Putin’s Russia is a death cult

So Putin’s sycophants say that if the United States directly intervenes in Ukraine, Russia will nuke the United States. This is the point at which you realize that today’s Russia is a death cult, not a nation. Because if Russia nukes the United States, Russia ceases to exist. The United States has enough nukes to make the rubble bounce.

MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) is still a deterrant against nuclear war. Official (if unstated) U.S. policy for the past 60 years has been that use of a nuclear weapon against the United States triggers an immediate and overwhelming nuclear response that destroys every population center and military site in whatever country was stupid enough to do that. And the U.S. has the capability to do that.

Russia knows this. Whether Putin wants to do a Jim Jones and make his citizenry drink the kool-aide in order to fuck around and find out, well. Suicide cults kinda work that way, I guess.

Reminder: The United States is a country that is violent, gun-happy, and has no desire to change any of that about itself. The United States is a nation where, when a spree shooter killed a bunch of first graders, proudly proclaimed that the answer to spree shooters was even *more* guns. This is a nation that invaded Iraq to punish a Saudi citizen living in Pakistan for attacking America, then elected an orange-hued dimwitted bellicose reality show host who didn’t know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite as President. This nation is nuts. This is not a rational nation that people should be testing.

— Badtux the Cult-observing Penguin

Henry Kissinger is dead and I am not sad

It’s really a shame that Hell is just a myth created by the paid priests of the ruling classes in the Middle Ages to mollify peasants upset that their rulers were getting away with doing bad things with no punishment during their lives (note that Hell is never mentioned in the Bible). Because if Hell actually existed, there was no person more suited for that eternity in the flames than Henry Kissinger. Kissinger never met a dictator that he didn’t want to coddle, or a protester that he didn’t want to shoot, or corruption that he didn’t embrace. For over forty years after he retired he hung around advising the worst amongst us in how to be even worse. And now he’s gone.

It’s a bloody shame that Hell is just a myth (even if you’re a Christian you shouldn’t believe in Hell because it’s not mentioned in the Bible and the Bible is the defining document of what it means to be a Christian). Because Hell would be the only afterlife worthy of Henry Kissinger.

Sigh.

— Badtux the WIshful Penguin

No, the Palestinian civilians don’t somehow “deserve” being killed.

There are people making the spurious claim that Hamas was elected by the people of Gaza and thus are the legitimate government of Gaza and thus it’s okay to kill residents of Gaza without any restraint.

This is utterly ridiculous. Hamas was elected *once*, in 2006, on a platform of ending Fatah corruption that was siphoning most aid to the Palestinians into corrupt politicians’ pockets. They haven’t allowed an election since, because they’d *lose*, having turned out to be just as corrupt as Fatah but way more violent. They have proceeded to impose their rule at gunpoint upon the residents of Gaza, probably killing more Palestinians than Israel has killed in the years since. Even Amnesty International has recognized that Hamas’s rule over Gaza has been brutal and in violation of all humanitarian principles. The chances of Hamas being re-elected if Hamas ever allowed a free and fair election (which they have not done for *SEVENTEEN YEARS*) is essentially zero.

I’m not going to be upset at all if Hamas gets exterminated by the Israelis like the vermin they are. And I suspect the Palestinians will breathe a sigh of relief if that happens too. Unless Israel truly believes that all Palestinians love Hamas and decide to start slaughtering Palestinians indiscriminately, which would move the focus away from the people who need killing (Hamas leadership and gunmen) and allow Hamas to get away with their mass murder of both Israelis and Palestinians.

— Badtux the Geopolitics Penguin

We rebuilt Germany and Japan after destroying them. Israel has done nothing for Palestinians after rendering them stateless.

Twenty years after WW2, Germans were selling us a million Volkswagens and the Japanese were flooding us with Honda motorcycles, having rebuilt their respective countries with massive American assistance. Germany and Japan are American allies to this day because of that gracefulness in rebuilding our former enemies.

Seventy-five years after the creation of the state of Israel via a massive act of ethnic cleansing, the people that Israel ethnically cleansed off the lands of their new country are still stateless and still living in misery. Israel has done nothing — zero — to help them rebuild or help them find a state to be home. All they’ve done is blame other people for the results of an action that Israel did itself — ethnic cleansing of people off of their lands.

