We walked out onto the ice today. I like to be able to do that, because you get a continual view of an unobstructed sunrise. I ran out ahead while Meade was holding still to do videos, seen here, and that's Meade in the distance in photo #3, with the waning gibbous moon. That's another moon view in photo #5.Talk about whatever you like in the comments.
I was listening to a "daylist" Spotify had made for me, and this line struck me: "When you get up in the mornin' and you see that crazy sun...."
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61 comments:
Ice, nice, baby.
Tough call between the first and third
https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/2007881124111147155?s=20
The cobra promithest fall short
https://x.com/infantrydort/status/2007844961731887323?s=20
A free meme, for those so inclined.
Its a play on Maduro's name and the old SNL sketch 'Quien es mas macho' with that picture of Maduro raising a machete captioned "Yo soy el mas duro".
Below, a picture of Trump announcing his capture, captioned "Madure es el mas blandito".
Cory Booker Using the Constitution to Shame Congress Over Maduro Raid Is Just AWKWARD – Twitchy https://share.google/tbps86kMZf1g4sNeW
Man… we were pretty tough back in the day:
https://x.com/i/status/2007820045989171233
I like the fourth photo!
Circling back
https://x.com/idontexistTore/status/2007565477942554948
Frank discussion
https://x.com/Knesix/status/2007960824783003721
Iran is in full revolt and CNN is running a special about the washed up comedian Chevy Chase.
The most trusted name in news.
narciso said...
https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/2007881124111147155?s=20
LOL!
Been a tough couple of days for the retard socialist in New York and the idiots that voted for him.
Dave Begley said...
Iran is in full revolt and CNN is running a special about the washed up comedian Chevy Chase.
The most trusted name in news.
It is quite possible that the Supreme Leader has died.
Also the fact that there is no water never helps. They could have built some desalination plants with all of the money they spent building tunnels in Gaza.
This tying is comedy gold, Jerry.
"It was easier to capture the leader of Venezuela, than it was to find a kid in a Minnesota Somali Daycare." -- Adam Hunter
We’re on a cruise in the Caribbean, enjoy your winter hellscape.
The real reason the left are upset about Maduro - is the Walzian mobsters / Biden hacks + Madmani collectivists - are all cut from the same cloth.
I just heard an interview with Steve Vai, re: auditioning for Zappa. Frank played a riff and asked Vai to play it back, and he did. Zappa asked him to play it in 7/8 time, and he did. He said add a reggae theme, same result. He said add a diminished 7th, same result. He said add a 5th to that and Vai replied that it was physically impossible.
Zappa said ‘I hear Linda Ronstadt is looking for a guitarist’, and Vai replied that it was time to go home. Frank said ‘Why are you leaving, you’re in the band!’
I wish that audition had been captured on video!
Thanks for that narciso. See @8:27 👆🏽
Sunday evening joke:
Three friends are in a hotel room in Soviet Russia.
Two friends drink vodka and loudly tell political jokes in their hotel room. The third, exhausted, tries to sleep but cannot.
Frustrated, he goes downstairs for a smoke. On the way, he asks the receptionist to bring tea to room 39 in five minutes.
Returning upstairs, he joins them briefly, then leans toward a power outlet and says, “Comrade lieutenant, please send tea to room 39.”
His friends burst into laughter at the joke. Moments later, a knock sounds… and the receptionist arrives with a teapot. The laughter dies; his friends turn pale and silent. The evening ends abruptly, and the tired man finally sleeps.
In the morning, he wakes to find his friends gone. Alarmed, he asks the receptionist what happened.
She whispers nervously, “The KGB came before dawn and took them.”
Horrified, he asks why he was spared.
“Comrade lieutenant really liked your tea joke.”
h/t Imtiaz Mahmood
Typical Althouse commenter
Do folks know former Obama Solicitor General Don Verrilli for years has been representing the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in US litigation? At firm Mrs Vance worked until day husband picked as VP nominee 2024. Because Trump and Biden administration only let the opposition appear in US courts. They also had the opposition form board of directors of state oil company PDVSA and its US subsidiary Citco Inc. So why isn't the opposition, recognised as true winner in last presidential election, being supported to run country?
"So why isn't the opposition, recognised as true winner in last presidential election, being supported to run country?"
I've been asking that for two days.
The guy's not even in the news.
So why isn't the opposition, recognised as true winner in last presidential election, being supported to run country?
Because it's not safe for them yet, is my guess.
"So why isn't the opposition, recognised as true winner in last presidential election, being supported to run country?"
Because they had no organization, plans, or support among the police and military. The Trump people talked to them for months and decided that they weren't up to the job. Consider it lessons learned from Afghanistan and Iraq. I, for one, am happy to see a bit a realism in these things.
Steelers!
That is all.
So instead military takes signal it can support Maduro's VP.
I dislike both teams but NFL and NBC got a fantatic game to cap regular season.
