schmexperts

 That photo Old Dog posted of the six news channels all on one screen at the same time reminded me of what CNN did after one of those jumbo jets plunged into the south China Sea without a good bye.  I don't remember exactly how many, maybe sixteen experts in a four by four grid on the screen.  One of them was a psychic and CNN got a lot of grief for that, and in fact they got a bit of grief just over the ridiculous grid, and now they bring them on one at a time.  The thing  being I have had my fill on experts so I am going to skip this one which is just as well as I can see from the link he is saying pretty much the same thing all the other experts are saying.

Back when the US faced its constitutional crisis, even when only one party wanted to rid us of this tyrant, much of the military and law enforcement stood tall and stuck to what they believed in.  It didn't help us get rid of the tyrant, but it did keep him from establishing his dictatorship and lining us up against the wall which word is was one of the things that so enamored him of Putin.

Are there any such generals or officers of the law with any kind of power to do such a thing in Russia?  Just my own little expert guess, but probably not.

CNN just on with a big list of all the companies that will no longer deal with the Russkies.  Again I am surprised at the strength of these mysterious sanctions, but apparently the citizenry is going back to the bad old days of waiting in line.  I'm not sure how real polls in Russia are, but the last one had the people backing the war two to one.  Well the American public backed the wars in Vietnam and Iraq at first, but when they went on and on and accomplished nothing, our people eventually got tired of them.  On the other hand in the mean time a more and more frustrated Putin finger is on the atomic button.

Here's the thing Beagles you have previously spoke against Mexican immigration using the issue that the country is just too crowded as it is.  Those bold blue and yellow Ukrainians would take up just as much space as the Mexicans.

But the analogy is not quite right.  These Ukrainians don't want to settle in Poland or Hungary or Czech, they just want to stay out of the way of the bombs until hopefully this thing is settled and we can go back to normal.

Speaking of normal, our local covid rate is down to the low levels of last summer, and just maybe we are going back to normal although plenty are still dying in the outlaw states of Florida and Idaho.  But my masks are now languishing in the bathroom drawer and hopefully I will only have to open the drawer to dump ithem into the dust bin.  Maybe while listening to the sound of hammers and nails as the Ukrainians put their country back and of the wheels of the wagon that is delivering Putin to the Hague.  There is a glimmer.

"Putin's Days Are Numbered"

 I know this sounds like wishful thinking, and it is when I say it, but maybe this guy's opinion is a little more well informed than mine.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/putin-s-days-are-numbered-russian-strongman-has-shown-he-s-not-very-strong/ar-AAUM7A8?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare

Truth be known, though, all of our days are numbered aren't they.  I just looked it up, and Putin is only 69 years old, which is not so old for a national president.  Too bad.  Of course, that doesn't mean he has to stay in power until the day he dies.  He could be persuaded to retire to a nice country home in Siberia.  One can only hope.

We have discussed this immigration thing before, and pretty well ran it into the ground.  What's new is my proposal that we bring in a few million Slavic people to balance the equation.  What's wrong with that?  Those Cubans have been in Florida for a long time, and I don't remember hearing about them causing any trouble lately, unless you count voting Republican as causing trouble, which Uncle Ken seems to be doing.  

if only there weren't so damn many of them

 I've done microwave instant coffee since I have had a microwave which was maybe a couple years after I got back to Chicago which would be the early nineties,  At some point my sister who has more couth than I do, bought me a coffeemaker to elevate me into a more refined lifestyle, and it's been okay, coffee is a little better but it is also more work and sometimes of a morning I am not in the mood and do the instant and that serves just as well.

That thing about the measuring cups reminds me of an interesting evening at the Ten Cat when I think it was Old Dog, maybe it was somebody else, wondered does the Ten Cat pint glass hold 16 oz.  Turns out it doesn't, it holds like fifteen and a half, which is not as shocking as it sounded right off.  Fact is all pint glasses, hold fifteen and a half ounces.  Just something they do, and they still call them pint glasses because that's what they do.  Sounds like some bit of chicanery and maybe it is.  I wonder if in Merrie Old Englande where those pint glasses came from if they are also fifteen and a half. Actually Englande has gone metric, so you would think it would have something to do with the metric system, but you would think that ye olde pubbe would be one place where maybe they hold to the measures used back when Britannia ruled the waves.

I went to google and it is more complicated than I thought.  I will leave it at that for the nonce and the reader can read further on the subject if they are of the mood.

Most matters are beyond my power of control.  I am interested in this because well, I am just interested in what is going on in the world.  

And right now I am near the end of Emma Goodman's autobiography and she is in Ukraine which was a hotbed for the anarchists, who were uneasily joined with the commies when they had the czar in common to fight, the enemy of my enemy sort of thing, and now that the enemy is gone so has the friendship between the two and the commies are putting the hammer to the anarchists.  Their most potent weapon is their bureaucracy which they also turn on themselves.

