lookin

Over-the-top insult jokes have always been a treat. Last time I saw a mouth like that it had a hook in it!

It's important to pick the right moment.

Hurry, Jeeves, light a match!

Full you say?!

Eccellente! They'll go pazzo in Milan!

Loved that book! And, as the reviewer says, a wonderful backstory. Thanks for posting.

I'm for progress as much as the next guy but, unless this thing pings my electric skillet to have a crispy pound waiting for me when I'm out of the shower, why would I want this? Seems a little like culinary blue balls.

Lucky only half of them showed up.

Hang on to the boots though. I've got a good feeling about this.

Renowned reviver of ancient pathogens, Dr. Rictus notices his dinner invitations are starting to dry up.

Another set of numbers: Not that raw firepower tells the whole story of course. It's also who's batshit crazy enough to use it. In a game of 'chicken' with Putin, you probably want your A-team. . .

Can I get an Oh, my! ?

Next, Putin Will Seize Donetsk and Kharkiv Editorial in The Moscow Times By Josh Cohen - Mar. 02 2014 As Russian troops consolidate their hold over Crimea, it seems clear that President Vladimir Putin will soon have troops in eastern Ukraine as well. The Federation Council passed a law giving Putin broad authority to use the country's armed forces on "the territory of Ukraine," and this, in combination with pro-Russian demonstrations now spreading across major eastern cities, provide Putin a fig leaf necessary to move into eastern Ukraine. While many Western analysts — and even U.S. intelligence agencies — predicted that Putin would not move on Ukraine, they have clearly not understood Putin's worldview. Russia looks at Ukraine in the same way that China looks at Taiwan: as an existential issue in which lines must not be crossed. The West has missed four crucial points: For Russia, Ukraine is the birthplace of Russian civilization and a close Slavic brother. The idea of Ukraine as an independent country aligned with the West is anathema to Putin. Many Russians refer to Ukraine as "little Russia." This is best encapsulated by an April 2008 conversation Putin had with then-U.S. President George W. Bush in which Putin reportedly said: "You don't understand, George, that Ukraine is not even a state. What is Ukraine? Part of its territories is Eastern Europe, but the greater part is a gift from us." In Putin's view, Western support for the anti-Russian protests in Kiev is part of a Western plot to tear Ukraine away from its proper place next to Russia's cultural, political and economic bosom. The West should have understood that there was no way Putin was ever going to allow Ukraine to slip away. The West has grossly underestimated the extent to which Russia was humiliated by NATO expansion toward Russia's borders in the 1990s. From Russia's perspective, NATO's eastward expansion evoked deep-seated Russian fears of being both encircled and shut out from Europe. Russia has suffered numerous invasions from the West, and in Putin's mind even a European Union association agreement is a possible precursor to eventual NATO membership. Ukraine is Putin's line in the sand. It is often said that with Russia is an empire as long as Ukraine is in its camp, but without it, Russia is just another regular country. The reality is that for centuries, Russia has been an empire, and an expansionist one at that. While we can debate the reasons for this, the reality is that Russia has never seen itself as just a regular country, and for that reason Russia will always ensure that Ukraine is firmly within its orbit. Finally, Putin has decided to move on Ukraine now simply because he can. Putin knows that there is little that the U.S. or NATO can do to prevent him from having his way with Ukraine, and he is right. Short of risking war with a nuclear Russia, Putin is fully prepared to ignore any Western threats of "costs" that Russia must pay for seizing parts of Ukraine. For these ideological, historical, military and geopolitical reasons, it is natural that Putin will not stop at the borders of Crimea. Putin will almost certainly not move into western Ukraine, but in the south and east where the population identifies strongly with Russia, there will never be a better opportunity than now to reclaim what Putin considers to be lost Russian territory. By next weekend, we very well might see Russian troops patrolling Kharkiv and Donetsk, and they won't be leaving anytime soon. Josh Cohen is a former U.S. State Department official who was involved in managing economic reform projects in the former Soviet Union. He currently works for a satellite technology company in the Washington area.

Let's hope the threats stay empty. While Obama can't say, "Isn't that nice!", there's really not much else he can do in the short term. Although less focused on military responses than Slate, The New York Times also concludes there's not much to be done right at the moment, even economically. Putin may well prove his own worst enemy, but I think the story will unfold in months and years rather than days and weeks. In the meantime, the less chest-thumping, the better.