As someone who has fallen through the ice, my advice is to listen carefully for sounds that the ice is stressed. If you go through, don't panic. Often, you're in shallow water and you can let your feet hit bottom and propel yourself upwards with enough force to give yourself a chance to slurp yourself back up onto the ice. If not, you just keep breaking ice until you get to shore. You have a few minutes.
So instead military takes signal it can support Maduro's VP.
It's a risky business, but I assume we have means of applying pressure. We will see how it goes. It avoids the problems we created in Iraq by disbanding the Baathist army, and hopefully avoids a civil war.
I look forward to the Democrats pivoting once more to ask why we aren't doing more to replace Chavismo. Although they have to tightly tied themselves to supporting Maduro that that would be ridiculous.
You don't immediately install the opposition in power because in order to clear out a communist dictatorship, whoever is in power is going to have to do some undemocratic, dictatorial things, like firing people with whatever the Venezuelan equivalent of civil service tenure is, seizing their assets, etc.
If the opposition party does those things, it won't ever seem fully legitimate and will have a core of people who want revenge. So you put a Regency in place, do the unpleasant but necessary house-cleaning, and then hold a new election that the opposition can win without giving the opposition dictatorial powers.
The Regency is going to be hated by whatever chunk of the population was benefiting from the previous regime, but it's also going to be blamed for all the things that go wrong in the chaotic adjustment period: when garbage doesn't get collected and the power goes out and the police take the wrong side in a dispute, etc.
So you let the Regency take all the blame and the opposition be the heroes who liberated the country not just from the Communists, but from the 'occupation.'
The Regency can then have the essential power to ban the Communist Party, seize all of its assets, prohibit all members from ever seeking office or holding a government job, imprison all the members who gave or accepted orders to harm people, and seize all of their communications and devices. The Communist Party of Venezuela needs to be utterly eradicated by permanently excluding all of its members from participation in the political system.
A Regency allows that essential work to be done without implicating the long-term government in the inevitable mistakes and abuses and without giving that government so much power that it turns into another despotism.
As allegedly stupid and ill-informed as the Trump administration is supposed to be, it seems that someone who has the President's ear has been reading their 19th-century colonial history, seeing what worked and what didn't, and acting accordingly.
The goal is to create a Venezuela that is free, prosperous, and America-friendly, not to fetishize the rituals of democracy and imagine that simply having people vote will produce all good things. That was the Bushies' fatal error in Iraq.
"Civil war' in Venzuela may be a misnomer. I have heard from expat Venezuelans about the gaudy unrestrained murderous brutality of the Chavistas and their successors. Venezuela seems to me to be headed for the various forms of retribution and extrajudicial justice that we saw, and pretended not to see, in the aftermath of WW2. it will be ugly, and, sadly, it will not be one sided.
Prof Drout's comments at 1134 are, as usual, astute.
I think the primary goals of the US in Venezuela is for the government to stop running drugs and throw out the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, Cubans, Hamas, and all the others exploiting the oil resources and seeking bases in this hemisphere. Maduro's guards were Cuban, and about half are now dead.
Yeah, it's been almost 2 full days since the leader of the Communist Party dictatorship that's been in power for over 25 years was arrested. What's taking the democracy so long....?
I don't know how some of you make it through the day, I swear.
Zappa said ‘I hear Linda Ronstadt is looking for a guitarist’, and Vai replied that it was time to go home. Frank said ‘Why are you leaving, you’re in the band!’
It took me a few years to finally get into Zappa. Not because I was opposed, but because I was listening to so many other bands/musicians at the time.
What's fun is I can still listen to 'new' songs any time I pull him up.
So instead military takes signal it can support Maduro's VP.
I'll be charitable and suggest maybe - just maybe - the Trump Administration knows what's going on far more than those on the left who reflexively oppose anything and everything he does.
The decision to make this move wasn't done during some drunken pizza party at Mar-a-Lago.
There are competent people in charge. Second-guessing them before the dust has settled doesn't seem prudent.
And if Trump really wanted to troll the left, he'd demand the $25 million the Biden Administration put out there for the capture of this thug.
A press conference is scheduled for later this morning in Minneapolis. Governor Tampon Timmy done in by the Somali$$ shimmy.
Disparity of Cult - Here is the only only press conference I could find mentioning Tim Walz:
"The children of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman are asking President Trump to remove a video he reposted on social media Saturday alleging Gov. Tim Walz is behind their mother's assassination.
Hortman was shot and killed alongside her husband, Mark, and their dog, Gilbert, on June 14, 2025, inside the family's Brooklyn Park home. State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot and wounded in their Champlin home 90 minutes earlier.
Vance Boelter, 58, faces federal charges for the shootings, including two counts of murder."
Trump is a total asshole. The only person who attempted to link Walz to these murders is Boelter, who sent a obviously untrue letter to Keystone Kash. Why would Walz want to murder Minnesota DFL lawmakers? Nobody believes that Walz is capable of murdering anyone.
https://x.com/bloisolson/status/2008024634135126228?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
🚨 BREAKING: Sources:
@govtimwalz
will make announcement about his political future Mon. He's likely to drop out of the 2026 #mngov race.
