Czech elections are this weekend
There is a strong possibility that the Communists, one of the very few Communist parties to maintain their name and identity, will finally lose parliamentary representation
UPDATE
The Czechs have kicked all the Communists out of parliament and for good measure kicked out all the Social Democrats too
As of 2013 the Social Democrats had been the biggest party in parliament and the Communists in 3rd (mostly buoyed by the elderly)
They've also gone from 9 parties in parliament to 4, a couple of which are merged parties.
I discussed in The New Right how the increase of parliamentary parties in Europe made coalitions more difficult
What we are seeing instead is new, unprecedented political coalitions forming
The first time I encountered Howard Stern was when he had Roger Ebert on his Channel 9 show and was asking Ebert if he ever pretended to be the slavemaster in bed with his wife
Then there's this, his comments speak for themselves: cnn.com/2020/06/15/ent…
Howard also enjoyed making fun of how mopey Scott the Engineer was, even when his wife was privately fighting cancer.
Scott went broke and started a GoFundMe for medical expenses.
Howard, who is worth $500m+, didn't contribute
Scott was fired soon after, after 30 years.
LISTEN UP KIDS
Sometimes in life you will be punished for doing the right thing
And you'll be tempted to do the wrong thing the next time
Believe me when I tell you the cost for doing that wrong thing will be higher than the punishment would have been
There are two types of people who can't look in the mirror:
Vampires, and those who knowingly choose wrong
What they have in common is not having a soul
this is really really hard when you are young, because one by one your friends will sell their souls, like tossing in their hand in a round of poker, until you're the last one standing
And you'll be wondering what you did wrong
And the answer is nothing, they did. They all did.
At some point Joe Biden decided that the loss of American lives at the hands of the Taliban was worth the political price
There is an enormous incentive for the Taliban to not just murder but to torture their foes, in order to make the costs of defying them as high as possible in order to solidify their hold on power
International disapproval means little to an organization with no foreign ambitions
Americans are extremely naive about the frequency and efficacy of the politics of sadism, because we're trained since kindergarten to believe doing evil is always counterproductive to one's goals.
How much money would someone have to pay you to do this
How much money would someone have to pay you to sit there quietly while your coworkers did this
"I think it was the part of wisdom for Stalin to try to show that a collectivist economy could be made to work in one country. I think he should have our support in that effort." --Upton Sinclair, 1938
"Let us discuss the famine. I venture to doubt that five million people were permitted to die. My guess is that it is near to one million; but that was enough. What were the circumstances? The rich peasants of Russia were sabotaging the revolution." --Upton Sinclair, 1938
"As to the matter of 'famine,' I advised them to push collectivization at all costs, because only through mechanized farming could they avert famine permanently; and they have done so." --Upton Sinclair, 1938