My friends, there's a fine line between genius and insanity... between innovation and disaster...
(*SIGH*)
Case in point: Irish Coffee. True genius!
Case in counterpoint: Irish Hot Chocolate...
(*STOMACH DOING ANOTHER SOMERSAULT*)
What seemed at first sip... and second sip... and second cup a creation Our Lord God would heartily approve us turned out to be nothing more than Satan's temptation.
(*SHUDDER*)
Perhaps it wasn't the Black Bush (Bushmills) infused hot coco alone that turned into... um... an irritant within my stomach several hours after consumption. No... perhaps the many, many, many bottles of Guinness which were also consumed had something to do with it. Or perhaps the combination of Guinness... Jameson... Hot Chocolate... Bushmills... Whiskey Cheese... Soda Bread... Butter... Corned Beef... Mustard... Mayo...
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
BUT...
HOWEVER...
LET IT BE KNOWN...
I... DID... NOT... PUKE...!!!
No...
Accuse me of lack of proper judgment... fine. But never... never, never, never... accuse me of not being able to hold my liquor... etc.
A grateful shout-out to my buddy "He Whose Name Must Never Be Spoken" for bringing me my coat before hypothermia set in during the period I took myself outside to get a wee bit of fresh (35-degree or so) air during the worst of it.
5 comments:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/23/business/dealbook/for-clintons-a-hedge-fund-in-the-family.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=1
Since marrying Chelsea Clinton five years ago, Marc Mezvinsky, a money manager, appears to have settled into his life as Bill and Hillary Clinton’s son-in-law.
When Mr. Mezvinsky and his partners began raising money in 2011 for a new hedge fund firm, Eaglevale Partners, a number of investors in the firm were longtime supporters of the Clintons, according to interviews and financial documents reviewed by The New York Times.
Tens of millions of dollars raised by Eaglevale can be attributed to investors with some relationship or link to the Clintons.
The "investors" include hedge fund managers like Marc Lasry and James Leitner; an overseas money management firm connected to the Rothschild family; and people from Goldman Sachs, including the chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein.
Some of the investors in Eaglevale have contributed campaign money to the former president and Mrs. Clinton...
Some have also contributed to the family’s foundation.
Identifying who put money into Eaglevale, a roughly $400 million fund that has had underwhelming returns for much of its brief history...
* AND THERE YOU HAVE IT FOLKS. ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW. JUST... ANOTHER... SCAM.
There are several examples of Eaglevale investors with relationships with the Clintons. Rock Creek Group, a Washington-based investment advisory firm, placed $13 million from the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and another public pension fund with Eaglevale in late 2011 and early 2012.
* PUBLIC PENSION FUNDS...
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
For a brief period in 2013, after Eaglevale had been up and running for about a year, Rock Creek sublet temporary office space to Mrs. Clinton after she stepped down as secretary of state.
* I WONDER WHO PAID FOR THAT; CERTAINLY NOT THE CLINTONS PERSONALLY!
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://buchanan.org/blog/what-would-ike-do-15756
* BY PATRICK J. BUCHANAN
In November 1956, President Eisenhower, enraged he had not been forewarned of their invasion of Egypt, ordered the British, French and Israelis to get out of Suez and Sinai.
They did as they were told.
(*NOD*)
How far we have fallen from the America of Ike and John Foster Dulles has been on painful display this March.
An Israeli leader told a joint session of Congress that President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran is stupid and dangerous and must be rejected. Congress gave him 40 ovations.
* AND OF COURSE HE WAS RIGHT...
* AND THEN... NEXT...
Bibi Netanyahu then went home and told the world there will be no Palestinian state, and was re-elected in a smashing victory.
* THANK GOD!
“Perhaps it’s time for Americans, especially those in the White House, to recognize this new reality of Israeli politics,” says The Wall Street Journal. We should restore “Israeli confidence in U.S. support.”
Excuse me? Who is the senior partner here? Who needs whom more?
* DAMN STRAIGHT!
* NO, FOLKS... NO TALKING OUT OF BOTH SIDES OF MY MOUTH... OBAMA IS A PUTZ AND I DO BELIEVE IN "AMERICA FIRST." NO DISCONNECT THERE!
Israel is entitled to choose its own leaders, who are entitled to make their own policy. But that goes for us as well.
* EVEN THOUGH LATELY WE'VE BEEN MAKING A COMPLETE HASH OF IT...
(*SIGH*)
We are today headed for a collision with Israel as serious as Suez ’56, and we are about to see what Barack Obama is made of.
