Plus ca change

Putin's fanboys with UDS will argue anything but reality, but no matter how hard they try, they can't beat the tale of the calendar.

If this was going well for Russia in any way, we wouldn't be talking about Ukraine as an independent country going into November of a year when they invaded it in February.

Things are nowhere near over, and that's exactly the point: Russia, on paper, should have been done with this before March 1st.

Hitler conquered France in 40 days. (To be fair, the Germans were only going up against the French, but you get the point.)

Russia can't even hold onto the territories they'd infiltrated since 2014, and will hold even less than they do now by the time this conflict hits 40 weeks. (Common Core grads: that would be in 5 weeks from now.) They stand a very good chance of even going backwards, and having to cough up Crimea as well, for the second time since 1989, perhaps as a Christmas present to Zelensky and the people of Ukraine. IOW, had they just sat there in February and done nothing, they'd have 60,000 more soldiers alive, 1200 more tanks, an extra airborne brigade available, and still have a Black Sea Fleet they could sail back and forth to Syria. Just by not starting this war. 

Against a country with only 1/10th their military strength.  

This level of military performance by Russia is why you can count their notable military victories in the last 300 years on your thumbs.

And at current trajectory, Russia wouldn't be any worse off than right now if we switched sides, and then abandoned them like Afghanistan.

Team Putin. 24/7, for 243 days and counting.

Maybe things will be better for Russia tomorrow. Outcomes can always change in war, sometimes rapidly (just ask the crew of the Moskva), and very well may multiple times before this ends. They certainly have for Russia since September 1st, let alone since February 23rd. But they're not showing anything new, and all those conscripts seem to be just so much cannon fodder. Now they're hoping Iranian drones will help them out.

Dear Putin Rooters: Lucy Van Pelt called. She wanted to know if you'd like to practice kicking some field goals.

Pro Tip

 h/t CW @ daily timewaster

We wish some people would learn this lesson.

There's a New (Old) Outlaw In Town

You just can't keep a good criminal down:

Big Country Expat has broken out of Goolag Prison!

Ssssssshhhhhh! Don't tell anyone. Bookmark the site.

You're welcome.

Have you seen this man?

Sunday Music: Go Insane

If you paid attention to the last couple of picks, you might have wondered what was going on with Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks' original bf. The reason she was brought into Fleetwood Mac at all was his insistence that they were a package deal.

By the time the  Rumours LP came out, she'd slept with Mick Fleetwood behind his back. How'd that go over with Lindsey? Listen to the lyrics of Go Your Own Way, or the moans and screams in the background closing of Gold Dust Woman, which was Lindsey alone in a studio after all this went down.

His solo albums gave him a chance to work it all out, and this track, the first single he released on his second solo album in '84, was the encapsulation of what he'd been quietly living amidst for seven years. It was his second solo hit, and peaked at #23 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Heartwarming Vid Of Felon Skipping Trial

 

We are second to no one when douchebadge coptards royally screw up.

By the same token, when good cops acting properly perform a community service arrest, and it turns out like this video, it warms the very cockles of our cold, green amphibious heart. Much like Beetlejuice watching The Exorcist, it keeps getting funnier every time we watch it.

Total time from initiation of felony stop "Go!" decision to resolution: fourteen seconds.

Incredibly, yet again, passing a law to stop felons from having guns didn't work. Color us shocked.

Important safety tip: Even an AR-15 isn't an instant one-shot stopper at muzzle range to the chest. Head shots are, but I'm sure their policy is center-of-mass "to stop". In our humble opinion, if police officers are pointing weapons at you, and instead of stopping, you run and draw a firearm, once that gun comes out, nothing says "Stop!" like a bullet to the brain. PSG, WSP. (Or alternatively, as the commenters on the video noted, a round of buckshot to the chest would have been très approprié.)