And a Putin knock off has appeared on House of Cards, pretty much looking like Satan.  Well you know on tv and in the movies Satan always has a lot of charm and do does this guy and normally I would go along with all that, but thinking of the current Putin I find no charm. no cleverness, nothing but, dare I say it? Trump across the waters.

I seem to remember that Europe was overrun with refugees from the Middle East a few years ago.  They finally had to start turning them away because there were just too many of them.

See this is what I have been talking about, the idea that refugees are turned away not because they are too different, but because there are too many of them.  The deception being in the idea that if there were fewer of them it would be ok, but in fact a handful of them would be too many, unless of course they looked like you and maybe their enemy is your enemy (interesting how Putin is now most everybody's enemy) and then the sky is the limit.

A little off the subject but those Cubans were hispanics like the Mexicans further west, who Beagles is always worried about taking over the country, but we let in a whole slew of Cubans and now they have taken over south Florida delivering the whole state to Trumpette, De Santis, and I don't see that disturbing the sleep of Beagles up north in the freehold.

But of course there are other differences between the Ukrainians and the wretched masses of the mideast yearning to be free and the situation is more complicated than that, but I am just saying that the argument that we would be kind to the huddled masses if only there weren't so many of them is pretty bogus.

I remember when Nixon used to rant and rave about Uncle Ho, how he had enslaved so many of his countrymen to a godless ideology and then had caused this huge war where so many had died and I thought geez he did all that, just this skinny little guy with the wispy goatee, how had he done all that by himself?

News break

You want news?  I got yer news right here, pal, a screen grab of six live news feeds.  The audio is amazing with folks all jabbering at the same time,  just like in the movies.  I feel like a media mogul...

Let My People Go!

 Call me a racist if you want to, but I'm more concerned about the war in Ukraine than I am about the myriad conflicts in Central America and the Middle East.  To be fair, ask any of the refugees from those two regions if they care as much about Ukraine as they do about the troubles in their own homelands.  My guess is they don't, and for good reason.  Okay, Slavic Europe is not exactly my homeland, but it is the homeland of my ancestors.  All four of my grandparents came from Bohemia, which is now part of the Czech Republic.  It wasn't until I moved to Cheboygan that I ever met anybody's grandparent who didn't speak with a foreign, usually Slavic, accent.  I think it's just human nature to care more about your own people than you do about other people's people.  If that makes me a racist, so be it.

I seem to remember that Europe was overrun with refugees from the Middle East a few years ago.  They finally had to start turning them away because there were just too many of them.  I don't know how many the Slavic countries accepted, but I seem to remember that they accepted a bunch of refugees from Vietnam when there were too many of them for us to take care of.  Last I heard, there were upwards of two million Ukrainian refugees so far.  We had that many illegal crossings of our southern border only last year, and that's just the ones they caught.  To be fair, that was a record breaker, usually it's closer to one million.  I don't see why we can't make room for at least that many Slavic immigrants.  Diversity is a good thing, right?  

When I was stationed in Berlin, popular mythology held that Hitler was the only bad German who had ever lived.  I find it hard to believe that he murdered all those Jewish people and ran roughshod over much of Europe all by himself, he must have had help.  The same could be said about Stalin, Genghis Khan, and Atilla the Hun.  I can't think of any historical figure who rose to national leadership without a little help from his friends.  Even Moses had a least one Friend in high places.

Coffee break

This war has been obsessing me,  I tune into CNN every morning and leave it on.

There's your problem, Uncle Ken.  Listen to some music instead, Sandy Denny perhaps, or watch some cartoons.  As I read the recent posts of the Institute I ask myself, "why are these guys spending so much time yammering about this stuff?"  What, I wonder, are they getting out of all the back and forth, besides a little venting?

-----

"Every thing we hear is an opinion, not a fact.  Every thing we see is a perspective, not the truth."      -Marcus Aurelius

-----

My motives for not joining the conversation are purely selfish.  Maybe you guys haven't noticed, but the clock is ticking and I'm not getting any younger.  Since you guys are about three years older than me, pushing 80, it looks like, I'm surprised you think that chewing over matters that are beyond your control is a good use of your time.  The whole situation is nuts but you can say that about most of human history, so there we are.

But I'm not going to aggravate myself, getting worked up and frustrated over the failings of the human condition.  Thousands of years of recorded history and it's the same old crap.  Mr. Beagles is on the right track, only checking the news once a day if I'm not mistaken.  I'm not ignoring the situation in Ukraine but like Mr. Beagles, my interest lies in the tactics, strategies, and now the big one, logistics.  But my source of news is not network or cable, I'm strictly a YouTube guy.  There are 24-hour news channels, in English, from many countries and I try to see what they have to say.  They all have a slightly different perspective but if you add them all up I think you get a better picture of the reality of the situation.  I don't check those channels until very late, near midnight, because Ukraine is 8 hours ahead of Chicago and not much seems to be happening overnight.  As of this moment I think the outlook for Ukraine is bleak unless there are some internal changes in Russia.  With all the dithering going on I think Puta will eventually have his way but it will be a Pyhrric victory and a disaster in the long term.

