Monthly Archives: January 2026

Wednesday [7 to 10)

(1057) Approaching elevenses. (1057)

 

10. Moosh corner


9. Jawdropping from IYE

Donny is nuts. IMO. Teflon Tony’s appointment proved it for me.

“DT names Tony Blair, Jared Kushner, Marc Rowan to advise “Board of Peace”

Two out of those three can get knotted and at this rate take Donny with them:


JH: What the hell is Trump doing? It’s Wiles and Bondi all over again … but worse. He has no idea whatever … is he totally unaware of how the people here see Blair, satan’s little demon? Or else DJT is totally aware and is in league with the bad players?

Or is he desperately trying, like Farage, to be one of the Big Boys’ Club?

IYE notes: Some Arab nations have refused to accept Bleurgh on the board. (Plus storm approaching in France it seems … weather type.)

8. Tale of a tiny door

7. (Cough … yes)

Runway engineering

 

Before even getting to this, I’m forced to speak of accents. The presenter below is from the Texas panhandle, a native, and yet the accent is nothing like the Texan drawl … it’s sharp, northern, maybe midwest, not sure what that sounds like and it is not a speaking circuit or presentation accent. It is sharp, high, difficult to handle in high doses, plus the slurring of words is distinct.

Another like that was that girl Julia James who was on about elegance, which she described as byu-dee. There are some excellent northern accents … I heard a northern US academic once and the cadence was perfect. Same over here … some accents are easy on the ears, some are wearing.

Here’s one girl from here, living in Canada … well you decide on her manner and accent. Not RP, with “gonna”, but southern, with a bit of estuary glottal stop … I find her pleasant, apart from the horrible nose stud.

The thing with Grady below is he does his HW well, even airline people like what he did … he’s an excellent presenter … thus I’m forced, according to the Unherdables charter, to present him.

A bit more on accents … I myself have a mix of southern, a touch of RP, a definite twang but also the ability to counter insomnia … let’s call it that lullaby delivery … and there’ve been many unfortunates sent into deep slumber when I prattle on. Sometimes deliberately.

Wednesday [6]

(0813)(0835)

 

The Peace Initiatives

First Nixon’s strategy, via Toodles:

Now this Trump initiative:


My comments:

  • Nixon may well have had that as his ideal but he had a monster beside him in Kissinger.
  • That X posting had CBS, PBS and the WEF as sources. To slightly tweak (we, not I) the words of Nero Wolfe … “Once we knew that (they’d) lied on that point, then anything else they said (had to be taken as) quite unreliable.”

It’s as Andy had presented in good faith … Sky News UK. The UK bit is vital with Sky as it is Uniparty “safe conservatism” of the Farage type in this country, whereas Sky Oz positions itself more like GB News here … they do allow “far right” noises now and then, but still with the sharp edges MSMed off.

Sky News UK positions itself as the working man’s conservative voice, in a Boris Johnson way before he went full WEF. With that Chagos report, they ran with the Chagos people being “removed”, a fair angle, but playing down what Starmer is doing … the very thing the country’s pundits are on about.

And in saying the US should not be there … then who would be there? Britain? Nope, it’s the Chinese, innit, as in London.

This is the challenging task for pundits … we ourselves must note all these snippets and side-anomalies, but there’s no obligation on readers to pick up on the messy fragments as a whole.

Give you an example. There was a local cabby, good chap, on about the bad players as we are, was down on Momentum taking over all preselections in our area, whilst his mate was all for Corbyn whom he thought was “at least for the working man”.

Wot, in Islington?

……

Side note:

I can’t really run “short” youtubes here at HQ because as you see, they take massive column space with no chance of reducing size under normal circumstances. Same with “longs” but at least longs are in proportion for shape. I ran the Nixon one now just to illustrate how one youtube short can dominate an entire column due to youtube configuration.

Similar situation in the evening. Running a youtube slap bang in the middle of all the screenshots looks awful, it’s jarring, it dominates It’s not the fault of the sender, bless his or her heart … it’s youtube itself. If I do it, e.g. Agadoo, it had to be as a separate post where full width is appropriate as a “feature”, e.g. with our baroque offerings. There’s one coming up on runway engineering … it needs to be full width.

An example where it really should not be full width is an opinion piece where the presenter himself is dominating the entire window. By way of contrast, look at the 1267:7 … loud, garish thumbnail but to the presenter’s credit, in the actual presentation, he reduces himself to the right lower side.

I tend to put those loud youtubes at NOWP in comments, which constricts the size somewhat, then signpost from here. Again, it’s not to downgrade our boys but to stop youtube’s maximum sensation game.

Techies reading this will say James, that’s bollox … youtube just use a tweaked iframe. Yes they do and yes, I can write my own lil ole iframe from templates kept on stick here … yes I can do that but look at all that extra time required doing it, time I should be spending, as pundit, on the topic we’re on at that time. Game’s not worth the candle … I have to use my time to cover all contingencies.