Kudos to the officer on the trigger for safely ending the situation, saving months of trial costs and years of prison upkeep for another waste of skin, and helping him to fully kick his oxygen addiction. If we had more of this, we'd have less of this.

Sh*tshow

 

"The mark of a man's intelligence is how much he agrees with you"

"If Russia isn't stopped in Ukraine, it will have to be stopped in Warsaw.

Russia has already lost its main goals. More countries joined a strengthened NATO. Ukraine is more independent and nationalistic than ever. Just as bad, Russian equipment, training, and leadership has been shown wanting. The war has been lost. Now it's a matter of how long the fighting will go on."

RTWT

We've been telling you this, and more, since March. There's no version of "Russian victory" in this conflict that doesn't start with "pyrrhic". In fact, they've already blown past that Rubicon, and proceeded to "Mariupolic". The only measurement left for Russian "victory" at this point is "Carthaginian", and it's still theirs for the grasping.

Contrarian whingers: explain to the class when it's acceptable for one country to conquer another country, and forcibly annex their territory and people at gunpoint, bearing in mind the current date. Show all work.

Can't do that?

STFU.

Fumble

h/t WRSA

Matt Bracken, whom we generally agree with, has misdiagnosed badly in his analysis of the latest Russian tactic, the Iranian-supplied Shahed-136 drone swarms.

He gets most of it right, until we get to effects, both individual, and collective.

It's anything but hard to intercept, as Ukraine has been swatting down 80-85% of them every day of the week, and twice on Sundays. Their success is limited, but not nil, because when Russia launches five of them, that means one gets through, and when they launch 100 of them, 20 get through. With a fairly small and limited-effectiveness warhead. Their saving grace is that they're enormously cheaper than heavier Russian rockets, so unlike their own heavy rocket artillery, Russia can afford to waste 80-85 to get 15-20 through. Provided all you wanted to do was scare people and hit soft targets, which is what terrorists do. But we're talking about Putin, so we repeat ourself.

Their effect, to date, is negligible. Zelensky himself noted outages in 30% of their power grid from the totality of all Russian strikes. But that's temporary, unless they're hitting items that can't be repaired or replaced, which is the difference between breaking windows, and actually demolishing a building.

To date in world history, only two bombardment campaigns have had any strategic effect in any war, and only one of those effects lasted beyond three years' time.

Bombing London in WWII, twice, including both conventional bombers, and the V-1 and V-2 campaigns, did nothing but piss off the British people, stiffen their resistance, and have them resolve to accept nothing from Germany but dismemberment and unconditional surrender. Epic fail.

Bombing Germany, even obliterating Dresden with a conventionally-created firestorm, didn't get the Germans to quit until Russia marched into Berlin and held the Nazi leadership at bayonet-point. Fail. Japan was wholesale bombed into oblivion as well, and it gained us nothing in the long run. Fail.

Linebacker II in 1972 convinced North Vietnam to return to peace talks, but that just gave them a couple of years' respite to re-arm, wait until the US was navel-gazing and war-weary, then wait until Watergate and near impeachment in Washington left them an open door to invade and conquer the South in 1975, barely two years later. Half-credit.

The only bombing campaign that ever "worked" for any strategic value of that word, was performed by the 509th Composite Bombardment Group under Col. Paul Tibbetts, in two pivotal missions. One over Hiroshima, and the second over Nagasaki, in August of 1945. Perhaps you've read about it. Strategic win.

Russia can't bomb tactical formations in Kherson or the Donbas, because they're too busy retreating, which is why those offensives keep rolling along, with the ultimate goal of dislodging Russia from Ukrainian territory altogether, including the increasingly probable loss of the entire Crimea, in perpetuity, by the end of this year.

So all that leaves them is non-mobile soft civilian targets in Ukraine, and their success rate is down around 15-20%. And as fast as they blow targets up, crews work to fix them.

Thus, when you're trying five attempts to get one small hit, they're simply a terror weapon, and the Ukrainian citizenry isn't afraid of the Russian wolf snarling any more.

