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| Frank Krüger |
The Lord made me an American for some reason. When I was young, America had its warts and sordid history, but it was constantly striving to do better and often achieved that aim. A global leader, feared and respected. By and large, people felt lucky to live here. September 11, 2001, marked the beginning of the end, and it has been all downhill since that fateful day. People have changed. I am beyond sick and tired of American politics and the overall culture as it exists today. Alas, I am not a rich man and cannot take off for Europe or anywhere else on a whim, so I am stuck on this sinking ship; a ship of fools. Americans are not warmly welcomed in most places. Since at least 2016, but starting long before that, we are a laughingstock and pariah in the world, deservingly so. Soon, when the transition to all-out Fascism is complete and atrocity is the order of the day, Americans will be in the same boat as the Russian people: Legally barred from even entering most countries due to harsh sanctions placed upon us.America, as it exists in 2022, would seriously be better off being ruled by a wise, benevolent despot - if such a person even existed - rather than our individual lives and liberties being subjected to the whims of a mobocracy of malevolent fools. The Constitution and the system of governance it lays out are wonderful things, but not in the hands of arsonists. Not when the majority of the population are bullies, racists, pseudo-religious zealots, and/or gaggling, obese imbeciles. Perhaps the best, most humane solution would be for the United States to just break up at this point: For how long are people in New England, California, or Chicago going to put up with being lorded over by rednecks, hillbillies, bigots, zealots, and gun-toting neo-Nazis? Or, I suppose, vice versa? The system has failed, but only because the people themselves have allowed it to fail and are actively complicit in said failure. In other words, we have paid a heavy price for our previous success as a nation, and it was inevitable. All empires fall, all good things come to an end, everything is degraded in time. It’s all over but the shouting.
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| Alexandr Kryazhev/Sputnik/AP |
PUTIN’S WAR OF AGGRESSION AGAINST UKRAINEDavid Rothkopf: Putin’s last hope to win in Ukraine is a GOP victory in November - The American people will be stabbing the Ukrainians in the back, and shooting their own selves in the foot, if they put this radicalized, pro-Putin GOP into a Congressional majority. But even putting partisan politics and control of Congress aside, I am sensing very strongly that most Americans of all stripes want nothing to do with this war; and increasingly view Ukraine as a burden and at least partially to blame for their predicament. Bizarrely, but par for the course, the large #Cult45 contingent increasingly views Putin as a strong and moral leader, even as he is failing on an epic scale in both his aggression toward Ukraine and in keeping Russia from the precipice of societal breakdown. Just as the more incompetent Donald Trump was revealed to be during his rotten four years in office, the more they shouted at us (and continue to do so now) that he was some genius who was making us ‘great again.’ Pathetic, and a sign of widespread mental illness that has resulted from years of unchecked disinformation polluting the public sphere. Seriously, what could any halfway-logical person otherwise surmise, after all these years of non-stop scandal, non-stop corruption, and non-stop incompetence? Generally speaking, it tells me most Americans have little idea what competence actually is anymore, and we are seeing that reflected in everyday life as much as in politics, economics, etc. Widespread mental illness. The U.S. at this moment is exceptionally inward-looking and strongly given to isolationist sentiment, more so than since before World War II. It is an era of rampant populism and extreme grievance. The world, however, will not permit us to stand in our own little sandbox and fight amongst ourselves like toddlers forever. Another Pearl Harbor or 9/11 is always around the corner. The GOP of twenty years ago understood this. Not now. The Republican Party as it currently exists is a walking disaster, and sadly must be judged as an accurate reflection of the ethical and cognitive decay of the wider American public. The Democratic Party better get their act together: While they may not be lining up to kiss Putin’s ass and recklessly destroy the NATO alliance that has kept the Western world secure for almost seventy-five years, they are doing a lousy job of impressing upon the public what is at stake right here and now. {Daily Beast 10/21}
President Biden acknowledged a vitally important reality that the entire world should unequivocally understand by now: Nothing can be put past Vladimir Putin, and the man has a deathwish for himself and the entire planet - Putin outright said - on September 21, when he announced the mobilization - that he was not going to rule out using any and all weapons at his disposal. Pretty sure the nuclear gun will be all Russia has left, seeing as their men are being wiped out on the battlefield and they are losing equipment at startling rates. Have we forgotten this already? It’s only been a couple of weeks. Basically, President Biden was reiterating what Putin has already made clear. Mr. Biden, perhaps, is becoming a little irritated at how he is seeing too many Americans react to what is happening in Ukraine, the lack of any urgency to confront the Hitler of our time. And, best I can tell from the meltdown the populist #Cult45 callers to a local talk radio show heard while I was out driving about on Friday evening (October 7; Dan Rea, WBZ Boston), and from what I’m seeing expressed online, some Americans are angry at Joe Biden for pointing out the obvious. Angry at Biden because Putin is holding a nuclear gun to the world. Is the POTUS just supposed to ignore the threat to all humanity, for the sake of allowing #Muricans to keep their heads buried up their a**es!? WTF! Here we have a different kind of ‘BDS’ movement: Biden Dementia Syndrome. Putin - not Biden, or Zelensky, or anyone else getting blamed by morons and hateful ideologues - has made nuclear Armageddon an imminent possibility! If we do not back Ukraine, then the dominoes are going to fall and we ourselves will be the target (we’ve already long been a propaganda target, and look at how much damage that has done to America in the past decade. Precisely why many hearts and minds are in the gutter.)
