Hey, fallout shelters may stop being retro Cold War kitsch and start being relevant again! #ThanksObama
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 17, 2014
Oh, all you Millennial kids who were so smug about your silly paranoid elders and their worries about the looming threat of global thermonuclear annihilation, you are in for such a treat!
War...war never changes....
ReplyDeleteYou are 2 for 2 on your posts this Monday morning!
ReplyDeleteBut it's OK because it's not Anti-Communist Hegemonic Cold War Thermonuclear War.
ReplyDeleteNowadays it's holistic Global anti-capitalist We-Are-One glow-in-the-dark togetherness thermonuclear asymmetric deployment using sustainably grown isotopes You've probably never heard of small-W war.
Does nuclear winter beat man made global warming with the hipister class now?
ReplyDeleteGerry
Once again, clever "Entrepreneurs"(Cough irish travelers cough) will be able to make a good living burying used oil tanks with oil-drum escape hatches and calling them bomb shelters. I am sad to say I have several relatives who succumbed to this stupidity and now have collapsed "Bomb shelters" in their backyards.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if I can get a W.O.P.R. for home use.
ReplyDeleteThe micro-nutrient layer in sustainably harvested isotopes grown in organic shade-tree centrifuges impart a lustrous glow to the skin!
ReplyDeleteThis will not be not a huge Colonial Corpratist war, General Electric and General Motors vs. the plucky Lada-driving Bolshevik idealists - it will be a war for Global Freedom and Justice!
Can we finally remake Red Dawn with the Russkies as the villains again?
ReplyDeleteProphet, No.
ReplyDeleteUntil they nuke us, we should be nice and not offend them.
BOHICA
Duck and cover drills, anyone?
ReplyDeleteI am afraid they will make Red Dawn 3(Dawn of Apocalypse?) using U.S. Corporatists as the villians.
ReplyDeleteStill trying to figure out how Obama has the authority, from anyone, to levy sanctions on foreign nationals. Would seem that should be the result of conviction in criminal/civil court proceedins. Is Obama to good to use secret kangaroo courts like his predecssors?
Some of us never stopped keeping our bunkers ready.
ReplyDeleteOk, I'm feeling a bit dense on this. Why does the Crimeans voting (foolishly IMO) to rejoin mother Russia equal a return to the thermonuclear war fears from our youth?
ReplyDeleteWell, someone's on particularly fine form today... :)
ReplyDeleteYou've probably never heard of small-W war.
ReplyDeleteIs it okay for grown men to squeal with delight?
Because...
...nevermind...
Ok, I'm feeling a bit dense on this. Why does the Crimeans voting (foolishly IMO) to rejoin mother Russia equal a return to the thermonuclear war fears from our youth?
ReplyDeleteBecause the owners of the two largest nuclear arsenals on Earth are at odds with each other over that particular situation, and neither one of the leaders involved are a good fit for playing the brinksanship game - they both have serious emotional failings leading to stability issues that aren't a good quality when your finger is hovering over the "fuck it, let's do this!" button.
The Caribbean is looking better every day. Course you throw enough free isotopes up in to the ionosphere you can pretty well muck up the entire planet. That should make the Greens giddy with Jealousy. Most of their plans would only kill of half the population.
ReplyDeleteWe have a community organizer about to throw down with a black belt. This is going to end well..Not.
Scott J, because Crimea lacks the authority to do such a thing. This is being put down as an East vs. West Cold War-esque showdown. Where west Ukraine and east Ukraine (read Crimea and predominantly Russian regions of Ukraine) will now build a wall separating the country in half.
ReplyDeleteAnd once again on one side of the wall we will have people driving Trabants and Ladas and on the other side of the wall they will be driving Mercedes and BMWs. It's just won't be the sides of the walls we're used to...
-Rob
Scott J;
ReplyDeletehttp://freebeacon.com/rt-anchor-russia-capable-of-blasting-u-s-into-radioactive-dust/
Re-set to 1961
Gerry
"Nook-u-lar combat, toe to toe with them Rooskies!"
ReplyDeleteEarly sixties retro is hip, right? Good thing we have a few BUFFs in service, time to start running the old Chrome Dome routes again.
Joe in PNG:
ReplyDelete"Good thing we have a few BUFFs in service, time to start running the old Chrome Dome routes again."
I have a better idea. Put a fisher-price toy in Obama's nuclear football, and wait for adults to get elected.
What in God's name will Greenpeace do now? They abandoned the "nukes are bad" shtick for the "global warmening" show. Going back would make them...what, bipolar?
ReplyDeleteHeh.
Dammit, I already lived through this crap ONCE!!! THAT was enough!!!
ReplyDelete"Put a fisher-price toy in Obama's nuclear football, and wait for adults to get elected."
ReplyDeleteThree years is a heckuva long time to bet that at some point he doesn't simply announce the dissolution of the United States and invite foreign troops in to Occupy.*
We didn't go to war over the Captive Nations in the Fifties, we won't be doing that now. It's just that in the Fifties we were at least trying in small ways to make life difficult for Russian tyrants. These days our government is trying to make life easier for them, by provoking fits of helpless laughter if nothing else.
*Hope I didn't use too many scoops of hyperbole, there.
Mike James
"because Crimea lacks the authority to do such a thing"
ReplyDeleteSo....I take it you're not one of those who takes the view the states Tamara and I hail from lost the war for independence but thinks them uppity Southerners got what they deserved.
