As hospital manglement tries to stuff 10 pounds of shit into a five pound bag, and then wants to pay for it at half price, I'm picking up a lot of OT. Posting is consequently going to be light for a few days. The world seems to be running on SSDD-Mode anyways, so I'm not missing much.
And the decision tree for "Double-rate + bonus" vs. "sitting around the house for free" is fairly short.
Wander as ye will, harden your living situation, and your hearts, as necessary.
These are the Good Old Days.
Just imagine what 2022 You would have told 2019 You, if travel back in time only that far were possible.
If anyone is wondering, this is with normal realities. COVID has ceased to be any sort of a thing since before New Years'. Remember that as boosterphobia and more Covidiocy kicks in.
In looking back over two-plus years of selections, we seem to have left out this brother/sister duo. Richard was a piano prodigy, Karen was a very skilled drummer, and both those talents were overshadowed by Karen's unbelievably rich singing voice. Which talents all combined for them to basically crush all pop charts from about '70-'75. They were one of the first fledgling discoveries of Herb Alpert (the "A" in A&M Records) when Karen was only 19, and who had one of the most phenomenal, unique, and recognizable singing voices of all time. To make up for the oversight, we go with two selections from among their first of many, many hits, both winning Grammy awards, and both going all the way to #1, in May and August of 1970. Over fifty years later, she still sounds like she's singing just to you, from right next to your ear, and the songs still resonate with the same power they did the first time we heard them.*
*FWIW, we spent a couple of days digging through the vaults, and true to today's second selection, we've got another two years of Sunday Music choices already teed up. And we're just getting warmed up.
Somebody's saying the quiet part out loud. (FAIK, has been saying it for some good time, and is only now getting traction). Whatever the reason something like this is turning up, it's a good thing. RTWT.
The American colonies were largely self-governing. Happy to have Daddy's help when the French and Indians came calling in the mid-18th century, they weren't so happy about getting to pay a disproportionate share of the costs. But they already had their own governments, and knew how to run what needed to be run. Colonial legislatures were already in existence, the only thing they had no input on was the persons made royal governor by the King. These offices proved easy to dispense with; the rest was co-opted.
As the author of the OP notes, all successful revolutions, and in fact, our own Unconventional Warfare doctrine, repeatedly points out the need to mirror TPTB with an underground government structure. Which unplugs the tyrannical government from the people, and the people from the tyrannical government, delegitimizing TPTB on the spot.
If you're some large "L" Libertardian, who thinks anarchy is something that has ever worked, you've got another think coming. You won't get the Wild West, either, you'll get the South Side of Chicago in the Roaring 20s, Beirut in the 1980s, and/or Bosnia and Serbia in the 1990s. Nature abhors a vacuum, and if you can't or won't run things, warlords will step up in your stead, and you'll just have traded one dictatorship 1000 miles away, for 1000 dictatorships 1 mile away.
By all means, figure out a minimal government, but you're going to have to have police, fire/EMS, trash collection, water, power, communications, etc., or you and your tribe will be cooking rabbits and living in leather tipis for a long, long time, until some bigger badass tribe rolls over you. Ask the Cherokee and Sioux how that plan works out for the second-place contestant.
A lot of government rent-seekers will be wholly suitable to roll into the new lash-up, and a lot won't. Some, in fact, should be actively barred from any such positions for life, lest you recreate the nanny state with all its drawbacks, and none of the benefits of modern society. For example, your fire and EMS folks are probably able to roll over without a hitch. Your police not quite so much. Your unionized civil servants, diversity awareness officers, and petty bureaucrats not at all.
So you'd better have a plan for that, and them.
Not by tomorrow (though that isn't a bad idea), but the sooner you start working on the shopping list, and deciding on the components of the layers, the easier it is to bake the cake when you need it. Local and county/parish level is good enough for openers. Levels above that will shake out as necessary on the day.
Take a hard look at what your city and county do, and start pondering (and discussing with LMIs) what on that list needs to stay, and what needs to go. Even as a pure thought exercise, it starts getting your head in the game for what will eventually become necessary.
