While everyone panics about North Korea’s frankenmissile, I will do what countless ofter Americans are doing today. I will coach my soccer team. I’ll do normal stuff that normal people do while my betters discuss things that could easily lead to a near-term nuclear exchange.
I’m hoping this reprise of 1962 doesn’t end badly, but Donald Trump is no John Kennedy, and Kim Jong-un is no Nikita Khrushchev.
Different scenario, Booman.
It looks to me that China and the U.S. have decided to cooperate on regime change in North Korea.
Sooner rather than later, before Kim Il Jong actually manages to create some sort of practical threat rather than being just another blown-up, tinhorn dictator who executes his failed minions with anti-aircraft rockets.
That is the strategic goal.
Tactically?
U.S. muscle, Chinese diplomacy and covert ops more than likely.
Which muscle?
Same as the recent Afghanistan/Syria action. Big noise. Maybe even bigger, depending on the amount of objective reality behind North Korea’s military strutting and posing. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see Kim Il Jong go down in some sort of prophylactic strike. China probably has a successor already picked out.
Watch.
China and the U.S. are now in business.
Nukes are very bad for business.
No nukes today.
Enjoy your soccer.
AG
I am Arthur, i use words.
I have a style, and opinions.
I say things that may be true, or may not be true, who knows.
I call it Analiticallous.
Wake up people, you are all fools.
Words have no meaning.
Life has no meaning.
Politics has no meaning.
I am a musician.
WTFU people.
I am better than you.
.
You are nalbar.
You do not recognize “meaning” even when it leaves bite marks on your ass.
As with bazzz above…
So what?
AG
Teach us dumb people about meaning Arthur.
Please do it in a way where you make convoluted posts, that dont adress the subject. Make sure you are beliggerent, because you are right and others are stupid. Then when they complain double down on that, and make sure you create a stawman to have something to attack.
I agree with quite a few things you talk about. What i dont agree with is the way you behave. And i certainly dont have sympathy for you when you are an ass, and feel sorry for yourself because other people are an ass to you in return.
If there was any chance of actually having a satisfying conversation with you, i might be motivated to adress some things with you, but since you prefer a trollish style, i dont see that happening anytime soon.
Also, i have little to contribute to this place i am afraid. The difference between you and me is that i am aware of it, and usually just lurk, and (insidiously) rate comments to the value that makes sense to me.
You write:
I think that the “I am afraid” part is what marks most of the so-called “liberal” PermaGov supporters here from the few others who have not left in disgust.
They…you mainstream Dem supporters…are afraid to rock the PermaGov boat, even though you are actually “judicious” enough to realize in your soul of souls that the Clinton/Obama team has as much blood on its hands as does the RatPublican/Trump team which is now apparently forming as we speak, as Trump moves towards the bloody center. It is the blood unnecessarily shed and lives unnecessarily ruined over the whole history of the United States that is the force driving it further into ever more dangerous, guilty waters.
I am not afraid.
Thus I take chances.
It’s genetic.
Different strokes for different folks.
“Judicious” voters voted for Hillary Clinton.
Perhaps it was “injudicious” ones who voted for Trump.
So it goes.
I am neither.
Maybe I am “injudicious” in another direction from the Trumpists. I don’t really know. My approach is not exactly taking over the government, I have noticed. So that goes as well. I do know that if the U.S. stays on its current path, the karmic buildup of centuries of “legally supported” injustice will eventually take it down. I do whatever I can to make people see this.
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” said FDR.
Fear of constructive change. Change is dangerous. “Changerous,” to coin a word. “What if it doesn’t work!!!???” cry the timid. “Let’s stick with the devils we know…the lesser evils!!!”
I do not believe that we have elected a president who understood the real meaning of “constructive change” since FDR was elected at the brink of a total collapse of the U.S. system. Fear of what was happening in the country and around the world drove that election, and it drove his subsequent elections as well. That fear and the recognition that what he was doing with the New Deal was actually working.
We missed a chance with Bernie Sanders…a chance that was identifiably and provably stolen by the same forces that run the DNC today.
And yet I get blamed for pointing that out.
It all bpils down to this:
I’m not frightened enough for polite company.
So it goes.
Deal wid it.
AG
Great job Arthur, exactly what i told you to do.
You even did the courtecy of throwing in some extra narcissism.
I hear and obey, oh great Bazzz.
AG
You are bazzz.
So far you have contributed nothing to this site except a few complaints.
Three complaints in total, in “comment” form….all about how little you care for what some of us are saying and/or how we go about saying it.
Plus a lot of 4 ratings for people who still believe that the CIA/PermaGov is working for “us” in its campaign against Trump.
So what?