I’ve never been in battle, I am no hero, yet I am beyond flabbergasted and disgusted at the attitudes of so many of the American people today. My ancestors who fought - and, in at least one case, died - Nazism must be rolling in their graves, and I take it as a personal insult to their memories. Imagine, had FDR stated prior to the U.S. entering WWII, that Hitler was serious about annihilating millions of Jews. And instead of condemning Hitler, they ‘shot the messenger’ instead? Imagine that the scale of appeasement, defeatism, and outright treason we have now was present then, and what that would have done to the morale of America’s troops and the citizens on the homefront once entry into the European theater became unavoidable? Actually there were considerable numbers of Americans - perhaps even FDR himself - who were incapable of understanding the horrendous extent of the Nazis’ capacity for genocide in the years leading up to the war, and even during it. Some of those out of hate, but most out of just simply not being aware how bad it was. Domestically, the war against the Japanese was generally regarded as the more pressing fight. Perhaps a sense of remorse over the shameful treatment of German-Americans (including my own great-grandfather and his wife and family) during the First World War, along with the obvious racism toward Japanese and Japanese-Americans (regardless of any individuals’ complicity or lack thereof in Imperial Japan’s war crimes) played a part in the Nazis being regarded as the secondary enemy. Only after the war ended, and when the footage from the liberated camps emerged, were people forced to truly grasp that the evil motherf**ker in Berlin meant exactly what he was saying about the Jews and his designs for global, ‘Aryan’ domination. Yes, there was an ‘America First,’ Nazi-friendly movement in the 1930s, and it was not entirely benign, and there was a level of unawareness during the war of the horrors of Nazism; nonetheless, the pre-war American pro-Nazi movement was fringe, it didn’t have a Fox News and an Internet to spread its perverted gospel, and went entirely silent after Pearl Harbor.
Let us stress this once again: In Putin’s case, he is not making any bones about what he is doing, and today there is zero excuse for being ignorant and misinformed, only widespread willingness to be such. Putin is blatantly destroying his own economy, his own military, and his own people - ultimately it is they who suffer most - as the price for being allowed to destroy Ukraine. With the mask of rationality that he wore for so long now having been removed, how can it not be evident to anyone that this guy is such a power-hungry tyrant that he will take down the whole world with him? In his very final days in the bunker, Hitler demanded scorched earth: Upon Germany, that is, as punishment for not achieving *his* grand designs. Literal scorched earth in that all homes, buildings, and infrastructure - those not already destroyed by Allied and Soviet bombing - were to be demolished. Underestimate a psychopath with the fate of the world in his hands at one’s own peril, and never appease: Whether the only reason for doing so is merely another excuse to stupidly yell ‘Let’s Go Brandon!,’ or out of genuine admiration for Putin and longing for his brutal style of governance, or a mix of both (usually it is with #Cult45.) Furthermore, the underlying lack of respect and care for the Ukrainian people - the victim-blaming and victim-shaming - that is present in all these calls for appeasement of Putin is growing extremely disturbing to me. The next thing President Biden must do is strongly condemn this rising Ukrainophobia, and all Americans who do support Ukraine must shut down those Americans - and elected officials and public figures - who are willing to let it be wiped off the map. Perhaps that aforementioned radio host should be educating his jacka** callers about that instead of allowing them free reign to defame the President of the United States and even engaging in a bit of it himself. {NYT 10/07}
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy suggests U.S. aid to Ukraine will end if the GOP regains control of the House - A vote for the Republican Party is a vote for Putin. No hyperbole, it is vital that Americans reject these compromised stooges. Incompetent buffoons they are, they will do nothing to improve the economy or life in the United States, but they will sell us out to our enemies, impoverish us, and rob individuals of their liberties. That seems like an awfully high price to pay because people are irrationally upset at President Biden over something - inflation - that is largely out of his hands, and is far worse globally. Americans are unholy idiots, though, and are just growing more idiotic with the passing of time. {WaPo 10/18}
Rep. Liz Cheney, former VP Mike Pence call out fellow Republicans for turning their backs on Ukraine and appeasing Putin. {National Review 10/19}
Pentagon announces another $275 million in aid to Ukraine, mostly to resupply ammunition for existing weapons systems - Слава Україні. {AP 10/28}
Tennessee man who fought alongside the Ukrainians: ‘Anybody in the West that asks Ukraine to just do peace talks, they need to go through these villages. They need to see what's been done to these people.’ {CBS News 10/27}
U.S. State Department: ‘Iranian military personnel were on the ground in Crimea helping the Russian military operate drones provided by Tehran to conduct strikes across Ukraine.’ {Reuters 10/20}
NATO’s secretary general calls on member states to step up arms supplies to Ukraine - Overwhelming, unrelenting force. However long it takes, whatever the price tag. No other option, unless we desire a global nuclear winter. #StopPutin #StandUpForUkraine {NYT 10/11}
NATO nations reject Russia’s allegation that Ukraine will use ‘dirty bombs’ as a false pretense for further escalation. {DW 10/24}
Tens of thousands of pro-Putin, Ukrainophobic leftists and right-wing populists march in Prague to demand the resignation of the pro-Western Czech government. {AP 10/28}
Putin’s goons are literally pulling men off the street and forcing them to fight in Ukraine - How does Putin expect to win a ‘special operation’ without his troops having proper training? In fact, there is little-to-no training whatsoever of the latest batch of recruits. ‘(C)cannibalizing its male population.’ Yet, here in #Murica, #Cult45 sees this man and Russia as pillars of strength; some see Russia this way merely because they are stupid and misinformed, but most because they envy the boundless cruelty with which Russians treat their enemies, and one another. Yet another reason never why populist bozos must never been heeded, for they are already doing a fair job of turning the United States into a ‘s**thole country,’ under the direction of Putin’s orange puppet. Pure barbarism. FTA: ‘Police and military press-gangs in recent days have snatched men off the streets and outside Metro stations. They’ve lurked in apartment building lobbies to hand out military summonses. They’ve raided office blocks and hostels. They’ve invaded cafes and restaurants, blocking the exits.’ {WaPo 10/16}
Russian authorities demand clergy of all faiths to cheerlead for Putin’s war, or else. Former chief rabbi of Moscow, Pinchas Goldschmidt: My first Yom Kippur in exile. {NYT 10/02}
Journalist Marina Ovsyannikova escapes house arrest and flees Russia - One very brave lady. {Sky News 10/17}
