Althouse: Sunrise — 5:16, 5:24.

June 5, 2023

Sunrise — 5:16, 5:24.

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44 comments:

Leland said...: Watching Astros vs Blue Jays, and A-B is advertising Michelle Ultra. This is the tag line from their remarkable ad agency: “It is only worth it, if you enjoy it”. I’ll avoid the possibility of regret.; 6/5/23, 7:56 PM
gadfly said...: In the latest twist in the dramatic tale of Donald Trump's possession of classified documents, an employee at Mar-a-Lago drained the resort's swimming pool last October and flooded a room where computer servers containing surveillance video logs were kept, according to a new report out Monday.

That report was timed with the DOJ - Trump Lawyer meeting today. And, of course, there is "no way" we don't know if the flood was accidental or on purpose.

Federal prosecutors at the Justice Department have asked at least one witness about the incident, CNN reported, as they obtained surveillance footage to track how White House records were moved around Trump's Palm Beach residence.

Fox somehow forgot to say anything about this.; 6/5/23, 7:58 PM
Jaq said...: Dang it's smokey here.; 6/5/23, 8:01 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: See if you can spot Chuck Todd Freudian slips.

0:08 I'm pretty/really

0:17 I've loath/loved

Chuck is not "leaving", he's getting pushed.; 6/5/23, 8:26 PM
madAsHell said...: Retribution??

Retribution for what, Jimmy??; 6/5/23, 8:28 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Life as an Uber driver

Everything is great at the beginning... and then they try to Chuck Todd your ass out.; 6/5/23, 8:34 PM
Political Junkie said...: Care to share your age? Anyone here in their 90's? Anyone here in their 20's?; 6/5/23, 8:34 PM
gilbar said...: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-officials-belatedly-confirm-nato-weapons-used-attacks-russia
US officials have very belatedly confirmed that the dozens of gunmen who mounted a cross-border attack on Russia's Belgorod from Ukraine on May 22 were using US and other NATO equipment, despite Washington's long-running warnings for Kiev not to allow this to happen.

At least four US-produced MRAPs (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles) were used in the attack, as well as anti-tank weaponry supplied from NATO countries.. Three of the MRAPs had been provided directly by the US to Ukrainian national forces

Two militia groups to neo-Nazis had claimed credit for the attack, and weren't shy about showing off their US and NATO military hardware.

a Biden spokeperson said "there was no way on earth, that anyone could prove those new-nazis were on the CIA payroll.. Continuing to pretend that no American troops are involved in the conflict; 6/5/23, 8:40 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Daily Dose: Watch a racoon play tag

TIL pigeons love bricks.; 6/5/23, 8:43 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Superbowl quarterback blocks his own guy?

From the White House.; 6/5/23, 8:51 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: YouTube: The Truth About De-dollarization and What You Need to Know

Joe Rogan had this guy on for the full hours.; 6/5/23, 9:03 PM
farmgirl said...: Very unique sunrise.
Aren’t they all? This one seems special.; 6/5/23, 9:24 PM
Bob Boyd said...: This is good.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1665078398828576769; 6/5/23, 9:26 PM
gadfly said...: Mar-a-Lago last October; 6/5/23, 9:45 PM
gadfly said...: Mar-a-Lago last October; 6/5/23, 9:48 PM
Owen said...: Unbelievable pics. Are you running the file through some kind of AI Hyper-Vision program???; 6/5/23, 9:52 PM
Narr said...: My age? I'm old enough to remember when the American Left was proud of their suspicion of government and corporations, and especially the two in tandem.