-----

So, rather than make myself goofy following the actions of total strangers in locations I've never been to, I'm working on enhancing my quality of life and making sure that my day-to-day reality is the best I can make it.  And lately, it's been coffee.  I'm not a coffee snob, for ease of use you can't beat instant, and the Maxwell House stuff is good enough for me.  But lately I can't find it, the local Jewel stores never seem to have it in stock so I've been giving normal ground coffee a chance, in this case, Folger's Columbian blend (the only coffee available at the local Kwik-E-Mart).  Brewed it up, filtered it, and it was terrible, some of the worst coffee I've had in years.  I used the proper amount of coffee but maybe I let it steep too long.  Anyhow, time to do a little digging and I started reading about cold brewing and gave that method a shot.  A little weak but otherwise very close to wonderful, no acidity or bitterness.  The downside is that it requires more coffee and a lot more time so there has been some trial and error but I am pleased with the results.  If I want some coffee tomorrow I have to mix it up today, 18 to 24 hours are recommended.  And now I'm fiddling with adding some eggshell and a little salt with good results.  The best thing about cold brewing is that you get the full jolt of the water soluble caffeine and since you need to use more coffee to get the full flavor you get about double the caffeine.  I keep it in the refrigerator and because it can get so strong I cut it with a little water.  And then I nuke it good; the cold coffee is good but a hot cup of java is better.

Another thing I noticed in my kitchen adventures is that measuring spoons are not accurate.  Over the years I've accumulated many partial sets and I did a little experiment with four different tablespoons and they were all different, none delivered the true volume of 15 grams of water.  Some were over, some were under, but none hit the spot.  I doubt this means anything in the real world but I don't think you should mix up the measuring spoons; use spoons from the same set for best results with your recipes.  That's your kitchen tip for today.

-----

There is no medical term for "booger."

fading glimmers

 It looks like Putin has foregone any attempt to be a little sophisticated about taking Ukraine and is now going to blow the place to shit with his many bombs and cannons and missiles.  I read an article a few days ago and it predicted this behavior if he didn't get his way right away citing the experience in Syria.

Ah remember the Arab spring? What a bust that turned out to be.  As part of that the Syrians arose against their odious dictator, Bashar al-Assad.  At first it looked like they would succeed but then Hezbollah came to the aid of Bashar and not much later Putin came knocking on the door, and he just bombed the shit out of the rebels.  The guy writing the article said it should come as no surprise to us.  The author was an Arab, and complained about how we were making such a hoopla about Ukraine, but we never seemed to care much about the Syrian rebels.  Was it because they were Arabs?  Most likely yes.

There were extenuating circumstances.  Syria was in the midst of a civil war which was part of the foment going on in the middle east, and while half of the rebels were those good freedom loving people who we so admire the other half were jihadi types.

Now that I think of it we didn't raise much of a fuss when the Russkies took back the Crimea.  Well Ukraine had some terrible kleptocrat, and that area had always been kind of Russian anyway, and Putin, at the time he didn't seem so bad.  He came out of the time of the drunken Yeltsin and Russia coming off the wheels, and many of us, including me, thought well maybe they need a strongman, and he may be brutal, but at least he is sane.  That latter part turned out not to be true.  

And what about all those refugees Poland and Hungary (both headed by right wing dictator types) are taking in, and isn't that like so generous and makes you proud to be a human.  But they have also been beating back middle eastern refugees with the butts of their rifles and while regretful, we don't worry too much about that.

One thing is how sudden this whole Ukraine invasion was.  One day there was peace and in weeks the Russkies were running in their tanks like in broad daylight, right in the middle of a busy thoroughfare.  And another one is how much the Ukrainians look so much like us.

Just one thing Beagles, the oligarchs have not put Putin in power, he has put them in power, he can make or break any of them.  But it does seem likely that it will take somebody on the inside to take him down.  I am wondering about the generals.  Not a big fan of the military as you know, but they do stand for something besides the dear leader and I remember how some of the generals that Trump put in helped to take him out.

One thing that has surprised me is how powerful these sanctions are, toppling the ruble and all that.  I don't quite understand it but it seems to work powerfully and quickly.  If we can undo Putin with it, can it be used to keep China's hands off Hong Kong and Taiwan?

In the glimmer of hope thing, well it's certainly not helping Trump, and Biden is gaining a tad bit in his dismal polling.  He is looking like Bush the First when he assembled the force that forced Hussein out of Kuwait.  Of course he lost the next election after that.

Thanks for the cartoon Old Dog.  Putin is looking strong now but when this over and the Russian economy is in the toilet, and they are saddled with a big country where everybody hates them, maybe then Putin's dick may go limp.