My wife flew back in from New York early after the death of our beloved Maggie, and today we’re going to be out making lots of arrangements and running a ton of errands — from a meeting with our accountant (as the IRS continues to send refunds to prisoners and send millions to illegals using faked forms and child tax credits, it is determined to make sure my PayPal account is on the up and up); to an appointment at the DR Horton design center, where we have to begin figuring out fixtures and the like for the house we’re building; to an early evening weigh-in, where Satch has to make 50 lbs in order to compete in the Colorado Youth All-State tournament at the Budweiser Event Center tomorrow.
Last night he weighed in — unofficially and preliminarily — at 51, thanks in large part, I suspect, to the stash of Halloween candy whose wrappers I found tucked into a corner on the top of our refrigerator.
I don’t ask my son to cut weight. At this age, it’s ridiculous. And yet when you are heading to an All-State Youth tournament, you can be damn sure there are kids who will spend a day in the sauna and come in right at 55lbs and then, by the following morning, weigh 60-63 while competing in the 55lb division.
For that reason, I told Satch that if he didn’t make the 50 lb division, I wasn’t going to let him wrestle. It’s one thing to have him wrestling duals against 60 lb kids who aren’t exactly State Champ caliber. It’s another entirely to throw a kid who will likely weigh 48.5-49.5 at the time of his first match in against kids who outweigh him by 10-12 lbs.
I happen to hate evening weigh ins. After sleeping, Satch weighed 49 this morning. When I showed him that, he was upbeat. He believed he could make weight. But because we have so many appointments today, I won’t have a chance to take him to the rec center for a swim before his weigh in — and in fact, he’ll be heading over to a friend’s house after school, where the Doritos temptation is always strong.
So today is all about mental toughness for Satchel. About discipline and willpower. If he’s able to moderate what he eats (I sent him to school with a bunch of carrots, celery, cucumber, apple, kale, collards, parsley, and beets juiced, to make sure he gets everything his body needs), he should be able to make the weight. If he can’t control himself, and decides to sneak a few snacks before the weigh in, that’s his choice. But I won’t let him wrestle in the big tournament, and instead have signed him up for a lesser tournament in which he WILL have to wrestle up, last night’s unofficial weigh in for All-States being the official weigh in for this other tournament, which is our insurance policy.
If he does make the weight, though, he can have the biggest McDonald’s meal of his life. So he’s got that going for him.
So. All of this has been a prelude to the news that I won’t be around today, and that I’m hoping some of you will provide interesting content here in the comments — things that will generate discussion. Like, for instance, this.
Enjoy your day. And by tonight I’ll let you know where Satch wound up.
Just after listening to Sen. Marco Rubio’s stirring attack on the leftist moron Sen. Tom Harkin earlier this week on account of Harkin’s nasty praise of the Cuban dictatorship on the U.S. Senate floor that day, one might think that Harkin should have been effectively shamed, exposed as an enemy of liberty.
But of course, we know Harkin will exhibit no shaming of any sort. He’s no doubt quite proud of his tyrannical beliefs.
But then I thought, what of the people of Iowa? Do they not experience a shame to have continuously sent such a monster to the United States Senate now year upon year for nearly two decades? For at root, the responsibility for the presence of this despotic ogre in the U.S. Senate lies entirely at their feet.
So, yes, in this sense Americans get what they deserve.
To Satchel:
Wer sein selbst Meister ist, und sich beherrschen kann,
Dem ist die weite Welt und alles untertan.
“He who is master of himself and practice self-control, to him is whole world and everything in it subject.”
German poet Paul Fleming, 1617
Good Luck!
I don’t ask my son to cut weight. At this age, it’s ridiculous. And yet when you are heading to an All-State Youth tournament, you can be damn sure there are kids who will spend a day in the sauna and come in right at 55lbs and then, by the following morning, weigh 60-63 while competing in the 55lb division. –
They should weight them the day of the tournament as well to avoid such bullshit advantage gaming. So, then, the coaches can choose to let a dehydrated kid then wrestle in his phony, gamed weight class, or they can have him honestly compete at his real weight.
The American Spectator has up a couple of pieces on Benghazi. “New Benghazi Witnesses” and “Whitewashing Benghazi“
senna tea for breakfast
Paul Rahe: Vladimir Putin: The World’s Greatest Fool
Rahe: *** Vladimir Putin should think hard about the precedent he is setting in the Crimea. The day may come when China does to Russia in Siberia what he is trying to do right now to the Ukraine in the Crimea. Putin’s government piously states that its only concern is to protect the majority Russian population in the Crimea from the Tatars and the Ukrainians there. China, in time, will say the like about the Chinese in Siberia. And when that day comes, he will have alienated everyone of any significance who might otherwise have rallied to Russia’s defense.
