Month: June 2022

France And Russia

Mocking Furriners, Politics

This is a seriously, seriously good article by Soeren Kern at Gatestone.  An excerpt:

On March 21, less than a month after Russia invaded Ukraine, European officials announced an ambitious plan for the EU to achieve “strategic autonomy” aimed at placing the 27-member bloc on equal footing with China and the United States. The implicit objective was to enable a “sovereign” EU to act independently of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in matters of defense and security. That plan is now in shambles.

As the war has dragged on, European unity has collapsed and efforts to transform the European Union into a European superstate — a United States of Europe — have been exposed for what they are: delusions of grandeur.

It’s long, but if you only want to read one article today, this would be a good choice.

Return Of The (Non) Native

Travels

Took off…

…and landed safely:

…all on the same day, after a 60-hour flight*.

“Now,” she asks me, “…exactly what day is it, and what’s the time?”  Always with the difficult questions.  She’s lucky I recognized her walking through the Customs gate…

*I know, I know… she says it just feels like it took sixty hours.

Bad Air

Travels

Seems as though the air travel industry is having tough times nowadays.

On Thursday, JetBlue and other carriers laughably claimed that they were canceling the flights because of weather. This was garbage, as the weather where we were (NY) was perfect. Why would they do this? If they can claim it was the weather, they don’t have to pay for your meals, your hotel—anything. (Yes, there were some scattered thunderstorms across the nation. Hardly enough to cancel 10,000 flights.)

What?  You mean airlines will lie to you to save money?  (In other news, politicians lie and water is wet.)   And:

How does this keep happening in America, over and over? (By the way, things were no less of a disaster over Memorial Day weekend.)

Mostly it’s due to staffing shortages: pilots, crew, and air control. This is partly due to the fact that the Biden Administration mandated vaccines for pilots and other personnel, many of whom either quit or were fired for refusing. Guess what, Joe; you need pilots to fly planes.

Here’s the situation, luggage-wise, in Britishland (where they can’t blame Biden, but they can blame their own BritGov for mandating similarly moronic policies):

That’s just one airport and one baggage gate, but apparently similar scenes can be found at all Brit airports right now.  What a fuck-up.

My rule of not taking checked luggage on any flight is looking better and better — and if I can’t pack sufficient clothes for a trip, I just set aside a little money to buy whatever I need Over There.

Not, mind, that I’ll be able to afford to fly anywhere for the next decade after Qantas Fucking Airlines emptied my wallet, twice in one year.

Speaking of which:  New Wife gets in tonight from Oz, U.S. Immigration permitting.  (That’s another whole kind of cock-up, but I’ll talk about that tomorrow.)

Happy 50th, Ziggy

Gratuitous Chick Pics, Music

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust album (I couldn’t be bothered to type out the whole title).

I’ve written about the influence of David Bowie before, so I’m not going to repeat it, other than to say that nobody — nobody — was playing any music quite like he was.  And Aladdin Sane was pretty damn wonderful, too.

Anyway, all that was to show you this rather startling comparison:

So what do these two have in common?

Well, everything.  They’re the same person: Brit TV personality Kate Garraway, who is also at the half-century mark or thereabouts.

The Bowie influence just reaches everywhere, dunnit?

Random Totty

Beauty, Business, Marketing / Advertising

You might look at pics of this toothsome redhead and think, “Oh well, just another example of Kim’s infatuation with bimbettes with ginger pubes.”

Well, yes.  However, this is a woman who started making her own cosmetics at age 13, became a world-renowned makeup artist, and is now head of an eponymous global company named Charlotte Tilbury Beauty Ltd, with annual sales of close to $200 million with profits of about 40% of that.

Not much of a bimbette, in other words.  Oh, and in the above pics, she’s in her late forties.  Yum.