AG
Just telling it like i see it.
thinks “Kim Il Jong”
I.e., roughly his standard grasp of Reality.
Go back to the Great Orange Satan where your “wit” is admired.
grasp of Reality.
North Korean propaganda notwithstanding, Kim Il-Jong has been dead for quite a while. It”s the grandson people are worried about.
Wrong name. Sorry. Right grandson, though.
AG
Both wrong: Kim Il Sung, grandfather, Kim Jong Il, father, Kim Jong Un current whacko.
If he really is the grandson. Wasn’t the father too fat to mate?
North Korea is kept for a reason?
Not so fast. It is easy to bomb anything in Afganistan. The enemy has no tech, no defense, just pay back. The NK are just watching the skys waiting for the first sign of bombs coming their way and boom they send off their stuff. Japan, SK, and the 30,000 American troops will be the target. The donald’s threat is just part of the clown show. The donalds has punched up the level of fear out there. The proof will be the stats on retail sale for the month of April….especially on line vs store.
Hope you’re right.
Me too.
AG
I’m going to spring out for a five mile run through the streets of NY and trust that the “deep state” is gonna jump in here any minute and straighten things out.
“He can run, but he can’t hide.”
Joe Louis regarding an upcoming match with Billy Conn.
There is no 5 mile stretch on NYC where one cannot see what is happening in this country, MDL.
Not if you know how to look. And where to look as well.
It’s plainer in some places than in others, though.
I suggest you take a 5 mile run north from the southern end of Hunts Point, up into…ohhhh, say take a right into Soundview or a left into the South Bronx. Take the side streets. I’ll bet it would be an education for you.
AG
P.S. If you haven’t garnered much in the way of street smarts, I wold highly suggest doing this during daylight hour. And…dress down. Ain’t hardly anybody up in here who gives a fuck one way or another about “Maureen Dowd,” but they’ll spot someone not from da neighborhood in a Bronx second. Especially if they’re wearing running gear that costed serious money.
P.S. Do you take the subways much? Same lessons to be learned there. Bet on it. Try the 4 train from Crown Hts/Utica Ave. all the way up to Woodlawn. Right through the heart of the Bronx. Or the 5 and 6 trains. Go when the working people are dragging their worn-out asses home from work…evening rush hour. Get out somewhere really…interesting looking…and take your constitutional there.
U.S.A 101.
All good libruls would benefit from such an excursion.
If only Hillary jogged…
Been running the streets of this city for 20 years. My daily route takes me though Astoria, wood side, sunny side Jackson Heights, east Elmhurst, and occasionally corona and flushing. I get as up close and personal as one can get.
One of the many reasons I moved from “real America” to NYC was the ability to get from point a to point b without having to drive. Not once in my 20 years here have I thought “gee I wish I had a car.” So I am quite familiar with the subway system and its denizens.
I like to run because I don’t need an expensive health club membership or fancy outfits, just a good pair of shoes, shorts and a t-shirt and I’m off.
MDL is snark. I can’t stand the bitch. Pretty sure you knew that already.
Doesnt matter, you are out of touch, arthur says so.
Noone has any understanding of real america, but him. Noone is street smart, cant you see him casually using “da neighborhood”, thats some real shit right there. Authenticity, it means you can assume anything about others, just to feel better than them. Because he is.
Also, no snark, you secretly worship MDL, you wont fool Arthur, he sees right through that. Just like he sees through all the smoke and mirrors, he can see clearly where noone else can. Its a special kind of Radarthur, its integrated and makes any complex situation either really simple, but still impossible to understand for other people, or extremely complex, but in a way that only arthur can comprehend.
You write:
Yes. I knew that. The snark itself marks you, MDL. And your choice of Maureen Dowd as a subject marks you even further. You are marked as a college-educated librul, probably of middle class upbringing and solidly middle class yourself. Try using the snark word inna inner Bronx to get you out of a tight spot and see what happens.
You also write:
I know those areas, MDL. They are (mostly) positively suburban compared to da central/south/east Bronx.
i know those neighborhoods, too. Been working in them (and with their musician citizens) since about 1966. Since the Bronx really was burning. On every level. Gentrification is a four letter word to most of their inhabitants. I see the hype in the NY Times about Bronx “gentrification.” It’s real estate bought-and-paid-for bullshit!!! What happened in Brooklyn, in Astoria, in Greenoint, Harlem, etc.? White, college-educated yupsters paying exorbitant rents so that they can be near their favorite $4+ coffee joints? When I go to the South Bronx, Mott Haven, Hunts Point, Soundview etc…and I am there often because my significant other teaches there and I rehearse/work in that area quite a bit…the only “gentrification” that I see is local residents (almost entirely latino) working their way up the classic U.S. economic ladder…the hard way up… and deciding to stay put but in better dwellings. And more power to them.