Putin declares martial law in illegally annexed areas of Ukraine, sets ‘the stage for draconian new restrictions and crackdowns throughout Russia’ {AP 10/19}
‘Russian forces retreated from the strategic eastern Ukrainian city of Lyman on Saturday, a humbling setback for President Vladimir V. Putin just one day after he illegally declared the surrounding region to be part of Russia.’ {NYT 10/01}
The Kerch Bridge, Russia’s only bridge linking Crimea to mainland, has been severely damaged in explosion - Another cataclysmic setback for the aggressor: This is the only major land conduit Russia has to supply their forces in Kherson and Zaporihzhia. Слава Україні {FT 10/08}
Russia unleashes brutal assault on civilian targets throughout Ukraine, cries ‘retaliation’ for Kerch Bridge attack - In the mind of any given oppressor, his actions are always justified and the one he is oppressing is the real threat to order. Any attempt by his victims at fighting back will always be met with incredulity, and by doubling and tripling down. Decades ago, when I was an awkward and bullied child bereft of any sort of confidence, I was always told to ‘ignore’ the bullies and they would back off. Rarely was I ever told to fight back, and never by the adults in my life. ‘Just ignore them.’ Sometimes that worked, but not very often; with those who seriously hated me, they were tireless in their fierce determination to subjugate me. When I did fight back, I would be blamed by said adults and told I was the problem. Kind of like how people are pointing the finger at the Ukrainians. Victim-blaming and victim-shaming works. The torture did not cease until we all graduated and went all own ways in life; hell, some of those motherf**kers still probably hate me, decades later. And I still hate them, but I digress. Vladimir Putin is tenacious and will see his demonic designs through to the bitter end. This is a desperate act by a man desperately trying to save face, and he is going to grow more desperate and dangerous. He only has two advantages: Nuclear weaponry, and an extremely effective propaganda machine that continues to convince people around the world - particularly in #Murica - that he is a man of strength, his cause is just, and it is ‘the West’ that are the true villains; even as all evidence says otherwise and Russia is collapsing from within. {AP 10/10}
‘Russia's Defence Ministry said on Monday that it had prepared its forces to work in conditions of radioactive contamination, after Moscow accused Ukraine of planning to detonate a "dirty bomb" - something Kyiv has strongly denied.’ {Reuters 10/24}
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid condemns Russia’s attacks on civilian targets. {Jerusalem Post 10/11}
The Russian-installed puppet leader of the occupied southern Kherson region accuses Ukraine of attacking its own people, urging residents to ‘save themselves’ by evacuating to Russia for ‘leisure and study.’ {BBC 10/13}
Russians begin forced evacuation of civilians in occupied Kherson in advance of expected Ukrainian offensive. {DW 10/19}
In spite of the renewed enemy assault on Kyiv and other cities, Ukrainian forces in the field continue to decimate the Russians: Ukrainian Air Force destroys nineteen kamikaze drones and five Ka-52 attack helicopters in one day of fighting. {New Voice of Ukraine 10/13}
‘NATO and Russia’s military alike staged planned annual nuclear exercises Wednesday as the Russian president repeated the unfounded claim that Ukraine plans to set off a radioactive “dirty bomb.”’ {AP 10/26}
Nine NATO countries - Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia - issue joint statement calling for Ukraine’s admittance into the group. {AP 10/02}
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz: ‘Putin’s war against Ukraine and all of the free world will fail.’ {DW 10/20}
Russia resumes blockade of Ukrainian ports after accusing Ukraine of staging drone attacks on their Black Sea fleet, threatening hunger for millions in developing countries. {AP 10/30}
Billionaire Elon Musk implores Ukraine to cede Crimea to Vladimir Putin, drawing rebuke from President Zelensky - Musk believes more Ukrainians will die if they do not cede land to Russia and declare neutrality. Well, more very well may die, but issuing any concessions to a bully is unacceptable and will only encourage other bad actors on the world stage. Particularly when the Ukrainians have that bully and his armed forces on the ropes, it would be the height of foolishness to give up and give in now. Ukrainians are proving themselves to be supremely resilient, and resistant to any sort of defeatism. Complete and total victory is the only option; not only on the battlefield but in the propaganda war, as well. This Musk guy clearly has designs on obtaining great political power, but he ought to stick to hawking electric automobiles; just as Donald Trump should have stuck to real estate and hosting TV game shows. {NBC News 10/03}
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| Riccardo Fabi/NurPhoto |
GEOPOLITICS & WORLD NEWSPresident Biden vows consequences after the Saudis conspire with Russia to slash oil production - And still the goobers will be sticking those Biden ‘I did that’ stickers on gas pumps as prices go up again. Patriotic Americans, blaming their president and turning a blind eye to the real villains. Anyway, as for Saudi Arabia, I am firmly among those saying ‘no more’ to arms sales or anything else to these Satan-worshiping desert rats. They’ve long been a covert enemy of the United States, and playing footsie with Putin ought to be the final straw in this camel’s back. {Reuters 10/11}
President Biden releases 15 million barrels from the strategic oil reserve after Putin and the Saudis conspire to cut production and send gas prices skyrocketing again. {NPR 10/19}
ExxonMobil leaves Russia following the expropriation of its assets. {Reuters 10/17}
Leaders of democracies increasingly echo Putin in authoritarian tilt. {WaPo 10/16}
The DOJ has indicted five Russian nationals in a sanctions evasion scheme involving U.S. military technology and smuggled oil from Putin’s client state of Venezuela. {WaPo 10/20}
Finland takes the global lead in combating Russian disinfo - The United States *could* learn something from this thriving, highly educated society: To teach school children critical thinking. It won’t, as most American adults lack the ability. {BBC 10/13}
‘Canada is imposing sanctions on 34 individuals and one entity that it says are complicit in dissemination of Russian disinformation and propaganda.’ - Needs to happen here, and in every western nation. {Reuters 10/17}
Germany to extend the life of its remaining nuclear power plants amid energy crisis. {DW 10/17}
Xi Jinping consolidates his power and installs more loyalists to high positions as unprecedented third term as Chinese president begins - Where have we seen this before, where in a large and powerful nation one man gradually concentrates so much authority in himself, and everybody else have become such spineless jellyfish that nobody will dare correct or overrule him when he goes mad? {DW 10/24}
Xi’s bellicose vow of Chinese world dominance by 2049 sends global markets reeling. {Bloomberg 10/26}
‘British defence intelligence is to issue a rare “threat alert”, warning that China’s military is trying to recruit serving and former RAF jet pilots to help train its own air force with generous recruitment packages.’ {The Guardian 10/17}
