Posts Tagged ‘UN’

The Sincerest Form of Flattery of Don Surber so Mini Linkfest plus Thoughts

Posted: January 27, 2024 by datechguy in baseball, blogs, business, crime, dynasty baseball, economy, gaming, Israel, Israel vs Hamas, media, medicine, nfl, online gaming, Sports, the courts, Uncategorized
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I have a lot of little things to say but not enough for an under the Fedora Day so today we’re going to give Don Surber the sincerest from of flattery and imitate his Saturday Link Fest with a few other thoughts:

First at Stacy McCain’s site we have a story about how thanks to a family squabble an iconic business will close:

The litigation later forced the family to change the name of its original location to Tony and Nick’s Steaks in 2022.
Anthony Jr.’s two sons — Anthony III and Michael, who were also employed at the sandwich empire — followed him out the door, taking copies of the company’s financial records with them and turned them over to federal investigators.
Those documents revealed that Lucidonio Sr. and Nicholas Lucidonio hid the success of their business from tax collectors by keeping two sets of books almost from the day the sandwich shop opened.

While one might have an opinion of members of an Italian (Sicilian?) family turning in another member of their family to the feds may I humbly point out that if they weren’t cooking the books it wouldn’t be an issue.

As my Sicilian parents who owned business taught me young, “Always pay the government first because they’re the only ones who can take from you before you go to court.”

2nd: Was at the bank today figured it would be an easy time since I needed to convert three $20 bills into two 10’s six 5’s and ten ones so I can make change if people at St Cecilia’s church want to buy tickets to the WQPH 89.3 FM Shrove Tuesday Brunch on the 13th (Details here). I figured it would take about 30 seconds invoving:

  • Opening the draw
  • Counting the bills
  • Giving them to me

Not anymore. Now a machine is involved so instead the teller has to

  • Take the last four of my social
  • Feeding my bills into the reader
  • Do tons of typing into the computer
  • Wait for the machine to spit out the bills when the typing is done
  • Print a receipt for the bills
  • Give me the bills and receipt

Machines don’t make everything easier

3rd: Over at Pirates Cove Mr. Teach notices climate folks trying to link “climate change” to ancient plagues. to wit:

While modern medicine has advanced considerably since the time of the Romans, this data offers insights into how diseases might change in our own changing climate. “Within the scope of the current climate change it is of major importance to understand the links between climate and human health and we unfortunately do not understand these links as well as we would like,” Zonneveld said. “Investigating the resilience of ancient societies to past climate change and relationships between past climate change and the occurrence of infectious disease might give us better insight into these relationships and the climate change induced challenges we are facing today.

He Quips:

One would have thought that an empire that could conquer so much of the known world, invent formalized sanitation, arches, pioneered early medical tools, concrete, the first bound book, and so much more, would have known not to use fossil fuels, hair dryers, ice makers, and plastics

It never ceases to amaze me that tens of millions have absolute faith in the never ending predictions of doom to come in 30 years when my own local forecast for Sunday has changed three times in the last 72 hours.

4th: I’m told the Doctor that I’ve had for the last 30-40 years or so is about to retire. Baring a major accident/incident before July I will likely not see him again.

This means I will likely have to get a new doc who doesn’t know me or my family or my past. This is normal but I’m not looking forward to it. If there was one thing I had no doubt about with my old doc it’s that he cared if I lived or died. Given what we’ve seen from the medical profession the last few years it will be very hard to get that impression from a stranger.

Of course as I’m in the back nine it more a question of what do I want to die from because in the end I have to die of something.

5th: The New Neo has some thoughts about the Jean Carroll defamation case and the type of precedent it sets:

I don’t think lawsuits like this one should be actionable, whether they be against Trump or anyone else. It should not be legally actionable defamation to say your accuser is lying about you and that you’re not sexually attracted to her. Nor was Trump ever found criminally liable for raping her, because the statute of limitations had run out by the time she made her accusations. I doubt her rape case would have held up in a criminal court anyway – unless it was a court composed of jurors or a judge who hated the defendant.

I predict that once leftists and left leaning institutions like universities are charged with defamation for insisting on their innocence in cases and have judgements made against them the injustice of this will suddenly become clear to the left.

