Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Gematria:

Gematria (/ɡəˈmeɪtriə/; Hebrew: גמטריא or gimatria גימטריה, plural גמטראות or גימטריאות, gimatriot) is the practice of assigning a numerical value to a name, word or phrase according to an alphanumerical cipher. A single word can yield several values depending on the cipher which is used. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Trucker Convoy Protester Spouts Wild COVID Conspiracy Theory in Viral Video,” Gerrard Kaonga, Newsweek:

She insisted that COVID-19 was a coded message for “see sheep surrender,” a conspiracy theory that was already debunked by a Reuters fact-check report in 2020.

“When it came out it was ‘corona’ right?” the woman said.

“Corona is six letters, when you use gematria and say A is 1, B is 2, C is 3 and you put Corona lined up is 6-6. So that is 6-6-6.

Dreadful incoherence. I wonder if gematria is related to pareidolia?

Religion News Service has an AP report:

The curators of raptureready.com — which shares commentary about “end of days” prophesies — suggest things could move quickly. Their “Rapture Index,” — on which any reading above 160 means “Fasten your seatbelts” — was raised this week to 187, close to its record high of 189 in 2016.

Which leaves me to wonder, At what number do they stop believing that a Rapture will ever occur? At what number do they stop believing in God?

One of the most detailed alerts came from televangelist Pat Robertson, who came out of retirement on Feb. 28 to assert on “The 700 Club” that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “compelled by God” to invade Ukraine as a prelude to an eventual climactic battle in Israel. Robertson said verses of the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel support this scenario.

“You can say, well, Putin’s out of his mind. Yes, maybe so,” Robertson said. “But at the same time, he’s being compelled by God. He went into the Ukraine, but that wasn’t his goal. His goal was to move against Israel, ultimately.”

“It’s all there,” added Robertson, referring to Ezekiel. “And God is getting ready to do something amazing and that will be fulfilled.”

Which leaves me with the terrifying visual of God as sock-puppet guy. Poor Vlad, eh? But I suppose it absolves him of guilt.

Or does it?

Perhaps Robertson’s conception of God, and interpretation of the Bible, bedevils – if you’ll permit – the idea of free will, which in turn leads to a God that’s, at best, juvenile in behavior.

Bah, the whole thing is silly. Drama queens, the lot of them.

The intelligence news that Russia may be requesting military and financial assistance from China is, I think, one of the more shocking incidents to occur in this invasion of Ukraine by Russia. For most folks on both ends of the political spectrum Russia is, or now past tense, was the Bear, grumpy and vicious and apt to eat the unwary.

Their failure to topple Ukraine in 3 days – it’s now close to 3 weeks – is signal evidence of failures in the military’s planning, logistics, resources, professionalism, top to bottom.

That they – read Putin – have to ask China for help, even if it’s only symbolic in the arena of military assistance, since such usually takes training, or, a chancy business, China sending military personnel, is a measure of their desperation. Why?

Because China’s Russia’s own bugaboo. China, the world’s most populous nation, has a huge Army, nuclear weapons, few scruples, and big ambitions. Now Russia, through the foolishness of Putin, has revealed a critical weakness.

And everyone is well aware that Russia is replete with natural resources – including China. This makes them desirable, not only as a trade partner, but as a subject territory.

I wonder if this has ever crossed Putin’s mind.

Will this happen? I don’t know. I’m not a military strategist, nor a specialist in China military, or indeed anything applicable. But I know China’s leader Xi is ambitious, he has a populace that must be kept distracted from its own many problems, and Russia is the prime example of a major power going downhill. It’s like a three legged sheep sighted by the wolf pack. Is the shepherd around, or is that sheep about to become dinner.

Russia’s internal powers had better start thinking about these possibilities, because right now Ukraine’s becoming a distraction and not a goal.

Senator Manchin (D-WV) is opposed to government subsidies for building electric charging stations for EVs, because …

“I’m very reluctant to go down the path of electric vehicles,” Manchin said at the conference. “I’m old enough to remember standing in line in 1974 trying to buy gas.” He added he doesn’t want to wait in line “for a battery for my vehicle, because we’re now dependent on a foreign supply chain.”

