Your personal doomsday clock update of the day.

Putin's Victory Day speech was described as low-key, but Paul Kengor disagrees. In his analysis, Russia's dictator upped the rhetorical ante, targeting the United States:

But my main point of concern here is Putin suddenly calling out the United States, and once again in the form of an old KGB-Kremlin talking point. This is yet another level in Putin’s rising escalation. And as the old KGB political dinosaur continues to stomp and lash out, he’s capable of more violence and destruction. In the past few months, Putin’s various lies against the Ukrainians have been a pretext for him to ramp up his rage by ever-increasing levels of military action. Let’s hope this one aimed at the United States and the West doesn’t result in Putin taking aim in literal ways at the U.S. and the West.

I remain very pessimistic.

By the way, the official Doomsday Clock is not worth consulting, as the invasion of Ukraine and the rattling of nuclear sabers by Russia is apparently less important than either political so-called disinformation or anti-covid policies in the developed world. In the old days, an event like a nuclear power invading its neighbor would have prompted an update. But the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has gone the mission creep route so you have to look elsewhere.

Burn Tiktok to the ground.

 It's a "strip club filled with 15 year olds."

So destroy the app then toss the app coders and abusers into a prison near the Arctic Circle. 

It is just and merciful.

Scenes from a nation careening toward the apocalypse:

A Forbes review of hundreds of recent TikTok livestreams reveals how viewers regularly use the comments to urge young girls to perform acts that appear to toe the line of child pornography — rewarding those who oblige with TikTok gifts, which can be redeemed for money, or off-platform payments to Venmo, PayPal or Cash App accounts that users list in their TikTok profiles.

It’s “the digital equivalent of going down the street to a strip club filled with 15-year-olds,” says Leah Plunkett, an assistant dean at Harvard Law School and faculty associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, focused on youth and media. Imagine a local joint putting a bunch of minors on a stage before a live adult audience that is actively giving them money to perform whatever G, PG or PG-13 activities they request, she said. “That is sexual exploitation. But that's exactly what TikTok is doing here.”

The transactions are happening in a public online forum open to viewers almost anywhere on the planet. Some of the demands are explicit — like asking girls to kiss each other, spread their legs or flash the camera — and some harder to detect, masked with euphemisms. Commenters say “outfit check” to get a complete look at a girl’s body; “pedicure check” to see their feet; “there’s a spider on your wall” to get girls to turn around and show their rears; and “play rock-paper-scissors” to encourage girls to flirt-fight or wrestle with each other. Phrases like “put your arms up” or “touch the ceiling” are often directed at girls in crop tops so viewers can see their breasts and stomachs. And many simply coax girls to show their tongues and belly buttons or do handstands and splits. In return, the girls are showered with virtual gifts, like flowers, hearts, ice cream cones and lollipops, that can be converted to cash. 

As I told a Gen Z man recently, it's an awful time to be a girl or a woman. He agreed. Small wonder, perhaps, that some tragic girls try to withdraw from being a woman altogether, only to open yet another door to horror.

 We are doing our literal damnedest to make decadent Rome look quaint, God help us.

Paul Zummo is one of the sanest men on the internet.

And because that is the most back-handed of compliments, let me re-phrase:

Paul is one of the smartest, most-grounded and sanest men around. Period.

Click on the above to read a polite defenestration of anti-anti-abortion sophistry.  

Last's morphing into a hack is nothing short of tragic. While I usually have little use for Friedrich Nietzsche, the age of Trump offers ample confirmation for the German philosopher's warning about fighting monsters and gazing into the abyss. 

Some of Trump's critics have revealed themselves to be mere mercenary grifters happy to mouth any political ad copy for pay.

Far worse are others who maimed their integrity. Last appears to be the latter, to my sorrow. I profited from reading him. What did I miss in his previous writing that could have signaled what he is doing now?

[And, yes, the same applies to those who have prostituted themselves to support Trump. But the principled anti-Trump Mr. Zummo isn't talking about that now. If you want some of that, go here. Speaking of which, I am about to throw up with the Catholic fawning over MTG. Get a grip. Your integrity needs it.]

 

All over but the mopping up.

The Latin Mass will be dead in Detroit by the end of 2023.

The archbishop has left the Institute of Christ the King parish more or less alone. 

But everything else is up to the "lively pastoral charity" (guffaw) of Rome.  

