Bullet Points:
** How many countries tax their citizens so that they can send money to the United States?
** There have been times in military history when you were drafted or pressed until the end of the war + six months or until you died. That would seem to be what Russia is doing now (Newsweek) h/t Claudio.
The new proposed legislation would raise the age limit for all officers to 70 and take the maximum age for contract personnel to 65—far older than the current limit of 51, according to an intelligence update shared with X, formerly Twitter, by the U.K. Ministry of Defense on Tuesday. Both of the new age limits exceed the average life expectancy for Russian men of 64.2 years, according to WorldData.Info.
The British Defense Ministry argued that the new limits could prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from ordering additional mobilizations but would effectively lead to a lifetime of service for Russian servicemen, with the older recruits also likely doing little to improve Moscow’s military performance in Ukraine.
My sense is that the Defense Ministry would slot the elderly into billets in rear areas, allowing the young to offer up their meat to the state on the Ukraine Front. There is a bright light in Russia. You can pay the state to exempt you from endless military service…
** “Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.” – General Robert E. Lee
** I may be alone in this, but I always thought one of the best Dune films was Lawrence of Arabia. Here (below), we see Paul with blue-in-blue eyes and Stilgar wondering if he’s the Lisan al Gaib.
** A Mafia Godfather discovers that his bookkeeper, Guido, has cheated him out of $10,000,000. His bookkeeper is deaf. That was the reason he got the job in the first place. It was assumed that Guido would hear nothing so he would never have to testify in court. When the Godfather confronts Guido about his missing $10 million, he takes along his lawyer, who knows sign language.
The Godfather tells the lawyer, “Ask him where the money is!”
Using sign language, the lawyer asks Guido, “Where’s the money?”
Guido signs back, “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
The lawyer tells the Godfather, “He says he doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”
The Godfather pulls out a pistol, puts it to Guido’s head, and says, “Ask him again, or I’ll kill him!”
The lawyer signs to Guido, “He’ll kill you if you don’t tell him.”
Guido trembles and signs, “OK! You win! The money is in a brown briefcase, buried behind my cousin Bruno’s shed.”
The Godfather asks the lawyer, “What did he say?”
The lawyer replies, “He says you don’t have the balls to pull the trigger, Pussy!”
** Mentally unfit to stand trial means mentally unfit to run the country.
** Valentine’s Day has passed, and there was a discussion of cigars here on VM a couple of days ago. DRJIM reminded me of Kipling’s classic poem “The Betrothed” – I offer it here as a belated Valentine for those who smoke cigars.
An Original Non-sequential Fictional Short
The Message
DeeChie lives in a controlled habitat on the shore of the Great Salt Sea. I’ve included the same photo (above) that he sent his potential future mate in the complex annual swarm that takes place with the arrival of the Solstice. DeeChie lacks the capacity to write Universal English, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t express concepts. Frankly, I don’t know how long he’ll last if he successfully mates with the new queen. I hope somebody beats him out so we can remain friends in our continuing historical discussions.
The ice shell on the third rocky planet with its large moon receded after a long presence, leaving the insects to rule and take their turn as the dominant species. The Age of Dinosaurs and the Age of Mammals passed with small relics or bones embedded in clay or metal structures crumpled and ground to shards by the merciless ice sheet to tell the mute tale of their passing. Some left for the stars but kept sentinels to inform them if the planet became habitable again. I, your author, am one of those.
DeeChie took his name from the place name the Mammals left behind when the ice took them. He and I were able to communicate after a century of trial and error. We share concepts without a common language as you would know it.
I am Kyle, pictured right. I will translate DeeChie’s message to you in a form you will understand.
___
These are my thoughts as shared with Kyle: My colleague, powered by a tiny plutonium generator, remains one of a handful of the humanic remnant who outlasted the ice in an installation on the Moon, in orbit. They landed near my hive, and we emerged to greet our biological cousins, only to find that they were not biological. They had no DNA strands to guide their imperative. They came as constructs driven by a common artificial machine intelligence. I, as a scientist in the cast of what mammalian records described as Hoverfly, was directed by my queen to examine and interrogate. I anticipate that you would describe me as a hoverfly, but roughly a thousand times larger than the pre-ice age species you were familiar with.