Our aim for the past seven decades has been to reorder the world in such a fashion as to make war counter-productive. The name of the game is commerce. The weapon we deploy is simple and powerful. Those who agree to leave their neighbors alone and to allow freedom of commerce can profit from a a world-wide economic system that will enrich everyone. Those who buck that system and opt for imperial ventures will be contained, weakened, and defeated.
This is a lesson that France and Germany have taken to heart. But Vladimir Putin is simply too dumb to notice. He is a product of Russia’s attempt to imitate Charles V of Spain, Louis XIV and Napoleon Bonaparte of France, and Adolf Hitler of Germany in attempting to establish a universal monarchy in Europe and beyond. They failed, as did Joseph Stalin and his successors, and Putin, who has forgotten nothing that the Soviets taught and learned nothing from the failure of the old Soviet Union, will fail as well. In failing, moreover, this product of the old KGB will do his long-suffering compatriots a great deal of unnecessary harm.
In folly, in today’s world, there is no one to compare with Vladimir the Great! ***
Timeline of events in Crimea.
From geoffb’s second link Whitewashing Benghazi:
*** Soon after the attacks, Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf introduced HR-36, a bill to create a House Select Committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks. Under Wolf’s bill, the special committee would have subpoena power and could force the issue of testimony and access to documents. If it did, we might yet see Obama exercise Executive Privilege just as he did in the “Fast and Furious” scandal. The bill has 177 sponsors, almost enough to pass the House today. The only problem is that House Speaker John Boehner won’t allow the bill to come to the floor. He has repeatedly blocked it from consideration. Without leaders interested in the truth, the American public will never find out, not now, not in the history books, just what happened on September 11, 2012. Nor, on present trends, will they find out why they can’t find out. ***
The ClownDisaster begs to differ, he is “The One”.
Milt Rosenburg in a radio conversation with Steven Smith: Episode 61: Was Leo Strauss a Straussian?
Florence Nightingale, call your office; there’s another Crimean War in the offing.
Pineapple juice is a mild diuretic and might help Satch eliminate a little water weight.
Best of luck to Satch!
Florence Nightingale, call your office; there’s another Crimean War in the offing.
Is it wrong of me to encourage the Charge of the Lightworker Brigade?
pathetic bleg time:
Anybody know if Jonah Goldberg has reviewed Fred Siegel’s Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism has Undermined the Middle Class?
Siegel has a different take than Goldberg on how modern Liberalism grew out of the Progressive movement.
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2014/02/an-open-letter-to-men-and-women-of.html
This has all the makings of a flashpoint.
There is this Ernst.
Indebted to you sir.
Russia invades, ClownDisaster sputters fecklessly. It isn’t the first time, and will likely not be the last, since the getters will get while the getting is good. We have only to be thankful that Roger Ailes chooses doltish idiots to convey the news of it.
Pity we don’t a journalist with the balls to ask the incredibly diminished leader of the free world if he if regrets that “tell Vladimir I’ll have more flexibility” comment. Huh?
It’s only 2000 troops. So it’s not like Ukraine got, you know, invaded invaded; only a little bit invaded.
Who can say what the journalists might have asked poor ClownDisaster, since he no sooner completed his sputtering than he sprinted from the room without a further word or acknowledgement of questions asked.
If he cowers before the worms currently inhabiting the White House Press Room though (and he does), no one would expect he could do better against a confident imperialist intent on further territorial acquisition.
Probably he’s off feeling sorry for himself.
At least Carter got to boycott the olympics the last time the Russians invaded another country.
Lucky bastard.
Do Americans finally grasp the brilliance of ClownDisaster’s preemptive accession of anti-ballistic missile favors to the Rus in 2009, withdrawing the United States from its Bushian agreements with Poland and the Czechs, and thus saving himself from difficult decisions in 2014? heh.
The one thing Rahe overlooked: Putin can afford be a Morloch because over here, the Eloi are in charge.
On a lighter note, the soft bigotry of low expectations on full display.
Don Lemon is another thoughtless worm from another thoughtless netword to be heard from. Thanks be we can have his view in order to henceforward avoid or dispense with it.
