Facts of Strokes

Powerline has a great post on how Bob Dole was presented and perceived in the 80's and 90's: 'Back then, Dole was portrayed as a nasty piece of work, a hatchet man with an acerbic wit. In 1976, when he ran for vice president, the line on Dole was that Gerald Ford selected him because of his ability to sling mud at Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale. President Ford would take the high road while Dole would ridicule and demean the opposition. If I recall correctly, Dole was sometimes compared to Richard Nixon, to whom he bore a slight physical resemblance. To the media, Nixon was, of course, the symbol of the politics of negativity, division, and hate.' And as this blog noted on Monday, conservatives didn't like Dole all that much either. 

What Will's Watching, Live Before a Studio Audience: ABC's homage to The Facts of Life and Different Strokes. We turned on the TV and our brain said to us, 'There's The Facts of Life.' It was just there, like it'd always been. Live was well executed Gen-X nostalgia. Ultimately pointless but fun nonetheless. The difference between Live and the Boomer's inability to shut the hell up about the 50s and 60s is this was done with a wink. Live was an hour and a half long inside joke, kind of like the old Brady Bunch Movie. 

The Facts of Life and Different Strokes aired for 8 seasons on network TV and enjoyed long lives in reruns. The quality of the acting, writing and plotting was about on par with those horrible Disney live actions sitcoms.* Don't ask this blog to explain why they were popular. They just were. Back then, younger reader(s), one just watched what was on. We had seven channels, man.**

We don't have many deep thoughts about the Biden/Putin phone call. Did it go well? Who knows? The US pledging not to expand NATO to Ukraine (which makes zero sense anyway) in exchange for Putin not invading Ukraine sounds like a pretty good deal, no? Finlandization, they call it. Not that we care what happens to Ukraine. We won't die for Donetsk. That being said, alert observers should be terrified. Biden managed to ef up vaccines, the Wuhan Virus, the economy and Afghanistan. The man is that special kind of Democrat who has never been right on foreign policy. 

It wouldn't surprise this blog to learn a carrier battle group complete with a Marine MEU is entering the Black Sea right now. The globalists concentrate on Russia, which is no threat to the US, while China runs rampant. There's a subset of Dems who think Ukraine is a vital national interest. Remember Schiff for Brains brainless arguments over Ukraine during the faux impeachment? War over Ukraine may be the ultimate expression of Trump Derangement syndrome. Besides, the Biden family may decide its business interests in Ukraine must be defended. 

And just because this blog has moronic enemies with the reading comprehension skills of a poo flinging orangutang, we once again state that we don't think Russia should invade Ukraine and if it did, we'd root for Ukraine. 

*Not Stuck in the Middle, which is great.

**No one counted PBS and being known to watch it was a good way to get your ass kicked.