Note that ethnic cleansing is *not* the same as genocide. When the USSR seized 1/3rd of Poland after WW2, they purged the ethnic Poles off of their new lands and replaced them with Russians. When Poland was given 1/4th of Germany after WW2, they purged the ethnic Germans off of their new lands and replaced them with poles. There was a massive refugee crisis in Europe in the aftermath of WW2 due to all this ethnic cleansing going on, such as the German population of Koenigsberg being deported to Germany and being replaced with Russians (and Koenigsberg being renamed to Kaliningrad). But — the difference is that the people being displaced had a nation to belong to.

The same is not true of the Palestinians. Seventy-five years on, they are still stateless and homeless due to Israel’s actions in 1948. You now have five generations of people descended from those whose birth certificates said “Mandate of Palestine” or “Province of Palestine” on them — people who have no nation to call home, because the one on their ancestors’ birth certificate no longer exists anymore.

I’m not saying that Israel could solve the Palestinian problem by themselves. But they have to take the lead, because they’re the ones who created the problem. Instead, they just blame everybody else but themselves for the problem they created.

— Badtux the “When will it end?” Penguin

Gym Jordan

So why is Jim Jordan, the leading Republican candidate for Speaker of the House, often called “Gym Jordan” by his critics?

Back before he was in congress, Jordan was a wrestling coach at Ohio State University. While there, at least 177 male students/athletes were sexually molested by the team doctor. Multiple men who were molested said that they told Jim Jordan about it and he turned a blind eye and did nothing. Others say his behavior was even worse and he knew about it and “begged” those who were molested to not report the guy. Jordan has also been accused of watching and doing nothing as the doctor masturbated in the locker room to the male athletes. Jordan denies having known about the molestation and says these stories are untrue.

So “Gym” Jordan is a reference to these activities. Apparently this kind of behavior nets you a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Because predators recognize their own, I guess.

— Badtux the Predator-spottin’ Penguin

No, Joe Biden didn’t invent a fake disease to dodge the draft

So, Joe Biden was classified undraftable due to asthma despite being an athlete in high school and college and the response of the right wing is to call him a draft dodger?

Look: I know from *personal* experience that the military won’t admit you if you have severe allergies or asthma. As in, I tried to sign up during Raygun’s big military buildup when they were accepting almost every swinging dick and got noped the fuck out at med exam because of my severe allergies.

Biden has released his medical records. He does, in fact, have exercise-induced asthma along with a history of severe allergies that have required multiple nasal and sinus surgeries, asthma and allergies controlled by medication. Both asthma and severe allergies are disqualifiers for military service.

Asthma or severe allergies are a disqualifier for military service because while it is controllable with medication, medication is not always available in a combat zone or if you’re captured. There have been many top athletes with asthma over the years, Olympic gold medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee being one of the more prominent ones. She performed well because she was on asthma medication. She would have been disqualified for service in the Army despite her admirable physique and extreme physical capabilities because her asthma would have been life-threatening if her supply of medicine was cut off due to being in a combat zone or being captured.

Joe Biden is a lot of things — a serial plagiarist, a guy with foot-in-mouth disease, etc. — but one thing he isn’t is a guy who invented fake bone spurs as a way of getting out of the draft. Based on the medical records that he released when he was running for President, he would have been ineligible for service in the military not only in 1968, but today.

• Badtux the non-military Penguin

Pride Month

When I was in high school, back in the Paleolithic, there were no gay kids. Oh, there were guys who were suspiciously well groomed with an interest in hairdressing and theater, and there were girls who were suspiciously into big dogs and pickups and landscaping and sports, but gay people lived elsewhere, not in our small city in the South.

Then they graduated high school and moved to the big city and let their freak flags fly. Because it turns out that ostracizing gay people and making it hard or even illegal to be gay doesn’t result in fewer gay people. It just results in closeted miserable gay people. The elders in our community back then in the Paleolithic thought that keeping gay away from the kids would make kids not-gay. Instead it just made for miserable closeted gay kids, some of whom ended up ending themselves.

