The Dog That Hasn't Been Barking - MOAR RUSSIAN WINNING!:
"Russia’s ruble slipped past 100 per U.S. dollar on Monday morning, a nearly 17-month low that has sparked internal discord over monetary policy as economic pressures from its ongoing war in Ukraine mount and international sanctions erode Moscow’s income streams."
Crayon drawing for the slow learners:
Dear hardcore retards:
Currencies go up and down. I haven't cock-a-doodle-dooed about this before now, even as the ruble slipped back to reality (starting last winter), for the same reason you shouldn't have been doing it when the ruble temporarily went up last year (for about seven months).
The dollar is shit, because we've inflated it beyond reality. That's bound to come in for a landing one day, sooner or later. And yet it's still better off than the ruble (currently by 10% overall), compared to five minutes before Pootie-poot got all grabby about other people's countries. Suck on that. There's also more USD being held as the world's reserve currency than there was several months ago. So news of the dollar's utter demise is a wee bit early, even if it's fundamentally less sound than Emperor Poopypants' memory.
The ruble is shit, because all Russia has to back it with isn't gold (they're not handing that over for rubles, jackholes, never were, and never will), it's commodities. Which revenue stream has been halved since Putard's asinine invasion, and which they're only selling (at fire sale prices) to India and China, both of whom are ecstatically happy to profit from Russia's stupidity, and get cheap energy while they can.
Whether there are long-term consequences and punishment from the rest of the world towards India and China when the dust settles remains to be seen, but neither has anything long-term to look forward to.
But FFS, stop pointing to the ruble as some bastion of stability. It's the Mexican peso in Cyrillic writing, with the inherent worth of Zimbabwean dollars. Even more so as long as they're an international pariah. Their economy is currently a fraction of what it was 20 months ago, and it isn't going to get better until they end this war, withdraw from Ukrainian territory in haste and for good, and probably pay hefty reparations on top of that. That's what they've bought themselves. Get over it, snowflakes.
I passed two of these guys on the way home this morning; both classic black Caddies, one a '56, one a '69, both sailing along the freeway about 2" above the asphalt.
If this 1975 classic can't help you get your mojo going, you're past help.
Floridians can keep this worthless motherfucker. The nation will miss him like a dose of clap. I'd piss on him if he was on fire, but only if I got to first light him on fire. Contact the blog if such can be arranged.
"They lied to FISA courts for surveillance warrants, gaslit the media and American people, and are rewarded with book deals, university faculty appointments, television commentary gigs, none receiving even a slap on the wrist. They all conspired to rig or overturn an election with no special counsels and no indictments. Such propaganda and elimination of political opposition fits the definition of totalitarianism.
...
Where is the GOP on this? Is there any GOP outrage or pushback? So much for checks and balances and co-equal branches of government. Where are the GOP primary candidates on this outrage that awaits them should they ever make it to the White House, and unlike the Bushes, actually push back against the deep state?"
I have this on the car MP3 rotation, but can't figure out how I missed moving it onto the Sunday Music list. Oversight: corrected. I already liked Olivia Newton-John longbefore this song came out. But when she guest-hosted the Midnight Special on July 26, 1980, I watched the whole show. And watching this performance of a great song by her, I only spent the next 43 years (so far) completely captivated by this woman.
Live TV?
Two versions, same show for different time zones, with band/no band, and a costume change:
I definitely remember watching the white version on the West Coast. When this aired, the song was #2 on Billboard's Hot 100. The next day it moved to #1, and stayed there for the next month.
The beauty of video and YouTube is that ONJ gets to be this hot and effortlessly talented forever, despite what her tombstone says. >sigh<
1) Ukraine will never stop fighting short of annihilation. (We told you this from the get-go last year.)
2) Russia cannot afford to stop fighting. Even if Putin goes away somehow (actuarial tables, coup, whatever.) Their elites are trying to re-establish the Soviet Union borders, as a means of internal security from perceived external threats. And that typical Russian paranoia is bringing about the exact external threats that didn't exist in January of 2022. NATO is now bigger than ever, meaner, and more anti-Russian than any time since the Berlin Wall went up in 1961.
3) Half of current "Russia" isn't made up of Russians. Moscow feels this in their bones.
4) If Moscow revolts, the whole enterprise collapses.
5) Russia has a history of riding forms of government right into the smoking hole of history. {cf. both Czarist Russia, and Communist Russia.} There's no reason to think they won't ride the current system right into total collapse either. It's what they do.