I turned 70 last month.; 6/5/23, 9:54 PM
wildswan said...: I am unable to explain to myself why the left is pushing the gender thing. It's so easy for people to understand the issue and then it's so easy for them to see that their understanding is knocked aside and that they are coerced into saying something they don't believe. As they are forced into statements on the gender thing, they come to know who is coercing them and how it's being done. This isn't how propaganda is suppose to work. Regime propaganda is supposed to be sort of invisible due to being probable; it's supposed to follow the contours of what people want to lead them to what they don't want. But coercing people to say that a woman is a man without his equipment or that a woman with all her equipment is a man and so a man can give birth doesn't lead to belief. The coercion merely makes the coercion mechanism clear. People can't be persuaded that they don't know a woman from a man but they can be made to know what they better say about the issue if they want to keep their job. The real result isn't what they say; the real result is that people are persuaded that thought control is being used against them.
So it's hard to understand why the left is doing it. Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad? Hubris? Bubbleland?; 6/5/23, 10:39 PM
wildswan said...: In the Ukraine war the Ukraine has issued just one statement about whatever is going on. Just a picture of a soldier with his finger to his lips. Don't talk. the ISW explains things thus:
"[we] observed an increase in combat activity in different sectors of the frontline but will not speculate about the intent, weight, or focus of Ukrainian counteroffensives operations. A successful counteroffensive operation may take days, weeks, or even months before its outcome becomes fully clear, during which time Russian sources may falsely claim to have defeated it."
So - don't talk, speculate, pass on rumors. Just have faith. What could be harder these days? But think of the goal. Imagine a liberated Ukraine, a happy part of Europe rather than more dead souls for the Russian empire to tax and cheat - never called on to be human except when they're called to be human waves of soldiers sent to die for unknown towns.; 6/6/23, 12:15 AM
Rt41Rebel said...: "In the latest twist in the dramatic tale of Donald Trump's possession of classified documents, an employee at Mar-a-Lago drained the resort's swimming pool last October and flooded a room where computer servers containing surveillance video logs were kept, according to a new report out Monday."

I guess the story about Trump flushing documents down a toilet wasn't enough. Go big! Call me when Trump uses his deliberate policy acceleration of global warming to flood the entire state of Florida with a hurricane to hide even more evidence. And when Russia nukes us, it will not have anything to do with Biden's terrible foreign policy, it will be because Putin is protecting his puppet Trump by incinerating all of the classified documents scattered about the entire east coast of our country.; 6/6/23, 12:53 AM
wendybar said...: "Reporter: “Why do you need the document at hand? You just got a chance to view it … Why move forward with contempt when the FBI says they’re cooperating in good faith?”

House Oversight Chair James Comer: “I’m supposed to take the FBI’s word that they’re investigating this?”"

https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2023/06/05/michael-shellenbergers-thread-perfectly-sums-up-why-half-of-americans-dont-trust-the-fbi/; 6/6/23, 4:35 AM
wendybar said...: We ALL knew it was going to come down to this. WHY doesn't every Biden Supporter take in a family or two?? They are the ones who voted to permit this invasion. Leave the rest of us out of this. We would have stopped them from coming or sent them back to their homeland.

"Eric Adams suggests housing illegal migrants in private residences in New York:

“It is my vision to take the next step to this faith-based locales and then move to a private residence... They have spare rooms.""; 6/6/23, 4:38 AM
Jaq said...: So now we are supposed to believe that Russia blew up the dam that provided water for Crimea, leaving Crimea, which they control fully, without water for 10 to 15 years, according to sources a while back, anyway, even if the country was at peace. This is after we were tasked to believe that Russia blew up its leverage over Germany by destroying its own pipeline, and that Russia was shelling a nuclear power plant that it fully controlled. A nuclear disaster on Russian controlled, ethnically Russian occupied Crimea just became far more likely, and we are to assume that Kiev isn't behind it.

This is Goebbels level propaganda we are being fed.; 6/6/23, 5:43 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Care to share your age? Anyone here in their 90's? Anyone here in their 20's?"

