"Its lavatories are fitted out with gold-leafed Italian lavatory brushes worth £650 and £900 lavatory paper holders. While only the best is good enough for Putin’s needs, one in five households and about 3,000 schools lack indoor plumbing, according to the government’s own figures."
3,000 schools without indoor plumbing — that's what got me.
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an underground ice-hockey rink, a tunnel to the beach..
What a WASTE of Money!!
What, On EARTH, is the point of an underground ice-hockey rink, and a tunnel to the beach?
Now;
an UnderWATER ice-hockey rink with a clear dome so you could see the fish (SHARKS*) while you skate..
(SHARKS*) with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads? Well; DUH!
Reminds me of pre-invasion Saddam Hussein stories. It’s fucking dejavú all over again.
"3,000 schools without indoor plumbing — that's what got me."
And it does take a _lot_ to cause Ann to notice, let alone feel "got[ten]" by, poverty. But this is in Russia so.
Putin is the most successful thief on Earth.
Oh, really? Lets see the stats for the Ukraine. Zelensky has Mansions in the South of France and Miami beach.
How many houses and $millions do Pelosi and Joe Biden have, despite living on as Congressmen/ Senator'ss modest salary for 30 years? How many tens of $millions do the Clinton's have - despite being modestly Pols their entire lives? The Queen Liz is pretty Goddamn Rich, she lives in a freakin Palace. Do we think she's living off the poor people in England?
Good lord this is so DUMB! I'm so tired of this ginned up hatred of Putin. You'd never know most people in Russia APPROVE of the invasion, and that RUSSIAN interests are at stake. This isn't just one guy going CRAAZZYY
3,000 school without indoor plumbing. In 1910, I'd bet 90% of rural/small town American schools had zero indoor plumbing. Yet, everyone survived.
Althouse writes, "3,000 schools without indoor plumbing -- that's what got me."
This statistic may not be quite as damning as The Times may intend. Outdoor privies are common even in prosperous communities in the Russian Far North. In places where overnight temperatures drop to -70 degrees Celsius and lower, plumbing is easily destroyed by freezing or frost heave. Potable water is stored outside as ice which is brought in and thawed as needed. It's a tough life in Sakha and Siberia, but the people take a stubborn pride in the hardships their lands impose.
"President Putin has a taste for luxuries that should not be affordable on his official salary of £93,000 a year"
Now do President Biden, or Obama, or Clintons.
Lem said...
Reminds me of pre-invasion Saddam Hussein stories. It’s fucking dejavú all over again.
My thoughts exactly.
Interested Bystander said...
Putin is the most successful thief on Earth.
In what objective measure?
Nancy Pelosi makes him look like a piker as far as the marie antoinette motif goes.
The clinton and biden and bush families are all more corrupt than he is.
There are corporate oligarchs that have him beat.
Xi is way ahead of him in pretty much every possible measure.
MayBee said...
Lem said...
Reminds me of pre-invasion Saddam Hussein stories. It’s fucking dejavú all over again.
My thoughts exactly.
They have played that record too many times.
Only really stupid people are falling for it now.
I got yer therapeutic mud right here.
No one seemed to recognize that the administrator at Yale that stole $40 million was living a lifestyle beyond her means. Some people are just better a stretching a dollar. Or a ruble......
I know this sounds like a speech at the UN, but apparently there are 2.5 million homeless children in the U.S. Indoor plumbing and school are no doubt issues for them. 37 million people below the poverty line--more than 10%. 16 million below the line for Russia is also a bit more than 10%.
Lloyd W. Robertson @ 10:00.
East Detroit looks pretty bleak to me - still lots of abandoned schools and storefronts. Meanwhile Trump, Pelosi, Putin, Gates, Branson, Putin, Zuckerberg, Biden, Clintons, Obamas all seem to be doing really well.
The divide isn't by national boundaries or race or religion. Those are "squirrels" to distract us from the growing inequality, pointed to by those who feel themselves better and more deserving than the rest. They're all hoping to distract the masses so they don't storm the Bastille and the Chateaus.
Isn't seeking political and government power the idiots way of achieving what you desire? What is the point of political and government power if you can't translate that into easy sex or lots of money, or both? The more things change in the world, the more they stay the same.
apparently there are 2.5 million homeless children in the U.S.
I'd be very interested in the source for that number. When I was teaching medical students for 15 years, we went to homeless shelters in Los Angeles. Among other things, I learned that there were almost no "homeless" children because the centers quickly moved them to family shelters run by the state and city. The only such children "on the street" were living in cars hidden by the adults. That was a small number.
Now, certainly the homeless industry has created more "homeless" with various incentives but I expect children are as rare as they were 10 years ago.
Lloyd W. Robertson needs to contact Biden because the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness' single point in time survey has starkly different data from the 2020 survey.