“I’ve read history, and I remember Henry Ford inventing the Model-T,” Manchin also said, “but I sure as hell don’t remember the U.S. government building filling stations — the market did that.” [WaPo]

Skipping both obvious and nuanced arguments, such as the observation that the market is neither prescient nor wise, let’s just go to what the writer, Gary Sargent, forgot, and that’s the billions in subsidies provided to the fossil fuel industries over the decades. By enabling the extraction and refinement activities, along with applications, it’s not hard to deduce:

That’s what built the filling stations.

Manchin’s exercising a deeply dishonest argument.

If you like ostriches, here’s some interesting facts.

Just kidding!

Not a good sign.

There is a lot of grim news for President Biden and Democrats in the latest Wall Street Journal poll (Cliff Notes version is that while more Americans approve of his handling of Ukraine, they give him low marks for his handling of other issues more important to them, particularly inflation). But I just wanted to take a moment to flag this part of the poll, which is remarkable and not something I can recall ever seeing before:

The survey also found Republicans making gains among minority groups. By 9 percentage points, Hispanic voters in the new poll said they would back a Republican candidate for Congress over a Democrat. The two parties had been tied among Hispanic voters in the Journal’s survey in November.

Democratic margins also eroded among Black voters, who favored a Democrat for Congress by 35 percentage points in the new survey, down from 56 points in November. Support for a Republican candidate rose to 27% among Black voters, up from 12% in November.

[Philip Klein, Editor, National Review]

When your target demographics seem to be moving away, you should pay attention. The saddest part is that the Democrats who lose are replaced by the fourth raters in the Republican Party.

If the guy pulls that trigger, not only does Raffles end up with a hole in his leg, but his fingers’ll get scorched, too. And Lady Melrose will not be happy with a hole in her carpet.

Raffles (1939) follows A. J. Raffles, Brit cricket star, thievery addict, and all-around good guy, as he finds a friend of his, a gambling fiend named Bunny Maunders, is well below the surface of the gambling swamp, and in desperate need of immediate help.

Which could be found in the form of Lady Melrose’s jewelry.

Lord Melrose, a fan of cricket, has conveniently invited Raffles to visit their estate for a party, and the guest list includes Inspector MacKenzie of Scotland Yard, incognito, who suspects the thief will be present, and Bunny’s sister, Gwen.

The latter for whom Raffles falls, hard. So hard he bounces.

Thieves are hardly romantic figures, though, even in 1930s England, so Raffles finds his challenge to be coming off as heroic to Gwen, not at all a thief to MacKenzie, and at least not offensive to the Melroses – as offending landed British gentry can introduce unneeded burdens to one’s career.

Even one as dubious as Raffles’.

It’s fun, but only the final scene, in which Raffles must face Gwen, MacKenzie, and the man he’s framing for the theft – did I forget to mention Raffles is just a bit of a cad? – approaches memorability.

Watch if you need a bit of diversion for an hour or so. Or you love David Niven, whose tiny little mustache must, as usual, do all the work of being charming for him.

Last October on Artnome, NFT enthusiast Jason Bailey detailed one of the lurking snakes of NFTs:

Aestivation:

Over the winter, most slugs and snails hibernate and, yes, as it warms up in the spring, they come out to feed. Then they activate a summer hibernation phase called aestivation, where they seek shelter again – slugs below ground; snails above ground. And then they come out again in the autumn. Here in Oregon, once we get the first fall rains, that activates them to come out again. This pattern is pretty typical for here in the US, western Europe, the UK and Ireland. In more tropical areas, like Hawaii or the north of Australia, slugs and snails are active all the time. [“Rory Mc Donnell interview: The slug hunter with a strange new weapon,” Brendan Knapp, NewScientist (5 March 2022)]

David Von Drehle briefly chronicles the recent corporate migration from maximizing profits to being what we might call corporate moral entities:

Returning to the point, morality provides a shortcut for identifying actions as threatening to our own well-being; if a person, a corporation, or a government persists in actions which are in conflict with moral dictates, this is not merely a doubtful condemnation of a possibly existent soul, individual or corporate, but, in fact, a threat, potentially existential, to the actors in the drama in which all are embedded.