The End – Dee Chie successfully mated with the Queen.
Ukraine
To distract attention from the devastating admission that Biden is mentally unfit to be president, the pearl-clutching media accused President Trump, once again, of being Putin’s puppet, even as Biden and all of Washington have for two years run through any hoop Zelensky holds up.
The argument is that we must defend the democracy of a nation that banned opposition parties, shuttered churches, and suspended an election. Perhaps the CIA was too busy working on our 2024 election to bother rigging another Ukrainian election like it did in 2014 under Obama.
Its defenders say Ukraine is at war and cannot afford an election like the United States does. Yes, prosecuting the opposition and imprisoning his supporters takes a lot of time and money. Facial recognition is tedious work, which is why the FBI reserves it for political opponents of the regime instead of actual criminals who loot stores.
Though I am not personally opposed to arming Ukraine cleanly to drain the Russians, the way it’s working is anything but clean.
Identify the Vehicles
1
2
3
4
Considering the ubiquity of the dollar and the fact we keep inflating it, we’re kinda taxing the world for our benefit anyway. And without having to let their governments take a cut if they taxed directly.
All the vehicles are so clean today.
(1) Ripsaw armed UGV.
(2) JLTV
(3) International Maxxpro MRAP.
(4) Looks familiar, but cannot place it.
– Kle.
(4) Maybe a Leonidas, or the Austrian relative thereof?
– Kle.
I think that you’re onto something.
Identify the Vehicle:
1. Ripsaw M5
2. Oshkosh M-ATV
3. MaxxPro
4. Looks like version of Saurer 4K 4FA
Yes
Taxing us for Ukraine (and Hamas)- Brother sent yesterdays Bongino Rumble podcast. I had heard some bits of what Bongino runs through (maybe you heard the infuriating Trump-Stall interaction where she was trying to argue “there’s no evidence”…Trump calmly assured her there was.) Bongino has been on this from day one five years ago and goes through Taibbi/Shellengerber’s report (this was CIA) bolstered by his own research and data. This includes worldwide players.
Everything we suspected is true!.
https://rumble.com/v4dd2h9-this-will-blow-up-the-deep-states-war-on-trump-ep.-2187-08142024.html
Then yesterday, to cover it up with another distraction, by days end we got “The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!, on the heels of Hur’s damning report that Squinty-Eyed Joe is essentially brain dead (albeit a major player in the coup), and by progression Obama and his scumbag cohorts are really running the country from his house down the street from the White House. Right now The Uniparty et al is in full-court press desperation to make their Treason and Sedition and Criminal activity go away. Every DC-based player we watch or watched is a criminal in the largest ever political coup…and it ain’t over as they work to obfuscate the truth.
The Covid Bravo Sierra was another brick in that wall. So was the Mar-A-Lago raid, which the thinking among us in the cheap seats is it was an operation to “find the folder” that has been stated as “now missing”. I suspect Trump has it secreted away and will use it to open this up wide for all to see.
Bottom line is the Congressional scumbags (70%? 80%?), with McConnell now (always?) in bed with Schumer, are trying to shovel another 80 or 90 billion of our taxpayer money to Ukraine and Hamas (that right there should tell you something), on top of the tens of billions already sent, while avoiding giving anything for our borders while thousands/millions of unknowns stream into our country untouched.
Their wagon is starting to lose it wheels…I suspect they will instigate another societal meltdown as they must have another contingency plan in the wings at the ready. Yet one can only hope they crash and burn (in Hell). Today would be good.
Add this into the mix (another scumbag who needs to have the air let out of him):
“Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas personally rejected independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “urgent” for Secret Service protection,…”
Now why would that be? Doesn’t take a genius.
