Looking for a Job that You can Do?

Yes

Waist Deep (by Frank Zafiro)

Past hip deep…and the name of a detective thriller novel that I’m reading during the blizzard that’s supposed to rage for the next 24 hours here at the White Wolf Mine.

When disgraced former cop Stefan Kopriva is asked by an old high school classmate to find a runaway sixteen-year-old girl, he reluctantly accepts. Driven by guilt over a terrible mistake that drove him from the force more than ten years earlier, Kopriva battles old injuries, old demons, and long-ago memories as he unravels the mystery of the missing Kris Sinderling… and seeks his own redemption.

I’m not big on true detective novels but this one might turn out to be good. It was recommended to me and I’m about 20 pages into it. So far, so good.

Book Corner:

** I was asked what I thought of Jack Carr novels. I think that they’re good. He does a LOT of product placement in his books.

** I was asked what I thought about the Tier One novels by Andrews and Wilson.

–Brian Andrews is a US Navy veteran, nuclear engineer, and former submarine officer. He graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in psychology, holds a Master’s in business from Cornell, and is a Park Leadership Fellow.

— Jeffrey Wilson has at one time worked as an actor, a firefighter, a paramedic, a jet pilot, a diving instructor, a Naval Officer, and a Vascular and Trauma Surgeon. He also served numerous tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Navy combat surgeon, deploying with an east coast-based SEAL Team as part of a Joint Special Operations Task Force.

They write a LOT of books about SEALs that are entertaining. They write formula book/series that have been successful.

Fusion

(Captioned Photo) A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) and the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wein) has found a way to control Type-I ELM plasma instabilities, which can melt the walls of fusion devices. The work is published in the journal Physical Review Letters and referenced at Phys.org

For the method to work, plasmas must be heated to 100 million degrees Celsius in reactors. Magnetic fields enclose the plasma keeping the walls of the reactor from melting. The shell that forms around the plasma can only work because the outermost centimeters of the edge of that shell, called the magnetically formed plasma edge, are extremely well insulated.

There is however a problem with this way of enclosing the sun-level heat of the plasma. In that edge region, there are plasma instabilities, called edge localized modes (ELMs). ELMs occur frequently, during the fusion reaction. During an ELM, energetic particles from the plasma may hit the wall of the reactor, potentially damaging it.

The reactor is called a toroidal tokamak fusion reactor. In this reactor, ultra-hot plasma particles move at high speeds. Powerful magnetic coils ensure that the particles remain confined instead of hitting the reactor walls and damaging them.

How a fusion reactor works is complicated, and the dynamics inside are also complex. The motion of the particles depends on the plasma density, temperature, and magnetic field. How these parameters are chosen dictates how the reactor will function. When the smaller particles of plasma hit the walls or the reactor, instead of a round shape, the reactor takes on a triangular shape with rounded corners, but the shape is far less damaged than with a large ELM.

“It’s a bit like a cooking pot with a lid, where the water starts to boil,” Georg Harrer lead author of the paper explains. “If the pressure keeps building up, the lid will lift and rattle heavily due to the escaping steam. But if you tilt the lid slightly, then steam can continuously escape, and the lid remains stable and doesn’t rattle.”

Hadrian’s Wall, England

The Devil’s Causeway, which splits from Dere Street and runs right through Northumberland, was itself a boundary line separating pro-Roman treaty beneficiaries from the anti-Roman cattle herding groups in the wilder, hillier land to the west.  Therefore, the wall didn’t need to go all the way to the sea.

For those of you with an interest, the article linked here takes a dive into the subject.

In return for being left free by the Romans, they paid a hefty tribute in corn and probably supplied auxiliary soldiers. The Romans had been practicing this kind of protection racket for a long time before reaching northern Britain. They had introduced luxuries like wine, olive oil, and high-quality tableware to the southern kings since the first Claudian invasion in AD 43, and some of these kings received citizenship, while their sons were educated at Rome, which also served to bind their fathers’ loyalty.

Bullet Points

** The UFO Stuff Resurfaces – Really?

** When Sen. Fetterman (D-PA) 5150d himself at Walter Reed Hospital, his wife split with the kids on vacation.

** It’s worth remembering that democrat mayors sent SWAT teams shut down churches, restaurants, barbershops, and gyms, but cheered when ANTIFA and BLM burned and looted their way through their cities.  I’m not even going to start with the Canadian National Govt.

** The Best Sci-Fi deals with the weather, homosexuality, and slavery. (Washington Examiner)

**. As I’ve said for decades, the Russians are happy to negotiate until they get what they want. To the Russians that is the measure of a successful “negotiation”. If circumstances do not permit them to achieve their goals, they will not negotiate. This is not so much a criticism as it is an observation. It is just the way they look at the process and purpose of negotiations and diplomacy.

“But [Mr Putin] doesn’t want an off-ramp. The goals of this special military operation will be achieved. He says that all the time.”

** The Chinese Balloon trick worked. The media forgot about all of those documents in Pedo Joe’s garage. Wag the dog…

** In Europe, wearing white socks is a fashion faux pas. The sock color should match the color of the trousers, according to Europeans. A leaked memo from the Dutch Finance Ministry stated that wearing white socks is “transgressing the limits of decent dress behavior.”

Not around the corner –  but still local to me.

Bullet Points:

** Wow, somebody thinks there’s still a Fourth Amendment! Amazing. Critical to this end run around the Fourth Amendment’s prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures by government agents is a pass play that allows police to avoid public transparency requirements (open bids, public meetings, installation protocols) by having private companies and individuals do the upfront heavy lifting, leaving police to harvest the intel on the back end.

** Florida is recruiting – It has been reported that by the end of 2022, more than 600 police officers from other states had taken advantage of this opportunity.

** A look back – Five years ago at LSP’s range at the compound in Hillsboro, TX. Has it been that long?

Time flies.

** Popular Science – A new wing design. Today, NASA announced that it will be working with Boeing to produce an experimental new aircraft demonstrator that looks radically different from the jets that passengers are used to seeing. The flying machine will feature long, skinny wings that extend from the top of the plane’s fuselage, above the windows, not below. And because these wings will be more slender and more lengthy than typical wings on commercial aircraft, they will be supported by trusses.  (See the captioned picture)

** Surprising Research Reveals Rampant Violence in Early Farming Societies.

According to new research, violence, and warfare were prevalent in many Neolithic communities across Northwest Europe during the time when farming was adopted.

New research suggests that violence and warfare were widespread in numerous Neolithic communities throughout Northwest Europe during a time period associated with the adoption of agriculture.

Bioarchaeologists discovered that more than one in ten of the over 2300 skeletal remains of early farmers from 180 sites dating back to around 8000 – 4000 years ago displayed weapon injuries.

Contrary to the view that the Neolithic era was marked by peaceful cooperation, the team of international researchers says that in some regions the period from 6000BC to 2000BC may be a high point in conflict and violence with the destruction of entire communities.

The findings also suggest the rise of growing crops and herding animals as a way of life, replacing hunting and gathering, laid the foundations for formalized warfare.

The view that the life of the Noble Savage was more peaceful than civilized life was popularized by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In recent years, this view was glamorized by films like Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves.

** Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) sent a February 8, 2023, letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland making it clear that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosive’s (ATF’s) pistol brace rule will not be enforced in Montana.

Breitbart News reported that the pistol brace rule was published in the Federal Register on January 31, 2023, placing said braces under the purview of the National Firearms Act (NFA) and giving owners of said braces 120 days from that date to comply with ATF criteria for legally possessing the devices.

Rich Victims in Western Society

When 29-year-old Yeonmi Park, a North Korean defector, finally escaped the human trafficking syndicate that bought her as a child for $200, she thought she would find freedom in the United States. What she found instead was a different kind of hell in the form of the leftist “woke” revolution.

In her new book “While Time Remains,” Park, who attended Columbia University, reveals the utter shock she felt upon learning that her uppity leftist classmates somehow saw themselves as “victims.”