That is, enabling and, through successful ventures, encouraging the genocidal institution may result in that genocide being inflicted on you, and most observers would then consider the genocided venture a failure. Not only is this a condemnation of Friedman’s deeply disconnected from reality Doctrine, but also the concentration on quarterly profits as a meaningful measure of corporate success.

And quite possibly the entire stock market and its scanting of the premise that stockholder behavior should enhance corporate morality. But that’s a thought for another time.

From this WaPo report, it appears we were on the brink of reviving the JCPOA, aka the Iran nuclear deal, when Russia invaded Ukraine, and now Russia, one of the signatories of the original deal, is raising an objection. Iran’s feeling the squeeze:

But Tehran has also made it clear that Iran feels it can’t risk a public rift with Russia by turning its back on Russia’s concerns and aligning with the United States, according to a person familiar with the details of the talks, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive subjects.

Someone should whisper in Iran’s ear concerning the trustability of Russia on anything. Of course, that might not make Iran’s leadership any happier, seeing as their options of the United States and China are unappetizing – at least to an Islamic theocracy. Under former American President Trump, we proved volatile and untrustable in pulling out of the JCPOA and reimposing sanctions, and that, sadly, remains a solid potential:

Comments by former vice president Mike Pence in an interview earlier this week with an Israeli newspaper that a future Republican administration would again withdraw from any revived deal also did not help, said a senior Western diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive subjects.

It’s deeply shameful that the former vice president made such a remark, which paints America as a dishonorable entity that does not live up to its commitments. Thus we see the descent of the American political class into vast, self-centered incompetence. The Republicans lead the way, but I suspect the Democrats are not far behind.

Back to the main plot, but China has what might be argued an even worse guilt in their relentless persecution of the their Islamic Uighur minority. Do the theocrats in Tehran really want to ally with a country whose leadership is dedicated to wiping out their religion?

But the unstable nature of autocracy, inevitably streaked as it is with splashes of brutality, incompetence, and arbitrariness, and possibly seasoned with an obscure religious zealotry peculiar to Russia and alien to Iran, has been revealed in all its repulsive glory. Do the theocrats feel entirely comfortable buying the arms of Russia when they’ve been revealed to be of surprisingly inferior quality by this conflict? I have to wonder if Supreme Leader Khamenei has nightmares featuring scenes from the American advance into Kuwait during the First Gulf War, in which American tanks easily outclassed their Russian-made counterparts used by the Iraqi Army.

I’d wake up in a cold sweat if I were him.

Nor can Russia offer relief from American sanctions any longer. The ruble is being rapidly reduced to a joke, Russia’s suffering a brain drain, and only its nuclear arms and immense natural resources retain their value.

I wonder if we’ll be seeing the Iranians trying to inch their way to signing on the dotted line soon.

I don’t know if I should be taking this post, concerning a letter from a Ukraine official to the Russian Defense Minister on various bits of sub-standard military gear found in Ukraine on Russian tanks, from Irenaeus on Daily Kos seriously:

In particular, the protection of Russian tanks T-72 and T-80 made from cardboard egg trays. Without a doubt, these means of protecting military equipment deserve to become a separate assessment factor in the PowerIndex when forming the Global Firepower rating of the strongest armies in the world.

There are corroborating pictures.

And they remind me of my school lessons in High School, when they claimed Russian arms merchants of World War I were delivering arms and munitions that not only didn’t work, but couldn’t work – replacement of gunpowder with sand, for example – all due, again, to corruption at the highest levels.

History rhymes.

Practicing the double-humped camel yoga position is the best way to escape prison.

