And The Hits Just Keep On Comin'

 History was made today, all right.

Glorious Reinforcements Ship Out

Codename: Spetzsnooze

We knew the Russian Army once stopped the Germans at Stalingrad. We just didn't expect Marshall Putin to draft veterans of that war now.

Forward movement? They'll be lucky to accomplish a bowel movement. 

And offensive operations will have to halt every day for the 2PM nap time. But now everyone will know what the Zs on their vehicles stand for: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

And their medics will need to add nitroglycerin and Flomax to their aid kits.

What will be the most important logistical item to supply to this army? Depends.

BOLO

After exhaustive criminal psychological and forensic investigation, these are the only suspects who fit the correct profile to have committed the dastardly sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines in the Baltic Sea this week. Help bring them to justice. Operators are standing by.

You Should Read This

 

Lawdog thinks the Russians deliberately blew up their pipelines too. 

But inadvertently and negligently, not purposeful sabotage.

Which is still going to cause volcanic butthurt to those who knee-jerked straight to " 'merica did it."

RTWT.

I'd link him over yonder --->, but for his twice-annual posting.

As Crazy As...

If you stop imagining Putin as your boyfriend,
here to save the world, it isn't crazy at all.

When You ASSUME

"Of course the U.S. did this. Biden said they'd do it, and the Navy had a ship practically in that exact spot, doing "underwater mine-clearing" operations. Sh'yeah, right; as if. This was totally the U.S." - every 80 IQ lackwit from Hell to breakfast, right now

We've already had proposed, and disposed of, the notion that Emperor Stumblefuck Poopypants I said any such thing, nor has any input, direct or indirect, on US foreign or military policy, nor ever has. The mere suggestion is fatuous, and risible, since ever.

So now, let's examine why what you assume you know is wrong, and why most people beyond their depth can't think their way out of a wet paper bag, and don't know what they don't know.

Above is the USS Kearsarge, LHD-3. The US Navy lists it as an Amphibious Assault Ship. And it is, for reasons we'll get into. It was the USN ship (head of an amphib task force, actually) nearest the recent difficulties with the NordStream I & II pipelines, and that rough proximity has induced every internet window-licker to point at the US and say "J'accuse!".  But let's get serious now.

It's a fucking aircraft carrier. If any one of twenty other nations deployed it, it would be called an aircraft carrier. Starting with the obvious: it carries aircraft. QED.

It's 843' long. For reference, it's the size of a WWII fleet carrier, like the USS Enterprise (only 827' long). The biggest aircraft carrier of WWII, the IJN Shinano, was only 872' long. So if you think Kearsarge isn't an aircraft carrier for all intents and purposes, Zombie Admirals Spruance, Halsey, and Nimitz would like to kick your balls up around your cerebellum for a bit, while they discuss the finer points of naval architecture.

Is has a crew of 1200 squids. They act funny, and they eat too much, but generally, onboard the ships of the Gator Freighter fleet, they're pretty damned good at their jobs, which is taking the Marines where they want to go, and putting them on the beach. They've only had about  250 years of practice at this skillset, and they've definitely gotten the hang of it.

As the above photo shows, it embarks a complement of MV-22 Osprey VTOL a/c (9 of which are visible above). You can also see 4 AH-1W Super Cobra helicopter gunships, 3 AV-8B Harrier II strike fighters, and a UH-60 Seahawk helicopter. For the math-impaired, that's 17 aircraft. Plus whatever's one floor down on the hangar deck. The standard deployment pack is 6 Harriers, 12 Ospreys, the same 4 Super Cobras, 4 Sea Stallion heavy-lift helos, plus 3-4 Uh1s or SH-60s. That's 30 aircraft. Carried onboard, and launchable from the ship while underway.

Aircraft. Carrier.

And 2-3 LCAC or LCU amphibious hovercraft, and/or a dozen amtrac amphibious assault craft.

That's the air component of a MAGTF BLT: a USMC air-ground Battalion Landing Team. If you think a mere hundred fifty or so paratroops from the 82d AB or Rangers in a C-141 are a can of whoop-ass, try on 1900 of Uncle Sam's Misguided Children for size. Rangers seize airfields. (And they do it very well.) BLTs seize capitols. And countries. You could look it up.

That's just the Kearsarge. Also present in the same task force were two other USN ships, with another complement of squids, plus another 2000 or so Marines, plus a company of tanks, a battery of artillery, a Force Recon element, and an entire Marine infantry battalion that's been drilled and checked off on Special Operations.

And because of all that, they're the absolute last guys anyone would use for blowing up an undersea pipeline.

Because what they usually don't embark, at least 99% of the time, are a complement of Navy SEALs.

And blowing up pipelines at 240' depth is not a job for Force Recon. Nor Air Farce PJs. Nor Army SF. It's what SEALs are for.

Onboard a BLT task force like the Kearsarge group, with 3000 guys embarked, there's always a hundred swinging Richards on deck, on the catwalk, at the hull openings, on the hangar deck, on the well deck, and wherever, on duty and off, seeing every damned thing going on. And at least one of the little shits, from the green side or the blue side, is going to write home, or phone home on port call, or these days, whip out his cell phone and video the goings on, or do some other sillyass thing, and OPSEC goes out the porthole or down the shitter.

You don't use BLTs for Sneaky Pete missions. You use them to kick down the door, with embarked CNN camera crews, blow the shit out of some assholes who desperately need it, topple a communist dictator, rescue American hostages, and/or such other duties as the president may direct, televised live to the world. Since fucking ever. It is the antithesis of a clandestine operation. It's a no-knock SWAT raid on an entire city or a country, FFS, with everybody watching.  

