Recent Comments

  • Reply to: The Evening Blues - 3-18-24   3 hours 3 min ago

    @joe shikspack

    It's a humorously visual rendition of a familiar song.

  • Reply to: 03/18 Open Thread Anniversary of the Oil Expropriation (Mexico)   3 hours 11 min ago

    @dystopian

    and fine marquetry sounds very cruisy ; )

  • Reply to: 03/18 Open Thread Anniversary of the Oil Expropriation (Mexico)   3 hours 21 min ago
  • Reply to: 03/18 Open Thread Anniversary of the Oil Expropriation (Mexico)   3 hours 23 min ago

    @QMS

    Thanks for the image.

  • Reply to: 03/18 Open Thread Anniversary of the Oil Expropriation (Mexico)   3 hours 25 min ago

    I was particularly taken with Eric Woolfson, who was new to me.

    Seeing the beauty of those two ships made me think I could possibly overcome on one of them, my lifelong tendency toward sea-sickness.

    Thanks el

  • Reply to: Is Pete Buttigieg the worst Secretary of Transportation in history?   5 hours 20 min ago

    @snoopydawg @snoopydawg Paul Craig Roberts believes the only option the Dems have is Hillary. He explains how he thinks this will happen. And then predicts the demise of the entire Western world by the end of the year.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mizuGhoJkU

  • Reply to: The Evening Blues - 3-18-24   5 hours 41 min ago

    @snoopydawg

    Thanks again snoopy.

  • Reply to: The Evening Blues - 3-18-24   5 hours 57 min ago

    @janis b

    What a fabulous story huh? I’m amazed that a bird could bond with a human like Russell has bonded with Otto. Otto will always have the memories of his good friend Otto to look back on. I wonder how long Russell will live?

    I vaguely remember the parakeet my grandma had, but he was friendly with us kids.
    Glad you enjoyed the video.

  • Reply to: The Evening Blues - 3-18-24   6 hours 9 min ago

    @joe shikspack

    Nevermind, I think I'll just laugh at it all ; ).

  • Reply to: Friday Night Photos La Biblioteca Edition   6 hours 16 min ago

    @orlbucfan

    Do you locals also call it Frangipani?

    The exhibition was last weekend, and I got some very nice feedback for my work. Thanks for asking.

  • Reply to: Is Pete Buttigieg the worst Secretary of Transportation in history?   6 hours 25 min ago

    All About Pete

    -- and --

    More About Pete

    Why support someone who gives no reason to trust that he cares about anything other than his career?

  • Reply to: Friday Night Photos La Biblioteca Edition   6 hours 26 min ago

    @dystopian

    What can be better than a lime in flavour and colour ; )

    Most leaves here are eternally one shade of green or another. At this time on my local travels I pass a few deciduous trees starting to turn colour, but nothing like what you get.

  • Reply to: The Evening Blues - 3-18-24   6 hours 28 min ago

    @snoopydawg

    i don't get how the propagandists expect us to believe that there was something hinky about the russian election when putin's approval ratings are consistently in the 80's (something no american president in living memory has achieved) and even the west's favorite opponent (now deceased) navalni never polled out of the single digits.

  • Reply to: The Evening Blues - 3-18-24   6 hours 32 min ago

    @janis b

    yep, sincerity and lying do seem to be mutually exclusive, but i guess if you believe the lie it makes appearing to be sincere easier.

    “The key to success is sincerity. If you can fake that you've got it made.”

    -- George Burns

  • Reply to: The Evening Blues - 3-18-24   6 hours 41 min ago

    @snoopydawg

    Thanks for the 'brilliant' and 'good feeling' tweets. They made my day ; ).

    Otto and Russell, what magic.

  • Reply to: The Evening Blues - 3-18-24   6 hours 42 min ago

    .

    Yet here he is appearing with the 3 other candidates that ran against him.

    One of the most remarkable moments in the aftermath of the election was Vladimir Putin appearing in Red Square with the three opposition political candidates who ran against him. All four men spoke to the crowd and pledged their allegiance to Mother Russia. Even the Communist candidate, who garnered around 4% of the vote, displayed no rancor and enthusiastically celebrated the 10th anniversary of Crimea’s return to the Russian Federation.

    Hey does anyone remember when Hillary was on stage ready to accept that she won the presidency, but then found out that Trump beat her and she left without giving her victory speech? Or something like that? Hillary will go down in history as the sorest loser ever. 6 years after she lost she is still blaming Putin for it.

  • Reply to: The Evening Blues - 3-18-24   6 hours 46 min ago

    Thank you joe for informing us with the news and blues.

    You chose an interesting quote to introduce Caitlin’s piece, which is spot on as usual. It made me wonder how can one lie with sincerity? Lying and sincerity don’t match. I always thought that sincerity was fundamental to being true to oneself and others. These psychopaths effortlessly deceive others, and in the process lose themselves. When so detached from themselves they become dangerous.

    Chris Hedges is always a good read.

    Fear has no hold in deindustrialized urban landscapes and the neglected wastelands of rural America, where families struggle without sustainable work, an opioid crisis, food deserts, personal bankruptcies, evictions, crippling debt and profound despair.

    It’s deeply repulsive that psychopaths are responsible for creating the conditions humanity live in. They fail, full stop.

    Good work by the climate activists in the North Sea.

    I guess the house owners in Salisbury learned a lesson. I feel badly about their predicament if it is their family home, and all their assets are in the home. If it’s just a business investment like an Airbnb, then they’ll just have to suck it up.