6) Besides destroying 1/3 to 1/2 of their ground combat power since 2/22, Russia has driven fully a third of its draft-aged males out of the country. They've got a lot fewer folks to draft, and the people running things at every age group and demographic aren't being replaced. That's everything from farms to manufacturing to research labs to nuclear power plants - and nuclear weapons. Most of their best minds who could get out are long gone, and the actuarial brain drain accelerates with every passing year.
7) Pushing generals out of windows isn't making the Russian Army leaner and meaner. It's just cutting off its head, as Stalin's purges did to it in the 1930s. Which is why Hitler's armies were able to push them to the brink of destruction for four years before total mobilization and Western aid finally turned the tide.
8) There's no aid coming this time, from anywhere, least of all China, and they're currently begging countries like the Norks and Iran for any scraps they can spare. China and India are simply buying Russian oil and gas at fire-sale prices, but it's less than half of what Europe was buying, in hard dollars, which isn't helping Russia's economy much. It's mainly just slowing the collapse.
For the perennial fucktards out there with a room-temp (at the North Pole) IQ, that isn't saying anywhere that Ukraine is "winning". Yet again, look at photos and reports from France circa 1919, and tell the class what "winning" looks like when your front yard is the front line.
Ukraine winning looks like national survival. And week on week, them eventually regaining Crimea looks likelier and likelier, and eventually pushing Russia completely out of Donetsk and Luhansk isn't beyond belief either.
Leaving Russia, just as after their Afghanistan debacle, with nothing to show for their effort but international embarrassment, crushing economic decay, and a large heap of dead Russian troops for their trouble.
What it does foretell is that as long as the West is resupplying Ukraine, Russian short-term prospects get bleaker by the month, and their long-term prospects died early last year. Their long-term future is as a shell of their former self, split up internally, their population gutted by war losses, refugee/draft-dodger flight, and the march of time.
Most of the -stans are already getting restless. And Putin has no one left to send if they all tell him to f**k right off.
David Johansen, AKA Buster Poindexter doing his version of the song from 1987, which managed to hit #45 on Billboard's Hot 100 that year. Still better than 90% of the current junk on the radio right now, and one that keeps popping into my head every time I see the thermometer in the car on the way to work. We also note for the record that we intend to conga line to this song at the grave site after Jane Fonda finally drops dead. You're invited.
We hereby award this day the FAFO Medal with gold star device, to one Douchebag Garcia, formerly of San Antonio, TX , car thief and felon in possession of a loaded weapon, shot by his theft victim while attempting to avoid apprehension for his crime, after the vehicle's owner tracked him down, finding Douchebag sitting in the stolen vehicle in question, and ordered him at gunpoint to get out of the vehicle and await the arrival of the local police.
Douchebag, desiring no such annoying outcome to his criminal enterprise, then produced a weapon of his own and shot the vehicle owner, wounding him for his efforts, whereupon Douchebag became a bullet sponge for the owner's far more accurate and voluminous return fire, absorbing thereby an unknown quantity of lead proceeding towards him at a high rate of speed, and with an unknown number of friends of the lethal projectile(s) arriving concurrently, as well as getting his girlfriend-accomplice shot critically in the exchange for bonus points, while managing to rapidly achieve room temperature himself shortly thereafter. Huzzah.
For getting shot, Douchebag Garcia rates the FAFO Medal, and by happily dying of wounds received in the exchange, the gold star device is additionally authorized.
His butthurt brother, Jose Garcia, unfamiliar with the rules of FAFO, is rectum-clenchingly upset that Douchebag's grand theft auto and attempted murder became a capital crime, but the San Antonio TX police chief, where the shooting occurred, has already declared Zero Fucks will be Given on behalf of Douchebag, who was killed both lawfully, and in a praiseworthy manner, saving the citizens of the state of Texas any further expense for such now-superfluous niceties as incarceration, trial, and imprisonment for this or any other future depredations on the citizenry thereof.
And to the vehicle's owner, wounded in the apprehension, we officially commend him for his actions, wishing him a rapid recovery, and godspeed in his future life. The local authorities should formally commend him for his actions, and reimburse him at least a celebratory box of replacement ammunition for his efforts. Dulce et decorum est.
Divemedic responds to the yappy pups who keep throwing out the "You first!" response to those of us who blog and talk about shoulds and oughts.