The fact that the Kearsarge TF was within a hundred miles is how anybody knows we didn't do it. 

{Doing something with a USN aircraft carrier amphib task force on top of it would be doing it while wearing a rainbow wig, flashing LED bow tie, and size 32 clown shoes, while jingling a stick with 27 cowbells on it. Briefly detail all US clandestine operations from 1900-present that fit that profile. (If the word clandestine has you stumped, click the link).}

Because with a task group like that, those of us embarked assumed (correctly in the 1980s, but now...??) that along with our Gator Freighter/Aircraft Carrier, the BLT, an LST with the tank company and LAVs, and a fleet oiler floating gas can, there was probably an SSN out somewhere in front of us, breaking trail, snooping and pooping, exactly like an undersea cav scout. That's their entire mission set, along with finding and, when directed, servicing enemy targets, like other subs, before they found and sunk us.

That SSN might have an embarked SEAL detachment, which is where you'd want those guys.

So let's talk about that possibility.

SEALs could have taken those pipelines out, with childish ease.

Because the bubbleheads of the Silent Service, unlike the blabbermouthed embarked Marine supercargo and squid crews on an amphib ship, keeps their fucking mouths shut about everything they do. For, like, decades and decades. The crap they pulled in the 1950s and 1960s is just now trickling out. Redacted and sheep-dipped all to hell, btw.

But they have Operational Rules. Like, "If there's no one around for hundreds of miles, but your shit starts exploding, that was us."

So they wouldn't do this with a BLT amphib TF within sonar range of a loud fart when this happened. Just like the predictability of the Air Farce kicking in Saddam's front door was at O-dark-thirty, the one proof the SEALs did something is that there are no US forces visible within an entire time zone, and no one has any idea who pulled it off, or how.

Secondly, they like to use Draeger rebreathers. Pure oxygen, no bubbles. Problem: oxygen gets all fatal to the operator at depths below 30'. So 240'-deep pipelines would be a no-go for their go-to rebreathers. Using scuba or mixed gas rigs would work, but anyone on the surface could see the bubbles, and the lock-in lock-out decompression would be prohibitive at that depth, assuming they had a decompression chamber (big enough to accommodate the entire team) emplaced on the deck of the sub involved.

Thirdly, while 240' is deep for free divers or minisubs, it's pretty fucking shallow for the full-sized ones. The Kattegat, and for that matter, the entire Baltic, is a small, heavily travelled, and effing shallow pond to be operating inside of. Both NATO and the (formerly) neutral countries take a dim view of subs that stray into territorial waters, and more than a few Russian sub captains have been hounded right the hell out of the area. And to surface combatants, all subs are hostile until proven innocent. (And if you think Norway, Denmark, or Sweden would just sign off and become co-conspirators - and keep that secret to the grave - on us slipping in to blow up the gas supply of the rest of NATO, I have a bridge to sell you, cheap.)

That's before we talk about the SOSUS network(s) in the Baltic, which probably comprises both ours and Russia's, and sees anything larger than a Bayliner cabin cruiser coming and going.

Finally, the whole point of a clandestine operation is to do something in such a way that you can plausibly claim "We didn't do it. No one saw us do it. You can't prove a thing."

Instead, the lumpenproletariat internet idiots worldwide assumes just the opposite. Because Biden babbled about what we could  do (not what we would do, short-attention span midwits). Because the Kearsarge TF was within rock-throwing range of the pipeline rupture sites. Because the TF was publicly acknowledged beforehand to be practicing "undersea mine clearance". Because we'd already warned the Germans and other NATO Euros that something was rumbled as about to happen, so presumably they would be watching it too.

Us doing this under those conditions would be dumber than OJ buying a knife, a ski mask, and black gloves, the week before cutting his ex-wife's head off.

And just because he was that stupid, and Emperor Stumblefuck Poopypants I is that stupid, you don't get to bootstrap this into "the entire US defense and intelligence establishment would go along with something so blisteringly stupid, even though doing this would poison NATO forever, drive Europe into Putin's arms, destroy the economies of 14 of our closest allies, give Russia the Victim Card, and open the entire Western society and infrastructure worldwide to whatever retaliation, including via ICBM, Vlad gets it into his silly head to undertake".

Call me when you pull 200 blackjacks in a row at a Vegas table. Then we'll talk about how many moronic stupidities in a row you'd need to line up to pull this one off the way you think it went down, if your excuse is "but the Navy was doing ops there".

And knowing that, anyone pointing to Biden's blather, or the presence of the US dotMil nearby, as being any serious rationale for American involvement, rather than 57 arguments against us doing it, plus the perfect opportunity for Russia to attempt to pin the tail on the scapegoat, to then be swallowed by a world where 50% of the population has an IQ under 99: Put your thinking cap back on, and try again.

Put on your cap, pick up the chalk, and get busy.

Occam's Razor 1, Usual Suspects 0

 

Explain in Comments why Saint Putin of the KGB would never, ever do something this devious and evil, and why Emperor Stumblefuck Poopypants I is too savvy to walk into this with his thumb in his mouth, drool running down to his elbow, and his pants around his ankles. Show all work.

If you cannot do that, STFU.

Seriously: if all you've got is naked gainsaying, don't bother. That will probably weed out all but one or two weakly argued attempts. Bring your A game, or stay in the bleachers. I'm too busy today to argue with retards. DLTDHYITAOYWO.

