Meanwhile, Back At Banana Republican HQ...

 

Cue Hail To The Thief

Five-Alarm REEEEEEEEEEE in 3, 2, ...

 h/t CTH

And That's How It's Done

All rise for the Chiquitastan National Anthem

Go to Adaptive Curmudgeon's place, and RTWT.

A  clearer and more cogent summary of events you will not find.

America has been gaslit for a year and a half, and it wasn't your imagination. The fraud is as serious as a heart attack, and as real as your own body.

I've made no to-do over it, and it's probably escaped anyone's notice, but I have never, not once, referred to that demented stumblefuck above anywhere, anytime as president of anything. He never has been, and he never will be. You have to win an election for that, he's never done any such thing, and Stevie Wonder could see that from space.

The only sufficient reckoning for this level of banana republicanism inevitably ends in rivers of blood, and mountains of skulls. That was true then, and it's more so now.

Nothing less will avail.

WYS ≠ WYG: How you Know The King Is Dead

h/t Common Cents blog

 

A few pointers on this clip from ITV:

1) This is a militia artillery unit. So what? My posted estimate at BCE's place was that it would take a very short time, far less than expected, to train raw recruits to operate field artillery competently. My estimate was a few days for the artillery itself, and a couple of weeks to shake out the fire direction head shed. I was earnestly assured by a commenter at BCE's blog it would take far longer, months and months, to do so. Yet here we have a battery at two months, tops, doing as well as any experienced military unit would do. TL;DR: I win again. Days, not months and months.

2) By leveraging the use of drones for fire direction, something that was in its infancy in my day,

a) they don't need to push Forward Observers out into harm's way

b) they can operate and target well beyond their own FLOT (Forward Line Of Troops)

c) their fire direction corrections can be made seamlessly, in real time, without relay, taking artillery from being indirect fire, to being very nearly direct fire. Their own FDC is calling their own corrections, and they can do BDA simultaneously.

d) anything in their range fan that their drone(s) can see, they can bring under fire, almost immediately. Their only limitation is the NV/thermal capabilities of their drones; the artillery can fire 24/7/365.

Nota bene: 

3) Russian counter-battery fire is virtually NIL. For the novices out there: This is YUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGE.

It obviously happens, else they wouldn't all run to their bunkers right after a fire mission. 

But so rarely as to be inconsequential.

Blue Force Cold War doctrine was to expect OPFOR to start erasing the grid you were in within 2 minutes of firing. That's not happening here. Nor anything remotely close.

How do we know that?

a) They aren't hooking the field pieces up to prime mover trucks at light speed after "rounds complete", and then hauling ass a mile or more away within 90 seconds of last round downrange. Conclusion: they aren't doing it because counter-battery almost never happens.

b) They're running to bunker shelters. I'll say that again: They're running to bunker shelters. Which aren't chewed all to hell by the constant accurate incoming Russian counter-battery fire. Conclusion: because it doesn't happen.

c) They have those bunkers at all, because they're disciplined enough to build them, and more importantly, because they had the leisure time to bother, because they've been firing from the same positions for so long, it was worth the time and effort to bother. Conclusion: Because there's been no counter-battery fire whatsoever, and they haven't had to displace anywhere in a big ass hurry, not even once, in days and DAYS and DAYS.

Inescapable Conclusion:

Once-vaunted Russian grid-square erasing counter-battery Armageddon beloved of 1980s tech fiction is so f**king rare in Ukraine as to be virtually non-existent. You're more likely to find Bigfoot in a Ukraine forest poition than an exploding Russian artillery shell.

The former Russian King Of Battle is impotent.

QED

If it were otherwise, those militia guns would have been smoking heaps of scrap, and those shelters blown asunder to kindling, with a fresh paint job of cannon-cocker blood-and-guts paté splattered hither and yon. Russian artillery is manifestly completely dickless, unless they're shelling non-movable cities and civilian targets, and hitting to minute of Mariupol on schools, factories, and apartment complexes only because those things can't run very fast.

