Caption: It’s a day for drinking green beer, and then pissing that same green-food-colored beer out. I don’t know what else. I hope your green day is a winning hand.
Bullet Points:
** The best villains are the ones that you can understand. And the great villains are the ones that you root for. One of us is gonna live and one of us is gonna die. And it doesn’t matter what anyone’s motives are at that point. It’s just Darwin.
** Rosie O’Donnell has deported herself to Ireland. This is excellent news for us, but it is also a tough break for the Irish. First the potato famine, then the Troubles, and now this!
** Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a memo ordering senior Pentagon leadership to review military standards related to health and appearance across all services. The message calls for the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness to collect information on physical fitness, body composition, and grooming so that the department can thoroughly review how and why those standards have changed since Jan. 1, 2015. I have noticed a laxness and an acceptance of ample people, particularly women who are disturbingly obese wearing the uniform.
** It will be interesting to watch this investigation unfold. The hammer is about to drop on Act Blue, the Democrats’ golden goose of fundraising, as House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) teams up with the FBI to expose what could be the biggest money-laundering scandal in American political history. In an explosive interview with Benny Johnson, Comer laid out a damning case against the far-left fundraising juggernaut, accusing it of funneling billions in suspicious cash—potentially from foreign adversaries—into Democrat coffers under the guise of “grassroots” donations. “We’re investigating ActBlue the same way we investigated the Bidens,” Comer said. “We’re starting with the suspicious activity reports—bank violations that flag financial crimes. And let me tell you, the evidence is overwhelming.” As Comer’s investigation progresses, chaos is unfolding inside ActBlue. Key executives are resigning. Lawyers are jumping ship. Employees are getting locked out of their computers, sending frantic messages about whistleblowers.”
** The NSA oversees national cybersecurity and monitors foreign threats. Musk’s interest in the agency is likely linked to his efforts to modernize federal technology — a core mission that fueled DOGE’s creation.
** In America, Democrats continue to make bad choices. While they have an opening to hit Trump over his ad-hoc-seeming tariffs and the falling stock market, they decide instead to focus on… wait for it… defending Hamas supporting antisemites like Mahmoud Khalil, garden variety criminals, and illegal aliens. Within the last two weeks, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu (as in “woo doggy, is she stupid!) has championed the latter two groups, in what looks like an ambitious campaign to debunk the stereotype that Asians are all smart single-handedly.
** What do you call 1000 Hezbollah terrorists getting blown up by pagers? A start.
** Historical problems with trade deficits.
** Things have certainly changed since I was young. Now people buy weed in the stores and eggs on the street.
** “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared on “Sunday Morning Futures” with host Maria Bartiromo and promised an “unrelenting” campaign against Houthi militants if they keep targeting ships in the Red Sea.” So, how long will the beards have their nuclear program?
Activist Judges
A federal judge who’s been a critical ally to the deep state has preemptively blocked the Trump administration from deporting five Venezuelan nationals under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) of 1978. US District Judge James Boasberg (more on that below) issued his preemptive ruling a few hours after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a motion on the Venezuelans’ behalf against Trump’s reported plan to invoke the AEA to accelerate the removal of illegals from the US.
The ACLU asked Boasberg to block the use of the law, though Trump has yet to invoke it. Of course, Boasberg complied, granting a restraining order Saturday morning that prevents the administration from removing the five Venezuelan nationals for two weeks so the judge can hold a hearing on their challenge.
In their filing, the ACLU, alongside Democracy Forward and the ACLU of the District of Columbia, stated that the government has moved the Venezuelans – alleged members of Tren De Aragua, to a facility in Texas, which they state are being used “as staging facilities to remove Venezuelan men under the AEA.” Of note, the Trump administration officially declared Tren de Aragua a terrorist organization last month.
Terraforming
In 1961, Carl Sagan speculated on the possibility of the “microbiological re-engineering” of Venus by introducing blue-green algae into its atmosphere. The algae would use photosynthesis to convert the planet’s abundant carbon dioxide into oxygen, reducing the greenhouse effect and lowering Venus’s surface temperature. Sagan later turned his attention to the potential for “re-engineering” Mars, a planet now considered one of our best candidates for successful terraformation. Mars has the opposite problem as Venus: Instead of harboring a thick, toxic atmosphere with a runaway greenhouse effect maintaining deathly high temperatures and pressures at the surface, Mars lost nearly its entire original atmosphere to solar wind, leaving surface pressures so low that liquid water cannot exist. To terraform Mars, planetary engineers must increase its surface temperature and atmospheric pressure while protecting the atmosphere from solar wind.