Water, shelter, and food are necessities. But you're not going to make it as Batman In The Boondocks, and if you can't wrap your head around that before you're in the middle of it, you're going to have hard sledding come the moment.
Once you figure out what you need, you can sub-divide it down into what those needs will require in order to work. Ideally, by subverting or siphoning off support for the current PTB, and ultimately by having the various parts of it thoroughly penetrated, infiltrated, and subverted. And the parts that have to go already metaphorically marked with red tape for culling, as appropriate, when the time arises.
For those with ears to hear, and a head used as something more useful than a hat rack, we give you some off-the-cuff down-in-the-weeds military analysis of a couple of videos from Ukraine, which are neither propaganda, nor assailable on any number of grounds, but which nonetheless make our non-dominant eye twitch.
This is Military Science 101 stuff. Why? Refresh the warning from Gunny, above, in your mind.
A) How To Tell Us You're Using Retarded Conscripts Without Telling Us You're Using Retarded Conscripts
So what?
Here you have a Russian "hasty" (as opposed to deliberate, i.e. well-thought out and executed) AT (anti-tank) minefield. Where the primary value of the word "hasty" is half-assed, slipshod, and damned near total waste of time.
Why?
1) A minefield is an obstacle. In order to be effective, (say it with me grunts of the world): obstacles must be under constant observation, and covered with direct or indirect fires.
2) What you have here, is neither, and thus totally ineffective. When someone in a sedan can defeat your barrier, you're a No-Go faceplant at the "Hasty AT Minefield" station.
3) Some dumbass, or dumbasses - plural, thought, or were told, that strewing a few dozen (it looks to be 30-40) AT mines across a hard-surface road was a good idea, because reasons. F^(# NO, it's NOT.
4) The brave idiot-savant civilians in the video defeated it by simply driving diagonally over it. With enough time to get out and video the feat.
5) Yet no mortar or MG fire, thus no observation, thus pointless waste of AT mines.
6) As the video notes, it takes 300+# of pressure to detonate one of these (to keep from wasting them on squad-level snuffies, and cheap sedans). You want tanks, or troop-laden APCs to blow one of these.
7) None of that happens. And it looks, for all the world, like Pvt. Ivan Jackassovich just laid them out in neat little rows, probably with not only no observers nor covering fires, but without any anti-handling devices. Meaning any dipshit could walk up, grab the carrying handle, and pick them all up and carry them to the side of the road. An anti-handling device means besides the pressure plate fuze on top, there are 1-3 other places where you can put a pressure-release or pull-triggered fuze, so that if you push, pull, lift, or try to carry off Mr. TankF**Ker, or any of his 40 other little round friends in the picture, he will blow you into bitsy pieces travelling up and outward at several hundred feet per second. IOW, they just set them on the road, and walked away.
8) I could be wrong, but I'm not stupid. Assuming no EOD, you simply get a length of rope or wire, long enough (say, 50-100m in length, long enough to be hiding well away from the blast) to tie onto one or more of those nasty little things, and drag them out of the way, without becoming one with the universe in a pink mist. If you have enough length, you lasso the whole bunch, and use a vehicle to pull the lot off to the side of the road. If that works, you now have 40 AT mines you can re-purpose. More about that in a moment. If not, your ears are ringing, and you need a new length of cord.
9) If 1 (or more) out of 40 were properly anti-handling bobby-trapped, your road has a new "men at work" hole in it, and the blast alerts sleeping Ivan Jackassovich nearby that it might be time to lay some RPD, mortar, or artillery fire on your AO at those co-ordinates, and doom on you.
10) What else did Ivan forget? The way you stop that sort of silly sh*t, is by sprinkling some anti-personnel (AP) mines amongst and amidst the AT field, so that little Jimmy YouTuber can't get close enough to screw up your handiwork without going all explodey. Think Russki versions of Claymore and Bouncing Betty mines, and again, all with anti-handling devices. Now no one wants to drive through your minefield any more, and it's an actual military obstacle.