ClownDisaster proclaims “there will be costs” to any Russian military intervention in territorial Ukraine, which I believe Putin can reckon simply thus: Just as the attendance of the world winter sporting powers at the Sochi Winter Olympics two miles from the border of the Georgian territory of Abkhazia seized by Russia in 2009 were the cost of that brief military adventure, so will there be similar costs to any seizure of Ukrainian territory in Crimea — though the exchange of funds from the West enlarging Russian coffers may take some other form than mere games, but possibly a more benign form, such as the purchase of vast quantities of gas and oil.
I don’t remember signing up to live in interesting times.
It has been reported that Russia has given Russian passports to the members of, the now disbanded, Ukrainian Berkut riot police Members of which are part of the forces manning checkpoints in the Crimea. Would this make them now Russian citizens? Would they would now be Russian soldiers?
Supposed video of Russian helicopters flying into Crimea, but who knows.
Likely it is real.
From same site.
So said Sarah Palin in 2008.
Wow, we really dodged the big one when that breeder snowbilly wasn’t elected!
Mr. Fernandez is a good egg and a good thinker, so to answer his rhetorical question (as I believe he already knows) ClownDisaster did not make his statement this evening for Putin’s sake, but for the sake of the imbecilic Americans who still do not know who they have made their
Commander-in-Chieflittle naked Emperor.Putin, of course, already knows — even as he puts on his socks in the morning — who and what he is dealing with. It’s the silly Americans who haven’t got a clue.
Yes, that statement was not made for Putin, but rather for those for whom this was made.
We’re in the very best of hands here, folks. The very best.
Steve Hayes’ twitter thinger is aggregating events as they go. He’s got an interesting pic of “tanks”, though I confess I don’t recognize the model, what with the turrets set so far to the rear of the carriage and the nine wheels I suspect they’re some sort of tracked artillery.
Twice. Don’t forget the Mormon was going on about how Russia was our “number one geopolitical foe” in 2012.
Ach, I didn’t notice, but John Schindler cleared up that question “what model?” with his answer “2S1 122mm SP (self-propelled) artillery”. Apologies for the inattention on my part there.
This looks to a successful attempt to annex Crimea from where I’m sitting.
Right.
evil koch bros. news
I think one of the biggest problems we have in the country is this rampant cronyism where all these large companies are into smash and grab, short-term profits, (saying) how do I get a regulation, we don’t want to export natural gas because of my raw materials … well, you say you believe in free markets, but by your actions you obviously don’t. You believe in cronyism. And that’s true even at the local level. I mean, how does somebody get started if you have to pay $100,000 or $300,000 to get a medallion to drive a taxi cab? You have to go to school for two years to be a hairdresser. You name it, in every industry we have this.
link
VDH notes Fareed Zakaria hoists self with own petard, kablooey.
Redline drawn by thems what know from redlines.
source
I knew that Powerline post was by Hinderacker even before I read the byline. Harry Reid violated all standards of decency a long time ago. Semi-Pros from Dover advising Republicans to choose their words most carefully (so to speak), like Hinderacker, made it possible for Reid to continue to do so long after his expiration date.
The man protests too much.
Here’s a bunch of Swedes who are w a y behind the times, insofar as they’re only getting around to talking for dogs, when Democrats have been doing this for conservatives for decades.
Mr. Fernandez is a good egg and a good thinker, so to answer his rhetorical question (as I believe he already knows) ClownDisaster did not make his statement this evening for Putin’s sake, but for the sake of the imbecilic Americans who still do not know who they have made their Commander-in-Chief little naked Emperor.
You mean to tell me the man raised and mentored by communists, who sits atop the communist party, is himself a communist? The hell you say.
Well, at least there’s this, and you may
for nowthank God for it: He’s not a National Bolshevikyet.“[H]ow much [one] should criticize the president because he’s black?” None, obviously.
One should criticize the president because he’s an incompetent faculty-lounge posey-sniffer who couldn’t manage a dandelion seed into floating on a stiff breeze, not because he’s black.
As Obama Parties — Russian Choppers Invade Ukraine (Video)
But to listen to some of these Tea Baggers you would think he was some sort of Bolshevik, and that the ACA is some sort of Bolshevik plot.
Busted link. Serves me right for trying to link to an Ezra Klein piece.
Take a gander at this Aug. 7, 2008 NYT‘s article [Group Plans Campaign Against G.O.P. Donors] in light of the ongoing IRS attacks on 501 (c) (4) groups, as well as the current question running something like “when did this business attacking conservative political groups start?”
bad banana news
Chinese Government Lobs Racial Slur At Outgoing U.S. Ambassador
CNN airing new image of Russian tanks in Ukraine
Yeah, those aren’t tanks (we can almost always count on news media to misidentify armor of whatever sort). Ukraine itself, according to the wiki, has 638 of that same self-propelled artillery in its inventory.
