Four Year Wonders Got Married: Ochka and ML

[olgac]

Interesting. Are You even married at all?
I am with my husband for 26.5 years. We have a child in college. For the last 10 years I have earned twice as much as him before we both retired (he is 9 years older)
Did I care he can't take care of me and my children? First of all he could on his salary, second I was making more than enough to take care
of me, several children and probably my parents too, except my parents are also in computer science, came here on
work visas and also made a lot of money.
Providing for me is not at all what I was looking for in a man, I had a good job even before I came to US (I was doing consulting for American companies) My husband was a developer himself in SF Bay Area and he knew he would most
probably double his salary in marriage. We also did a lot of rock climbing and backpacking together back then.
And there was and still is a lot of physical attraction

I sure hope the woman You end up marrying is not just looking for a provider

If my husband passes away before me and I decide to get re-married (highly unlikely) I will for sure plan for a divorce
and get a strong prenup before marrying since it's a smart thing to do.

[olgac]

But about my friend You are correct: my former coworkers who are her age normally married someone in 20s
However she is talking now to a Belorussian developer from Amazon from Bay Area so we will see 😊

[krimster2]

olga, BeeFarmer is an American Incel, he has yet to have a serious relationship with a woman
however HE considers himself to be an expert on this subject and all other related subjects that he's read self-help books about
unfortunately, he has no awareness of how ridiculous he sounds, becuz he is socially isolated

I find him amusing and like to ridicule him, cuz I'm a mean bastard

[olgac]

Oh cool thank You for the summary

[ML]

Trench mentioned this  book (by Jens Muhling) several months ago and I bought it at that time.

Finally finished reading it . . . during my bathroom visits.

Can't say that I would recommend it to anyone.

It is just compilation of places he visited and random Ukrainians he encountered and talked with.

[Trenchcoat]

Trench mentioned this  book (by Jens Muhling) several months ago and I bought it at that time.

Finally finished reading it . . . during my bathroom visits.

Can't say that I would recommend it to anyone.

It is just compilation of places he visited and random Ukrainians he encountered and talked with.

It was 'Civ' I believe that mentioned this book originally, I knew nothing of it until he mentioned it. I bought it too as I could get a new hardback copy of it cheap here for a few pounds. It's a reasonable thick book and I haven't had a chance to fully read it yet but thought as it's so cheap I would get it too as I am eager to get insights into Ukraine. It probably isn't all that but at the price I thought it cheap enough to browse over in my spare time if spare time ever occurs for me again lol.

The book I recommended was, 'Gates of Europe, A history of Ukraine' that I believe is a good enough read into the history of the Ukraine region and well worth getting and reading.

[ML]

The book I recommended was, 'Gates of Europe, A history of Ukraine' that I believe is a good enough read into the history of the Ukraine region and well worth getting and reading.

Yes, I posted my review of this book here back in September 2024.
I strongly recommended it.

http://www.russianwomendiscussion.com/index.php?topic=25886.msg572811#msg572811

[ML]

My hot neighbor

[ML]

http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=music+to+%22carol+of+the+bells%22#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:7523b8f5,vid:SQadcm_dwEM,st:0

[ML]

Merry Christmas and best wishes for New Year 2025 to all my friends and enemies here.

[ML]

Today we hosted the parents of Ukrainian professors and professionals here in our town.

They have come here to escape the terror of the war in Ukraine.
Most are very much wanting to return to Ukraine ASAP.

Wife is between ages of the professors and their parents.

Most of the women wish my wife were their DIL, rather than what exists.

About half of them are trying very hard to learn English; the other half not trying at all.

I stay with them during the meal, and then go off to my office so they can talk in Ukrainian without needing to interpret for me.

[ML]

Angela Merkel Wants Her Memoir to Save Her Crumbling Legacy. It’s Backfiring.

Her new book, “Freedom”—published in late November in nearly 30 languages—is riling up even some of her most ardent supporters, in part because Merkel declines to consider that any of the policies of her four-term chancellorship, from 2005 to 2021, might have been misguided.

“Much pride, little self-reflection” was the headline that the powerful German state broadcaster ARD, the key media platform of Merkel’s time in power, put on its capital bureau’s report on the book’s launch. Merkel’s own political heirs in the Christian Democratic party say that publicity around the memoir is damaging their current election campaign. They blame their unpopularity on the challenges they inherited from Merkel and lament that voters are now reminded by the book that she—and by extension, her party—helped create the country’s problems.
Merkel has been criticized for opening Germany’s borders too much during her term.