Sagan suggested spreading a dark material, or even growing dark-colored plants, on Mars’s polar ice caps, allowing them to absorb more of the sun’s heat, increasing the surface temperature while releasing water vapor and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Other researchers have explored the feasibility of importing greenhouse gasses or building giant orbital mirrors to increase Mars’s surface temperature, constructing a magnetic shield to protect Mars’s atmosphere, and releasing genetically engineered microbes onto the planet’s surface to alter the atmospheric and surface chemistry.
Terraformation is the ultimate example of long-term planning, as even optimistic estimates predict that it would take centuries of effort and patience before a human could walk unprotected on the surface of Mars. Advocates of terraforming Mars or other space environments see it as crucial to creating a multi-planet civilization. Robert Zubrin, the founder and president of the Mars Society, an organization that advocates for human Mars exploration and colonization, even claims that the successful terraforming of Mars would demonstrate humanity’s superiority over the physical world: “The first astronauts to reach Mars will prove that the worlds of the heavens are accessible to human life. But if we can terraform Mars, it will show that the worlds of the heavens themselves are subject to the human intelligent will,” he writes in his 1996 book The Case for Mars.
Whenever someone waxes poetic about humankind bending the universe to our will, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the ethical implications of the proposal. One primary consideration about terraforming is that the process could damage or even wipe out any life being terraformed. If an alien microbe evolved on Mars, it probably would not survive in a more Earth-like environment. By transforming Mars’s surface into Earth’s, we might exterminate species or entire ecosystems without detecting their existence. The changes we would make to a cold, dry, relatively airless world like Mars would also introduce physical processes—such as wind, flowing water, and new chemical reactions—that could easily erase or contaminate any evidence that extraterrestrial life ever existed on the surface. If we allow planetary engineering to race ahead of astrobiological research, we could miss our opportunity to make the most important scientific discovery in human history: the discovery of life that evolved beyond our planet. We also risk exterminating the very lifeforms we dream of discovering.
The ethical dilemma of terraforming far exceeds planetary protection concerns about forward contamination by a lander or even a human settlement. The goal of terraforming is to intentionally create an entire ecosystem on a global scale, which would more than likely destroy any existing ecosystem. Terraforming technology might even become feasible before we definitively determine whether extraterrestrial life exists on the planet or moon that we hope to transform. But suppose we do discover evidence of existing microbial life on a planet like Mars. Should this disqualify Mars as a target for terraforming? Should we avoid settling on Mars at all?
Fraud, Waste and Hillary
(Gateway Pundit) Why did the State Department (taxpayers) pay for Hillary Clinton’s 5-star hotel room and rental vehicles in France in 2024? Hillary Clinton traveled to Bordeaux, France, on February 23, 2024, and the American taxpayer paid for her lavish retreat.
Clinton reportedly traveled to Bordeaux to promote climate change (bullshit) at the World Impact Summit, which benefits the Clinton Foundation. The twice-failed presidential hopeful stayed at the 5-star Mondrian Hotel (a Clinton favorite). The total cost for the luxury hotel ($16,759.18) and transportation ($22,570.19) set taxpayers back $39,329.37.
According to French media, Clinton also made a few “personal visits to the city.” Of course she did. The article referenced didn’t say whether or not she brought a catamite (standard practice). Huma Abadin used to do the work, but she bailed years ago. With a US Secret Service detail, luxury hotel accommodations, transportation, food, and other demands, who knows what the total cost to the American taxpayer was?
“Another peculiarity of this visit was Hillary Clinton’s strict adherence to image control. Photographs were only permitted if taken by her photographer, except during her masterclass, where a few photographers and cameramen could capture the opening minutes of her speech. This practice is reminiscent of that of international music stars during their concerts, where media access is strictly regulated,” Too Bordeaux reported last year. Too much wine, too many years, and too much rich food have not been kind to the aging oligarch.
Ukraine – Looking Forward
“On the face of it, Russia’s first response to US proposals for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine contains several major deal-breakers that the Ukrainians could never swallow. First and foremost, the Kremlin demands international recognition that Ukraine’s Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhiye, and Kherson provinces are now part of Russia. Given that Russia does not control the latter four regions—including the provincial capitals of Zaporozhiye and Kherson cities—Moscow is technically demanding that the Ukrainians cede even more land than it has already lost.
Other Russian demands, notably Ukraine’s future neutrality, were already effectively conceded at the Istanbul talks. Since imminent membership of NATO has never been on the cards for Ukraine, practically, politically, or legally, this should be an easy concession. All that is being surrendered is Ukraine’s aspiration to join at some future date, not the actual prospect of membership, which is non-existent.