  • Reply to: 03/18 Open Thread Anniversary of the Oil Expropriation (Mexico)   6 hours 47 min ago

    The irony.

    Unfortunately timed to help bolster Yoon's party during the general election April 10. It also lends credence to Yoon's "fake (gajja) news" anti-disinformation campaign. There is an excellent summary of Yoon's repressive administration including efforts to suppress and control the media in this New Yorker article, published last year. A rare breath of fresh air in English language media. I got one free look at the article before I got the pay wall.

    The Worrying Democratic Erosions in South Korea

    This is from Reuters:

    SEOUL, March 18 (Reuters) - South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol joined U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other foreign officials this week in calling for measures to counter digital threats to freedom as Seoul hosted the Summit for Democracy.

    The event is the third of its kind after U.S. President Joe Biden established the summit in 2021.

    As the summit opened on Monday, Yoon's administration denied allegations that it had mobilized government agencies to coerce the media into more favourable coverage.

    Explainer: Why is South Korea hosting a 'Summit for Democracy'?

    In a prior news report Reuters claimed that any backsliding in South Korea was mostly about discrimination against women, and that other complaints about the Yoon administration were overstated.

    The Reuters report attempts to distract and minimize the South Korean democratic backsliding, and the obvious authoritarian inclination of the current far right Yoon administration because it caters to US and Japanese foreign policy goals.

    Democracy in South Korea took a step backward since Yoon took office, the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden said in an annual report last week, citing legal cases against figures associated with the previous administration, and assaults on gender equality and freedom of expression.

    Concerns about democratic backsliding in South Korea are likely overblown for the moment, and recent elections have been free, said Philip Turner, a former New Zealand ambassador to Korea.

    South Korea to host third democracy summit with digital threats on agenda

    This Hankyoreh column below outlines the real problem of the policies of Yoon Seok-yeol, Han Dong-hun, and other principal figures in the current PPP so called "new right" configuration:

    The claims they have made are farfetched and based on leaps of logic. A basic translation of them might read thusly: “The Constitutional Court dissolved the Unified Progressive Party because they were communists (added note-in 2014). Their successors in the Progressive Party are also communists. In forging an election alliance with the Progressive Party, the Democratic Party and its leader Lee Jae-myung are likewise communists. Don’t vote for communists.”

    After Korea’s liberation, members of the pro-Japanese collaborators branded many democracy advocates as “commies” and had them executed. This was an ideological maneuver, a ploy to achieve dictatorial rule while covering up their own misdeeds during the occupation.

    The column goes on to say that today's new right are the descendants of the pro-Japanese collaborator class. This is a key to understanding contemporary South Korea's domestic political scene. This is why statues of independence fighters must be removed from the military academy grounds, and the "bamboo spear song," must be ridiculed.

    The tiresome commie witch hunt of Korea's fake conservatives

    “Since the majority party is set on preventing serious crimes from being prosecuted under the law, we must stop that party from further mischief that would wreck this country’s present and future. We must also eliminate the politics of privilege for members of the protest generation who have held sway over that party for three decades now and who attempt to bully and indoctrinate generation after generation of Koreans. We have to stop the Democratic Party under the leadership of Lee Jae-myung from ruining this country as it seeks to enrich itself in collaboration with its hardline supporters and the privileged members of the protest generation,” Han said.

    The real reason for Yoon and Han's politics of antagonism and hate

    Members of the assembly elected by a majority of South Koreans are described as "privileged members of the protest generation" rather than the elected majority representing the South Korean people. Note the misuse of the term "collaboration." Everyone in South Korea knows the principal meaning of collaboration in historical context. Han'sYoon's use of the word in this way is Orwellian. Above democrats and progressives are characterized as "communists," here as privileged criminals. In fact, Yoon and Han with their politically motivated firings, and prosecutions of political rivals, labor and media figures and journalists, are doing the bidding of traditional corporate chaebol elites. Their interests and families thrived during the dictatorships and the earlier Japanese colonial period. They resent having to share power with the democratic opposition that wrested political and economic concessions from their privileged grasp.

    There seems to be an emerging consensus online that the democratic party isn't going to lose its majority in National Assembly although it could lose some seats. This is contrary to a recent bandwagon effect, the pollsters and conservative media tried to create in recent weeks in favor of the ruling conservative party. The new Innovation Party of former justice minister Cho Guk, whose family was devastated by Yoon/Han directed political prosecution, looks like it may take 10 or more seats in proportional representative elections. They are allied with the democratic party.

    Thanks for the OT enhydra lutris!

    (corrected a couple of typos)(had to make another correction)

  • Reply to: The Evening Blues - 3-18-24   6 hours 51 min ago

    @soryang

    yep, this is the government that they warned us about in civics class, but they told us to expect it to be a government from overseas.

    i am guessing that this time the people might have to step in and put the government in its place.

  • Reply to: The Evening Blues - 3-18-24   6 hours 59 min ago

    @snoopydawg

    a couple of weeks ago hi-test was $3.77/gallon and then pretty much overnight it went up to $3.99/gallon - mind you that's at the cheapest station in my area, there are much higher priced gas stations near me.

    food prices here are getting pretty ridiculous, too. pretty soon we'll have to take a wheelbarrow full of cash in to take a small bag of groceries out. lottery tickets are pretty much the only thing at the grocery store that appears to be unaffected by inflation.