Motives:

Europe has nothing to gain from this, and everything to lose.

The U.S. has nothing to gain from this, and everything to lose.

Russia has everything  to gain from this, and little, if anything, to lose. And if the time comes to rebuild the pipeline, Europe will gladly pay every penny, directly or indirectly. Net loss to Russia: ₱0.

Means:

For the low-information punditry, the pipelines sit at a depth of about 240 feet of water. Not thousands of feet down.

Anybody with a rowboat, a fish finder, 20 pounds of Semtex, and a few hundred feet of det cord had the means to do this. It isn't WWII: You don't have to swim over to it and wrap explosives around the pipeline to get the job done, FFS.

Been to sea, and still had to have this explained to you?
Stop licking the windows on the short bus.

That leaves the possible suspects at 150 nations, and 58 terrorist organizations. And 98% of the later have long historical ties for financing and supply from Russia and her client states.

Hell, it even leaves the list of suspects with the means at hundreds of corporations, and thousands of beer-drinking stump-blasting bass-cranking Bass Pro Shop Good Ole Bubbas from the Carolinas to the Colorado River, just off the top of my head, without even breaking a sweat.

Thousands and thousands of potential suspects could have done this. It's not like finding the Titanic "somewhere" in the North Atlantic.

So what say let's all stop pretending,  a la MSNBC, it was the January 6th Coup Attempt trying to land a manned mission on Mars to conquer the solar system.

So: Russia wouldn't do this? With everything to gain, and nothing to lose??

Grow the fuck up.

Zero downside, could have paid for it out of petty cash/pocket change, and it would have taken about 3 minutes to plan and a half an hour to execute.

They could, and they did.

QED

UPDATE: More grist for the mill.

Fiat Pacem

 

Our most sincere well-wishes for continued safety to Silicon Graybeard, Borepatch, Divemedic, Big Country, Angus McThag, their families, and anyone else in the downrange vicinity of Ian these next few days. May they remain safe, dry, and well until it passes.

We're also hoping Sean Penn flies a helicopter right into the approaching eye, to see what help he might bring Cuba, but that's probably too much to ask for.

Laughs Sovietly

Don't Blame Me

 Wilder said it

I just make the memes.

Natzsofast, Guido

WRSA posted the above FAS graphic today as part of a larger meme dump. One ought to be careful when publishing the propaganda of communist front groups. The technical term for the FAS' poster is "lying by omission". We have amended the graphic to read more accurately.

One is forced to conclude the primary motivation for Putin's repeated Ukrainian land grabs since 2014 is that he did them mainly because he could.

Thus becoming lesson 8,000,012 in world history on why you never give up your weapons.

Inflation

 

But I'm sure it's because there's no recession well underway.

Sunday Music: Folsom Prison Blues

 

Johnny Cash's 1955 song, which became his signature piece, the opening to his act most of his career (Hello. I'm Johnny Cash..."), and the live performance of which, released as the opening cut of his first live album At Folsom Prison in 1968 single-handedly revived his flagging career, became his first #1 country album, which was voted one of the best albums of all time on multiple lists, paved the way to his mainstream success, including a TV show, went triple platinum by Cash's death in 2003, and won him his first solo Country vocal Grammy in 1969, the year he sold more albums than the Beatles. There is no more quintessential American song or artist than this track. 

Entropy Works

 ...and then Wilder said...

More On Chronic Putardation

 

Nuclear Option

1) It's not 1945 any more. No one has a monopoly on nuclear force. A "limited" nuclear war doesn't stay limited. Five thousand simulations have demonstrated this to the point it's beyond arguing. Pop one nuke, anywhere, and it snowballs in a couple of days until someone shoots their leader in the head, or until everything north of the equator is radioactive glass. Russia pops a nuke, anywhere, they're signaling their wish for an extinction-level societal event.

2) Russian generals know this too. Which makes popping Putin's pumpkin head with a pistol far easier than complying with a nuclear deployment or launch order, and orders of magnitude more likely.

3) We know this too. Which means the odds are, no one will pay any attention to this as anything other than a bluff, on the theory that Russia isn't as crazy as Putin is. If we're wrong, Australia, Brazil, and Argentina can fight over the world in a hundred years. (Related Food For Thought: Different CinC for sure, but when Russia released control of WMDs in Syria in 2017 and used them on rebels there, we wiped out an entire Russian Air Wing there next day with 59 Tomahawk missiles with the hint not to deploy WMDs again. Putin pops a nuke in Ukraine, or anywhere else, and the engines will start warming up at the 509th and 131st BWs in Whiteman. After that it gets ugly.)

4) So his nukes are an empty rattle unless he's got a death wish for the entire Russian people, and Putin's going to have to dance with the gal who brung him: his drunken, incompetent, untrained and ill-prepared Russian Army boobs and bumpkins. Boo frickin' hoo.

Conventional Forces

1) Putin has plenty of troops already. So why "mobilize" partially?

2) Because he has thousands of miles of hostile borders, with every single nation. Russia has fought China, and incurred thousands of casualties in border skirmishes over the last century. They're not friendly with Iran or Afghanistan either. Turkey, Norway, and the Baltic States are NATO. Finland and Sweden want to be. Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, and Hungary are also NATO, and have no wish to return to the fold of their temporary overlords from Moscow; in fact, they're rabidly strident about that point.

3) More than half a dozen -stans have no wish to be under Moscow's thumb either, and they make that point known to Moscow every few years, violently. St. Petersburg is a looong way from Moscow as well. And even the Russian capital is no hotbed of Putin-lovers these days, or any days.

