animalistic eating style of Florida's Ron Desantis.  I love watching the guy behind him

 

A Breath of Fresh Air

Jamie Raskin is one US Representative who is fast paced and intelligent.

Here are shorts showing  his amazing speaking style from this past week's Oversite Committee Resolution to Hold Hunter Biden in Contempt of Congress.  Additionally, there are links to Jared Moskowitz from Florida and Jasmine Crockett from Texas.

If you ask me, the 2024 Congress is completely contemptable.  But I digress.

Enjoy Raskin. Click this link:  

https://www.c-span.org/video/?532775-1/oversight-committee-debates-resolution-hold-hunter-biden-contempt-congress-part-1

Another bright light is Jared Moskowitz.  

Click this link to watch him call out the hypocricy of the GOP.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?532775-1/oversight-committee-debates-resolution-hold-hunter-biden-contempt-congress-part-1

Jasmine Crockett from Texas tells it like it is

https://www.c-span.org/video/?532775-1/oversight-committee-debates-resolution-hold-hunter-biden-contempt-congress-part-1

The GOP is demonizing Hunter Biden

 #FuckTheGop  #FuckMagats

This nine minute video from a former musician and addict is a must watch.

He explains how screwed up magats/gop are in demonizing Hunter Biden to  keep people from focusing on the real problem of drumpf and his criminal family.  It's time to stop this horrible behavior.    #VoteBlueToSaveAmerica

Tom on Modern Piracy

 

Elements of the Us Navy successfully repulsed an attempted boarding by Houthi terrorists yesterday.  The terrorists' target was the Maersk Hongzhou, which is Danish owned and registered vin Singapore..  The Navy, including a team from the USS Gravely, and attack helicopters from the Carrier Dwight D Eisenhower, engaged the Houthi Naval force, and when the Houthis fired on them, sank the 3 attack vessels, and killed all 10 of the Houthis terrorists involved in the attack.  The Iranians have dispatched a warship into the Red Sea, and nobody knows where things go from here.

The right of free passage is central to the health of the global economy, and that has been honored in the breach by a number of  non-compliant naval forces, including Iran, China, and to a lesser extent, Russia.  Non-state actors often take advantage of various choke points. such as  the Straits of Malacca and the Straits of Hormuz, to name just a couple of examples. Since the seizure of power in the wake of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Mullahs have attempted to control the Red Sea and all adjacent waters, through which much of the world's oil flows.  The Iranians regularly interfered with seaborne commerce on an intermittent basis since the establishment of the Islamic Republic.  What Iran's long-term intentions are is anybody's guess, but my feeling is that they would like to make the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf part of Iran's 'Sphere of Influence'.   The Chinese have a similar vision of turning the South China Sea into a Chinese lake.  And don't forget that piracy has often been a favorite source of income for pirates and brigands.  Piracy is a significant problem in the aforementioned Straits of Malacca and the nearby Sunda Strait, as well as the Houthi war on western shipping.  Earlier, the Somali coast was a hotbed of piracy.  

Piracy is a problem as old as mankind, itself.  The notorious Barbary Pirates' were a scourge upon Western Europe and the Mediterranean basin from medieval times until the middle of the 19th century.  They preyed upon the maritime trade, but also conducted raids on coastal towns in order to loot these towns and capture locals, who they would sell into slavery. The Caribbean Sea was infested with piratical enterprises from the 16th to the early 19th centuries.  Pirates saw the Spanish Treasure ships as tempting targets.  The Vikings who conducted raids in northern Europe, as well as Britain and Ireland were essentially pirates.  So what the Houthis are doing in their bailiwick is nothing new.  

The question before us is:  whatever are we to do about this worrisome problem?  The first impulse would seem to be to smite the Houthis with the mythical million pound shithammer. We have a carrier task force in the eastern mediterranean, and application of such force would seem to be something of a no-brainer.  I'm of the opinion that piracy should not be tolerated under any conditions.  But the fact that the Iranian Navy has sent a destroyer into the area complicates things significantly.  Still, a robust response to this sort of foolishness is the only way to respond.  I think that the Iranian presence is a bluff', but even if I'm wrong, we have little to fear from Iran.  It just takes will.  And if we choose not to be willing to stand up to those who would oppose us in this matter, we may as well dismantle our military and pay obeisance to our Chinese and Russian masters.

Trump Smells Like Ass

 #TrumpSmellsLikeAss has been trending on Twitter and it's been fun.