The days of self-delusion are over. For was there ever a doubt where Bibi stood? In 1994, he denounced the Oslo Accords in a speech interrupted by chants that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was a “traitor.”
Did anyone think Bibi, who opposed Ariel Sharon withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza, was going to withdraw tens of thousands of Jewish settlers from Judea and Samaria, share Jerusalem with a Palestinian state, or allow the return of Arab refugees to what Bibi says is the “Jewish state”?
“Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls. Left-wing organizations are busing them out,” said Bibi on his Facebook page in Hebrew, according to a translation by Haaretz.
That’s the real Bibi. We have clarity now.
What should Obama do?
* RESIGN?
Drop the petulance, call and congratulate Bibi on his election and tell him we are proceeding with the Iran deal — if we conclude it accords with our interests. And if he attempts to sabotage or scuttle the deal, he should expect political and economic retaliation.
Bibi is looking out for Israel first. America needs a president like Ike who will start looking out for America first.
* AND BEYOND ISRAEL...
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
It appears we are at a moment of truth worldwide.
Our freeloading friends in NATO, only four of whom spend 2% of GDP on defense, and some are cutting that, should be told that the days of Uncle Sam carrying the lion’s share of their defense are over.
Ukraine and Crimea are on their continent not ours.
The Soviet Empire is dead; the Soviet Union has ceased to exist. A Russia smaller than it has been in centuries, with half the population the USSR had at the end of the Cold War, is primarily their problem not ours.
If the Germans, Brits, French and Italians will not man up and pay for their defense, let them pay tribute to powerful neighbors the way other fat, rich and feeble nations have historically done.
The Chinese are launching an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank as a rival to the U.S.-dominated World Bank. Despite our pleas, Britain, France, Italy and Germany are rushing to sign on as charter members. South Korea and Australia may follow.
* HOW MANY OF YOU KNEW THIS...???
Our allies are looking to pick up contracts for the construction projects for the new Chinese “silk road” from Asia to Europe.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
The AIIB will have $50 billion in startup cash, a pittance to a China sitting on a hoard of $3 to $4 trillion in cash reserves, from decades of huge trade surpluses run at the expense of the United States.
Virtually all our Asian allies do a larger share of their trade with China than with us. They want to buy from and sell to China, and stay in Beijing’s good graces. But if menaced by China, they want the United States obligated by treaty to come and fight for them.
One understands why this is in their interests. But why is it in ours?
* IT'S NOT!
Nor is the Middle East any different.
* NOPE...
The Turks, Saudis and Gulf Arabs want us to finish off ISIS, whom they were lately aiding, but also Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. They want us to fight them all, but disagree on whom the Americans should fight first.
Last week, John Kerry said he might talk with Syria’s Bashar Assad, and was denounced by the Saudis. The State Department backed off. But who are the Saudis to be telling us to whom we may talk when coping with the Islamic State?
In the Eisenhower era, Dulles spoke of an “agonizing reappraisal” of our alliances, a cost-benefit analysis of what America was getting out of them, compared with what we were contributing to them.
Is there a single U.S. alliance today that would survive a cost-benefit analysis like that?
* A POINT I MAKE CONSTANTLY!
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://buchanan.org/blog/will-the-gop-kick-it-away-15744
* ALSO BY PATRICK J. BUCHANAN
With Hillary Clinton scrambling to explain her missing emails, much of America is wailing, “Please don’t make us watch this movie again!”
Why, then, would the Republican Party, with a chance to sweep it all in 2016, want to return us to the nightmare days of George W., which caused America to rise up and throw the party out in 2006 and 2008?
* BECAUSE INSTITUTIONALLY THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS "THE STUPID PARTY."
Do Republicans really believe that America wants a return to the Cold War with Moscow and new and larger hot wars in the Middle East?
* YEP! WITH ALL THEIR HEARTS!
With President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry seemingly about to conclude a deal to freeze Iran’s nuclear program, House Speaker John Boehner invited Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to use the State of the Union podium to call Obama and Kerry naive and trash their deal as paving the ayatollah’s way to an atomic bomb.
* THAT'S FINE. I DON'T TRUST OBAMA. NOTHING WRONG WITH HEARING WHAT NETANYAHU HAD TO SAY. NOW... LET'S READ THIS SUPPOSED TREATY.
(*SHRUG*)
For the U.S. House to invite a foreign leader to come into its chambers and see that leader, on national television, mocking U.S. foreign policy to wild cheering was something few of us expected to see in our lifetimes.