Russian counter-battery capability has been degraded to non-existence, for all practical purposes. If it were otherwise, the ITV video would have been a snippet stating "ITV news team missing somewhere near  front-line positions in eastern Ukraine."

So, minus any help from what was once the foremost cudgel of the entire Russian military order of battle, to the point that amateurs are pwning Vlad's minions 24/7/365, see if you can guess why the Russian troops in Ukraine can't fight their way out of a wet paper bag, and have been relegated to shelling the living hell out of soft, non-movable civilian targets for two months.

FTR, I assumed the Ukes would need time to get their FOs up to speed, and instead they made them completely superfluous. 

I also took the common assumption that the Russians were barely competent at counter-battery fire at face value, but obviously, from first-hand evidence, they're about as good at counter-battery fires now as they are at running cruisers in the Black Sea, or attacking a short distance on mutiple axes of advance, while keeping their front lines well-supplied with fuel, food, and bullets: i.e. which is obviously not at all, based purely on the evidence of anyone's lying eyes.

I can pick that much info up from a less than 7 minute video; ITV didn't figure it out after being there live to film it. And all the gainsaying and Putin-cheering can't change those realities on the ground.

Those "Go Putin!" and "The Plan Is Working!" comments from those whose only uniform time was as a parking valet aren't aging well in light of ground realities on the front lines of a war. But you can't use facts and common sense to argue people out of positions they didn't use facts and common sense to get to in the first place.

Plan C...?

 

The first phase of Russia's invasion of Ukraine was a tragedy. The current phase is a farce.

This is not your great-grandfather's Russian Army. They spent so much time fighting unarmed dissidents, they appear to have forgotten how to fight and win a war where both sides get a vote.

Too bad, so sad.

Yet some blowhards will tell you "The Plan Is Working!", which of course explains why Ukraine fell 80 days ago, Zelenskyy was executed, and Putin is in full control of the adoring Russian fanboys in the Soviet Unio Russia's newest province. Oh, wait, none of that has even come close to happening, and Russia's even losing their grip on the eastern bits they scarfed up early on.

As to who's winning, here's a cluebat upside the head for ya.

Shocked. Shocked, I am.

Sunday Music: Stuck in the Middle With You

 

Before Gerry Rafferty's breakout solo career, he was the co-founder of and front man for Stealer's Wheel, and this cut from 1972 their sole memorable hit (which made it to #6 in the US for about five minutes). Which chorus applies to far too much of our lives.

Zeitgeist

 h/t WRSA

This is our submission to Boriquato.

The current administration, in one panel.

While we enjoy the predicament Vlad's gotten himself into, we are under no illusions that they are ten feet tall and shoot lightning bolts from their eyes.

The regime's desperate antics to distract from eleventy other ginormous self-inflicted problems heading into mid-terms are hilarious, in a clowns-in-a-Volkswagen driving off a cliff sort of way.

For John Wilder: How did the hunter know there were clowns sneaking up on him?

He heard a funny noise.

Russian Black Sea Submarine Fleet Grows Again?

RFS Makarov in happier times.

In what's becoming rather tediously embarrassing to the Russian Navy, it seems they've had another ship spontaneously catch on fire and explode just after Ukrainian defense forces fired AS missiles at it.

Funny how that works.

This time it's the frigate Admiral Makarov (smaller than a destroyer, larger than a patrol boat, for non-naval types).

(BOHICA) Russia's Admiral Makarov has been hit by Ukrainian missiles and burst into flames. The frigate would be Russia's latest naval loss in a troubled campaign.

We're still waiting to hear if this one sinks as well, or whether they manage to tow it back to port in Sevastopol, over 100 miles away, before it becomes another member of the Black Sea submarine fleet. Maybe they'll get luckier this time.

Meanwhile, sources with close ties to the Russian navy have obtained this Russian training film used to teach ship boarding and search operations.

