Tag Archives: Soviet Union

Don Lemon Rides Again …

Posted on by under Humour, Political commentary, Social commentary

In my earlier post this morning, I made mention of Trump’s cabinet meeting yesterday morning in which he gave the cabinet an ‘alternative history’ lesson about the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s involvement in Afghanistan, etc., and where he took the opportunity to praise … himself … and to criticize everyone else. As the New York Times headline read:

Trump’s Freewheeling and Fact-Free Cabinet Meeting

Pretty much, yep.  I thought you might enjoy Don Lemon’s take on it, as well as a few clips from the circus.  It’s good for a few chuckles anyway.

Stay tuned, for Filosofa will return …

The Radar is Crowded Tonight!

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Political commentary, Rants

Puff-magic-dragonIf you could see my radar screen tonight … blips all over the place!  Oh yeah, 2019 is going to be the year that finally drives Filosofa to lose her marbles and do something crazy like streaking nude through Grand Central Station screaming, “Run for your lives – Puff the Magic Dragon is attacking!!!” Long story short, this morning’s hodgepodge are not snarky snippets, but out-and-out rants … mini-rants, but rants nonetheless.  Hold your ears …

Trump’s history lesson:

Yesterday, Trump called a cabinet meeting, apparently for no reason other than to brag about the things he says he has accomplished but hasn’t, to blame everyone but himself for everything that is wrong, and to give us a new view of world history.

“Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan. So you take a look at other countries—Pakistan is there. They should be fighting. But Russia should be fighting. The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there. The problem is it was a tough fight.”   Anybody want to buy him a copy of World History for Dummies or The Idiots Guide to World History?

While it is true that the former Soviet Union was financially drained by its 10-year campaign in Afghanistan, and collapsed only two years later, there were many other long-term factors in the USSR’s demise. In addition, the Soviets didn’t invade Afghanistan because “terrorists were going into Russia,” as Trump said, but because they wanted to shore up their pro-communist puppet government there.  And by the way, Donnie … Pakistan is supporting the Taliban, not fighting them.

A few other preposterous statements he made at the meeting …

“I shouldn’t be popular in Europe. I want Europe to pay. I don’t care about Europe.” This one was apropos of nothing, other than to criticize Germany, repeating for at least the millionth time that they are not contributing what he, Trump, considers proper to their own defense.  There are reasons for this, but they require an explanation of the history of Germany, and … well, let’s just not go into history with Trump anymore, okay?

Trump now claims, falsely, that he fired General James Mattis.  Not even a shred of truth to this … Mattis resigned in response to Trump’s utterly asinine plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan without even consulting his military advisors or our allies.  Period.  Trump did not fire him.

And he has new justification for his abominable wall … that the Vatican “has the biggest wall of them all”. 

The meeting lasted 95 minutes, after which all cabinet members likely headed to the nearest bar.

drunk

Another child is dead …Jazmine BarnesThe little girl in the picture above is Jazmine Barnes.  Correction … was Jazmine Barnes.  Jazmine was 7-years-old when she was murdered while riding in a car with her three sisters and her mother, LaPorsha Washington, in Houston, Texas.  The gunman has not yet been caught, even though the police know the vehicle he was driving.  Ms. Washington was also hit, albeit not fatally. Two things about this infuriate me.  First, that it happened.  Even though the majority of people in this nation are in favour of realistic and sensible gun regulation, thanks to the National Rifle Association (NRA) and corrupt politicians, we have almost none.  And so, little Jazmine Barnes is dead, and her mom, dad, and sisters are bereft.

Porshia Washington

LaPorsha Washington

The second thing that inflames me about this is that I only found this news on the BBC, three days after the fact!  The BBC!  British Broadcasting Corporation!  Where was The Washington Post?  Where was the New York Times? I had to cross the pond to find out that a child was shot to death in my own country! This should have been front-page news, but if it was even reported, it was tucked far behind all the Trump-related headlines.  I did find the news on a Houston news outlet, Heavy.com, and The Root.  Two days after the shooting, CNN finally reported on it.  C’mon, media!  Trump is not the only show in town!

What am I, chopped liver???

“Do the Dems realize that most of the people not getting paid are Democrats?”

This was a Trump tweet last Thursday morning.  Two days prior, he had told reporters that the furloughed federal workers were fully in support of Trump holding the nation hostage as he holds out for his abominable wall.  In just two days, the workers went from being on his side, patting him on the back, to being “just democrats” in his rhetoric.  Does this ‘man’ ever take time out to think???

The president, senators, representatives, governors, et al, are elected officials who are chosen by the voters to represent all citizens of the United States.  Their job is not only to represent the specific party with which they are affiliated.  Their job is not to represent only the people they like, or the people who approve of them or agree with them.  They are to represent We The People … ALL of ‘We’!  In addition to the aforementioned books, we should also send him a copy of U.S. Constitution For Dummies!

As a member of We The People, I am calling for the immediate resignation or impeachment and removal from office of the ‘man’ occupying the Oval Office, for he is not representing all of us, but only the minority.  He is endangering the lives of the people he is tasked with protecting and he must be removed NOW!  Hear that, Mitchell McConnell?  Hear that, Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows and the rest of you in the House “Freedom” Caucus?  Get. Him. Out.

Okay, well … I had one more rant, but I got so worked up over these three that I have forgotten the other.  Consider yourself lucky, I suppose.  Yep, folks, welcome to 2019.  Have a lovely day!Maxine-2019.jpg

Need a Date? Call the Government!

Posted on by under Global Issues

The next endangered species may well be … Georgians!  (No, not the State in the south of the U.S., but the post-Soviet country in the east of Europe). Those of you who think the U.S. government is invading your privacy, wait ‘til you hear this!

While Japan and China have had a one-child law for decades, such is not the case for Georgia. Apparently birth and marriage rates have declined in Georgia in recent years and have reached the point that the country is close to a ‘demographic catastrophe’.  In 2015, the population was 3.7 million, as compared to 4.9 million in 1993, or a decrease of 24%.  Economic collapse and political turmoil before, during and after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, led to a mass exodus of people searching for jobs and a better life elsewhere.  This explains part of the problem, but the trend appears to be continuing, as the population decreased by 15% since the 2002 census.   The Jamestown Foundation, an institute for global research and analysis, projects that in another 50 years, there will be fewer than 1 million people living in Georgia, and they have dubbed this a demographic catastrophe.  Meanwhile, neighboring Turkey’s population increased by 21 million, and Azerbaijan’s by 2.3 million.  I guess we know where all the Georgians went.

In 2004, a couple of attempts were made to try to encourage couples to have more children.  First, the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Ilia II, promised that he would personally baptize every child born to parents who had more than two children.  And around the same time, the government began giving handouts for two years from the date of the birth of a couple’s third child.  I am thinking a lot of Japanese and Chinese couples might like to move to Georgia! Apparently, though, the handouts have been pretty meager and are limited to areas where death rates exceed birth rates.

Now comes the really interesting part, the latest idea for a solution.  While the Jamestown Foundation recommends that the government work toward job creation as part of the solution, Georgia’s DDF (Demographic Development Fund) believes that the problem is not enough people are getting married and having children.  So, they decided that a government-supported dating service is the answer to the problem. “We will take a census of all singles, widows, widowers, the divorced and enter their details in a database,” Davit Khizanishvili, the fund’s president, announced.   The DDF has already started to profile Georgia’s unmarrieds, entering personal details such as “weight, height and zodiac sign” into a database, which they say will be administered by a special agency. ‘Zodiac sign’?  Seriously?

The government has been a bit less alarmed than either the Jamestown Foundation or the DDF, and believes they are being alarmist, but on the other hand, they are not stopping the DDF, at least not yet.  Understandably, the citizens of Georgia have some concerns, among them that single people might now be taxed more than married couples, that the service would become a “national breeding program”, and that government would force people to get married. The government has neither supported nor opposed the idea of the database, but the Georgian Orthodox Church has come out in favour of it.

This just opens so many scenarios in my mind.  So, you thought the U.S. government invaded your privacy?  Turns out, though, this is not the only such program in existence.  Denmark has historically low birthrates, and in 2015, a travel agency, Spies Travels, in conjunction with wannabe-grandmothers, launched a program called ‘Do it for Denmark – Do it for Mom’.  In one Spies Travel press release, they said “It turned out quite successful, we made the Danes travel more, have more sex and reproduce for their country.”  The ad goes on with more, but as some of it is a bit more … um … graphic than I can get away with here, I will include a link and you can read it for yourself. There is also a video, which I did not watch, so let the viewer beware!  granny-baby

I have only one concluding remark to this whole thing:  who knew?