The Japan-USA thing is almost like when boys fight. Later they become friends. I almost had that happen. I got the snot beat out of me in seventh grade. (Well, I did hit the other guy first, with my lunchbox, after he jumped on my friend’s back.) Two years later, I tried out for basketball, and he was pulling for me.
I really liked the article that talked about the immediate reaction to Trump’s quote about Pearl Harbor. Basically, it was “we’ve been made to feel guilt about this for so long, but it’s something we can joke about now, we’ve been forgiven.”
And you know what? We shouldn’t forget about Pearl Harbor, but we can also know that Japan isn’t the same country anymore, and hasn’t been for some time. And when they can joke back about “next time you give us nuclear weapons, you need to package them better,” you know we’re okay now.
My understanding is that Japan and the US had relatively good relations by the end of the 19th Century. So apparently there was some commonality developing there already. Then early in the 20th Century, the culture that would predominate during World War 2 started to develop. I suspect that there’s an argument to be made that Japan’s history from the arrival of Perry’s Black Fleet to the American occupation was Japan trying to figure out it’s place in a much wider world.
And the real difference in that meme about Europe v. Japan is that we broke that culture in Japan that led to WW2 and it’s atrocities. Between several kilotons and breaking that culture, Japan got to grow new culture that looked to the US for an example. And it stopped Marx from getting hold.
The problem with Japan was due to the military planners being a) completely out of touch with reality (same as France, pre-WWI and pre-WWII), and that inbred group of officers also often held simultaneous positions in the Japanese civil government.
General Billy Mitchell did an official tour of Japan in the early 1920s, and the Japanese officers showed him plans for various attacks on nearby countries and the United States. When Mitchell got back home he tried to tell people about it, and was officially told to STFU by both his superior officers and the President. Since he viewed what he had learned as a massive national security problem, he went to the press with his warnings. The press wasn’t worried about the Japanese either, but made Mitchell’s court martial (for disobeying orders) a national show.
In 1941, of course, the Official Story was that the Japanese had attacked “without warning.”
That’s how my brother and his best friend became close. My brother insulted his best friend’s mother, they broke a window on the bus in the ensuing fight, and have now been best friends for over twenty years.
I am absolutely certain that the bat hanging in the dark corner listening but not “being sociable” is me. And yes, black tea so strong it leaves Greek power lifters staring in awe.
A Bud Light popup REINFORCES a sobriety app, associating the taste of that daggitt dribble with the image of a mug of beer. It also reinforces sexual abstinence, reminding you of that cosplay dude in the dress.
As a Boomer, we had a much better exercise regimen than Gen-Xers. I walked 500 miles, then I’ve walked 500 more. And I’ve dragged the line, strolled, turn-turn-turned, danced on the ceiling, rowed the boat ashore, run the other way, chased the bright elusive butterfly, dated the girl who waves at trains, dated another who runs down the streets of the city (calling a name that’s lighter than air) then reaches down to capture a moment, did the Peppermint Twist, went surfin’ USA, went sidewalk surfin’, and rode every toy in the playground in my mind. And the Baby Boomers’ National Anthem is Mann-Weil’s “Shades of Grey” (Monkees’ version).
I’m opposed to term limits — they take away the option of keeping good people on the job. Instead, I would like to see a law prohibiting any person serving in appointed or elective office from having their names printed on the ballot. If they are any good, they will get the write-in vote. A party that doesn’t think the incumbent will get that much support will then primary them in favor of someone whose name CAN be printed.
If you liked “Where’s Waldo?” you’ll LOVE trying to find an article mentioning Yamaguchi Otoya which doesn’t describe him as a “right-wing ultranationalist.”
I think some of us aspire to be called “right wing ultranationalists,” unironically. Without the, y’know, violent and lethal stabby stabby of our crazy opposite numbers (of which there are many). Sometimes it’s better to just let them live on and eat themselves over time. So long as you’ve got a good fence between you, that is.
Yet another reason for effective boundaries. Keep toxic rage addicts in their own pen, far away from decent folk everywhere. Also, why we have prisons.
I joke that obviously I can agree to a lot with my ultranationalist brethren in Japan, because I also have a problem with revisionist history of WWII.
Anyway, a multiculturalist strategy against the charge of racism is to study and selectively emulate foreign nativist movements.
There is a strong American nativist and preferring our own customs argument against imitating, say, the interahamwe, but the people who say we cannot prefer our customs, and who say that foreigners are beyond criticism would prefer not to use those arguments.
Just read Wikipedia. Very interesting that there is paragraph or two very specifically stating that Asanuma WAS NOT A COMMIE BASTARD. He liked the emperor for gosh sakes! That isn’t allowed according to standard leninist doctrine!
Yeah. It’s suspected he was in the general area (since there’s an unnamed follower mentioned a bit later who’s believed to be him), but there’s no way to know his precise location.
Two (John and Matthew) got direct offers Peter got his ghost written by John Mark (The Gospel of Peter as told to John Mark is how the Gospel of Mark might be titled today :-) ). And Dr. Luke is literally not even in the picture. It’s not clear to me if he is an early follower or doesn’t get involved until Pentecost. Only Luke gets a sequel.
No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems— of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.
This is the necessary reply to every lament about laws passed.
Also the one about Australia. Reminds me of “the moon is a harsh mistress”.
Re “something went wrong” — I’ve seen websites that collect “blue screen of death in public” pictures. The one I remember very well is the one on the stadium perimeter wall during the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony.
The Jumbotron went out during one round of the men’s NCAA basketball tournament, and the horn got stuck. Everyone got an in voluntary 15-20 minute time out.
The mention of China reminds me of a recent one, though it was sort of intentional. This year Beijing decided that it didn’t want people celebrating the changeover from 2025 to 2026 (probably not because it’s the Western new year, but because they don’t like people gathering in large groups). However, the word didn’t get out properly to everyone. In one of the cities, there was a large display doing the countdown, out alongside one of the main streets. But shortly before it reached zero, the people managing the display were ordered to shut it off.
They shut off the countdown. But the display reverted to a signal not found-style error message.
As I noted above, I suspect part of it might be interactions with a changing world. There might very well have been people in Japan who were alive both when Japan received the Perry Fleet, and during the Korean War (roughly 100 years apart). Japan was forced to change and adapt to a completely new world during that time. The opening of the world has presented incredible opportunities that the closed society didn’t have before. It’s had some fumbles, but it realizes that it has a friend.
Europe, on the other hand, has gone from being king of the world, to a subordinate that’s not quite a backwater (though parts of it are getting there fast).
They have a LOT of puns, though if you don’t understand Japanese they are time bombs in your head until you get a translation and realize a horrifying pun just got inflicted upon you.
Spain also recently had what might have been a “F*** Joe Biden!” moment, with the crowd at a stadium in Spain calling the Spanish PM a m*****f*****. Though since it’s Spain and not the US, I’m hesitant to draw immediate conclusions without more evidence. And evidence that the trend is spreading throughout the country.
I can confirm my cat likes all of those toys on the bottom.
Cat allergy, check.
Hey, nice fire. Where’s Groot? Shhhhhh.
Oh man, Larry Correia’s gnomes versus flamingos!
Pardon me, but don’t you have to maintain a presence on the land to claim ownership?