Large, Clanking, Steel, 16#@

 

That would be the cajones on the featured pilot in this video, (this vid is at least a year old, as the Big Stick, CVN-71, seen herein is currently dry-docked in Bremerton) which randomly popped up in my YouTube feed today.

This is not recruiting poster video; this is the stuff they show to weed people out before they even sign up.

Near anybody can do this on an airfield that isn't moving, or even on a carrier on pool-table flat calm blue seas, on a bright sunny day.

Quite another thing to do it in driving rain, with visibility down to ¼ mile, if that.

"So, coming in at 160 knots (184mph) you're going to land a gray airplane on a gray ship, in gray seas, on a gray day, in a gray fog. Got it?"

There are four arresting wires to hit in a sweet spot only 50 yards long from #1 to #4, and after that, it's "BOLTER! BOLTER! BOLTER!" slam the throttles forward, and go around for another try. This guy just managed to get back aboard after catching the #4 wire.

Later in the video, you can see the arresting gear crew using the tow tug to unkink the cable for the next guy coming in. No word from the video on how long it took to get the pilot's seat cushion out of his over-clenched sphincter after landing.

And then, to make it hard, they'll do this at night.

This is why no one in the Air Farce ever imagines they can do what the carrier-qualled guys can do. Both high skilled, but two completely different worlds.

And somewhere, on one or more of the four deployed CVs, they're doing this right now.

Mad props. Top Gun is barely the tip of the iceberg on this.

Russia Claims Victory Over Azovstal Plant For 33rd Straight Day

 

We haven't seen this kind of military performance since
Snoopy tried to shoot down the Red Baron.

And after they fall back and regroup for the 34th time, they plan another successful attack tomorrow. And the day after that.

Just kidding.

What Russian troops involved in the fighting in Ukraine actually have to say is hilarious:

(Buttfuckograd) ..."ninety-nine percent of the equipment" in another unit didn't even work, but when the troops warned the senior in command that their vehicles didn't work and their guns "did not fire" he shrugged it off and said to just "go like that".

 It gets better. RTWT 

Sounds like good news for Vlad is still not looking to be coming home anytime soon. Pretty much like his hapless raggedy "army". (Unless we count the coffins.)

And when they attack deep, they seem to have an accuracy problem, according to the conservative-leaning Washington Examiner.

Clever readers will note a common theme about Russian military "performance problems" from the entire political spectrum. Intel analysts would call those universally bad appraisals an "indicator".

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Moscow Molly rebuttals detailing the 47-D chess Puton is playing in Comments.

Be Careful What You Wish For

 

If You Can't Do The Job Right, Quit, Or Kill Yourselves

 

MPD, circa 2021.

Go to Divemedic's blog.

Read that entire post, and watch the videos. He tells this in exquisite detail.

This is not "bad tactics", however. It's institutional insanity.

This is where the former judicial system of the Royal Navy should take precedence:

Those officers - the entire convoy - should be rounded up, fired en masse, and horse-whipped to bloody shreds for no less than 24 hours apiece, regardless of whether they die at any point, with the punishers - from their own department, no less - working in batches lest they tire (defaulters and shirkers to be placed in with the culprits), in the city square in front of the courthouse, televised live citywide, with every off-duty officer in that county, and the families and children of the culprits, including any child over the age of 5, mandatorily present to witness the event until it's over. Any survivors to be subsequently pilloried in front of City Hall for 30 days and nights, untreated and unguarded.

Then the entire surviving MPD left afterwards should be required to knock at the door of every residence, and sincerely and personally apologize to every citizen of the city, until they're done.

And the chief of police and every officer in their direct chain of command should be sentenced to 20 years for corruption, attempted murder, and criminal conspiracy, pour encourager les autres.

But as they won't be, every officer in the MPD that dies "in the line of duty" for the next century has it coming. 

"A few bad apples" my aching ass. Fire them all, and start the prosecutions, for cause. Citizens there should be given full carte blanche to shoot at the MPD on sight, without prior warning, and all such incidents excused under all state and federal laws.