Murderous Trance (2018) is a fictionalized recounting of real-life events that happened in Denmark in the 1950s, to wit, a bank robbery and murder of two bank clerks, in which the perpetrator, Palle Hardrup, is caught rapidly, if in a bone-chilling manner.

The case initially looks open and shut, but there’s the question of another robbery, which seems to fit the same pattern, but the booty was not recovered, and the suspect claims not to have committed that crime. Complications ensue, between collaborations with the occupying Nazis just a scant few years ago, and the friendship of Hardrup, while in prison, with cellmate Bjørn Schouw Nielsen, a hypnotist.

And Nielsen’s sudden friendship with detective Olsen’s frustrated and grief-stricken wife, Marie, should certain raise, concerns, hackles, and perhaps a ghost or two.

Throw in a researcher with a shady background, and this is a tense thriller. It’s not a bad little story, and it lacks the distraction of big name stars – if that bothers you. But the kicker is that something much like this did happen in Denmark, leaving one to wonder at the cold inhumanity of some humans.

Groyne:

a low wall built out from the coast into the sea, to prevent the repeated movement of the waves from removing parts of the land [Cambridge Dictionary]

Noted in “Rising seas could submerge Rio and Jakarta by 2100 – what can we do?” Simon Usborne, NewScientist (26 February 2022, paywall):

But physical defences like these are expensive, impermanent and, in some cases, unintentionally harmful. Take groynes, structures built perpendicularly out from beaches into the sea. A series of these is good at stopping protective sediment such as sand from being washed away along the coast through a process called longshore drift, but it can actually increase erosion after the last groyne because this area receives less sand than it would otherwise.

If you’ve been looking for a way to test your predictive capabilities on international issues, Lawfare has the contest for you:

Rare are the moments when policy wonks get to put their theory into practice. But today we are happy to announce the White Hat Cyber Forecasting Challenge! We invite every Lawfare reader to take up the challenge of issuing predictions on future developments in the world of cybersecurity.

I’ve registered and answered some of the questions. I’m not sure if I’ll get prodded to answer more as they become available, or if I’m supposed to be responsible for my behavior.

Anonymous continues to claim credit for interfering with Russian communications – or maybe enhancing it:

PLEASE RETWEET AND SHARE 1/2 Our action works ! Your action works ! We call on all global citizens to go to https://t.co/tymxfJSJtU and copy the number to your what’s app on sms message. Then send them (see our next message) simply copy and paste it and send it to the number. https://t.co/TTKWeMYfDW

— Anonymous (@AnonymousUK2022) March 6, 2022

And The Daily Beast reports at least one outcome:

On Thursday’s episode of The Evening With Vladimir Soloviev, state TV propagandist Vladimir Soloviev complained that he and editor-in-chief of RT Margarita Simonyan are being terrorized by unknown individuals, receiving endless calls and texts about Russia’s military activities in Ukraine. He griped: “Margarita and I can show our telephones to demonstrate that we’re getting a thousand calls and texts per hour.”

Several days earlier, two other state TV propagandists, Olga Skabeeva and her husband Evgeny Popov, also reported a barrage of calls. Skabeeva, who hosts the state TV show 60 Minutes, angrily yelled that Ukrainians or their supporters have been “endlessly calling everybody, everybody, all citizens of Russia, including me and Evgeny!” Later in the show, she loudly interrupted a panelist to grumble about being subjected to a “mass attack that started at 2 a.m… we started getting calls from the territory of Ukraine, two to three minutes apart, Ukrainian and Polish phone numbers calling nonstop… And then, text messages with threats to kill me and my family, and photos—endless photos—of corpses, which they say are the corpses of Russian soldiers!”

That’s gotta be disturbing when President Putin claims all is going according to plan. Worse, it means Putin is losing his grip on the information flow to his own people. And do they understand misinformation like Americans have been learning.

I wonder.

I see digital currency is celebrating a bit of new legitimacy – the US Government is going to investigate the possibility of regulation and even issuing its own digital currency:

I saw on the news last night that local business monster 3M is “halting operations” in Russia. A business like 3M can have huge impact, so why didn’t it do that two weeks ago?

