“A great piece of land”

The defeated former president, marveling at Vladimir Putin’s invasion:

“He’s taking over a country — really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in.”

Imagine FDR marveling at Hitler.

But what really strikes me here is the idea that a country is nothing more than a property, something to take as one’s own. Not a culture, not a history, just “a great piece of land,” with a lot of people on it, and a good price — just “two dollars” in sanctions. It’s the same mentality that let the defeated former president see Greenland as something to buy (or trade Puerto Rico for), and the same mentality that lets him see women as parts to be grabbed at will.

The History Channel

Admiral James G. Stavridis (ret.), on MSNBC a few minutes ago: “Sometimes you’re watching the History Channel in real time. This is one of those times.”

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And he just invoked 1914, 1939, and 1962 (the Cuban Missile Crisis).

Recently updated

Who owns Henry Darger? Questions, and a delay.

A cartoon from Ukraine

From the official Twitter account of Ukraine:

pic.twitter.com/IaqFbpayqz

— Ukraine / Україна (@Ukraine) February 24, 2022

A subsequent tweet added: “This is not a ‘meme’, but our and your reality right now.”

DuckDuckGo

I don’t know what to make of this story: “Fed Up With Google, Conspiracy Theorists Turn to DuckDuckGo” (The New York Times).

Ticonderoga headwear

[Click for a larger view.]

Now everyone can be Mr. T. But I wonder if they have anything in a Mongol, 7⅛.

I have no information about this odd photograph. All I can do is thank the reader who sent it.

See also today’s Yellow Petals.

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A missing niche

I was at a town meeting, where local retailers were being encouraged to 1. find a niche and 2. provide great customer service. I posed a couple of questions:

If almost anything can be found at Amazon, at a lower price than a local retailer can charge, how can that retailer find a niche? And if they can’t find a niche, how can they provide great customer service? To whom?

No one had an answer.

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Miller vs. Davis

In Illinois’s redrawn 15th Congressional District, Mary (“Hitler was right on one thing”) Miller, endorsed by a defeated former president, is struggling in her primary race against fellow Republican incumbent Rodney Davis:

In the fourth quarter of 2021, Miller raised less than $165,000, bringing her election cycle haul through December 31 to $788,000. Davis, on the other hand, raised more than $1.8 million for his reelection campaign so far this cycle, including about $421,000 in the last three months of 2021.

Rodney Davis is no bargain, but he’s at least a better choice than Mary Miller — which, admittedly, is not saying much. Whatever happens in their primary, our household, in a redrawn 12th district (redder, whiter, and less educated), will almost certainly end up represented by the unappealing Mike Bost, who, like Miller and unlike Davis, voted against certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. No, we’ll still be in IL-15.

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“He’s a dictator”

From Finger Man (dir. Harold D. Schuster, 1955). T-man Burns (Hugh Sanders) speaks about a criminal boss:

“Look — you know the mobs, how they operate. One strong, ruthless man can tie a syndicate together. He pushes the buttons and pulls the strings, and all over the nation his vicious rackets are set in motion. He’s a dictator. We’re after one of those dictators. We want him bad.”

“Peacekeeping operations”

I was disheartened this morning to hear the announcer at a nearby NPR affiliate say that Vladimir Putin “has begun peacekeeping operations in Ukraine.” So I called the station and left a message, suggesting that the phrasing be changed to “what he calls peacekeeping operations.” An hour later the announcer said that Putin “has sent troops to Ukraine.” The change might be coincidental.

As many people have already pointed out, every journalist who refers to “peacekeeping operations in Ukraine,” without attributing that language to the Russian state, is doing Vladimir Putin’s work. Totalitarian euphemism should never get a pass.

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Wow: two return calls, and an assurance that they’re going to be more careful about the phrasing.