Unexpectedly of course.

6th: If anyone is interested we have some openings in both the 1972 and the 1997 league for Dynasty Baseball.

If you’re up to it and have an interest give me a shout because the window for all of this is closing.

7th: Since I quoted Don Surber for the title of this post it behooves me to mention an interesting twist to the old “learn to code” crowd:

ITEM 14: What the nation needs is coders who learn to mine.

CNBC reported last month, “The U.S. is running out of miners. More than half the nation’s mining workforce, about 221,000 workers, is expected to retire by 2029, according to the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration, and the number of candidates willing to fill those slots is shrinking.”

Smart people are urging and/or putting their kids into trade schools where basic “manly” skills are taught as it’s becoming increasingly clear that the American left has basically evolved into the passengers of the B Ark of the Golgafrinchan fleet

8th: Since we mentioned the need for coal jobs it’s worth noting more layoffs of Journalists: First this week at the LA Times (Via Legal Insurrection):

As a general rule, most people are sympathetic when they hear about others who have lost their jobs due to layoffs, company closings, and the like.

But in the case of the now-former employees of the Los Angeles Times, that sympathy is in short supply among conservatives and others who were frequent targets of the paper’s agenda-driven news and opinion divisions.

On Sunday, Legal Insurrection reported that the left coast newspaper had announced that staff cutbacks were imminent, with around 100 people set to be let go. In response, unionized employees staged a one-day walkout and demanded, among other things, “to swap traditional seniority protections for those related to diversi

And now at Business Insider via Ed Driscoll at Instapundit who notes the irony in his shot chaser format:

IT’S TIME TO ADMIT THE SHUFFLEBOARD TOURNAMENTS ON THE TITANIC ARE THRIVING:

Shot: It’s time to admit the economy is thriving.

—Business Insider, December 31st.

Chaser::

I look forward to the plethora of articles from those journalists remaining insisting that the economy is better than ever. Perhaps AI can write them at the LA Times and Business Insider.

The NFL league championships are this week and from the NFC we are guaranteed a great story of overcoming adversity no matter who wins, either Detroit FINALLY making it to the Superbowl with a rejected QB or San Francisco making it led by the very last pick in the draft born the year Brady was picked and drafted 63 places later than him (262nd).

In the east you have Lamar Jackson the pre-emptive MVP facing Patrick Mahomes who now has made the AFC title game in his first six seasons as a starter. Comparisons to Tom Brady and questions if he will beat Brady’s six titles and ten Superbowl appearances are already flying but in the end no matter what he achieves when people ask who was better the record will show that when facing Tom Brady in the AFC Championship game or the Superbowl he was 0-2 against a Tom Brady at age 40 or over.

10th and last at Elder of Ziyon which is a must visit during the Israel Hamas war they note a rather amazing phenom at the UN, collective memory loss:

Q: Given the UN’s big role in Gaza, UNRWA, has there ever been any indication to the UN that tunnels are being built under the city?

UN: Not to us. I mean… it seems to me that all this infrastructure was built in a highly secretive way. I mean, I see it just as an observer… To think that the UN had any understanding of what was… any information about those operations, I think, is… No is clearly the answer to that.

This is even though the UN has admitted in previous years that tunnels were found underneath their own schools. 

In fact, former UNRWA Gaza director Matthias Schmale admitted that it is a “safe assumption” there were extensive tunnels under Gaza, in a 2021 interview:

If it wasn’t for the fact that Hogan’s Heroes was a fictional show I’d swear that the UN was recruiting heavily from descendants of the guards at Luft Stalag 13 for their uncanny ability to know nothing and see nothing.

Cue Schultz:

Under the Fedora: UN Talk vs Shot, The Just Murdering Kids High Ground, Pam and Robert Being Right Sometimes Sucks, Self Inflicted Wounds, Schlichter and Wayne on Barbarians

Posted: October 30, 2023 by datechguy in culture, Israel, Israel vs Hamas, middle east
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Given what we’ve seen from the UN lately there are a lot of people wondering why we bother with the UN. People who ask this forget what the actual job of the UN is which was so aptly described by Sir Humphrey Appleby in the Classic series Yes Prime Minister over Israel striking back after a PLO attack nearly 40 years ago:

PM James Hacker: Surely we should use the debate to promote peace, harmony good will!