This lively pastoral charity is exactly analogous to that of an oncologist toward a tumor, as you have no doubt noticed.

And you can count on Vigneron's successor giving the Institute a long walk of a short plank.

Ah, well--Eastern Catholicism is alive and well in these parts. And at least two of the Churches do not worship the ground the papal office trods. 

On a related note: for the first time in 70 years, no priest was ordained for the Archdiocese of Detroit. The Francis Effect, baby!

Yeah, sorry.

Not a lot of blogging juice right now. Family stress with the move of a child outstate (not on bad terms, but not ideal), so prayers would be welcome.

Plus, not much to say. Don't get giddy about Roe--it was also "overturned" in a draft opinion by Chief Justice Rehnquist back in 1989, and here we are. 

There's only so many times you can point out that our blinkered leaders are sending the world straight to Hell in the express lane before it gets a bit old, even for an oblivious, repetitive pedant like myself.  

A few good books in my reading rotation, and maybe that will prompt the blogging keyboard back to life.

Speaking of which, if you'd like fresh, accessible translations of Roman classics with an emphasis on Cicero, check out the collection here. 

May God grant you and yours peace.

Two loose-cannon Presidents in a row.

The most recent one demanded regime change for a nuclear-armed power we are not at war with.

Not saying the quiet part out loud is one of the commandments of effective diplomacy.

Ah, well. I'm sure it'll be fine.

And it's not like we weren't warned that such things could happen.

Yelena Baturina.

Ms. Baturina is a billionaire, and depending upon the source, either the richest or second-richest woman in Russia.

Unlike many,many other oligarchs, she has not been the subject of sanctions by the Administration for Putin's War.

Pay no attention to the passed envelope in 2014. 

Nor to the 2010 Wikileaks material. 

For, as everyone knows, the road to wealth in Putin's Russia comes straight through the pages of a modern-day Horatio Alger tale.  [Anyone who says the same about the contemporary United States gets the coveted Whataboutism Nonpublished Lazy Comment of the Moment Award.]

 

202022.

A grim year is going to get grimmer as it drags on. 

To wit, American farmers can't take advantage of soaring wheat prices because commodity markets are spooked.  

After Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent global wheat futures soaring, U.S. farmer Vance Ehmke was eager to sell his grain.

Local prices shot up roughly 30% to nearly $12 a bushel, about the highest Ehmke could recall in 45 years of farming near the western Kansas town of Healy.

Instead of reaping a windfall, Ehmke found a commodities market turned upside down. He and his wife Louise told Reuters they couldn't sell a nickel of their upcoming summer wheat harvest for future delivery. Futures prices for corn and wheat had rocketed so abruptly that many along the complex chain of grain handling - local farm cooperatives, grain elevators, flour millers and exporters - stopped buying for fear they couldn't resell at a profit.

On the other hand, agricultural profit projections are extra-murky as diesel prices soar into the stratosphere.

First pestilence and death, now another war, perhaps famine? 

 

I have taken to cramming together the last three years into one super-horrible one with six numbers--hence the title. A safe bet I'm going to have 202023 in the hopper.

Fret not, Americans who earn less than $300,000 per year! Mike Bloomberg's digital steno pad has some advice for getting through the latest twist in the anni horribili.

Now, the article itself is not that bad--apart from the "let them eat lentils" bit. But someone at Bloomberg's Twitter account added the tag line of "nobody said this would be fun." 

Hoo, boy. 

And while I like lentils, they are persnickety, requiring hours of careful soaking and repeated washing to avoid the gritty "I just ate a lot of chaff" aftertaste. 

Anyway, it's going to get worse and worse, so prepare as best you can.

 

 

A question about the current crisis.

 

Have any members of the Western political elites (broadly construed to include lesser figures like members of Congress or their European equivalents, prominent religious figures, celebrities, etc.) spoken out against the insane tide of Russophobia engulfing their nations?

As someone who loathes Putin and delivered aid to a Ukrainian Catholic parish for shipment to that besieged nation, I find this blinkered ethnic cancellation campaign beyond repulsive. 

But even more so is the utter refusal of anyone in prominent political or cultural positions to call it out and to continue to do so.  

If you have examples of people doing so, I would love to see them. But I suspect they come from those at the fringes of power, according to various values of the term "fringe."

Proof of concept leaps to my distrustful mind. But in the short term it is another marker of how unfit our leaders are to lead free people, and how little they like such folks.

Not All Russians.