I'm seeing that 9% of readers here are under 25 and 21% of readers are 65 and older.; 6/6/23, 5:51 AM
Leland said...: In the latest twist in the dramatic tale of Donald Trump's possession of classified documents

The drama is quite dull when you remember the President has every right to be in possession of classified documents and can declassify any of them. Good to see the left finally admitting the NARA story is a tale, as in a fictional narrative.; 6/6/23, 5:52 AM
Jaq said...: The Washington Post from last December on Kiev's plans to target the dam.

https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/status/1666030961878790144?cxt=HHwWgMCzuaaV954uAAAA

Remember that Joe Biden could have picked up the phone and made a deal that would have left Ukraine largely intact, with semi-autonomous Russian speaking regions, you know, like Canada with Quebec. Russia intervened in the Ukrainian civil war last Feb with a small force, which Joe Biden took as a show of weakness. Now Russia has hundreds of thousands of troops and a massive army, and looks ready to overrun Ukraine, and the "offensive" by Kiev has been mostly, though not completely, turned back. So who is desperate enough to blow up the dam? Ukraine should have used the force that it is wasting in this futile counterattack as leverage in negotiations.

Crimea, BTW, had been without water from this canal ever since Kiev cut it off in 2014, so it's more of an inconvenience than an existential threat to Crimea to lose that supply of fresh water from the dam. I guess we will see how this shakes out.

Regarding age of readers, readers != commenters.; 6/6/23, 6:09 AM
Humperdink said...: The SEC, chaired by Gary Gensler, is investigating/ suing crypto currency company Binance for among other things, misappropriating customer funds.

From the archives: In May 2015, Gensler was named chief financial officer of Clinton's campaign for president.

Made me laugh.; 6/6/23, 6:38 AM
West TX Intermediate Crude said...: Wildswan:
The "gender" thing is power. It's the ultimate in gaslighting- we have gone from the Python's "Loretta" scene to men having babies as Received Wisdom in a couple of decades. If you go to a Starbucks in Madison and say out loud that "Men cannot have babies," it will get vewwy vewwy quiet and it would be best to not say it until you have already received your order.
Re Ukraine: be careful what you wish for. As much as I hope that Ukraine can remain a free state, a decimated Russia will have second order effects that will be on balance much worse for USA and the rest of the world. The Chinese will be further empowered to move on Siberia, Taiwan, and other East Asian targets, much to the detriment of Western Civilization in general and millions of free-ish people in Asia in particular.; 6/6/23, 7:15 AM
Assistant Village Idiot said...: Political Junkie graciously asked me in the tourist thread to share about my Romania experiences, as he thought my interactions potentially "impactful." You have no idea. Sons #3 & 4 (of 5) were adopted from Romania because of those trips. So on a family scale, that's about as impactful for the seven of us as it gets, and then we start into the daughters-in-law from the Philippines and Norway that they added to the family.

But for the trips themselves, we were certainly part of a very impactful set of ministries in Beius, which is in Transylvania. How much our individual contribution was is less certain. You show up. You go to the abandoned babies room at the hospital and you rock them and play with them and do the exercises with their limbs that the rehab specialist taught you, and you hope to God it helps at least a little, because their future is so grim. Or you deliver food to old women in rural villages on terrible roads, because they can't make it to the market. Or you take blood pressures and medical histories and try to understand the symptoms of people who are far from doctors, shouting over your shoulder in English, hoping none of them understand, when another American is sitting with a patient that turns out to be in your specialty. (I am a retired psychiatric social worker who did emergency care most of my career.) Or you do crowd control or consult for English lessons at the schools the orphans are at. At the end of the day you get together with the local Baptists at a home church that used to meet in secret, many of whom lost relatives to the secret police and try to sing along. They ask you to preach, because you are educated and therefore supposedly know more than they do, and you are ashamed to untie their sandals. You visit Gypsy villages and do all the same, with even poorer, more oppressed people.

And in the end, did it matter? I don't know. Christ has not commanded us to create results but to obey. So you get on a plane and come back again, because you know that someone has to show up. Maybe it would have been better to send the money to some Romanians to do these jobs.; 6/6/23, 7:39 AM
Jaq said...: "The Chinese will be further empowered to move on Siberia, Taiwan, and other East Asian targets, much to the detriment of Western Civilization in general and millions of free-ish people in Asia in particular."

