Idiomatic Idiocy

Would they know “not the sharpest knife in the drawer?“

A blogging colleague recently lamented familiar expressions or idioms are disappearing from our English language, thanks to dumb-downed schooling in this country. Some examples might include: “the shoe is on the other foot,” “strike while iron is hot,” “champing at the bit”and “another feather in your cap.” Older literature, where these idioms might be found, is no longer read in our schools, having been crowded out by “woker” texts or even banned.

A sad example of the idiomatically challenged, this involving the latter example in my list above, aired recently on that puerile TV game show, “Wheel of Fortune” (ironic America’s dumbest game show is hosted by America’s brightest game show host). Watch below as the unfortunate contestants struggle to solve the Riddle of the Sphinx before them (to use another no-doubt disappearing idiom).

Spoiled Privileged Elites Playing Diplomacy, Destroying Everything in Their Path.

How our elites brought us a war.

Your Tatler thanks a family member for alerting him to a superb essay in the Tablet, Ukraine’s Deadly Gamble, written by the always excellent Lee Smith, a veteran blogger-writer on the Internet. It’s fairly lengthy, complex and highly detailed, but essential reading if one wishes to gain a fuller understanding of the outrage and tragedy of the Russian invasion of of Ukraine.

Mr Smith argues the present war in Ukraine is the result of years of blundering by many, even Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. It should be noted though most of Zelensky’s mistakes were made with the encouragement of foreign affairs “experts” in the United States, who encouraged his desire making his country a big player in the international scene, an impossibility according to Smith. And who might those experts have been? A lot of familiar names crop up: Anthony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland, Susan Rice, and a whole lot more, but surprisingly, not the awful Samantha Power, who might have been too busy crafting the foolhardy Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran.

In the case of Ukraine, it seems every cockeyed policy these rogues dreamed up was to play the unfortunate country off Vladimir Putin, the goal being to inculcate in the dictator the notion Ukraine was a danger to him and Russia. In that, at least, they succeeded all too well and Putin is doing what any despot would do when feeling threatened.

Taking a step back to gaze on this staggeringly credentialed club (Blinken, Harvard, Columbia Law; Sullivan, Yale, Oxford; Nuland, Brown; Rice, Stanford, Oxford, Power, Yale) and others, similarly credentialed, one has to wonder how these people, so purportedly well educated, could pursue such foolish policies yielding such disastrous results. Certainly their near unanimous embrace of socialism and anti-Americanism, learned in college classrooms from former ’60s radicals, plays a significant part, but it’s still puzzling to your Tatler their astonishing incompetence; everything they have a hand in fails.

Should this country still be reasonably intact in 2024, the State Department and all other related government institutions must be scoured. Meanwhile, the privileged, spoiled elites in them now continue on their merry path of destruction. They bring to mind the poignant words near the end of The Great Gatsby concerning the rich and thoughtless Buchanans.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

The New, New Math, Now with Wokeness!®

The smart set says 2+2=5.

Instapundit alerts us to an article in Campus Reform announcing a stunning discovery by academics in America’s institutions of higher learning: traditional mathematics is racist. Apparently, certain pointy heads in academe are proposing that “objective mathematics is rooted in ‘white supremacist patriarchy’ and white social constructs.” Who knew?

In the article there is a fair amount of contemporary acadamese explaining it all, plus links for those who want still more, but truth be told, your Tatler, a hopeless throwback to the 20th Century, cannot make heads or tails of it (is that expression racist?), so will not post any of it here. One bit of advice, though. It might be a good idea to avoid bridges and tall buildings designed by graduates of engineering schools espousing such doctrine.

Mr President, Actions Speak Louder than Mealy-Mouthed Words.

Canadian and American drinkers show Putin what they really think of him.

Sure it’s only symbolic, but the noise these people are making is a great deal louder than anything coming out of Washington or NATO.