The MPD cure of "law enforcement" is worse than the disease of "crime". They're the problem, not the solution. And it didn't start yesterday, or last year.

This is why you defund the police: anarchy is a better government than Gestapo tyranny. And all but the most delusional and deranged copsuckers know it, not just here in the wake of multiple incidents, but in formerly polite and proper Canuckistan, after seeing the Mounties trampling unarmed grannies for sport, and down under in Ozshwitz, after watching their local gauleiters use the Oz polizei to throw people into COVID konzentrationslagers because they were Vaxx Juden.

If beating the hell out of random citizens trying to protect their businesses while the police go out shooting random people on "hunting trips" rather than arresting actual rioters is how your local fuzz respond during city-wide riots, the best thing you can do for public safety, and your own well-being, is shoot them all in the face, on sight. More and more, the worst of them are all but begging for exactly that sort of response, from Joe Average. Eventually, that's exactly what they're going to start getting.

A weak second-best would be to fire the entire department for cause, and start from scratch, trained by the state police under transparent full outside scrutiny, for the next 25 years, and only turn them loose when they get to where they can do it themselves without having their hands held, and without ever again getting accused of turning lose Brute Squads with official sanction.

Nazi Germany was not supposed to be an instruction manual.

Someday, Folks Will Figure this Out...

 h/t I Hate The Media

(BIGBROTHERISWATCHING) The US Centers For Disease Privacy Control and Prevention paid for location data harvested from millions of cell phones to track compliance with COVID-19 lockdown measures, according to a new report.

The CDC documents described SafeGraph's data as 'critical for ongoing response efforts, such as hourly monitoring of activity in curfew zones or detailed accounts of visits to participating pharmacies for vaccine monitoring'.

F***ing Retards!

They were literally watching to see who went to get their VAXX Clot Shots and boosters, in real time!

I have a dream that someday, even average nitwits with 80 IQs, maybe even down to 75, will learn to stop carrying their electronic tattletale everywhere they go, plugged in, powered up, and telling Big Brother their moves to within 2m every waking moment of their fool lives.

And I'd also like world peace, gasoline for 50¢/gallon, the winning Powerball ticket, and the cellphone number of the Playmate Of The Year (provided it's still a biological female).

You can guess which wish is likelier to come true this century, but overwhelming odds are the dedicated retards will still be checking their Facecrack status as they're standing in line for the boxcars. Mark my words.

If The Shoe Fits Dept.

 

In Case You Were Wondering

 

Obstruction Of Justice

18 U.S. Code §1503:

(a)

Whoever corruptly...endeavors to influence, intimidate, or impede any ... officer in or of any court of the United States ... in the discharge of his duty, or ... corruptly ... influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice, shall be punished as provided in subsection (b).

(b)The punishment for an offense under this section is—

...

(3)

in any other case, imprisonment for not more than 10 years, a fine under this title, or both.

In short, whoever leaked the draft memo from SCOTUS is looking at the ass end of a dime of federal hard time. 

Nota bene that there's no First Amendment carve-out for conspiracy, and any reporter or paper who fails to identify the leaker is subject to contempt of court charges, and indefinite time in federal prison, until they reveal their source.

This is one of those cases where that should include "for the rest of their natural life, or until they cough up the information, whichever comes first."

Life is a long time to be Bubba's new girlfriend.

Somebody's looking at hard time over this, and if the FBI doesn't get their man, federal marshals may be conga-lining reporters and editors into contempt hearings by the busload.

And God help them if it's a sitting justice on SCOTUS.

Failure to go after this: more proof you're now living in WROL times.

The More You Know

h/t Miguel

 

Two cinematic deaths. One pretty effing brutal, especially by 1972 (or any other year's) standards. The other painless and peaceful.