Sir Humphrey: Well it would be most unusual. The UN is still the accepted forum for the expression of international hatred

Yes Prime Minister A Victory for Democracy

That’s the secret. Instead of going to war against Israel in a fight that would not go well for them Every single one of those Arab states can go back to their population that would like to see Israel wiped from the face of the earth and the Jews exterminated and point to their vote in the UN to show how they gave the Jews what for.

That’s 3D chess.

Had a commentator who insisted that the beheading babies stuff was a myth. Guys like that are the reason that Ike made sure US troops and generals saw the death camps and recorded the evidence of them.

But what I’d really like to ask the fellow is this: “Given that you deny that Hamas beheaded babies, would you object if they did and concede that if it was done it would constitute a terrorist act?”

I suspect the answer would be a long speech about Israel and a lot of ducking because if your base position is. “They didn’t behead babies they just killed them.” there isn’t a lot of high ground left to hold.

I saw this tweet a few days ago concerning how the British Taxpayer was subsidizing the radical mosques and put up this response:

Geller and Spencer and company have been right about this from the start and spent a decade warning the west about it and for their efforts have dodged assassination attempted, been banned from countries and have been put on all kind of “hate” lists.

The only hate that I suspect they have is hating the fact they they were right about all of it. I suspect they would have been much happier if they had been wrong about radical Islam and the antisemitism of the left.

Being right sometimes sucks.

That actually brings up another aspect of not only this story but the decline of the US and the west. Every single part of it was preventable and was only made possible by people making choices at worst for personal gain and at best out of sheer ignorance and stupidity.

The bottom line is those who made these choices hated those who warned them more than they hated the possible consequences of their decisions, particularly if the consequences were pretty much restricted to the plebes.

I suspect that they will remain wed to those choices because they would rather continue with these consequences than admit we were right.

Finally Kurt Schlichter has a piece today that illustrates the reality that our friends on the left have spent the last 40 years denying:

What happened over the last 70 years or so was an interregnum of peace in the West, created by violence against barbarians and facilitated by people willfully looking away from the butchery still continuing at the fringes of the map. The West managed to build a civilization that was – for the first time in history since perhaps the Pax Romana – generally internally peaceful. And the West convinced itself that this was normal.

But it was not normal. It was an anomaly, a glorious one, but an anomaly nonetheless. The world is not a peaceful place, and it never was, and it never will be.

You can read the whole thing but if you want the best possible summery of the truth he is saying you can’t do much better than this two minute clip from John Wayne’s Oscar winning performance in True Grit.

Consider the closing line from the clip: “The rat catcher’s too tough on the rats, give them rats a fair show they say. Well what kind of fair show did they give old man Potter. Tell me that!”

I can’t think of a better summing up of the left’s call for a cease fire than that.

My parents generation that fought World War 2 understood this. Their grandchildren and great grandchildren who whine about “microagressions” do not.

Libya: Is it the right thing to do?

Posted: March 24, 2011 by datechguy in opinion/news, war
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At Patterico a relevant question has been asked concerning Libya that is not being asked enough concerning president Obama’s decision to go to war in Libya.

But before we hammer the President too hard, ask yourself a simple question. Is he right, right now? Forget what he said when he represented one of the most liberal jurisdictions in America, but is he right, right now?

The answer: It depends on how you look at it.

If you look at is in terms of preventing a slaughter, then yes. Our actions prevented an immediate slaughter and are thus worthwhile in the short term. The trick will be to keep it from becoming a bigger slaughter in the long term.

If you look at it in terms of dealing with troublemakers then perhaps. As a general rule if you have a chance to get rid of an enemy (Gaddafi) one should take the opportunity, however the time to have acted was when the rebels were outside of Tripoli not when Gaddafi was outside of Benghazi.

If you look at it in terms of national interest then frankly the answer is No. The rebels who are fighting him seem to also be fighting us elsewhere. If we give over Libya to a different set of enemies they can use that state to sponsor war against us. This is a very bad idea. Additionally historically we have gotten little payback when we have stuck our necks out for Arab countries in general.