And the offensives in the east and south continue completely unimpeded and unaffected by Russia bombing civilians.

The multi-billion dollar question is, where the F**k is the Soviet Air Farce, which has been almost entirely MIA since February 25th. If Russia really could bomb anything effectively, they would be doing that, rather than using second-hand Iranian-made drones (because they literally can't even make those drones themselves.) They're that hard-up.

Flash back to 9/11, and tell the class how those bombings in America convinced the US to get out of the Middle East, mind our own business, and roll over and play dead.

That's where Putin is, and there's no amount of lipstick that will make this pig into a prom queen.

Tweets That Didn't Age Well

h/t Peter at BRM

One less musclehead in the grand scheme. No great loss. And Dunning-Kruger in action.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, 2,000,000 and counting is a predictive trend.

Putincide Vs. Partisans

 

No pension for you, podpolkovnik. War is all hell.

It seems that the man responsible for the current Russian recruiting debacle in one district, to provide cannon fodder for their ongoing disaster in Ukraine, was found dead near a fence at his home. Some reports say he hanged himself, but no one has yet explained how he also cut himself down afterwards and got to where he was found, and no points for guessing how many times he also shot himself in the back of the head and stabbed himself before settling on hanging as the best method of suicide.

"There is rising fury over mobilisation officials forcibly recruiting men with little or no training in apparent violation of the rules. Armed conscript-snatching teams of enlistment officers backed by police have been operating in Russian cities, grabbing men on underground trains, on the street, and in offices."

Either way, whether through popular insurgency, or official displeasure, it's pleasing to know that at least one more lieutenant colonel of the Russian Army will be in a warm place for all eternity. And it's yet another data point letting you know just how well the war is going for Russia, and the actual nature of both popular and official support for it.

As noted in comments, the Potemkin Army is suffering from Potemkin readiness and Potemkin recruiting, which explains much about their Potemkin success. Some folks are going to need to stock up on condiments for all the crow and shit sandwiches they'll be eating if this continues apace. Boo frickin' hoo.

Sunday Music: Enchanted

Enchanted, you thought you saw something in my eye.

 It's a shame that you wanted me, but didn't try.

Woah woah woah, I hope you make it... 

Last week's choice gave you the backstory on the inspiration for Walter Egan's biggest hit. Today's choice is one from Stevie Nick's solo album Wild Heart from several years down the road that sounds an awful lot like a belated reply.

Ozymandias* Redux

via Tam

It Was All A Sham

Source QOTD:

The 4th Guards Tank Division and 2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division-and by extension the whole 1st Guards Tank Army-probably are unfit for further fighting. They could reconstitute, but with what and whom? The Kremlin's urgent recruitment drive is faltering. And having written off more than a thousand tanks in Ukraine, the Russians might need years to bring depleted units back up to full strength. 

The Ukrainian army by contrast has more tanks now than it did before the current counteroffensives, as it has captured more Russian tanks than it has lost of its own. 

Oops. Cat. Out of bag.

RTWT

Ponder that when you see Russia press-ganging geriatrics and cripples for the front lines, trying to renovate 60-year-old tanks for military service, and rattling its rusted nuclear saber.

It's because they haven't got anything else to spare to throw at this war.

And the Number One supplier of military equipment to Ukraine, for weeks and weeks now, and by orders of magnitude, isn't NATO; It's Putin's raggedy drunken Russian Army.

Tam QOTD:

What do you want to bet that a large percentage of the billions Moscow allocated to modernize its armed forces following their underwhelming performances everywhere from Chechnya to South Ossetia wound up bobbing gently at anchor in Monaco and Barcelona?

No bet.

Pisser for Vlad-o-philes.

*{link for Common Core grads}

QED

in reply to today's question at WRSA 

 

New Dark Ages vs. The Light Of Knowledge

 

Over at Borepatch's blog, he mentions additional evidence to overturn the beloved Big Bang Theory, which has people who've embraced it lifelong in what is best described as panic.