‘American officials are intensifying efforts to build a giant stockpile of weapons in Taiwan after studying recent naval and air force exercises by the Chinese military around the island.’ - Absolutely vital that Taiwan be prepared for the inevitable. {NYT 10/05}
Taiwan’s government declares it will not back down to China on its sovereignty. {Reuters 10/16}
The United States warns Hong Kong against becoming a safe haven for fugitive Russian oligarchs. {Insider 10/08}
‘Let it rot.’ China’s middle class in crisis - FTA: ‘Incomes are no longer rising while the cost of living is increasing by leaps and bounds. And there is a lot of social pressure. To be considered “successful,” you’ve got to be able to live in such and such a neighbourhood; send your children to such and such a school; wear clothes from this brand; and own that make of car.’ {France 24 10/16}
‘Death to the dictator!’ Public anger, particularly among women, only keeps rising as anti-government protests continue in Iran, in spite of bloody crackdown. {AP 10/09}
72-year-old dual citizen of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia is tortured and sentenced to 16 years in a Saudi prison over tweets critical of the kingdom. {Insider 10/19}
Brazil on edge after hard-left candidate Lula wins presidential election, far-right incumbent Bolsonaro and his supporters expected to dispute the result. {Reuters 10/30}
Thailand: ‘An ex-policeman has killed at least 37 people, most of them children, in a gun and knife attack at a childcare centre’ - I suppose we can no longer say America is the only country where this sort of thing happens. The sickness is spreading. {BBC 10/06}
Over 100 dead in Indonesian soccer match stampede. {AP 10/01}
County Donegal, Ireland: Seven confirmed dead following gas station explosion - Needless to say, a terrible and sudden way to go. Prayers for all affected. {Sky News 10/08}
Interview with journalist Elle Hardy: One out of every ten people in the world will be a Pentecostal by the year 2050. {Times of Israel 10/15}
Canada announces it will help purchase land on Juno Beach to save it from condominium developers - A grand-uncle of mine died in the vicinity of Juno Beach, fighting for the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, on June 7, 1944. On his behalf, I am grateful this action is being taken. {BBC 10/07}
New Italian PM Meloni puts on a mostly moderate front in her first address to Parliament, but does boldly claim that Italians ‘do not have any lessons to learn from anyone’ - No lessons to be learned, and nobody to learn anything from? Funny, just about all Germans of the post-war era would never make such a claim about themselves, knowing their unfortunate record in the past century. And, say, wasn’t Italy aligned with the Nazis and the Axis Powers? Didn’t they actually start this whole Fascism thing - somewhat concurrently but officially well before the Nazis came to power - under the thumb of one Benito Mussolini? Yes, and yes, of course. I will stop there before I say something cruel and/or unwarranted. and simply state that ‘I beg to differ’ with Giorgia Meloni on that account. No nation, no individual, no entity is above learning the lessons of history. As we could sadly attest to here in #Murica; that is, if most of us had any f**king clue or care what is going on. *If* this moderate stance does reflect how Giorgia Meloni will lead, then I will certainly take back my initial criticisms of her. But, when in history has most any obvious totalitarian *not* have initially presented themselves to their given populaces as committed to pluralism and civil liberties? Few and far between. {Reuters 10/25}
Thousands march in Mussolini’s hometown to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the March on Rome - FTA: ‘Organizers warned participants, who arrived from as far away as Rome, Belgium and the United States, not to flash the Roman salute used by the Fascists, or they would risk prosecution. Still, some couldn’t resist … A young American man wearing a T-shirt with a hand-drawn swastika inside a heart and the words “Brand New Dream,” and a fascist fez said he had timed his European vacation to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the March on Rome so he could participate in the march in Predappio. He declined to identify himself, other than to say he was from New Jersey, and lamented there was no fascist group back home to join.’ {AP 10/30}
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| Henry Nicholls/Reuters |
Liz Truss resigns as British Prime Minister after just six weeks - Apart from the absurd, outright seditious manner in which #Cult45 approaches President Biden, no politician in the United States faces this level of scrutiny and accountability, and not least of which by their own given party. No American leader would gracefully step aside once it became clear they had failed: If that were the case, Donald Trump would have been done in half the time of Truss (44 days as of October 20.) The American public is conditioned to support trickle-down economics, and has been so for decades. The British public was out for blood. For all her faults, Liz Truss is a reasonable human being, not some cartoon caricature as is typical in our rotten country. This all said, Conservatives have formed the government in the UK for twelve consecutive years, and it’s been a revolving door of Prime Ministers with very mixed results, to put it kindly. At least the Brits can take solace in that they don’t have to live in the dying United States of America, and are not very likely at risk of being a tyrannical hellhole run by insane ChristoFascists anytime soon. {BBC 10/20}Kwasi Kwarteng sacked as UK Chancellor - Liz Truss was a mere six weeks into her now-defunct premiership, but had severely lost the trust of the UK public. Frankly, while she did not display a great deal of competence, I seriously feel bad for the lady, as well as for Kwame. The UK Conservative Party is not even one-tenth as nuts or as extreme as our GOP has become, yet the British public remains boiling mad and poised to ‘throw the bums out.’ While in #Murica, large segments are literally begging for Fascism. Americans just pile on President Biden for anything that goes wrong, and the more loony any given politician is - a Bernie or AOC-type on the hard-left, or Trump and his acolytes on the far-right - the more the press and the general public showers them with attention. In America, nobody is interested in serious governance or real solutions to real problems. Politics has been reduced to a mere team sport, and Americans vote solely on how much pain a given politician promises to bring to all those people in society they hate. That is simply the short and the long of it, Americans want to kill one another and appeals to common sense and reason are useless. In retrospect, it really is remarkable that we somehow managed to get an old-fashioned politician like Joe Biden (barely) elected president in this circus atmosphere. It would not have happened were it not for the extraordinarily inept response to COVID-19. It took an epic plague, which has taken over a million American lives, to get the general public to hold the most corrupt, unqualified leader in presidential history accountable. Still, they only barely did so - 74 million or so abject morons enthusiastically voted for another four years of the orange douchebag, while much of the 81 million that elected President Biden had to be dragged kicking and screaming into bothering to vote. Still, the jackass is a free man, and the moment the handcuffs are put on is the moment we are going to see a bloody uprising. The upcoming mid-term elections will tell us all we need to know: The American public can never again be trusted to vote responsibly. For all of their problems, the United Kingdom is a far more sane and civilized society than ours, and they will still be standing long after #Murica has been confined to history’s dustbin. The UK will get through this economic crisis, and will do so with dignity. ‘Dignity,’ a word that is not even in the American vocabulary anymore. {Sky News 10/15}
