Althouse: At the Wrestlers Café...

February 22, 2014

At the Wrestlers Café...

... we're just playing!

31 comments:

Bob Ellison said...: That top photo is a doozy. Meade should submit it in a contest somewhere.; 2/22/14, 10:41 AM
Hagar said...: Ryggtak!; 2/22/14, 10:53 AM
rhhardin said...: I wonder why my LaCrosse atomic clock shows 11:40 at 11:58.

Normally they're a couple of minutes off (if they can't receive Boulder for a while) or a certain number of hours off (if they're received the wrong timezone code).

You can't trust the damn things, is the lesson.; 2/22/14, 11:00 AM
Hagar said...: I think the clock in my computer syas it needs to be manually set within 5 minutes of the correct time in order to keep up the self-correcting.; 2/22/14, 11:20 AM
Curious George said...: Maybe there is hope for America...; 2/22/14, 11:26 AM
Hagar said...: I got to thinking that I could not remember ever reading about a country called Ukraine and so looked it up on Wikipedia. It appears that the State of Ukraine is a brand new concept that was made into a country after the breakup of the Soviet Union 20-odd years ago.
In the past there have been more or less self-governing "tribal areas" in The Ukraine, though nothing larger than perhaps half as large as the present State of Ukraine, and Peter the Great put a stop to that after the Great Northern War 1709-1720, and The Ukraine has been a part of Russia ever since.; 2/22/14, 11:59 AM
Bob Ellison said...: Hagar, Ukraine's history goes way back. Russia is an impossibly big place, spanning eleven time zones. Ukraine, like Georgia and other nationalities with common cultures, languages, and other differences with Russia proper, has been under Russia's thumb before the USSR, during the USSR, and now again afterward.

Lots of hate there.; 2/22/14, 12:08 PM
wildswan said...: There is a website called Paelofuture which shows German postcards about the future which were made in 1900.

And there is another called Capitolwords in which you can put words or phrases and then the site compares how often they are said by Democrats vs how often by Republicans. For instance Benghazi is said 83% of the time by Republicans. And "keep your health care" was said equally by Republicans and Democrats in 2010 but not at all now by Democrats. And Democrats mention "Wisconsin" and "Scott Walker" and "Milwaukee Public Schools" far more often then Republicans!! And "Green Bay Packers" is a steady topic but on a low level.

I'm not at all sure what Congressmen do talk about though the site tries to give some guidance. "Paleofuture" is not a topic at all - how wise I was to move.; 2/22/14, 12:21 PM
mccullough said...: The top photo looks like the Michael Vick cafe; 2/22/14, 12:54 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: I once posted a picture on my blog of two dogs playing. Dogs playing look like dogs being ferocious in stills. Someone got upset, thinking that I had posted a picture of a dog fight for entertainment. I took it down to avoid confusion.; 2/22/14, 1:00 PM
Matt said...: I found it interesting to compare the comments between this post:

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2014/02/ted-nugent-apologizes-for-using.html?commentPage=1

And this one...

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/01/is-harry-reid-racist-it-depends-on-what.html

If Crack reads this, what caused your dramatic change over just four years?; 2/22/14, 1:05 PM
Simon said...: Hagar et al,
The lens through which I see the Ukraine protests, or perhaps the analogy that helps me understand it, is the Madison protests of 2011. In both cases, you have large minorities who are hostile to the legitimately-elected Governor/President and his policies. In both cases, the legitimately-elected Governor/President pursues policies legitimately within his authority, prompting condemnation and protests from those who lost the election fair and square.

The difference on the protester's side is that the 2011 protests never got violent; the 2011 protesters left downtown Madison much as they had found it while the 2014 protesters will leave downtown Kiev as a burned-out shell.

The difference on the executive's side is that Scott Walker didn't back down. Walker understood that appeasing that kind of protester is feeding the crocodile. How would we have reacted if Walker had agreed to suspend the Wisconsin Constitution and order early elections for the legislature and his own replacement? Those who voted for Walker wondering whether they had legal recourse. See, e.g., Ann Althouse, Time for the Federal Courts to Enforce the Guarantee Clause, 65 U. Colo. L. Rev. 881 (1994). Even the Times might, reluctantly, wonder aloud whether this could possibly be squared with a republican form of government.

