Prince....you will be missed.
Update:
Hmm...I see that the video I linked to has been removed due to a copy right claim of some sort. Ahh...I suppose that is the risk when linking to something on You Tube. For anyone who happens by and would like to know what it was, it was a link to Prince's song, "Gold". While it was not a huge hit here in the US it seemed to me to be a song that said something about Prince's feelings, which is why I linked to it. And, I wanted to do something besides "Purple Rain'.
52 comments:
News ‘round here was a little vague about what he died of. Some chatter about a possible OD.
Mid length piece in TheAtlantic explaining that our allies and our enemies are in no hurry to end the mess that is Syria today, on account of they all prefer the mess to a resolution in which their favored proxies are exterminated. Man makes much sense. Piece isn't all that long, fairly short for an Atlantic report.
Some chatter about a possible OD.
That's always my first thought. But in this case there may be something else involved. They had actually landed his plane earlier in the week early because he was feeling ill. He also had a doctor's apt. Someone said he had some kind of flu, but it's hard to think that ordinary flu would kill someone so young, unless there were underlying health conditions. The are doing an autopsy today.
Hmmm...that "the" should be "they".
Man makes much sense.
A agree.
"Man makes much sense."
I too agree. Not a very optimistic view but probably a correct one.
I wonder if there's any chance to speed along an end to the conflict along by getting those outside facilitators mentioned together and hash out a deal where they collectively try to de-escalate instead of escalate the conflict. Or if they are prepared to fight down to the last Syrian.
I guess it has at least been seen to be attempted by those "peace talks" but probably just for show so far.
"Or if they are prepared to fight down to the last Syrian."
Told ya before I figured they's currently ready to fight down to the last living Syrian. One hopes they begin to find that attitude too expensive before too long. In any case, there is much he and I agree upon, and I've long been leery of the interventionist theories about how ‘we’ were gonna fix that mess.
I suppose I should have been less optimistic about the idea that we could depose Saddam and husband a better Islamic republic into being in his stead, but at least I learned from that mistake. Too many of my countrymen are too willing to try the old failed theories all over again.
(And it's still not been proven that it wouldn't have worked if only the bastards in charge had actually tried to make it work when they had the chance, but it's too late now for outsiders, like us, to make it work; Western style representative government is now a failed concept in the eyes of too many across the Middle East. They'll have to give up on the alternatives, before they can be coaxed into givin’ that another try.)
And, speaking of the failure in Iraq. A brief update to date, a sketch of the dismal prospects in Iraq by the NYT. (The one good note; we've apparently decided to foot the pay bill for the Peshmerga fighters who've been soldiering on without pay for months now.)
*sigh*
Busy weekend. I've watched the first half of the video you left in the other comments section, Marcus. No, people don't realize what this world will be like if populations continue to grow at an unsustainable level. I can see it here. Roads that were small with little traffic have been upgraded and widened to support the amount of traffic. Areas that were empty fields are now filled with new housing developments. With the increased population you need to upgrade your infrastructure, such as electrical grids and power lines. Yet you run into so many people who say, not in my back yard. With climate change water may become a serious issue. We see the tainted water in Michigan, for example, and the communities close to the Great Lakes who are requesting access to that water for their use. Down the road we may see more fighting over resources, even here.
Solar plane lands in California
Too many of my countrymen are too willing to try the old failed theories all over again.
"Everybody wants to sell what's already been sold..."
(The one good note; we've apparently decided to foot the pay bill for the Peshmerga fighters who've been soldiering on without pay for months now.)
Yes. They at least have shown they are capable of functioning, even if there are flaws. Iraqi emotions tend to get in the way of Iraq's government functioning in a useful manner. At least so far. There is still too much all for me and none for everyone else.
There is a Fareed Zakaria special on Monday night at 9pm on radical Islam and why they hate us. I will have to try to remember to tune in. I always like his shows.
This morning he had Irshad Manji on as a guest. Interesting, and sensible, woman.
Barack Obama: "We consider it a major national security issue that you have uncontrolled migration into Europe."
https://twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/723554861288198146?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
You and me both, Barack. You and me both.
Gotta run, after a weekend of running all over the place, filling stump holes, and trying to plant a little garden, I'm going to see a play today. It's raining, so a good time for indoor activity. :)
Lee:
"New listing of odds on bets starts out with:
"1. Nobody wins going in and they have to sort it out in Cleveland at the convention, where Cruz wins eventually.
Sun Apr 10, 09:18:00 am"
Does that still stand or do you see any reason to change it based on yesterdays' primaries results?
I read about Trump winning big but that the actual numbers of secured delegates may not be enough anyway.
"Trump got a big win, big enough that people will now start talking
about how the ‘establishment’ can't stop Trump. Wrong paradigm.
Question is, can the right-winger crazies stop Trump? I think they can,
and will. I'm still bettin’ on Cruz coming out of Cleveland with the
nomination."