Eugene Robinson: Liz Truss’ fall is a warning to populists everywhere - Key passage: ‘The Conservative Party is in power because it embraced populism, which turns out to be a good way to win elections but an impossible way to govern.’ {WaPo 10/21}
Rishi Sunak to officially be the next British Prime Minister and Conservative Party boss after Penny Mordaunt drops out of leadership race - Wishing him luck. My gut says the clamor for a general election is not going to subside anytime soon. {Sky News 10/24}
Boris Johnson’s full statement announcing that he will not seek a return to the Conservative Party leadership and No. 10 Downing Street. {BBC 10/24}
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| Eric Risberg/AP |
POLITICAL S**TSHOW IN #MURICAPaul Pelosi, husband of the Speaker of the House, severely beaten at his home, 42-year-old suspect in custody - #Murica has seen many troubling incidents of political violence over the last decade, harbingers of what is to come: January 6, the Charlottesville debacle, the various race riots, skirmishes at Trump rallies, Occupy Wall Street, the violent protests against COVID restrictions, and so forth. Gabby Giffords, Steve Scalise, Rand Paul, and the husband of the most powerful person in Congress have been assaulted by raging lunatics. This is not even the first violent incident at the Pelosi house: A radical anarchist group once left a pig’s head in their driveway. We’re only getting started. Americans today zealously guard their freedom of speech, but only theirs. Whichever direction they’re coming from, Americans have become obsessed with shutting down opposition. Being a ‘liberal’ or a ‘conservative’ (neither term really applies anymore, but let’s not get too pedantic here) is held by the other side as akin to literal treason. Even outside the sphere of politics, Americans can no longer agree to disagree: For instance, try criticizing certain pop culture figures that their fans have deemed infallible, and those armies of online sycophants will make it their business to shame and silence the offending party. ‘Tolerance’ is a word we’ve heard a lot of for many decades, but I’m not seeing very much tolerance of any kind anymore, from hardly anybody.
For longer than I can now remember, I have suffered through intense premonitions of a day when Americans would no longer be able to live amongst each other, where a violent civil war would ensue. These premonitions are uncontrollable and take so much out of me, mentally and physically. The fact that I have yet to endure a heart attack (did have a scare around this time two years ago) or a stroke during one of these episodes is a wonder, but that is coming. The worst part is that everything is coming to pass, just as I’ve been seeing and sensing it. Very soon now, violent mobs will be canvassing door-to-door and in every neighborhood in this country, demanding that all take sides (their side.) We’ll see atrocities committed against millions of innocent civilians. People want to rip each others’ heads off, for we simply do not like one another. America is a pressure valve about to burst, with mass violence being the only possible result. In earlier times there was a terrible civil war, one that the country never healed from in earnest but there was a political reunification that held for 157 years. Reunification is not going to be the result this time. Nor are the Confederates very likely to lose again. Not when they have all the guns, not with their numbers, not with numerous sympathetic authorities and politicians leading them, and not with the extreme ideological zeal these people have been infused with for several decades via talk radio, cable news, et al. Most Democratic constituencies cannot be bothered to vote in large numbers most years, and they’re not going to save the day in 2022. The nationalist populist right is engaged to the max, and are counting on their enemies to throw in the towel and capitulate. The United States was a great country, but what a heavy price we are now paying for it. Wish Paul Pelosi a speedy recovery. This is inexcusable. {AP 10/28}
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| David Szauder/Washington Post |
Potential scenarios of what would happen if/when Trump is returned to the presidency - The 2020 presidential election may have been an outlier, and just barely, but I am tired of giving the benefit of the doubt to a nation of people who appear determined to ‘f**k around and find out’ when it comes to embracing ChristoFascism. Trump and the GOP accomplished nothing of worth in the four years he was president; his sole ‘achievements’ were passing a tax cut bill that did not help poor and middle class Americans, and installing three glorified Republican politicians in robes to the Supreme Court. Even before we get to the corruption and the tyranny, he was an abject failure at governing. The response to COVID-19 alone should have been enough to forever render Trump and most Republicans unelectable for many years to come. No modern U.S. president has ever bungled a national crisis in as epic a fashion as Donald Trump did with COVID. In all of American history, only James Buchanan’s disastrous handling (or lack thereof) of the secession crisis of 1860-61 compares in sheer mismanagement. Seven f**king years since he came down that escalator, and half or more of us still can’t see what an incompetent buffoon this is!? Seven years of this, and these people are still shouting at the rest of us, ‘you gotta support Trump!’ Well, I shouldn’t be so flabbergasted, though I still am: The American people themselves are largely buffoons. Come on, let’s stop pretending we are such a wonderful nation of beautiful people: We are a nation of geeks, dweebs, bullies, illiterates, drug addicts, criminals, heretical religious zealots, and obese slobs. If modern Americans were serious-minded, this would never have happened. The most obvious of conmen - a man who was widely known as a tabloid joke for decades prior - would still be hawking real estate in New York. Especially among GOP voters - simple-minded, populist fools they are - competence no longer enters into the equation for most Americans. No, people of all stripes only want somebody to tell them what they want to hear, and to hurt the segments of society that they hate. If the American people were even one-tenth as ‘good’ or as intelligent as we tell ourselves we are, a reprobate like Donald Trump would not have been elected president in 2016, and certainly would not be the leading Republican contender for 2024. The fact that after seven long years of this garbage, and with his miserable track record, millions still tenaciously cling to this bastard and are more aggressive than ever in trying to force him upon the rest of us really speaks volumes as to what we have become. Ladies and gentlemen, I have reached peak exasperation with this ridiculous country and ridiculous moment in history. Or have I? For it is only going to get worse. Vast, polyglot empires always collapse in time, and time is just about up. {WaPo 10/14}‘The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected former President Donald Trump’s plea to step into the legal fight over the FBI search of his Florida estate’ - If this corrupted, far-right court does not consider their enabler and master to have a case, then the motherf**ker doesn’t have a case. {AP 10/13}