Listen: You can't compromise with crocodiles and bullies; you beat them or you'll get beaten eventually. Yeltsin understood that in 1994. Walker understood that in 2011. It is unfortunate that Yanukovych doesn't.; 2/22/14, 1:22 PM
Hagar said...: Comparing Ukraine to Wisconsin is ludicrous. Wisconsin politics just runs to name-calling; in Ukraine the protesters think they have something worth dying for.
Perhaps it is nationalism, but if so, it must be more than one nationalism; that huge area was never occupied by just one people. And at least some of the protesters seem to be more or less Great Russians, which is something that should give Putin pause.
Whatever, this situation is more complicated than the MSM can cope with.; 2/22/14, 1:43 PM
lemondog said...: A dog called "psycho"

and

Penny and Roo, A love story; 2/22/14, 1:46 PM
Hagar said...: Watched The Journal Editorial Report this noon.

I do not think McConnell and Boehner is the problem. Those guys have jobs to do, which are to try to keep their respective caucuses together, not to run for president.

I think Karl Rove, Dan Qayle, et al. is a problem. These guys should consider that Obama was re-elected because more Republicans did not come out to vote for Romney than there were Democrats not voting for Obama.
I think this was because "The Establishment" (outside of Congress) does not have the confidence of the voters, not because of McConnell and Boehner.; 2/22/14, 1:55 PM
Hagar said...: Also I think the UAW appealing the election at the VW plant in Tennessee on the ground of "outside interference" by Republican politicians is silly and smacks of desperation.
I would expect the majority of the workers at the plant to be Democrats by tradition, and the statements by the Governor and Sen. Corker to have been counter-productive of their intent, if anything.

I think the workers have finally noticed that the Wagner Act attitudes are self-destructive to their interests, and they probably also have low opinion of the present day AFL-CIO leadership.; 2/22/14, 2:02 PM
Saint Croix said...: Stalin killed millions of people in the Ukraine. His army took all the food out of the country, and then the soldiers closed the border so the people could not escape.

Death by starvation, a holodomor.; 2/22/14, 2:22 PM
Hagar said...: It is an area, not a country.; 2/22/14, 2:36 PM
Saint Croix said...: I find that wikipedia article kind of infuriating, by the way.

In the absence of absolute documentary proof of intent, scholars have also made the argument that the Holodomor was ultimately a consequence of the economic problems associated with radical economic changes implemented during the period of liquidation of private property and Soviet industrialization. Some scholars accordingly consider the famine to be unintentional

The excuses people make for Stalin!

The bias in our media is really amazing. We have no trouble showcasing the evil of National Socialism. You'd think we would equally be appalled at all the murders committed under Communism. 94 million homicides!

Accidents. Unintentional. Oops.

Here is our own Pravda media describing Communism as a "pivotal experiment."

No wonder Ukraine is pissed.; 2/22/14, 2:54 PM
Saint Croix said...: It is an area, not a country.

Ukraine is a country now. The nationalist movement in the Ukraine dates back centuries. It was never really part of Russia, and the only reason it was part of the "USSR" is because the army went in and murdered 2 million of them.; 2/22/14, 3:07 PM
mtrobertsattorney said...: Will the UW law school faculty have anything to say about the troublesome shenanigans going on at the UW Center for Communication and Democracy?

The Center has been identified as one of the two sources for the FCC's proposal to monitor American newsrooms, including websites, for how they select their news stories and how they report on them.

How about a resolution condemning Lewis Friedland, the Director of the Center, and his merry band of leftists for their attack on the First Amendment?; 2/22/14, 3:31 PM
mtrobertsattorney said...: Will the UW law school faculty have anything to say about the troublesome shenanigans going on at the UW Center for Communication and Democracy?

The Center has been identified as one of the two sources for the FCC's proposal to monitor American newsrooms, including websites, for how they select their news stories and how they report on them.

How about a resolution condemning Lewis Friedland, the Director of the Center, and his merry band of leftists for their attack on the First Amendment?; 2/22/14, 3:31 PM
Simon said...: Hagar said...
"Comparing Ukraine to Wisconsin is ludicrous. Wisconsin politics just runs to name-calling; in Ukraine the protesters think they have something worth dying for."