The latest target of the Republicans is the price of gas at the pump, and more generally the price of oil. Certainly, the prism you use colors your views, as Erick Erickson presents:

If President Biden committed to tapping our oil reserves and expanding domestic energy production, oil markets would respond rapidly, just as they did in 2008.

Instead, even now, his administration dogmatically demands Americans switch to electric vehicles and get off fossil fuels. His administration continually, daily signals that they will put the fossil fuel industry out of business. They thereby disincentivize investments in oil and gas, driving up costs on the American people.

Decline is a choice and it is one Joe Biden’s Administration is making on the backs of the American middle class. Their Marie Antoinette moment of “let them have EVs” is going to provoke a backlash.

They can blame Vladimir Putin all they want. Banning imports of Russian oil was the right thing to do — but it should responsibly be done by expanding American energy production, not relying on Venezuela, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

But it’s hard to take Erickson’s points seriously. He’s complained elsewhere about the Keystone XL pipeline cancellation, but Professor Richardson notes that the Pipeline, a spur on the current Keystone Pipeline meant to lessen travel time, would not compensate for Russian oil. Erickson also ignores the distortions of the market caused by subsidies, which will skew all market responses as pricing moves from up-front to taxation, today and tomorrow. His attempts to ridicule Democrats who are saying more drilling and refining would not lower prices ignores the fact that this is not a standard economic situation of supply and demand, but rather a war situation in which analysis is far more nuanced and difficult – and pricing reflects it. I’m left thinking he doesn’t really have a grip on how this works at all – and I’m saying that as nothing more than an ignorant amateur who happens to have a lot of experience at analysis of complex situations.

Steve Benen sees a half-full glass:

Americans have expressed support in recent weeks for a ban on Russian oil imports, but are consumers prepared to accept the consequences of such a policy by paying more at the pump?

A few recent surveys suggest the answer is yes. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday:

A wide majority of Americans, 79%, said they favored a ban on Russian oil imports even if the prohibition increased energy prices in the U.S., according to data from a new Wall Street Journal poll. Just 13% said they opposed it…. The Journal poll surveyed 529 registered voters from March 4-7 on this question: “Would you favor or oppose the U.S. imposing new sanctions on Russia by banning the sale of Russian oil to the U.S., even if you knew it would cause U.S. energy prices to increase?”

On many of the nation’s most contentious issues, there’s a sizable gap based on party affiliation, with Democratic and Republican voters disagreeing in large numbers. But these survey results from the Wall Street Journal suggest the issue is less divisive: 88 percent of Democrats support the moratorium on Russian oil imports, and 77 percent of Republicans agree.

Even 72 percent of voters who would vote for Donald Trump in 2024 are on board with the policy.

Right now, he sees this as a positive, of a citizenry rallying to the Ukrainian cause. How long will the ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) hold it together?

I think, at the moment, Erickson’s behind Benen. Rather than note and appeal to American pride in ingenuity, he instead is solidly in the status quo camp, which forces him into the attitude that his audience, that all Americans, are snowflakes who’ll wilt when oil prices go up. And he can’t stand the thought that the “baby-killing” liberals are urgently pointing the way to a solution.

And that’s really a rather repulsive take in a stressful situation. He looks more like a paid oil industry lobbyist than an honest pundit.

CNN/Politics‘ Chris Cillizza identifies the most important part of omnibus spending bill introduced today – the resurrection of earmarks:

… the actual impact of banning earmarks was very different than what those who pushed the ban hardest believed it would be.

What happened, in practice, was that leaders in both parties lost leverage over their rank-and-file members. They no longer had a carrot to dangle in front of wavering members to get them to sign on to a piece of legislation where the vote was tight.

That loss of leverage was compounded by the rise of third-party groups — led by super PACs — over the past decade. Their ascension signaled a diminution in the power of political parties. No longer could party leaders overseeing campaign committees bend members to their will by offering — or withholding — support.