Commenter SiG mentions a New Dark Ages.

Too late, I say. The New Dark Ages have already started. We've been in a Post-Scientific Age for decades, if not nearly a couple of centuries. I've mentioned this before, because I'm not the only one who's noticed it.

The only trouble with describing a New Dark Ages is that one must necessarily place the advent in the past tense. Probably somewhere around the mid 1800s.

It's a sloppy border, not a hard demarcation, but while some of the harder sciences proceeded fairly normally to the current moment, the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings regressed hard over a century and a half ago, and many of the popular explainers were promulgating the exact superstition-filled world they claimed to be leading us out of. Color me shocked.

They merely traded their own biases and fears for those of the medieval monks, and they've spent entire careers, not shining a light on darkness, but throwing buckets of water on any unorthodox candles they find offensive.

That's "scientific consensus" in a nutshell, and such dictatorial groupthink - the hallmark of tyranny and socialism in every other realm - has ever been the nemesis of actual discovery.

The only thing that makes it even partly fair over time is that some things can't be shouted down, because the entire body of evidence shouts back against them.

Science is a team sport; Discovery is one man stepping forward onto the pinnacle and saying "A-Ha!"

Thus true science is always and necessarily Show and Tell.

There's no Tell without the Show. And anyone who says "Trust the science" isn't a scientist, he's a used-car salesman, trying to get you to buy the sizzle, without providing any steak.

Everyone's job, as a proper consumer of the product, should be shouting back at those charlatans, "Where's the beef?"

False prophets, upon discovery as such, used to be stoned to death. It's a penalty that needs to be revived.

Breaking News For PA Voters:

 

Let's get serious: Fetterman was a retard before the stroke.

But at least he can finally STFU.

And he now checks the Vegan Politician box.

Just not the way originally intended.

Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied

 h/t Middle Of The Right

Nurse arrested by Officer Douchebadge for following the law settles for $500,000.

I'm guessing mediocre lawyering. There should have been another zero there ahead of the decimal, minimum.

And, as usual, the idiots at Fox News fucked up the story by the first line: she didn't refuse to let Officer Douchebadge draw the blood. She refused his illegal demand that SHE join a criminal conspiracy to draw it HERSELF, and become an accomplice to battery on an unconscious patient, and violation of civil rights under color of authority. Pity Fox can't afford anyone with a high school diploma to look that detail up for them. Layers and layers of editorial oversight.

And rather than being charged criminally under state and federal law for those felonies, Officer Douchebadge, though fired by SLCPD, is still free, and trying to get his old job back. No, really.

If ever someone needed to go away and eat his gun for the good of society, Officer Nursebeater is the poster child.

There's only one thing we have to thank him for: Officer Douchebadge's inspirational, brazen, and profligate violation of his oath, the law, the US Constitution, and all common sense and decency, and his total commitment to outright over-the-top jackbooted thuggery, which he'd obviously been doing his whole career, roused us enough to begin memeing. (5-8K of 'em, at last tally.)

You can blame him or thank him, as ye will.

Either way, he's still unmitigated human debris, and his entire family line should be erased from the genetic pool, on general principles. And anyone who killed him, deliberately or accidentally, should receive a Presidential Medal Of Freedom for public service.

At the very least, the Governor of Utah and the Mayor of Salt Lake City should both award that nurse a commendation for upholding the actual law far better than the douchebadged thug at SLCPD did that day.

There's already enough sheep pens in Utah that the state, and the nation, could be considered well rid of that additional giant piece of walking shit, and anything that happens to him between now and whenever he kicks his oxygen addiction is totally justified.

Meme Perfection

 h/t WRSA

This should be for sale as a 24"x36" poster (I'll take 100 of them), and be found plastered on every flat surface from Maine to Maui. Starting with outside every federal building and facility in the country, including post offices.

