ISIS: Listening to NPR I heard that Boko Haram* had pleaded their allegiances to ISIS and that while normally it takes a couple of weeks to process requests they decided to fast track their membership application... Fuckin lovely. If you don't know who these Boko Harim asshats are, you're not missing much. While the whole Charlie Hebdo thing was going down, they went about killing something like 2000 people. Notice there was little or no outrage about that. I know my previous posting was about ISIS and my opinion on these bastards really hasn't changed, if only it's hardened somewhat as they've gone out of their way to be even more gruesome and heinous. I can only imagine because of the way they use social media this is exactly their tactic. They know that gore sells and doing shit like burning people alive in cages is going to get them talked about. Though I wonder about the long term strategy of such behavior. I wonder if in the center of this whole thing is a suicide cult that's trying to bring about the "end times." Is this "suicide by super power"? These ass clowns continue to run riot across large swaths of Syria and Iraq. I will now refer you to my previous post. *- I won't even dignify them by spelling their name right.
Florida banning the use of words like "Climate Change" in governmental documents:
Clearly this is helping the dialog. I have to wonder what the end game is in this situation. Right now Florida is already suffering the effects of climate change. They've got a MAJOR ground water problem... mainly that their aquifers are filling up with salty water. I made this joke on Facebook about this and said "Good thing they live in a high elevation!" I expect that these clowns will be arguing that climate change isn't real while their entire state is underwater... it'll be considered a "long term human caused oceanographic anomaly"
Our crazy winter: I live in Massachusetts and while this isn't considered a record snowfall, the fact that we got it all at once is. At one point I had 64+ inches of snow in my front yard. Thankfully we've had a couple of nice slow melt days so the snow is at least only 3 feet deep instead of 5 1/2 feet. What's been more interesting is the turnabout that's come from watching the T fall apart and suddenly the interest in government to fix a long neglected poorly maintained subway system. Even better it's become a arrow in the quiver of those who (like me) are very critical of the Boston 2024 Olympic bid.
Ukraine and Russia: I'm really not sure what the end game is here for Russia. As far as I can tell, Russia doesn't really get anything out of this other than causing their economy to implode and to convince the entire world they're really really not credible. We all thought they weren't, now they're just showing it more. What's even crazier is how the Kremlin (well okay Putin) keeps yaking about how they're going to sink all this money into the military. Yet the Ruble is being shredded and all we've managed to do is engage in finger waving. Why we haven't kicked them out of SWIFT I have no idea. This would be the sanction that would have true teeth because it would hit Putin in his real soft spot... his billionaire oligarchs. I guess the one reason we haven't done this is that we just don't know how they would react. We keep thinking this guys a rational player when he's been demonstrated to not be. He might suddenly freak out roll the tanks and artillery into Ukraine... Oh he's already done that... He might just start quietly sending thousands of troops into Ukraine... Oh wait he's done that too. Okay, I have no idea what he might do then. Arming the Ukrainians with MANPADs and anti-tank weapons would merely make it expensive in the long run for Russia. If there's anything we know about Russia they don't really have a problem throwing troops at a problem.