Mutually assured destruction?

You might want to slip a little to the dog first.

From the article: That’s why the best hope of rolling back Russia’s intervention in Crimea now rests on firmness about the consequences. If Western countries are to uphold their values and interests, they must show they’ve learned lessons from the Russia-Georgia war by acting together to threaten sanctions against Moscow and aid to Ukraine. In my opinion, the challenge will be providing aid to the half of the country that wants nothing to do with us. One of the comments to the article: Catherine the Great conquered the Crimea 250 ish years ago ... Russia won't give it up. Ukraine should split itself like the old Czechoslovakia did ... and let the pro Russian people of the Crimea be Russian, and the Lithuanian/Polish people can live in the Western "Ukraine". Russia won't give up the Crimea. Makes sense to me. Fighting to keep the country together, whether successful or not, will cost a lot of lives. Although it may take a long time, we've had better luck letting a Western-supported region exist side-by-side with a Russian-supported region and seeing who's happier. If we start now, I expect this could be done diplomatically, without much loss of life. It's said that most Ukranians want to keep the country together. If that's true, why not a referendum, oblast-by-oblast, to see who wants to be on each side. Russia will almost certainly get Crimea, which it surely wants. Unfortunately, it's probably more likely that both sides will goad Ukraine into a civil war before the split eventually happens.

Hmm. AdamSmith is not here yet. . .. Oh, my! The Conference is starting already. What's the title of his paper? . . . 'Economic Removal of Twinks From The Web'

Fresh from Rio, Tomcal makes a beeline for Mezziniu The Cousins and a few close friends follow right behind

All this recent news got me interested in visiting Crimea, home of the Yalta Dacha (for the alta caca). Timing couldn't be worse, of course. Apparently, it's long been considered the crown jewel of the Russian (ex-) Empire. Can't see any of this this ending well. Russia's not just going to walk (or float) away.

Perhaps MsGuy's Black AMEX came through.

I was thinking less of dollars and more of 'opportunity cost' in terms of things Congress doesn't get around to. Of course, that assumes that they have other things they could be working on. OK, never mind.

Once you've learned how to use one bracketed HTML function, you've learned how to use them all. (Well, nearly.) Center/uncenter works just like quote/unquote. So does left/unleft and right/unright. My one suggestion for learning new tricks is to do so only when there's a piece of meat waiting for you; i. e,.some kind of payoff. In my opinion, learning for learning's sake is highly overrated. Exactly so. Once you've clicked all the 'multi quote' boxes for the posts you want to quote, there's one final undocumented trick you need to know. There will be a black box at the bottom of the screen that says something like 'Reply to 2 quoted post(s)'. You have to actually click that black box in order for the quotes to show up in your post window. Then you're ready to respond to them. PS: Not to intrude on OZ's busy schedule, but it used to be possible to use the edit menu to click on an image, and then click on the 'center' icon to center it. No more. The 'center' icon is greyed out and unavailable for centering images. That's why I've been forced to use brute-force HTML tags to center an image. I'm not complaining, as the workaround is not tedious, but the edit menu is definitely in need of some fixin' if its functionality is to be restored. PPS: For reasons beyond my ken, it's possible to use the multi-quote function to quote from separate posts, but not multiple quotes from the same post. That's why you've had to learn the quote/unquote trick. There's no reason the edit menu couldn't be set up to allow multiple quotes from within a single post. It just hasn't been programmed to do so. The edit menu has been through at least a million revisions since I've been infesting the site and each revision results in behaviors that weren't there before, and the loss of some that were. It would be nice if the programmers would take the time to test the edit menu before releasing it to the masses, but no doubt that would only delay OZ's next project.

It sure seems complicated, relative to a single-payer health care system. I guess most folks know that the insurance companies have been scooping 30% off the top, but I think that's on its way down to 25%. Still, it's a health care expense that most other countries just don't have. And we're not going to get things in balance until it gets down to 5%. Like Canada. Like Medicare. For example. Gotta admit, though, the insurance companies have done a masterful job of lobbying. They're tying up an incredible amount of legislative and administrative bandwidth in order to keep their margins intact.