Opinions, art, debate
I can’t wait to see what narrative all the creeps who were defending Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will come up with to explain his invasion of Syria. How will they reconcile their belief in Putin’s role as somebody who is an alternative to the “evil West” with his cheerful eagerness to exploit the conflict in the Middle East?
Poor fuckers, I almost feel bad for them.
The hapless governor of Illinois, a.k.a. Big Government Rauner, has been incapable, so far, to force the state legislature to accept his anti-family, anti-education, anti-children budget. In a fit of impotent rage, he decided to start killing citizens to blackmail the legislators into compliance. Now the state is refusing to cover health insurance claims of 146,000 people, including many elderly folks:
Citing the state budget impasse, an agency controlled by Gov. Bruce Rauner has stopped paying health-care claims for at least 146,000 state workers, retirees and their families receiving coverage through self-insured plans.
However, payments to other health-care providers will continue, for the time being, on behalf of at least 158,000 patients covered by the state’s managed-care plans.
Note the bold-typed part. Rauner is holding these 158,000 people (one of whom is me) hostage in order to wrestle out of the legislature the right to hire many more expensive lackeys who’ll make his stupid wife feel important. I congratulate all of the idiots who voted for this freak of nature because they were convinced that it is possible for a very rich fellow to look out for the interests of anybody but other very rich fellows.
Will nothing teach you to beware of billionaires, you stupid twits?
The writing of history is closer to fiction than any fiction. It is always biased, tendentious, subjective, manipulative, political, and propagandistic.
There is, however, one characteristic that distinguishes the American way of writing history from everybody else’s. When I read history books published in Spain, the UK, Ukraine, Germany, Russia, or Latin America, I am likely to find any number of lies and mistakes, yet all of these books will have one thing in common: every historic moment they discuss will feature a number of players who will interact with each other in a variety of ways based on their own, often conflicting interests.
American history writing only features a single player, godlike in its omnipotence and loneliness. Each history book discusses this character’s interaction with itself. That lonely, all-powerful player is, of course, the United States. The possibility that there might be other players on the world arena, with an agency and needs of their own never even registers.
So if you pick up, say, a history of Guatemala or World War I or the USSR or anything else written by an American, you will discover that the book isn’t really about Guatemala or World War I. It will be about the US creating and acting upon Guatemala, etc.
I’m not sure if there are any American medieval historians of note, but if they do, God, how they must suffer because of the incapacity to stick the US into every sentence.
Gosh, people will believe any silly feel-good garbage. Billionaires are terrified that one of their own will get into the White House. Donald Trump, the friend of the dispossessed. Has anyone heard of anything more stupid?
The funniest spat ever is taking place between Spain’s two Leftist parties, the old and self-important Socialist Party and the new and iconoclastic Podemos. Both parties are claiming that Jeremy Corbyn is closer to them and not to their Leftist opponent.
In my own very modest opinion, Spain’s political parties would be better off if they stopped looking for some English-speakers to imitate and suck up to. Irrespective of the virtues of Corbyn (or lack thereof), it is kind of pathetic that two political parties in another country would start bickering over who looks more like him two seconds after he got elected to the leadership of the Labour Party.
Finally, somebody is stating the obvious: claiming you are against big government and simultaneously endorsing the governmental intrusion into people’s bodies is rank hypocrisy.
Bernie’s age and gender are playing into his message in a major way. If a gentleman of his generation can figure this out, it is shameful for younger people, especially women, to remain dense and hateful.
Good job, Bernie!
P.S. If anybody feels at all tempted to make any anti-choice arguments here, go reread my post from September 4, strain your pea – sized brain to its utmost capacity, and keep your murderous oh-peenions as far away from me as possible. The point of the post is to celebrate Bernie’s success and not to advance hateful rhetoric.
Folks, have you seen this hilarious blowup between two pissy and ignorant kids at Oberlin? I promise you, it’s the best. One of them goes into fits of rage because another one uses a Spanish word. The kids are so stupid that they confuse “your” and “you are” and say things like “for all intensive purposes.” They obviously have no time to do their homework but dedicate tons of time to stupid, self-righteous anger.
Just as I decided that it might be a good idea to listen to a Chopin concerto at the local symphony, it turned out that the conductor is called Vassily Sinaisky.
A short Google search confirmed my suspicion that this fellow is from Russia and used to work at the Bolshoi. This means the chances of him not being a Putinoid are nil.
So obviously I’m not going. These Putinoids are managing to poison one’s existence no matter how far away from them one tries to get.
Russian media are experiencing paroxysms of enjoyment as a result of the European refugee crisis. Bits of saliva appear in the corners of the TV commentators’ mouths and their eyes bug out in orgasmic glee whenever they talk about the refugees. And talk about them they do. One celebratory report after another on the refugees is appearing on Russia’s state-owned television.
Russia’s Foreign Affairs minister Lavrov says that Russia will not even consider diminishing its support of Assad. Among other reasons for Russia to stay in Syria, ensuring that the flow of refugees towards Europe grows looms large.
Putin sees in the refugee crisis a real opportunity to kick the EU out of its role as the world’s #2 major player. The #1 spot obviously belongs to the US, and Putin never made any secret of his intense desire to see the planet subdivided between its two owners and commanders: Russia and the US.
The EU is getting in the middle of this cozy arrangement, which is why Putin’s propaganda has been vilifying Europe as a degenerate place where gay pedophiles run around unchecked, destroying everything good they encounter. This EU-bashing has been the staple of Putinoid propaganda for years.
The refugee crisis has given Putin’s media an opportunity to announce that the closing stage of the “decline of the West” has finally begun. Once the degenerate, gay-loving, feminism – infested Europe finally collapses, says Putinoid propaganda, Russia will step out of the shadows to which it had been unfairly relegated and bring the world the true light of its profound religiosity and traditional values.
For the past week, I’ve been a New York Times subscriber. This makes me feel like a real grownup academic, so I’m happy.
Today, the newspaper that I got delivered weighed about 10 pounds and had mountains of magazines and inserts sticking out of it. One of the magazines is called The NYTimes Style and it features photographs of men in various stages of dress and undress. The men are way too feminine for my taste but the magazine itself is a very welcome development. I’m tired of having magazines filled with photos of half-naked women stuck in my face all the time. I’m not gay, why would I want to look at women? The most attractive, endlessly fascinating woman I might want to look at is always easily available in the mirror, anyway.
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