“The publication of this unrepentant, self-righteous book at a time of economic and political turmoil like this is hurting the conservative bloc,” said Nico Lange, a former senior official in Merkel’s government.

The reaction is accelerating the already-sharp downturn Merkel’s standing has taken since she left office. For most of her 16 years as chancellor, her domestic approval ratings were among the highest of all European leaders. But in recent years both the German public and her one-time supporters abroad have turned against her signature policies and initiatives.

Formerly celebrated in some quarters for opening Germany’s doors to asylum seekers who began flooding Europe’s borders in 2015, Merkel is now held responsible for the many problems that accompanied the influx. Though she left behind a comparatively strong German economy, the country’s famed infrastructure was starved of funding during her tenure and, to Germans’ consternation, is quickly decaying. Once dubbed the “Putin whisperer” who alone could keep the Russian leader in check, her critics say she enabled his invasion of Ukraine. Her aggressive push to quickly phase out German nuclear power—in response to the nuclear accidents at Japan’s Fukushima reactors in 2011—now draws criticism for making Germany too dependent on fuel from Russia.

“Her key policies have all been exposed as wrong by the passage of time,” said Andreas Rödder, the chair for modern and contemporary history at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany. “Only a few years later her era feels like ancient history.” Even the international media that once lauded her as the effective leader of the free world—partly as a counterpoint to Donald Trump in his first term—have taken the opportunity of the book’s release to offer critical reassessments. The Financial Times, which in 2015 called her “one of Germany’s great chancellors,” wrote in response to her memoir that she was “the most damaging European leader since 1945.”

The former physicist’s sober and consensual approach to politics was a hallmark of her long years in office. As Germany’s first female chancellor, Merkel seemed free of the vanity of alpha-male politicians. But in her memoir and the interviews surrounding it, she has shown a different, more defensive side, doubling down on even her most divisive decisions and swatting away criticism. It does not, she told CNN, “make a whole lot of sense” to question her judgments with the benefit of hindsight: “We always have to look at matters under the conditions we were in then.”

In that context, Merkel insists in the book, her policies had “no alternative”—a phrase she often used to justify them while in office. This response was the inspiration for the name of a once-tiny anti-Merkel party, Alternative for Germany, whose aggressively nationalist and anti-immigrant views have now helped it become Germany’s second-largest political force.

The book’s prologue states a mission typical of political memoirists: to protect her narrative of the past. “I didn’t want to leave the further telling of the story and the interpretation only to others.”

On immigration, Merkel says she was guided by a humanitarian imperative and would not change her call: “For me this was not about an ‘influx,’ but about people, and it was fully irrelevant whether they had a right to stay in Germany or not.” The consequences—failed integration, ballooning welfare spending, rising crime, political polarization—can be partly blamed, she writes, on Germans’ lack of “will to change.” 

In the decade since she instituted her open-door policy, immigration has changed the face of Germany and its political dynamics. An average of around 400,000 immigrants—the population of a large German city—have entered each year, and Germany now spends as much on refugees as it does on defense.

She is similarly unapologetic about her management of Germany’s infrastructure, once the envy of the world but now crumbling. The fabled autobahns are dilapidated, a bridge collapsed recently, trains have become notoriously late, and countries including Romania now boast faster internet speeds.

Policy experts partly blame a cap on state borrowing that has tied the hands of politicians—a cap that was constitutionally enshrined at Merkel’s behest to ensure the fiscal discipline she was known for. It can’t be circumvented for urgent needs like infrastructure investment or rearming the country as war rages in Europe. A two-thirds majority in parliament is needed to overhaul it, which has been impossible amid the country’s recently fractured politics.

Russia and Putin, Merkel’s memoir reveals, were unparalleled sources of fascination and trepidation for her. She fondly recounts her first visit to Siberia as chancellor, when Putin served her a delicious brown bear steak (“it was something special”). But he also made her and others wait for him at meetings, in an obvious power play, and brought his Labrador to one of their meetings after he learned she had a dog phobia. 

As the only Western leader who kept in constant contact with Putin, she recalls how she worked with him to circumvent U.S. sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Even after Putin’s first invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in 2014, she helped him build the pipeline, seeking to double Russian gas exports to Germany. “Germany’s strong industrial base had to be secured,” she says. “That would guarantee jobs and, as a result, social security.” Failing to work with Putin was “not an option,” she writes, even after he told her that he was ultimately out to destroy the EU.