Yet another complete failure for Trump and company. Don’t f**k with the FBI - ‘Mr. Trump and his supporters had long insisted the Durham inquiry would prove a “deep state” conspiracy against him, but despite pursuing various such claims, Mr. Durham never charged any high-level government officials.’ {NYT 10/18}
Trump questioned under oath in defamation suit brought by writer E. Jean Carroll. {Sky News 10/20}
Trump-era DHS official says he believes the ex-president wanted members of Congress killed on January 6, 2021, as a pretext for declaring martial law and remaining in power in perpetuity. {Raw Story 10/13}
Former Trump aides testify before the J6 committee that the former president admitted he lost the election: ‘I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark (Meadows.) This is embarrassing. Figure it out.’ {The Guardian 10/13}
Former Trump WH chief of staff Mark Meadows ordered to testify before Georgia grand jury investigating GOP efforts to reverse 2020 presidential election results. {WaPo 10/26}
Jennifer Rubin: Will the GOP condemn Donald Trump’s latest anti-semitic remark? Of course not - A stupid and mean-spirited party for a stupid and mean-spirited country. FTA: ‘Virtually the only time Republicans condemn antisemitism is when it comes from the left. And now that so many in the GOP fear offending White Christian nationalists and followers of Rep. Marjorie “Jewish space lasers” Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), there is no chance the GOP will condemn Trump’s bile.’ {WaPo 10/17}
Adam Milstein: Why the Golden Age for Jews in America is coming to an end - Americans are walking into the same anti-semitic trap that Germans in the 1930s walked into under Hitler. How did that end for the Germans? {Jerusalem Post 10/19}
Trump charged Secret Service ‘exorbitant’ rates at his hotels, records show - Somebody, somewhere, previously reported this while Trump was in office. I wish I could remember which outlet(s) ran with the story and the exact timeframe, but I do recall sharing it. Why would anybody be surprised? Trump demands loyalty from all, but he himself has zero loyalty to anyone or anything. The willingness and duty of Secret Service agents to protect his stupid ass - even giving their own lives if necessary - means nothing to him or his millions of acolytes. {WaPo 10/17}
Steve Bannon remains a free man following sentencing on criminal contempt of Congress conviction - Judge Carl Nichols sentences Bannon to four months in prison, but deems the neo-Fascist operative not to be a flight risk or danger to the community; thus, he can remain free during the appeal process. None of these people are ever going to be made, in earnest, to pay for their crimes in this sick joke of a nation; at least not as long as most citizens continue to bury their heads in the sand. Millions of us may eventually be locked up in concentration camps, all because we were too lazy, or too overconfident in the health of our economic and political systems, or perhaps too complicit to see the clear-and-present Fascist danger. Americans cannot be bothered to learn from history, not even from events in relatively recent history such as the Holocaust. The 21st century United States will go down as one of the cruelest, most self-destructive, and dumbest nations/empires in all of history. Every single day of late, everybody and everything here are living down to already pitifully-low expectations. So I can barely wait for the day, whenever and however it arrives, that I am freed from this s**tshow. In a sane and moral country, Steve Bannon would have been sent to the gallows for treason long ago. {NPR 10/21}
Convicted felon Steve Bannon directly threatens Dr. Anthony Fauci and family - Somehow a free man while his slap-on-the-wrist sentence is being appealed. Free to issue what amounts to a death threat, without consequence, on a respected medical leader. Based on nothing more than crackpot conspiracy theories. Yet, few are alarmed: COVID is ‘over,’ and they are too busy whining over the price of a Big Mac, and fretting about what others are doing with their private parts. {The Independent 10/25}
Georgetown University historian rails against the media for treating Republicans like they’re 'normal candidates' - For those of you who have still to figure out that most of the American news media and Trump Inc. are walking hand-in-hand. {Raw Story 10/18}
DeAnna Lorraine and Lauren Witzke, former GOP congressional candidates turned professional conspiracy mongers, allege Hurricane Ian was created by the ‘Deep State’ with weather manipulation technology specifically to target Gov. Ron DeSantis. {Insider 10/01}
Come on, Georgia, 'y'all' couldn't possibly be this stupid. Right? ‘If (Herschel) Walker is elevated to political office, he could become a useful cautionary tale for racists to illustrate why politicians of color are a bad idea.’ {Njeri Mathis Rutledge 10/13}
‘Three major medical associations have asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate and prosecute people who are threatening violence against children's hospitals and physicians that provide gender-affirming health care.’ {CBS News 10/04}
Jennifer Rubin on the ‘masculinity crisis’ in the GOP. {WaPo 10/20}
Connecticut jury orders Alex Jones to pay $965 million in damages to the families of eight Sandy Hook victims - Absolutely the right verdict. Unfortunately, my gut tells me those families are never going to see a cent, as he simply does not have the money to give. He will appeal, possibly to the Supreme Court, and we all know that corrupted body is on the same ideological crusade as Jones and company. Alex Jones will legally get out of this, while public opinion appears to be shifting rapidly to the far-right - how else to explain how a political party engaging in sedition and telling everybody they are going to take their rights away is poised to regain Congress? How else to explain the increasing adulation Americans express for Vladimir Putin and lack of concern for Ukraine? How else to explain why we all gave up on fighting COVID and gave in to the anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, and conspiracy goofs? Need I go trying to explain all this bulls**t going on around us? Americans are growing cold and distant, they are shunning the truth in favor of whatever their preferred narratives are; the majority of Americans are becoming good little Fascists, period. Fascists or not, nearly all Americans hate their fellow citizens and are demanding a purge of society. Exactly what the GOP is going to facilitate, and Alex Jones will be handsomely rewarded for his considerable efforts in bringing about this horrifying state of affairs. The Sandy Hook families have been in grave danger for nearly a decade, and they’re going to face harassment or worse for years to come. When Fascism arrives in full, after 2024, they may even have to flee the country to avoid being killed or persecuted. Sounds crazy? Everything happening now sounded like science-fiction in December 2012, when those babies were sacrificed. Today, the Sandy Hook families achieved a moral and legal victory, but neither their babies nor their country are coming back. #Murica is an incredibly cruel, wicked, unfair place where good is evil and evil is good; it will not be saved. {WaPo 10/12}