“They were in Manhattan, living in the freest country you can imagine, and they’re saying they’re oppressed?” It doesn’t even compute,” Park told the New York Post about her experience at Columbia.

“I was sold for $200 as a sex slave in the 21st century under the same sky. And they say they’re oppressed because people can’t follow their pronouns they invent every day?”

(Related: The University of Florida College of Medicine is pushing woke CRT and other anti-white propaganda on students.)

The whole article (here) is worth reading.

If I say that it’s safe to surf that beach,  it’s safe to surf that beach. Long left and right slides and a bowl section. It’s tube city…

It’s a Sticky Wicket

Viktor Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister, refused to meet with old Pedo Joe, who is visiting Hungary. Orban thinks that Europe has been weakened in the past year, partly because the FJB regime imposed its interests in Brussels at the expense of European interests, and that the response to the war, the “tsunami of sanctions,” had begun to weaken the European economy, while America, rich in cheap energy, was unaffected. Moreover, the prime minister is reported to have said that Europe’s military strength had also begun to weaken, because the war had reduced the European armies’ stocks, and they had not been replenished.

On the flip side,  Russia, the principal enemy, has also been significantly weakened and degraded both in terms of personnel and equipment.

Bullet Points:

** Federal Workers want to stay home. It is much easier to do nothing when you are not being watched. If you thought that government was inefficient before, wait until they all stay home. Then again, maybe if they all stay home and unplug their phones, it will limit the harm that they do. Your tax dollars at work.

** Regardless of the intermittency of the weather, the electrical grid is expected to deliver continuous and uninterrupted electricity no matter what the weather. Power grid blackouts are driven by the rapid retirement of small acreage coal and natural gas power plants.

Wind and solar electricity generation require vast amounts of pristine acreage, but due to the intermittency and variability of breezes and sunshine being a significant deficiency, wind turbines and solar panels do not work most of the time.

This is illustrative of why a myopic focus on renewables for reducing carbon-dioxide emissions through a deepening dependence on the intermittency of wind and solar electricity must ultimately come to terms with the laws of physics and the high financial and environmental cost of achieving a reliable electrical grid with these technologies.

** (NY Post) Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer became the latest Democrat to condemn House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s decision to give Fox News host Tucker Carlson access to surveillance footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol Building. “The speaker is needlessly exposing the Capitol complex to one of the worst security risks since 9/11,” Schumer said in a Wednesday letter to Senate Democrats.

** When you are the “spare”, you seem to have a need to call attention to yourself.  In the former prince’s memoir he regales his readers with the body count that he racked up. Yeah. I’m sure that the royal brat was the only one shooting. And when he writes of killing Afghans, I can’t help but wonder whose side they were on. More likely a platoon of ANA Commando Corps types coming back in from patrol.

** Just another empty suit –archetype [ahr-ki-tahyp], noun: the original pattern or model from which all things of the same kind are copied or on which they are based; a model or first form; prototype.

If there is one thing all Americans now know about transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, it is that he is massively, moronically incompetent but thinks he is the smartest, most impressive person on the planet.  As Victor Davis Hanson has noted, he is “the epitome of the empty résumé class.”  He had no qualifications for the job beyond the fact that he ticks a couple of identity politics boxes, he’s gay and proud of it, and he’s a mind-numbed leftist.  He is, therefore, the perfect book cover for the Biden Cabinet catalog.

Like Biden and the rest of his Cabinet, Buttigieg was hired for all the wrong reasons and is thoroughly incompetent for the job he holds.  Chosen for reasons other than expertise or competence, it explains the utter failure of the Biden regime on every issue that matters: national and border security, health and safety, military readiness, food and energy security, inflation, economic management, and dangerous involvement in a foreign war that may well lead to WWIII.  Perhaps that is the goal, given this regime’s failure on every front.  Distraction from our $31T in debt?  Distraction from the fact that the mandated vaccines are killing young people at a 40% excess mortality rate?  Distraction from the open border that has ushered into the country five million unvetted migrants and tons of fentanyl that is killing 100K people a year?  All of the above?  It’s a good article.  You can read it all at American Thinker.

** Politization of BATFE – “We did not become ATF agents so we could collect data, ensure firearms are in compliance, seize trigger groups, argue about what a firearm is or is not, seize firearms for reasons other than prosecuting criminals or spend countless hours inputting data to justify someone else’s existence in HQ,” he wrote. “We became ATF agents so we could work the streets and smack evil in the mouth. We took this job because we are willing to risk it all and hope that we can make the streets just a little bit safer for the law-abiding, upstanding citizens of the USA.”

Identify the APC

Mars – by 2030?

I do understand that the Communist Chinese have declared their intentions to land on Mars by 2030 and Elon Musk’s talk is more ambitious than that, but how realistic is the date?

Car Rifles

No, I haven’t gone Sig Saur crazy. However, I’m going to make another recommendation. I know, you all have your favorite car rifle,  but maybe we can make something a little smaller and we’ll call it a pistol because that’s what it is…the Sig MCX SBR Rattler (300 Blackout or 5.56 mm/hot-swappable if you’d like.) The Blackout has a greater appeal to me.

Here’s another review.

I like the Hornady 190 grain Sub-X. The subsonic round is designed to be cycled through a suppressor for a better shooting experience.

Even though these firearms are not only acceptable but desirable in Arizona, there are places where slapping one down in the passenger seat might be frowned on. The question of how much freedom you should be trusted with by your betters is always an issue.

The Treasury of Atreus or Tomb of Agamemnon.

A photo of the roof and interior. Mycenae, Greece.

The structure was constructed during the Bronze Age around 1250 BC.

What is it about “the dome” that made it such a popular design among ancient peoples? These structures were not easy to build of stone; they required a sophisticated understanding of engineering, yet we see them throughout the world.

Bullet Points:

**Another suicide related to Bill and Hillary Clinton. The grisly scene where a top Bill Clinton adviser was found hanging from a tree with a gunshot wound to his chest has finally been revealed nine months after he took his life. But the sheriff’s report into Mark Middleton’s death raises more questions than answers as it shows his death was ruled a suicide – but the weapon that killed him was nowhere to be found. Middleton, 59, was found dead last May at the Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas, an hour west of Little Rock.

** Wasn’t Joe Biden raised by Puerto Ricans? Joe Biden on Tuesday met with Polish President Andrzej Duda at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw to discuss Ukraine, Russia and NATO. Biden claimed he grew up in a Polish neighborhood and felt self-conscious because he didn’t have a Polish last name. Pedo Joe is a constant embarrassment to the US. They need to drop him off at the Home where he can eat the checkers, thinking that they’re Oreos.

** More Jules’ adventure in Iceland here.

“We finally arrived at the giant geysers and watched them erupt. The smell was very sulphuric; like bad eggs. However, I was already used to that as the water in the hotel smelt the same and was much like washing in liquid fart.”

** British Petroleum Moves Green: Chief Executive Bernard Looney plans to dial back elements of the oil giant’s high-profile push into renewable energy, according to people familiar with recent discussions.

Mr. Looney has said he is disappointed in the returns from some of the oil giant’s renewable investments and plans to pursue a narrower green-energy strategy, the people said. He has told some people close to the company that BP needs to do more to convince shareholders of its strategy to maximize profits in areas where it has a competitive advantage, including its legacy oil-and-gas operations.

** Today is national margarita day.  And I am not wasting away in Margaritaville. I can’t speak for my co-author, Jules, who does observe the holiday.

And then there’s cousin Miranda,  a Parrothead, who is also known to celebrate well and beyond the national holiday. She was well and truly blazed during the performance as shocking as that sounds.

** I received a phone call from a person who lives about 20 miles from me, more remotely, more primitively in terms of tech asking me to do something about the power company. I have nothing to do with the power company and though I’m known where I live as somebody who helps,  I have no official position.