4) In short, Putin has a metric fuckton of conflicts that need troops to staff them, 24/7/365. None of those guys can be pulled without risking invasion, internal disaster, or even civil war. Bummer, for Vlad.

5) Those conscripts haven't been in the military for months to years. It will be months and months before they can be processed, re-trained, equipped, and deployable to units, whether piecemeal, or wholesale. That's next spring, at the earliest, before they make any difference at all. And then he'll have 300,000 green, untested troops to throw at a problem that 190,000 soldiers have proven unable to handle. Or with people who don't want to be there at all left to guard his vital national interests from actual enemies, while moving, at great difficulty and expense, the better-prepared and more politically reliable units to the Ukrainian meatgrinder. Well-played, MápШaԯ. That will turn out well.

6) Russian doctrine since ever is to reinforce success, not failure. That's true at the soldier level, and the army level. They don't reinforce struggling units, they leave them to their fate, and send fresh troops to make new attacks.

7) The problem in Ukraine is the US, NATO, the whole world, and 3000 satellites, are all watching everything Putin does, live and in color. Elon Musk has single-handedly given Ukraine a first-world satcom comms capability. Putin's a two-dimensional thinker in a three-dimensional battlespace. And he's paying for that now, in real time.

8) His forces right now continue to get rolled back, in most cases faster than they can make defensive lines to hold. 

Political Sideshow

1) Trying faux referendums, among a population that is either dead by Russia's hand, refugees in Poland and Slovakia, or rabidly anti-Russia in the occupied zones isn't going to fly. Nobody will buy the bullshit, and it will be d.o.a. anywhere it's peddled.

2) Putin wants to claim this is about protecting Russian sovereignty. The problem with that is that he thinks "Russia" is any territory he wants to grab ahold of, whether they want it or not. If he and his murderous military fucktards would simply fuck off, and march back to Russian territory mutually agreed upon by all parties as of December 31, 1990, he'd be at peace with the world. Nobody wants to talk about that inconvenient little truth. GTFO of Ukraine, and MYOB, respecting the status quo ante, and this is over by breakfast tomorrow.

3) India has openly rebuked him for the Ukrainian war, and China has "severe doubts and hesitations" about his entire ill-advised enterprise. His alliances of convenience are becoming inconvenient to the only allies he has in the world.

Conclusions

You don't mobilize reserves and send in 150% more people than you started out with when you're winning a war. Look no farther than LBJ or Dubbya to figure out the truth of that statement. So Russia isn't winning this, and they've obviously even gone beyond what the initial troop commitment could get and hold. And they're not done losing yet.

Current Russian losses are lied about by both sides, but anyone who believes Ukraine managed to bum rush a million square miles of territory and more out of Russia's grasp because the Russians were retreating faster than Ukraine could catch up to them, and suffered negligible casualties in such a wholesale rout, is smoking truckloads of hopeium. 

If you think Russia is going to strike back, it begs the question: If they were any such competent, and capable, why did they get their asses kicked back inside the Russian border in the first place?

Because they're not that competent and capable. Duh.

The initial offensive has slowed, but not stopped, and Ukraine is putting continual pressure on Russian forces, increasingly against troops poorly motivated, abysmally led, and running out of critical supplies. The retreat and despair grows by the day, which emboldens Ukraine, and encourages the West to continue and indeed increase supplying Ukraine with what they need to humble Russia all the way back to inside their own borders - where Putin should've kept them in the first place.

The losses that have to be the highest now are in Moscow. Anti-war protests by hundreds and thousands of Muscovites who said "Hell no! We won't go!" sprung up within hours of Putin's mobilization. Bombs are being thrown at his motorcade. And at this rate, the only unit taking more casualties than the ones in contact with Ukrainian forces in Kharkiv and Donbas are Putin's food-tasters in the Kremlin. He's probably losing 100 a week at the current rate.

And it's a going to be a long, cold winter ahead of him.

For the midwits out there trying to do this with half the IQ points needed, Putin's a world-class @$$hole because he's a KGB thug and ruthless murdering dick-tater, always has been one (you could look it up) since ever, and not because Poopypants likes him or hates him. You're not right on this because you're opposed to Emperor Poopypants' opinion, you're wrong because you're twenty-five years behind the curve on Vlad. You have enemies closer to home than Vlad, but they're not your only enemies. When you set the problem up wrong, you'll never get the right answer.

50:50 odds Putin never sees Christmas if nothing changes. Even if he does, Santa's bringing him a lump of coal. And if he's very, very lucky, it won't be from the charred remains of his army, or his capital.

For Safekeeping, Of Course

But only until you get the hanging gibbet built.

Wilder's got another good post up today. RTWT.

And now you know the answer.

Jackass II

The jokes write themselves. Bummer for Russophiles.

 

Kapitan Ahabski Demands: "Get.That. Whale!"

 

We have a banana republic fraudulent selectee who shits his pants and babbles incoherently.

Russia has a psychotic megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur. (Cue the anonymous butthurt poo-flinging monkeys in comments.)

Now he's trying the 800 lb. Gorilla Bluff, to buy his way out of the most epic politico-military miscalculation of modern history. Perhaps by the kiloton.

He blames the West for rattling the nuclear saber, when he himself has done it first, times beyond counting since December.

He's scapegoating his own forces' manifest total incompetence, and inability to prosecute what should have been a week-long occupation, onto NATO Nazis directly making war on his drunken bumpkins. He's forgotten that the only people in Russia who fought actual Nazis are 95 years or more old, or dead. Mostly dead.

