On Saint Valentine’s Day, the planet of love prevails in the evening sky.
A tulip petal I found on the ground.
And this was its inner side.
The heart doesn’t really have this shape.
The most val thing about the heart is that it is regulated by four valves, as I learned a year and a half ago.
Down to Earth Department
“Be my Valentine, Vlad!!! Valence means power. Us dictators gotta stick together!!!”
“Thank you, Duckie. We do need some love.”
“Peace In Our Time!!! You keep what you’ve conquered, and I’ll get away with what I’m gunna conquer!!!”
“Agreed, comrade, but Canada and Greenland add up to a lot more than measly Ukraine. So I’ll need Poland and Finland and a few more. Down to the Gulf of Russia (as we’ll rename the Mediterranean).”
“And don’t you love my demand for half of Ukraine’s income from its minerals from now on, in payment for the past aid that I’m cutting off to please you?”
“Certainly, we don’t want them trying to use their uranium in that nuclear power plant of theirs that we set on fire.”
“And how about my obvious right to their coal and oil and gas and steel and wheat? All that your bombs haven’t pulverized, that is.”
“Why does that unnecessary pooting so-called country need that stuff? They can’t export it after I’ve annexed all their ports. They are no superpower like us, they had no right to so much coastline.”
“How about leasing Crimea to me for a golf resort?”
“Sir, you are an anthill of bright ears – I mean, a fount of brilliant ideas!”
“Here’s another: how about we let shorty Zelensky in to the room while we discuss how we carve up his country? Then everyone could actually see us talking over his head.”
“Bingo, Boss! And we could have Australia and Antarctica in to talk over his head too, they are as near to Ukraine as you are. But little Volodymyr, as he calls himself in his bad Russian, won’t be in his so-called office much longer, after I’ve forced him to hold an election before I’ll talk to him and then he loses it because I’ve made him look such a failure. ”
“Oh, I don’t think you’ll have to wait that long. He’ll have a breakdown and a heart attack from depression. I would, if I had to keep railways and factories and hospitals and schools and radio stations and power stations and ministries and armies and ambulances and police and rescue teams functioning while missiles are sailing overhead ti taje iyt nire if ny cities and an airstrike could take me out any second. It may be a mercy to perish sooner of winter cold, like so many of his people with their electricity and roofs gone.”
“Comrade, don’t say you’re going left – I mean, soft! Turning into a bleeding-heart liberal!”
“And at this moment, YAY!!!! All those other so-called sympathetic countries stop supporting him.”
“So why should they expect you to live up to some outdated American sense of fair play?”
__________
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Why must you always politicize
a blog that people who are in love astronomy come to?
The overthrow of the elected government of the Ukraine by the Obama administration for being too sympathetic to Russia is the origin of the debacle that is the Ukraine today, alas. Historical reality has to be faced and the consequences of Obama’s 3rd term under the Trojan Horse of Joe Biden. https://discover.hubpages.com/politics/Why-America-Overthrew-Democratically-Elected-Government-in-Ukraine
That’s a funny conversation. But I don’t think Trump wants to be a dictator. Dictators don’t shrink government, they increase it.
“…the full power of centralized government was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew you don’t control things; you can’t control the economy without controlling people. So we have come to a time for choosing. Either we accept the responsibility for our own destiny or we abandon the American Revolution and confess that an intellectual belief in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.” Ronald Reagan, 1964
Trump is, with his diktats (executive orders), drastically shrinking the civil-service and judiciary branches of government while concentrating power into the presidency. This is exactly contrary to the balance by which the founders hoped to ward off monarchy. If you mistrust Big Government, you should mistrust it not only when it is a bureaucracy but also, or more, when it is an individual.
I respectfully must disagree with you.
The executive branch is in charge of implementing the laws passed by Congress. Congress passes budgets to fund certain agencies, but it is the president’s job is to see to it that the money allocated by congress is used wisely and that the intent of the funding is carried out. Over the past century the executive and legislative branches branches have been slowly ceding power to career bureaucrats. This was based on the belief that experts in the government agencies know how to make policy and implement it better than congress and the president.
