Whoever sent the gift of a book about cats, thank you. It’s lovely. There are some really useful pictures in there demonstrating the reasons behind cat behavior.
Comments:
The Associated Press reports on the consequences of the USAID funding cuts in Nepal:
In impoverished Nepal, where a conservative culture leaves openly transgender people with few legal job options, the impact on aid workers’ lives was particularly crushing. Starving and scared, around 100 LGBTQ+ aid workers left jobless by the funding cuts have turned to sex work to survive, walking the streets alongside the very people they once fought so hard to help.
The video at the link reveals that USAID money was buying condoms and lubricant for these “aid workers.” Commenters are unanimous in their support for stopping the flow of American taxpayer money to such endeavors. What is extraordinary is that Associated Press has no inkling of how most people perceive the story.
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The bill has come due for every pleasant reading moment I’ve ever experienced. It arrived in the form of an autobiographical narrative Land of Women by the Spanish author Maria Sanchez. Feelings of chthonic horror overcome me whenever I am visited by the memory of reading the book.
The reason why I hate Land of Women is not that its author is a standard sloganeering lefty. Cristina Fallarás is a leftist in the exact same mold as Sánchez, yet I loved her book A la puta calle. The number one consideration for me is always whether a book is well-written. Ideology doesn’t enter into my calculations at all if the writing is good.
Land of Women is atrociously written and extremely poorly read on Audible. In this, too, this book differs from that of Christina Fallarás. Both women recorded the audio version of their books themselves, and in this exercise Fallarás proved to be as talented as she was in the writing of the text. Sánchez, on the other hand, might be a good veterinarian, which is her original profession, but she most certainly shouldn’t write. The fact that Sánchez gets aggressively promoted and was even translated into English, while the book by Fallarás has been memory-holed, is a great literary injustice.
One of my biggest complaints about Sánchez’s writing is that she clearly hates the Spanish language and is incapable of editing her own text. Throughout the book, she uses the expression “el medio rural” in every other sentence. I have not encountered this turn of phrase anywhere outside of bureaucratic documents and find it jarring in a text that attempts to give a lyrical description of the countryside. But that’s not even the point. Sánchez says it so many times throughout the book that one begins to get dizzy. It seems that the idea of searching for a synonym is completely alien to the author.
Another problem is Sánchez’s love of rhetorical questions. She ends every short section with 6 or 7 of them, without any awareness of how boring and repetitive this narrative trick gets. I listened to the book on Audible, and there is an additional layer of horror in the author’s completely fake intonation when reading the questions aloud.
I might be more understanding of Sánchez’s terrible writing if it were compensated on the level of the content. But that is ridiculously bad, too. Sánchez’s main idea is that, because of sexism, nobody recognizes that women work in the countryside alongside men. I have no idea what that even means but Sánchez goes on and on for 200 pages, denouncing in a pouty voice the lack of recognition for her work in the countryside as a woman. This form of grievance is outdated and vapid. Spanish rural areas are tragically depopulated. Whole villages stand empty and look bombed out. This devastation cannot be cured by primitive, childish feminist slogans. Sanchez’s attitude is that of a person who stands next to a site of a terrible fire that devastated a whole neighborhood and whines that nobody paid her enough compliments.
It’s nothing short of appalling that many brilliant books are never translated from Spanish into English, while this badly written, superficial, and prattly excretion of an impoverished mind does.
DNC committee picks SOUTH CAROLINA as first presidential primary voting state in 2028, beating out Nevada.
The vote breakdown:
– South Carolina: 26
– Nevada: 19
– New Hampshire: 4
This means they are nominating Kamala after all. That’s excellent news for Republicans. And for people with a sense of humor. Which is the same thing.
There was an oil crisis in the 1970s that devastated the economy of the developed countries and eventually brought in the neoliberal revolution that I keep talking about. I wasn’t alive back then, but people who remember it know that it was very tough.
The constant presence of the United States in the Middle East since then aimed at preventing the repeat of that oil crisis. The policy was successful in achieving that goal.
Now, sadly, everything changed. In the course of its war against Iran, the United States demonstrated that it’s impotent to effectuate a desired regime change. Iran is now emboldened to do the things that it feared doing when it thought that the United States was a lot stronger militarily than it is. Concealing defeat in the war and simply withdrawing is the worst possible thing that the U.S. can do right now. Not starting at all would have been enormously better. But we can’t go back in time. We have now painted ourselves into a corner in which every day can bring a repeat of the oil crisis of the 1970s.
The original goal was to solve the problem once and for all. Iran has a regime change, and the U.S. does not need to hover around the region any longer. We can go back home and concentrate on our own issues. Currently, the result has been the exact opposite. Iran realized that the United States is a lot weaker militarily than it was always presumed to be. Leaving the field of the battle will not erase anybody’s memory. It will not allow us to go to the pre-war status quo.
My struggle with the new blog template turned out to be a very humbling exercise. This is great. Humbling experiences are good for the soul. For some incomprehensible reason, half of the changes that I made yesterday reverted back to the crappy original. Right now, everything looks the way I wanted it. Except, of course, for the photo, but let’s leave that aside for the moment.
I hope everybody is seeing that I changed the number of recent comments to make it easier for people to participate in discussions. I’ll stay on it because the humiliating nature of the whole experience will probably save me the need to go to confession.
This was a joke, by the way.
Shiloh Hendrix has been found guilty of disorderly conduct against the adult guy who was following her around taping her. She has been found not guilty against the “disabled Somalian child.”
Given that the entirety of her “conduct” was limited to saying words, I believe she has a First Amendment appeal.