And he thinks he can bluster this into a "democratic" solution amidst the war he initiated by annexing the Sudentenland and Alsace after a fake election or three, in which he'll win 137% of the votes. Yeah, everyone will fall for that.

He fiddles faster, while Rome burns. And his alliances of convenience with China and India are getting shakier by the day, right before his eyes. His own "allies" aren't buying the bullshit anymore.

Greatest probabilities? This ends one of two ways:

1) This asshole has no choice but to go all-in on his busted straight, and he starts a global thermonuclear war. (Because just what you want to do when your best troops can't handle a neighbor fighting at 1/10th your strength, is to get more countries wanting to take you on.)

2) He has a 9mm stroke through the earhole, his brains are scattered all over the desktop opposite him, the general with the smoking gun throws in the cards, and there's a sudden change in leadership in Russia.

There is no likely third way out that's anything but a distant hope.

At any rate, these are exactly the actions of a desperate man, losing his war soundly, not someone waging 47D chess against a puny upstart. Even those gargling his junk have to see that, and admit the obvious.

(BTW, the Ukrainian offensive, north and south, hasn't halted, merely slowed, and Russian forces are continuing to get their asses handed to them and/or retreat faster than they can stabilize their lines. How sad.)

And your entire future on this planet comes down to the sanity and circumspection of his senior military and political staff. The fate of the world now hangs on the wisdom and sobriety of senior Russian generals.

Oh, Greeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaat. What could possibly go wrong?

Got bunker?

This guy is Hitler in the bunker, ordering counterattacks by divisions that no longer exist, as the rubble sifts from the ceiling onto his maps.

Cue the rant meme videos. They'll be absolutely accurate.

And best be working on some underground habitat.

No, REALLY.

Putin has forgotten the obvious: No one negotiates with terrorists.

If he expects a diplomatic solution, Step One is to march all his dipshits back into actual Russia, and return to the status quo ante. Which, at this point, would probably include returning Crimea to Ukraine too, before any further discussions.

No? GFY. Enjoy the Grad Soufflé with Shrapnel Sauce.

Signposts

 

Official Inflation is 8+%/year. Actual Inflation is more like 28% or 38%/year. (Wait until you see food over the next 12 months.) So, who got a 38% raise last year? Not you either?

When inflation is 0%, the interest on the ginormous national debt is nearly 0%. When interest goes up with inflation, the interest on the debt becomes untenable. That's when economies and governments collapse. And then wars start, because everybody always wants their money, and people don't quietly and obediently starve to death after they realize they've been rooked for decades, and paid in funny money that's worthless. You could look it up.

TPTB and their media wing minions are still frothing about arresting Trump for taking home paperwork he's allowed to declassify on a whim, but they couldn't see why Shrillary's 30,000 federal felony counts of destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice were a problem, and they can't see the problem now either.

Flipping onto CCPBS This Week for a couple of minutes before I was looking for a firearm was rather bracing, in regard to the full frothing delusional psychotic moonbats - talking to each other as if they were completely normal - on display there. Having turned all that horseshit off years back, seeing it in full bloom now has me in a mind to load some more magazines, and then buy more ammo and magazines, so I'll have more to load.

I felt like Murphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest suddenly thrust among the really crazy, and seeing just how batshit nuts they all are, right up in my face.

Worse, nearly half the country thinks this is fine, and The Way It Ought To Be. With absolutely zero self-awareness of what total fucknuts they are.

There's a great but unappreciated scene in the beginning of The Eagle Has Landed, where Anthony Quayle as Admiral Canaris describes a meeting with Der Führer and his minions, where he realizes he's working for outright lunatics, and he wonders aloud "...what must I look like to them?"

The screenwriter got that right. That's how it happens.

Look at the vilification of the last president, who is increasingly looking like The Last President Ever, and anyone who thinks, speaks, or votes even remotely similarly.

If the Left had no brakes on their behavior, the roundups, boxcars, camps, welcoming showers, and ovens would have started two years ago. Or more.

And I'm speaking literally, not metaphorically.

That's exactly what they want to DO. And they're not even afraid to say it, out loud and publicly. If that doesn't scare Hell out of anyone sane, they're a moron. When someone says they want to kill you, they're telling you the truth.

Well, fair enough. Sauce for the goose, lunatics. "You magnificent bastards, I READ YOUR BOOK!"

If anyone hasn't clued in to that reality by now, they're cannon fodder for what's coming like an  express freight train with no brakes.

You aren't going to persuade, you aren't going to vote, and you aren't going to have your day in court. If you're really lucky, there's one box left for you to influence your future, and the sooner you wrap your head around that undeniable truth, and plan appropriately, the better off you'll be.

Not just cash, but money. Tangible assets, not ones and zeroes, nor cryptofiatbux, or paper ones. Food. Food for a long time, for more people than you think. A reliable perennial water source. Medicine and medical supplies. Arms; guns and ammo. More ammo than you can imagine. Spare parts, cleaning supplies. Tools, traps, and toys. Energy. Comms. Everything from Sat phones to carrier pigeons should be on the menu.

If you think you're going to dig a deep enough hole and hide for a decade, forget it. Odds against that working: too high to mention.

You're either going to stand up and fight for your liberty, to get it back, or you're going to give it away, never to enjoy it again.

It's that bad, right now.

All you're going to get going forward is watching it get worse, and wondering how you ever let things get this bad to begin with.