All of this is pretty moot now that we are in, WE ARE IN. The real question is what will be the result of our actions. Here are the three possible results

#1. Gaddafi wins: I think this is the least likely outcome. As long as there is some kind of no-fly zone it becomes a ground fight, Benghazi can still fall but if his armor heads toward Tobruk it is very vulnerable from the air. If the west is willing to take out his tanks and armor then Gaddafi can’t finish the job. Of course if the west gets cold feet this goes from the least likely outcome to the most likely outcome, but I think that England and France have too much invested for them to let this happen.

#2 The Rebels win: This has a better chance of happening because you can’t be sure how loyal the forces supporting Gaddafi are. As long as the money holds out the hired guns from the south will stay loyal, but the loss of air superiority makes a huge difference. Of course it’s also a question of taking back cities held by the government which I think is not possible unless Gaddafi and his sons are dead. The question becoming if the rebels win, will they be grateful or will they use the new Libya as an Islamic state to support our foes internationally?

#3 The partition/administration of Libya. Almost certainly the final result. The west without US leadership doesn’t have the staying power or the willingness to actually win the war or commit the ground troops necessary to do so. Sans such will the end result will be a deal to save face for the west that allows Gaddafi’s family in charge of the east where his tribe lives and the rebels in charge of the west. That allows Gaddafi to claim a victory over the west while the west claims success in its mission even as the east is purged of supporters of the rebellion.

And of course this result is the worst of all possible results for the US. We will have a Gaddafi family looking for revenge by proxy in the east while in the west the rebels, who never liked us in the first place, will blame us for the failure to take the country and the purge of their supporters in the east. Since they were already supporting wars against us they will now have a nation to do so with, and it will be a nation “supported’ by the UN.

This is a mess full of bad choices and results. We can only hope it is done wisely.

It’s only blood for oil if Bush does it

Posted: March 18, 2011 by datechguy in middle east, war
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Let’s see, removing a tyrant dictator with bloodthirsty sons who controls a lot of oil and has been killing his people for years.

Yup that sounds like Iraq to me.

Can someone explain to me how Morning Joe is going on about that “we might be too late” while advocating an Afghan pullout?

I hope it works, but I think Gaddafi takes Benghazi before a single plane makes it in the air unless Egypt invades first.

Update: Boy I think I’ve never been proven wrong so fast:

Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa says Libya is declaring an immediate cease-fire and stopping all military operations.

Friday’s decision comes after the U.N. voted to authorized a no-fly zone and “all necessary measures” to protect the Libyan people, including airstrikes.

Koussa says the cease-fire “will take the country back to safety” and ensure security for all Libyans.

I actually didn’t think that Gaddafi was this smart. By calling a ceasefire he gets the chance to consolidate the gains he has made. He takes away the ability of NATO and the west to strike. As long as they are not attacking they will have a hard time justifying bombing.

This will also force the rebels in Benghazi to actually form a government and act like one. How they act and what they do will also be instructive.

Additionally Gaddafi is an old man, if this goes into a long diplomatic negotiation he will be able to string things along for at the very least months, and perhaps years. The end result? Either a partition or a face saving resignation and transfer of power to his sons.

This may or may not work out, but the solution will not be a quick one.

Update 2: Ed Morrissey comments

Imagine if the UN had been pressed into action two or three weeks ago. Rebels would still hold a large portion of Libya, and Gaddafi’s military would be forced to make a choice between an aging tyrant rapidly losing leverage and a populace clearly ready to seize its own destiny. Even a week ago, rebels still held key positions and Gaddafi was having trouble mounting any large-scale offensives.

Now Gaddafi can afford to offer a cease-fire. It protects his air force while changing very little on the ground. He has the main rebellion cut off in Benghazi and has secured his control over the other rebellious areas. He can afford to wait out the rebels and lay siege to Libya’s second-largest city, secure in the knowledge that the West won’t further intervene. It took them this long to arrange the no-fly zone, and Gaddafi knows that the West has no interest in another ground war in the region (and for good reasons).

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