APS (Power company) seems to be VERY well run. They’re on it, managed smartly, and from what I’ve seen they’re proactive. BUT when the winter snow load hits, lines go down. Cause and effect. Said person is angry because their power is always restored last. It’s turned into a racial grievance because the lady is 1/4 Mexican.  I asked, “who knows you’re 1/4 Mexican?” She said, “everyone, because I tell them.” So she has no power and her chickens were dropping dead, she moved them into the house and they’re crapping on everything. She moved the goats into the house and they’re eating the furniture and the drapes.

It’s not the power company’s fault because even with a 4×4 all chained up, I have difficulty getting into that back area where I know a few people. Because of the national trend, it’s now about race and equity. Even people off the grid get the satellite feed from MSNBC.

Trump

The man, the myth, the legend, arrived like the proverbial cavalry.

President Trump told residents of East Palestine they are victims of ‘betrayal’ by Brandon and the federal government and said his visit finally sparked them to act in a tour of the toxic train derailment site.

The former president greeted crowds furious at the lack of action from the White House, 19 days after the disaster in Ohio, and brought in thousands of bottles of his own water, cleaning supplies, and canned food.

He then stopped at a local McDonald’s where he ordered Big Macs and handed out signed MAGA hats to the customers.

Hundreds of people lined the streets waving MAGA flags and chanting ‘no more Joe’ to greet Trump after he landed in the community on his renovated Trump Force One jet.

In a speech at the local fire department, he praised the response from law enforcement and the ‘strength and courage’ of the residents, and said: ‘You are not forgotten’.

He promised to return if the community didn’t get help from the White House and when a reporter asked what message he had for Biden, Trump said: ‘Get over here’.

Male and Female

From American Thinker – Certain American and Canadian scientists have officially proposed that the scientific community phase out the musty old terms “male” and “female” from the scientific language in order to avoid any appearance of “emphasizing hetero-normative views.” Instead, these “experts” want terms such as “sperm-producing” and “egg-producing” to be employed, as they say, they’re more inclusive. They also approved the use of  “XY individual” or “XX individual” as tolerable alternatives.

Moreover, these ass-hats scientists contend that the terms “man,” “woman,” “father,” and “mother” are “problematic,” as are those such as “primitive,” “advanced,” and “non-native.”

Identify the Tank

Yarn is Spun 

There no denying it.

Bullet Points:

** Russia Expels an American Vegan – Now I know that Russia really hates us. Nobody wants her back.

The American animal activist (right) jailed for walking her pet calf through Red Square says she was made to sign a false confession and believes she was targeted by Vladimir Putin’s administration due to her race, vegetarianism, and nationality.

Alicia Day, 34, a professional victim, was convicted of staging a protest and resisting arrest after leading a Holstein Friesian calf named Doctor through the Moscow landmark on February 1.

The New York City native was handed a 20,000 ruble [$266] fine, 13 days in the notorious Sakharovo Special Detention Center, and was deported to Istanbul, Turkey, on Thursday – two days after leaving jail.  One can only hope that she finds a new home and life in Turkey. I’m sure that US Ambassador Jeff Flake (disgraced US Senator, exiled from Arizona) will see to it that she can stay there.

** Everybody I know wanted to have their own particle accelerator after this. Especially the frustrated .380 shooters.  Who can really blame them?

** Somebody’s ex-girlfriend…Obviously, she likely switched and went lesbian.

** What’s Your Neighborhood Equity Plan? (Fox News) If you’ve worked hard to afford a suburban house with a patch of lawn where your kids can play, you’re under attack.

The Biden regime and Democrats in New York, Connecticut, and other states are fighting local zoning laws in order to build high-rise apartment buildings with “affordable” units in tree-lined, single-family neighborhoods. All in the name of equity, meaning everyone can live in a tranquil suburb, whether they’ve earned the money to pay for it or not.

The Biden regime announced Jan. 19 that it will require all towns across the U.S. to submit “Equity Plans” showing how they will make it possible for low-income people to live there by providing affordable housing, transportation, and other resources.

** Show me the Money! Elected life is great! Rep. Swalwell (D-CA) has consistently used donor funds on limousines, flights, yachts, and posh hotels, including internationally. The spending came as Americans in both his district and around the country faced rising inflation that drove food, fuel, and energy costs through the roof.

** From Stringshot: I spent a lot of time in oilfield shitholes in my past life.  The attached photo was taken in the Nile delta in Eqypt in the ’80s.

This isn’t the photo that he sent. It wouldn’t load on the blog. But you get the idea. And then I lost the camera therefore the 2009 date is in the bottom right corner.  I worked in the office, shop, and on the rigs running prototype downhole tools with A LOT of ragheads.  The photo depicts a local squatting on a toilet seat in a portable can wearing his dishdasha.  The other Brits, Canadians, Americans, etc on location demanded from the company man that at least one port-o-can be reserved for us.  Didn’t happen.  Muddy, greasy footprints on all the seats. I was told that the second coming of Allah would come from a man and if he did the locals could not let him drown in the waste….  Needless to say, I rarely used the local facilities – but when you had to, you had to.

Then there are the Islamic rules for toilet etiquette…

And there are also rules for Buddhists.

This is a two-in-one urinal and rear-ender…from the Island of Santorini in the Med. Who says that this blog isn’t brimming with culture?

It’s snowing at the White Wolf Mine…

Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst, Where there aren’t no Ten Commandments an’ a man can raise a thirst; For the temple-bells are callin’, an’ it’s there that I would be By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea…

The Flag

US Citizens can protest policies, the current government, or anything else they choose, that is their right. (so long as they’re not doing it at the Capitol)

When they “protest” our flag and anthem as we saw during the recent Super Bowl, you are insulting the nation we all live in and love, and all those who have served, been injured, or died to keep it free. There is nothing you can do or say that can make your actions anything more than the arrogance of classless people, who care about themselves more than our country or the freedoms for which our veterans and their families have sacrificed so much, to ensure you have the “right” to speak freely. Except that the Bill of Rights is being trashed by our installed leaders. Do you sense my frustration?

Passport

A trash truck rear-ended my Honda Passport and now it’s being put back together. I have USAA Insurance (serving veterans). The Trash Company policy is underwritten by Progressive.  So naturally, because they’re progressive, they’re trying to say that it was my fault that their insured backed their commercial vehicle into my lawfully parked car. Whatever. Sometimes life is like that. How progressive.

Feel the Bern…

Identify the Tanks

1

2

Your Tax Dollars

Bullet Points:

** Brandon Regime loves Ukraine – “Today, the United States announced $460 million in new support for Ukraine: $450 million worth of arms and equipment from DoD inventories under Presidential Drawdown Authority, as well as $10 million to support ongoing U.S. efforts to provide emergency assistance to help maintain Ukraine’s energy infrastructure,” a U.S. Department of State spokesperson said in a statement.  Apparently, we will also be funding the government pensions of Ukrainians. How generous our regime is with other people’s money.

** Rasmussen Reports Survey: among Republican voters, 45% say they would support Trump and 32% say they would support DeSantis, with 14% saying they would support some other candidate.

** Nuclear Treaties – what are they worth?

Southpark Strikes

Privileged and spoiled, Meghan Markle has been left ‘upset and overwhelmed’ for the past few days at how she and the former prince, now known as just plain Harry, have been depicted in an episode of South Park. The episode, titled ‘World Privacy Tour’ pokes fun at the couple’s multitude of grievances, while Meghan is introduced as a ‘sorority girl, D-List actress, person-of-color, influencer, and professional victim,’ by another character.

They nailed it.

451

h/t John Derva (Oslo, Norway) (PS – John is my brother from another mother. I just wish that he lived a little closer than Norway or I lived a little closer than Arizona)

Author Ray Bradbury published the book Fahrenheit 451 70 years ago. It’s more relevant than ever. The book can be said to be in the same category as Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World published in 1932 and George Orwell’s novel 1984 published in 1949.

In the 30s Nazis burned books that didn’t fit their definition of what was correct. In our days, Roald Dahl’s books should be changed so that the words are adapted by a narrower circle of people. Those who insist to have defining power and the right to change and rewrite history, remove literature and paintings assume the role and are given a good opportunity to exercise their work. It is gladly funded by the taxpayers over public budgets. They think a lot about what words can be used and what you should be allowed to see.