Things are so much healthier for gay kids today. We need to keep it that way. Because back then, not all gay kids survived. And for that matter, that is still true in some families today.

— Badtux the “the gay agenda is live kids” Penguin

Why America has a homeless crisis

The median home price in 1970 was $23,400.

The median home price in 2022 was $436,800.

If home prices had gone up at the same rate as inflation, the median home price today would be $185,200.

Are there any questions about why there is a homeless crisis in America today?

— Badtux the Numbers Penguin

RIP Petey 2017 – 2023

Petey was the beloved pet of an elderly lady down the street, Miss Dooty. When Miss Dooty died, Petey was thrown out on the street and eventually showed up at the feral cat colony that I feed.

Petey swiftly made friends with the other community cats, including Creampuff, a seal-point long-haired cat who behaves as if he was also once an indoors cat that was dumped. Petey and Creampuff both acted like they wanted to be indoors cats again, coming into my house for a few seconds when I was bringing the food out and yelling at me that they wanted their food. I delayed because I needed to prepare a cat room for them to keep them isolated from my own cats while I treated them for fleas and worms and verified that they had no diseases that my cats could get. I was going to do that last week but hurt my back doing gardening work, so I did not get it done until Friday evening so I could bring the cats in on Saturday morning.

Creampuff showed up on Saturday morning.. Petey did not.

I got a call today from someone relaying the bad news that Petey had been struck by a car several blocks away and was deceased. He died literally hours before I was to bring him in.

Creampuff is in the cat room right now, lonely because he no longer has his friend Petey. I am sad and feel guilty because if I’d only done this the previous weekend when planned, Petey would still be alive. Petey had joy and fun and seasons in the sun, my last video of him on the Thursday before he died is him playing with Creampuff on my front lawn. But he should have had more.

So it goes.

— Badtux the Sad Penguin

 

Conservatives are fragile snowflakes in every nation

So let’s look at conservatives in the UK.

The Tories have proposed a new policy where they will reject all asylum seekers who enter the country without already having a visa. Which is a violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention, of which the UK was one of the original signers, as well as being a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights which the UK also signed, and would result in the UK basically rejecting 100% of refugees because the UK has no provisions with other countries to accept refugees in a more formalized way.

How big is the refugee problem in the UK? Last year, around 45,000 refugees crossed the English Channel in small boats and applied for asylum when they reached the UK. The population of the UK is 67 million people. In other words, .006% of their population, a tiny fraction of their population.

Let’s face facts: the proposed Tory policy is all about racism, not about any actual threat to the economy or stability of the UK. And famous footballer(*) Gary Lineker called them on it, calling the proposed policy “an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s“. And the response of the Tory chairman of the BBC, Richard Sharp, who bought his position by “donating” a major sum of money to former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, was to suspend him for a bogus violation of a social media policy that does not apply to a contract sports analyst, thereby violating his right of free speech, a right (freedom of expression) not guaranteed in the non-existent British constitution but guaranteed in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights that the UK signed.

Here’s the thing, though. Lineker is a multi-millionaire. He doesn’t really give a shit about the BBC trying to muzzle him. The same applies to most of the other sports commentators at the BBC, the BBC hires former sports stars to run their sports programs, and most of them have plenty of money in the bank and are doing it because they love their sport and were bored in retirement. So, most of the other sports analysts stayed home today, and the BBC was showing lots of reruns of non-sports shows to fill dead air space. They weren’t even able to have the few sports reporters remaining interview football stars about the games after the games, because the football stars refused to talk to the BBC in solidarity with their former colleague.

None of these are people that the BBC can intimidate. The butt-hurt Tories can replace their sports commentators with random Tory schmoes with no credibility and lose all their audience as well as create an uprising by a football-crazed viewing audience, but the Tories can’t intimidate them. So butt-hurt conservative snowflakes either are going to have to double down and risk a rebellion by even some of their own supporters, or are going to have to back down with some sort of face-saving gesture. That’s it. That’s their choices. We’ll see what happens… but one thing is clear: Conservatives are fragile snowflakes who can’t stand criticism regardless of what nation they’re in.

— Badtux the Snowflake-melting Penguin

(*) For some reason, Americans call football “soccer”. The term used in the entire rest of the world is used here.