From Fox News:

Russian vodka pulled from shelves in US, Canada bars, liquor stores: ‘Every small thing makes a difference’ https://www.foxnews.com/us/russian-vodka-us-canada-bars-liquor-stores-shelves

Irish Democracy North of the Border.

Bank runs in Canada, thanks to Trudeau.

First, a definition of Irish democracy: the term is a recent neologism and a good one. Reason Magazine defines it as “massive, passive resistance to governmental dictates and rules.” Your Tatler believes that encompasses nicely an unpleasant situation now occuring in Canada and not receiving much attention from mainstream media. Large numbers of Canadians are pulling their funds out Canadian banks and redepositing them in United States banks or other safer locales.

From PJ Media:

According to the Canadian financial blog Armstrong Economics, the emergency powers activated by Justin Trudeau to cripple the trucker protests have sparked panic among citizens, which could lead to a devastating financial crisis. On Feb. 14, Trudeau enacted the Emergencies Act, which enabled Canadian banks to freeze the assets of anyone who donated to protests against the vaccine mandates — without due process or any court action.

This is nothing new. Canadian banks have always been able to seize accounts without due process, something far more difficult to do in the United States, thanks to our Constitution (at least for now it is). What happened was the pretty-boy nitwit PM (one could say he’s a cute Joe Biden), with his ill-thought-out Emergencies Act of 14 February, spilled the beans and revealed to Canadians the virtually unlimited power their banks have over their own money. Naturally enough, a good many of thm, totally spooked, are withdrawing their money from those institutions. If the trend continues, it could create a major currency shortage in Canada, leading to all sorts of unpleasantness.

While your Tatler is of course sympathetic to panicky Canadians desperately trying to safeguard their life savings, we must remember a majority of them voted for the idiot responsible for this frightening debacle (the same applies to US voters dismayed with our turnip-brain President we may have put into White House). It should serve to remind Canadians in the next general election, they should look inside a pretty head first to see if there’s anything in it worth voting for.

Noted with Grim Satisfaction.

From the New York Sun:

“Watching, in real-time, the rape of the Ukrainian nation by President Putin should fill any well-meaning observer with a sense of shame. Particularly those at the helm of Western nations and others who could have done more but didn’t or who could do more but won’t.

[Ukraine President] Zelensky is right. We have left a young, emerging ally of the West alone to the wolves. We might well have invited this onslaught through months of diplomatic waffling and the promise of inaction.

Now, the best we offer the sons and daughters of sovereign Ukraine is a regime of modest sanctions, protestations of solidarity, dollops of humanitarian aid, hashtags, memes, and Ukrainian flags galore adorning a million social media profiles.”

Read it all. https://www.nysun.com/article/shame-of-the-west

Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea: Does Putin Know What He is Getting Into?

Since the 1945 United Nations Charter outlawing war (no guffaws, please), no major country in the world has legally declared war on another. That of course hasn’t stopped countries warring with one another, only from the legal nicety of formally announcing it and being careful not to use the word “war” in press releases. This has led to fuzziness and obfuscation from our political leaders and military when defining the objectives of fighting. In the last four major wars–oops, armed conflicts–the US has fought in, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, there was no declared goal of victory and surrender by the enemy, which led to them dragging on and on until the people, wearying of the body counts, had enough and we withdrew, with little or nothing to show for the years of carnage.

All of this is to preface the question in the header: does Putin really know what he is getting into? The situation in Ukraine bears a strong resemblance to those of countries this country has fought post-1945 (also to our own Revolutionary War). The Ukrainians have a strong and fierce fighting tradition; they despise the Russians, and, to quote Mr Churchill, they will never surrender.

Putin is facing a long, unwinnable guerrilla war with a brutal and dedicated foe, who will stop at nothing to drive the hated Russians out. War is hugely expensive. If (and that’s a big “if”) the US and NATO follow through with their sanctions, and if (a much smaller “if”) China doesn’t come to the rescue, Russia could run out of money, though Putin won’t.