"On a single night in 2020, roughly 580,000 people were experiencing homelessness in the United States. Six in ten (61%) were staying in sheltered locations—emergency shelters or transitional housing programs—and nearly four in ten (39%) were in unsheltered locations such as on the street, in abandoned buildings, or in other places not suitable for human habitation."
"The number of unsheltered people in families with children increased for the first time since data collection began. In 2020, just under 172,000 people in families with children were experiencing homelessness. While most people in families with children were in sheltered locations (90%), the number of unsheltered people in families increased by 13 percent. This increase offset a decline in sheltered people in families with children, so the overall level of family homelessness was essentially the same in 2020 as in 2019."
34,000 unaccompanied adults under 25 were reported.
Russia is even more corrupted than America, funny that that is the end game of communism, the Castro family and Chavez family are pretty rich too. And Putin is more corrupt than Biden (well more successfully corrupt) so lets trundle our boys off into the war! We are supposed to be like the "hos" who are upset that other countries' pimps are living larger than Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.
Apparently the Ukes have found a weakness in Russia's air defenses and have pulled off two daring and successful helicopter missions in the past couple of days, evacuating some of the Azov Battalion leadership from Mariupol, two of the four helicopters were shot down, but this was inside the Russian perimeter, and blowing up a fuel dump *inside Russia.* These are actual successes, probably relying on Nato AWACs, but still. Heroic stuff by the Ukes.
If it were not for power and money, men would have to rely on their physical attractiveness to get women, leaving most of us on the outs.
It's good to be the czar. Until you're not. Just ask Nicholas the second. Not that I'm predicting that for Valdimir, there could easily be a Vladimir 2 or even 3. Of course, if you pay attention to Russian birth rates, there may not be any Russians left to reign over.
Lloyd Robinson- Respectfully, 2.5 million homeless children in the US? That sounds like an awful lot. Where does that come from and what is the age range defined by the word children??
Back in the days of the USSR, the Communist leadership of the USSR led the life of luxury with mansions in nicer places of the country included in areas that we call gated communities here in the USA. These Soviet elites also had ample supplies of food and the best of everything. Putin is just continuing this “tradition” of the dictum “He who has the gold makes the rules”. Just like a number of prominent politicians in the United States of both parties but particularly Democrats, such as the Clintons and the Obamas after their presidencies and Congress members and Senators such as Pelosi and Biden, who used their elected positions to enrich themselves and their families through government contacts and contracts to their families, sometimes by sponsoring and passing legislation that directly or indirectly benefited them.
"3,000 schools without indoor plumbing — that's what got me."
The bog. Is an actual bog!
One can use wealth to gain power, or power to gain wealth. For many in government the world over the objective is to gain both. It's all a status game and explains why it is necessary for governments to have checks and balances. And when the checks and balances fail, why it is necessary to have revolution and the guillotine, the streetlamp, or - as a last resort - a large, plate glass window a few stories above the ground.
"Defenestration" is one of my favorite English words.
Our commies build their dachas in Martha’s Vineyard and Hawaii.
TOWINO writes, "'Defenestration' is one of my favorite English words."
Mine, too. Unfortunately, one gets so few opportunities to use it, unless one is Czech. Heard of the Defenestration of Prague? There were, in fact, three Defenestrations of Prague. Wonderful people, those Czechs -- not only do they make some excellent firearms, they know how to make good use of a window.
media mania. hype stories 👉🏽 https://youtu.be/eIAWggqZQmE
So he and Trump share the same decorating sensibilities. No wonder they are such pals. And to the people who always engage in whataboutism: the Clintons and Obamas and Bidens have had numerous books that created the majority of their wealth. You can see that in the taxes they shared willingly when they were politicians. Another thing Putin and Trump share: refusing to be transparent about their income.
My wife grew up behind the Iron Curtain. Technically she lived in the capitol city, though it was really a village on the edge of the city. She didn't have running water in her home until the late 70s or early 80s. It doesn't surprise me that there are still schools in Russia without indoor plumbing. Some parts of Russia are pretty remote. For all I know there are parts of Alaska that don't have indoor plumbing in schools either.
Schools in my Baltimore where the median grade is an F. Any comment, American billionaires? If Putin has no right to be a billionaire when there are poor people?
Basically I agree with that, but it applies here too.
So I Googled about indoor plumbing in Alaska. In 2015 there were still at least 30 villages that didn't have "basic plumbing infrastructure". Furthermore, "Many households in rural Alaska use a toilet known as a 'honey bucket'. A plastic bag lined bucket collects urine and feces. Then, plastic bags of feces from honey buckets are disposed in a sewage lagoon."
My source on homeless children: https://www.air.org/centers/national-center-family-homelessness
"each year": so maybe a much smaller number on any given night? If they count up night by night they keep counting some of the same people? I don't know.
"3,000 schools without indoor plumbing"
Several decades ago -- perhaps around 1990 -- I remember when the World Health Organization finally got approval to evaluate hospitals in the USSR -- and found that some so-called "hospitals" had neither electricity or indoor plumbing. Whatever year that was -- the report was a shocker.