Oooo. Missing Serval? Pippi needs a friend, and I need someone to make coffee for me and Kaethe in the morning.
On this day in ancient Egyptian history….
Jesus is alive and watching the supermarket parking lot in my town.
Note that at the end of the cruise, Doris could out arm wrestle every man in the nursing home.
Gen X gives us the Road Warrior. Baby Boomers thought we were all going to be radioactive ash.
You’re 67 and looking for a job? Hahahahahaha!
No problem. Spain is about to return to being a Muslim majority country, so killing women who have had sex outside of marriage is perfectly permissible under Sharia law.
Fauxcahontas
Unfortunately, our grandfathers didn’t kill the communists. They elected FDR.
How do I know the show was going to suck? That’s a rhetorical question, right?
I always need a reason to buy a gun. My wife dislikes me spending the money without a reason.
Rubio the astronaut plumber. “And THAT’S why we need plumbers, Mr. Kimmel!”
I’d actually watch Starfleet ICE.
Keep in mind that Mr. Yamaguchi committed suicide while in jail awaiting trial. That does assume that he wasn’t Epsteined to prevent him from using the trial as a media for justifying his actions.
Some of us Boomers are disappointed that we can’t take Pan Am to the space station. OTOH, AIs that don’t open doors properly seems to be something that really came true.
The wheeled pirate ship looks like it was enroute to Burning Man. Before ticket costs went through the stratosphere, Flyover Falls was a stopping point for pre and post BM travelers. One motel in town has a car-shaped repair as a momento of the state of mind (for values of various chemical alterations) of the returning Burners. Nobody in the motel was hurt. Not sure the driver noticed.
The Spanish state may have un-alived that girl, but Canada was first! That’s right! We are breaking new ground in un-aliving depressed young women for no good reason. Spain is just riding our coat tails!
And by the way. Where’s the Spanish Inquisition when they could actually make themselves useful? Are they all having a fricking donut at Timmy’s?
It might be fun to go around asking Christians if Issha son of Maryam has communicated to them that the Twelvers are apostate.
But, I am pretty sure that I would find that there is not a consensus among Christians about re-militarizing the Teutonic Order, and recruiting it up to the manning level suitable for playing those political games in the pagan third world.
Grunwald in 1410 pretty much put paid to the Teutonic Knygghts, thanks to my ancestral ethnics **. See also Christiansen’s The Northern Crusades , 1998
Knights Hospitaller, however, still have a presence: 4 different Orders of Saint John and the Military Order of Malta (who are in Rome, and is actually yet another order of Saint John).
** my particular ancestral ethnics seem to have been Samogitian peasants as far as my family knows, and our surname seems to come from ‘plowman’.
Ah, but where the Canadian girls depressed because the state took them from their parents and put them in youth homes where they were repeatedly gang-raped?
“Hah! ‘Child Protective Services’ my ass! It’s a horror show! I wouldn’t trust them with a feral dog.” — one of my characters, who was sold as a sex slave at 14 by a ‘Childrens Advocate’.
See also ‘Not That Kind Of Good Guy’ by John Ringo.
I do grant that Spain may be beating us for disgraceful institutional mistreatment of young girls. For now.
But not sheer institutional gall. The young Canadian girl was depressed because she was on the autism spectrum, and “somebody” had convinced her that MAiD was the “treatment of choice” for her condition. As I recall the story there was nothing actually wrong with her, medically speaking. She was depressed. (And gee, I wonder how that happened? Public education, anyone? Socialized medicine, maybe?)
Her father took the government to court in an effort to save her life, and the government actually fought the man on it. They brought sufficient legal force to bear that the father LOST the court case, and I do believe the young lady is now not merely dead, she is really quite sincerely dead.
Even the Spanish didn’t sue the girl’s parents so they could kill her. Another first for Canada!
In other Easter news, in Canada it will soon be illegal to quote from the Holy Bible. We’re not sure which parts yet, they haven’t made that too clear. No page and paragraph, as it were. I expect the specifics will depend on who they’re trying to chuck into jail on any given day.
Yes, they released this news for Easter. Purely coincidental, I’m sure. Uh huh. Fer shur.
Oh, and public prayer is or soon will be illegal in Quebec. Like, you get arrested and they toss you in the drunk tank for 48 hours kind of illegal. And oddly enough, the big main line churches are all utterly silent today. Not a word out of them. Almost as if they’d all fallen off the Earth and drifted away into space.
They do this here, me and my rosary are going to stake out a street corner. I don’t pray in public. I don’t impose my beliefs on other people. BUT they do that?
I’ll be praying the rosary on the corner every day. EVERY SINGLE DAY. Unless I’m in jail. And when I get out I’ll be praying again.
This was passed in Quebec because city officials in Montreal are too cowardly to arrest disorderly moose limbs. Straight up.
So now they pretend this is okay by arresting a couple of old ladies here and there. Makes them look fair. Then the moose limbs block the road they can say “No no, praying illegal! Everybody same same!”
The silence from the Catholic Church is deafening…
Given that Canada is steadily moving towards the “anything that offends Muslims is hate speech”, it seems clear that they will eventually get to the point of banning The Bible entirely, and will raid churches for speaking passages from it. I would say they will do the same to Jews and the Torah, but it is rather clear that Canada is going to full 1930s-1940s Germany, sooner rather than later.
Canada is pretty much a full-fledged socialist dictatorship, ruled by a minority government (as in not a majority of parliament) that does not intend to surrender power, EVER. It is well past time that the USA treat Canada as such.
When a government starts to see its own citizens as widgets that they own, the result is always Germany 1930s to 40s. It’s the LOGIC of the thing. It HAS to run that way.
“…it seems clear that they will eventually get to the point of banning The Bible entirely…”
I agree, and this is the end state of a very, very loooong campaign in Cannada that (I believe, anyway) began in the 1930s. The slow drip, drip, drip of anti-church, anti-Christian propaganda started here roughly at that time, and has prospered greatly since. In the 1970s it became federal policy thanks to #TrudeauTheElder.
Endgame, they make church illegal and seize all the buildings. That’s how it is in China, and that’s how it will be here.
Fortunately, I feel it will be unlikely that the USA lets Canada become Frozen Cuba. Probably not happening.
Wanna hear something really horrible? MAiD is number five in the causes of death in Canada as of 2022, we do not have numbers for 2023-2025 because of course we don’t. Could be number three by now, it’s almost certainly number four.
If you look it up using AI like I did, you have to do the math yourself because MAiD is not a “cause of death” according to Health Canada. And you have to specify “including MAiD” because the AI has been instructed to play dumb.
Go Canada! Number one in unaliving Canadians since… I was going to say WWII, but according to the numbers MAiD is beating both Hitler and Kaiser Bill. Great success!
Thankfully, all my old ancestors are safely over the Rainbow Bridge, so I don’t have to worry about it.
Yeah, that. And it goes like this: How long before you’re not allowed to live peacefully and die at home when you’re damn good and ready?
How long before they drag you out, stick you in a “rest home” and then medically unalive you on their timetable so they can make their numbers this week?
Seems like a tinfoil hat sort of argument, doesn’t it? And I might agree, except the MAiD numbers keep increasing, and the criteria keep widening from intractable end-stage illness where death is immanent, to include anybody who’s feeling poorly. As if MAiD were a treatment.