If Sabo wasn't in hiding somewhere, he should be working on the billboard version of this 24/7.

Vlad Wisdom

 

I leave town for a couple of days far from anything higher-tech than a wristwatch, and the Putinophile Usual Suspects wet themselves with glee when he rockets multiple cities far from the front lines. Exactly like he's been doing to Ukrainians since February. >yawn<

1) Cities don't move very fast, so this wasn't a particularly impressive technical feat.

2) People who you've been shelling for seven months aren't liable to lose heart when you do it yet again.

3) Interested third parties aren't inclined to take you more seriously when you bomb cities instead of armies.

4) Both of them have, in fact, tripled down on their resolve, and their aid guarantees, and the phrase "war crimes" moves from whispers to bullhorns.

5) When your armies, plural, are getting their asses handed to them on a platter for over a month straight, you might want to think about shelling those military formations that vex you. If you could find them and target them correctly. Everybody also notices when you can't do that: their army, your own army, and the armies of friendly and unfriendly nations now know you can't hit Jack or Shit, unless Jack's a third-grader on the swings in the playground.

6) When all you have is a tack hammer, even your problems that really are nails give you trouble.

7) Vlad has now announced it's open season in return on actual Russians in actual Russia. That rarely ends well. Ask Zombie Herman Goering.

All Vlad has accomplished is to look like a bigger and more murderous @$$hole, with a weaker and less-competent military than before. The only things helping him now are that his supply lines are 100 miles closer to Russian territory than they were in August, and he's got 60,000 less troops to supply than he started out with in February.

And with time, as things develop, he may not have to worry about supplying his forces in Crimea any more at all. As the king said in The Princess Bride, "Won't that be nice?"

Well-played. It's like Christmas in October.

Road Trip

Money in pocket and time off conjoined felicitously.

Back......Wednesday. Ish.

Entertain yourself in the interim with the swell blogs and sites over yonder.-------->

Vlad Wisdom

Choices. Consequences.

h/t WRSA

Spicy. (Somebody else's meme. My version is better.)

And suitable for stickers. Just saying.

Vlad Wisdom

 

Sunday Music: Magnet And Steel

Shortly after joining the Mac, Lindsey Buckingham co-produced the second solo album (Not Shy) for a young artist. While working on it, the artist met Stevie Nicks. Years later, he admitted he was "smitten" by Stevie (understandably; in the mid/late-70's, who wouldn't have been?). But not knowing the real story, he figured she and Lindsey were a solid couple, so he wrote the song to her as his only option to express how he felt, and let it go as a dream that would never be. The artist was Walter Egan, and this song was the effort. Stevie sang as one of the backing vocals (not in the video though), unaware at the time she was the inspiration for the song. It was Egan's biggest hit, peaking at #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978.

Vlad Wisdom

 

Every day, Vlad's troops are moving 10-20 miles. Back towards Russia.

And he's using the suckers in Eastern Ukraine who took his side, and the fat, old slobs press-ganged into his war as cannon fodder tampons to plug the holes long enough for his shattered professional troops to retreat without getting cut off or wiped out to a man.

And The Usual Suspects at P-Anon keep telling you the same thing:

Vlad Wisdom

 

I Was Wrong

But before the World's Foremost Experts, who've gotten this wrong  every day since February 26th, start wetting themselves with delight, some background:

You see, I assumed that the military tribe of incompetents surrounding Putin would call up their 300K reservists, equip them, give them some minimal refresher training, and use shattered leftovers from early in the war as cohort units, around which to rebuild serious fighting forces.

That takes weeks to months for us, and Russians aren't anywhere near that competent, so I figured a reasonable expectation was that either they'd have to issue and train for a winter offensive (good luck with that in Russia or Ukraine on the steppes), or far more likely, they'd take the time to do it right, and have another go at things next spring.

Because that's what military leaders competent in logistics, tactics, and strategy would do.

