A Plebe's Site

Quam bene vivas referre, non quam diu.

And So It Begins

Posted on 21 August 2014 by eehines

The crumbling of the Afghan polity is under way.

A reporter wrote a news reporting/opinion piece about the Afghan government that didn’t comport with that government’s approved view of itself. As a result,

Afghanistan’s attorney general has banned a New York Times reporter from leaving the country after he wrote a story about unnamed officials seeking to take power if the country’s presidential election deadlock persists.

The reporter’s…error?

Attorney General Basir Azizi said the story…could “create fear and confusion among the people” and that [reporter Matthew] Rosenberg will not be allowed to leave the country until it has been investigated by officials.

Of course.

A Child King

Posted on 21 August 2014 by eehines

Kim Jong Un, the child, and the king, in question, is describing Secretary of State John Kerry as a wolf with a “hideous lantern jaw.”

He’s also termed President Barack Obama a monkey and Republic of Korea President Park Geun-hye a prostitute.

The AP thinks these are “crude insults,” and so they are, but it’s also important to keep in mind that these are, at bottom, the childish name-callings of a poorly raised adolescent. In the end, while any proper raising requires discipline, and Kim should be held to account for his misbehavior, the boy is more to be pitied for his condition than condemned for his behavior.

That he has an unstable finger on crude nuclear weapons also is a concern, the way any child playing with a gun is, but that’s a separate question.

TANSTAAFL

2 + 2 must always = 4
–Polish proverb

Be not intimidated… nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.
–John Adams

Nothing in the universe has a shorter half-life than a politician’s memory for inconvenient facts.
–Admiral Hamish Alexander, RMN

Dawn is nature’s way of telling you to go to bed.
And to just stay there until the evil yellow disk is gone again.
–Anonymous

In a polity, each citizen is to possess his own arms, which are not supplied or owned by the state.
–Aristotle

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.
–Chief Justice John Roberts.

A yawn is a silent scream for coffee.
–Shane Mclean

If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my ax.
–Abraham Lincoln

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