You can’t deny people medical treatment, right? It’s good for them, you know. Denying such care is inhumane. More care is more better.
Only one person living alone in a 3-bedroom house? Especially if you are elderly?
Yes, mom has broached this fear before.
She is perfectly able to live alone. She does pay for some housekeeping and yard work. She can afford what she is paying for. What she can’t pay for is moving into a 55+ facility, with assisted living options. She could, if she sold the house. Would pay for, maybe, a year(?), before she’d be moving in with one of us (not me, because there is no way on this earth she’d move in where there are 4 legged animals, and we have 6 … Oops.)
The pink flamingo reminds me of when (two decades or so) the Girl Scouts were selling “pink flamingo insurance” kinda like Chicago fire insurance—pay us or you get it.
The signatories to the Migratory Birds Treaty need to all get together and agree to make Canada geese an exception to the treaty, so that those birds can be hunted without having to get special permission (just whatever is normal for hunting licenses in your country). That population really needs to be reduced.
May the soldiers, marines, airmen, and Navy folks be swift, be accurate, and be competent in their jobs. May there be confusion and inattention in the enemy, may their bowels be troubled, their attention diverted, and their orders contradictory. May there be those on the ground what help and aid, bless them with courage and good sense.
And may we get our boy home safe and sound. Bet he’s got one heck of a story once he’s all rested and healed up.
There are certainly female pilots flying combat missions over Iran. One of the videos of a pilot meeting civilians post ejection after a Kuwaiti F/A-18 shot their Strike Eagle down (thanks Kuwait!) was a young lady, and YT vids from plane watcher videographers in the UK include ATC radio traffic including B-52 and B-1 pilots taking off combat-loaded heading for Iran responding to ATC clearances and such in their clearly female voices.
The last official thing I saw was that the Warthog driver and one of the Strike Eagle crew had attained a visit from the PJs and got their free HH-60 ride, with the search continuing and as of yet no word on the second Strike Eagle flight crew.
Stephen Green has a an X post up on Instapundit from a source he trusts, claiming that the WSO has been recovered alive. Time stamp is about an hour ago, I think.
That’s good news. SERE gets emphasized pretty firmly in pilot training pipelines, and it’s good to think that’s useful in the real world. Good job on the PJs and other SF dudes if correct.
And I see another story up on PJ that CBS News (I know) is reporting recovery of the WSO Sunday morning local time, so both safe, but still nothing from CENTCOM or higher.
And RedState is reporting a post from DJT saying the WSO and the team sent in to rescue them are all safe and out. Which is a very nice Easter present.
And as more details come out, oh, my, are the furriners and domestic American-haters mad! How dare those bumpkin Americans succeed, and without a coalition no less!!
The ozzian official state-paid jskool press kids have already declared this as DJT’s “quagmire moment”, and there are X posts citing the demo’d-in-place C-130s at the AIRFIELD WE BUILT 30 MIN FROM ISFAHAN as exactly same thing as Jimmeh’s disastrous failed mission to rescue his reelection chances in 1979, both miss the point: This mission was a success, they rescued the wizzo, with zero KIA among the special ops dudes who did the rescuing.
And also notably, there’s no “bombing pause”. DJT has the countdown clock running on the powerplants and bridges. And at the same time we’re sending astronauts back to the moon.
Yeah, this was an impressive op. It also shows our priorities. We’re willing to lose any amount of equipment to retrieve just one of our guys from behind enemy lines. We sent those two transport aircraft in knowing that we would never be able to bring them back. The Israelis will also go to great lengths to rescue their guys, but quite likely no one else. It motivates our guys, because they know that they won’t be abandoned. It also makes me feel a bit sorry for the guys that make up our allies’ troops (many of whom would likely fit right in with our guys) because they can’t expect the same level of support from their commanders.
Some allies have first rate special ops folks, but nobody else has the depth that the U.S. has – while the SAS or Oz SAS guys (Kiwi SAS are no slouch either) could do the job no question, getting there and out again, and getting air cover on what sounds like a 20 mile long running vehicular gun battle extraction, they’d pretty much have to ask us.
And there are videos of Iranians “stuck” in massive “traffic jams” in the middle of the night that “accidentally” block Basiji and IRGC thugs from driving out of town to search for that WSO.
And the ones that did manage to get to that mountain found out that fighting US SOF is, as the X post below notes, a different proposition than beating teenage girls (we’ll see how WP(DE) does on the link):
More word is coming out, which is confusing. I had assumed that the C-130s were to bring in vehicles because for some reason they had to drive to pick the WSO up. But what I have read so far is they apparently used the C-130s to fly in a bunch of SOF AH-6 / MH-6 “Little Bird” helicopters from the Night Stalkers, and I assume Delta troopies, which they then used to go grab the WSO from the mountains. But when taxiing for departure both the C-130s nose gear got stuck in soft soil, so several different, lighter weight, fixed wing cargo aircraft had to be flown in to get everyone out, then they blew up all the abandoned aircraft.
But there’s video of HH-60 CSAR helicopters, along with HC-130s which can aerial refuel the HH-60, flying all around that area. The Air Force Pararescue folks and those aircrews are specifically trained and tasked with rescuing downed aircrew – I assume they are the ones that got the front seater. There must have been complications in where that pilot was holed up.
And what happened to the CV-22 tilt rotor, which was supposed to be for long distance CSAR. This is specifically why we’re paying for those.
BZ all around for pulling it off, but what’s come out so far is a bit confusing.
They recovered the Lt Col and everyone is out of Iran, even though a few of them were injured in the process.
Now the bad news. Evidently, the loss of that F-15 also resulted in the loss of:
1 A-10 that was providing cover against ground forces. Pilot managed to get back to the gulf before he had to punch out.
1 MH-6 helicopter from either ground fire or mechanical issues during the extraction, had to be left behind and destroyed.
2 C-130s that landed on a road 5 miles from the ridge the weapons officer was hiding on, that were unable to take off again due to soft deep sand, had to be left behind and destroyed.
Apparently, they helicoptered out all the aircrews successfully. But man, that was a massively expensive attack on whatever the original target was for the F-15. Probably close to a billion dollars lost in this one operation
Well, hopefully they can just take two more C-130Js off the Lockheed Martin assembly line and send them out to replace those two lost. Preferably, those Hercs will have originally been destined for the UK and for Spain, and we can bill them extra for them and tell them “you’re welcome.”
That baby camel sure is cute. Baby sheeps are the same way. A neighbor long ago and elsewhere used to have sheep, and the little lambs gamboling in the field were impossibly adorable. But the creatures they turn into when they grow up… 😬
Eh, ye raise ’em right they can turn into halfway decent folk with a leg up on experience, common sense, adaptability, strength of character, and work ethic. There just happen to be a murthering lot of idiots breeding, indoctrination camps, and psyops masquerading as the nooz, the entertainment industry, and Human Resource departments.
Eh, ye raise ’em right they can turn into halfway decent folk with a leg up on experience, common sense, adaptability, strength of character, and work ethic. There just happen to be a murthering lot of idiots breeding, indoctrination camps, and psyops masquerading as the nooz, the entertainment industry, and Human Resource departments.