ScottJ,
ReplyDelete"Ok, I'm feeling a bit dense on this. Why does the Crimeans voting (foolishly IMO) to rejoin mother Russia equal a return to the thermonuclear war fears from our youth?"
The validity of the election, its legality, whether it was rigged or not, and all the rest of that crap don't mean a fart in a windstorm against the fact that The Smartest Administration Ever is doing a half-assed job of flexing what's left of out war-weary military power in the face of Putin like he's some sort of third-rate comic opera dictator like Ahmadinejad or Hussein and not the guy in charge of almost half the strategic intercontinental nuclear warheads on the planet.
This isn't some guy you casually bully between fundraising tours for Congressional candidates and kiddie fitness photo-ops at the White House; we fuck up with this guy and what's left of the human race is glowing in the dark and beating each other over the head with axes made of radioactive traffic signs. You don't put the junior varsity in against the Strategic Rocket Forces.
Scott J,
ReplyDeleteStrawman much? I come from Texas, that fought a bonafide war of independence, thanks.
And this situation ain't that. Maybe you think the Crimeans have the authority to split off and annex with Russia, they don't, not by international treaty, previous agreement, or constitutional authority.
And guess what? There isn't constitutional authority in this country either. I suggest Texas v. White (1869).
Revolution is an authoritative way to declare independence but the current method Crimea has used (bringing together it's parliament and voting itself part of Russia) is NOT legal authority to do such a thing. They will have to formally declare independence and then decide to be annexed.
-Rob
"They will have to formally declare independence and then decide to be annexed"
ReplyDeleteAs I understand it at this point they have completed step one of that process.
As the noted philosopher J. Blackthorne said to the other noted philosopher Toronaga Y., revolution is perfectly legitimate...provided you win. I do not incline to blame a body for tryin', or at least for thinking 'er over.
ReplyDeleteHave a little faith, not all of us Millennial are all that smug, nor overly ignorant of the past. Now pardon me as I go to change out of me kilt into a smoking jacket and go in search of my copy of "Alas, Babylon".
ReplyDeleteJ in WV
Rob:
ReplyDeleteCrimea did that. And then they asked to join the RF. Then Putin had the Duma vote them in.
In exactly that order. Putin is very good about using existing legal formalities to get what he wants.
I recall the US did something similar to Panama and Columbia.
This is about ethnic politics, and Obama screwing with a country in the near abroad because he was butthurt over the drubbing he got in Syria.
If you want to provoke Russia into a war, just screw with the near abroad ... Condoleeza Rice tried her best to get Bush to not do it ... and apparently no one in the current administration has a clue how dangerous this is.
Anyone who tells you that Putin is "done" now that Crimea is back in Russian control, hasn't studied History.
ReplyDeleteMehmed the Conqueror, Attila the Hun, Ivan the Terrible, Xerxes of Persia, Timor the Lame (Tamerlane), Alexander the Great, The Athenians (a 100 years or so after the events depicted in the new 300 movie), right down to Napoleon, Hitler, and probably a few I have missed - they only stopped when they were stopped. (Mehmed the Conqueror only stopped marching across Europe when he died suddenly.) None of them ever said "My empire is big enough; I'll stop now."
And everybody else standing in line next to the Ukraine is a member of NATO. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland - unless he decides to move south into the Middle East or China.
RevolverBob: A successful revolution invalidates all treaties and UN blathering.
ReplyDeleteIf the South had gotten Great Britain to send them troops, they might have won, and the CSA would be a cold hard fact today, regardless of how much bleating was done.
The Crimeans wanted no part of an ethnic Ukrainian government, not after electing one earlier that was more to their liking. When the Ukrainians unilaterally invalidated the last election, they asked for this ... all of the ethnic Russian provinces are going to want out now.
wheelgun: Putin stopped after taking the ethnic Russian portions of Georgia.
ReplyDeletePutin is pretty easy to figure out: If mess with Russian speakers, he will intervene. If you mess with the Russian Near Abroad, he will react.
Kristophr - Exactly. Putin has no designs to create an empire. he just feels that his responsibility to Russians extends beyond his own borders.
ReplyDeleteI wrote about this the other day. Imagine Germany going into rebellion, with all the US bases and Americans living there to support them. We'd have boots on the ground in seconds, not minutes, if something like that were to happen.
Putin is only doing EXACTLY what we would do in the exact same situation. I'm really not worried about it, to be honest, except for what Tam brought up above - we telegraph weakness with prissy pants at the helm, and when the two most powerful nuclear-armed nations on Earth come to odds with each other, you don't want two incurable narcissists with superiority complexes and chips on their shoulder hodlin their finger over the buttons of armageddon.
Wheelgun - I've heard all the Sudetenland comparisons and the napolean comparisons and all that.
ReplyDeleteI havent' seen any evidence that Russia has any intentions of doing anything like that. As soon as intentions such as those begin to telegraph, then I'll start worrying.
Up to now, Putin has stated his intentions in multiple incidents, and in every one of those incidents, he's done exactly what he said he was going to do - protect ethnic Russians and give them the opportunity for self-governance if they so choose (south ossetia?)
Is this a noble goal? is it right? Up for debate, definitely, but it is what he is doing, and it is, I'm convinced, ALL he has plans to do.
Just heard while reading this that shots were fired at Ukrainian soldiers on their base by unidentified masked men in uniform. The Ukrainians have been authorized to defend themselves if attacked. Two Ukrainians injured, one may be an officer.
ReplyDelete