That was kind of the point. And I didn't compare the "Ukraine to Wisconsin," I compared two protests, one that happened to be in the Ukraine and one that happened to be in Wisconsin. It isn't complicated, it's straightforward: The Ukraine has an elected government that de facto revolutionaries--protestors from the losing side of that election--are trying to overthrow. That isn't complicated, and it doesn't become complicated simply because the Ukrainian nation and its geography have a complicated history. (As Saint Croix notes, the argument that it "is an area not a country" is childish, akin to disputing the status of the countries carved out of the former Hapsburg and Ottoman empires. Whether there is a coherent "Ukrainian nation" may be disputed; that the Ukraine is in fact a country today may not.); 2/22/14, 3:49 PM
Oso Negro said...: @ Simon - Do you understand the depth of the support in Kiev for the protests against Yanukovych? My mother-in-law, scarcely a fire-breathing radical, was one of hundreds of older women and men guarding the wounded in the hospitals when he sent the police to try to arrest them. The city was feeding the protesters. Are you a natural Tory, or more of a totalitarian? It happens on occasion that people have simply had enough.; 2/22/14, 4:28 PM
Oso Negro said...: And about that election, from wiki - Early vote returns from the first round of the election held on 17 January showed Yanukovych in first place with 35.8% of the vote. He faced a 7 February 2010 runoff against Tymoshenko, who finished second (with 24.7% of the vote). Analysts predicted a slight advantage for Tymoshenko in the second (and final) round as she was more likely to attract voters from the other 16 candidates who did not proceed to the second round. Viktor Yanukovych refused to hold debates with his opponent before the second round of voting, saying Yulia Tymoshenko should either take responsibility for every word as prime minister, or go to the kitchen.After all ballots were counted the Ukrainian Central Election Commission declared that Yanukovych won the election with 48.95% of the vote compared with 45.47% for Tymoshenko.Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc members immediately claimed that there was systematic and large-scale vote rigging in this run-off.
On 10 February 2009, Yanukovych called on Tymoshenko to abandon her protests February 2010, Yanukovych had stated that Borys Kolesnykov was his preferred next Prime Minister of Ukraine. According to him pre-term parliamentary elections will be imminent if the Ukrainian parliament would not work effectively. Yanukovych also stated that, as the largest faction in the parliament at the time, his party was entitled to nominate the premier.
On 16 February 2010, Ukraine's parliament had fixed 25 February 2010 for the inauguration of Yanukovych as president.On 17 February 2010, "the Higher Administrative Court of Ukraine", suspended the results of the election on Yulia Tymoshenko's appeal.On 20 February 2010, Tymoshenko withdrew her appeal after "the Higher Administrative Court of Ukraine" rejected her petition to scrutinize documents:
— about 300,000 voters who voted but were not in the "Register of Voters of Ukraine";
— about 1.3 million voters who "without right" voted in their homes;
— about falsification in the election in the eastern regions (Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv region, Crimea, etc.) — fixed by law-enforcement officials.
Tymoshenko stated : "I and my political party will never recognize Yanukovych as the legitimately elected president of Ukraine"; "an honest court will assess that Yanukovych was not elected President of Ukraine, and that the will of the people had been rigged".

Tymoshenko, of course, ended up in a penal colony. Yanukovych' record is one that a Chicago Democrat could admire.; 2/22/14, 4:40 PM
Hagar said...: St. C et al.
Aren't you with the folks who complain so bitterly about the way the League of Nations carved up the Middle East after WWI?

A state does not necessarily make a country.; 2/22/14, 5:29 PM
Saint Croix said...: I am with the people of Ukraine. And, for that matter, the people of Venezuela.

Wherever I look, I see Tea Party.; 2/22/14, 5:43 PM
Hagar said...: Spengler has something about perhaps Ukraine can split into two or more states with the westerly part(s) looking west and the south and east cozying up to Russia, and that Putin might put up with that.

That could have been, perhaps, if the Baltic states and those south had formed their own "Mittel- Europa Pact" back when instead of being pressed into NATO, but I don't think so now.

The Obama administration will just go cluck-cluck for domestic consumption, and there will be no "consequences" without the United States taking the lead.; 2/22/14, 6:01 PM
ken in tx said...: At one time the Grand Duchy of Poland included the Ukraine. I learned this from a Classics Illustrated version of “With Fire and Sword”. I was in Jr. High. Yeah, I read Batman and Superman too. Today's kids don't seem to have those choices. Maybe I'm wrong. Some of those WWII video games do teach some history.; 2/22/14, 7:06 PM
Simon said...: Oso Negro said...
"Do you understand the depth of the support in Kiev for the protests against Yanukovych?"

I don't care. That's the most direct and frank answer that I can give you—I don't care. In general, I have no sympathy for protesters; in a republic, the correct venue for protest is at the ballot box. Only when the ballot box is closed or compromised does actual protest become legitimate. Nobody seriously disputes the legitimacy of the 2010 election. The revolutionaries are nothing more or less than the losers from that election continuing their opposition by other means. A wise prince will tolerate protest until the first molotov cocktail is thrown, but once it is thrown, a wise prince crushes the rebellion before the bottle hits its target.

"Are you a natural Tory, or more of a totalitarian?"

I am a conservative—a Burkeian, which, I suppose, makes me a Tory. I have no more sympathy for dictators than for the mob.

"It happens on occasion that people have simply had enough."

Your remedy is to vote against the man in the next election. Not revolution.; 2/22/14, 9:10 PM
David said...: The top photo is essential dog. Well done.; 2/22/14, 11:07 PM