Uncle and aunt used to run sheep. Even after they switched to grass seed grow and harvest operation they’d have lamb barbecues. Only it was mutton, not lamb. Just as sweet and tender, because long before the cubed meat hit the barbecue it’d been “cooked”, er marinated at least a week in a combination of lime, lemon, a cocktail of other sauces, and spices. I didn’t. But a lot of the cooks sampled meat barely warm. Cooked? It melted in your mouth. I miss those barbecue potlucks (barbecues stopped after their youngest was murdered in 2000).
i had the privilege of eating at a Luguna Pueblo saint’s feast day celebration back in the early ’90s, when the Lagunas had a Small Business Defense Contractor on the pueblo. The shop foreman invited us over for lunch, where his wife had laid out a spread of turkey, mashed potatoes, and so on and so forth. But one dish was mutton in red chile sauce, which lives in my memory because it was the gift that kept on giving. I kept tasting mutton for around the next 24 hours.
This is why mutton is even lower than lamb on my list of favorite foods.
At home, growing up, we used to have mutton when great-uncle lost a ewe, then latter when uncle and aunt lost one … when their own freezers were full.
Regular mutton, not “cooked/marinated”, essentially until all the fat dissolved off the meat, essentially gone, doesn’t “taste” bad. But it is greasy and felt for a day or so. Or why the marination is primarily acidic fruit juices, pulp, and rinds.
Did I mention Shish Kebab recently? Our cook for a long ago feast bought a lamn in Spring for a September event. As she put it, Shish Kebab wasn’t a name, it was a job description.
Her assistant was somewhat appalled at the idea of eating a cute little lamb, but by September SK wsa no long cute, nor very little, and any romantic notuons the assistant had had been pared away.
BTW, SK was quite good, and I don’t really like lamb.
Any of you out there like me who haven’t heard Sarah speak? And wonder why people joke about “Moose and Squirrel”?
Here’s a video from a foreign couple who visited the US, and listed five things about their visit that surprised them. And no, contrary to what it might sound like, they’re not from Russia, or somewhere in Eastern Europe. Quite the contrary, they’re from the western-most tip of Europe, in the country of Portugal.
(And if you heard that to a particular pattern of music notes, I know what hymn you have sung recently. ;) ) [“Come, Christian Join to Sing”, for those wondering.]
so, they set up an airfield in the middle of Iran, extracted the guy, eliminated a whole bunch of thugs, and got away with no losses. the Europeans can’t believe we would spend that sort of money. Civis Americanus sum is back, baby!
the whole thing of the European Union/Agressor Nation is to be penny wise/pound foolish when it comes to academic and bureaucratic oversight for economic efficiency and savings, and then be all butthurt because the ‘common wisdom’, everywhere, particularly in academia, is profoundly violated.
Because the ‘common understanding’ has been very carefully curated to remove the details and understanding that would show that we are being profoundly stupid, from the circle trigon party student organizations on European campuses to the agile cults of silicon valley, to the DIE and feminism everywhere.
1. People are not fungible, and selecting for symbolically important people breaks stuff instead of fixing stuff. (DIE) 2. Some things really do need to be delayed for the sake of perfectionism. (agile in general, and the AI ‘we gonna die if we don’t adopt’ specifically. but also a lot of cloud stuff.) 3. We don’t and will not have perfect master planners, in general economies function a ton better if the academic trained can keep their fingers out of the pie, or if the normies refuse to let the academics have a say.
If we don’t waste on the stupidities, we can do stuff that is important to us.
I Twitter fasted yesterday and missed things, but when I heard this morning I wondered if anyone would play the, “That’s not cost-effective!” card (the secular equivalent of, “This ointment could have been sold for 300 denarii and the money given to the poor!”).
My beloved responded with the Hawaiian love sign, with both hands. Pretty well sums up my opinion, too.
When I was praying for him early this morning, I got the oddest sense of “He’s OK, let’s focus on some others.” That’s … never happened before. I didn’t hear the news for another three hours.
According To Hoyt 
The Japan-USA thing is almost like when boys fight. Later they become friends. I almost had that happen. I got the snot beat out of me in seventh grade. (Well, I did hit the other guy first, with my lunchbox, after he jumped on my friend’s back.) Two years later, I tried out for basketball, and he was pulling for me.
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I really liked the article that talked about the immediate reaction to Trump’s quote about Pearl Harbor. Basically, it was “we’ve been made to feel guilt about this for so long, but it’s something we can joke about now, we’ve been forgiven.”
And you know what? We shouldn’t forget about Pearl Harbor, but we can also know that Japan isn’t the same country anymore, and hasn’t been for some time. And when they can joke back about “next time you give us nuclear weapons, you need to package them better,” you know we’re okay now.
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My understanding is that Japan and the US had relatively good relations by the end of the 19th Century. So apparently there was some commonality developing there already. Then early in the 20th Century, the culture that would predominate during World War 2 started to develop. I suspect that there’s an argument to be made that Japan’s history from the arrival of Perry’s Black Fleet to the American occupation was Japan trying to figure out it’s place in a much wider world.
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And the real difference in that meme about Europe v. Japan is that we broke that culture in Japan that led to WW2 and it’s atrocities. Between several kilotons and breaking that culture, Japan got to grow new culture that looked to the US for an example. And it stopped Marx from getting hold.
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The problem with Japan was due to the military planners being a) completely out of touch with reality (same as France, pre-WWI and pre-WWII), and that inbred group of officers also often held simultaneous positions in the Japanese civil government.
General Billy Mitchell did an official tour of Japan in the early 1920s, and the Japanese officers showed him plans for various attacks on nearby countries and the United States. When Mitchell got back home he tried to tell people about it, and was officially told to STFU by both his superior officers and the President. Since he viewed what he had learned as a massive national security problem, he went to the press with his warnings. The press wasn’t worried about the Japanese either, but made Mitchell’s court martial (for disobeying orders) a national show.
In 1941, of course, the Official Story was that the Japanese had attacked “without warning.”
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Mutual respect.
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That’s how my brother and his best friend became close. My brother insulted his best friend’s mother, they broke a window on the bus in the ensuing fight, and have now been best friends for over twenty years.
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Not “freinds”. Perhaps in the future it will be so.
Respect. We respect each other.
We tested each other, and eachvfound their opponents to be worthy, but weird and somewhat unsavory. But dang those so and so’s can fight like demons.
Not quite “name our helicopters” respect, but that was different.
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I am absolutely certain that the bat hanging in the dark corner listening but not “being sociable” is me. And yes, black tea so strong it leaves Greek power lifters staring in awe.
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My Dad’s Mother always said, if you can see through it, it’s not tea.
Why yes, I do drink battery acid.
Oh, and Happy Easter everyone!
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Need more coffee. ☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕
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Dragons are reptiles too…..
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stolen.
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Neither Dragons nor Dinosaurs are reptiles. [Dragon snout pointing upwards] 🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲
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Ah, but are dragons butterflies? Lepidoptra means “scaley” and “winged.” ;p
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Dinosaurs are birds.
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The cat box/spaceship gives me “Calvin and Hobbes” vibes.
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SFBS!
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A Bud Light popup REINFORCES a sobriety app, associating the taste of that daggitt dribble with the image of a mug of beer. It also reinforces sexual abstinence, reminding you of that cosplay dude in the dress.