* DOESN'T BOTHER ME A BIT, PAT.
Came then the astonishing letter drafted by Tom Cotton, a 2-month-old senator who makes Ted Cruz look like Ramsey Clark, that was signed by 47 Republicans. Sent to the ayatollah and mullahs, the Cotton letter instructed Iran that any deal signed by Kerry might not be worth the paper it was written on.
* IT WOULDN'T BE. NOT IF REJECTED BY THE SENATE.
Congress could reject the deal, said the 47, and a new president in 2017 could cancel it with “the stroke of a pen.”
* YEP. THAT IS INDEED THE REALITY.
The letter’s purpose was the same as Bibi’s purpose — to scuttle, sabotage and sink any U.S. nuclear deal with Iran. But if there is no deal and Iran returns to enriching uranium to 20%, we are on the road to war.
* NO. (ARE WE AT WAR WITH NORTH KOREA?)
Is this what America has to look forward to if it votes GOP?
Another Middle Eastern war, with a country twice the size of Iraq, to strip the country of weapons of mass destruction it does not have?
Didn’t we just do that at a cost of 4,500 dead, 35,000 wounded warriors and $1.7 trillion?
GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, mulling a presidential run, has called Kerry “delusional” and charged Obama with timidity. Why? Because, said Lindsey, “he didn’t call Putin the thug that he is.”
* PUTIN IS A GREAT MAN... A GREAT LEADER!
Is this what America wants, a president who will call the ruler of Russia, who has thousands of nuclear weapons and is supported by 85% of its people, a “thug”? Is that presidential leadership?
* AMERICA VOTED TO RE-ELECT OBAMA. WHAT "AMERICA" WANTS... (*SHRUG*). LET'S CONCENTRATE ON WHAT I WANT!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
How does name-calling at that level advance U.S. interests?
At the Munich security conference in February, Sen. John McCain compared the negotiations in Minsk, Belarus, among German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Vladimir Putin to what happened in Munich in 1938.
Yet the Minsk truce is holding. Ukrainians are not dying, as of today. And the Germans are meeting to bail out Ukraine and prevent that bankrupt country from going belly up.
Yet last week, McCain said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier belongs “in the Neville Chamberlain school of diplomacy.”
Said McCain, this “is the same guy that refuses — and his government — to enact any restrictions on the behavior of Vladimir Putin, who is slaughtering Ukrainians as we speak. He has no credibility.”
A former presidential nominee, McCain is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Does he speak for the party?
* MCCAIN IS A MORON. (AND, YES... HE DOES SPEAK FOR THE MAJORITY... THUS... "THE STUPID PARTY.")
Will America applaud an arms airlift to prod a destitute Ukraine into fighting Russia to reimpose Kiev’s rule over the Russian-speaking Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea, in a war Ukrainians cannot win and NATO Europe will not fight?
* PERHAPS...
If Putin should respond to U.S. weapons pouring into Ukraine by seizing Mariupol on the Sea of Azov and establishing a land bridge from Russia to Crimea, what would the Republicans do?
* MISSPELL "MARIUPOL" REGULARLY I'M GUESSING...
Yet undeniably, inside the GOP, the day of the hawk is again at hand. Sen. Cotton, whose tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan give him a street cred that other GOP hawks do not have, is making no apologies, not backing down, driving the debate and being emulated by the GOP presidential hopefuls. Sen. Rand Paul signed his letter, as did Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
* PAUL SIGNED IT NOT AS A HAWK, BUT AS A CONSTITUTIONIST. (AGAIN... THE LETTER REFLECTS CONSTITUTIONAL REALITY...)
And the Republicans are betting, probably correctly, that the invitation to Bibi to dis Obama and elevate the menace of Iran will sit well with a Jewish community that historically votes Democratic. But short-term gains could be canceled out by long-term losses. If Kerry comes home with a deal to which Germany, Britain, France, Russia, China and the U.N. Security Council have signed on, will Congress spend two years trying to scuttle it? Will Congress refuse to lift sanctions on Iran even if all our principal allies have done so?
In addition to bellicosity, the GOP seems to suffer from inconsistency. Even as it seeks to strip Obama of his power to close a deal with Iran, it is trying to give him a blank check to fight ISIS.
(*NOD*)
And who is fighting the Islamic State today in Tikrit, Iraq?
The Shiite militia and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
* I NEVER SAID IT WASN'T CRAZY...
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