…it’s the weekend!
Thanks I love her. Rick Scott should be shouted out of every Starbucks. No Frappuccino for you!
I always forget she was married to Gavin Newsom. Can we say “opportunist”?
House January 6 committee to subpoena Kimberly Guilfoyle after she backed out of meeting
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/25/politics/kimberly-guilfoyle-january-6-committee/index.html
Well that’s about time
Biden nominates Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/25/ketanji-brown-jackson-supreme-court/
Stonks!
Dow surges 835 points as index rallies on final day of volatile week
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/02/25/stocks-markets-war-russia-ukraine/
Siri, show me the worst take:
Have a great Saturday!
apparently the french just intercepted and seized a russian cargo ship in the english channel
not sure what will come of that…
anyways…im learning that trying to confirm any news coming out of ukraine is a good way to achieve insanity
The cargo ship was probably filled to the gunwales with Russian “champagne”
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/03/1031324658/france-and-russia-are-in-a-tussle-over-who-gets-to-call-champagne-champagne
also germany is now the only remaining country blocking russia getting kicked out of swift
maybe not for much longer tho as there seems to be increasing pressure on the parties to knock that shit off…
i should probably stop trying to follow all this stuff by the minute and go for a walk or something
aaaand over on oppolitics they are finding some exceptionally disturbing shit if true
https://opposite-lock.com/topic/38726/russia-potentially-taking-off-the-gloves
cannot verify…which is also why i linked to oppolitics instead of just dropping the tweets here…tho i actually dont understand my logic on that one
im not doing a very good job at not following this by the minute…..
…the dam is a new & entirely chilling twist on something that we absolutely know fits a well-trodden pattern in his little book of tactics in terms of visiting misery upon neighboring populations as a method of extorting their governments to do russia’s bidding…so that’s unpleasant to contemplate
…but I’ve spent a good chunk of my morning looking for reasons to reassure myself that while it undoubtedly benefits putin to have as much of the world as possible believe there is no line he isn’t prepared to cross…I have to believe that isn’t true in the final analysis?
…not been finding it entirely comforting, though…since I can’t help but also believe that he’s so busy painting a picture of a threat so extreme as to be able to don corleone the whole globe into accepting an offer it can’t refuse that at the very least there are some lines I doubt he wants to cross that we could get carried past on sheer momentum if we aren’t pretty careful
…it’s not a fun bit of circular logic that has me batting between the two…but the nuclear stuff is a good example?
…just as I’d managed to persuade myself that the suggestion yesterday that something might have blown up a chunk of waste in/around chernobyl was not only an exaggeration but arguably the opposite of what the point would be in trying to occupy the place…on the basis that precisely because nobody sane is going to blow that shit up it affords you a de facto shield as a site for a staging post…the idea that it could potentially provide material for the dreaded dirty bomb/suitcase nuke popped up
…& I want to feel like the fact it would be an entirely unconvincing pretense to make out that russia weren’t responsible for making &/or using something like that actually means it’s the threat that’s on the table rather than the reality
…but he poisoned a guy in a busy restaurant on a major thoroughfare in the middle of central london in broad daylight specifically with a radioactive substance whose signature metaphorically left a glowing trail right to his actual desk…& the official line was “how very unfortunate for him – but read my lips, it had nothing to do with us”…& in a lot of ways he got away with that shit entirely?