Actually what has happened is that China and Russia have declared a military alliance, and US policy seems to be based on the idea that the Chinese are as dumb as the Europeans. China gets access to Russia's vast resources, energy, and minerals, including strategic ones, like neon, without having to administer the region. Russia gets a customer who manufactures lots of stuff that Russia needs in return for its commodities. Russia tried to make this kind of partnership with Germany, but the US would have none of it, but a Russia-China economic partnership does not have to ship its goods over the US controlled high seas, or through US controlled territory, like, for one example, the Nordstream did.

Did you know that the Japanese Empire took Taiwan, they called it Formosa, from China during the heyday of the "Empire of the Sun," and when the Chinese tried to take it back, after the war, the US, sole nuclear power at the time, sailed warships through the Taiwan Strait, preventing China from taking back its lost province. Basically, the US is trying to legitimize its theft of the island, by military force, a theft which China has never recognized as legitimate. World wars have been ignited over lesser insults.; 6/6/23, 7:53 AM
Rusty said...: tim in vermont said...
"Dang it's smokey here."
The UP is on fire.
" A nuclear disaster on Russian controlled, ethnically Russian occupied Crimea just became far more likely, and we are to assume that Kiev isn't behind it."
OK let's be fair here. Russia doesn't exactly have a stellar record of controlling it's nuke plant's. In the current state of affairs the odds of them doing it to themselves is fifty-fifty.; 6/6/23, 9:06 AM
Jaq said...: The military targeting of civilian infrastructure, especially of water supplies, is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. Yet this is precisely what NATO did in Libya, while blaming the damage on Gaddafi himself. Since then, the country’s water infrastructure – and the suffering of its people – has only deteriorated further.

Standard NATO operating procedure.

Time will tell, but this blowing up of the dam, and it was blown up during the night, The Guardian has video, probably by underwater drones of the kind the UK has said they provided to Ukraine, will not leave Crimean and other Russian controlled areas without drinking water, but it will hobble agriculture.

This is what happened last time that water was cut off to Crimea by Kiev

"The suspension of water supply through the North-Crimean Canal in April 2015 launched destructive processes for the agriculture of the peninsula. The Crimean authorities failed to find an effective solution to the water problem.

Last summer, the Ministry of the Temporary Occupied Territories of Ukraine stated that the total area of the plots covered with healthy productive vegetation in the annexed Crimea decreased by 6.7 times, and the volume of winter crops production on the territory of the Crimea in the period of 2014-2017 decreased by 85%."

This is not something that Russia would do for a momentary tactical advantage. If this same dynamic applies, as it looks like it will, to the Russian controlled areas of Ukraine, it will be a further agricultural disaster, and points to the time honored "scorched earth" style defensive strategy being used by Kiev. These kinds of strategies based on creating food shortages are the reason that the Global South does not back the US in this war. One thing we know for sure, the crops in Crimea are doomed to wither and succumb to drought, maybe not this year, since Crimea has stored away some water, but in years to come, and it will be decades before water is ever restored at a level to support agriculture there, if ever.

I guess the rejoinder will be that Russia is stupid, and did this to themselves out of stupidity. Well, go ahead and believe that, as I will continue to believe that this whole war was welcomed by the US in order to wrest the Black Sea from Russian control, and so the US has zero interest in peace.; 6/6/23, 9:09 AM
Narr said...: It's a three-way race to the bottom on the part of the Big 3 (USA, Russia, China). Each faces systemic problems that can no longer be papered over, and each is rightly seen by many of their subjects or citizens as more dangerous and inimical to their interests than those foreigners, no matter how despicable said foreigners may be.

It's easy to see that war presents each regime with a way to solidify domestic support. Ergo, there will be a war, maybe this year and for sure before the '24 elections.

A century ago, multi-national and multi-ethnic empires in the East collapsed into the component nationalities. Relatively homogenous Germany's empire disappeared but not their central and critical position, their economic might, or their sense of grievance.

IMHO it's most likely that the multiculti USALGBTQ+ empire will be shown the door in many places, Russia will sink further into its soulful nightmares, and China . . . If they survive the next 5-10 years without catastrophe they'll be lucky.; 6/6/23, 10:06 AM
Narr said...: I'm sure the many students of the Ostfront here wondered, like I did, why I didn't recall the town of Bakhmut from my readings and studies.