Ukraine was constitutionally neutral from 2010 until 2015. The sticking point is that neutrality is being imposed once more at Moscow’s demand, which is a clear violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Nonetheless, according to four participants in the Istanbul talks, Kiev was willing to sacrifice peace by staying out of NATO.
Two Kremlin demands stalled the Istanbul talks: ‘de-militarisation’ and ‘de-Nazification’ of Ukraine.
In practice, this meant restrictions on the size of Kyiv’s army and scrapping laws the Kremlin claimed discriminated against Russian speakers and insulted the memory of WW2 (Great Patriotic War) veterans. Limits on Ukraine’s armed forces—currently not only the biggest in Europe but more significant than the European Union and Britain’s standing armies—are another deal-breaker.
A Korean-style demilitarised zone on both sides of the border may be a feasible workaround, as long as it is far larger than the 1.5 km buffer envisioned in the 2014-15 Minsk accords.
A briefing paper prepared by an FSB-adjacent think tank and leaked to the Financial Times yesterday by a European intelligence service advises the Kremlin to take a much harder line.
One suggested demand is the’ complete dismantling’ of the current Ukrainian government, plus wholly demilitarised zones on the Ukrainian side of the border only. By those hawkish standards, Putin is relatively modest in his demands.
Identify the Armor
1
The unconventional concept involved transporting additional ammunition to the frontline by attaching it externally to the tank. At first glance, this may appear unwise, as any damage could destroy the vehicle. However, the idea is entirely rational. The design is intended solely for transporting extra ammunition to the frontlines, avoiding the risks of storing it inside, where an ample supply could be far more hazardous if hit. The ammunition and tanks are essential on the battlefield, and transporting ammunition in unarmored vehicles exposes them to significant danger while moving to where the tanks are engaged in combat.
The external containers, each holding two to three rounds, are resistant to shrapnel and small arms fire. Suppose they are punctured and the ammunition detonates. In that case, it will behave like an old firecracker held in an open hand, erupting outward and away from the tank’s hull rather than causing internal damage.
2
3
4
Parting Shot
The model has now become ubiquitous, and, as Elon and many others point out, if you are a “non-governmental organization” whose revenue comes from the government, you are not a non-governmental organization.
End
2 is Valentine Mark III tanks of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Tank Regiment (1st Polish Corps) in Scotland.
Yes, good call.
I miss read the post on Rosie O’Donnell and thought she was causing the next potato famine. It is early .
It’s coming.
A number of O’Donnell memes out ther. Some saying she will cause the next famine, while other say she will cause Ireland to tip over.
It sounds as if both could happen. Prophecy? You be the judge.
Heard Ireland would impose a 125% tariff on imported US goods….until we agree to take Rosie back. Tough decision.
Leave her to eat them out of house and home. They’ll reconsider.
Larry posted a cartoon regarding “Ireland to tip over.” which was H/T PaulM.
Identify the Armor:
1. Comet
2. Valentine
3. Perhaps Iveco LMV
4. SK-105 Kürassier
Yes
*
#3 perhaps?
Russian Typhoon-VDV K4386 MPAV
Good!
I learned a new word today: catamite. Not too sure when I’ll use it but I look forward to that occasion.
And US District Judge James Boasberg isn’t an “activist judge – he just identifies a President.
Read elsewhere that Trump has declared the last minute auto-pen pardons to be null and void. That could make life interesting :)
The resulting exploding heads will be interesting to watch, then get worse once they find out who instigated the autopen effort.
(Same deal as “Take the jab or lose your job” WASN’T tyranny…but “do your job or lose your job” IS tyranny. Hard to keep up with the possessed insanity.)
Yeah, interesting in the Chinese curse sense [1].
I don’t know what to make of this. Net gain or loss? Is being able to prosecute Dr Fauci and Gen Milley (among others) worth the trade-off of the if-pardoned-can’t-invoke-5th-amendment thing? Does this mean greater likelihood of justice, or does this mean another layer of protection for those actually calling the shots. I suppose I could believe that Fauci was actively involved in his particular brand of evil, but I am less convinced that Milley is substantially his own man.
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[1] I’ve never heard of any actual Chinese person using “May you live in interesting times” as a malediction. But then again, I’m pretty crap at being Chinese, so what do I know. That caveat said, I suspect that “Chinese expression” is as authentically Chinese as fortune cookies.
Dang Mike, and hear I was getting all of my “Chinese idioms” from your writings. My illusion is shattered, my life is incomplete…gonna need a therapist to repair the damage.
Don’t tell anyone, Paul M, but I’m actually Finnish (Perrrrrrkele!) and just LARPing as Chinese.