TL;DR: He's right, and they're wrong.
My detailed thoughts:
It's quite possible to both blog, and make concrete preparations. Most smart folks are doing at least the latter, which is better than nothing.
The problem is the shortage of thinkers and organizers (or people smart enough to listen instead of spew bile) who can't look past Step Two, and the yakkers and flakkers who think this is a one-step process consisting of either/or, who are probably doing neither to any notable degree, let alone working on any higher levels of The Pyramid.
You could look it up:
This embiggens.
[Word To Your Mother: It's a 22-step process, and you're not even functioning at Step 3 yet.]
Franklin and Adams spent the entire Revolutionary War wining and dining in France (Step 9 if you're keeping score at home), and all that talking and diplomacy got us was money, arms & munitions, and military support sufficient to gain our actual freedom. So imagine how stupid you sound when you denigrate people making your case in public to anyone listening.
When you notice someone brighter than you talking intelligently about "stacking up" some international support, pay attention. They're playing chess, and you're playing checkers.
Just don't hold your breath waiting for them, or any actual backing, to show up.
And for anybody dishing on those holding in-person training for those of you out there with exactly zero lifetime real-world military experience (that would be 97+% of everyone, according to Census data since 1975), unless you've got your own well-regulated platoon - that's 30+ pipe-hitters for Common Core grads - of Immortals trained, supplied, organized, ready, and standing by for pear-shaped society, you probably ought to re-think your own cleverness. They aren't getting rich doing it, and they're trying to do a favor for literal hordes of mostly ungrateful numbnuts, who don't know what they don't know. Tribes and greater are the only thing that's worked since before recorded history. Solo actors and family-sized units are a death sentence, since about 50,000 B.C. or so. But keep thinking you'll be the exception. Maybe God holds you in special esteem.
Most of the loudest whiners (who, so far, are not deliberate fed-poasting agents provocateur) are going to blow their load, fail, get pissed, and run to emulate Benedict Arnold when no one else wants to do things their way.
Anybody bitch-slapping the Leftards, and getting rich doing it, deserves a hearty "Hell, yeah!" Libtards hate this, because anytime they're getting stuck by any genre of music, it underlines that their whacktard kneejerk orthodoxy has become The Man.
UPDATE: Aldean's response to Cancel Culture yesterday, live in concert:
Another flashback track from happier times, when Reagan had just been re-elected by a landslide, before the titular subject was a festering left-wing luna-twat with Tourette's, and movies provided actual entertainment and a pleasant escape from everyday life, for the princely sum of two bucks on student discount night, in a tune sung by an 80's girl group you could listen to - or look at - all day long. A Number 3 in the UK, but peaked at 95 in the U.S.
Lately, I post these notices mainly to piss off the ten people who still think the blog is struggling since the revocation of their superfluous blessings.
As if.
But their impotent rage tickles my funnybone to no end.
To the rest of you, sincere and continued thanks for dropping by.
When I still worked in the biz, I lost an entire series' employment to the last writer's strike. Six month's slam-dunk income. And 95% of SAG-AFTRA aren't actors, and haven't been for years, they're washing cars and waiting tables, and never even work enough to make their medical benefit requirement in any year. Yet are still allowed to vote on whether all 160K members will strike. (And most actors good enough to become "producers", thus the ones having exactly the most to lose by going on strike, aren't allowed to vote on that. Spasibo, comrades.) But those unemployed assholes are also fucking with the livelihoods of 200,000-400,000 working class people behind the camera with few other options (not a lot of work for grips, for example, outside the biz, except at moving companies, but without them on set, the movie doesn't happen), because the precious above-the-line primadonnas "don't make enough" when they do work. How oppressive. And they're doing it just as TV shows go back into production, and this summer's movies would be getting made, for release next summer. So they're screwing the entire town, and the entire industry, at the height of the working year for Hollywood. Fuck them all sideways, with a rusty chainsaw. Brighter lights might have noticed that the 299M people in this country outside their bubble don't give a wet fart for them, and they'd take a good deal, and continue working. But that would be easy.
First they're going to spend all this season home choking their chickens, and then they're going to wake up one day and realize they strangled the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of high-functioning autistic retards.
Angus has some oft-repeated thoughts on the college loan debacle. Give it a gander. Our reply was far too long to post there, so we post it here:
I think you're yelling at the wall. And you should probably let it go. And this is me talking. Just saying.