11) But they didn't do that, so they were noobs, idiots, and time-wasting wankers, along with too stupid to know that, not supervised by any NCO with at least half a brain, and/or don't have AP mines, anti-handling devices, anyone with the wit and skill to emplace them, nor OPs, binoculars, radios, mortars, machineguns, or artillery to spare for such a basic Infantry 101 function. Thus, f**king amateurs.
12) Takeaways you can use:
a) In the 1956 Hungarian uprising, Hungarian partisan townies in Budapest stopped Russian tanks with this tactic. Using green-painted upside-down dinner plates. Yes, really. If you have plaster or concrete, you can make your own AT mine mold, and crank out as many realistic looking AT mines as you like. If, unlike Ivan Jackassovich, you cover that obstacle by observation and direct fire, you can stop a tank with 5 pounds of concrete and some dark green spray paint. At least for a good while. If you sprinkle in a couple live ones, with anti-handling boobytrap devices, you can make a few real mines seem like dozens to hundreds. Only combat engineers and several hours' time, under fire, will be able to figure out what's what. While they're getting shot at. (There are higher-tech ways to breach minefields, like combat engineer vehicles (CEVs, i.e. tanklike killdozers) which throw detonation cord explosives a couple hundred yards over such a field, and blow a pathway through it. Maybe 2-4 times, before they're out of line charges. Then it's back to doing it the hard way. So, how many fake, or thin but realistic, minefields before you've still halted an advance for hours, days, or weeks? That's up to you.)
Thought Exercise: If someone (you, me, whoever), decided to 3D print the fuse assembly and prongs at the top X 100, and attach them to 100 metal coffee or paint cans painted green with suitable markings, and buried them appropriately with the trigger prongs sticking out of the ground, who wants to go up to them and see if they're real? And what if one or two of them were? {cf. F**ked Around, Found Out}
b) If you collect those unguarded AT mines, you can cart them somewhere else and emplace them for your own purposes. Like properly buried, waiting for Ivan Tankovich to come lumbering by, and blow himself into vapor. Even in a hole under the hard-surface, with a chunk of the roadway on top, because remember, 20 pounds of concrete or asphalt isn't gong to set off the pressure plate. 50 tons of tank, however, makes a nice fireball, and none of his friends want to come visit their former buddy, Ivan Blownaparte.
c) If you have dummy mines, you can trade live mines for dummy mines, which Ivan Jackassovich and his commanders may check on, not knowing you're driving everything right through that "minefield" whenever it suits you, allowing you to get in places you aren't supposed to be, or get out of places they want to keep you in.
I told you that, to talk about this next video:
B) The Small Ballsy Ambush That Could Have Been Soooo Much Better
We know you can't see this here; sign in, go to YouTube, and WTWT.
1) One or two really ballsy Ukrainians took an NLAW and wasted a Russian tank.
2) Okay. Buuuuuuuuuuut.....These guys were checker players, not chess players.
3) As the scene develops, yes, they got a tank. Which is a nice trade for one NLAW. And they slowed a battalion task force down, because they had to engage the ambush.
4) Now try this, after anticipating what that NLAW would do.
The Con
5) One shot, one kill: Good. Five more seconds of thought and planning, and a couple more pieces on the board: Much better. Let's review the cast of characters:
The Set-Up
6) Suppose we'd brought some help, for what was an entire battalion task force. Because the four tanks and three APCs are at least a motorized rifle company team. And there's another one behind it on the same road. Two companies = battalion.
The Sting
7) So, instead of 1-2 guys with balls the size of church bells, to ambush a T-72/T-80 from less than 100 yards away, we send eight guys, with half a dozen NLAWs, and a machinegun team for backup (or a couple of good designated marksmen with good optics).
8) And all those AT mines we pilfered from Ivan's half-assed minefield? We found someplace to put them, along the sides of the road at our much-better ambush.
9) Our original NLAW team triggers the opening ambush, as before.
Ivan's APCs all move to the far side of the road to take cover and support the counter-ambush.
Where they hit the AT mines on the far side of the road, and blow up.
The tanks, doing a doctrine herringbone to the sides, hit the AT mines on the near side.
Now Ivan's down 3 tanks and 3 APCs, for 1 NLAW, and those scavenged AT mines.