Reagan 1984 Election Ad (Bear in the woods)
The cycle of [calling for an immediate end to the] violence continues.
I’m shocked that Krauthammer’s shocked. Or at least I would be, if I didn’t know that it was more of that more-in-sadness-than-in-anger bullshit that passes for thoughtful beard-chewing. You know, the kind of thing that appeals to the moderates and independents.
Really Chuck, if you and the rest and pragmatist crowd hadn’t been so quick to bestow this faculty lounge 2nd generation red-diaper doper baby with “good man” cred, you wouldn’t have to act surprised when the anti-American president does things that aren’t in the best interests of America now, would you?
yea noonan is doing the same shtick
America and the aggressive left
journolist “right”
Definitions, control of reality is all in the words deployed. So see Palin was wrong.
date rapeuncontested penetration.No wonder Shakespeare wanted to kill all the lawyers.
illegaluncontested search and seizure.If it catches on, the boys in blue are going to love this.
– And so yet another “redline” bites the dust. The Golden Erkle seems to have nothing to show for his “Warning ro Putin” except the piece of toilet paper stuck to his shoe.
– What a total pussy. Mooch probably keeps his ballsac in the same drawer as her industrial strength boxer shorts.
Why should this year be any different from the previous –what is it now, four or five– years?
BBH called him a “pussy.” McGehee called him a “posey-sniffer.”
I was going to call him a “prissy little pantywaist of a pansy poofter,”
but the alliteration scared me.
Popehat mused that “uncontested arrival” is “just the tip” of foreign policy.
Burglary, safe-cracking and most all crime in areas where CCW is only for “good cause” could just be described as “uncontested” acquisition of property.
I’d also say that the use of “uncontested arrival” for the Russian action puts the lie to the idea that Obama hates all colonialism.
As with all “causes” on the Left, what is opposed is not for its own sake but is only a means to power. The holy “cause” will be thrown over when it is not useful to the real end.
Executive ordersUncontested legislation. This could be done for a long series.Putin moving to formalize the deployment of Russian troops in Crimea.
How does an arrival goes uncontested? When it is desired.
Putin has Russian parliament’s okay to move troops into Ukraine.
Get that Barry? He went to his version of congress.
Russia recalls ambassador it the US.
it = to
Geoff, does your wife read Russian? I know you had said it was her major in college.
What does she say the real scoop is?
She used to be able to speak and read Russian but hasn’t done so for over two decades so it has mostly gone away.
This site I linked above seems to be the best for breaking news. It is translated versions of local news reports.
Today’s page.
Thanks.
Somehow, in the absence of meaningful action on the parts of the European Union and the United States regarding Ukraine, I’d expect to see word of urgent consultations among states such as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Azerbaijan and so on, speaking directly with the Ukrainian parliament and executive. In cooperation, one would think these nations would make quite a formidable association, both on simple economic terms as well as in any possible or necessary mutual defense pact. Yet, so far as I can tell, no announcement of such talks has been made.
A Twitter news on Ukraine feed.
Paid protesters, how like our own astro-turfed Democrats.
Why haven’t the member states expected to attend the 2014 G8 summit in Sochi already announced they’ve no such intention?
I would expect that we will see an “excursive order” that amends this treaty. Or he’ll just redefine the words to mean whatever the optic of the day calls for.
Or how about “Nice WTO membership you gained yourself in Aug 2012 Russian Federation. It’s a shame that now you have to lose it.”
Sorry, it appears that that was the “Budapest Memorandum” which was signed but never even sent to the Senate for ratification.
Putin is doing to Ukraine what Obama’s EPA is trying to do to states like Wyoming that have coal and oil resources.
Mere corruption wouldn’t prevent the Unicorn Prince from sanctioning Russia, but incompetence might prevent him from seeing how sanctioning Russia could serve his ends.
That’s Putin’s advantage — competent corruption beats incompetent corruption every time.
– I gotta believe that Putin is laughing his ass off at the Jug eared pussy-boi. Bumblefuck is being laughed at on the world stage, and robbed blind here at home by elements of his own party and the dumb fuck doesn;t have a clue, snd Biden is even more of a moron if thats possible.
– If America can weather 8 years of this total train wreck administration she can weather anything.