Add those two factors together, and you get developments like the rise of the House Freedom Caucus, a rump group that has no loyalty to or fear of party leaders. And over the last decade, it’s the extremes — like those represented by the Freedom Caucus — who have increasingly have influence in Congress.

While I hesitate to comment on whether or not this is the most important, it’s certainly very important. If Cillizza is correct as to the levers it gives Congressional leaders over their caucus members, then look for multiple cries of corruption emanating from the lead troublemakers sometime in the next couple of years.

Why?

The extremist screamed in terror. The idea of a reasonable Congressional leader had never occurred to her! And now she was in its clutches!

Because their influence will wane, at least so long as relative moderates are in charge of Congress. The would-be follower extremists, faced with legal bribes, will suddenly be willing to change their votes from NO TO EVERYTHING! to Uh, if I can have this, then OK.

And the ideologues who have been enjoying outsized influence of late will suddenly be back out in the wilderness, right where they belong. And hating it. So they’ll scream foul corruption as loudly as possible, and the cycle will begin anew.

Because I doubt the body politic will actually learn anything from this.

Which is how I visualize proposed laws, not yet passed.

Not really.

But this proposal fulfills a lot of implications:

An anti-abortion GOP lawmaker in Missouri, a state which passed one of the country’s strictest abortion laws back in 2019, says she has a solution to to the problem of people traveling out of state for abortions, The Washington Post reports.

“An unusual new provision, introduced by state Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman (R), would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helps a Missouri resident obtain an abortion out of state, using the novel legal strategy behind the restrictive law in Texas that since September has banned abortions in that state after six weeks of pregnancy,” reports the Post. “Coleman has attached the measure as an amendment to several abortion-related bills that have made it through committee and are waiting to be heard on the floor of the House of Representatives.” [RawStory]

If this passes and survives the inevitable SCOTUS review, a principle presumably established by the survival of the Texas anti-abortion law, which has not yet occurred, will protect it, and that principle will receive a confirmation.

Which means that when other states pass private justice laws that attack conservative shibboleths, the Court will have little choice but to uphold those laws as well, or be plastered with a very poor reputation.

If the Court’s conservative wing is smart, it’ll join the liberal wing in rejecting laws such as the Texas law, and this law if it passes, 9-0. Otherwise, the legacy of those in favor will be forever dirtied, even laughed at.

Addendum: And does it matter?

We’re seeing this strategy first in MO largely because a new, 18,000 sq ft clinic on the Missouri-Illinois border has limited the impact of Missouri’s strict antiabortion laws: Since that clinic opened in Oct 2019, 10,644 Missouri residents have received abortion care there. 6/

— Caroline Kitchener (@CAKitchener) March 8, 2022

Yes, I’d say it does.

I don’t know how many such charges have already been lodged and that sort of thing, but this one’s not entirely surprising:

A former campaign staffer and the grandson-in-law of US Senator Rand Paul who received a presidential pardon from former President Donald Trump has been charged with directing Russian money into the 2016 presidential election, according to the US Department of Justice.

The announcement came on Monday via an unseal indictment from 9 September.

Business Insider reports that Jesse Benton, Mr Paul’s former aide, “conspired to illegally funnel thousands of dollars of foreign money from a Russian foreign national” into the 2016 campaign.

He also managed Senator Mitch McConnell’s 2014 campaign.

Mr Benton received a $100,000 wire transfer from an unnamed Russian national in October of 2016, according to the indictment. He was allegedly promised that he would get to “meet a celebrity” at a Philadelphia fundraiser a month earlier.

Though prosecutors did not name the candidate involved in the memo, Insider confirmed that Mr Trump was hosting a fundraiser in Philadelphia the night of the fundraiser mentioned by the Russian national.

Why isn’t this surprising? Senator Paul (R-KY) passes himself off as being from the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, and, if you read libertarian literature, you’ll see that one of their stated goals is to use human greed and selfishness for the good of society.

It’s not a long trek from greed and selfishness to the acceptance of bribes, now is it? It’s almost as elevation of money as the chief goal of existence, both here and hereafter.