The MG team mops up the dismounts from behind.
The bottom NLAW takes out the point tank.
The top NLAW team goes after anything left alive in the kill zone, or takes on the following company.
10) If the lead company tries to blow through the kill zone, the bottom team stops that.
If the following company moves up, lather, rinse, repeat.
If they sit there in shock, the teams displace, and either retreats unscathed, or have a go at moving into position to hit the stalled company as well.
If the column tries to focus on any one team position, the other teams hit them from the other directions, as cover for the targetted team to displace and get away.
If air support or supporting artillery starts coming online, the ambush team executes the GTFOofDodge maneuver, and lives to fight another day.
11) Now 8 guys, plus half an hour to dig in those two AT mine strips along likely ambush exit routes, have wiped out an entire company, and/or possibly even a battalion task force.
And it's all over in 2-4 minutes, before any air support or artillery fire can be called in on them.
12) Takeaways:
a) Roads/trails are kill zones. Always, always, always.
b) Flank security, if you're the convoy. That means drive on both sides of the road, and ready for anything form any direction.
c) Don't focus in on just the first point of attack, it may be just the opening.
d) If you're the fox, instead of the hounds, bring friends, and plan for the enemy's first, second, and third likeliest responses. Kill everything you can, and then get away. Unless you can wipe out the whole unit, and scavenge.
e) Ambushee: GTF OFF THE "X".
f) Ambusher: Make it very hard to get off the X. Know when it's time to go.
Ukraine, on both sides, is amateur hour. A little more thought can make a big difference either way.
Now imagine you're the one hiding from a large heavy task force like this one, or trying to stop one. Think of other ways to halt or destroy that force with what you have on hand, or could cobble together. No NLAWS? How about molotovs and flammenwerfers? No MGs? What about snipers? No mines? What about anti-tank ditches and obstacles?
There's no horse that can't be rode, and no rider that can't be throw'd.
Adapt. Improvise. Overcome.
Scavenge anything useful the enemy provides, and give it back to him, pointy end first.
UPDATE: For those of you still swinging long after the 10-count, you should go read this article over at Peter's BRM blog, based on a WSJ analysis of Russia's war-making shortcomings.
TL;DR: The Russians suck at logistics as well as at tactics.
Show of hands: who thought Russia was good at military logistics, EVER, other than a brief period from 1943-1945, and even then with Murmansk convoys bootstrapping them up to bare competence?
"An obvious consequence of the war in Ukraine is that numerous states around the world will intensify their pursuit of nuclear arms. For nothing more clearly illustrates their value than the fate of Ukraine, which gave them up in 1994 in exchange for worthless assurances. The era of nonproliferation is over."
Those still gargling Putin's genitals after 40 Days Of Fail will find Ferguson's level of reason and reality a bitter pill to swallow.
2002 cut from multi-platinum album artist Sheryl Crow, who won a Grammy for the song, which peaked at #88 on the Billboard Hot 100. Great song, awesome homage video to the all-time King Of Cool, and only one quibble: they should have wrapped it up with Crow's stunt-double leaping a bike over barbed wire on the Swiss frontier. -15 style points. Other than that, considering how easy on the eyes she looks here, I could play this one on an endless loop most days.
If this is The Sun's April Fool's joke, it's a scorcher. Apparently Russia complained that Ukraine forces sent two Mi-24 helicopter gunships 25 miles inside Russia to blow up an oil tank farm in Belgorod last night.
Complained to who? Boo frickin' hoo, Vlad. You thought this was only going to be one-way, on a two-way range?
Greetings from Kyiv!
Cue some Russian general saying this:
We can only hope this is real, and not a prank. (It's on about 14 media sites, when last we looked.) Perhaps it might inject some sanity into the situation, and induce less delusional thinking to take control of events in the region. If it's a prank, we thoroughly enjoyed it. If it isn't: even more so.
(WASHINGTON DC) After news broke early this morning of confirmed widespread election fraud in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, with further states announcing widening probes, the House of Representatives was set to debate articles of impeachment this afternoon, when news came from the White House that the current regime would step down, rather than force a constitutional crisis, and formally conceded losing the 2020 election.