In Sweden, they have come a long way in that process and Astrid Lindgren’s books will be adapted to the new age of what is correct. Photographs and pictures of professors who have been of great academic importance will be removed from the walls of a Swedish university.

The latest is relevant at the National Museum where painter Christian Krohg’s painting will be replaced with one that is politically correct and that does not violate the Swedish and Danish director who has no sense of what Christian KrohG conveyed at his time.

We have all had examples of how the demand that a bench with the name of Carl von Linné is removed from Tøyenparken and the statue of Ludvig Holberg was long overdue removed. Even the statue of Winston Churchill has been demanded removed.

Ray Bradbury rewrote this over 70 years ago and gave the following explanation of why it was important for some to remove what they defined as offensive.

When Montag fails to show up for work, his fire chief, Beatty, pays a visit to his house. Beatty explains that it’s normal for a fireman to go through a phase of wondering what books have to offer, and he delivers a dizzying monologue explaining how books came to be banned in the first place. According to Beatty, special-interest groups and other “minorities” objected to books that offended them. Soon, books all began to look the same, as writers tried to avoid offending anybody. This was not enough, however, and society as a whole decided to simply burn books rather than permit conflicting opinions. Beatty tells Montag to take twenty-four hours or so to see if his stolen books contain anything worthwhile and then turn them in for incineration.

It will Bomb (again) without Ron Pearlman

Bullet Points:

**A Sheep-Dip and it’s back in business

** Five days of snow-in-a-row are predicted at the White Wolf Mine. Will I be snowed in?  That’s more defined by the Highway Patrol closing major arteries than by my inability to exit the house or get back if I’ve left.

** Pres. Jimmy Carter was a dismal failure as a president, only exceeded by Pedo Joe. However, he was not a horrible man. His life post-president has been one dedicated to humble service. His opinions of gay marriage are not mine, but I can agree to differ. He’s at home, dying now, in hospice. The last time I saw him was in a grocery store parking lot in Las Vegas, NV at least 25+ years ago when he was stumping for his son who was running for public office. Everyone ignored him. I felt bad at the time. I’m not a Carter apologist, and I wouldn’t shake the Half-Blood Prince’s hand, but Carter was neither Barack nor Pedo Joe. When he flies, he flies commercial and shakes the hands of everyone on the airplane. I’m sure that he’ll do a lot better on the other side than Pedo Joe will.

** (Telegraph) For millennia, it was little more than a myth. Then it remained an archaeological mystery. But now, a British Museum project has finally unearthed a lost wonder which could shed new light on the birth of civilization.

Archaeologists working in southern Iraq have discovered the 4,500-year-old palace associated with a mythical king, whose buried library of clay tablets might fill the gaps in an ancient epic poem that inspired parts of the Bible.

Experts with the British Museum also found a lost “holy of holies” at the ancient city of Girsu, ending a 150-year search that began when a 19th-century archaeologist first discovered the site and the Sumerian culture which built it.

** An Air Yacht – Or a Target? Come on, it’s a fair question. What if it was filled with space aliens?

** The BattleComp Flash Hider (BCFH) is $50 off until March 1. Only at battlecomp dot com. A company owned by a friend of mine.

** ANASA-funded team of researchers has identified a lunar pit on the moon that’s always a balmy 63 degrees Fahrenheit — suggesting it could be the perfect place for future astronauts to establish a moon base. youtube.

Getting in and out of the pit wouldn’t be easy — the bottom is 328 feet below the moon’s surface, so it’d be like rappelling down a 30-story building. But if NASA can make it work, astronauts wouldn’t have to expend energy on yet-to-be-invented climate control systems for their future moon base.

** PaulM sent this chart in an e-mail. How can you be both a democrat and a Christian given the position that the democrat party has taken?

People in Utah should consider themselves lucky that no trains containing toxic chemicals have derailed there recently…

Sailing

The Draken Harald Hårfagre a Viking Ship replica… You have to admire the men who sailed those longships. It took no small degree of courage.

Traveling

When you’re in a place where the toilets look like this… you will need to make sure to either bring your own toilet paper or use a sock. If you flush the soiled sock, it will make things interesting for the next guy/gal.

  Bullet Points:

** The Federalist – As bad as you think the budget situation is, CBO noted that in the past year, it has gotten much worse. And if Democrats have their way when it comes to fiscal policy, things will still somehow worsen. —Wow, and I’d just begun to believe Pedo Joe that those happy days were here again. I guess not.

** More Californication – Senator Dave Min announced the introduction of Senate Bill (SB) 637, which requires that the State’s public finances cut off business with any banks or lenders with business customers that manufacture firearms. SB 637 applies to every aspect of California’s public finances including municipal bonds, capital projects, and the State’s debt portfolio.

** ZeroHedge – Several of the UK’s most respected TV shows, movies, and works of literature have been included in a list of works that could potentially encourage far-right sympathies, compiled by the taxpayer-funded and government-led ‘Prevent’ counter-terrorism program.

As The Daily Mail reports, works by some of the world’s greatest writers were included as examples of warning signs of potential extremism, including Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Tennyson, Orwell, Huxley, Kipling and Edmund Burke.

When I watched Season 2 of Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon Prime, I thought of this quote: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever. ” ― George Orwell, 1984″

** The politician never handles the cash directly. That’s why they have a crime family or staff or FTX Crypto to manage it for them. 10% to the Big Guy.

** Is Brown Skin an Indication of White Supremacy? MSNBC has sparked outrage after accusing Nikki Haley of ‘using her brown skin to launder white supremacy’ in the early days of her presidential campaign. Host Mehdi Hasan fronted a heated discussion about the Republican hopeful, where his guests took aim at Haley following her repeated claim that America ‘is not a racist country’.

** House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has given Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from January 6th, 2021, according to Axios, which reports that excerpts will begin airing in the coming weeks.

Bullet Points:

** FBI paid more than $3 Million Dollars to Twitter for their Censorship actions against Trump Supporters dating to the Government Overthrow of the 2020 Election. The ELON Act, introduced this month by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and backed by nine other cosponsors, would impose a one-year moratorium on taxpayer payments from the Justice Department to social media firms as well as require an audit on how much money changed hands since the start of 2015 between DOJ and Big Tech firms.

** Being a complete idiot is a standard for the woke. Being forced to hire and promote them is a matter of equity, now a national policy in the US. h/t Claudio

** I saw a statement on the internet that said 20 million AR-15s were in private hands in America. It took me back. Only 20 million? Somebody needs to sell more AR-15s.

** From East Palestine

** From Vuhledar –  In the Big Russian Winter Offensive.  By one account, nearly three dozen Russian tanks and armored vehicles were reduced to smoldering rubble. By another, as many as 500 Russian troops may have been killed. Relatives of soldiers from one unit are frantically trading text messages and social-media posts trying to locate their loved ones. According to Ukrainian and Western intelligence officials, Russian and Ukrainian military bloggers, satellite photographs, and other open sources, a collection of Russian marine infantry and other units suffered catastrophic losses in an effort to capture the Donetsk region town — for the second time since November.

What Kind of Military?

Recent incursions into American airspace by Chinese spy balloons, an increasingly threatening Chinese military, and an escalating war in Ukraine that pits NATO forces against Russia all point to the need for a strong, tough, professional U.S. military that can win wars and protect the homeland.

The United States spends more on defense than any other country in the world.  In fact, our 2021 total of $801 billion exceeded the $777 billion spent that year by the next seven countries — China, India, the U.K., Russia, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and Korea — combined.

What do we get for our money?  If 2020’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal is any indication, the answer is not much.  After twenty years of war with nearly 6,200 U.S. military and contractor deaths, our precipitous departure left behind some 9,000 American citizens (1); countless Afghan allies; and more than $7 billion in sophisticated weapons, munitions, and military equipment (2).

