@QMS Since I drink beer, I can keep it cold by putting it on the porch! No heat will be a pain for us, but the beer will be just fine.
People in Louisiana avoid NO. I get tempted, though. A client has an apartment in the French Quarter, says I can stay there anytime I wish, and that it is safe. But how does anyone feel safe when some guy in Houston knew just when and where the street bollards were being replaced on Bourbon St.? Like, was that broadcast on the news and he just happened to see it?
Speaking of bollards, I noticed last week that the nearby Walmart added more of them to their front doors. They now block vehicles both headed into the door, and now on both sides of the door. The Waltons are blessed with good instincts.
Will you get a dose of the Arctic storm, Blair? Stay warm, dear friend.

mostly framed in typical social engineering blather
can't say I'm surprised by your experiences in So. MS
like so many other things, ain't what we thought it used to be

Thanks for your efforts in posting this OT!

candy is dandy but likker is quicker ~

@la58 Brzezinski and the world would have been a safer place. His horrid legacy might have been less horrid.
Very interesting, la58.
Thanks mucho!

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/2024-12-29/jimmy-carter-declassi...

Washington, D.C., December 29, 2024 – The late President Jimmy Carter, contrary to the views of some critics, was typically focused, knowledgeable, and strong-willed on matters of foreign policy, often responding sharply to attempts by his most senior aides to bend his thinking, according to a review of the voluminous documentary record on Carter’s presidency.

A case in point is Carter’s relationship with his national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Every week, Brzezinski sent the president a memo intended to combine both factual reporting and personal observations on global affairs. Carter often wrote brief marginal notes on those memos in reply, which in retrospect open a window into his own thinking about the world and approaches to foreign policy.

A revealing example is Brzezinski’s April 21, 1978, “NSC Weekly Report,” an 8-page memo that immediately launches into a page-and-a-half appeal to modify and toughen administration foreign policy by doing more than just “negotiating agreements and devising formulas.” What was missing in the U.S. approach, Brzezinski wrote, was a hardnosed effort to “influence attitudes and to shape political events.” Sounding for all the world like his famously realpolitik predecessor, Henry Kissinger, Brzezinski called for a slew of other tactics, including an occasional “demonstration of force ... to infuse fear;” “saying publicly one thing and quietly negotiating something else;” “letting problems fester until they are ripe for action;” and using “black propaganda to stimulate difficulties for our proponents.” “The world,” he ended, “is just too complicated and turbulent to be handled effectively by negotiating ‘contracts’ while neglecting the need also to manipulate, to influence and to compel.”

Carter’s handwritten replies to most of these ideas are no more than a few words but they are graphic in conveying the president’s disapproval and even sarcasm regarding Brzezinski’s ideas. Next to the mention of force, he writes “Like Malaguez?” – a reference to a forcible rescue operation of a merchant ship (the Mayaguez) off Cambodia in 1975 that ended disastrously. Next to “saying publicly one thing,” he scribbles “Lying?” – an allusion to his core campaign pledge to reject the public dishonesty of the Nixon/Kissinger years and never to lie to the American people. In other places, he simply underlines the passage and puts a question mark in the margin. Finally, reacting to Brzezinski’s statement that he plans to develop some of these ideas further for the president, Carter writes: “You’ll be wasting your time.”

@Granma would I invest $5000 to go on another German Christmas Markets tour? Not any time soon.
News is not about informing us, but manipulating us.
Been that way since 1948.
Copycats will always copycat.
Interesting observation, chica. There is clearly a point where information that helps flips to be that which harms.

Around the world are copycats, IMO. One happens, lots of news coverage. There are more. Sometimes, on the anniversary of such an event, the press digs up that story, reminds us it happened a year ago. I honestly believe if the media did not give these coverage, there would be fewer.

If you think about it, did we all need to know about that first crowd smash? It is awful, heartbreaking. Gets lots of views. Inspires others. They try to think of a place where they can find a bigger crowd to drive into.

We need a more ethical media.