Lloyd- Thanks for the citation. Good on you. I think this represents one of the problems with advocacy groups like AIR. The stat is not that 2.5 million kids are homeless. It's that in a year, there are maybe 2.5 individual nights in which a kid is homeless- if there are 1,000,000 homeless kids, each homeless for 2.5 nights, they say that 2.5 million homeless. I would also wonder if the definition of homeless includes nights in foster care or temp housing. It's a fuzzy statistic meant to sound scientific- the quote from their web site is below-
"A staggering 2.5 million children are now homeless each year in America. This historic high represents one in every 30 children in the United States.":
While any homeless child is one too many, there is no conceivable way that 1 in 30 or even 1 in 3,000 children in the US is homeless. In my dotage I've become cynical of any statement/stat that does not make sense. The bigger the crisis, the better the fundraising.
"And to the people who always engage in whataboutism: the Clintons and Obamas and Bidens have had numerous books that created the majority of their wealth"
That made me laugh.
A. How dare you mention Democrat hypocrisy and corruption?
B. Our corporate cronyism is not like your corporate cronyism! Biden is a talented author!
"3,000 schools without indoor plumbing"
We'll get there.
JaimeRoberto @ 1:22: I grew up in Northern Canada. The “honey wagon” was a real thing. Some parts of town had modern conveniences, but lots of old settlers’ cabins did not.
"...: the Clintons and Obamas and Bidens have had numerous books that created the majority of their wealth. "
Speaking of believing fairy tales.
Most of the Clinton's cash came from their corrupt nonprofit and ties to Epstein (who, I will remind you, did not kill himself), and we all know where Biden got his (with a little help from his druggie son and the Ukes).
Obama may have made most of his from speeches and being overpaid to produce streaming content that mostly never sees the light of day. So on the scale of corrupt grifters, Obama may be the closest to 'clean'.
Trump made his money in real estate and TV. You may not like him, but at least he made his money in some way other than soaking taxpayers and foreign governments for "access".
one in five households and about 3,000 schools lack indoor plumbing, according to the government’s own figures."
20% of households and 3,000 schools do not have indoor plumbing.
That's water and sewage. That's not a house problem. That's an absence of infrastructure, Something the Roman's had 2000 years ago.
Communism; the best government,it just hasn't been done right... yet. Sure,that's the ticket
I fear my grand kids will live to see rolling blackouts, interruption of water service, forced public transportation. And a dumbing down of education that will make them want to have what Afghanistan has now.
My source on homeless children
I have no opinion about the accuracy of the source you link.
It does however bring to mind an event in Iowa, back when GHW Bush was President, and homelessness was one of the cudgels used by Democrats (media) to pummel the administration.
Drake University in Des Moines had a prof that set out to count all the homeless in the state, and had the results published in the Des Moines Register. About a month later, the weekly paper at the county seat town published a letter to the editor, by pastor in the county seat.
In short, the county was supposed to have 22 homeless children. The pastor, ashamed of himself and his peers for not offering aid to these children, set out right the wrong.
Only he could not find any in his community. The other pastors in town, could not identify any homeless kids, and contacts across all the communities in the county had exactly the same results. Could not find a single homeless child. When the Professor was contacted with this information, he explained that college kids, home for the summer, were homeless. They were just 'crashing' at their parents house, but did not have home of their own.
Advocates do strange things to justify their advocacy.
In Russia, lard saves you.
the Clintons and Obamas and Bidens have had numerous books that created the majority of their wealth.
Hilarious. You really believe that ? That reminds me of Khrushchev's autobiography. Every Soviet embassy was given a quota to buy and, hopefully, find someone who wanted a copy. I remember one story about a mysterious truck that left the Soviet embassy in an eastern European city. The CIA (back when they were interested in foreign stuff) wondered what was in the mysterious truck. They finally found out it was the embassy's load of Khrushchev's biography they were trying to sneak to a landfill.
The grifters need believers like you.
Has Putin invited Cawthorn to the orgies yet?
3000 schools without indoor plumbing. That's all?
Before I retired, Uncle Sam sent me all over the world.
Most US residents truly do not know how good they have it. If a person was born in the USA in the past 75 years they have lived through the peak standard of living in human existence.
"The grifters need believers like you."
Hilarious words for someone who supported Trump and his grifter children.
Yes, our politicians are crooks. They aren't crooks on Putin's scale. I miss the days when someone could call out a Saddam Hussain, a Quaddafi, an Idi Amin Dada without somebody whattabouting Ford or Carter, but I suppose they are not comingback.
A lot of Russia is still The Wild West: sparsely settled and poor, and poor in Russian terms is poorer than poor in American terms. Think of Indian reservations in your parents' or grandparents' day
I believe that must have been Brezhnev's autobiography. Khrushchev was deposed and his book was published in the West.
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