As a Boomer, we had a much better exercise regimen than Gen-Xers. I walked 500 miles, then I’ve walked 500 more. And I’ve dragged the line, strolled, turn-turn-turned, danced on the ceiling, rowed the boat ashore, run the other way, chased the bright elusive butterfly, dated the girl who waves at trains, dated another who runs down the streets of the city (calling a name that’s lighter than air) then reaches down to capture a moment, did the Peppermint Twist, went surfin’ USA, went sidewalk surfin’, and rode every toy in the playground in my mind. And the Baby Boomers’ National Anthem is Mann-Weil’s “Shades of Grey” (Monkees’ version).
I’m opposed to term limits — they take away the option of keeping good people on the job. Instead, I would like to see a law prohibiting any person serving in appointed or elective office from having their names printed on the ballot. If they are any good, they will get the write-in vote. A party that doesn’t think the incumbent will get that much support will then primary them in favor of someone whose name CAN be printed.
If you liked “Where’s Waldo?” you’ll LOVE trying to find an article mentioning Yamaguchi Otoya which doesn’t describe him as a “right-wing ultranationalist.”
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I think some of us aspire to be called “right wing ultranationalists,” unironically. Without the, y’know, violent and lethal stabby stabby of our crazy opposite numbers (of which there are many). Sometimes it’s better to just let them live on and eat themselves over time. So long as you’ve got a good fence between you, that is.
Yet another reason for effective boundaries. Keep toxic rage addicts in their own pen, far away from decent folk everywhere. Also, why we have prisons.
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I joke that obviously I can agree to a lot with my ultranationalist brethren in Japan, because I also have a problem with revisionist history of WWII.
Anyway, a multiculturalist strategy against the charge of racism is to study and selectively emulate foreign nativist movements.
There is a strong American nativist and preferring our own customs argument against imitating, say, the interahamwe, but the people who say we cannot prefer our customs, and who say that foreigners are beyond criticism would prefer not to use those arguments.
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Just read Wikipedia. Very interesting that there is paragraph or two very specifically stating that Asanuma WAS NOT A COMMIE BASTARD. He liked the emperor for gosh sakes! That isn’t allowed according to standard leninist doctrine!
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Bud Light
is
Tribble P###.
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Thanks. Now I have “Hey hey we’re the me-mes!” as an earwig.
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I think someone forgot that Luke wasn’t in Jerusalem, let alone at the Last Supper.
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Mark also wouldn’t have been at the Supper.
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He might have been in the Upper Room but not at the main table.
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Yeah. It’s suspected he was in the general area (since there’s an unnamed follower mentioned a bit later who’s believed to be him), but there’s no way to know his precise location.
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And it’s unlikely that Mark was sitting at the main table.
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Oh G-d, it took me until here to actually get the joke!
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Two (John and Matthew) got direct offers Peter got his ghost written by John Mark (The Gospel of Peter as told to John Mark is how the Gospel of Mark might be titled today :-) ). And Dr. Luke is literally not even in the picture. It’s not clear to me if he is an early follower or doesn’t get involved until Pentecost. Only Luke gets a sequel.
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Dr. Luke later becomes an associate of Paul the Apostle.
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I’m not sure Luke was even there for Pentecost; I believe he was supposed to be in Athens on Good Friday.
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Is it ever made clear whether Luke started out as a Jew or Gentile? If the latter, then he most definitely would not have been present that day.
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The Wiki Article on Luke comments that there are arguments either way.
IE Luke may have been a non-Jewish Greek or he may have been a Hellenistic Jew.
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Yes, neither Mark nor Luke was one of the 12.
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My favorite bit of Thomas Sowell
This is the necessary reply to every lament about laws passed.
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But both of them might be my hamburger if he doesn’t remove them chop chop….
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Indigenous people of the moon, I liked that one.
Also the one about Australia. Reminds me of “the moon is a harsh mistress”.
Re “something went wrong” — I’ve seen websites that collect “blue screen of death in public” pictures. The one I remember very well is the one on the stadium perimeter wall during the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony.
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The Jumbotron went out during one round of the men’s NCAA basketball tournament, and the horn got stuck. Everyone got an in voluntary 15-20 minute time out.
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The mention of China reminds me of a recent one, though it was sort of intentional. This year Beijing decided that it didn’t want people celebrating the changeover from 2025 to 2026 (probably not because it’s the Western new year, but because they don’t like people gathering in large groups). However, the word didn’t get out properly to everyone. In one of the cities, there was a large display doing the countdown, out alongside one of the main streets. But shortly before it reached zero, the people managing the display were ordered to shut it off.
They shut off the countdown. But the display reverted to a signal not found-style error message.
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We also defended Japan for 80 years for free.
As I noted above, I suspect part of it might be interactions with a changing world. There might very well have been people in Japan who were alive both when Japan received the Perry Fleet, and during the Korean War (roughly 100 years apart). Japan was forced to change and adapt to a completely new world during that time. The opening of the world has presented incredible opportunities that the closed society didn’t have before. It’s had some fumbles, but it realizes that it has a friend.
Europe, on the other hand, has gone from being king of the world, to a subordinate that’s not quite a backwater (though parts of it are getting there fast).
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“Meri Prefecture”, or, in Japanese, ‘MeriKen’.
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Well played, Japan. Well played.
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And one Japanese post on X went something like ‘you gave us nuclear weapons twice before, but this time, please be more careful with delivery.’
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They have a LOT of puns, though if you don’t understand Japanese they are time bombs in your head until you get a translation and realize a horrifying pun just got inflicted upon you.
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Spain also recently had what might have been a “F*** Joe Biden!” moment, with the crowd at a stadium in Spain calling the Spanish PM a m*****f*****. Though since it’s Spain and not the US, I’m hesitant to draw immediate conclusions without more evidence. And evidence that the trend is spreading throughout the country.
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I can confirm my cat likes all of those toys on the bottom.
Cat allergy, check.
Hey, nice fire. Where’s Groot? Shhhhhh.
Oh man, Larry Correia’s gnomes versus flamingos!
Pardon me, but don’t you have to maintain a presence on the land to claim ownership?
Oooo. Missing Serval? Pippi needs a friend, and I need someone to make coffee for me and Kaethe in the morning.
On this day in ancient Egyptian history….
Jesus is alive and watching the supermarket parking lot in my town.
Note that at the end of the cruise, Doris could out arm wrestle every man in the nursing home.
Gen X gives us the Road Warrior. Baby Boomers thought we were all going to be radioactive ash.
You’re 67 and looking for a job? Hahahahahaha!
No problem. Spain is about to return to being a Muslim majority country, so killing women who have had sex outside of marriage is perfectly permissible under Sharia law.
Fauxcahontas
Unfortunately, our grandfathers didn’t kill the communists. They elected FDR.
How do I know the show was going to suck? That’s a rhetorical question, right?
I always need a reason to buy a gun. My wife dislikes me spending the money without a reason.
Rubio the astronaut plumber. “And THAT’S why we need plumbers, Mr. Kimmel!”
I’d actually watch Starfleet ICE.
Keep in mind that Mr. Yamaguchi committed suicide while in jail awaiting trial. That does assume that he wasn’t Epsteined to prevent him from using the trial as a media for justifying his actions.
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My beloved cracked up over Doris’s Viking cruise.