Donald Trump was sworn in at his residence at Mar-A-Lago early this morning, and is returning to Washington D.C. later today to take up his interrupted presidency where he left off. Trading on Wall Street has been suspended in advance until next Monday, and gasoline futures have plummeted to $3/gallon on the news, with further drops likely.
On hearing of the change in U.S. leadership, Vladimir Putin has announced the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all Russian forces from Ukraine, which was confirmed by unnamed Pentagon military sources.
Ambulances have reportedly been taking staff members from all major networks, the WaPo, and the NYTimes to hospitals in Washington D.C. and New York City, where ERs are reportedly flooded with a surge of patients with chest pain and possible strokes.
Early word from Capitol Hill is that with the dissolution of impeachment hearings, the Senate is poised to take up the nomination of FL gov. Ron DeSantis as the new nominee to serve as Vice President, after former VP Pence announced he would not be joining the new administration, by mutual consent.
Speaker of the House Pelosi could not be reached for comment, but a steady stream of parcel trucks have been delivering box wine by the pallet load to the Speaker's offices.
Unconfirmed reports from San Diego, El Paso, Laredo, and Brownsville are of thousands of people streaming south on foot, with the vehicle traffic jam at some border checkpoints backed up "for miles."
Putin's gonna peg the Ruble to gold, and knock off the dollar! Eleventy!! ZOMG!!!
Natzsofast, Guido.
Last year's Russian budget was $233,000,000,000. (Way more than that - 16 TRILLION - in Rubles, which are worth about a penny, and less now that two months ago.) Russia's gold on hand, per some commenter, which we'll stipulate for humor purposes, is 2200 tons. At current rates of gold/dollar exchange, that means that the Russians printed 33% of the government spending out of Putin's ass-gas from borscht and caviar. And that's only LAST year. That means everything they printed every year prior and every year from now on is ass-gas too. Times, what...32 years, just since the birth of the current Russian Federation?!? And forward in perpetuity??
(Bonus: Anyone remember why the Soviet Union collapsed? Anyone? Beuller?? Ferris Beuller...???)
And the Russian government budget is only 20% of their national GDP.
IOW, in order to meaningfully peg the ruble to gold, they'd need 7-8 times more gold than they have, which would be 50% of the total known gold reserves of the entire world, which they ain't got, ain't gonna get, and never will have.
And the Russian economy is only about 7% the size of the US economy. We have double their gold reserves, and we couldn't do what they're announcing in a thousand years, short of worldwide ironclad agreements, and massive deflation, which would also halt all government money printing virtually forever. NTTAWWT.
This is like Texas trying to take over the world by printing Confederate money, and requiring it (or gold) to buy Stetsons, Pace Picante Sauce, and Igloo Coolers.
Sh'yeah, when monkeys fly outta my butt.
Not. Happening.
And in any event, neither Putin, nor Russia, nor anyone sane, is ever going to swap rubles for gold. That ship sailed for good in 1971. Which means this is all Russian bullshit, and the ruble is, and will continue to be, finely-engraved toilet paper, just like all fiat currencies. (Including the dollar, as we've told you, and told you, and told you.)
It would take a simultaneous agreement for 5300% worldwide deflation, from everyone, and a permanent exchange rate, to back the world by stable currencies, using all gold reserves in existence, divided by the current planetary GDP.
Your $10K in savings would be worth about $189.
Your $50K annual salary would shrink to about $18/wk.
That's 46¢/hr. $3.68 for an 8-hour day.
Minimum wage (from $15/hr) would be 28¢/hr. $2.08 for 8 hours.
And that's pre-tax income. Uncle Gimme and his state and local minions would still have their hands out for 10-50% of what you make.
Gasoline (from $6/gal) would be selling for 11.9¢/gal.
8¢/gal in the free states.
And so on.
Forever.
Get 200 nations to sign on to that, and we can back everything with gold, forever.
Until then, as neither Russia nor any sane nation will ever again trade their fiatbux for physical specie (gold or silver), this is all smoke and mirrors. Fairytales. Vaporware.
