WSJ: "Roman Abramovich and Ukrainian Peace Negotiators Suffer Suspected Poisoning: The Russian oligarch and others developed symptoms they blamed on hard-liners in Moscow who they say want to sabotage talks to end the war" wsj.com/articles/roman… "Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and Ukrainian peace negotiators suffered symptoms of suspected poisoning after a meeting in Kyiv earlier this month, people familiar with the matter said."

"The desperation—lawmakers catering to the loudest voices in the party base—is not healthy, Hurd says. It’s the by-product of safely partisan districts that provide more incentive to light fires than put them out."

An apt metaphor.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… "After a bombing near the CIA compound, Hurd was tasked with briefing a group of lawmakers from the House Intelligence Committee, who happened to be visiting Afghanistan..."

Politico: Biden wants "the richest-of-the rich...to pay at least 20[%] in taxes on a combination of both their income and their unrealized gains in things like their stock portfolios, something that is not currently taxed."

Again with taxing unrealized stock gains? Pure theater. When the Biden Administration starts getting their policy ideas from Liz Warren, it's nothing more than the White House generating campaign fundraising narratives about Republican obstruction.

A wealth tax is politically and legally DOA, let alone on unrealized stock gains.

I was this week years old when I was exposed to Thomas Sowell's argument that American ghetto culture picked up many of its bad habits and poor impulse control from imported Anglo cultures that have since largely gone by the wayside at the point of origin. amazon.com/Black-Rednecks… One would think that black theorists would stop entertaining their pet theories long enough to entertain the idea, born out but extensive research, that a toxic white subculture, largely an historical footnote at this point, explains, at least in part, black subcultural toxicity.

Catching up with the outcome of the Cup race with 15 to go, and Smoke called that one: The caution should have been earlier. Chastain got hosed on that deal. With 7 to go, Dinger patiently waits for Chastain to use up his tires.

NO NO NO WAIT WAIT WAIT WE STILL HAVE SEVERAL DAYS OF SCRIBBLING TO PUBLISH! I WAS GONNA MAKE ESPRESSO! First sighting in the wild: I once wrote about the ethical/etiquette parameters of punching someone.

Trump brings his anti-Kemp campaign to Georgia ajc.com/politics/trump… “'Trump voters will not go out and vote for Brian Kemp,' Trump said, adding that the Senate GOP frontrunner will also be damaged."

This is entirely plausible insofar as a slight, sickly, divorced black woman might be more prey to it, but I couldn't help thinking, while reading this, that being ripped off and lied to is not an experience unique to her cohort. This is why, for instance, many people prefer pets

https://twitter.com/TheAtlantic/status/1507836208252080130

Sometimes it seems that there is a perception among many black people that white people see each other's white skin as a sort of secret handshake that leads to fair dealing and hail fellow well met goodwill as a general rule.

CNBC: "Senate Democrats on Wednesday unveiled a new billionaires’ tax proposal...The proposed tax would hit the gains of those with more than $1 billion in assets or incomes of more than $100 million a year..."

The assets part makes it DOA.

Seriously.

It's a joke. Not sure how many times we have to go through this. When Democrats try to disguise wealth confiscation as taxation, it proves they're not the least bit serious.

A "wealth tax" is not a tax. Income tax is a tax. Capital (realized) gains tax is a tax. "Wealth tax" is confiscation.

My favorite Neil Young album.

He hated it and took it off the market.

Neil is Neil. Nothing else to say.



Boogity. I'll take crazy good over boring smoove any day.

Sally Kellerman in M*A*S*H should tell you quite eloquently why the TV show was a sad joke that you should not cling to. What a film. And what a piss-poor excuse for television. #ExpressYourEtc

I stopped playing music long ago, but DBTs are a body memory and I want to plug in my old long-gone Carvin 4x10 and Mexi Jazz with noiseless pickups so bad it hurts. My fingers are mad at me now.

Progression:
Putin is a conservative. Oh look, Ukraine wants to chart its own course!

Lord let me die
With a hammer in my hand

Time for my all-time favorite day-drinking album. youtube.com/playlist?list=… My GF at the time worked for Universal, and one day I visited her at work, and she reached in her odds & ends drawer and pulled out this album. Said, no idea if this is any good. You want it? Why sure, I'll give it a spin.

Stellar.

"When NATO announced in 2002 its plan for a major wave of expansion that would include three former Soviet republics—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—Putin barely reacted. He certainly did not threaten to invade any of the countries to keep them out of NATO." "Asked specifically...whether he opposed the Baltic states’ membership in NATO, he stated, 'We of course are not in a position to tell people what to do. We cannot forbid people to make certain choices if they want to increase the security of their nations in a particular way.'”

Poor little Vlad,
Little Vlad is so sad.
Free people scare him.
Raging against
The dying of the light--
The only solution is to
Extinguish yours. Lenin the Daddy betrayed him.
Stalin the Uncle betrayed him.
How dare Ukraine determine
Its own destiny.
The nerve. The gall. The horror.

Maybe now isn't the time to navel-gaze missed opportunities in the wake of the collapse of the USSR? Unless of course Russians have no internal locus of control, and all evil spews forth from the mistakes of the West.

Which is, not to put too fine a point on it, a stupid idea. There's a weird infantilization going on re Russia. Are Russians children? Are they exempt from the consequences of their own behavior in a way that would never for a moment be granted to the West?

First we acted as if Crimea never happened. Now we act as if the Russian slaughter in Independence Square never happened. Work your way back to the Holodomor and then tell me again how Russia has some historical claim on Ukraine.

Junior Murvin:

Police and thieves
In the streets
Fighting the nation with their
Guns and ammunition
Police and thieves
In the streets
Scaring the nation with their
Guns and ammunition

https://twitter.com/ConservativeLA/status/1496286411292565511

A note to the people obsessed with Canada's overreach: Where were you when working truckers had to travel five hours to get around your performative demonstrating trucker buddies? Keep pretending you give a fuck about independent contractors. You don't. Don't play. Until you understand the difference between freedom and liberty, you will be sad performative signifiers.