Only total farking military idiots and morons would send them straight into combat immediately, right?

Nope. I was wrong there. Nothing could be further from the truth. That's not what's happening at all.

They loaded the busses and trains with old farts, and simply shipped them Stalingrad-style, straight to the front lines, to be fed face-first right into the meat-grinder, and they're already turning up in Uke POW hauls. In short, Russian generals are falling for their own patriotic propaganda from their Great Patriotic War.

Three days after the mobilization, their fresh conscripts were already being captured. Some of them are simply driving over to the Uke side, and surrendering, to get it over with. And bringing fully functional BMPs with them.

Unarmed, unfed, unsheltered, un-equipped, and generally surly and pissed at being treated as exactly the cannon fodder they are.

Captured Russian equipment is now a sizable percentage of the reason for the renewed and re-invigorated Ukrainian push forward: Russia is supplying them nearly as much gear and ammunition in some areas as they're getting from the West. How annoying.

The Russian conscripts being force-fed into this would be rioting and mutinying, but they don't even have the ammo to pull that off.

So where I'd previously expected the Ukrainian Army to take a breather any day now, if not weeks ago, to consolidate their gains, and then see where to go next, I expect they may be able to completely push the remaining Russian forces back strategically. They're encircling a full corps (two-plus divisions) now, and if they cut off the southern front, everything from Odessa to Mariupol is in play, including shutting the Crimea off from Russia proper by land again.

Things on the fronts might return to something like normalcy eventually, but that would depend on Russian military leadership competence (another thing they're under-supplied with), so the only limiting factor may become how long the Ukrainians can keep kicking Russian forces in the balls, and how long they want to keep doing it, before they stop to fully consolidate their gains, with an army on the ground now about 4 times the size of the Russians, and at least twice the size it was when this conflict started.

And the whinging that this offensive was all NATO troops has dissipated like fog on a sunny day. The Ukes are doing this themselves, and it's obvious from space.

Russia's big mobilization so far is looking like the mouse that farted.

Bummer, Putinophiles.

The primary concern, and still-open question, is whether Putin has the ability and the will to order a nuclear strike, and the insanity to try it, or if that really is the point at which he gets retired, and he knows it, and is thus forced to eat the entire shit sandwich he ordered, until all of it is gone.

Interesting times continue.

Equal Time For Equal Idiots

 

More Vlad Wisdom

And he's proving it every day, while all Czarlet's fact-spinners and gainsayers can't undo that reality.

Ass Backwards

 from Chief Nose Wetter

As if, at this point, anyone in the country is surprised that the banana republic poser in the White House can't even put his pants on frontside to the front without copious assistance.

The expression on the guy behind Emperor Stumblefuck Poopypants looking at the zipper on his backside is priceless.

But at least it's faster to take care of business when he's about to sh*t himself again. Which, we're guessing, is just about hourly, both metaphorically or literally.

The Art Of Fail

 

Not The War News Some Were Hoping For

 

It's looking grim for Team Annexation:

Russia no longer has full control of any of the four provinces of Ukraine it says it annexed last week after Ukrainian troops advanced dozens of kilometres in Kherson province in the south of the country and made additional gains in the east.

On Monday, the Russian military acknowledged that Kyiv’s forces had broken through in the Kherson region. It said the Ukrainian army and its “superior tank units” had managed to “penetrate the depths of our defence” around the villages of Zoltaya Balka and Alexsandrovka. 

The [Russian] Ministry of Defence spokesperson Igor Konashenkov said Russian troops had occupied what he called a “pre-prepared defensive line”. They continued to “inflict massive fire damage” on Ukrainian forces, he claimed. 

His comments are an admission that Ukraine’s southern counter-offensive is dramatically gaining pace, two months after it began. Ukrainian brigades appear to have achieved their biggest breakthrough in the region since the war started, bursting through the frontline and advancing rapidly along the Dnieper River. 