In my last post I wrote Putin “is no dummy.” That was relative of course to our turnip brain in the White House. It may turn out he is not as clever as he thinks.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea: Does Putin Know What He is Getting Into?

Since the 1945 United Nations Charter outlawing war (no guffaws, please), no major country in the world has legally declared war on another. That of course hasn’t stopped countries warring with one another, only from the legal nicety of formally announcing it and being careful not to use the word “war” in press releases. This has led to fuzziness and obfuscation from our political leaders and military when defining the objectives of fighting. In the last four major wars–oops, armed conflicts–the US has fought in, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, there was no declared goal of victory and surrender by the enemy, which led to them dragging on and on until the people, wearying of the body counts, had enough and we withdrew, with little or nothing to show for the years of carnage.

All of this is to preface the question in the header: does Putin really know what he is getting into? The situation in Ukraine bears a strong resemblance to those of countries this country has fought post-1945 (also to our own Revolutionary War). The Ukrainians have a strong and fierce fighting tradition; they despise the Russians, and, to quote Mr Churchill, they will never surrender.

Putin is facing a long, unwinnable guerrilla war with a brutal and dedicated foe, who will stop at nothing to drive the hated Russians out. War is hugely expensive. If (and that’s a big “if”) the US and NATO follow through with their sanctions, and if (a much smaller “if”) China doesn’t come to the rescue, Russia could run out of money, though Putin won’t.

In my last post I wrote Putin “is no dummy.” That was relative of course to our turnip brain in the White House. It may turn he is not as clever as he thinks.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea: Does Putin Know What He is Getting Into?

Since the 1945 United Nations Charter outlawing war (no guffaws, please), no major country in the world has legally declared war on another. That of course hasn’t stopped countries warring with one another, only from the legal nicety of formally announcing it and being careful not to use the word “war” in press releases. This has led to fuzziness and obfuscation from our political leaders and military when defining the objectives of the fighting. In the last four major wars–oops, armed conflicts–the US has fought in, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, there was no declared goal of victory and surrender by the enemy, which led to them dragging on and on until the people, wearying of the body counts, had enough and we withdrew with little or nothing to show for the years of carnage.

All of this is to preface the question in the header: does Putin really know what he is getting into? The situation in Ukraine bears a strong resemblance to those of countries this country has fought post-1945 (also our own Revolutionary War). The Ukrainians have a strong and fierce fighting tradition; they despise the Russians, and, to quote Mr Churchill, they will never surrender.

Putin is facing a long, unwinnable guerrilla war with a fierce a brutal and dedicated foe, who will stop at nothing to drive the Russians out. This, combined with a cash flow problem if (and that’s a big “if”) the US and NATO follow through with their sanctions. War is hugely expensive, Russia may run out of funds, even if Putin doesn’t.

In my last post, I wrote Putin “is no dummy.” That was relative of course to the turnip brain in the White House. It may turn out he is not as clever as he thinks he is.

here are many bad things that can be said about The Bomb of course, but one possibly overlooked consequence of it is, since the end of Second World War, wars as they were known throughout the ages, i.e., Country A declares war on Country B, the two sides battle it out until one of them surenders, the winner declares victory and life goes on.

The United States, via Congress, last officially declared war 80 years ago on 5 June 1942 against the Axis powers (the last of three war declarations made by the US in WW2). 75 years have passed since the Japanese surrender and the US entered “peacetime,” yet that hardly ushered in war-free era. This country since has fought countless conflicts, some mere skirmishes, other having the look and feel of real war, the latter responsible for the death of over 100,000 American troops, nearly a quarter of those lost in WW2. Yet not once has Congress been asked to declare war in these instances. Why?

Ostensibly, war is illegal; under the United Nations Charter of 1945 war is officially outlawed. As we all know though, UN dictates are, as the Bard would say, honored in the breach, as the header above shows. No rational person would argue the Vietnam and Korean conflicts weren’t wars, off course they were (