Wednesday [1 to 5]

(0726) Overslept, which these days is a blessed relief … morning all. (0746)

 

5. Do not let these bstds in


4. The Beckhams


3. Steve at 1269

  • The Logic Behind Trump’s Push for US Control of Greenland
  • DOJ Issues Subpoenas to Walz, Frey and Other Far-Left Minnesota Officials Amid Federal Investigation Into Their Role Impeding ICE Operations – Frey Responds
  • Norway Notifies Citizens Their Homes and Vehicles May Be Seized in Case of War Against Russia
  • Trump Humiliates Starmer Macron; Again Demands Greenland; Russia Destroys Kiev AD Ahead Of Offensive
  • Hearing for High Court case to compel New Zealand government to release the Pfizer Covid vaccine contract schedule for Jun
  • Holy Land patriarchs denounce ‘Christian Zionism’ as a ‘damaging ideology’  (JH: I’m going to read this one first)
  • Much more.

2. As one usually does


1. DAD at 1269

a) France: A Budget at Last? After months of fierce debate, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has decided to go back on his promise and push through the 2026 budget using Article 49.3, which allows him to override opposition from MPs.

b) UK. A High Court ruling has cleared the way for Reform to challenge the cancellation of local elections in May. Mr Justice Chamberlain presiding today…

c) Is this the end for Geert Wilders? Is the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), led by Geert Wilders, heading for the abyss or merely suffering a temporary dip?

d) The Bulgarian President resigns: he is expected to form New Party. Sofia may align more closely with Orbán, Fico, and Babiš if former president Rumen Radev wins the spring parliamentary elections.

e) French automobile maker Renault is reportedly starting production of long-range drones for military use at two of its plants in France.

Tuesday [11 till close of play]

(1515) Afternoon all and good morning just in case. Good evening too!

 

15. Steve corner

Iran:

Did Iran use toxic chemicals against the protesters? https://albawaba.com/news/did-iran-use-toxic-chemicals-against-1620507 Newsweek reported that the Iranian regime may have used toxic chemicals to suppress the protests that have swept the country in recent weeks, according to a former British official. […] Ramil noted that this information has not been independently verified, but stressed that if proven true, it would represent an “extraordinary escalation” in Tehran’s tactics against its citizens, warning of serious legal and political repercussions, especially since Iran is a signatory to the #ChemicalWeaponsConvention.

War Room at 1269:

  • Noor Bin Ladin On Larry Fink And The World Economic Forum’s Davos Annual Meeting
  • Raymond Ibrahim On The Dangers Of Islam In The West: It’s Time For People To Actually Be Cognizant Now Than Later Or You’re Gonna End Up Like Europe And That’s Not a Good Place To Be
  • Joann Fleming On The Islamic Invasion Of Texas: As I’m Interviewing Candidates For The March Republican Primary Ballot They Tell Me As They’re Going Door To Door That This Has Become The Number 1
  • Raymond Ibrahim: It’s Always Better To Nip It In The Bud Early Before It’s A Problem . Places Like The UK, Germany, And France Have Like 10-15% Muslim Populations. So Even If They End Immigration Right Now This Is Something They Have To Live With

14. Chagossians arise


13. When one believes, one does it alone


12. Alberta’s not small and weak … honest


11. Don the armour

Tue Mat

 

“A precursor to the Thin Man series, starring William Powell as a detective (but without the very supplementary Myrna Loy). And this is directed by none other than Michael Curtiz (“Casablanca” and “Mildred Pierce”), and you can often tell, scenes characteristically complex with lots of people and foreground/background. As a whole the movie races along, to the point that the huge cast (all introduced with visual vignettes at the start) is confusing. But hang in there. because a third of the way through Powell kicks in full time.

There are few actors like William Powell in the history of American film. He is peculiar in charming ways, and makes no bones about it. He lacks any sense of what we might think of as cool or hardness–there’s no Bogart in him, no Cary Grant of course, nothing but what a character actor might have. And he made it a virtue, visible even here. The rest of the cast is good or very good, with a few other recognizable faces, and it gels increasingly as you go until a series of dramatic whodunnit style conclusions wraps it all up.

Powell’s detective, Philo Vance, was a snobby socialite, and the plots have a quality of private detective vs. police (which gets used in a lot of these kinds of series, of course). There are four movies with Powell playing the part (and many others with other actors in the role. This is the fourth, and best of them, the first going back to the dawn of sound, 1929. It’s not as slick or warm (or sophisticated) as “The Thin Man” series, which is a high water mark of the effete detective, but it’s terrific in its own way, and really well constructed. I’d not miss it.”

Quick song

 

(0911) So I can get some brekky, come back and do Tue [6 to 10], plus the OoL post. Overseas incoming came earlier, took me out of things awhile.

Remember the driving drone type of genre I love … here’s a band who sometimes did it to perfection … I prefer reactors who have some soul in their bodies: