The last meals of historical human-sacrifice and murder victims.
Category Archives: History
John Bolton’s Intriguing Notepad
I think it’s worth noting that it would be handy to have some troops next door just in case things went south and we had to extract Americans. But if it nudges things in the right direction, that would be good, too.
A Third Of A Century
Today is my birthday, which also means that it’s the anniversary of the loss of the Challenger and its crew (and the beginning of the long drawn-out end of the Shuttle program). Hard to believe it’s been that long.
Space Policy
This anti-business piece is sort of a mess:
Indeed, legislation has been proposed in Congress since the UAG was formed that promotes the Council’s professed goals of expedition, streamlining, and commercial dominance, and it enjoys bipartisan support from lawmakers representing “states and districts where aerospace technology plays a significant role in the local economy,” according to an analysis from Daily Kos. This shared financial interest has brought together far-right, anti-science legislators like Ted Cruz and Lamar Smith in co-sponsorship with Democrats from states with aerospace-heavy economies. [Emphasis mine]
The premise is that space is supposed to be about science, but that has never been true. And as Mark Whittington pointed out on Twitter, it wasn’t Ted Cruz or Lamar Smith who were running ads blasting their opponents for supporting a mission to Europa.
Venezuela
Who backs whom? If Cuba, Turkey, China, and Russia back something, I’m agin’ it.
You Don’t Say
Some Democrats are starting to think that Barack Obama was a lousy president. He shouldn’t have won either time, but (as usual) the Republicans ran lousy candidates.
Charles de Gaulle
…was a prophet on the EU and Brexit:
De Gaulle—the leader of the Free French resistance in World War II who went on to found the Fifth Republic under which France still lives today—understood the problem best. He thought Britain would never truly be at home in a European union. “England in effect is insular, she is maritime,” he said in his remarks blocking Britain’s entry into what was then called the Common Market in 1963. “She has in all her doings very marked and very original habits and traditions.” He added that “the nature, the structure, the very situation that are England’s differ profoundly from those of the continentals.”
Sadly, that’s not as much the case. One of the strongest drivers of Leave was to prevent further deterioration and Europeanization.
Should The FBI Run The Country?
Tribute To A Monster
..by a restaurant in downtown LA.
Next up: An Argentinian tapas place called “Che’s,” and an Austrian restaurant named “Der Fuhrer.”
Disagreeing With DC Conventional Wisdom
…isn’t a crime, let alone an impeachable offense. It is time to rethink NATO, perhaps past time.
NATO and the EU have been free riding for a long time. It was an organization for a different era and power structure. Putin’s Russia doesn’t have the resources to conquer Europe, especially if they start getting serious about their own defense.
[Sunday-afternoon update]
Yes. Europe was never a true partner in its own defense. They had a (brief) excuse in the midst of the Marshall Plan, but we’ve been indulging them in their own socialism and unwillingness to spend on their own defense for the decades since recovery. Time to rethink it.
And for those who think that Trump is Putin’s “stooge,” did Putin order him to insist that Europeans spend more on their own defense and live up to their NATO obligations?
[Bumped]