@soryang I will watch it after the trip to the grocery store.
Sachs is unimpeachable. We all need to clearly understand this insane pivot to Asia bs.
That bridge over the Mississippi River is a wild ride, fer shure. It was slow and crowded going, but coming back home, it was normal. It is a narrow sob, ain't it?
I-10-I-12 is a cluster, whether we use it to go to San Antonio, or toward Florida. The parallel Hwy 90 heading east from Texas is one traffic light after another.
Hope you are finally getting squared away with home repairs, etc...Our projects are hiring a crew to add a room to the house, and another crew to paint the house. Maintenance is never ending, storm or no storm!
Have a wonderful weekend, my friend, and always remind any and everyone that the US will get their asses handed to them in a war with China.

​​

NOW Neocons Are READY: Make Taiwan The Ukraine Of Asia | Jeffrey Sachs & Joanna Lei

Sachs insights are almost always worthwhile imo. Joanna Lei and Neutrality Studies do the English speaking world a great service by concisely characterizing the domestic situation in Taiwan with a DPP president, destroying the western propaganda about its vibrant democracy and shared values. She has a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of the US military strategy, and its motives.

Sachs points out the unlikely potential of the US to win a war on China's doorstep based upon a maniacal and unnecessary desire to "rule the world." This is one of the best presentations on Taiwan I have heard in years, (and I've listened to a lot of them in English by other credible observers who are fluent in Chinese and English) and Pascal living in Asia himself is to be commended for getting Lei and Sachs together for this discussion. I don't think anyone has lifted the veil on the Taiwan myth promoted in the west as Lei does here.

There are a lot of parallels in the Taiwan and Korean experiences that are particularly relevant now.

On the Cusp thanks for the O&E! Really liked the CCR tune. Can't believe I never heard it before. I've been back and forth on that 1-10/I-12 route hundreds of times. Only actually drove into NO proper once. Never really visited. I've told the story of crossing the Mississippi bridge near Baton Rouge many times in a fully loaded rig. Scary. I was always afraid it might collapse.

@snoopydawg And Bernie is harping Medicare for all again.
Excuse me. I must excuse myself to vomit.

.

From the files of you can’t make this up comes shitlibs begging dems not to vote to certify the election.

Didn’t they call republicans who didn’t want to vote to certify the election insurrectionists? Why yes they did. Even though democrats used the legal procedure not to certify the election 5 times before republicans did that.

And they are still defending incrementalism on the grounds that the founding fathers said that’s the way to accomplish things. I don’t remember reading about that before today.

I kept thinking that once the old guard democrats died out then some sanity would return to the democratic base, but it’s the younger people who are coming up with these ideas. There’s no hope. Once they’re old enough to see that democrats will always betray their base there will be a new generation of dem voters thinking that they can change the party from the inside. Rinse and repeat….

@Lookout We had a good time in Gulfport. Dear One's closest friend lives in Florida, has a daughter in Gulfport. We will coordinate, meet up there in the future. Surprisingly, our condo unit was the nicest one we have ever rented! The balcony was so big, you could get in your walkies by some back and forths across it!
Well, the roast is in the crock pot, so it is time to start reading your WW, dear friend!

I hope you had a nice trip to MS.

To follow up on the Sachs Lei conversation...more China bashing lies.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/01/indictment-debunks-china-hacking-c...

On October 25 2024 a number of main-stream media outlets were spreading an anti-Chinese propaganda campaign launched by U.S. national security sources.
The immediate occasion was an incident in which some hacker had gained access to a number of call records.
...
Media repeated those claims without any qualifications.
They were wrong.
Only ten weeks later the old reports are falling apart. Now a U.S. soldier is accused of hacking into the call data record databases and of publishing parts of them, presumably on his own behest.
...
There is no fact that would associate Wagenius with China or vice versa. The October claims of a Chinese hack just vanished. No one (but this little blog), certainly not NBCnews, will ever point out that the old claims, made by U.S. national security sources, of a Chinese hack were totally bollocks.
Be assured that any other claims made by national security sources of similar hacks by Chinese, Russian or Iranian actors are likely to be of similar quality.

Lies and more lies to propagate war. It is the US stock and trade!

Thanks for the OT!