Much has been said and written about America’s increasingly woke, politicized military and its negative impacts on recruiting and readiness.  Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, attracted widespread criticism when he spoke of “white rage” and reportedly hid nuclear codes from President Trump while telling his Red Chinese counterpart he would provide advance warning of any planned U.S. attack on China.

Even cadets and midshipmen at the nation’s military academies are undergoing woke indoctrination in Critical Race Theory, transgenderism, “toxic masculinity,” and so-called Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity, which many military experts fear will harm unit integrity, morale, and war-fighting capability.  And now there is a new wrinkle at our academies: the Spectrum Club, which “actively bridges the relationship between Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Questioning (LGBTQ) cadets [and midshipmen] and their allies” and “serves as a safe haven for LGBTQ cadets [and midshipmen] when they need support[.]” …more from Anthony Lentini at American Thinker

Nocturnal

Identify the Tank(s)

Retro Movies for President’s Day – Redford

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

Spy Game (2001)

The Sermonette

Greater China? 

H/T CW at the Daily Timewaster

Beware the Russian Banana Peel

Marina Yankina (right), another top Putin ally, has been found dead after mysteriously falling 160ft from a building.

Let’s say that you were invited to visit Russia and to a balcony 160′ AGL and you saw a banana peel on the decking – would you be justified in feeling triggered? Yes, definitely. yes.

You’d think that the Russians would mix up the assassinations a bit and find somebody who could write a convincing suicide note. It’s almost as if Slick Willy Clinton was the President of Russia these days. All those suicides and not one note.

Israeli Defense Infrastructure – in the UAE?

Yes. JERUSALEM — An Israeli defense company has inaugurated a new facility in the United Arab Emirates and plans to show off a high-energy laser weapon to attendees of the IDEX conference, taking place in Abu Dhabi this month. H/T Claudio and I’m as blown away as he is. It’s a new world.

KC3 – Coronation scheduled for May 6. I’m afraid that I’ll be busy that day. All the best, Jolly good show old boy, chin up, heavy is the head that wears the crown and all that, etc.

Ammunition Reviews –  Because this is the Lord’s Day…

(praise the Lord and pass the ammo, etc.)

Depending on your reaction,  this could be a regular feature here. at VM. I am reviewing factory loads here, not hand loads. I do hand-load special application ammunition but most people don’t.

These particular 9mm loads are reviewed for use in lightweight self-defense applications. The tool must fit the use. I’ve test fired them in Ballistic jell and against non-human living flesh targets (feral hogs) to evaluate their effectiveness from Sig P365 SAS and Sig P365 XMacro handguns. Essentially they are the same platform but to me, they carry differently.  (stock photos)

The SAS (Sig Anti-Snag) has nothing to hang up if you carry it in a pocket or are drawing from a holster. No sight, no safety catch, nothing.

The P365 SAS is equipped with an FT Bullseye sight integrated into the rear of the slide. The FT Bullseye sight uses a combination of fiber-optic and tritium (FT) technology to provide illumination during both day-and night-time shooting conditions. To aim the pistol, simply center the green dot inside the larger green circle, place the dot on the target, and fire.

Since the sight sits on the same plane as the bore, the pistol shoots to point of aim. I found the P365 SAS to be one of the most accurate pistols I’ve ever shot at close-quarter concealed distances. If you’ve been searching for a micro-compact pistol that you can actually hit something with, this is the handgun for you.

Another plus is the pistol’s capacity. The P365 SAS ships with two 10-round magazines—one that seats flush with the frame and one with a pinky extension for a more comfortable grip. With an additional round in the chamber, that’s a total of 11 rounds of point-defense love.

The Sig P365 X-Macro has night sights that are silencer/suppressor friendly.  I’ve installed a Romeo Zero Elite optical sight. The magazine capacity is 17 (+1). It’s still a small, concealed-carry firearm but with 2 spare magazines, that’s 52 rounds of point defense love. The tested firearm has a True Precision barrel threaded for a silencer/suppressor.

So one is more of a deep-carry point-defense handgun and the other is what I would characterize as a point-defense tactical handgun.

Now to the 9mm ammunition tested and reviewed. I’m traditionally a .45 ACP shooter, but developments in new 9mm ammo have increased the lethality to the point where, I’m crossing over to the other side when it comes to micro-compact handguns. Who would have thought that I’d recommend 9mm? Well I carry and I do particularly for this purpose.

(1) Fort Scott 9mm 80 grain +P – T. U. I. (Tumble Upon Impact)

Fort Scott Munitions™ 80 grain 9MM Luger TUI™ ammo is a match-grade handgun bullet, with a Tumble Upon Impact™ action that exceeds the performance of a standard expanding bullet for decisive terminal impact. Engineered to create a dynamic wound cavity.

The plus is that this copper bullet (1300 FPS) is light and flat-shooting. It creates massive wound channels as advertised and the tumbling action of the bullet does a number on a flesh-and-blood non-human target. The muzzle flash coming out of that 3.1″ barrel is considerable and if you are going to carry them, you should train with them (obviously) at night as well.

(2) Black Hills Honey Badger 100 gr 9 mm +P 

Hollow points may falter when it comes to how deeply they can penetrate. I’ve seen many people survive wounds from 9mm hollow point bullets including shots directly into an eye at point-blank range. The doctors out there would say good, and the warriors out there say WTF?

This 9mm +P cartridge by Black Hills solves that problem with its unique 100-grain Honey Badger projectile, which delivers deadly terminal performance without the need for a nose cavity that could slow it down.

A Honey Badger bullet looks like a drill bit. As its scalloped sides rotate within a target, they will channel and direct soft tissues outward to create a massive wound cavity. And because the Honey Badger is made of solid copper rather than a core and jacket that could separate, it keeps a stellar portion of its weight as it consistently penetrates to over 12” inches in depth.

This round also flies at about 1300 FPS and has a different profile with a significant wound channel (not as significant as the TUI – above) but wicked deep penetration that you’re unlikely to see in a hollowpoint.  It penetrated all the way through a feral hog/razorback at 20 meters with a 1.5 to 2-inch wound channel.

Summary: Both the Honey Badger (Black Hills) and the TUI (Ft. Scott) cartridges exceeded expectations. The lightweight 80 grain TUI round is a man-stopper as a point-defense solution. It is not designed to defeat kevlar body armor and trauma plates.  These are not the ideal rounds to marry with a suppressor. For that, I like the Super Vel 115 gr Hush Puppy. But that’s another review.

My carry suggestion is the Ft. Scott TUI for the Sig P365 SAS and the Black Hills Honey Badger for the Sig P365 X-Macro (tactical). Both +P. rounds shoot flat. The Honey Badger is going to give you remarkable penetration for this application married to the wound channel.

Helpful? Useless? Let me know your thoughts. I have thick skin. I’m constantly testing different ammunition for different applications to make the tool fit the use. Because I live in a place where I can drive to a location that is infested with feral razorback pigs, I’m able to test on living tissue. The ballistic gel is useful to see the pattern but the proof against nasty, angry, aggressive pigs shows me more.

Other work demands far from the WWM will diminish my ability to pursue my hobby but I’m willing to do testing within my platforms if you’re curious and I can post pictures. I don’t do videos. I’m not Hickok45 – who is exceptionally cool.

Meme of the Day

Bullet Points:

** In Tranny News – Democrats in Virginia’s Senate voted to kill a bill that would ban schools from hiding a child’s “gender transition” from parents. Sage’s Law, the bill that passed the Old Dominion House 50-48 on February 7, was shot down Thursday in Senate committee 9-6. Democrats control Virginia’s Senate by a margin of 22-18.

** Missing Cash?  The Stacey Abrams charity ‘New Georgia Project’ has a potential tax problem. According to a new investigative report, the group is ‘missing’ $500,000. That’s not a small accounting error, it’s a possible crime.

** On Disney’s latest ultra-woke reboot “The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder”, the characters immediately roll into a litany of damnable lies about the history of this country. Intended for an audience of children, the first diatribe declares:

Slaves built this country and we the descendants of slaves have earned reparations for their suffering and continue to earn reparations every moment we spend submerged in a systemic prejudice, racism and white supremacy that America was founded with and still has not atoned for [sic].