Merkel calls the international uproar over the pipeline insincere, saying that the U.S. wanted to sell its own natural gas and allies such as Poland and Ukraine also acted out of economic self-interest. Her Eastern European critics, Merkel writes “appeared to wish that Russia would simply vanish and cease to exist…but Russia, heavily armed with nuclear weapons, existed.”

Putin trusted her to wield her veto to keep Ukraine out of NATO, she reports. “But you won’t be chancellor forever,” he told her. Merkel’s refusal to re-evaluate her Ukraine policy has elicited perhaps the most visceral reaction to the book. She says that international peace talks must now settle the war over the head of Ukraine’s president. The conflict can’t be won with weapons, she argues. “It would be a mistake to underestimate Putin,” she writes of the European response. “Our strength is large, but not unlimited.”

Merkel’s memoir testifies to her limited perception of political realities, wrote Richard J. Evans, Regius Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Cambridge, in a review of the book. “Perhaps the things we learn about her are not really the ones she wanted us to learn.”

[krimster2]

gasterbeitern didn't start with Merkel
it started with the end of Hitler
cuz 1/4 of one of the key labor demographics was killed in Hitler's Special Military Operations
and Deutchland had "no alternative" as the article sez
they leave that out

same thing will happen in Russia, a huge labor migration from central asia/asia to Russia, Russia has "no alternative" either
and ya know what homey? NEITHER DO WE!!!

Russia will one day be a minority orthodox christian country
and will be considered as "white Uyghurs" by Han Chinese
wussup my Uyghur? Uyghur PLEEZE!!!!

[Trenchcoat]

Well looks like laffing in his scholz will soon be out of office and Merz of the CDU will be there in his place. Afd looks like they will be putting in a strong performance in upcoming elections in Germany. Will be interesting to see if any change in Ukraine policy by Germany after these elections take place.

[ML]

We have a wood burning whole house furnace at our country house.

Have to periodically bring in firewood.

http://www.facebook.com/reel/591722813612941

[ML]

For Christmas I bought my wife 12 pair of sexy panties, all the same color.

She said:  People are going to think I don't change my panties.

Me:  What people ???

[ML]

Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are to be renamed to:

USA Ocean East and USA Ocean West.

[krimster2]

dewd, we can rename Earth to America!!!
then there isn't even a southern border, it's a state line!!!!

can somebody connect me to President Trump?
Hello? Mr Trump...?
what, he's in Greenland? Well is Mizzus Trump in?
darn it....

[ML]

List her 5 major defects.

[ML]

Hegseth 51-50.

[ML]

This should be illegal that a man can have such an age difference with his gal.

What has he got that the rest of us don't have to attract such a gal.

[krimster2]

not sure what ya mean, for the area I live in, they're a pretty average looking couple...

[2tallbill]

not sure what ya mean, for the area I live in, they're a pretty average looking couple...

But she doesn't know squat about football. Can you imagine needing to explain everything to her?

[ML]

The UBN team has spoken to several Russians who immigrated to the US in the early 2000s and 2010s. Now they are US citizens and living good lives in America, but their families still live in various regions of Russia. According to dozens of their relatives, sanctions have significantly impacted the country's economy, causing many mid- and small-sized businesses to shut down. Over the past three years, inflation has skyrocketed and many people have lost their jobs, leading to a difficult situation. According to those interviewed, in rural areas every third person has lost their job in the last three years.
 
The Russian economy has suffered significantly if we exclude Moscow and St. Petersburg. Some workers cannot find jobs that pay $200 to $300 a month. Furthermore, due to sanctions, Russian men cannot travel to certain countries for work and support their families by working abroad, leaving them with no way to support their families. What is the only option left? You are correct: Join the army! Thus, Western sanctions have worsened the Russian economy to the point where Russian men have no choice but to fight in the war to earn a few thousand dollars every month in addition to a large signing bonus. If we think that the impact of Western sanctions on Putin’s situation is exclusively negative, we are very, very wrong. No, he has more people willing to kill Ukrainians to make ends meet.

[krimster2]

none of my Russian in-laws "volunteered" to fight in Ukraine
they were hand delivered an official letter and then soldiers came and picked them up
and they were all middle-aged men with families
Russians don't need to bribe people, when they can arrest anyone they want for anything, at anytime

The War is fought on two battlefields
one is in Ukraine, and the other is within the Russian economy
the economy is the Anvil
the War is the Smith's Hammer
and the Smith is the Ukrainian people

The West control's the Size of the Smith's Hammer
Putin wants it to be as small as possible
and Trump WANTS to give Putin what he WANTS, so Putin will give Trump what he WANTS

and we get to watch the Puppet Show they're gonna put on for us
which should start...real soon now...