We Finns are known for our deception. Particularly for sitting in the frozen woods, with snow in our mouths so our breath doesn’t steam, waiting to snipe Ivans.
Sorry. Hope the therapy works out. But remember, it’s our secret!
-Miika
I suspected as much, I can grab my Chinese Cultural Appropriation (CCA) elsewhere. Not all is lost…so with this new MikeC revelation….SKAAL! (what else ya gonna do when the power is out)
In regard the autopen – Hätä ei lue lakia.
I forgot to say: “Everyone but Paul M stop reading!” So everyone please un-read whatever you might have read above. Thank you. (“The jury will disregard the last statement.”)
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Speaking about difficult issues of identity, Alex(andria) Stein (Prime Time 99) is a legend. Saatana! Don’t misgender her, bro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y__217RLXzU
I literally almost passed out laughing….that was epic! Alex Stein is a legend, “I spent hours tucking this thing in.” Hahahah. That really took…err…uhhh…anywho…whatever…gender free something or others…to pull that off. Just made my unreliable renewable electricity day as I sit here in the dark (was that Spring forward 1 hour or 10 hours?… I can never keep it straight but the clock says it’s night).
I believe my first exposure to that curse was in a book set in Ireland and that it was an Irish curse.
May You Die in Ireland
But I thought it was only going to take ten years of fossil fuel use to terraform the Earth to unlivability? Just turn the EPA loose and they’ll find the Martian snail darter or Martian spotted owl. Maybe even the inanimate Martian sand dune. NIMSS (Solar System)?
.
A pardoned person can still fail to remember when questioned. Trump seems to be saying, “Simon says turn over the real facts about [conspiracy]”. What would the news look like if his administration was actually serious?
Heads will explode. If that’s all we get out of the revocation, it may be entertaining.
“….worth the trade-off of the if-pardoned-can’t-invoke-5th-amendment thing?”
——
My question as well. If a pardon stands, what if their compelled testimony is “I don’t recall”?
The deal making when the screws are on will push the prosecutions upwards.
I have a question Mike_C, do you consider yourself an Irishman on this most glorious day of March 17th?
That would be cultural appropriation. Just sitting here listening to the Dropkick Murphys.
He’s also disregarding that judge and those gang members are gone and not coming back.
Oopsie…already landed in their land of origin. Checkmate on that one. (Critical to know the game better than ones opposition.)
👍
They were shipped to the prison in El Salvador, not Venezuela. So not home, where they’d be released and rewarded.
😁
Stand corrected…only read the headline figuring it was back to V. Minimally they’re gone from here.
Richard Harris interview. The relevance to Ireland starts about 2:25 (+,-).
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tPXNOFn98E
“Catamite” sentence: Much of congress likes to use us as their persoanal catamite and f@ck us in the a$$ with our own money from their mortal high ground in the morning.
I liked the old Summerset Maugham and Anthony Burgess novels but without acknowledgement of good and evil. What we are seeing is just the seven deadly sins in action with lazy arrogance.
The more I hear about the excuses on Epstein, the more I wonder why Melinda Gates left Bill.
Tom
New week…can The Dems approval rating get any lower while Trump’s increases? Waiting for Schumer and crew to say “Hold my beer”, which will immediately be challenged by the MSM…”Notsofast Chuckyboy, no, you hold MY beer!”.
***
SPD- Seems South Boston PD 311 was called over rowdiness during yesterday’s SPD parade…unknown if there was a response as it would have been considered “normal” and worth checking out.
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Me, still working through “The Foggy Dew” this morning, then seeing the above report am definitely not “Going Up To Boston” anytime soon.
Ps. Seems REA has decided to shut the power off [in our area, whatever that means] at 9:30…for 8 hours. Guess taxes will have to wait, sorry IRS. At least it’s not frigid and snowing, or that I really wanted to get some office or Shop work done…but I can DOGE the pen and rid it of some Democrat largess.
*NOT worth checking out….see, still Fogged.
“In America, Democrats continue to make bad choices.”
Deuteronomy 28:20 “The Lord will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me.
Joshua 10:10 The LORD threw them into confusion before Israel, so Joshua and the Israelites defeated them completely
Judges 7:22 When the three hundred trumpets sounded, the Lord caused the men throughout the camp to turn on each other with their swords.
X2…excellent Ed. (some things never change, He certainly does not)
” But suppose we do discover evidence of existing microbial life on a planet like Mars.”
Didn’t stop western civilization encroaching in the New World….