But what's done is done. And won't be undone until you start doing it. You and anyone you can find like you. Find them you will, and find them you'd better. And you're going to have to dig the problem children of society out like a hog looking for truffles, or like any cancer, they'll just keep coming back.

Get it right the first time. And get yourselves ready for the day.

Things are too far gone to be set right casually. It's going to be work. Bloody, bloody awful, work. More than you can stand. As if you have any choice.

Their Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds

 h/t Big Country Expat

Sunday Music: Breezin'

 

Title track off George Benson's 1976 triple-platinum and number 1 album for pop, R and B, and jazz that year.

Too mellow? Something with a funkier beat from his next live album:

Putting the Z in Bazinga!

h/t Sixbears

The fortunes of war turn on a dime. And may again. 

Honest Questions Deserve Honest Answers

h/t WRSA

Both of these embiggen.

Knowledge Is Power

 

MI6 Spy Skills For Civilians : $10.99 new from the 'zon.

Surveillance And Surveillance Detection : $16.49 new from the 'zon.

Basics. Haven't changed in 100 years. Our intel agents aren't born, they're trained. You can learn anything they can. And probably should.

Both books recommended without hesitation.

When Will This Penny Drop?

 

Herr Oberst Speaks, etc.

 Watch it and weep, Russophiles.

This isn't some grand strategy where Russia is luring the Ukes into a trap.

It's the Russian forces getting their asses handed to them in Kharkiv.

And while Col. Reisner notes this as the third phase of this conflict, there's absolutely no telling how many more it will undergo, nor have we told you anything to the contrary.

Since this affects a few things, not least of them your food and fertilizer supplies going forward, Europe's energy, the world economy, Putin's and Russia's future, and whether you might need SPF 10,000 sunscreen anytime soon, you might want to pay attention. Anyone who thinks this is "just a sideshow" isn't tall enough for the internet yet.

We further note that despite all the pants-wetting in comments yesterday, nobody could argue with anything more authoritative or convincing than the Underpants Gnome Theory Of What's Happening that what we told you isn't exactly what's going down.

Another shutout for Putin's biggest fans. Shocking.

---------------------------------------

Meanwhile, in the category of weapons autists, this guy

is both fun and interesting to watch, because you're getting better-than-CIA-level military analysis (in this case, of Russian howitzer tube life) from some guy in his den with nothing but a brain and internet access. Before you get your panties in a twist over that, realize this was how Tom Clancy (an insurance agent with zero .mil training, FFS) got started too, and he got dragged into both the CIA and the Reagan White House, with people who were baffled at how he'd figured out the stuff he wrote, which was hitting uncomfortably close to the mark, and all he used was open UNCLAS sources.

If you think your leadership, civilian or military, is wall-to-wall geniuses, I have a bridge to sell you.

Common sense, isn't.

Russian Forces Moving Like Lightning

 

Unfortunately for those rootin' for Putin, the sudden Russian speed of advance is full headlong retreat.

For months now, Russia has been chewing its way deeper into Ukraine territory, averaging about 1km/day (that's 0.02 MPH for people whose countries landed men on the moon). After a brilliant feint to the south which caught the Russians deploying the wrong way, and caught the pundidiots cock-a-doodling about the "failure" of Not The Main Offensive Effort, the Ukrainians massed their forces in the north instead, and have averaged advances of 20km/day. Put another way, Russia has demonstrated that their tanks can go 20x faster in reverse than they go in forward gear. To find the equal of this Russian retreat, you'd need to look at Iraq in 2002, America coming out of Afghanistan last year, the South Vietnamese Army in 1975, or France anytime after 1815 to present, inclusive.

In the area north and east of Kharkiv, Ukraine has pushed the Russian army all the way back into Russia. Ukrainian forces have recaptured over 1000 mi² of territory in the last week or so, which is more territory than Russia was able to gain in 3 months of heavy fighting when the armchair generals declared they were "winning".

Which is why the Usual Suspects have been rather quiet about this disastrous (for Putin) turn of events. How sad for them.

Piss on the MSM all you like, but even Russian house press organ TASS basically instructed the few fifth-column pro-Russian holdouts in the Kharkiv area to GTFO of Dodge in haste, because the Ukrainians were coming. Suck on that hard cheese, geniuses.

Doubly so, because the possession of the HIMARS system by Ukraine now puts 30 miles of Russian territory in range of shelling, and any military target inside Mother Russia is now fair game. 

Trains, tracks, stations? Yup.

Airfields? Power plants? Factories? Major roads and junctions? Dams? Any POL facility? Oh hell yes.

Pretty much anything that Ukraine can make any reasonable argument is contributing to the Russian military's effort is now on the open season list, which means civilians thereabouts are now in season as well, and it won't be just Russian conscripts eating shit for Putin's dreams of a restored Soviet Empire. That's going to have a ripple effect, and put a spotlight on the 800 pound gorilla: Putin's forces suck at this war thing.

War gets a loss less fun when it's fought on your own territory, huh Vlad?

Already, nearly a score of minor Russian officials no longer buying the bullshit, and fully clued in to Reality, have publicly called for Vlad to fuck off and retire, in haste, and openly signed their names to the petition. The state media is openly hosting debates suggesting that maybe signing a peace accord and GTFOing from Ukraine wouldn't be a bad idea. None of this bodes well for Vlad's long-term career prospects, to say nothing of what a paper tiger it reveals Russian military power to be.

Exactly. As. We. Told. You.