Simple historical context and logic easily disprove that initial claim, of course.  Slaves certainly didn’t “build this country” — America was nothing resembling the economic juggernaut that it would later become when slavery was summarily abolished in 1865, and one could hardly suggest with any seriousness that the agrarian part of the country where slaves existed was the most substantial driver of America’s eventual economic and industrial might…more at American Thinker.

** Wind turbines are failing—collapsing—around the world. In recent months and years, turbines in Oklahoma, Colorado, Sweden, and Germany have collapsed. According to a report in Bloomberg, all three of the major manufacturers say that the race to create ever-bigger turbines has resulted in manufacturing issues.

Siemens has experienced quality control issues, Vestas has seen project delays and quality challenges, and GE has seen an increase in warranty costs and repairs. Supply chain issues and fluctuating material pricing hasn’t helped, either.

A number of the turbines that have been collapsing around the world have been more than 750 feet tall. The tallest thus far, 784 feet high, fell in Germany in September 2021. This means the turbines are (were) taller than the Space Needle in Seattle and the Washington Monument. Even the shorter turbines that have tumbled to the ground recently were roughly the height of the Statue of Liberty.

Some of the newer turbines stretch to a height exceeding 850 feet and possess blades 300 feet long.  It is true that the bigger the turbine, the more energy it can capture. However, it is also true that the bigger the turbine, the farther it has to fall. And the more likely it is to do so. Imagine what happens to even a smaller turbine’s surroundings when it collapses, and its 12,000-pound blades hit the ground!

** Woke Bites, Lemon – Don Lemon apologized to his CNN colleagues for his sexist remarks on the air a day prior and was rebuked by his boss, a transcript of a company conference call reportedly shows. Lemon apparently felt the squeeze amid the backlash and attempted to explain why he referred to women 50 and over as past their “prime” on Thursday’s airing of “CNN This Morning.” He was taking on 51-year-old Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley over her assertion some of the country’s leaders are too old to lead.

** Star Trek Picard – Season 3 – Full disclosure, I like science fiction and even space opera, but Hollywood seems to really be flogging the donkey hard with this one.  I haven’t seen and I may not see it as the actors may be a little long in the tooth for the franchise. Star Trek went woke with the more recent iterations.  Can’t anyone come up with anything new? Is that asking too much?

** The Senator from Pennsylvania – It’s unlikely that he’ll return to the Senate, and that’s no surprise. I feel sorry for him. He was used hard and opposed by Oprah’s darling, Oz. Who do you vote for, the stroke victim with the massive tumor on his neck (or spider eggs waiting to hatch) or Oz? Obviously, they went with the big loser and he crashed and burned as predicted.

Identify the WW2 Jet Aircraft

Ocean Levels Rising

Captioned Photo: Chloride, Arizona

 Bullet Points:

** Are Drug Cartels good for Arizona? House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Thursday, the Sinaloa cartel is now the biggest employer in Cochise County, Arizona, because it hires so many people to smuggle people and drugs.

** Yesterday, an Arizona Senate committee passed the Defend the Guard Act to require the governor to stop unconstitutional foreign combat deployments of the state’s National Guard troops. Passage into law would take a big step toward restoring the Founding Fathers’ framework for a State-Federal balance under the American Constitution. I expect the installed governor to veto the bill.

** Holuhraun eruption in Iceland to welcome Jules to the island.

Red Mist? Oh yes.

** Pro-Life Discrimination – The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum kicked out a dozen Catholic high school students and their chaperones for wearing beanies inscribed with pro-life messages. On Jan. 20, students and chaperones from Our Lady of the Rosary School based out of Greenville, South Carolina, traveled to Washington, D.C., for the annual National March for Life. The group members wore matching blue beanies with the words “Rosary PRO-LIFE.” The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), representing the parents of some of the students involved, alleged that the museum staff mocked the students, hurled expletives, and claimed the museum was a “neutral zone” where political or religious messages were not allowed.

** Federal Flight Control Low Recoil 8-pellet 00 Buck is absolutely the pinnacle of defensive shotgun technology, and indeed, a “top” load particularly when we are measuring recoil management, follow-up shots, pellet deformation, patterning AND terminal ballistics.

** Anyone who still believes the government is a special kind of rube.

** (strategypage) Russia has a problem with the growing number of Ukrainian spies and paramilitary partisan groups operating in Russian-occupied portions of Ukraine as well as pro-Ukraine or anti-Putin Russians inside Russia who provides Ukraine with targets and other information about Russian military activities. Ukraine abides by the American restrictions on using American-supplied missiles on targets inside Russia. Instead, Ukraine uses improvised and Ukrainian-made long-range weapons to strike these targets. Ukrainian special operations forces have also operated inside Russia and carried out some spectacular attacks on Russian military bases and industrial sites. This damage, especially large explosions, and fires, are hard to hide from commercial and military satellites overhead or curious Russians with cellphone cameras and access to the Internet outside Russia. Russian lack of adequate facility security or effective air defenses is embarrassing but no surprise to most Russians and Ukrainians.

Firearms

If you’re a politician and don’t want to grapple with difficult social problems, the easy out is to blame firearms, or even knives as they do in the UK. Eliminating firearms completely in the US is impossible because there is an implicit right to have them without government interference and because there are so many of them. Politicians, therefore, announce that their hands are tied.

The turd in the punchbowl is that in areas where the public has unfettered access to firearms ownership, crime rates drop. An armed society is a polite society. Most criminals use illegally obtained firearms in the commission of a crime and nationally the statistical likelihood that any firearm in the USA will be used to commit a crime is about .02%. VERY unlikely.

Dealing with inner city poverty, illiteracy, degeneracy, violence, etc. effectively is racist. Dealing with mental illness is expensive and finding a ‘cure’ is often elusive. Surprisingly, treating allergic reactions has been very effective in reducing mental illness, but since it doesn’t require an expensive pill, the medical community doesn’t get behind that with any degree of enthusiasm. Homelessness is a combination of all of the above. Reducing the number of firearms in a population doesn’t have ANY impact on those endemic problems.

Prohibition hasn’t worked but eliminating alcohol and street narcotics would reduce all of the problems above exponentially and would promote a much healthier society. The wine industry, the restaurant industry, and the distilleries wouldn’t sit still for it any more than those who drink or use drugs would. Firearms have no part to play. Yet politicians are comfortable blaming them.

Do You Remember the Maine?

The Armed Cruiser <i>USS Maine</i> (ACR-1) was a United States Navy warship that sank in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, contributing to the outbreak of the Spanish–American War in April. U.S. newspapers, engaging in yellow journalism to boost circulation, claimed that the Spanish were responsible for the ship’s destruction. The phrase, “Remember the <i>Maine</i>! To hell with Spain!” became a rallying cry for action. Although the Maine explosion was not a direct cause, it served as a catalyst that accelerated the events leading up to the war.

Bullet Points:

** Chinese Balloon – CBS News reported US Intelligence actually saw the spy balloon lift off near China’s south coast and tracked it for nearly a week before it entered US airspace.

** The Post reports: The government of Canada’s second-most populated province is demanding that Mayor Eric Adams “immediately” stop helping migrants illegally enter the Great White North, as recently revealed by The Post. [Emphasis added]

“Any form of assistance to migrants crossing the border where it is strictly forbidden to do so should stop immediately,” a spokesperson for Quebec Premier Francois Legault said. [Emphasis added]

“We understand that the situation of migrants in New York poses major challenges, but the situation in Quebec and particularly in Montreal is even worse and constitutes an important humanitarian issue.” [Emphasis added]

** Nikki Haley for Prez? Who cares?

** Dating for the Unvaxed (purebloods)? As we observe more and more mRNA / nanotech being mainstreamed into various medicines and the food supply chain… Will the fate of humanity ultimately rest with purebloods being able to copulate with other purebloods?