The ATF murdered Brian Malinowski, a Trump supporter. Brian was the director of the Bill and Hilary Clinton Little Rock Airport, and a gun hobbyist. He did NOT make a living selling guns but the ATF nonetheless decided he should have a Federal Firearms license because he sold a few guns at gun shows. They tried to arrest him but he wasn’t home. The second time they took no chances,. The ATF and several little Rock police officers raided his home in the pre dawn hours. They had a heavily armed police patrol boat behind his house as well. They could have easily arrested him on his way to work, but instead used Gestapo like tactics to murder him. The ATF agents said he pointed a gun at them but there were no body cameras to prove this. His sobbing wife told them they must have the wrong house,. In order to quiet her, they made her stand outside in 35 degree weather in her bathrobe for 4 hours. Trump’s consultant Roger Stone was also the victim of a pre dawn raid, and arrested in his pajamas.The FBI did a raid on Trump’s house with authorization to use deadly force. Quite chilling.
The judicial department has also grown stronger. They use “lawfare” to selectively prosecute conservatives. They tried to take away Trump’s wealth with ridiculous fines. They turned a legal non -disclosure agreement that Trump negotiated with Stormy Daniels into illegal campaign spending and came up with 34 different charges (based on 34 checks written to Stormy Daniels). Trump had other bogus charges, such as the classified documents and election interference cases, which also went nowhere.
Trump knows he has to rein in the out of control agencies and the judicial branch. Americans overwhelmingly voted for Trump. who clearly signaled his intentions during his campaign. Trump loves America and wants to see it return to its former glory. He is using the executive branch in its original purpose, to implement laws.
The bureaucracy is out of control. They have grown accustomed to power and have relegated the president into a figurehead with a rubber stamp. They are doing all they can to sabotage Trump’s efforts, in the name of self preservation. These career bureaucrats must be controlled. We cannot continue on this path of uncontrolled spending. The interest on our debt is higher than our military budget. This results in weakness and would allow REAL dictators to take over the world.
With Ukraine, Trump is meeting one on one with Putin, while JD Vance and others have been meeting with Zelensky. Once they figure out what each side is willing to give up for peace, they can then begin negotiating a peace deal. Trump is a great deal maker.
Putin knows Trump would not hesitate to supply superior weaponry to Ukraine if he so chooses, so Putin will give up more than he wants. Zelensky knows he can never win the war, so he will give up more than he wants as well. In the end, this atrocious war will finally be over.
Trump wants Greenland for strategic purposes, since it lies between the US and Russia. It might be good for Greenland, too, if he U.S. provides for their security. I don’t think Trump iwants to take over Canada. I think he just said that to remind them of how vulnerable they are without the U.S.providing for their defense , not to mention that we are the biggest importer of their goods. He made that statement along with tariff threats to get Canada to pledge 10,000 troops to the border to stop the flow of Fentanyl and illegal border crossings.
Our constitution, with its checks and balances, was designed to make the population sovereign, rather than a king or a handful of thugs. They never envisioned a strong beauracracy acting as a 4th branch of government. Trump has to rein in spending, and is using Musk to weed out unnecessary spending. He is using his constitutional power as the president, and nothing more.
You may continue to believe that one Big Man knows better the details of how to maintain healthcare, environmental safety, etc. than do the “career bureaucrats”, that is, professionals who have qualified for the jobs they been appointed to through training in the fields they are responsible for.
If only that were an apt description of the employees who make up the federal bureaucracy! Alas, coming from the perspective of someone who has spent 32 years in that bureaucracy, it is to a large degree inaccurate. While there are many civil servants who are very capable and well-intentioned, the managerial layer almost always tends toward taking actions that perpetuate the “need” for the department and always increase the budget. Managers know that the pathway to promotion is to manage *more* money, and a career killer is to reduce the budget of your agency or department.
Over the last 40 years, we have seen significant increases in the size of the federal government in the areas of health, education, military, and services; unfortunately, this has coincided with increasingly worse national metrics in precisely those areas. Americans are poorer, less healthy, less educated compared to other countries, and have less trust in government institutions than 40 years ago. The group of people who have “won” during that time are the top 1% (especially the top 0.1%), corporations, and finance, precisely because government has increasingly been captured by those corporations and enabled their expropriation of wealth from the middle and lower classes. It’s ironic that the real estate billionaire Trump is the first president since Carter to seemingly want to address these issues.
America started the fight by proxy
If Russia took over Mexico or Canada
We would go to war in 8 min.
Russia waited 8 years while USA built a nato army on the border with Russia.
Historically a bad idea,
to get in a fight with Russia for any reason
Thank you for reminding us of the pretext Putin concocted for launching his invasion.
There’s a relic of Saint Valentine at the Whitefriars/Carmelite church in Dublin. The place is mad busy with couples on 14th February.
https://whitefriarstreetchurch.com/saint-valentine/