I brought that up because of this:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. - Amendment VIII, United States Constitution (1791)

The question came up at all in comment discussion at Gun Free Zone because people don't know, don't understand, or don't care about the details regarding legal execution, and most folks have no idea how it's done.

By the numbers:

1) Sedative: (Valium, Versed, etc.) Subject is sent to chemical Oblivion, beyond responding to pain. This is key. If they're not pain-free, you're executing someone cruelly, which is a violation of the 8th amendment to the US Constitution. This includes using outdated or impotent drugs literally past their freshness and efficacy date. Do it right, and it's the Final Big Nap.

2) Paralytic: (succinylcholine) Subject's muscles of respiration are paralyzed completely. Breathing, and any attempt at same, is switched off in a couple of seconds. Paralysis in about 2-3 seconds. Brain death begins at about 6 minutes, and total irreversible body-wide cellular death in 15 minutes.

3) Electrolyte: (potassium chloride) Subject's heart muscle receives a massive overdose of potassium, which switches it off like a light switch within a couple of seconds after administration.

You have to do it in this order. If you don't make it painless, it's cruel punishment, at a Dr. Mengele level of performance. If you turn the heart off first, there's no circulation to move the succinylcholine around in order to paralyze the breathing muscles, and they flop around unconscious, gasping agonally for breath, and take longer to die, all the while looking like a fish out of water, while yet unconscious. With designated press representatives watching, by law and custom, every grisly detail.

Do it the right way, and you turn off their mind (and pain perception), then their ability to breathe or move at all, then finally switch off the heart muscle. Death is inevitable, rapid, and peaceful. And looks like Yoda's passage into the afterlife, rather than Luca Brasi's.

Which is why SCOTUS lets you do it, and the media can't really say f**k-all about the actual mechanics of the process.

But botch it, and give them someone wide awake while being suffocated, and then inducing cardiac arrest via a painful electrolyte injection, or leave them with someone flopping around and gasping for their last breaths like Luca, and that will be the last legally-sanctioned execution you see in probably anyone's lifetime. Game. Set. Match.

(And yes, I have given and do give all three medications regularly, just not to the same person at the same time, and usually not in the dosage necessary nor with any intent to induce the results described above. But I know my sh*t, so I know what I'm trying to not do, in most instances. Giving #2, sux, being the exception, because we want to paralyze your breathing to make insertion of an ET tube possible and easy for the doctor for a few seconds, all the while a respiratory therapist is ready to start bagging you or hooking your new breathing tube to a mechanical ventilator and oxygen.)

Now you know how they do what they do, and why it's done that way, as opposed to something like slitting open their abdomen, tying off one end of their intestines to a solid anchor, and kicking them out the window on an upper floor, and leaving them to twist slowly at the end of their own innards, fully awake, until they expire.

The Ministry Of WTF?!?

 

Fertilizer Shortage Solved

Call 1-800-Morbark for a problem solver near you.

WFEE Takes A Grenade In The Pants

Another thrilling installment of Internet Drone Expert getting it totally wrong.

Episode III V IX We've honestly lost count

The World's Foremost Expert on Everything, who has assured all and sundry for years that hobby drones can't lift worthwhile explosive payloads, takes it in the pants again, this time on Miguel's Gun Free Zone blog, with a post about the Hobby Lobby Air Force. RTWT.

We were not only assured by that same expert that not only is what you'll see there UNPOSSIBLE! ELEVENTY!, but that furthermore, no one of nefarious bent will ever take this lesson, and bootstrap it to delivery of payloads to our comparatively rather peaceful environs. Sleep tight, America.

And if you believe that wagonlaod of bullsh..., er rose fertilizer, we have a bridge for sale, cheap.

Bonus Special: One Handful Of Magic Beans for any family cow!

Send checks to the blog: winning bid takes the prize.

Sunday Music: On The Border

 

This Al Stewart selection courtesy of a mention a few years back by long-time commenter RandyGC. Before then I'd never heard it, but through the magic of YouTube, you never miss anything, even if you tune in to 1976 more than forty years late.