Oh yeah. This is looking up.
Going this far off the rails seems to indicate that the war isn’t exactly going to Putins plans. Yammering on about phantom Nazis and the like indicate an Antifa-like divorce from reality, which is just *awesome* to contemplate considering he’s got access to thousands of nukes.
Yeesh.
Note: some kinda rough stuff here. A 22-year-old dog sitter was mauled by a pair of dogs. She was bit *800* times. I’m honestly kinda shocked that the cops who responded didn’t plug the dogs on the spot.
The ability to clone *faces* can’t come soon enough.
There are three good arguments for homeschooling:
This one is Number 3.
Note that the video news piece says that the school district is cancelling classes and enacting some policy changes. That’s nice… but at least from what’s said here, the response is not just inadequate, it’s wrong. They are banning the use of headphones and cell phones during the day – but this doesn’t seem to have been a cause of the fight in the first place (rather, a student in the wrong classroom, refusing to leave). In fact, the use of a cell phone as a video recorder allowed this issue to come to light. Instead, what the school district *should* have announced is a zero tolerance policy regarding violent students. If you think it’s the height of wit and wisdom to chuck a chair at someone else, you need to no longer be around other kids. Certainly not at taxpayer expense.
So here it’s a case of students you wouldn’t want your child around until you begin them in combat training, and a school board full – apparently – of corrupt and/or incompetent fools.
Some videos of interest. First: Ukrainian auto mechanics are busy at work converting captured heavy machine guns from Russian armored vehicles into hand-held weapons to turn back onto the Russians:
Second, a video showing trashed Russian vehicles. *Lots* of trashed Russian vehicles. Turns out lining up your vehicles on roads is sometimes a terminally bad idea. And a lot of armored vehicles in a town, destroyed or abandoned.
And a tank battle in an urban environment without infantry support. The tank you see here is close enough to the cameraman that he could’ve just *walked* up to it and poured napalm onto it. If he’d had *any* sort of rocket propelled grenade or LAW he could have shot from the hip and bullseye’d that tank and turned it into a pyre. One wonders if the video cut off when it did because he reached for his handy anti-tank weapon for an *easy* kill.
I know a lot of people think that Putin is playing some 4D chess thing here, leading the Ukrainians into a false sense of hope. Well, maybe… but if so, he’s taking his sweet time on springing the trap and in the mean time he’s squandering a hell of a lot of Russian lives with *stupid* tactics. One would think that if these sort of videos were widely disseminated among the Russian populace, they’d be pissed off enough to actually do something. It would surprise me exactly none at all if the Russian military has lost more soldiers in the last two weeks in Ukraine than the United States military lost in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last twenty years.
Bird matching shapes vs Human matching shapes. from facepalm
Corvids are pretty smart birds. Humans are pretty dumb humans.
That is all.
After the last post where it was mentioned that Russia is effectively stealing hundreds of airliners that Russian airlines ahd leased, here comess this “never do business with Russia again” story:
Reportedly, Russia will not only re-open places like McDonalds, they will continue to do business *as* “McDonalds.” They will have no actual relationship with the actual McDonalds corporation; they’ll simply steal their locations, their stuff, their name, their logo, their brand.
Next: I presume Russian agents in the west will procure computer games and movies, transport them to Russia, and then sell/show them to Russian audiences. And why not? Books, music, movies, TV series; car, computer, fashion, architectural designs can all be stolen and used without compensation under the new rules Putins stooges are putting forward. This will make Russia a *monumental* pariah nation. The Chinese at least *pretend* to actually care about IP.
This is apparently not just the 3rd time this five year old has attacked his teacher, it’s the third time she has required hospitalization as a result. One wonders why he was given an opportunity for the *second* attack. Seems like the lil’ dickens needs to be institutionalized. Or just yeeted across the border, dunno. Given the violence involved, I *really* want to get a look at this kid; one doesn’t normally expect a five year old to be capable of causing grievous bodily harm to an adult. This was a “special needs” class, so it might one of those cases where an intellectual defect was offset with a whole lot of physical strength. If he’s such a danger at five, I shudder to imagine what he’ll be like as an adult member of Antifa.
Well, well.
Leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates declined requests to speak to President Biden during the Ukraine crisis, officials say. They both took calls from Putin. https://t.co/McsybyBKw8
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) March 8, 2022
Granted, there are lots of reasons to avoid Gropey Joe. But honestly, there are more reasons to avoid contact with Putin.
Boy, I sure am glad that the USA managed to achieve a fair bit of energy independence a few years ago. It’d be a damn shame if that had been squandered away, huh.
The way to deal with Russian oil is not to promise not to buy it… but to not to *need* it in the first place. Electric vehicles would be a handy way to go about that… and the way to make electric vehicles on a large scale make any sort of sense would be to have a boatload of shiny new gigawatt nuclear powerplants coming online every year. Any day now, right?
Right?
Some years ago, Obama’s chief of staff pointed out that you never want to let a crisis go to waste, because it presents an opportunity to make changes that you otherwise could not get accomplished. The Russian war presents the United States with several *spectacular* opportunities:
1) Energy independence. Nuclear, fracking, oil exploration on out own turf should be ramped up and made national security priorities.
2) The DoD has fallen *way* behind on weapons development. The M-1 Abrams and the AH-64 Apache date from the 70’s, the Javelin and Stinger from the 80’s, the F-35 from the 90’s. We haven’t developed a new nuke in generations. Time for some new stuff… and fast.
3) Russia has threatened the ISS. Time to either abandon that orbital money pit, or boot the Russians from it and Americanize all aspects of operations and maintenance until such time as sanity prevails in Russia.
4) SpaceX should (and hopefully already is) be recognized as vital to America’s national interests, and thus should have the very best security. Physical protection against sabotage and outright strikes along with protection against theft of secrets should be priority #1 at the CIA and FBI. If recent Russian hijinks lead to this concept being more generally accepted not just at SpaceX but elsewhere, then the Chinese efforts to steal every damn thing will also be hindered. Additionally, SpaceX should spread out: manufacturing and launch sites in Texas, Florida, Vandenberg, Alaska, Colorado, Montana, Oklahoma, Hawaii, Guantanamo as a start, with point-to-point rocket transport sites built near *all* major cities over time. Does using Starship for ballistic cargo/passenger transport make sense? Probably not. Screw it, let’s do it anyway. As government boondoggles go, it would be a very minor one… and one that would *necessarily* lead to major improvements in many technologies.
5) All of the major launch systems that are now in a precarious state due to Russia cutting of the supply of rocket engines? yeah, THAT turned out stupid, huh. Globalization is fine when it comes to cheap toilet paper or Pokemon cards. Rockets? Computer chips? Drugs? No. Shoulda figured this out when the Commie Cough crapped on the planetary logistics system. Long past time to realize that some things need to be done in-house.
6) Democrats are discovering the sanctity of national sovereignty and of arming the Ukrainian populace with fully automatic weapons. These discoveries should be applied here as well: strengthen border security, deport illegals (both those sneaking across the border and those who overstay their visas), and at the very least institute universal reciprocity for concealed carry… and get rid of the NFA and all the gun-grabbery that followed. Defund the ATF; transfer the funds and staff to the INS.
Anyone who disagrees with these policy proposals is clearly a paid Putin shill.