Rembrandt van Rijn The resurrection of Christ 1639 Man, I don’t want to do this but I get drawn back in all the time. I haven’t followed the latest episode of the Schiffwives of DC live today, I wasn’t behind my laptop, but I did make a bunch of notes on my phone and mailed them to myself. And all the time I’m thinking: we do remember how this all started, don’t we? Ukrainegate got started on the premise
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Paul Gauguin Road in Tahiti 1891 I’m getting pissed off about multiple things right now, too many to make them all separate essays. Let’s give it a combined shot: In Holland, the talk of the town is nitrogen emissions. I’d never seen it raised as that kind of problem, but there you go. The government last week decided to lower the max speed limit on highways to 100km (66miles) , from 120-130. Their reasoning was that this would allow
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Johannes Vermeer View of Delft 1660-61 Roger Stone convicted on all counts. I’m reading through them and see WikiLeaks all over. And yes, he may have been lying about all sorts of things, his contacts with Randy Credico, what he knew when etc etc. But one thing must again be made clear: Stone never had any direct contact with Assange, let alone in some plot to release information that could damage Hillary Clinton. We can be sure of that
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Rembrandt van Rijn Jeremiah lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem 1630 Watching Day 1 yesterday of the impeachment inquiry that isn’t one, I was thinking about an old children’s game, which is just as useful for adults, in which, in a wide circle of persons, no. 1 tells no. 2 a story, no. 2 tells no. 3, and so forth. If the total numbers of persons in the circle is large enough, it’s certain that the story, if it has
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Rembrandt van Rijn Let the little children come to me 1627-28 Let’s see what shape I can give this. I was reading a piece by Byron York that has the first good read-out I’ve seen of the October 29 deposition by Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, self-labeled no. 1 Ukraine expert at the National Security Counsel, and I want to share that in a summarized form, with my comments. There’ll be some longer quotes though. And I know there are
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Salvador Dali Bay of Cadaques 1925 Do I really need to reiterate -as I’ve done easily a hundred times- that I don’t think Donald Trump is a great choice to be president of the United States, that when you have a pick of 320 million people there should certainly be a better option? Then again, should I also reiterate that he was elected as president 3 years ago, and that means a lot in the US political system, so
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Ivan Shishkin Midday. Near Moscow 1869 “In theory they were sound on Expectation Had there been situations to be in; Unluckily they were their situation” – W.H. Auden And drawn back again into energy… I did a little interview on the topic this week, and that was a little too little. Can’t cover it all in 5 or 10 minutes, even though that is mostly because people understand so precious little. We fool ourselves non-stop 24/7
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Nelly’s Tzistarakis Mosque in Monastiraki Square, Athens c1930 It’s been too long, way too long since I wrote about our Athens fund, I know, and I apologize. It’s just that for the longest time, things were too unclear and changing too fast for me to write an article. I was waiting for things to settle down to a point where I could have faith they weren’t going to turn upside down again within days or weeks. Well, we finally
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Salvador Dali Self portrait 1921 On October 21 2019, Brexit became an entirely irrelevant issue. Or perhaps we should say it had already become that, but on that date it was exposed for all to see that it was. The parading into a courtroom of Julian Assange in London was all the evidence one could need that the UK government breaks its own laws as well as numerous international laws, with impunity. But that is not how the media
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Rembrandt van Rijn Self portrait with tousled hair 1629 If you ask me, this is brilliant, but I know you’re not asking me. Still, what I’m reading today is genius. That is, Donald Trump and his people have found a way to communicate with Vladimir Putin and his people while the entire crew that’s listening in to his talks with foreign leaders were doing something else, whatever that may be. The overall impression of Trump’s order to redeploy an
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