Sandy Hook families seek $2.75 trillion from Alex Jones - Obviously, the families are never going to receive that astronomical sum, and are not even very likely to reap the standing judgment of $965 million. They know all that: Essentially, this is about making it so cost-prohibitive to lie about and smear innocent people that Alex Jones, and the myriad of other hate-mongers, will refrain from doing so in the future. It is a worthy attempt at obtaining real accountability. I will continue to support these families, even as I am skeptical that anything short of the harshest penalties imaginable - going well beyond financial ones - are ever going to stop hateful and violent people from destroying lives. Truth be told, there is not enough money in the universe to ever repair the damage that has been done to the psyches of these individuals. And no matter the massive judgments against him, Alex Jones will never be sorry for sowing mass chaos and hurting others. He is a proud and shameless psychopath, bully, and seditious traitor who will wear all of this as a badge of honor until the day he dies. {Bloomberg 10/21}
'Mr. Jones may attempt to turn real-life tragedies into walk-on parts in his distorted fictional universe, (but) he hasn’t escaped the real world. In that world, our world, there are consequences.' Anna Merlan: ‘Alex Jones picked on the wrong people’ in the Sandy Hook families. {NYT 10/14}
Texas-sized grifters: Alex Jones’ Infowars bankruptcy turns spotlight to family, friends. {Bloomberg 9/30}
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| Joshua Roberts/Reuters |
Boston-area police officer on paid leave after it is discovered he helped organize the infamous, anti-semitic ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Virginia in 2017 - From a neighboring community to the one I live in, just a few miles north of the city. Hardly a bastion of neo-Nazi activity, or at least not on the surface. If law enforcement here cannot be trusted to refrain from engaging in sedition and white supremacism, then I can only imagine how bad the situation must be in the places where rednecks, hillbillies, and Christo-Fascists are in charge. Sadly, as I’ve been saying all along, the types of individuals drawn to careers in law enforcement also tend to be very susceptible to right-wing, populist propaganda. A damn shame, because most of us really do support and appreciate those first responders who serve honorably, and we have not liked all this ‘defund’ and anti-cop rhetoric coming from the hard-left. So to see police embracing the opposite extreme, and giving actual cause for their detractors’ concerns, may not be too surprising but it does make me sick. Abandon all hope, the people of this country keep letting all of humanity down, and are determined to repeat the mistakes a far greater country made about 90 years ago. {CBS Boston 10/13}Brooklyn Nets issue mealy-mouthed statement after player (noted anti-vaxxer, all around pain-in-the-ass) Kyrie Irving plugs anti-semitic filth on his social media. {ESPN 10/29}
Adidas cuts ties with anti-semitic rapper Kanye West. {CNN 10/25}
Anti-semitic messages projected onto buildings in Jacksonville, FL - ‘Kanye was right about the Jews’ among them. {The Independent 10/30}
Putin acolyte, Fox News contributor, and former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard announces she is leaving the Democratic Party - How about leaving for Moscow, and never returning, Tulsi? {Yahoo! News 10/11}
U.S. Army falls 25% short of its recruiting goal - FTA: ‘Exacerbating the problem is the fact that according to estimates, just 23% of young people can meet the military’s fitness, educational and moral requirements — with many disqualified for reasons ranging from medical issues to criminal records and tattoos.’ {AP 10/02}
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| William Thomas Cain/Getty Images |
Social Security benefits to rise by 8.7% in 2023, the largest increase in four decades - Enjoy it while it lasts: The GOP have been wanting to eliminate Social Security and Medicare for decades, but never made a real move as they knew it would be political suicide. That was when the Republicans were, for the most part, rational players. Post-Trump, they are going for broke and are completely reckless. As are their idiot voters, nearly all of whom are driven solely by a desire to ‘own the libs.’ No critical thinking going on there, unless one considers Trump voters may be willing to bring pain upon themselves if it means the people they hate suffer more. {WaPo 10/13}Federal judge dismisses lawsuit brought by six states against the Biden administration over student loan forgiveness program. {WaPo 10/20}
Homelessness surging in many American cities; Boston one of the few escaping the trend. {AP 10/09}
Approximately sixty-three percent of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, including nearly half of six-figure earners; ‘financial distress could reach an all-time high by the end of 2022’ - Extremely alarming numbers. {CNBC 10/24}
Mississippi: Day care workers facing felony charges of child abuse after workers don Halloween masks to terrorize the kids into behaving. {AP 10/21}
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter dies at 68. {AP 10/25}
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| Hulton Archive/Getty Images/Britannica |
For the first time since 1950, the World Series will feature zero American-born Black players - Young, ADHD-addled White kids - and/or their wishy-washy ‘soccer moms’ - generally do not want to play baseball anymore, though there are still enough who do to keep the talent pipeline going. With African-American kids, while many of them are no doubt also ADHD and addicted to video games and junk food, I think the problem is simply a cultural one: They are enamored with hip-hop culture, which is not at all compatible with a pastoral, old-fashioned game like baseball, but certainly is with the NBA and NFL. Whatever way one slices it and whatever the causes, it is deeply saddening that America’s single-greatest gift to the world, and its greatest invention - the game of baseball - is gradually being forsaken by its own people. And another in a long series of signs that yours truly may have been born at the wrong time in history. #LongLiveJackieRobinson {AP 10/26}COVID-19