The Ukrainian military’s southern command said forces in the south destroyed 31 Russian tanks and one multiple rocket launcher, without providing details of where the fighting occurred. 

Russian sources acknowledged that the Ukrainian tank offensive had moved along the river’s west bank, recapturing a number of villages along the way, and threatening the supply lines for thousands of marooned Russian troops.In a sign of turbulence inside Russia’s army command, the head of the western military district was reportedly sacked on Monday in the wake of the recent defeats. 

The news outlet RBC said Col-Gen Alexander Zhuravlyov had been fired. His district is one of five that make up Russia’s armed forces. The move follows criticism over the weekend by Chechnya’s president, Ramzan Kadyrov, of Valery Gerasimov, Putin’s chief of the general staff, over the loss of Lyman. 

“This is obviously related to the war blunders, which are becoming harder to hide. The Kremlin is looking for scapegoats,” said a former Russian defence ministry official who has worked with Zhuravlyov. “The pressure on the commander of the Russian armed forces, Valery Gerasimov, will only increase,” the former defence ministry official added.

But wait, there's MORE!:

Russia's forces occupying Ukraine’s southern Black Sea region of Kherson have suffered serious territorial losses to Kyiv’s troops over recent days, maps published by Moscow's defence ministry showed.

The ministry’s daily video briefing made no mention of any pullbacks on Tuesday, but the maps included showed that Russian forces were no longer in control of the village of Dudchany on the west bank of the river Dnieper, where Ukraine’s forces have been pushing to reclaim territory captured at the start of Moscow’s offensive.

In the northeastern Kharkiv region, defence ministry maps showed that Russian forces have left positions on the west bank of the Oskil River. They appeared to have retreated some 20km (12.4 miles) to the east, as far as the border of Luhansk province, in the aftermath this month of a counteroffensive by Kyiv’s army.

That's all Russian sources admitting that the Russian Army is getting its ass kicked all the way back to actual Russia, Internet Field Marshalls. Hint to the hardcore Putards: this was the military breakthrough news you've been breathlessly waiting for since February. Except it's going in the wrong direction. Bummer, huh?

Ukraine has regained more territory in one month than Russia could capture in five. This doesn't bode well for the competence or success of any future Russian operations short of Canned Sunshine deployment.

Maybe the Russians are going to wait until the Ukes have totally recaptured all Ukrainian territory before they spring their Sooper Sekrit Counter-Offensive.

Probably by zooming in from behind on flying unicorns, right?

The war is far from over. Things may shift again. But it hasn't been a very good week for those Rootin' For Putin.

How sad they must be.

Local, Local, Local

 From Chief Nose Wetter

Russian Transmissions: Two Forward Gears, and Twelve In Reverse

 

Meanwhile, back in the actual war, Ukraine continues to beat the Russian Army like a rented mule, pushing them out of town after town in a month-long counter-offensive that hasn't stopped yet, and attempting to completely encircle some 20,000 Russian troops and cut them off from any hope of Russian resupply or help. Bummer.

But it's okay though, because the World's Foremost Experts assure us that the Ukes are going to collapse any day now, certainly long before they take Moscow, definitely before they get to the Urals, and Putin has all those elderly recycled conscripts coming online. In a few weeks. Or months. If they can catch the hundreds of thousands of military-age males (which is now 60 in Russia) lately seen bum-rushing the borders to neighboring countries, like Mexicans at the Rio Grande, to avoid Putin's latest military levee.

Any day now, the Russian military powerhouse is set to spring their Sooper Sekrit Trap on the Ukes as they recapture more of Ukraine. Any day.

No one is sure how Russia will manage to equip their replacements, but most sources report there will be plenty of Ak-47s and -74s lying on the ground waiting to be scooped up.

Good times.

Good News, America Last Lunatards!

North Korea supports Russia's annexation of Ukraine.

Thank God. Vlad was afraid only Syria and Belarus were coming to the party. 