To be crudely blunt, but precise, the only way Putin's pegging the ruble with gold is like this:
There may come a point where the dollar isn't the international reserve currency*.
But this news ain't it. It would take a helluva lot more than just Russia to do that.
Stop swallowing the doom porn. Pay your bills, and go deep on the preps you can.
That is all.
*UPDATE: Want to see how it's far more likely to come about?
[Pro Tip: You've heard about this from Peter at BRM. You've heard it from CA at WRSA. You've heard it from me. You've heard it from Phil at Bustednuckles. And from John Wilder. You've probably heard it from Deninger and Tyler Durden a time or twelve too. Now Eric is piling on, in splendiferous detail. Bracken. Ferfal. Selco. Michael Yon. ,Rawles, since ever. And on and on. Maybe, just maybe, at some point, the penny will drop for you, if it hasn't already. And you'll start to think in terms of a world where those green pieces of paper in your wallet and bank account are worthless. And you'll decide to prepare for "Then what?", hopefully while there's still some brief period of time to do so.
Nota bene: NOBODY is telling you to run around like a headless chicken, or a person whose head is on fire. They're telling you that the financial system you take for granted, and have your whole life, is a house of cards, and a windy day is coming. Make prudent preparations for that. If you can figure this out for yourself without being a spaz now, you'll never have to be one later. I'm guessing the Fukushima Tsunami was a lot more fun to watch from over here, than it was on the coast of Japan in real time. I'd venture a guess that financial collapse will be a lot like that too, and high ground for that looks a lot like arable land with available potable water, a garden and some barnyard animals, friends and neighbors to ride the river with, clear fields of fire, and being pretty self-sufficient for most to all normal needs. Just like for 37 other possible problems.
Worst case? You're early, or it never happens, and you're still ready for a buttload of other grief from any number of scenarios.
1. I like Will Smith. I like Chris Rock. Neither of them came off this looking their best.
2. Rock has cracked on Will Smith many times. Smith has never smacked him around before. So let's look at what changed.
3. Jada Pinkett Smith was at the Oscars, because she's a bona-fide actress, and married to Will Smith, nominated for Best Actor this year, for 25 years.
4. Rock is divorced.
5. There is a comedy line. And I'm not talking the PC cancel-culture nonsense. There are simply things you don't do. Rock knows this now, just like how a man who picks a cat up by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way, as Mark Twain famously observed.
6. If Rock had poked fun at Smith for having big ears, or doing Wild, Wild West, or noted Jada Smith is more likely to get a Golden Raspberry Award than an Oscar, that would have been in-bounds. And, to be fair, Smith even laughed at the joke about Jada and G.I Jane 2. Right up until his wife let him know the joke at her expense wasn't funny. Her face looked like stone.
7. At that point, Smith sent Rock a message: you don't get to kick retarded kids, and you don't get to crap on a man's wife because of her physical appearance due to her medical condition (alopecia).
8. People will try to throw out "Rickels" or "Dangerfield", by way of excuse: No sale. Both teased friends and strangers in good fun, and said so publicly every time they did it, and you knew there was no malice in their rips. Anyone who can't tell that after watching them perform for 2 minutes isn't paying attention.
9. Until last night, Rock didn't know the difference. Now he does.
10. He also knows why it's called a "punchline", and that the Supreme Court wasn't kidding when they recognized that some speech qualifies as provocative "fighting words". "Sticks and stones" isn't a valid argument. Don't believe me; go to any bar, and call someone's companion an "ugly bitch". Be sure you have full dental coverage beforehand. Tell the class how it works out for you. Once your jaw wires are removed.
11. Rock doesn't have cinematic immunity for being a rude jackass just because he's on international TV. But with his one good ear, he'll probably pay a bit more attention to his own inner filter.
12. Standing there afterwards didn't show class; it showed he didn't have the grace to say "I went too far; I apologize". That would have been the Bigger Man gesture. But he doesn't have that in him. And maybe getting someone with more class and grace than recent edgy smartasses to emcee what is supposed to be the biggest event in Hollywood would be a better idea. The Academy hasn't found anyone who was more funny than irritating, and more humorous than raunchy, since Billy Crystal hung up his tux a few years back.