You learned a hard truth, and you got screwed over hard in the process. But your story is not every kid on the hook for $100-200K, who thought majoring in kick boxing or Vogon poetry at night school at Wossamotta U. would get them first dibs in interviews for Harvard Law, Silicon Valley, or Wall Street.
Last I looked, Congress took over student loans, mainly as a boon to leftist colleges and universities, during Obama's first term, with a Democrat congress.
Nobody's parents voted for it, and neither they nor students sure as hell didn't ask for college tuition to skyrocket 500%, which it's done continually after Uncle Fed took over the whole thing.
(The list of things that didn't turn to shit 5 seconds after the feds got involved could be written with a Fat Sharpie inside a thimble. But you know that already, because you've got VA health care.)
This is the mortgage crisis all over again, except with college tuition.
Let it crash.
Stop trying to float a lead balloon.
Colleges will take a dive. Good.
Idiots who majored in stupid majors will eat a fat one too. Boo frickin' hoo.
TANSTAAFL applies, in spades.
I got the degree I have now as an adult, for pennies, from the local JC.
The same programs are available now, and with five times as many slots.
I only delayed that because I hadn't figured out what to be when I grew up earlier in life, and because despite having other choices, I decided to sign up to potentially kill people for Uncle when I could have ridden the wave from college into corporate America. I don't regret either choice. The one college loan I ever took out I got deferred, first while serving in the Corps, and then being a full-time student.
I paid it off after that with a minimum wage job in about two years.
I could have paid it off in 8 months while I was still in the Corps, years before it was due, but I didn't have to, so I didn't.
But anyone, any time, anywhere, who can't figure out that taking out $200K in loans for a job that pays a quarter of that per year is too stupid to go to college to begin with.
Is that predatory? Hell yes it is.
Let the whole silly-assed program die, and let the banks and the universities take it in the keester.
It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of loan sharks.
And as you mentioned a couple of posts later, apprenticeships in the trades are begging for candidates.
So don't give away squat.
Let the smart and hardworking kids who got worthless degrees go learn plumbing or welding on their own hook, and pay their own damned loans back themselves, with no further assistance. Like the smart ones will.
The lazy millennials who thought they were going to get a Ph.D. in Victim Studies and get rich, and are waiting at Starbuck's until that tenured professorship opens up?
Fuck them, sideways, with a rusty chainsaw.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Caterpillar trains people to repair heavy equipment every year, and the salary two years after graduation is well into six figures.
And they haven't filled all the training slots once in any year in the last 30 years.
(That's an example straight out of Mike Rowe's message, btw.)
Because it's hard, and dirty w-o-r-k, and you have to go where people are using heavy equipment to build things, which is generally hundreds of miles from Hipsterville, and with lousy internet. Boo frickin' hoo.
The government fucked up something it touched? And they lied to people?
Stop the presses.
I see 50 "Help Wanted" signs every day.
The only kids I see taking entry-level slots at McDonald's and Burger King are Asian kids, working their way through college. I can count the hispanic and black kids I see in those jobs on my thumbs.
What I never see are "French Poetry and Victim Studies majors needed" signs.
That hasn't been news to anyone paying attention since...ever, AFAIK.
OTOH, the friend I went to school with, who got kickedTF out of high school in our junior year the day after they found out he signed up for the GED test?
He both entered and graduated college a year ahead of any of us with a degree in electrical/electronic engineering from the local JC and State U., at 1/10th the price of private tuition-based schools, went to work for Texas Instruments, and he's retired years early, after making senior VP. After getting rich over decades of hard work.
I'm pretty sure he never voted to have Uncle Sugar hand out fat college loans to every swinging dick who thought they could be president of Warner Brothers or Activision at 23, or sign with the Celtics or the Cowboys in the first round.
And the total college loan takeover? That kicked in in the 2010, and the kids who signed up for that - as legal adults - were almost completely Millennials*. And that's exactly who's crying about their current situation now. Color me shocked.
The Boomers and even Gen Xers had graduated long before that happened.
People who owe money and aren't lazy, stupid, or both, will ultimately pay it off.
Those who won't are neither bright, nor industrious.
That's just how it is, no matter how big the pitfall that was set before them.
Dean Wormer's advice to Flounder is timeless.