And Kim's surprise support, coming on the heels of the Norks' 72-year quest to ratify their "annexation" of South Korea, is a total shock to experts.

So all those heroic keyboard commandos bravely taking a firm stand for guilt by association as a perfectly logical rationale in standing against globohomo now have a firm new ally in the fight to warp reality.

Now all you need are Xi and Ayatollah Imawannajihad on your side, and you've collected the entire 1991 Legacy Edition set. Well-played!

Inconvenient Reality v2.0

 h/t Brad Lena

Turns out you could make a "Hitler Rants" parody about
Nazi Germany blowing up the NordStream pipelines that
would be miles more accurate than any codswallop
about "Biden did it".

For all those "America Worst" folks busy shoving the U.S. forward as the Most Likely Suspect in the Baltic shenanigans, comes another inconvenient bit of harsh reality, this one from the Asia Times.

Far more plausible than "the U.S. did it" knee-jerk slobbering nominations, this article notes the copious number of old explosive relics and modern-day military exercises in direct proximity, and - color us shocked - it turns out multiple nations, including Russia, regularly hold military exercises, with live ammunition, very near the pipelines and the immediate vicinity, even after the article's discussion of tons and tons of UXO from WW2 scattered hither and yon from Russia to the Kattegat strait.

Oopsie. The universe of what could have happened just got a lot wider than those trying to paint this as inevitably the US, in a clown wig and floppy shoes, acting all by itself on a bare white plain of obviousness.

Looks like some folks' knee-jerk "theory" just took another direct hit.

But the low IQ contingent wants you to believe that we did it, after we explicitly warned Germany that intelligence pointed towards some nefarious third-party op, which might be planned for the pipelines, and yet with everyone watching, we went in there and sabotaged the pipelines ourselves, and expect Germans to starve to death and freeze this winter, while their government, together with Danish, British, Norwegian, and Swedish militaries and governments keep the secret of our responsibility from the whole world, in perpetuity, because that regional conspiracy sounds more plausible to them. And for not going along with that delusional codswallop, I'm the unreasonable one.

Which is proof of the adage "Where there's smoke, there's a bong."

RTWT.

{For a second time, for the flood of low-comprehension readers, this is not nor ever was intended to explain everything that happened. It simply points out that there are a lot of balls in play on this pinball machine, multiple navies from interested parties in the local region, and many, many more ways for pipelines to go "Boom" than does pretending that only the US Navy's undersea capabilities are likely to own the blame. If this was too hard for anyone to grasp without being this explicitly told, please spend less time licking the short bus windows, and more time looking out of them. Complex problems seem simple -- for simpletons. Don't be That Guy. The level of mouth-frothing psychosis to defend "The U.S. did it!" position would be embarrassing even to incarcerated delusional psychotics. - A.}

Crushing It Royally

 

Politics for $2000, Alex...

 

A.: "Because Biden promised it."

Q.: "What is the answer to no question, ever?"

Fair Is Fair

 h/t WRSA

But if they did shell Baltimore for six months,
how would you tell the difference?

FFS, Call A Cab

Some people are alive only because it' s illegal to kill them.

The longer I work the ER, the more I'm convinced that any DUI/DWI should be mandatorily charged as attempted murder, and any death resulting from a DUI should be mandatorily charged as first degree murder, with the most lenient sentence possible in either case being 50 years in prison, with the first possibility of parole after 49½ years served.

And before they get on the prison bus, the family(ies) of the victim(s) should get 5 minutes with a lead pipe and the culprit, alone, in a soundproof room.

One $20 Uber ride would have changed three lives last night. But Uber, like a parachute, only works when you use it.

Sunday Music: Sara

One of those Stevie Nicks songs by the Mac that's over 6 minutes long, but you wish it was 12. And just like another Sunday Music pick was what motivated me to teach myself drums, this song was the impetus to teach myself to play keyboards.