SAMP-Ts to Ukraine

(strategypage) Italy and France pledged to send Ukraine some of their Aster 30/SAMP-T air defense batteries, a European equivalent of the American Patriot. SAMP/T is a land-based version of the original Aster 30 ship-based missile. Aster was inspired by the U.S. Navy SM (standard missile) developed in the 1960s. Aster was developed during the 1990s and entered service in 2001. SAMP/T is French for Surface-to-Air Medium-Range/Land-based (in French it is Sol-Air Moyenne-Portée/Terrestre) and entered service in 2008

Claudio speaks:  There are a few errors in the article. France has ten operational SAMP-T, Italy 5. Both countries are merging their non-operational training batteries to give one deployable unit to Ukraine. Both countries are ordering additional batteries, doubling numbers or more.

A SAMP/T battery consists of eight vehicles. One carried the fore control center, another the AESA radar and the other six vehicles each carrying an eight-cell canister for storing and firing the half-ton missiles. Additional trucks carry reload missiles and other equipment. The radar has a range of 100 kilometers. Like the similar U.S. Patriot system, SAMP/T can knock down short-range ballistic missiles, and low-flying cruise missiles. The system is highly automated, requiring only two crew to operate it. Each launcher can fire all eight of its missiles in ten seconds while the control system can track a hundred targets simultaneously and control sixteen missiles simultaneously. Targets as low as 50 meters (150 feet), or as high as 18 kilometers (60,000 feet) can be detected and hit.

Will NATO troops wearing Ukraine uniforms defend these batteries?

FTX Pay-Outs (Source: Federal Election Commission)

You’ll note that while significant pay-outs went to Democrats, the Republicans benefitted from the laundering scheme as well.

Hanging is too good for some people…

Identify the AFV

Bullet Points:

** Hospitals refused treatment – Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky introduced new legislation on Tuesday that would prevent healthcare facilities that denied critical care to unvaccinated patients from receiving taxpayer dollars, Fox News Digital reported. The proposed bill, “The COVID-19 Vaccination Non-Discrimination Act,” seeks to hold health care institutions accountable by blocking federal funding.

** You need to know where to put the dog droppings and where to put the mail.

** Raquel Welch – RIP at age 82 – pictured right in the prime of life.

** How stupid are people to believe that space aliens are using balloons to fly to Earth. Biden/Harris voters?

**  Pfizer’s own trial with over 40,000 participants showed NO EVIDENCE of a mortality or hospitalization benefit. The vax was/is a bad thing.

** Chris Cuomo: “I was going to kill everybody and myself” after being fired from CNN.

** Utah Governor Cox said, noting the last census confirmed that Utah was the fastest growing state in the country over the past 10 years. “Our biggest problems are more growth-related. We would love for people to stay in California instead of coming as refugees to Utah.”

Bullet Points:

** Jules in Iceland – more here. You’re asking yourselves if there really are trolls in Iceland or if Jules is just making it up. Well, you know that red mist is real, so how much more of a leap is it to trolls?

** Jules also reminded me that Clarkson’s Farm 2 is live on Amazon Prime. She boasted that she binge-watched the whole thing. So you know what I had to do. I started watching. There will be no Clarkson’s Farm 3 because Clarkson doesn’t like former Prince Harry’s part negro wife. Amazon took exception to his comments about the shrewish American – and canceled him.

The UK’s Independent Press Standards Organisation has launched an investigation into Amazon Prime Video host Jeremy Clarkson for a tabloid article where he wished Megan Markle be paraded through the streets naked, referencing a scene from Game of Thrones. Clarkson is being investigated for breaches of accuracy, harassment, and discrimination, and is liable to pay up to £1 million ($AU1.7 million) if found to be uncompliant.

** The war has been good for Ukrainian oligarchs. Zero Hedge has the latest on Ukraine officials being busted wastefully spending the American people’s money and it seems like a wave of these criminals resigned, but they haven’t been brought to justice.

** Jim Brandon, Brother to Pedo Joe – President Biden’s brother was hired to engage in secret negotiations with the Saudi government on behalf of a US construction company because of his relationship with the then vice president, legal documents claim.

Jim Biden was selected because Saudi Arabia ‘would not dare stiff the brother of the Vice-President who would be instrumental to the deal,’  bombshell affidavits obtained by DailyMail.com allege.

Joe’s younger brother Jim, 73, was at the center of a $ 140 million settlement negotiation between Hill International and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2012.

** Soviet Naval Aviation (Part 1) h/t Claudio. – and then the second part (Part 2). I had access to classified information on Soviet systems and don’t recall specifically what I had access to when so no comment.

** Pedo Joe’s Classified Papers – A second university has been found to have received more than $6.7 million in anonymous donations from China, including direct funding from the Chinese government, after Joe Biden set up a program there in his name, according to a Government Accountability Institute analysis. The revelation comes following reporting that anonymous China-linked funds flowing to the University of Pennsylvania almost tripled after the inauguration of the Penn-Biden Center, which illegally housed classified documents.

** Institutional Racism – A grant opportunity to advance “healthy food equity” from the Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation automatically disqualifies otherwise eligible organizations if the CEO is white.

Of course, if the CEO self-identifies as non-white, it’s cool.

** Yusuke Narita, a 37-year-old economics professor at Yale, says the solution for Japan’s population problem is “mass suicide and mass ‘seppuku” of the elderly. He has also said of euthanasia that the “possibility of making it mandatory in the future [will] come up in discussion.”

** Dr. Jordan B Peterson and Dr. Del Paulhus delve deep into the Dark Tetrad: Podcast – Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy, and the newly added Sadism. From these four traits, researchers can quantify much of the darkness of humanity, and begin to study it in a way that yields numerical results, and the potential to make substantial predictions. Dr. Delroy Paulhus is a personality researcher whose work in dark personality traits, via a variety of psychometric methods, has yielded measures of the Dark Tetrad. His work has also validated measures of socially desirable responding, perceived control, free will, determinism, and over-claiming. His work has been published in over 150 articles and books, and his current citation count exceeds 43,000.

Identify the Aircraft

    Bullet Points:

** Although the majority of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees come from “underrepresented racial and ethnic groups,” the agency is hiring a Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at the recommendation of a special Inclusion Action Committee (IAC) created after George Floyd’s death. The head of the Homeland Security agency created after 9/11 to protect the nation’s transportation system says the new Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer will report directly to him and will help drive cultural change, establish a new leadership principle focused on supporting and sustaining an inclusive culture and ensure that performance plans for TSA executives focus on inclusive leadership. Despite a 55% racial and ethnic minority staff, the agency with 60,000 employees will work to ensure it is inclusive and that diversity is reflected at all levels, according to an extensive report published by the in-house IAC.

** The End is Near (again) –  “Earth’s rising sea levels could spark a mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale,” the UN’s Secretary-General has warned. In a grim speech to the UN’s security council in New York, Antonio Guterres said countries like Bangladesh, China, India, and the Netherlands risk being flooded. The beachside mansions of oligarchs worldwide would be the first to go…

Even though there is NO PROOF of rising sea levels, these cheap political hacks still spew their stuff. Without a Green New Deal, we’ll all be dead next year from global warming.  I’d welcome some global warming in Arizona today to melt the foot of snow that fell.

** The Morlocks live among us. (h/t. JW) The Morlock is a subhuman who imagines himself to be posthuman, that is, anointed as superior by fate or by evolution. The Morlock imagines men to be livestock. We, the vulgar, the lowly, the benighted, are lambs to be shepherded and — for he too has a faith, albeit a perverse one — lambs to be sacrificed for the salvation of the world.

All these imaginations are vain, not merely inversions of the truth, but perversions of it. Deception and self-deception are the core of their mystery.

Morlock is not their name for themselves. They are an occult and parasitic tradition, that disguises its aims and means in layers of deception and self-deception.