Lee C. @ Wed Apr 20, 05:07:00 am
"Slate says the next few Republican contests are gonna be good for
Trump. Slate is a liberal leaning publication, but they tend to be
clear-eyed liberals and most often get the data right."
Lee C. @ Fri Apr 15, 03:47:00 pm
Nothin’ much has changed.
Just mentioning, I didn't try to pick a quote from you and challenge it. I was merely interested in wether you still saw that as the most likely outcome, since Trump seems to have won rather bigger than expected.
I read in NYT that Indiana might be a deciding state. That if Trump should win there by a decent margin he's actually likely to get the 1237 delegates after all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/27/upshot/why-donald-trump-is-probably-two-states-from-victory.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Of course there are also other ifs and buts but Indiana is pointed to as a state that could clinch it for Trump.
"I didn't try to pick a quote from you and challenge it."
I just meant to point out that I had foreseen that the ‘establishment’ Republicans and their captive pundits would be getting weak kneed about now.
Although… If Trump wins Indiana (bound delegates) I'll reconsider my bet.
If I was to guess right now, based on my admittedly close to zero knowledge about the primaries process, but also based on a good deal of reading in these primaries I would at this point guess:
I believe Trump will fall short of 1237. But I also think he'll come quite close to that number, not in the hundreds but in the tens, and that the second best candidate Cruz will be several hundreds of delegates from it. In my mind this will prove a real challenge for those who try to deny Trump the nomination.
I mean if you're a party, the GOP, and you want that party to beat another party, Dem, in the general election, which I assume is still the main goal (with supreme courts nominations and such in the balance) can you really afford to bypass the candidate, Trump, that's been way more successful in the primaries and risk it all with a candidate that doesn't even win amongst your own, Cruz, who is arguably even more unpopular with your opponent Dem voters?
You adressed this with:
"Wrong paradigm. Question is, can the right-winger crazies stop Trump? I think they can, and will."
And here I confess I don't really have my ear to the ground, but are those zealots really that powerful and influential? And do they seriously believe their preferred candidate could win? And if they are in doubt about that wouldn't they consider Trump, if he's a better chance for a Republican win in the generals, in the end?
Too many questions here, and I gotta go see a man ’bout a dog. I'll get back to this later; but, for now…
"And if they are in doubt about that wouldn't they consider Trump…"
No. Later on the rest.
The Saudi's pique with Obama is over other matters.
Care to expand on that thought?
Too many questions here, and I gotta go see a man ’bout a dog.
Sounds more fun than thinking about shopping for dirt. *sigh*
"Care to expand on that thought?"
Primarily, they do not like him making peace, even just a partial peace, with Iran (the nuclear deal); secondarily, they're pissed off at being publicly tagged for being ‘free riders’ on the back of American military power. And, they just don't like him in general (feeling's mutual). Bush they liked; Obama, not so much. They'd really like to have another neo-con in the White House so's we'd pay their way again, but I think they could live just fine with Hillary.
After looking that over again, I conclude that most of your questions come down to this one thing.
"And do they seriously believe [Cruz] could win?"
Answer is, ‘yes’, although the more professional among them are already preparing to blame the coming loss in the general on Trump and his people pouting over their loss in the primary, and refusing to ‘get behind’ Cruz when the time came.
To expand on that a little bit…
"And do they seriously believe [Cruz] could win?"
You should remember that for almost 40 years now these people have been encouraged to believe in faerie tales. They believe any sort of nonsense is possible if they just want it to be that way. The only way they can fail is by not wanting it hard enough, just want it hard enough, pretend long enough, and any faerie tale can come true.
"They believe any sort of nonsense is possible if they just want it to
be that way."
Well, at least they've been told that, indoctrinated in that, for 40 years or so, and they at least pretend to believe it.
Lee: "Answer is, ‘yes’, although the more professional among them are already preparing to blame the coming loss in the general on Trump and his people pouting over their loss in the primary, and refusing to ‘get behind’ Cruz when the time came."
OK. I find it hard to come to terms with people being so single minded but if you say so I do believe you.
Queary then:
Do you believe Trump necessarily must get the 1237 before the convention to become the GOP candidate? What if he got 1200 on his side in the first vote and Cruz several hundreds less, would there still be a real effort to turn it around by forcing more voting sessions?
"Trump gets up to around 1,150 delegates going in, that bet gets ‘iffy’
at best, there will be around 130-150 ‘unbound’ delegates to share out,
but at 1,100 going in; I still say Cruz probably pulls it out."
Lee C. @ Wed Apr 20, 05:07:00 am
"I find it hard to come to terms with people being so single minded but
if you say so I do believe you."
These people were taught to believe they could pay for a war in Iraq by cutting taxes on the wealthy. They insist that global warming is not real; it's all a liberal/commie plot to somehow break American global dominance (in case Obama can't get it done on his own). Obama is a Kenyan born, Muslim ‘anti-colonialist’ whose parents somehow spirited him from Kenya to Hawaii to have a false birth certificate created so that he could become President of the United States 50 years later. There is actually such a thing as ‘Creation Science’ which should be taught in American schools as an alternative explanation to the Theory of Evolution. If you cut taxes for the wealthy they will ‘create jobs’ for the rest of the population even if that general population has no money to spend on anything these supposed ‘job creaters’ produce. And the list just goes on and on---
OK Lee, so what you're basically saying is that common sense and reason isn't that big a part of the equation. Right?
