09:40 – I think it’s funny to watch the progressives panic. Their latest campaign seems to be an all-out attack on “fake news sites”, which ironically are the sites that are reporting truthfully. And the attacks are being made by the actual fake-news sites like CNN, AP, NYT/WP, and ABC/CBS/FOX/NBC/PBS. Those traditional “news” sites have completely destroyed their credibility with the American public, and are now in flat-out panic mode. What a bunch of progressive scum. It’s nice to see them getting what they deserve. Well, not what they deserve. That would be seeing them hanging from lamp posts. But at least seeing their lies starting to catch up with them.
Another lurker has begun posting comments. Welcome to Eugen (Romania). It’s always interesting to hear what folks from outside the US think about things. The first time I ever had extensive face-to-face contact with anyone from eastern Europe was in 1981. I was dating Lee Bowie, a girl who went to Clemson University, and driving down from Winston frequently to spend weekends with her. She rented a house, and her housemates were two girls from Poland, Cassia and Goga. Their take on the US was fascinating. They were actually afraid of uniformed cops, which I guess was understandable. Just as we’d all grown up watching TV and movies about nasty Soviet spies being foiled by heroic CIA agents, they’d grown up watching nasty American spies being foiled by heroic KGB agents. They were scared to death of the US military and nuclear forces, just as we were scared to death of the Russian military and nuclear forces. They were just normal people, and quickly came to realize that we were just normal people as well. I think all of us quickly realized that they were afraid of our government and we were afraid of theirs, both with good cause.
The only real difference between us was that we were used to plenty and they were used to shortages. The first time I visited Lee in her new rented house, I carried in my bottle of Coke from my Jeep and opened her freezer to stick it in and rechill it. It wouldn’t fit in the freezer, which was literally crammed full of frozen pizzas. Lee explained that Cassia and Goga had discovered supermarkets. In Poland, they’d had to stand in line for food and take whatever was on offer. They couldn’t believe that in the US they could just walk into a supermarket and carry off as much as they wanted of whatever they wanted. We had some interesting discussions after that about the relative efficiency of capitalism and free markets versus socialism and a command economy.