Here's a video of Adam Kinzinger about his own experience with the smelly one

Tom on Leaving the Old Year and Welcoming the New

 We'va almost made it to the New Year and there are times when I wonder how we made it this far without  having a national nervous breakdown.  Politicians of both parties are competing among themselve to see just how low they can sink themselves in a lagoon filled with animal waste. Some politicians have expanded the definition of family values to include threesomes. and others will have to be screwed into the ground when they die because they're so crooked, (I see you, Bob Menendez). Former Congressman George Santos lent new meaning to the term: "Compulsive Liar", with his florid delusions making him into a latter day Walter Mitty.  Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert demonstrated that even mature women can engage in unseemly public displays of affection.  Girls just want to behave badly, sometimes very badly. A staffer for Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland used a Senate hearing room to manufacture pornography.  But the Lifetime Achievement Award for Spectacularly Bad Behavior goes to Rust Gtuliani, who went from an American Hero to pathetic drunk in the space of 10 years.  He's gone from being a feared bully to an object of ridicule.  Donald Trump invites his many enemies to "Rot in Hell" as his idea of an appropriate seasonal greeting.

The Roman God, Janus, represents the transition from the old year to the new.  Janus has two faces.  One looks back to the year just concluded, while the other looks toward the future.  During this week, the airwaves and the print media  are full of retrospectives of the year just past, as if we hadn't just lived it. The  interregnum between Christmas and New years is kind of a dead zone, where normal life exists in a hiatus.  It's a good time to reflect on the year just past and the year to come. 

That brings us to the subject of New Year's Resolutions.  Some people treat these promises that folks make to themselves as bad jokes, while others embrace the promise of personal  reinvention with the intensity of a recent convert, but the only winners are the owners of gyms and the pedders of home exercise equipment and self-help books.  The gyms tend to serve the near fit and the already fit, as well as men who imagine themselves as a potential Adonis in waiting.  The essential difference between men and women is that men tend to overstate their attractiveness, while women tend to understate their's.  I've never forgotten the kid whose dad operated the old Elpis Bakery in Haverhill.  The kid was something of a galoot who reminded me of the character, 'Flounder' in that classic film about college life, "Animal House".   At one point in the film, the Dean of Students advises Flounder: "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son".  This kid reminded me of Flounder, because he was fat and stupid, (and he had a bad complexion to boot), but I don't know if he drank.  But he did have a license plate frame on his car that identified him as a "Super Stud" .  You can't make this stuff up.  

Women, on the other hand, are socialized to see themselves as fatally flawed, appearance-wise.    I remember the time that my late wife picked up a copy of the Sports Illustrated 'swimsuit issue.  She was going through one of those periods during which she was a bit heavier than she would have liked, and she reacted badly to those very lovely models, not a single one carried as much as an extra ounce on their frames. When I asked her what was wrong, she expressed her unhappiness about her physical attractiveness. She expressed a desire to be skinny.  I told her that that I'd learned a long time ago that: "If you fuck a skinny girl, you're gonna get hurt:)  I can say with certainty that no man ever asked his partner: "Do these jeans make my ass look fat?".  Ladies who exercise are more likely than men to do their exercising at home.  They buy Peletons and treadmills if they can afford these diabolic devices, or use hand weights and "Glamor Stretchers' if they aren't.  Glamor Stretchers are basically resistance bands that could be used in a million different ways.  My mother had a set of them, and I seem to recall that they came out in the late 1950s.  The human action figure Chuck Norris has an infomercial touting some sort of all in one gym apparatus that you can conveniently slide beneath your bed when it's not in use, and chances are that that's where it will find a home after a couple of weeks.  My favorite device is the 'Thighhmaster', an infernal machine touted by the late Suzanne Somers.  I remember a Howie Carr radio program where one show whose topic was "Bad Valentine's Day Gifts You Have Given". There were some doozies, but the worst call was the fellow who called to admit that he had gotten wis [artner a thighmaster for that special day and could't understand why she was miffed.  His excuse was that she'd asked for one, but I'm willing to bet that she didn't ask for it as a Valentine's Day Gift.   

Back during the days when I had actual feet, my primary form of exercise was walking.  Simple, cheap, and easy on the joints. Now that I'm confined to a wheelchair, I get my exercise from a combination of free weights, resistance bands, and an arm bike routine.  One of the things that's important when you're confined to a wheelchair is upper body strength.  I'm probably not as diligent in that area as I should be, but the work that I did in rehab and since has served me well.  I'm as strong as I've ever been.  