That the Russians are involved is of little surprise, given Russian interference in the 2016 elections, as documented in the Mueller Report, and Putin’s interest in keeping America on its heels and divided.

I am expecting more such indictments.

Mr. Benton’s previous conviction, for which he was pardoned, was for campaign finance fraud. This would appear to be more serious. And Mr. Benton does not appear to be burdened with the usual weight of morals.

There’s been a stir in political circles concerning Senator Graham’s (R-SC) remark last week concerning President Putin of Russia. Steve Benen explains:

Graham didn’t just make an oblique reference in an obscure forum. The sitting senator and failed presidential candidate first floated the idea of Russians assassinating Putin on Thursday night, during a national television appearance. When that caused a bit of a stir, Graham pushed the same message again, this time via Twitter. “The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out,” he wrote.

On Friday morning, the GOP lawmaker returned to Fox News and again said he hopes someone in Russia will “take this guy out by any means possible.”

The rhetoric did not go unnoticed. NBC News reported:

Russian officials pounced on Graham’s comments, with Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov telling reporters, “Unfortunately, in such an extremely tense atmosphere, there is a hysterical escalation of Russophobia. These days, not everyone manages to maintain sobriety, I would even say sanity, and many lose their mind.” The Russian ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, said on Facebook that Graham’s statement was “unacceptable and outrageous” and said the degree of Russophobia and hatred of Russia in the U.S. is “off the scale.”

I know my own comments can be interpreted easily as a call for an assassination, and to some extent this is polite company outrage, because it is considered poor form to call for the assassination of a politician, within or without your country. Moreso, this is an entirely justified social convention, because sometimes there are people around who will commit an assassination for flimsy, even personal reasons that are really unjustifiable. This leads to an unstable political environment, and, given the power of today’s weapons, that can lead to disaster.

All that said, I don’t see Putin surviving this war. He physically has no where to go, and while the Ukrainians, along with President Biden and the allied liberal democracies, continue to perform at a premier level, he runs a substantial risk of defeat. Defeat will almost certainly mean his death. If he stubbornly continues this war for weeks or months, the Russian military’s reputation will be ruined, and if he withdraws, ditto. Meanwhile, the economy is rapidly worsening and may be ruined for so long as he’s in power.

Finally, remember, Sun Tzu observed that for an aggressor to achieve success in war, they must vanquish their enemy; the defender, though, need only survive. Which is a bit simplistic; I think Ukraine should like to see Putin unhorsed, as it were, in order to avoid future threats.

In the end, though, Putin will have to be removed in order for this conflict to be resolved, and his government replaced. Graham, I think, simply said out loud what everyone else was thinking. It was just not something you say out loud if you’re a United States Senator.

Via Paul Fidalgo, who has the transcript:

CNN has a video piece on Flat Earth belief with Kelly Weill, which she says is “almost like a religion in its totality; if you believe it, you have a whole new worldview.” And she says:

There is no inherent reason there should be so many Flat Earth Nazis, and yet, there are a lot of Flat Earth Nazis.

Except there is. The enemies of the Nazis – that is, just about everyone in the civilized world – happen to use science against the Nazis, not only to destroy their war machine, but, more importantly, to destroy them philosophically, from their excuse of eugenics, which has been discredited, to their mystical belief in the “Aryan race” and, contrariwise, their anti-semitic beliefs.

All of which is, to be polite, inconsistent with science.

Wildly so, for those of us who are less bashful.

In order to discredit these arguments, one has to start somewhere, and falsifying the proof of a spherical (oblately, if you will) Earth would then put doubt into the minds of science-believers, or at least so the mystically-inclined Nazis would like to think. From there you discredit the rest of the evil secular science, and prove “Nazi science.” And, if the flat-Earth paradigm were to be proven true, the Nazis who led the way would have a barge full of social prestige coming their way.

And, if you’re a Nazi, why not take a shot? It’s not like you have even an outside shot at getting any social prestige anyways, between the way society generally tilts and your limited IQ.