It took David Glantz to explain that to me (by way of YouTube). Turns out, it was called Akimovsk back in Guderian and Rokossovsky's day, and figured prominently in those campaigns.
Col. Glantz also explains that it's a myth that it is good tank country. It is in fact lousy
tank country.; 6/6/23, 10:13 AM
Narr said...: My bad. Artemovsk = Bakhmut.

I knew I should have written it down and not trusted to memory.; 6/6/23, 10:48 AM
Narr said...: I would wager that about 50% of the 9% under 25 are ambitious young Feds keeping an eye on the nest of subversives that Althouseblog has become. The other 50% are risking their careers and social standing.; 6/6/23, 10:59 AM
Drago said...: Rt41Rebel: "I guess the story about Trump flushing documents down a toilet wasn't enough."

It seems like only yesterday gadfly and Inga were regaling us with tales of Trump selling all of our nuclear secrets to Putin and North Korea!

They move seamlessly from one lie to the next.

Good times, good times.; 6/6/23, 11:38 AM
H. Gillham said...: Those pictures are just gorgeous. Thanks for sharing.; 6/6/23, 11:44 AM
Dr Weevil said...: More bald-faced lies from 'tim in vermont', who still hasn't corrected his proven slander of three days ago, claiming that the head of Ukraine's Intelligence service wants to kill three million Russians, though I've called him on it twice.

Here are just two of the dozens of lies he's told just in this thread:

1. The U.S. never stole Taiwan from China. It was returned to China when the Japanese surrendered in 1945, and Chiang Kai-shek, as head of state, sent his top general to accept the surrender of the top Japanese general in Nanking. When Chiang and his Nationalists were driven out of mainland by Mao's Stalin-supplied armies four years later, they took refuge in Taiwan and their U.S. ally protected them. Given how utterly brutal Mao and his Communists were, that was the right thing to do. Chiang was quite brutal himself, but (like Pinochet) set Taiwan on a course to prosperity and democracy. Mao's only claim to rule China was 'might makes right', and that only goes as far as the might extends: if he couldn't conquer Taiwan, he had no right to claim it. Now that Taiwan is a democracy, it has a right to continuing freedom that the genocidal post-Maoist thugs of China should have no say in. The kind of creep who would willingly condemn Taiwan to slavery to Xi is exactly the kind of creep who would willingly condemn democratic Ukraine to Putin and his genocidal torturing rapists.

2. "Russia has hundreds of thousands of troops and a massive army, and looks ready to overrun Ukraine, and the 'offensive' by Kiev has been mostly, though not completely, turned back." Kyiv (only assholes call it Kiev) hasn't yet begun their offensive, and the Russians are already terrified. Just watch the Russian propagandists translated by @JuliaDavisNews, @francis_scarr, and others on Twitter. Of course, the Russians are claiming that the Ukrainians just made a major attack that they crushed, killing 3,750 and destroying hundreds of armored vehicles, including 8 Leopard tanks. But they're lying. They're showing videos of the 'Leopards' they destroyed, which are clear enough for anyone to see that one of them was a John Deere 4830 Self-Propelled Sprayer, and two more were John Deere Harvesters (I forget the model numbers, but farmers will know). Again, the Russians tell obvious lies and 'tim in vermont' eats them up and regurgitates them so credulously that we have to wonder if he's being paid to do so. His failure even to admit it when he's proven to have done so suggests that.

Then again, ancient Greeks and Romans thought being a slut (of either gender) was worse than being a whore, because a whore at least gets paid, while a slut has sex with anyone who asks out of pure sluttiness. Maybe 'tim in vermont' isn't getting paid, just shilling for Putin out of pure love of evil.; 6/6/23, 4:41 PM
Political Junkie said...: Nice story, Assistant Village Idiot. Thanks for sharing.; 6/6/23, 5:38 PM
Jaq said...: Did you know that there have been such a thing as man portable tactical nukes since the '60s?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition

These were Cold War munitions developed to facilitate sabotage within the Soviet Union by NATO, in the case of a hot war. Weighs about 75 lbs, and could take out a huge dam, like for instance the Hoover Dam, or Three Gorges Dam in China. I am sure Russia has their own versions. WW3 is gonna be lit, for anybody who lives to see day three of when it goes hot, anyway.