Mind ou, at Lilies a few years ago someone actually brought a small longboat and he became one of the rowers (briefly).
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“I canceled my Viking Cruise when I found out we’re not allowed to sack few towns along the way.” 🤣
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“Just what type of Viking cruise is this with no pillaging and plundering of Europe?” the American asked.
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‘Doris’ looks a lot like my mom!
Sister in law and I are going on a cruise September; I sent her the meme, and email subject was ‘I’m glad we’re going [other line]’
Said it made her day.
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Land presence is only required to fulfill the requirements of squatters to take legal possession of the property they’re occupying.
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Some of us Boomers are disappointed that we can’t take Pan Am to the space station. OTOH, AIs that don’t open doors properly seems to be something that really came true.
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The wheeled pirate ship looks like it was enroute to Burning Man. Before ticket costs went through the stratosphere, Flyover Falls was a stopping point for pre and post BM travelers. One motel in town has a car-shaped repair as a momento of the state of mind (for values of various chemical alterations) of the returning Burners. Nobody in the motel was hurt. Not sure the driver noticed.
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The Spanish state may have un-alived that girl, but Canada was first! That’s right! We are breaking new ground in un-aliving depressed young women for no good reason. Spain is just riding our coat tails!
And by the way. Where’s the Spanish Inquisition when they could actually make themselves useful? Are they all having a fricking donut at Timmy’s?
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They are waiting until no one expects them.
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Forget the Inquisition. First we need the Reconquista. All else follows, or should. Priorities, you know, priorities.
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It might be fun to go around asking Christians if Issha son of Maryam has communicated to them that the Twelvers are apostate.
But, I am pretty sure that I would find that there is not a consensus among Christians about re-militarizing the Teutonic Order, and recruiting it up to the manning level suitable for playing those political games in the pagan third world.
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Grunwald in 1410 pretty much put paid to the Teutonic Knygghts, thanks to my ancestral ethnics **. See also Christiansen’s The Northern Crusades , 1998
Knights Hospitaller, however, still have a presence: 4 different Orders of Saint John and the Military Order of Malta (who are in Rome, and is actually yet another order of Saint John).
** my particular ancestral ethnics seem to have been Samogitian peasants as far as my family knows, and our surname seems to come from ‘plowman’.
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Ah, but where the Canadian girls depressed because the state took them from their parents and put them in youth homes where they were repeatedly gang-raped?
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Sounds like child protective services in New Hampshire.
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“Hah! ‘Child Protective Services’ my ass! It’s a horror show! I wouldn’t trust them with a feral dog.” — one of my characters, who was sold as a sex slave at 14 by a ‘Childrens Advocate’.
See also ‘Not That Kind Of Good Guy’ by John Ringo.
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Makes note the check the ‘zon link, preferably after caffeine.
Oregon’s CPS seems to be yet another hellhole for those they “protect”.
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I prefer to get books direct from Baen. I got this one as part of a Monthly Bundle last year. I’ve been buying the Bundles every month for 12+ years.
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I do grant that Spain may be beating us for disgraceful institutional mistreatment of young girls. For now.
But not sheer institutional gall. The young Canadian girl was depressed because she was on the autism spectrum, and “somebody” had convinced her that MAiD was the “treatment of choice” for her condition. As I recall the story there was nothing actually wrong with her, medically speaking. She was depressed. (And gee, I wonder how that happened? Public education, anyone? Socialized medicine, maybe?)
Her father took the government to court in an effort to save her life, and the government actually fought the man on it. They brought sufficient legal force to bear that the father LOST the court case, and I do believe the young lady is now not merely dead, she is really quite sincerely dead.
Even the Spanish didn’t sue the girl’s parents so they could kill her. Another first for Canada!
In other Easter news, in Canada it will soon be illegal to quote from the Holy Bible. We’re not sure which parts yet, they haven’t made that too clear. No page and paragraph, as it were. I expect the specifics will depend on who they’re trying to chuck into jail on any given day.
Yes, they released this news for Easter. Purely coincidental, I’m sure. Uh huh. Fer shur.
Oh, and public prayer is or soon will be illegal in Quebec. Like, you get arrested and they toss you in the drunk tank for 48 hours kind of illegal. And oddly enough, the big main line churches are all utterly silent today. Not a word out of them. Almost as if they’d all fallen off the Earth and drifted away into space.
Go Canada! Elbows UP!!!
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😢
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They do this here, me and my rosary are going to stake out a street corner. I don’t pray in public. I don’t impose my beliefs on other people. BUT they do that?
I’ll be praying the rosary on the corner every day. EVERY SINGLE DAY. Unless I’m in jail. And when I get out I’ll be praying again.
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“I’ll be praying the rosary on the corner every day.”
I’m looking forward to the bumper stickers and the public prayer vigils. Should be lit. ~:D
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I’ll bet Moslems caterwauling and blocking public roads at all hours is not illegal. ☹️
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It is now.
This was passed in Quebec because city officials in Montreal are too cowardly to arrest disorderly moose limbs. Straight up.
So now they pretend this is okay by arresting a couple of old ladies here and there. Makes them look fair. Then the moose limbs block the road they can say “No no, praying illegal! Everybody same same!”
The silence from the Catholic Church is deafening…
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No need to bet. It’s a sure thing.
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Given that Canada is steadily moving towards the “anything that offends Muslims is hate speech”, it seems clear that they will eventually get to the point of banning The Bible entirely, and will raid churches for speaking passages from it. I would say they will do the same to Jews and the Torah, but it is rather clear that Canada is going to full 1930s-1940s Germany, sooner rather than later.
Canada is pretty much a full-fledged socialist dictatorship, ruled by a minority government (as in not a majority of parliament) that does not intend to surrender power, EVER. It is well past time that the USA treat Canada as such.
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When a government starts to see its own citizens as widgets that they own, the result is always Germany 1930s to 40s. It’s the LOGIC of the thing. It HAS to run that way.
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“…it seems clear that they will eventually get to the point of banning The Bible entirely…”
I agree, and this is the end state of a very, very loooong campaign in Cannada that (I believe, anyway) began in the 1930s. The slow drip, drip, drip of anti-church, anti-Christian propaganda started here roughly at that time, and has prospered greatly since. In the 1970s it became federal policy thanks to #TrudeauTheElder.
Endgame, they make church illegal and seize all the buildings. That’s how it is in China, and that’s how it will be here.
Fortunately, I feel it will be unlikely that the USA lets Canada become Frozen Cuba. Probably not happening.
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That’s… quite sincerely horrible.
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Wanna hear something really horrible? MAiD is number five in the causes of death in Canada as of 2022, we do not have numbers for 2023-2025 because of course we don’t. Could be number three by now, it’s almost certainly number four.
If you look it up using AI like I did, you have to do the math yourself because MAiD is not a “cause of death” according to Health Canada. And you have to specify “including MAiD” because the AI has been instructed to play dumb.
Go Canada! Number one in unaliving Canadians since… I was going to say WWII, but according to the numbers MAiD is beating both Hitler and Kaiser Bill. Great success!
Thankfully, all my old ancestors are safely over the Rainbow Bridge, so I don’t have to worry about it.
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Oh, I knew about that one. Also saved the article about how the ratchet effect can only make it worse.