This is not bad news. If the Supreme Court eventually takes on the case and gives us a definitive ruling on words being constitutionally protected, that’s a win. It’s bizarre that all of this effort is needed to prove such an obvious thing, but that’s where we are.
Exhibit #5302 that liberals do not understand conservatives:
No, we don’t believe this because we’re not morons. Barry’s profound desire to see us as morons stems from his smugness and lack of curiosity.
We don’t all have the same opportunities. My opportunity to star in the NBA was always completely non-existent. My child’s opportunity to become a reader with a vast vocabulary was always sky high, given that both of her parents have Ph.D.s and write books.
What we do believe is that giving everybody identical opportunities, let alone guaranteeing similar outcomes, is an impossibility. Since we have the capacity of learning and retaining information about the past, we have also observed that every effort to engineer similar opportunities/outcomes for everyone has invariably resulted in a massacre.
There are billions of people living on this planet. Consequently, the mix of the good and the bad things that your specific existence entails is not going to be the best or the worst in the world. Some things are going to be easier, and others are going to be harder. Conservatives are not the abnormal ones for reacting to this simple fact of life with calm acceptance. Our reaction is mature and adult. Feeling constantly inflamed that other people were more advantageously situated by the circumstances of their birth is immature and pre-adolescent.
As promised, I keep trying to improve the new template. Here is what I’ve done so far:
1. I have expanded the list of recent comments to 40.
2. I have added the number of comments on each post. I confess that it does look a little clunky, and I will keep trying to improve it, but at least there is a number of comments right now.
4. I have changed the font away from the atrocious sans serif.
I’m slowly figuring out how to introduce at least some changes to this template. Please let me know what else needs to be done.
USA Today invokes Emmett Till in column about Caitlin Clark flopping
Nancy Armour wrote a column about Caitlin Clark complaining too much about officiating but took it in an unbelievable direction.
Liberals can’t help themselves. In an article about women’s basketball, they somehow find an occasion to reference Emmett Till, who, as far as I know, was most definitely not a female basketball player.
At this point, liberals might suspect that it’s time to stop, but they can’t. They have become prisoners of the bad habits they indulged in for many years.
A conservative literary critic and college professor
Thank you so much!! That’s a very thoughtful gift. I know Misty will appreciate the effect. 😻😻😻
The difference is that the U.S. is a vastly superior civilization, while Russia is a vastly inferior civilization.
“The whole idea of attacking Iran was the idea that the attacks would embolden the population to rise up and…
Love your sign off ;-D
You’re welcome! Even as a long-time cat servant, I found new and useful info in that book, and I’m trying…
The share of Democratic voters who are African Americans is between 20% and 25%.
So annoying. And the writing is as bad as the voice.
Blacks are only 10 % of this country and a third of Black men are ineligible to vote due to…
She won’t be back, leftist never forgive failure. The only unforgivable crime to the left is failure. The Democrat party…
Amen sister!
She is young. They should keep nominating her for the next 30 years. I strongly support this wonderful plan.
Please, Lord, let the Democrats nominate Kamala.
Black voters will vote for somebody black or black-adjacent, like Biden. If Democrats had chosen Nevada, that would have meant…
“Sánchez’s … completely fake intonation” I decided to look her up on youtube and didn’t find her reading the book…
” can’t win without the black support” Does Harris have that much support among Blacks? I’ve noticed low level murmurs that…
I’m not sure what this means but the Dems can’t win without the black support.
I’m so glad! Always open to more suggestions.
Thank you, Cliff. That’s exactly it. And exactly for the reasons you say. From the first moments of the war,…
It’s not about the black vote, it’s about the black fraud. Walnut
“Their top leadership was killed” And immediately replaced and harder to kill now. “The capital was bombed for weeks, and…
It worked, and looks good! Thanks for trying to tame this into submission, and for being cognizant of preferences of…
You are conflating an existential threat with a 1940s-style ground invasion. Their top leadership was killed, the capital was bombed…
“Iranians are fighting an existential war on home soil” There are no (and hopefully won’t be) any US soldiers on…
Iranians are fighting an existential war on home soil, USA is fighting a war of choice that nobody asked for…
“We just demonstrated to the entire world the utter impotence of our armed forces.” Exactly. On taking office, I remember…
Absolutely, that’s another great example. And it’s a darn shame.
“…so he ends up making decisions from a position of ignorance.” Yes, in the areas where I know for certain…
Because people find the feeling of envy to be unpleasant, but refuse to realize that it’s up to them to…
Let’s ask ourselves: How come Ukraine is managing to hold its own against a much larger country with an initially…
Or China can simply buy the oil that is in the market at higher prices. It’s a totalitarian regime. The…
Nobody has ever explained why equality (outside equality before the law)is desirable or just.
Staying in this war is not any better than just pulling back. For all intends and purposes USA already lost…
” What’s the end goal here?” There’s no goal at present, they’re stalling waiting/hoping for ideas. What a goat fuck it…
How does staying in this war help anything? What’s the end goal here?
“Sadly, we are not energy independent. This is a fake stat that glosses over the fact that we import vast…
Sadly, we are not energy independent. This is a fake stat that glosses over the fact that we import vast…
What this cat wants to do more than anything else is lie on the bed next to me and stare…
“Because it won’t bring the gas prices down, and if it’s not going to bring the gas prices down, then…
About the cat, what Cliff and Occasional Reader said–she’s marking you as hers, and the rubbing is a sign of…
Because it won’t bring the gas prices down, and if it’s not going to bring the gas prices down, then…
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