yeah….at the moment…im honestly not sure what line putin wouldnt cross
especially as from what i can piece together the invasion is not exactly going to plan
the problem with being a strong man leader is you cant back down without looking weak…
…it’s that last part where I think the bulk of my fears reside in terms of bigger picture/closer to home stuff
…there’s exactly nothing about the situation on the ground in ukraine that he’s responsible for that has any business being possible much less actually the case in a sane world & the cost to ukraine (& more to the point ukrainians) is entirely fucking tragic…but since I pretty much can’t do a damn thing to alter any of that it’s hard not to find myself thinking my way down various rabbit holes in terms of how (or indeed where) things could go from here
…& I’d very much like to have better grounds than I feel like I do to believe that there’s a path to be taken that doesn’t involve things getting too much worse before they get better…but like I said in that other comment…the “too much” part for me describes a line I’m not at all sure there isn’t a genuine chance there isn’t a sufficient critical mass pulling for to outweigh the momentum that’s got us to this point
…& it’s momentum that’s been being built for at least as long as there hasn’t been a USSR…so…I dunno…we’re running out of folks who can personally remember just how fucking bad of an idea it is to kick off a world war…& old as the likes of biden & putin are they’re still a post-WWII generation who might actually think there are things worth starting that kind of shit over…so it’s not even a little bit comforting to know that I’m not sure there are many things that would make putin happier than NATO going the way of the warsaw pact given the sort of things he’s got form thinking are justifiable actions in pursuit of his preferred outcome…much less what he thinks of as tit for tat
…& not to make light of any of this shit…but humanity isn’t exactly short of things we already needed to be making more progress with than we’ve been managing to…so the thing I’m wracking my brain over is what the hell it’s going to take to get him to pull his fucking neck in before we’re off to the races?
i have no idea what it would take to make him back down
tho…this just popped up on the beebs live blog
well..they had the version without subtitles
The part that I see no one talking about, regarding those hydroelectric dams, which has *me* worried–both short term *and* long-term, is the “Ukraine is the Breadbasket of Europe!” part.đ
As all of y’all know, from the stuff we learn as our cities get hit with catastrophic storms, hurricanes, & flooding, Floodwaters are a toxic mess of sewage, farm runoff (both animal–aka “Manure pits/lagoons” *and* chemicals & topsoil!), chemicals from whatever industry was in that region, and other assorted industrial pollutants like heavy metals…
The area *right* along the Dnipro River is HEAVY in industry–steel, automotive, air, metal refining, etc. Comparably in the US, think of “The Rust Belt” running along the Northern US/Great Lakes region.
But as this map https://www.producer.com/daily/map-of-ukraines-wheat-producing-districts/
will show you–that dark green region on the lower right of the map? That’s in the Dnipro’s basin/valley, and it’s potentially really bad, if *that* gets flooded!
Because not only is there all that industry, Zaporizhzhi has a nuke plant…
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-02-26/ukraine-official-says-russian-troops-approaching-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant
But the other parts that folks who didn’t grow up in Ag-heavy areas may not realize, is that when farmland floods, 1. all the crops being grown or stored there become “adulterated” (meaning RUINED & unable to enter *anywhere* into the food chain, if it happens in the US–with our low standards… now imagine what the rules in the EU likely are!)…
And by “unable to enter the food chain,” that means unable to enter the food chain at *ANY* level!!! That Adulterated croppage can’t become cattle feed, slop for hogs, chicken feed, ANYTHING!
Also, it can take literal weeks for the water to drain & just for the soils to dry out.
Then they need to be tested for heavy metals & other contaminants, potentially treated to mitigate the contamination, etc.
Which brings me to the next point…
If you didn’t grow up hearing the corn, wheat, & soybean numbers from the Chicago Board of Trade, every single day of your childhood (and much of your young adulthood, too!), you may not realize that Winter Wheat is already in the ground, planted, dormant, snd ready to grow as soon as the ground thaws. It’s harvested in late spring… Then the spring/summer crop gets planted for Fall harvest…
If the dams are blown, the winter wheat gets flooded & destroyed… and Ukrainian farmers have to wait until after thaw /frost-out later this spring, to see how damaged the soil is, to determine whether or not they can even plant a spring/summer crop…
Meaning that if the dams get blown up, realistically, Europe could lose an ENTIRE YEAR of Ukrainian wheat.
It’s old data, but my phone likes to be a butt & tank posts of i toggle back & forth too much gathering links, so it’s what I can get right now… but Table 1.1 in this link shows just how big Ukraine is, in European wheat production;
https://www.fao.org/3/y4011e/y4011e04.htm
They’re only second to Russia.