The names that they give themselves are legion. In times long gone, they were called the Illuminati, the Enlightened Ones; or the Gnostics, who possess the Inner Knowledge; or Sophists, who count themselves as Wise. From the alchemical writings of Hermes Trismegistus, comes to the name Hermeticism. Within this broad and hidden tradition are many schools and sects and cults: Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Freemasonry.

In the current generation, they are variously called, Leftists,  Socialists, Progressives, and Woke. Again, there are various sects and cults, differing in only nuance or priority, but all part of the same social evolutionary process, all part of the same Dialectic: Totalitarians, Anarchists, International Socialists, National Socialists, Fascists, Antifascists, Feminists, Transactivists, LGBTQ, WEF, CNN.

** In East Palestine – The EPA is now highly suspect to the fact that the railroad may have buried toxic waste in order to get the rail line back open again. It was buried under the rails from that trench that they dug.

One Year Later

One year in, the war in Ukraine has shown that Vlad Putin and his cohort’s beliefs are still rooted in Soviet frames and narratives, overlaid with a thick glaze of Russian imperialism. Soviet-era concepts of geopolitics, spheres of influence, East versus West, and us versus them shape the Kremlin’s mindset. To Putin, this war is in effect a struggle with Washington akin to the Korean War and other Cold War–era conflicts. The United States remains Russia’s principal opponent, not Ukraine. Putin wants to negotiate directly with Washington to “deliver” Ukraine, with the end goal of getting the U.S. president to sign away the future of the country. He has no desire to meet directly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. His goal remains the kind of settlement achieved in 1945 at Yalta when U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sat across the table from the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and accepted Moscow’s post–World War II dominance of Eastern Europe without consulting the countries affected by these decisions.

The question asked here on this blog: When will Russia retaliate against the US? They don’t have much to retaliate with at the moment besides nuclear weapons and the Russians have ALWAYS kept a tight leash on their nukes. Even when they were dead broke. Asking the Chinese to retaliate on their behalf won’t work. The Chinese are allies of convenience and only when it’s profitable to China.

According to Putin, Russia is locked in an existential battle for its survival against the West. He is once more digging deep into old Soviet tactics and practices from the 1940s to rally the Russian economy, political class, and society in support of the invasion. I’m not saying that he’s wrong, just that he doesn’t have many options.

Putin has shifted his narrative about the war several times to keep his opponents guessing about how far he might still go. He and other Russian officials, including his spokesman and foreign minister, have openly stated that the invasion of Ukraine is an imperial war and that Russia’s borders are expanding again.

Russia’s wartime casualties appear to be approaching 200,000. As many as one million people are estimated to have left Russia in the past year in response to the war, either because they oppose the invasion or simply to avoid being drafted. In this regard, the world has learned that there are some limits to Putin’s coercive capabilities, even if this mass exodus of dissenters seems to leave behind a more quiescent majority.

The Kremlin is convinced that the West will eventually grow tired of supporting Ukraine. Putin believes, for example, that there will be political changes in the West that could be advantageous for Moscow. He hopes for the return of populists to power in these states who will back away from their countries’ support for Ukraine. Putin also remains confident that he can eventually restore Russia’s prewar relationship with Europe and that Russia can and will be part of Europe’s economic, energy, political, and security structures again if he holds out long enough (as Bashar al-Assad has in the Middle East by staying in power in Syria). This is why Russia is seemingly restrained in some policy arenas. For instance, it has vested interests in working with Norway and other Arctic countries in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard and the Barents Sea, where Moscow has been careful to comply with international agreements and bilateral treaties. Russia does not want its misadventure in Ukraine to embroil and spoil its entire foreign policy.

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PS –  to Mike_C: https://www.virtualmirage.org/vespers/ 

Though I have not done it, I always wanted to use a piper or possibly even a pipe band to counteract Middle-Eastern music played during Ramadan after sunset. Of course, at the White Wolf Mine, there is no evidence of Middle Eastern culture. I reflect back to my days living in the fetid cities.

Shout Out to PaulM (thanks for the graphic)

Yes, SecTRANS But-Guy is ridden hard and put away wet on a regular basis, but it doesn’t keep him from solving the real problems impacting real Americans. He has his eye on PedoJoe’s chair.

It comes with aging…

Bullet Points:

** When you tire of the more ‘organic’ scents being marketed for scent candles.

** Hillary Clinton (stumping in India) has declared that it’s time to make cash transactions in America illegal in order to “fight climate change.” Many central banks are pushing for Central Bank Digital Currencies, “digital cash” over which they have complete control, claiming they will reduce humanity’s carbon footprint.

Clinton, who looks a lot like George Soros these days, is dragging the sack in India because they seem to be one of the only places where she can get paid to show up. She spent time in India with Huma Weiner, her assistant a lot when she was SECSTATE under Barack.

“Today, I’m proud to announce that the Clinton Global Initiative, started by my husband, will work closely with SEWA and with our partners the America-India Foundation, the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, the Desai Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Council for Inclusive Capitalism, and the Algorand Foundation to launch a $50 million Global Climate Resilience Fund for Women,” the former secretary of state said during a speech in Gujarat, India.

“This fund will empower women and your communities to have access to resources that will make you resilient to the effects of climate change, like extreme heat,” she added.

What about just asking Hillary to make it rain?

** (USNewsMag.com) – The city council of Grand Forks, North Dakota unanimously voted to stop a proposed Chinese-owned corn mill from being built, resulting in cheers from the residents who had filled the seats of the council meeting.

The proposed mill would have been built on a 300-acre parcel of land that was purchased by Fufeng Group in 2022. Fufeng Group is a Chinese-owned company that claims to be an international manufacturer of bio-fermentation products. The land was purchased for $2.3 million while the proposed mill would have cost $700 million. Despite the promise of 200 jobs for that local community and initial support from Mayor Brandon Bochenski, many people voiced concerns about the proximity to a U.S. Air Force Base.

**. (Frontpage) Unlike its Black Lives Matter allies, the Antifa networks aren’t funded by a single nonprofit. Antifa’s illegal activities and the radical tendencies of its participants, many of whom are involved in a variety of radical groups, some of them domestic terrorist organizations, make that a non-starter. However, unlike conservative groups which have been ‘debanked’ from Big Tech fundraising platforms, Antifa gains support through leftist 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) groups which include fundraising platforms, bail funds, street medics, and promotional media organizations.

** So many kinds of people came to the new world and worked their own land, built their own towns, and established their own societies without the help of slaves. For one, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade transported well over 12 million slaves, but only a little over 300,000 made their way into the United States. This didn’t happen all at once. Slavery did officially begin in 1619, but it began with just over 20 slaves.

The Stylebook

“To reduce disinformation, we need to remove the financial incentive to create it,” the Global Disinformation Index declares on its mission page. But as the Washington Examiner exposed last week, the self-appointed arbiter of truth doesn’t seek to silence the legacy corporate outlets that repeatedly peddled false stories. Rather, it demands the widespread censorship of conservative webpages that got those stories correct by branding the right-leaning sites the “riskiest” ones when it comes to “disinformation.”

The MSM has been criticized for years due to its left-wing bias, but much of it is built in due to blind adherence to the Associated Press Stylebook. AP style is used to merely cover things like how to capitalize words, avoid the Oxford comma used in academia, etc. This now has been vastly expanded to instruct journalists substantively with Orwellian language changes. Much of it is needlessly inflammatory, using divisive words when discussing anything related to the right’s perspective. At the same time, anything regarding the left-wing agenda is sugarcoated, using watered-down, peaceful-sounding words and phrases.

The most recent ridiculous change occurred in January when the AP Stylebook tweeted that it was offensive to use the phrase “the French.” In a sense of irony, the AP Stylebook deleted the tweet, stating that it was inappropriate to use the phrase.

The phrase “late-term abortion” was banned in December, claiming it’s not accurate since abortions allegedly don’t take place during the last week of pregnancy. However, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, about 12,000 late-term abortions occur annually. “Crisis pregnancy centers” are supposed to be put in scare quotes and instead referred to as “anti-abortion centers.”

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h/t Frank – Frank’s Corner