13. Will Smith doesn't have an anger problem, he has a sense of proportion. (Timing, not so much. If he'd instead socked Rock with a closed fist behind closed doors, he'd have saved his wife's honor and his own reputation, and perhaps more effectively with less backlash.) But sometimes, you have to throw an elbow - once - in a televised game, to get some respect. There is something salutary, in a civilizational way, in seeing a husband literally stand up and take a poke at someone who has transgressed the bounds of propriety. If anything, Smith was too gentle with Rock, but in any event, I suspect his point landed home simultaneous with the slap.
14. The big winners were the producers of the show, because it took a probable new record audience low and turned it into an event that'll be talked about for years to come. Rock looks like a graceless jackass, and Smith will have to deal with people thinking he's a hot-head, after 53 years of being no such thing. If the Academy is smart, Rock and Smith will be paired as co-presenters next year, and Rock should wear a sparring helmet.
15. Smith's recognized acting talent means he's far from over, and Rock's comedy will always find an audience. But unless this hatchet gets buried, they probably shouldn't share the stage in the future. And the notes to future emcees should probably include the delightfully old-fashioned concept that cracking jokes about the spouse of one of the premier headliner honorees is neither funny, wise, nor in-bounds.
16. The only thing Rock did right was not to file a police report. No victim: no crime. That saved him more than Smith, because the LAPD wouldn't make any arrest, and the D.A., in fact no D.A., would ever file charges even if they did. Because they know half or more of any jury would hear about Jada's Smith's medical diagnosis, and in that light, refuse to convict Will Smith of anything short of "he should have closed his fist before he smacked him". Nine chances out of ten, the judge dismisses the case out of hand before trial, because of the precedent in Chaplinsky v New Hampshire, if it ever even got that far.
UPDATE: Divemedic, who took issue with our analysis of the Alec Baldwin incident, comes to the same conclusions we did here, and for the same reason: there are some jackassical things you might do that merit someone taking a poke at you.
After last week's pick, and with all that's going on, you had to know that once I'd dusted this one off, it was coming at you on a Sunday. Top 20 rocket for one-hit wonder Timbuk3 from Christmas of 1986.
When literally nothing can shake your belief that Russia is "winning" in Ukraine, you're not advocating a position based on facts and logic, you're proselytizing for a mystery religion.
Russians stacked up for weeks with no notable gains? Russia is winning!
More Russian generals dead in 4 weeks in Ukraine than the US lost in 3 major wars and five smaller conflicts since 1964? Russia is winning!
Video after video of Russian tanks and AFVs getting blown up, captured intact, out of gas, loaded with ammo, even towed into their barns by farmers with tractors? Russia is winning!
Russian soldiers filmed in tears claiming they were lied to, surrendering cold, hungry, and broken, crying to mama, and running over their own brigade commanders with a tank in rage? Russia is winning!
Normally, one has to hold to a belief in globull warmism, systemic racism, or the holiness of diversity to believe this level of bullshit despite all contrary evidence.
Let's talk turkey: Russia's army, on paper, started this conflict a 10:1 favorite. This was literally a modern David-versus-Goliath tale.
Then, Reality kicked in.
1) The Ukrainians rather obviously have united in not wanting to be taken over. This, alone, guarantees Russia can never, ever win, unless they kill every single Ukrainian in existence.
2) The Russians troops of 2022 are not the Russian Soviet Army of 1980. It's a shell of its former self, and the guys that fought in their last combined-forces war are all 90+, or dead. They haven't fought a war like this since 1945, which is to say, the institutional ability to do so is ancient history. They're ill-equipped, under-trained, unmotivated, poorly led, hopelessly inadequate to knocking off a relative pipsqueak army like Ukraine's, and have no chance in hell of taking on 40M partisans for the next 20 years.