He met w/
@SenAmyKlobuchar
on Sun. Full analysis in tmrw http://TheDailyAgenda.com + live on
@wccoradio
at 6:20AM w/
@vsawkar
It took me a few years to finally get into Zappa.
I get him confused with Warren Zevon. The Zappas and the Zevons ought to play a football game and sort that shit out.
Maduro's Song.
“The only person who attempted to link Walz to these murders is Boelter”
So the only person who linked Walz to the murders is the murderer? You bet that should be investigated.
I get him confused with Warren Zevon. The Zappas and the Zevons ought to play a football game and sort that shit out.
One of them? His hair was perfect.
The other suggested we avoid the yellow snow.
The Steelers win on a last second field goal miss by the Ravens new and improved kicker. The Ravens canned their All-Pro kicker Justin Tucker for inappropriate conduct while getting massages. Meanwhile violent miscreant retired Raven Ray Lewis is still revered throughout Baltimore.
Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar could not be reached for comment. They are dead.
From wiki: “Following a Super Bowl XXXIV party in Atlanta on January 31, 2000, a fight broke out between Lewis' entourage and another group of people, resulting in the stabbing deaths of Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar. Lewis and two companions, Reginald Oakley and Joseph Sweeting, were questioned by Atlanta police, and 11 days later the three men were indicted on murder and aggravated assault charges. The fight occurred about 200 yards (180 m) from the Cobalt Lounge at 265 East Paces Ferry Road in the Buckhead Village neighborhood about two miles north of downtown Atlanta where Lewis had been celebrating.[168][169] The white suit Lewis was wearing the night of the killings was never found. Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard alleged the blood-stained suit was dumped in a garbage bin outside a fast food restaurant.[170] A knife found at the scene did not have any fingerprints or DNA. Lewis subsequently testified that Oakley and Sweeting had bought knives earlier in the week before the Super Bowl from a Sports Authority where Lewis had been signing autographs.[169][171] Baker's blood was found inside of Lewis's limousine.[172]
Two weeks into the trial, Lewis's attorneys, Don Samuel and Ed Garland, negotiated a plea agreement with the District Attorney in which the murder charges against Lewis were dismissed in exchange for his testimony against Oakley and Sweeting,[173] and his guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of obstruction of justice.[29] Lewis admitted he gave a misleading statement to police on the morning after the killings (initially telling them that he was not at the scene).[174] Superior Court Judge Alice D. Bonner sentenced Lewis to 12 months' probation. One year in prison is the maximum sentence for a first-time offender,[175] and the immediate probation was the judge's decision. He was also fined $250,000 by the NFL, which was believed to be the highest fine levied against an NFL player for an infraction not involving substance abuse.[176] Under the terms of the sentence, Lewis could not use drugs or alcohol during the duration of the probation.”
It was reported by Fox Business that a delegation from the PRC (read: the Chi-Coms) had been in Caracas meeting with the democrats Man-of-the-Year. Timing was exquisite.
“ Report: Gov. Tim Walz likely to drop out of 2026 race” MSN
Trump should send the same helicopter.
Remember when the Bills cut Gary Anderson, three time Pro-Bowler and the Steelers' all time leading scorer in the pre-season before losing that first Super Bowl by a wide right on a very makable kick?
I just watched, "One Battle After Another".
Don't bother. It is a very poor adaptation of a very poor Pynchon novel, "Vineland". Vineland was a slog because the 60s were over and a lot of the attempts at jokes were lame. The director took those same lame jokes and made them painful. It's sad because there are some very good actors in it and they did the best they could with the material they had.
" The crying of lot 49" would have made a better movie. Of course they'd need a competent director.
“He met w/
@SenAmyKlobuchar”
I picture them meeting over hair combs and salads.
Nick shirley
@nickshirleyy
·
22m
I ENDED TIM WALZ
https://x.com/atensnut/status/2008190097171341462?s=20
"This week in US history: Democrats make Klansman the third-in-line for president.
On January 5, 1993, the start of the 103rd Congress, the Slavery Party-better known as the Democrats, re-elected Robert C. Byrd, a West Virginia senator with a past affiliation to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), as President pro tempore, placing him third in the presidential line of succession after the Vice President and Speaker of the House."
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/01/this-week-us-history-democrats-make-klansman-third/
It seemed to me that The Crying of Lot 49 was so locked into the moment of the sixties that if you wanted to read it now, you better have lived through it, and since I was only a kid in the 60s, most of it went right over my head.
More Althouse's generation. I always felt closer to GenX.
My copy of Vinland sits on my shelf still only partially read.
I lived through it, Jaq.
It's filled with visual gags that would play well today. Much like a low brow DiVinci code.
That's why you got it. It was a short novel, and I was determined to finish it, but I was never far from Google to understand the references. You would have to make the movie three times as long to give enough background to follow it for those of us who didn't live through it.
Looks like I'll have to add "Crying" to my re-read list. Never did get around to Vineland.
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