*(That's before we get into the ocean of difference between Boomers from 1946 versus 1964. Generalizations on arbitrary "generations" are ultimately specious. I have more in common with John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, or Tom Selleck - not a one of whom is a "Boomer" btw, than I do with most of those who are. The only thing kids in a given generation share across the board is similar birthdates, in 20-year swaths. Like you'd expect.)
Today's Sunday Music selection brought to you in honor of the First Son, Slow 'Tard, played by legendary Slow Hand himself. Clapton's live version hit the Top 40 in 1980. Just about the time the title substance did too.
"[Independence Day] will be the most important [period of time] in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized by pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this forward forever more.
You will think me transported with enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can se that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that posterity will triumph in that day's transaction, even though we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not." - John Adams, July 1776, in a letter to his wife, Abigail
As SiG noted today, you can always go back to bitching and moaning about the problems tomorrow; they'll all still be here on the 5th.
Enjoy the holiday. And perhaps give at least a passing nod to "solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty". It surely couldn't hurt.
Read Mike's post. He, like many of us, is of two minds today. That's as it should be, we suppose.
Our birthright is monumental. Where we are shows how much has been lost. And much of that loss, simply surrendered.
But whatever happens to the United States, Liberty and Freedom have never gone out of style.
It's just that once in awhile, when they've been pushed around by bullies and thugs, they need someone to twist a few arms, crack a few heads, or even slit a few throats and stack some bodies on their behalf.
Back in the day - and yesterday - people chose not to pay attention to the fact that they were going to have to fight and earn their independence every single day, and year after year.
This isn't a new fight.
It's the same old one.
The people who will win, find that an animating struggle, not a perpetual slog. Be of good cheer.
And whenever opportunity presents, kill a commie for mommie.
Top Ten hit, forty years old now, from 1983, for the Motels. We wouldn't mind if that summer had lasted forever, especially falling asleep to Martha Davis' haunting ballad playing on into the night.
"Truth is always stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense."
This event could only have been better if it hit Flushing Meadows NYFC, Poo Poo Point WA, Crap Albania, or Poop Mexico. We would have added Shit Iran to that list, but there, by definition, every storm is a Shit storm. (It would be too good to be true if this town was also host to a religious shrine: Holy Shit! Or had a drive-thru: Shitburger. Tapping into that one locale could put Iran on a profit basis just on merchandising. They could go DJT one better, and rename the province Shitholia, and retire on the t-shirt royalties which, unlike oil, would never run out.)
And if you didn't know about any of these places, it's fair to say you don't know Shit.
As it is, we'll be writing the NCAA and recommending they find the closest college stadium to that corner of Nebraska/Wyoming border, and announce it as the perpetual site of the annual Tidy Bowl. Charmin, Ajax, ExLax, Metamucil, and Depends would be falling all over themselves to sponsor it. Maybe even The Gas Company.
And when the political folks found out, the money they'd make from that obvious tie-in would turn the town into Las Vegas North.
We may be onto something here. We'd pursue this even farther down, the, um,...rabbit hole, but frankly, we just don't give a shit.
Not counting the news outlets or websites along the full range of accuracy and veracity, I follow multiple actual individuals' handwritten blogs. (Bot news aggregators don't thrill me.) Looking them over, many are current serving or former military and a couple are some variation of high-speed low-drag elite forces ninjas. Or just funny as all. Because life without humor is just despair. So in other words, the same folks I trusted in the military not to wet the bed, sh*t themselves, or otherwise run around like headless Nancys, are the same folks I trust on the interwebz, for demonstrating pretty much the same trustworthiness and circumspectly responsible behavior. Color me shocked.
Comments are fully moderated, due to idiots and trolls. Grown up discussion here will appear just as soon as I have the time to push it through. ANONYMOUS UNSIGNED COMMENTS WILL BE AUTO-DELETED WITHOUT MERCY, and the url added to the spam filter, or mercilessly mocked at the bloghost's sole discretion. If you're too chickensh*t to come up with an alias for online purposes, you're not tall enough for this blog. Pick a name, and stick with it, and you're good. Get cute, and you're wasting your time and my electrons, and your masterpiece will never see the light of day. No warning shots will be fired. If you can't maintain decorum and polite behavior, I won't toy with you, I'll squash you. If one of your comments disappears, YOU f**ked up. If all of them do, it's time for you to go. Disagree with the points made, on the merits, and you're good. Go after me personally, or other commenters, and your comment will never see daylight here. My tolerance for skirting the line is at absolute zero, and will remain there. Don't f**k up.
