i donno what this means either

 you cant spell hubris without bris

jokes man

Whats the difference between a lentil and a chickpea?
I've never had a lentil on my face

Foreign Policy doctrines 101: USA vs UK

Obama doctrine on foreign policy: "Don't do stupid shit".

Boris Johnson doctrine on Brexit:  "My policy on cake is 'pro-having it' and 'pro-eating it too'".

Welcome to 2020

It's only the first week of a new decade and we're already seeing superlatives thrown all over the place.

1. Jakarta welcomes 2020 in the most Jakarta way ever: city-wide flash floods due to the biggest rainfall since 1866, killing 60 so far. 
2. Bushfires in Australia has already burned through 3.7 million hectares, the biggest in Australia's history.
3. The massive 2019 swine flu outbreak in China killed one-quarter of the world's pig population.
4. The assassination of Iranian Major General Qassem Solaemani by an American airstrike may prove to be the most consequential act of war of this century.
5. Of course, Trump's conduct towards Ukraine, which resulted in his impeachment, is the very definition of high crime and misdemeanor - - it's "worse than Nixon" (TM). 
6. Massive, longstanding anti-government protests continue in Hong Kong and India. 

Bolivia's crisis is China's fault?!

What's going on with Evo Morales in Bolivia? When is a coup not a coup? What's the CIA got to do with everything?  China????

So here's Max Fisher on whether Bolivia is seeing a "coup" or a "popular uprising":

Transitions like Bolivia’s tend to be fluid and unpredictable. The perception of legitimacy, or a lack thereof, can be decisive.  But today’s world rarely fits the black-and-white narratives that emerged from the Cold War and that still shape expectations that coups and revolts are morality tales with clear heroes and villains.[...] 

Coups often come after mass uprisings calling for change, with generals describing their interventions as temporary measures to restore democracy. And few, if any, popular uprisings succeed without military support, if only in the form of generals refusing to come to the government’s aid.  

The political scientist Jay Ulfelder has referred to that as a “Schrödinger’s coup,” after the Austrian physicist, Erwin Schrödinger, writing that such cases “exist in a perpetual state of ambiguity, simultaneously coup and not-coup” with no hope of forcing the events into a “single, clear” category.

Michael Parlberg on whether some covert CIA role is at play:

Let’s not mince words. It’s a coup. When an elected president is forced to resign by the head of the armed forces, after weeks of escalating street violence and a police mutiny, the word “coup” fits. [...]

The United States welcomed Morales’s ouster, and the U.S. presence in Bolivia, particularly in drug policy, has long been unhelpful. But “The CIA is behind everything bad in Latin America” is a lazy analysis by those who don’t care to understand the internal dynamics of other countries. It’s also one which inflates the omnipotence — and interest — of the U.S. while denying the agency of domestic actors. (The United States has not had an ambassador in Bolivia for more than 10 years, and both the DEA and USAID were kicked out of the country by Morales years ago. Far from its Cold War reputation as an all-powerful puppet master, the U.S. now treats Latin America with indifference and neglect. Today, the foreign power that matters in the region is China.)

Keith Johnson on the role of natural resources in the situation ("is lithium the new oil?"):

The notion that Evo Morales was an obstacle to the exploitation of Bolivia’s lithium potential, and that his ouster in some way is meant to open the door for multinationals to tap Bolivia’s mineral wealth, is upside down. For more than a decade, Morales talked of turning Bolivia into a lithium powerhouse and made the full-scale development of the country’s mineral resources a staple of his economic vision. While Morales spoke of using these resources to benefit all Bolivians, deals that would bring the benefits he claimed never really materialized. [...] 

[Globally] China dominates the production of lithium-ion batteries, for the same reason it rules so many other areas of manufacturing: moderately cheap, well-educated labor mixed with extensive infrastructure, combined with major government investment in electric vehicles. That’s an issue U.S. strategists have raised in the last few years, but the problem isn’t a lack of supply of lithium itself; China sources most of its lithium from Australia and Chile, rather than domestic mining.  

Chile and Argentina have far higher-quality reserves of lithium and more favorable climatic conditions for the type of lithium mining carried out in South America. That means they are much, much more appealing as a source of lithium than Bolivia is, at least with current technology. They are also both allies of the United States, as is Australia, the other major lithium producer. In other words, there’s no need for Washington to resort to shady means to ensure a questionable source for something it already has a plentiful supply of.

Holy sh*** this can't be real??

From a WaPo article on the impeachment hearings, but really should be the Enquirer or something:

During the course of the phone call from the restaurant [in Kyiv, Ukraine], [US Ambasssador to EU Gordon] Sondland also consulted with Trump on another matter of importance to the president at the time: efforts to free the American rapper A$AP Rocky from jail in Sweden at the request of reality television star Kim Kardashian. 

The same day as his July 25 phone call with Zelensky, Trump lashed out at Sweden on Twitter and demanded the nation free the American rapper despite his assault charge from his role in a street brawl. 

“Give A$AP Rocky his FREEDOM,” Trump tweeted. “We do so much for Sweden but it doesn’t seem to work the other way around. Sweden should focus on its real crime problem!” 

Sondland, according to [American diplomat David] Holmes’s opening statement, advised Trump to “let him get sentenced, play the racism card, give him a ticker-tape when he comes home.” Sondland added that Sweden should have released the rapper on Trump’s word, but the president could at least tell the Kardashians he tried, according to Holmes’s recollection. 

According to a senior White House aide, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a diplomatic issue, Sondland was involved in the A$AP Rocky effort because of his relationship with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, and because Trump saw him as “the Europe guy.” 

Apart from sending national security adviser Robert O’Brien, who was then his top hostage negotiator, to intervene in the matter, Trump pressured Sweden’s leader on a phone call to release the rapper, saying that the United States does a lot for Sweden and Sweden should do this for him, according to a U.S. official. 

Swedish officials tried to explain they needed to let the courts deal with the matter, but Trump was angered, saying it should have been easy for the Swedish government to do as he asked, the official said. Swedish officials were baffled by Trump’s aggressive involvement in the case, the official added. 

In early August, Sweden released A$AP Rocky from jail after he was detained for a month on assault charges. According to the official familiar with the episode, Trump was frustrated that he didn’t get enough credit for securing the rapper’s release.

Pierre Delecto speaks!

Solid burn from Sen. Mitt Romney aka Pierre Delecto:

'“I think people forget I worked for 10 years as a management consultant,” Romney said, referring to his time at Bain & Company. “Which meant I was able to make no decisions, I was able to get nothing done, and I had to try and convince people through a long process.” In retrospect, it seems, he was destined for the U.S. Congress.'