As it is, the agricultural productivity of Crimea and southern Ukraine has just taken a huge hit for decades to come as most of that land had been irrigated by the impoundment of the Kakhovka Dam. Russian defensive lines at Kherson have been flooded, and mines will be washed away and buried unrecorded under layers of mud, to be discovered one by one in the future. We will see if Ukraine has the ability to exploit the disarray in Russian defenses that blowing the dam has created, or if they realized that their offensive was doomed, and so went scorched earth on what they could not win. Leaving Russia a poisoned chalice.

Nobody really knows anything outside of a small circle, I am sure.; 6/6/23, 8:02 PM
Jaq said...: I will stop calling it Kiev when Kiev's soldiers stop wearing Nazi insignias and celebrating the deeds of a Nazi collaborator who killed hundreds of thousands of Poles and Jews.; 6/6/23, 8:05 PM
Dr Weevil said...: So 'tim in vermont' blames an entire nation because 0.1% of the soldiers and 1% of the citizens know that the Nazis murdered far fewer Ukrainians than Stalin did, and are too stupid to know that the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend and think they have to pick one extreme or the other.

There are roughly 500 out-and-out Swastika-waving Nazis in the U.S. and 3,000 cross-burning hood-waving Klansmen, though some of them are no doubt undercover agents of federal, state, and local law enforcement. (Thomas Wictor did the calculation a few years ago.) Does that make the entire U.S.A. deserve to be crushed by a foreign power? Russia has far more open Nazis in and out of its armed forces than Ukraine: did 'tim in vermont' ever follow the link to the very long Twitter thread proving that, and showing how many have met with a smiling Putin? Of course he didn't: he doesn't want to know.

Again, anyone who watches Russian propaganda on the twitter feeds I've recommended knows that the Russians are losing, and know it, and are in a complete panic about it. Some clues for the clueless about the gradual (soon to be sudden) collapse of their armed forces:

1. They haven't even been able to drive a couple hundred lightly-armed anti-Putin Russian insurgents out of the two border towns they captured last week, who also killed the colonel in charge there.

2. Wagner and the Russian army had a firefight in Bakhmut with deaths on both sides a few days ago, and Wagner captured the brigade commander, a lieutenant colonel, tortured him, broke his nose, and filmed him making a humiliating forced apology. No competent army in the world would allow this kind of thing, but Russia's did.

3. As noted above (to deafening silence from 'tim') the Russians are filming themselves blowing up obvious farm equipment while claiming it is Leopard tanks. (I really hope the combines weren't occupied when the Russian helicopter blew them up.)

The obvious desperation of the Russians awaiting the Ukrainian counter-offensive is why the Russians blew up the dam. There is no doubt that they did it. They had means (they rigged many tons of explosives under it months ago), opportunity (the Ukrainians could not have brought so many explosives there, and have no missile that could do the job), and motive (covering their left flank so they could move troops where they are desperately needed). And they proudly claimed the deed as their own for the first few hours, before they realized they'd made way too big a flood and were killing their own soldiers as well as Ukrainian civilians and all the animals in the local zoo, at which point they started blaming Ukraine, like the filthy weasels they are. See this link.

Of course, an honest interlocutor would have either acknowledged or tried to defend his lies about Kyrylo Budanov, or Taiwan independence, or the Ukrainian offensive, but 'tim' just lies again, and again, and again, almost as if he were paid to do so. Is he a Putin whore, or a Putin slut? Perhaps some patriotic insider somewhere will reveal all the juicy secrets some day.; 6/6/23, 10:30 PM
Candide said...: Stupid Weevil, cannot learn.; 6/7/23, 8:59 AM