That's a bit of an understatement. Are you familiar with old comic book character ‘Green Lantern’? He supposedly could simply will things into being.
Nope, Green Lantern is one of the Marwel charachters (if he's even that) I know nothing about. Just some mentioning in a Seinfeld episode is all I can remember. So you'll need to explain things not using that Green Lantern, since it says nothing to me.
He's DC Comics (Superman, Batman, Flash, et. al)
Well, as I said, Green Lantern simply willed things into being (a shield if he needed one, a sword if he needed one, a wall where he needed it, whatever). When he was having difficulty making his magic work it was always because he had applied insufficient will-power to the task at hand.
In a similar vein, just for instance… Republican ‘base’ voters have been told for neigh onto 40 years now that the ‘supply-side’ economic theory jointly dreamed up by the Heritage Foundation and Ronald Reagan's too imaginative mind will actually work to produce shared prosperity--of course it does not, never has; never will. But the Republican ‘base’ has been sold on the idea anyway, and so they imagine the reason Republican economic policy always results in them getting the short end of the economic stick has something to do with a lack of sufficient will-power among the politicians they've been electing to majorities in the Congress. And that's just one for instance; they got a whole bunch of hare-brained theories they've sold to a credulous set of voters (their ‘base’) and now that base thinks they should somehow make these fantasies real. Of course, they cannot.
For instance, Putin is not gonna back off in the Ukraine just because a Republican President has sufficient ‘will-power’; the Republican President would have to actually commit sufficient military resources to the task and risk real war, but, the Republican ‘base’ will never stand for that, on account of that will cost real money not to mention the risk of real war, and besides, actually committing the resources the project requires is contrary to the theory that will-power alone is sufficient--it's an admission of failure of will, and thus would be a betrayal by the Republican President of all the things the ‘base’ believes in.
Zeyad has a new post up.
Bush they liked; Obama, not so much.
It's rather ironic that the Saudis have so much in common with the Israelis.
Apparently John Boehner doesn't care too much for Ted Cruz, calling him Lucifer in the flesh.
Boehner has often spoken harshly of Cruz. Only this time he got caught on tape. (If you listen closely to the whole thing you can hear his host assuring him he isn't being taped, so he can speak freely--turned out not to be the case, of course.)
Lee, any comment about this:
http://takimag.com/article/the_conservative_media_meltdown_david_cole#axzz47DBcNQSh
I don't know of the main characters enough to form an opinion but I get the general idea.
Not sure which part I'd comment upon; Mr. Cole rambles all over the lot, and not in any sort of discernible pattern, just meandering.
This did seem unusually blunt:
I have Democrat friends and Republican friends,” Boehner said, according to the Stanford Daily. “I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”
Well, off to buy groceries and dirt.
Pentagon officials (admittedly political appointees, but still…) have issued a statement blasting the current House Benghazi Committee (I believe this is the eighth congressional committee to take up the subject) for making repeated requests for the same categories of documents, when their earlier requests turned up nothing to go on (as if asking for them again will somehow materialize documents which do not currently exist), and for demanding that the military guys (real soldiers, not political appointees) engage in speculation or discussions based on hypothetical situations that have been repeatedly dismissed as nonsense ‘by any one of the multiple high-level military officials already interviewed” and generally wasting time and money. Politico.com
Why does Al-Sadr remind me of Donald Trump?
I bought a book recently about Benghazi, 13 Hours in Benghazi in soft cover recently. I haven't started it yet, but I have this horrible feeling that I might have already read it. I hate that when that happens.
I'll have to check out your link later, Lee. I have a date with a lawn mower, some wood chips and some raspberry bushes.
The Republicans are going to try to keep Benghazi going long enough to hot it up for Hillary's campaign for the Presidency, but I've long thought they made a mistake in opening that last omnibus type Special Committee. Made their move way too soon; they don't have the evidence to keep the subject interesting long enough, even to their own partisans. Should have announced some faked up ‘new evidence’ and be opening the hearings about now. (When it would also serve to take some critical attention of their own presidential prospects, a benefit they didn't know they'd need, but still….)
Zeyad posted an interesting article on the Kurds and their possible early ties to Daesh.
With the protests in Baghdad recently it does look like that whole region is a royal mess.
[Lynnette]: "I have a date with a lawn mower, some wood chips and some raspberry bushes"
Mine's with a beach, a table-tennis table, and a west Iberian country ... but will shortly be replaced again with rain, rain, and rain ;-)
Mine's with a beach, a table-tennis table, and a west Iberian country ... but will shortly be replaced again with rain, rain, and rain ;-)
I am totally jealous. Yes, even of the rain! At least then I would have an excuse not to work out in the yard. lol!
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