Ukraine is fighting for its national survival; Russian troops are fighting for a paycheck. And faced with a peer military advance, they're running like scalded cats, leaving metric fucktons of supplies and operable munitions behind, and leaving some units stranded with no transport out except their boots. The ammo will come as a boon to Ukrainian equipment sidelined for lack of Russian-compatible ammo. The Russian POWs will have their moment in the sun on international news any day now, begging to be repatriated, and/or telling the world where Vlad can head in, and why this military adventure is all nightmare.

h/t Daily Timewaster

Pisser, Vlad. You'll be getting those lost rounds back soon, but probably at a high rate of speed.

At some point, the Russian army will stop outrunning the Ukrainian rapid advance, dig in, and put up a fight. Probably. Eventually. Vlad and his generals hope.

Things may even see-saw back and forth like this. But Russia giving up territory 20:1 compared to how they take it doesn't argue for eventual Russian victory.

And Vlad's frustration and desperation could lead to him trying to unleash nuclear weapons, which either opens the ball on WWIII (got bunker?), or gets him that 9mm Retirement Plan just behind the ear, followed by the sudden ascension of General Ivana Survivalot to the leadership of the surviving Russian Federation. Dealer's choice on which is more likely.

Fun times, kids. Fun times. How does this end? Rapidly, one hopes. The sooner Russia withdraws to status quo ante, the better for the entire world.

What does this new turn of events mean for pretty much everyone?

I can hardly wait to hear the spin and bullshit on this new reality in comments, or from the usual Armchair field marshals.

{And proving what I've told you all along about even-handedness, CA @ WRSA hot-linked this post within about two minutes of me dropping it on the 'net.}

Free Radicals

 

Point Of Order

 

Some information is good to know, purely as such, but if it really affects you, you've been doing it wrong for literally decades. So if anyone out there as an adult in the big wide world is seriously concerned for more than 0.2 seconds that bank and credit companies can and are now tracking firearms and ammunition purchases made with bank cards (which name kind of gives the answer away), including ATM/debit cards, I have something you really need to hear:

WTF is wrong with you, you mouth-breathing paint-chip-eating inbred retarded moron fucktard? Have you never heard of using CASH?!?

If that sentence requires any further explanation or elucidation, or you feel honor-bound to try and respond in defense of Chicken Little, you're not tall enough for the entire internet, let alone this blog. DLTDHYITAOYWO.

Those of you looking on at all this in bemusement, and wholly unaffected by events, continue to MYOB, and carry on as before. You are not the target audience.

Sunday Music: Life In The Fast Lane

Third single from 26x platinum album Hotel California (1976), which peaked at #11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in '77. The late '70s in a nutshell, and the song was spawned by new guy Joe Walsh's guitar pre-game practice riff, which opens the song.

Hmmmmmmmm...

 h/t  OddJob and NCRenegades

Just the Gestapo, rounding up the Usual Suspects. Like they do.

 

Good Training

 

I have some experience with this topic, and with being right. The proof came this week.

Preserving HIPPA and general confidentiality, suffice it to note that Some Unnamed Agency in SoCal was doing high-speed low-drag range training, during which, despite all good intentions to the contrary, bullet fragments went uprange at a high rate of speed instead of down range. And into people.

Bad ju-ju.

Did training end?

O no it did not! It simply transitioned from Weapons training to Casualty treatment and transportation training.

Bad news? Multiple GSW casualties.

Good news? All, thank a merciful deity, walking wounded, minor injuries, and discharged home same day.

Adopting The Other Ryan's trusty AAR format, we proceed with the particulars.

The Good

Pretty much everything.

Immediate training halt. All weapons safed/secured for patients and medical personnel. Multiple victims, swarmed by multiple TCCC-trained doods, treated and properly field-bandaged within half a minute.

OIC not only knew who/where it was, but made immediate telephone contact with nearest trauma ER, and spoke with on-duty MICN. Given somewhat extended transport time, and relatively minor nature of wounds, all victims transported Code 3 by black and whites to said trauma center, and probably well in excess of the speed of anything but a Lifeflight helicopter (which would have been ridiculous levels of overkill in this instance). All victims seen by MD within less than 30 minutes of initial incident. Which borders on best-case time, as the training range in question is 20+ minutes' travel time away on a good day at normal speed.)

Better still, had it been necessary, agency OIC was prepared to send escort unit to meet EMS and guide them to victims, had their direct contact number on speed dial, and knew the designated Lifeflight/EMS helo LZ, had the injuries been more serious. Quickest route out was well-briefed, and all units and patients arrived at ER in convoy.

The Bad

Not much. Multiple trained medics, but no designated medic per se. Fog of war also led to confusion on number of casualties. One turned out to be two, which turned out to be three. Oops. Adrenaline and small fragments will do that; minor initial wounds are easy to miss when you're young, healthy, and amped up.

Were I consulted, I'd suggest permanent or ad hoc Battle/Training Buddy Checks: everyone is paired up at initial briefing, and once there's an incident, each person checks himself, then his buddy. Designated medic(s) check each other, then triage, assess, and treat all ID'ed as wounded, and report level of injury. That's about the only thing they didn't do that they should have done, or something like.

The Ugly

Nothing. We should all be so lucky. And if you prepare in advance for just this type of thing like their OIC did, you too can be similarly "lucky".

Luck is the residue of diligent preparation.

BLUF:

If you shoot (including hunting*) regularly, at least one entire annual practice session should be a full casualty rehearsal, so that when it's real, you don't cock it up. Because if you do, you'll beat yourself up for years afterwards with coulda/woulda/shouldas, and it's too late to be wise then, and just jacks up your stress, blood pressure, and ulcers.