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“…the ratchet effect…”
Yeah, that. And it goes like this: How long before you’re not allowed to live peacefully and die at home when you’re damn good and ready?
How long before they drag you out, stick you in a “rest home” and then medically unalive you on their timetable so they can make their numbers this week?
Seems like a tinfoil hat sort of argument, doesn’t it? And I might agree, except the MAiD numbers keep increasing, and the criteria keep widening from intractable end-stage illness where death is immanent, to include anybody who’s feeling poorly. As if MAiD were a treatment.
You can’t deny people medical treatment, right? It’s good for them, you know. Denying such care is inhumane. More care is more better.
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Or:
Only one person living alone in a 3-bedroom house? Especially if you are elderly?
Yes, mom has broached this fear before.
She is perfectly able to live alone. She does pay for some housekeeping and yard work. She can afford what she is paying for. What she can’t pay for is moving into a 55+ facility, with assisted living options. She could, if she sold the house. Would pay for, maybe, a year(?), before she’d be moving in with one of us (not me, because there is no way on this earth she’d move in where there are 4 legged animals, and we have 6 … Oops.)
Slippery slopes indeed.
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I’ll hear no talk against Erica Ortegas. She flies the ship.
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The pink flamingo reminds me of when (two decades or so) the Girl Scouts were selling “pink flamingo insurance” kinda like Chicago fire insurance—pay us or you get it.
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“That’s a Real Nice Yard you got there, mister. Be a Real Shame if any flamingos were to… Happen… to it.”
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Flamingos? Bah. Newbies. Now a whole flock of Canada geese on the other hand…
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“Thinmint to Tagalong, Thinmint to Tagalong, call in a pink strike on Otterman’s residence, with a time delay on second strike.”
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Battle of the Long Necks!
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No, no, it’s ‘Night Of The Long Necks’! 🤣
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Sounds like a beer commercial.
I’ll drink to that!
Unfortunately, 1 is my limit nowadays.
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The signatories to the Migratory Birds Treaty need to all get together and agree to make Canada geese an exception to the treaty, so that those birds can be hunted without having to get special permission (just whatever is normal for hunting licenses in your country). That population really needs to be reduced.
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And please pray for the safety of the list F-15 Airman.
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^lost
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May the soldiers, marines, airmen, and Navy folks be swift, be accurate, and be competent in their jobs. May there be confusion and inattention in the enemy, may their bowels be troubled, their attention diverted, and their orders contradictory. May there be those on the ground what help and aid, bless them with courage and good sense.
And may we get our boy home safe and sound. Bet he’s got one heck of a story once he’s all rested and healed up.
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Note there are plenty of top rate Eagle Drivers (and GIBs in the Strike Eagles) with ladyparts.
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And I hope sincerely that the military had better sense than to send one over Iran.
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There are certainly female pilots flying combat missions over Iran. One of the videos of a pilot meeting civilians post ejection after a Kuwaiti F/A-18 shot their Strike Eagle down (thanks Kuwait!) was a young lady, and YT vids from plane watcher videographers in the UK include ATC radio traffic including B-52 and B-1 pilots taking off combat-loaded heading for Iran responding to ATC clearances and such in their clearly female voices.
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I heard yesterday that both Eagle crewmen, as well as the crew of the SAR helicopter that was shot at, were safe?
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The last official thing I saw was that the Warthog driver and one of the Strike Eagle crew had attained a visit from the PJs and got their free HH-60 ride, with the search continuing and as of yet no word on the second Strike Eagle flight crew.
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Stephen Green has a an X post up on Instapundit from a source he trusts, claiming that the WSO has been recovered alive. Time stamp is about an hour ago, I think.
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That’s good news. SERE gets emphasized pretty firmly in pilot training pipelines, and it’s good to think that’s useful in the real world. Good job on the PJs and other SF dudes if correct.
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And I see another story up on PJ that CBS News (I know) is reporting recovery of the WSO Sunday morning local time, so both safe, but still nothing from CENTCOM or higher.
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And RedState is reporting a post from DJT saying the WSO and the team sent in to rescue them are all safe and out. Which is a very nice Easter present.
https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2026/04/05/we-got-him-president-trump-responds-as-second-airman-is-rescued-from-eneny-territory-in-iran-n2200972
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And as more details come out, oh, my, are the furriners and domestic American-haters mad! How dare those bumpkin Americans succeed, and without a coalition no less!!
The ozzian official state-paid jskool press kids have already declared this as DJT’s “quagmire moment”, and there are X posts citing the demo’d-in-place C-130s at the AIRFIELD WE BUILT 30 MIN FROM ISFAHAN as exactly same thing as Jimmeh’s disastrous failed mission to rescue his reelection chances in 1979, both miss the point: This mission was a success, they rescued the wizzo, with zero KIA among the special ops dudes who did the rescuing.
And also notably, there’s no “bombing pause”. DJT has the countdown clock running on the powerplants and bridges. And at the same time we’re sending astronauts back to the moon.
AFY.
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Yeah, this was an impressive op. It also shows our priorities. We’re willing to lose any amount of equipment to retrieve just one of our guys from behind enemy lines. We sent those two transport aircraft in knowing that we would never be able to bring them back. The Israelis will also go to great lengths to rescue their guys, but quite likely no one else. It motivates our guys, because they know that they won’t be abandoned. It also makes me feel a bit sorry for the guys that make up our allies’ troops (many of whom would likely fit right in with our guys) because they can’t expect the same level of support from their commanders.
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Some allies have first rate special ops folks, but nobody else has the depth that the U.S. has – while the SAS or Oz SAS guys (Kiwi SAS are no slouch either) could do the job no question, getting there and out again, and getting air cover on what sounds like a 20 mile long running vehicular gun battle extraction, they’d pretty much have to ask us.
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And there are videos of Iranians “stuck” in massive “traffic jams” in the middle of the night that “accidentally” block Basiji and IRGC thugs from driving out of town to search for that WSO.
And the ones that did manage to get to that mountain found out that fighting US SOF is, as the X post below notes, a different proposition than beating teenage girls (we’ll see how WP(DE) does on the link):
https://x.com/NiohBerg/status/2040807250504171739
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More word is coming out, which is confusing. I had assumed that the C-130s were to bring in vehicles because for some reason they had to drive to pick the WSO up. But what I have read so far is they apparently used the C-130s to fly in a bunch of SOF AH-6 / MH-6 “Little Bird” helicopters from the Night Stalkers, and I assume Delta troopies, which they then used to go grab the WSO from the mountains. But when taxiing for departure both the C-130s nose gear got stuck in soft soil, so several different, lighter weight, fixed wing cargo aircraft had to be flown in to get everyone out, then they blew up all the abandoned aircraft.
But there’s video of HH-60 CSAR helicopters, along with HC-130s which can aerial refuel the HH-60, flying all around that area. The Air Force Pararescue folks and those aircrews are specifically trained and tasked with rescuing downed aircrew – I assume they are the ones that got the front seater. There must have been complications in where that pilot was holed up.
And what happened to the CV-22 tilt rotor, which was supposed to be for long distance CSAR. This is specifically why we’re paying for those.
BZ all around for pulling it off, but what’s come out so far is a bit confusing.