The insane anti-Russian hysteria is correctly rebuked by Charles Cooke in this excellent essay. 

We have been sternly (and correctly) told not to lump all Chinese in with their genocidal government nor all Muslims for the dreary drumbeat of atrocities across the globe.

And yet, the hysteria here has slipped the leash without anything close to the same pushback.  

During the First World War, the British public took to booing dachshunds in the street — or so I was told as a boy. I always thought this was probably untrue, but I am now beginning to wonder. In the last 48 hours, I have read that “the International Cat Federation” — that pillar of civilization — “has banned Russian cats from its international competitions”; that the Paralympics “will deny access to athletes from Russia and Belarus”; that the state of New Hampshire is removing “bottles of Russian vodka from New Hampshire’s state-run liquor stores”; that EA Sports intends to “remove the Russian National Team and all Russian club soccer teams from its FIFA video game franchise, and remove all Russian and Belarusian hockey teams from the latest NHL video game franchise”; and that Russian chess player Alexander Grischuk has been “kicked out of a forthcoming tournament” in Norway, despite being a critic of the war that has caused his ejection. From here, booing dogs seems the obvious next step.

I can certainly imagine a situation in which one country’s behavior became so extraordinary — and the threat that it posed became so total — that another country needed to take the sort of zero-tolerance line that includes the superintendence of cat-fancying. In 1940, Nazi Germany posed such a threat to Great Britain. But, clearly, Russia isn’t at that point yet, because, if it were, we would have stopped buying its oil. We are not expected, I hope, to believe that it is imperative that we expel Russian pixels from our video games, but a mere matter of taste whether we cease to purchase Russian energy? Somehow, that would seem a failure to get our priorities straight.

Our reluctance to distinguish between Vladimir Putin’s evil on the one hand and Russians and Russian culture more broadly on the other is especially jarring given how unwilling so many people have been to criticize the Chinese Communist Party for its role in the Covid-19 pandemic. Last year, it was deemed beyond the pale even to mention China in connection with the pandemic — lest doing so lead to sudden outbreaks of “anti-Asian hate.” Why, I must ask, is the same rule not being applied here? Is there really no useful middle ground? Assuming sufficient due process, there are excellent reasons to target well-connected Russian oligarchs, just as there are solid justifications for our having imposed harsh sanctions on the broader Russian economy. But vodka that is served in the United States? Norway wasn’t willing to boycott an Olympic Games that was being held in a country that is committing genocide, but it has the resolve to keep a dissident chess player from competing on its shores? None of this makes much sense.

I was going to ask rhetorically whether we intend to abandon Tchaikovsky and Dostoyevsky, too, but, as it turns out, this isn’t really a joke, for over at Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen notes that “the editors of the ‘Studies in the History of Philosophy’ have decided not to pursue the project of publishing a thematic issue devoted to Russian religious philosophy.” Why? Are there are a lot of religious philosophers in the Russian military? Did they help plan the invasion of Ukraine? Are the bulk of them fans of Putin’s — or even still alive? This is boobishness in the extreme, the equivalent of disowning Beethoven because of Bismarck’s bad behavior. The United States should use any leverage it has against the Russian regime, but there is a difference between leverage and iconoclasm, and it is one that too many in the West are not presently observing.

Even Russian NHLers are getting death threats, to the horrified outrage of their emigre Ukrainian Jewish agent.

The closest analogy here is China, given that state misbehavior is directly comparable, so I will focus on that. 

Why the difference? A couple of likely culprits in my book.

First is cash--China owns a lot of things and people in the West, and that sweet yuan stream is addicting. 

Second is the poisonous identity politics of the West: Russians are overwhelmingly white, and insane domestic nastiness transfers well overseas in this case. Xi gets the race card played on his behalf, but there is nothing in the same deck for Putin. 

Oh, make no mistake: there is no shortage of apologetics for Putin's hellish aggression out in the wild. But it is dressed in a different brand of blood-stained tinsel than that which festoons the monster in Beijing.

It will be double digits by spring.

Inflation hits highest mark since 1982. 

Energy prices will continue to spike, and with the fourth largest wheat producer on the planet under Russian occupation, that commodity will soar, too. With all the knock-on effects throughout the system.

The plan to address the former is to drain some more out of the strategic reserve, and blame oil producers for gouging. Because going hat in hand to OPEC back in November ended in our envoy being sent on his way.