If you shoot in a group, it should be a group thing. Including updating medical info kept either by the group, or on each individual's person: blood type, last tetanus vax, medical history, allergies, surgeries, meds, doctors, and who to call (or not), and how to do that. And full hands-on practice victim treatment, including packaging for transport/transfer. (Which includes safety and security of all operable weapons - guns, knives, grenades, etc.!! - on both patients and all responders.)

And "MEDICAL" should be one of the briefed contigencies gone over at the beginning of any training/shoot day, even if it's just to say "The plan is the laminated card on top of the group first aid kit; the nearest ERs and EMS numbers are on the back of the same card."

If you shoot solo, you should use it to go through your IFAK/Oh Shit GSW/trauma kit, and update location info, emergency contact and transport/evac plans (P-A-C-E:Primary,Alternate, Contingency, Emergency) for the nearest EMS and ER locations. If you don't have that many, you're doing it wrong.

Train like you fight, so you fight like you trained. "Winging it" is not a plan.

*(That would include leaving a route plan/hike plan with a relative, friend, ranger, or under the visor on your vehicle - or all of the above - in case you go down in BFEgypt, and can't hobble back to the vehicle, so folks will know where to start the search.)

Half Right, And All Wrong

 h/t WRSA

Your town. Your street. Your house. Your family.
Or theirs. Choose wisely.

RTWT.

Is society becoming Balkanized? Hell, yes!

That's the half-right part.

Now, stop playing checkers, and think for five seconds about what happens after that.

How did Balkanization work out in 1776?

How about in 1845 in Texas?

Or 1849 in California?

How about 1861 in the South?

How did it work out for the Balkans themselves in 1939?

South Korea in 1950?

South Vietnam in 1960?

Ukraine since 2000?

Even the stupidest slow learner ought to be able to buy a clue here.

To work (assuming it ever can, which I think is a fool's errand, but we'll grant it arguendo for the moment), all parties have to be willing to accept the status quo.

So, the US is balkanizing into mutually incompatible camps. That's just an early symptom, not an endpoint.

Who sees the insufferable Karen Leftarded statists, after all the rhetoric of just the last two years, let alone every waking moment since the 1920s, as sitting still to watch their own blue hives descend to being the local Trashcanistan or Shitholia (many of them are there already), while watching those damned red-state knuckledraggers enjoy peace, prosperity, safety, and happiness, and leaving them the hell alone, while Karen's minions are unable to hijack and deprive them of the smallest sliver of it?

Did they leave you alone and mind their own business during COVID? Did they accept abortion and gay marriage when they won those victories in court, and STFU and just live their lives?

SRSLY?!?

No. Fucking. Way. Ain't happening.

Go look at LawDog's Cake Analogy in case you're not familiar.

Here's what that looks like in real life.

Here's what it looks like  a couple of years later.

If you're really fortunate, you might balkanize an entire county to yourself. Personally, I think you'll be lucky to have so much as an entire like-minded city block or full section of land, come the day, before the next phase starts in earnest. And probably not even that.

That's how it works. First come the Blood And Honor segregation laws, then Kristallnacht, then Auschwitz. Pebble drop, splash, ripples.

You cannot suspend gravity (nor will you), and you won't balkanize, and chill out. It's simply not going to happen, by and large, for 99% of anyone.

And it won't matter if the Rs take the Congress 535 to 0, impeach this entire misbegotten banana republic fraudulent administration, and recognized Trump as the correct president. At best, that'd buy you a paltry few months of relative respite. At worst, it would detonate the bomb in everyone's face right then. So forget tearing around third base and sliding safe at home.

You're still going to have to shoot sumbitches in the face, long past the point you're sick of it, and they still won't leave you alone, not ever, until there aren't any of them left. Look at what happened in Rhodesia. Look at what's going on in South Africa. Look at Israel. You can't build the fences high enough to make people who want to kill you stop trying. And there's no where left to run. You'll have to hunt them down and exterminate them to bring that happy moment to fruition. Waiting for the knock at the door is planning to fail.

You will not rise to the level of your lack of training in that moment, you will fall to the level of your complacency. And if you haven't trained, and steeled your heart, to that inevitability, you will surely fail.

Balkanization is just jumping out of the plane.

What happens after that depends on how well you've trained and equipped yourself, and whether or not you pull the ripcord.

Don't kid yourself that you're just going to jump out and hover in space, suspended blissfully between heaven and earth. Gravity works. And for the careless, it leaves a mark.

Black Magic?

 

Well...'Bye.

A royal truck driver isn't an altogether bad thing, and to give her credit, the old bag rode her star right into the ground, and by not abdicating early, prevented the Royal Inbred from acceding to the throne for an extra 30-40 years.

But now they're stuck with King Flop-ears, who threw over the catch of the century to marry his horse, and the nation and king deserve each other, in every possible way.

All that leaves now is over-hyped ceremony in honor of a dead formerly-great nation, because the husk is all they've got left, and then the pointing and laughing for the rest of the inevitable decline into oblivion.

If they have better days, it probably won't be in my lifetime, but the next royal funeral will be the most widely and wildly celebrated one in anyone's living memory. The wisest decision in world history was us throwing all that in the crap heap first chance we got.

Now watch what other shyte TPTB get up to everywhere, while the laser focus of a media with the attention span of a housecat on crack looking at a laser pointer is focused on the solemnity of dropping a box in a hole.