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That’s great! Our Heroes rescued our pilots, killed a bunch of bad guys and sent a message: FAFO. I’m not seeing a downside. 😁
Bummer that we lost some expensive equipment, but the mission got done. Like they say, “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.”
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News flash.
They recovered the Lt Col and everyone is out of Iran, even though a few of them were injured in the process.
Now the bad news. Evidently, the loss of that F-15 also resulted in the loss of:
1 A-10 that was providing cover against ground forces. Pilot managed to get back to the gulf before he had to punch out.
1 MH-6 helicopter from either ground fire or mechanical issues during the extraction, had to be left behind and destroyed.
2 C-130s that landed on a road 5 miles from the ridge the weapons officer was hiding on, that were unable to take off again due to soft deep sand, had to be left behind and destroyed.
Apparently, they helicoptered out all the aircrews successfully. But man, that was a massively expensive attack on whatever the original target was for the F-15. Probably close to a billion dollars lost in this one operation
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Well, hopefully they can just take two more C-130Js off the Lockheed Martin assembly line and send them out to replace those two lost. Preferably, those Hercs will have originally been destined for the UK and for Spain, and we can bill them extra for them and tell them “you’re welcome.”
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That baby camel sure is cute. Baby sheeps are the same way. A neighbor long ago and elsewhere used to have sheep, and the little lambs gamboling in the field were impossibly adorable. But the creatures they turn into when they grow up… 😬
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Same with humans…
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Not all of them, some you can tolerate with the right amount of alcohol.
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Thus the stories of Scotsmen and sheep? (Strains of “Scotland’s depraved” in the distance …)
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“SHEEP LIE!!!“
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Eh, ye raise ’em right they can turn into halfway decent folk with a leg up on experience, common sense, adaptability, strength of character, and work ethic. There just happen to be a murthering lot of idiots breeding, indoctrination camps, and psyops masquerading as the nooz, the entertainment industry, and Human Resource departments.
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Eh, ye raise ’em right they can turn into halfway decent folk with a leg up on experience, common sense, adaptability, strength of character, and work ethic. There just happen to be a murthering lot of idiots breeding, indoctrination camps, and psyops masquerading as the nooz, the entertainment industry, and Human Resource departments.
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“Mutton yesterday, mutton today, and blimey, if it don’t look like mutton again tomorrer”.
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Ready for a little dwarf, then?
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A lot of lamb at Costco for Easter weekend.
Uncle and aunt used to run sheep. Even after they switched to grass seed grow and harvest operation they’d have lamb barbecues. Only it was mutton, not lamb. Just as sweet and tender, because long before the cubed meat hit the barbecue it’d been “cooked”, er marinated at least a week in a combination of lime, lemon, a cocktail of other sauces, and spices. I didn’t. But a lot of the cooks sampled meat barely warm. Cooked? It melted in your mouth. I miss those barbecue potlucks (barbecues stopped after their youngest was murdered in 2000).
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Ouch.
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i had the privilege of eating at a Luguna Pueblo saint’s feast day celebration back in the early ’90s, when the Lagunas had a Small Business Defense Contractor on the pueblo. The shop foreman invited us over for lunch, where his wife had laid out a spread of turkey, mashed potatoes, and so on and so forth. But one dish was mutton in red chile sauce, which lives in my memory because it was the gift that kept on giving. I kept tasting mutton for around the next 24 hours.
This is why mutton is even lower than lamb on my list of favorite foods.
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Don’t disagree.
At home, growing up, we used to have mutton when great-uncle lost a ewe, then latter when uncle and aunt lost one … when their own freezers were full.
Regular mutton, not “cooked/marinated”, essentially until all the fat dissolved off the meat, essentially gone, doesn’t “taste” bad. But it is greasy and felt for a day or so. Or why the marination is primarily acidic fruit juices, pulp, and rinds.
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Did I mention Shish Kebab recently? Our cook for a long ago feast bought a lamn in Spring for a September event. As she put it, Shish Kebab wasn’t a name, it was a job description.
Her assistant was somewhat appalled at the idea of eating a cute little lamb, but by September SK wsa no long cute, nor very little, and any romantic notuons the assistant had had been pared away.
BTW, SK was quite good, and I don’t really like lamb.
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Respect the natives! ;)
Cats gonna cat.
And yes. We were definitely taught Mad Max was the GOOD ending.
Cat’s revenge for the Dot!
That grin on the nightvision guy….
Cowboys and samurai; IRL separated by space, not time!
Mediocrity would be an amazing improvement!
Whoa. Go Otoya.
Meri prefecture. *Snrk* Ooh, we’ll have an ongoing friendly argument!
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Any of you out there like me who haven’t heard Sarah speak? And wonder why people joke about “Moose and Squirrel”?
Here’s a video from a foreign couple who visited the US, and listed five things about their visit that surprised them. And no, contrary to what it might sound like, they’re not from Russia, or somewhere in Eastern Europe. Quite the contrary, they’re from the western-most tip of Europe, in the country of Portugal.
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He is risen!
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Christ the Lord is risen indeed.
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Alleluia!
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Ditto.
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Alleluia! Amen!
(And if you heard that to a particular pattern of music notes, I know what hymn you have sung recently. ;) ) [“Come, Christian Join to Sing”, for those wondering.]
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Indeed, he is risen!
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Alleluia!
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“I send very clear messages!”
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Official governmental salute finger.
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Last summer, at scout camp, there was an adult (former police) who referred to it as the “communication finger.”
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“I’m Sarah’s favorite Finger!” 🤣
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TBF
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so, they set up an airfield in the middle of Iran, extracted the guy, eliminated a whole bunch of thugs, and got away with no losses. the Europeans can’t believe we would spend that sort of money. Civis Americanus sum is back, baby!
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the whole thing of the European Union/Agressor Nation is to be penny wise/pound foolish when it comes to academic and bureaucratic oversight for economic efficiency and savings, and then be all butthurt because the ‘common wisdom’, everywhere, particularly in academia, is profoundly violated.
Because the ‘common understanding’ has been very carefully curated to remove the details and understanding that would show that we are being profoundly stupid, from the circle trigon party student organizations on European campuses to the agile cults of silicon valley, to the DIE and feminism everywhere.
1. People are not fungible, and selecting for symbolically important people breaks stuff instead of fixing stuff. (DIE) 2. Some things really do need to be delayed for the sake of perfectionism. (agile in general, and the AI ‘we gonna die if we don’t adopt’ specifically. but also a lot of cloud stuff.) 3. We don’t and will not have perfect master planners, in general economies function a ton better if the academic trained can keep their fingers out of the pie, or if the normies refuse to let the academics have a say.
If we don’t waste on the stupidities, we can do stuff that is important to us.
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I Twitter fasted yesterday and missed things, but when I heard this morning I wondered if anyone would play the, “That’s not cost-effective!” card (the secular equivalent of, “This ointment could have been sold for 300 denarii and the money given to the poor!”).
My beloved responded with the Hawaiian love sign, with both hands. Pretty well sums up my opinion, too.
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And comments pointing out the guy was shot down on Good Friday and rescued early Easter morning.
The Almihmight be trying to tell us something.
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Almighty.
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When I was praying for him early this morning, I got the oddest sense of “He’s OK, let’s focus on some others.” That’s … never happened before. I didn’t hear the news for another three hours.
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The Author has a sense of humor.
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