Math and reading scores drop following pandemic lockdowns - Covidiots will point to this as further ‘proof’ the lockdowns were not justified. Cry us a river. Test scores have been dropping and American kids have progressively become dumber and dumber with every passing year, long predating COVID. In other words, these scores would not be any better right now if schools had remained open at the height of the pandemic. Furthermore, standardized testing may not be the exact science its adherents believe it to be, but that is a debate for another time. Not up for debate: Stupidity is as contagious as COVID; perhaps some kids actually became a little bit smarter when separated from their peers. Growing up, my cognitive abilities were always sharper when I was left alone, but I was flustered to no end when forced to be around other kids - and most adults, as well - breathing down my neck. In fact, I am still that way in middle-age, only now I do not make the mistakes of fighting my nature and trying to ‘fit in’ with people I despise. No longer entertaining anybody’s crap for the mere sake of having a ‘friend’. Do not get me wrong, of course the lockdowns brought great difficulty for many parents, but how hard could it really have been for the average child? They got a long vacation, and have been largely spared the worst effects of this plague. In my day, I would have killed for the privilege of not having to go to school and see my a**hole classmates for an entire year or so. All these people who’ve been whining and crying for two-and-a-half years over COVID protocol can kiss my Anglo-Saxon ass. Over a million Americans are dead, in large part because belligerent people refused to do what was necessary in a public health emergency, and were encouraged in their defiance by the very person (obviously referring to the orange sack of increment that was POTUS in 2020) whose sworn duty it was to protect America from all foreign and domestic enemies (an enemy or threat need not be a person or persons, after all.) On some levels, I honestly miss the lockdowns and the breathing room it provided. Solitude is an important life skill, one that American children - and most adults - desperately need to learn. {WaPo 10/24}
‘The United States on Thursday extended the COVID-19 pandemic's status as a public health emergency for another 90 days, thereby preserving measures like high payments to hospitals and expanded Medicaid.’ {Reuters 10/13}
Boston University refutes Daily Mail report that researchers at the school created a new, deadlier strain of COVID-19. {WCVB 10/18}
HEALTH
German pharmaceutical company founders say a cancer vaccine could be available by 2030 - Will believe it when I see it. One need not be a raging conspiracy theorist to figure that the bulk of the medical industry is not going to allow this to happen. Keeping people sick is simply too big of a business for them to ever give up. Furthermore, with the coming total Fascist takeover and given how petulantly #Cult45 (along with many other Americans) reacted to any sort of vaccine mandate with COVID, it is likely that vaccinations of any kind will be illegal in the United States by 2030. We will be strictly prohibited from traveling abroad for medical reasons (or most any reason whatsoever.) Maybe if one lives in Japan, Australia, Western Europe, or perhaps Canada if it is still standing, then they will have access to a cancer vaccine, but the (GOP-controlled) U.S. government, corporate America, and the American people themselves are never going to allow it here. Lest anyone thinks I’m being melodramatic, ‘f**k around and find out’ as the kids say these days: Put this radicalized GOP and a vengeful Donald Trump back into power, and see what is going to happen. Frankly, I’m probably understating how awful life is going to be in the U.S. very soon; we’ve already seen enough rot and decay. {ABC News 10/18}
‘Influenza is hitting the United States unusually early and hard, resulting in the most hospitalizations at this point in the season in more than a decade and underscoring the potential for a perilous winter of respiratory viruses.’ {WaPo 10/28}
Flesh-eating bacteria on the rise in Florida following Hurricane Ian. {AP 10/19}
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Worst flooding in Nigeria in decades; more than 200,000 homes partially or completely destroyed. {NYT 10/17}
For the first time, human beings have ‘purposely chang(ed) the motion of a celestial object and the first full-scale demonstration of asteroid deflection technology’ - A shame: I was looking forward to going the way of the dinosaurs. {NASA 10/11}
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captures new views of the cosmic landscape known as the 'Pillars of Creation.' {NYT 10/19}
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MISC.Rest in Peace, Jerry Lee Lewis - An American original, for better or worse. If I had come of age in the 1950s, and up until 1964 and the Beatles, I definitely would not have been a ‘rock n’ roll’ guy. I’d have been a Jazz-loving Beatnik. Which isn’t to say I don’t have any appreciation for at least some of those early Rock musicians and their songs - Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, and there are more - but I do not relate to it the way I do with Brubeck, Miles, Coltrane, and so many others. I’d also say that I prefer the more purely R&B material of that era to its closely-related cousin, Rock. Jazz to 50s-Rock is an apples-to-oranges comparison anyway, and I only bring it up as a gentle means of saying ‘not really a fan,’ but still acknowledging that Jerry Lee Lewis was very important in shaping what Rock music became. Even if his true window of musical relevancy was a mere two or three years. The stuff in his personal life, I’ll leave that to others to pass judgment on, though I will say that perhaps he would have been relevant for a bit longer had he not been such a nutter. How he lived this long, Lord only knows, but Godspeed. {NYT 10/28}
St. Louis Cardinals lose in opening-round sweep, in the final acts of Yadier Molina and Albert Pujols - End of an era. Moments like this provide perspective: Win or lose, these athletes will laugh all the way to the bank. Unlike in the real world, there are no consequences for their failures. Never put anybody on a pedestal. Anyway, maybe I am getting far too old for all this geeky fandom crap, rooting for sports teams as if life is a perpetual high school pep rally. What our ancestors on the other side must be thinking about the way we live today and what we prioritize. Perhaps I shouldn’t care anymore about some ballclub in a city hundreds of miles away. Perhaps in five years, when ‘Yadi’ and ‘Albert’ are being inducted into the HOF, when Arenado is playing for the Dodgers or whoever, and when ‘Goldy’ is retired and forgotten about, I could take a few moments to remember the good times; but until then, no longer care. Albert Pujols said God didn’t bring him back to St. Louis to fail, but nearly all these preachy fools who are always talking about God in this country today prove time after time they have no idea what the hell they are talking about. Ten years ago, Pujols was saying God wanted him in Anaheim - re: his greedy wife, who has now left him, wanted to get out of St. Louis and hobnob with the beautiful people in Southern California - but that was a failure and a useless waste of nearly a decade. Obviously, one of the greatest players ever, at least during his first ten or so years, I know. I believe I’m just so f**king over giving excessive credit to, or having a misplaced sense of faith in, anybody or anything. Having said all of this, you people probably will find me posting about the Yankees - and the Braves, Dodgers, Astros, Mariners, et al. - in the days to come, because I really do love the game. As stupid and futile as it to love it. Because I’m a hopeless idiot trying to survive in a fallen world full of vultures and useless vermin. {AP 10/09}
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Farewell to a great English lady: Actress Angela Lansbury dies at 96. {NYT 10/11}Celebrating ‘Beavis and Butt-Head,’ a show that was ‘always much smarter than its characters' - Few things in life have ever made me laugh quite as hard as these two guys. A brilliant critique of society that remains relevant. {NYT 10/04}
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