The blinkered stupidity of our leadership is keeping pace with inflation. Putin sure loves having oil at $92+ to fund his blitzkrieg. Just imagine how different things would have been at $45 per barrel on that point alone.

So, more pain for the working and middle classes, with no end in sight. But Wall Street is set for a big rebound today, cheering spending increases by said classes. Have they ever thought people are trying to pre-empt inflation and "supply chain issues" by making purchases now so they won't have to pay a lot more later? Raises hand.

Well, no, they haven't. That would require them to place themselves in the shoes of the people they regard as human resources.

But the money traders are desperate for anything that looks like good news, so there you go.

A long, miserable year beckons. And no doubt with more unpleasant surprises.

Three cheers for Congresswoman Omar.

No, really: she wonders why power-apologist journalists are going after donors to the Freedom Convoy following a hack-n-doxx. 

Short answer: because that's what journalism is today--a corporate apologetics ministry for the oligarchy.  And oligarchs want people to know their lane and not disrupt the neoliberal machine. 

It's all class warfare these days--and crushing smallholders with the temerity to annoy leviathan is an absolute must. 

A reminder from Pixar:

And another from Orwell:

"Gotta say I did not have 'Land War With Canada' on my 2022 bingo card."

David Burge, the ever-sardonic Iowahawk, responding to a babblingly-stupid Matt Iglesias tweet.

In related news, our governor, in the midst of a deservedly-difficult re-election fight, has offered heavy equipment and security assistance to remove the Canadian truck protesters.

Oh, really?

She has always been a good neoliberal, making sure the corporate bottom line is never threatened too much. And she does love issuing edicts. But there might be a few problems with committing Michigan personnel to a classic Foreign Freedom Adventure Expedition! on her own. 

 

 

OK Groomer.

The phenomenon of public schools engaging in what can only be described as grooming behavior reached new lows this week.

13 year olds in a Connecticut middle school were asked to list their favorite sex acts.

Look, parents: you have two options.

1. Pull your kids; or

2. Defenestrate every member of the school board in the next election.

But understand that No. 2 is not going to do anything about the educational processes that form teachers who think grooming kids is a civic duty.

 

 

Yep. Remember her?

"There is more outrage over Joe Rogan than Ghislaine Maxwell."

And there was more coverage of the "Long Island Lolita" trial than that of Epstein's sidekick. Despite the fact the latter was a galactic cesspit of corruption in which the elites frolicked with coerced girls.

No cable or broadcast movies about Jeff and Jill, though.

I do not wonder at all why that is.

The idea that Prince Andrew will be the only one to suffer any consequences for Epstein's serial pimping of girls to the elites is the stuff which sharpens guillotines.

"Dialogue is only for people we like."

Boy Trudeau tells the Freedom Convoy protesters that they need to accept the infallibility of his decrees and go home. 

CNN's framing, uncritically accepting the spin of anti-protesters, is in stark contrast to their advocacy of the "fiery but mostly peaceful" protests of 2020. Naturally.

Anyway, it would cost BT nothing to at least hear out a delegation. But given that class warfare prerogatives prevent the elites from seeing the protesters as anything other than unruly serfs who must be made to assume their place, that will never happen.

Plus, conceding legitimacy to any complaint suggests that his regime might have erred, and he can't have that. 

Remember: everything is class warfare these days. Especially so-called identity politics, the most clever divide-and-conquer scheme devised in this century. Always be aware that those who thunder most about "privilege" have done and will do nothing to divest themselves of it. Acknowledging privilege absolves them and authorizes the wielding all of privilege's prerogatives. It's a topical cream: for external use only.

Remember this moment when the Nu variant starts rampaging.

Eh, let's wait and see about a travel stop from South Africa, says "America's Doctor."

Why? Because it's still early:

Only a few cases of the B.1.1.529 “Nu” variant have been detected [outside of South Africa] so far. By the logic of March 2020, that should make this an opportune moment to slap a travel ban on southern Africa. We might not be able to stop Nu from reaching the U.S. but we can limit the number of travelers bringing it in, slowing the spread. And the slower the spread is, the fewer people will be infected while the country waits for Pfizer and Moderna to produce an updated vaccine, if need be.

I have an idea: tell him he's acting like a fellow over-rated egomaniac when the latter was too late about stopping travel from Europe.

That might do it.

The UK has already issued a travel stop. 

Meanwhile, the stock market dropped like a stone today--maybe that will wake up a caretaker or two at the White House.