I was on a bus recently, talking with the driver. He was ghetto-bred for sure, just by his way of speaking. We got to talking about the traffic and as he deftly maneuvered through the jaywalkers, hot car assholes and plain dummies, he laughed and said “If it ain’t hard, it ain’t right!!!”
NYC is losing that “hardness,” and it will pay a p;rice for the loss.
Watch.
I see the real estate bubble popping here with the next recession.
Will NYC burn again?
I hope not.
I’d like to see the .01% get fried, though.
Instead of their tenants:
Later…
AG
Do you only speak ad-hominem?
Do :you only speak Undergrad Debate 101?
AG
AG–other than being in transit via Penn Station, I’ve only been to NYC once, after dropping my kid off for her freshman year at a university in Massachusetts in 2014. Top of my touristy list was the Tenement museum, seeing how my grandparents had lived. (Yeah, my roots are in the vanished Jewish working class.) Next was walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. Hugely disappointed by NYC bagels. The next year in Montreal I ate the best bagels in the world.
Out here in Portland OR gentrification is real.
P.S. Read this if you want to know what NYC was like when things were really bad.
Report From Engine Co. 82
Know your city.
AG
There’s a US highway 101 out here on the Pacific coast; wondering what your USA 101 alludes to.
An imaginary freshman-level college course in the real U.S.A.
AG
Oregon isn’t part of your real USA?
I didn’t pick my parents or my birth place. What about you?
Thread needs more GIF’s
We’ve been short of Chicken jpgs lately.
I can’t do GIF’s, but here are some musicians protecting the culture of America, one note at a time.
.
And the original, because I can.
This one song has probably done more good for society than every jazz song ever.
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As a bass player for more than 30 years, I will profoundly and deeply disagree with you.
Yes, yes: at first it was nice to get some respect (we bass players aren’t as under-appreciated as drummers or tuba players, but outside of Bootsy, Lemmy, Phil Lynott, and a few others, we’re mainly in the background).
But the song got overplayed, and now you get asked to play it all the time.
Worse, when people find out you’re a bass player the next thing they say is “I’ll bet you’re all about that bass.” Typically they sing the melody and then it gets stuck in your head. Like it is in mine now.
Also, and not to be too pedantic, bass is plenty nice but “no treble” doesn’t sound good.
So what do you think about “Fat Bottom Girls,” “Big Bottom,” and “Baby Got Back”?
I love the first two, but was never a big fan of Sir Mix-a-Lot.
Since we’re posting parody music videos, here’s NASA Johnson Style.
LOL, thanks Neon.
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Happy to provide a laugh or two.
I started my morning (after a granola bar, store-brand Emergen-C, and double espresso) with 3 hours of tennis (half-hour with ball machine, 1.5 hrs game drilling session with a club pro, 1 hour hitting with another guy who was in the drill session).
Then big second breakfast standing in for lunch.
Nap impending.
If I wake up from it, world unannihilated, I’ll call that good for now.
I can’t tell if that’s real or if you’re just twitting AG.
I was assuming real. If so, sounds like a good invigorating morning. If the latter, clever nonetheless.
top-post, not the rest of the thread.
I heard Gen McCaffrey last night talk about the next five,to ten years. NK will most certainly have a missile capable of reaching the US and will likely have a hundred or more nuclear weapons. There is no clear path to dealing with this. China may be the best bet. So if Trump has enlisted their support, good for him. This time around it may all be bluster ( or so we pray), but more dangerous times are coming. One supposes if there was more sanity running NK perhaps the threat would be lessened. Maybe China can affect a change in leadership.
The thing is….they have created something like an organized gang in NK. And like any mobsters, if the leader threatens their existence, they will wrap him in a carpet and bury him somewhere.
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China wants to avoid a meltdown in NK leading to a refugee crisis–the border area in China is heavily ethnic Korean–as well as the US military on its border. That’s been the Chinese motivation for a long time. Hard to see how their leverage is greater now than with the seemingly sane predecessors to Kim Jong Un.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/3JItGh7kzKg
Took to the kid to a ‘Tax Day March.’
Not quite 10% the size of the Women’s March. I’d say 95% middle-aged and older.
Sounds like a venue for people carrying signs reading “Who is John Galt?”.
Frankenmissile with no way to launch it as of yet. More saber rattling. I haven’t checked Tumblr in a while, but I am sure the tankies are flooding the place with pro-North Korea memes. Kim should really get a Twitter account. He and Drumpf could have so much fun together.
Your betters? Rarely better and fequently worse from where I’m standing.