But New year's resolutions are not just  about physical strength and a pleasant appearance.  A good deal of the things  that we resolve to do, (or not do),   in the New Year fall into the category of 'self-betterment.  I suspect that all but the most obtuse folks out there know that all of us have areas that we can improve upon.  We can be kinder to those with whom we come into contact in the course of our everyday lives:,we can love more and hate less.  We can resolve to lead healthier lives, by eating healthier, cutting down on our drinking, and finally quitting smoking.  Americans once had a zeal for self-improvement, and a common resolution is to read and ponder things that may be outside of our comfort zones.  Of course,sometimes the very people who most need to examine and reassess their motivations are the very last people to do so.  But in the final analysis, all we can do is to try and improve our own attitudes.

The year ahead should prove interesting.  There are 3 wars currently ongoing; in Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan, any one of which can turn into a regional conflict.  There's a presidential election that promises to be terrifying and entertaining in equal measures; a contest between a man as old as Methuselah and another morphing into an actual Nazi before our very eyes.   Mass shootings increase every year, and there's no reason to think that this year will be any different .

Tom on the Ukraine War

All of a sudden, the Russo-Ukrainian War is heating up.  Ukraine apparently mounted a successful naval operation against Russia's Black Sea fleet, and not for the first time.  The Black Sea Fleet actually reminds me of McHale's Navy.  Then on Friday, Russia launched a massive air attack on Ukraine, utilizing drones, cruise missiles, and anything else in their arsenal that can fly and explode.  In a tit to Russia's tat, Ukraine responded by launching an aerial assault on the Russian city of Belgorod, killing at least 21.  

I know I'm no expert on military matters, but I have read a good deal on the subject over the years.  But even a non-expert can recognize what works and what doesn't.  What doesn't seem to be working is the slugfest currently going on between the Ukrainian and the Russian armies.  The current conflict reminds me of WWI, because of the stalemate that seems to exist and the sheer scale of the casualties suffered by both sides.  Consider:  When the current war began, Russia had an army of about 360,000 troops.  Of that number, 315,000 have been casualties, (the number either killed or wounded).  Ukrainian casualties were about 131,000.  While both of these estimates are just that, I tend to trust them.

During the entirety of this conflict, Ukraine has defied expectations, but the truth is that they're never going to win a slugfest against Mother Russia.  What they need to do is to start experimenting with asymmetric warfare.  Ukraine's dealings with the Russian navy have been more successful than not, and they should do more of it.  I've always had a fantasy of a naval raid on the resort city of Sochi, where Mr. Putin has his billion dollar dacha.  Russian civilians have been largely insulated from the direct effects of war, and Ukranian attacks on Russian civilians may well change Mr. Putin's cost-benefit analysis.  Maybe a bomb being set off in the Moscow Metro would have the effect of concentrating civilian minds on the collateral costs of war.  Perhaps a bomb planted in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg would drive tourists away.  Guerilla campaigns work because they strike when and where an assault is least expected.  Such campaigns demoralize the civilian population, and demoralized people have a tendency to lose faith in their government. 

But is it ever ethical to target civilians?  The overriding urge  to refrain from targeting civilians is commendable,but you have to realize that it's also a fairly recent development in man's long history of warfare. The horror and carnage of the 20th century's global wars gave mankind pause.  The Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 prohibited the use of war as an instrument of foreign policy and, to my knowledge, has never been renounced, which says a good deal about the effectiveness of the late League of Nations.  WWII ended in the annihilation of two mid- sized Japanese cities in a nuclear inferno, and the incineration of the national capital, Tokyo, were all targeted at civilians, as were the end of war firebombing of German cities like Cologne and Berlin; Dresden and Hamburg.  Casualties from bombing raids during WWII in the European Theatre of Operation is estimated to be around 400,0000.  In the War against Japan, the Firebombing of Tokyo incinerated somewhere around 100,000 souls and left a million people homeless.   And Tokyo was not the only city that suffered from bombing.  After WWII, the international community worked on promulgating a series of so-called 'Rules of War', which were designed to protect civilians.  The term is often used interchangeably with 'Geneva Conventions'.  

To me, if either party to a conflict expects their civilian pop[ulation to be spared being the targets of an enemy's fire, they must, in turn, be willing to not fire on their enemy's civilian population.  Adherence to the rules of war should not be a suicide pact. You can't expect to make war on the civilian population of a foe and then complain when your foe retaliates in kind.  When an enemy spends decades firing rockets at your civilian population, don't complain when they target your's, especially when said projectiles are fired from the midst of civilian populations.

Monday Morning Smile

 

Here's to hoping 2024 brings you as much joy as this baby elephant!  Happy New Year

2023 Losses

 

Monday Morning Smile

 

MondayMorning Smile