Mars – If it’s anything like “life as we understand it, ” it’d have to be underground. The surface ground is very caustic. Yes, I know that bacteria can live in caustic anaerobic conditions, but there is no sign of them if they’re on the surface. BUT (big caveat) Valles Marineris is a system of canyons that runs along the Martian surface east of the Tharsis region. At more than 4,000 km (2,500 mi) long, the atmosphere is denser there, and surface water could exist. We haven’t explored there. Neither have we explored the polar caps.
But the minute we do, we’ve contaminated it.
I’m not sure if Schrodinger’s cat is the right analogy.
That’s the problem. Simply by arriving, we’re colonizing Mars with bacteria and viruses. They’ll adapt to the new environment. Maybe they’ll grow in size – 6’5″ and in search of human blood…something dramatic like that.
IIRC, the spacecraft for those missions are quite carefully kept clean from contamination. And they also do vacuum/thermal cycling on them, which pretty much sterilizes them.
If there was anything there McDonalds would have bought a spot for the first burger joint only to have Dollar General and a Starbucks follow suit. (A riff on my buddy’s comment when I was heading out to climb Longs Peak, “If there was anything up there to see they’d have built a road and put in a coffee shop.” Heh)
–
Kidding aside, interesting to check out other planets…Ad Astra was a fun movie, as was The Martian…but life elsewhere, microscopic or not? Not buying it…yet. Actual question: Is the presence of water vapor considered “life” on an otherwise inhabitable planet?
When I was in high school the group I was with climbed Mt. Copeland. It was a clear day and you could see Longs Peak off in the distance.
Haven’t thought about that for some time now.
I just walked around Reidy Falls in Greenville South Carolina about an hour ago. Not a McDonald’s. Some really upscale diners and restaurants, though.
It’s like they built the whole city around it.
Rumor has it Khalil was in Beruit under British diplomatic cover working on Syria. A professional color revolution specialist apparently
X2
May you have all the happiness
And luck that life can hold
And at the end of all your rainbows
May you find a pot of gold.
May the roof over your head
always be strong
May you be in Heaven a half hour
before the Devil knows you’re dead!
And may you die in Ireland.
I’m detecting a comment theme Ed.
Karoline Leavitt saying President Trump will tell District Judges to pound sand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1XLQoNe01M
What are those judges going to do? Send their bailiffs to arrest Trump?
Maybe they’ll burn their Teslas in protest?
Watching with great interest to see what those putz’s will do now they have been called out by the Big Dog…maybe [laughingly] hold him in contempt while red-faced with spittle flying that The President questioned their overreach into the Executive Branch.
Serious – not a Saint Paddy’s Day Goof – “Gold surged to a record high above $3,000 per troy ounce, as fears over the threat to global growth from Donald Trump’s trade war push investors into the safe haven metal. The price of bullion rose to $3,004 per troy ounce on Friday.
*
Gold has been among the world’s best-performing assets since Trump took office in January, and it has risen 14 percent since the start of the year.
The US president’s fast-changing tariff policies have sparked concerns that a global trade war will fuel inflation and cause an economic slowdown in the US and beyond, causing Wall Street stocks to fall into a correction and adding to gold’s appeal.”
Good…all about the economics. Still waiting to see if Fort Knox is full or empty.
–
(Power backup running just fine…Starlink comm’s are critical to life as I know it…so is a full fridge. BUT…if I was a highly educated person I’d be in a panic because the pickup is currently stuck in the garage for the outage duration because I forgot to pull it out beforehand and have no idea how to open the door without electricity. PPPP)
>forgot to pull it out beforehand
And that’s how Canada ended up with Governor Trudeau. Darn you, Fidel!
#tishboom
The Cuban revolution may have been a failure, but Castro did manage to screw all of Canada, if only by proxy via his spawn.
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Full fridges are one (good) thing. But the kind that can’t figure out their garage door are like, well, these people. So there I was in Bellevue (Seattle) late one January. The weather report said there’d be 4-6 inches of snow (unusual for Seattle area despite the northern latitude, for you furriners; also, 10-15 cm for the godless furriners) and power lines might be down. I stopped at the local Trader Joes to get some snack food, and the frozen microwave dinner section was stripped bare, as if locusts had passed through. I asked a clerk if this was a normal thing on a Thursday night. “Nope. I think this is because of the snowstorm.” Maybe they all have generators and all that good stuff, but I doubt it. If you expect a power outage, is a frozen dinner that you heat with an electric appliance (high wattage, yet) the logical first choice?
PS: there was no power outage.
Castro’s get – the gift that keeps on giving – like a virus. Why didn’t Junior grow his beard out and always wear an army uniform?
I’m gonna need more popcorn for the Act Blue debacle… :-)
We all are, NFO!