Here's some more data about the variant that's giving some epidemiologists the sweats.

It's rampaging through the South African province that includes Pretoria and Johannesburg, and has surpassed Delta in the course of three weeks.

[Update: mirabile dictu, someone is awake in DC: travel ban begins Monday, which I hope means we test everyone in the meantime and then citizens and legal residents who return, too. Good on the Administration for acting quickly.]

May the Women's Tennis Association ever prosper.

On November 2, 2021, Peng Shaui, a female pro tennis player from China, announced that she had been raped by a former vice premier and high ranking Communist Party member back in 2018.

Shortly thereafter, the post was deleted, then she herself vanished. A statement purportedly from her was published by the state media two days ago, stating that she hadn't been raped, was fine, really, just taking some time off, thanks, don't worry.

The usual unconvincing platter of lies. 

Yesterday, the Women's Tennis Association responded to Peng's imprisonment.

I am so used to seeing cringing, bowing and scraping before the People's Republic of China that the slightest pushback against the monsters of Beijing deserves a celebratory signal-boost.

But note that the WTA's actions are not "the slightest pushback." 

This is putting money where one's mouth is, something American corporations and institutions never do when it comes to flow of sweet, sweet blood-stained yuan.

None of us should be under any illusions that China will change its behavior due to being publicly shamed in the west. If they cared about that, they wouldn’t have issued a transparently fraudulent “everything’s fine” statement in Peng's name. But having the WTA and its stars call attention to Peng’s disappearance will help further delegitimize the regime in the eyes of westerners who don’t normally pay attention to foreign policy. And it might shame other western institutions that are inclined to keep quiet when China commits crimes in plain sight to acknowledge what’s happening before their eyes. There’s news today that the UN is now demanding proof of Peng’s well-being from Beijing. Would that have happened if the WTA had shrugged off her disappearance as a matter of internal Chinese politics?

Women’s tennis isn’t a mega-bucks business in China the way, say, the NBA is but they’ll be leaving real money on the table if they pull out. Steve Simon, the WTA’s chairman, swung a deal in 2018 that would have seen China hold the WTA Finals every year for the next decade. Nine tournaments were played there in 2019 alone, with room to grow. And Simon is known for his business savvy, per the WSJ. If there’s anyone you might expect to carefully weigh the financial health of his industry against the safety of a single Chinese player, it’s him.

But you’d be doing him a disservice, if so. The second half of the CNN interview embedded at the end of this post is almost shocking in the moral clarity Simon displays by threatening to quit China. “There’s too many times in our world today … that we let business, politics, money dictate what’s right and what’s wrong,” he says at one point. “We have to start as a world making decisions that are based upon right and wrong, period.” And then the real stunner: “This is bigger than the business.”

Bravo to the Association and the athletes for standing up and saying no. Willing to leave money on the table in the process.

As compared to Marriott, which went the usual collaborator route. The American hotel chain behemoth actually used the phrase "political neutrality" in canceling a Uighur conference at one of their hotels.

Congratulations--that earns the profits-not-people chain the Elie Weisel retort:

Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.

The food price increases are here--and more are on the way.

 As was said on my favorite sci-fi television show:

"The avalanche has started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."

Yes, you can say "but it's convenience food. Not staples." 

Bagel Bites are not the product of Old World Craftsmanship™: it's all basic food and supply chain inputs.

 

Appeasers gonna appease.

First, the good: Boston Celtics center Enes Canter takes a stand on Tibet. 

It should also be noted that the Turkish native cannot return to his homeland because of his fierce and well-supported criticisms of the tyrant there.

So, yes--he's the real deal.

Xitler's Reich responded as expected, yanking Celtics games from broadcast.

Which brings me to the bad: the best case scenario is a tepid defense of Canter. But more likely, you'll see anger from those who always take yuan--no matter how much blood you have to wring out of the bills.

Speaking of such: the bowing and scraping sell-out collared practitioners of neo-Ostpolitik (a failure, no matter what the red-friendly apologists try to say) are floating trial balloons about abandoning Taiwan.

Because of course they are. 

Makes me wonder how many yuan are cycling through Vatican City at the moment.

No doubt some sold themselves too cheaply, not understanding the market.

And let me end on a final grim note:

If you don't have a "Guns of August" square on your 2020s Apocalyptic Bingo Card, get one that has it. It's just about a certainty to happen.