3) Their tactics are 1950, but they're running into weapons from 2020. Picture Pickett's Charge at the Somme, and you're starting to get the idea. Unescorted tanks are being turned into corpse canneries. Guided by drone surveillance and targeting, and blown to hell by defenders the fanboys say are "cut off, without any chances". [Murphy's Rules Of Combat: When you're winning, be sure and tell the enemy.]
4) Their secure comms didn't work. Their unsecure comms are jammed. They tried to use cell phones, which were intercepted at first then taken offline. They're now down to wire, and runners.
5) Command and control is getting whacked at a prodigious rate, in a notoriously top-down hierarchical command structure where anyone below the rank of general has to ask permission to do anything. And their generals keep having their heads go all explodey.
Contrary to the fanboys' fervent contentions, this could be disproven. The Russians could start moving through Ukraine like a German blitzkrieg, kicking ass and taking names. They could take Kyiv, roll across the Dnieper, and hurtle all the way to the borders of Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland, driving hordes of fleeing ethnic Ukrainians into permanent exile forever. But a month into this, they show no signs of the basic ability to do any of that. Hundreds of MANPADs have kept them from gaining air superiority. Javelins have made their armored attempts almost as obsolete as Polish horse cavalry charging panzers with wooden lances.
In a move straight from my namesake, the currently operative cover story is that they "never really wanted to capture Kyiv", and that sitting bogged down in mud, immobile, and watching their capabilities blown to hell day in and day out for a month was their cunning battle strategery all along. How cleverly facile. Move the goalposts, and declare that you scored a touchdown. Brilliant! Russia hasn't done that so hamfisted-obviously since the '72 Olympics men's basketball finals.
Now you've got Russian Kremlin spokesholes trying to sell you the line that "wherever we ended up now is where we really wanted to be all along".
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. "The grapes were probably sour anyways."
With maybe 85% of it's raggedy-ass incompetents left, despite running out of fuel, food, and munitions with every shot fired, might Russia still manage to trample Ukraine, by sheer weight of forces? Sure.
And then what?!? Face a population 10 times more fiercely motivated and 500 times bigger than the mujahideen in Afghanistan, last seen kicking the once-mighty Soviet Army the fuck out of that debacle?
Putin can't even keep Russians in Moscow in line over this invasion, even after arresting them in the thousands; he has fuck-all chance of keeping Ukrainians down, even if he captures Zelenskyy and puts him up against a wall on live TV tomorrow. Despite Russia turning Mariupol into a modern-day Hiroshima (minus the radioactivity), no one is running up to the Ukrainian government HQ and throwing molotov cocktails at the walls. OTOH, Putin appears to be getting his advice on charm and leadership from the biographies of Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein. Nothing he has done, is doing, or even could be contemplating, are the things people do who are winning a war.
But the fanboys, reading some Q-tarded version of Russian hagiography, have convinced themselves St. Vladimir is playing 97-dimensional chess here.
If believing that level of delusion helps you get through the day, that's your business, but don't piss yourselves when things don't work out like you thought they would.
Given the raving idiot on our end of the playground, things overall are liable to go from bad to really shitty, whether fast, or more slowly. It would therefore behoove you to stop sniffing glue as you get your own crap in one bag, and start facing up to how things really are right here at home. Crazy people are a luxury in hard times, and the first to be thrown under the bus. Putin isn't your friend, never was, and he isn't coming to save you either.
And whatever the final outcome, Russia turning out to be the most hamstrung, impotent, and incompetent fighting machine since the Judean People's Front is the best news to come out in 2022. The stupid bastard running the show there not realizing that is the worst. It's never pretty when delusional megalomania meets harsh reality, and it's worse for anyone in range of the rage that results from someone putting a Javelin missile right through that castle you were building in the clouds.
And now, he can't have heart-to-heart chats with Obozo, nor even go to Pedo Island to relax and decompress.
And Czar Vladimir wept, because there were no more worlds his paper army could conquer.
So stop gargling Putin's junk, and start learning lessons from the side you hate to admit is stacking them up.
Because when Spicy Time starts here, which side d'ya think you're going to be on...??
Leviathan's? Or the guys trying to bring the beast down?
Best wrap your head around that answer right quick.
Objects in crystal ball are closer than they appear.
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.
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