That’s a lot of wheat, if it goes “offline” and out of production for an entire yearđŹđđ, and that WOULD impact Wheat for *ALL* of Europe.
Annnnd if that land were to be contaminated with nuclear waste–either from Chernobyl being WAY upriver, *or* from that much nearer plant in Zaporizhzhia, there would be even bigger issuesđ
Here’s to a slothful and sloth-filled Saturday.
Personally i prefer the two toed sloths but I’m not going to kick these guys out. They’re delightful.
Russian invasion brought to you by Applebeeâs and Google Maps –
https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgd7dd/google-maps-live-traffic-showed-the-russian-invasion-of-ukraine
It is amazing the content that Google Maps has. I recently had to hunt down this very obscure site in Chile in the middle of nowhere. Sure enough Google maps had it, and the dirt road (really a path though the jungle) that led to it, two nearby waterfalls, and some kind of small campground a couple of miles away…
That Starbucks lady is a true hero!
This will be the downfall of Biden if he doesn’t take this kind of advice…
https://inthesetimes.com/article/biden-white-house-inflation-corporate-power-profits
Can’t we just kick Tucker out either way?
https://www.politicususa.com/2022/02/25/this-could-be-huge-the-fcc-is-investigating-american-media-and-other-companies-for-russian-ownership-ties.html
Meanwhile, at “Loserpalooza”…
https://crooksandliars.com/2022/02/cpac-day-1-insanity-annotated
…the corporate/inflation thing is a really strong point…particularly with the way things are going in the sanction-tastic no man’s land we currently appear to inhabit…but I think it may be a similar order of problem (particularly where campaign/party finance is concerned) to the one london is pretty much a shining example of at this point where the influence of russian money is concerned, let’s call it backstage, while the front of house rhetoric tells a very different story?
Holy shit, Bieber Fever is Covid!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/komonews.com/amp/news/local/saturdays-justin-bieber-concert-at-the-tacoma-dome-rescheduled
I gotta:
I find it hilarious that Canadian and America Wingnuts are scrambling after screaming that Trucker Puds cosplaying Freedumbz Fyghters are true fighters and Trudeau is a totalitarian oppressor that not more than 2 weeks later we actually see real fighters actually dying for their homeland and what real oppression looks like.
Unlike several of the so called leaders of the loser cosplay spectacle in Ottawa who ran the fuck away when the heat arrived, the leaders of the Ukraine are still at ground zero.
I learned early on in my life to not give a fuck what someone says but rather observe what they do. I have yet to see most so called leaders of the right wing stand up for what they believe in outside of maybe the loon Dan Crenshaw. The rest are just a bunch of fucking posers. Yet they always assume they’re the brave and strong ones while showing no actual evidence.
From a friend in Moscow who was arrested protesting the war: âBe afraid of nothing! This scum bag has to be stopped!â
So i got no sleep last night. You may remember a post i made a few weeks ago about my across the hall neighbor (J) who had some sort of episode necessitating a wellness check. Well, last night about 2am was nutso neighbor 2 electric boogaloo. I awoke to a bang and a shout. When i peeked out the window, J was crouched in the bldgs doorway, phone to one ear and pointing into the darkness with his other hand. He was shouting something about a federal warrant. At first i thought he was seeing little green men again but i actually heard a voice respond, though i didn’t see from who. I was already on w 911, and they had cops en route having rcvd calls from our address already. When they got here, he gave them the same sort of paranoid rant as last time, accusing one of them of recording him with his coat button. I don’t know if he was taken to the hospital or arrested bc i had to get up early. Though a neighbor informs me cops actually came back a 2nd time. J also told them (the 1st time) that someone from the complex knocked on his door to ask him to quiet down, then pushed their way inside and attacked him.
I ordered one of those door knob barricades this morning on Amazon.