Squinty-eyed Joe was already essentially brain dead in the 1980s, all the coverage of his campaign back then is right on YouTube.
I expect he was born brain dead.
– Kle.
The Russian boogyman was our friend when Hillary was SecState and Barack had his open microphone fiasco. Then became the enemy when Trump ran for office because they couldn’t blaggard CHINA.
Weak minds swallowed the bullshit.
The scary part is how many weak minds there were and still are. Covid was a test, and The Criminals In Charge found out how many would follow (How many still have a garage full of TP?).
Not even Jesus had that level of instantaneous commitment, which is not a good commentary on the General Public, who, as you stated yesterday, remake God in their image.
Wait…so hoarding TP from Costco is now bad?
Not now, but back then…you know how these things get recycled, so maybe it will be cat food or something else more stupid than a$$ wipe (my tone today). I always found it funny the enviro-religious never got up in arms over all the masks lying around defiling Gaia…guess it was okay as it was saving the planet from us, the human locusts.
Exactly, was always the dullest knife in the drawer, which is why they picked him. That’s pretty damning for Harris, who, despite the Lefty shills (Tarlov…spit, spit) saying she’s smart and was tough on crime as one of the best DA’s evah, I don’t believe that for one second (but it was California, so that’s a factor on the Dufus Richter scale).
Harris is worried, and she knows it, and The Criminals In Charge may simply install Newsom, which is a joke (but not funny). Joe – who may not actually be him – is not there no matter what they do to pump him up with Special Sauce to hang in there for the next 9 months — gotta short circuit sooner or later, which will make America appear weak to our enemies (maybe that’s the end game play). Gotten more weird and criminal than anyone could have predicted.
I thought that somebody would have pulled the plug on the old pedophile six months into his term and predicted it here. It didn’t happen, which means that he fogged the mirror to the satisfaction of the Swamp. Sure, he went to sleep when meeting with foreign leaders, shit himself, and stumbled around aimlessly, but it worked for them. Harris Peter Principled herself at whore/outcall. The public office thing was Willie Brown’s joke, and handlers walked her around.
Imagine the complete lack of of shame and self respect a person must have to look back with no regret (assuming the might even have a scintilla of such) and say to themselves, “How did I get here?”, while fully knowing how. These people are not smart, but somehow end up running things. I say we should keep the “good” illegals and ship all the Bums In Charge to their pals south of the border…I’d spring for a C-note.
Shipping them south is not enough. SpaceX has space available…
If you want proof that there is no longer a free (unowned) press just look at the last week or so…
The special prosecutor says says (basically) “yes Biden broke many laws but we can’t charge him because he’s not there enough to stand trial”.
Then they say they are not going to test his mental abilities at his up coming physical exam because they don’t need to…
A free press would be talking about this AND the 25th Amendment… if the President can’t be tried because his mind is gone I’d say that’s reason enough to have him replaced.
But what we had is not what we have today….
If they 25th’d him and Harris became the first female sorta black president, Trump would be guaranteed #48.
MSM: Her mother was South Asian and her father is Black.
Other Sources: Her mother was a Tamil Indian (Sri Lanka), her father is Jamaican American, Donald J. Harris (wow, like Donald J. Trump, only Harris…ironic), is of Afro-Jamaican and Irish-Jamaican ancestry.
Used to be just Jamaican (that I ever heard), but now known as Jamaicans of predominant African descent. Same with Irish-Jamaican, the second largest ancestral component…like we care.
But she’s Black! The characterization language morphs to fit the propaganda.
Received my mail in presidential primary ballots. As an independent I can vote either for the outright thieves’ party or the genteel thieves’ party. The Dims offer eight candidates, seven I’ve never heard of. Also offered is a vote for “Noncommitted delegate”. The RINO ballot lists seven candidates and “Write in”.
Since my vote amounts to a spit in the ocean I’m tempted to write in RFK Jr. Isn’t he running as an Independent?
Got ours as well, with LL’s lead a few years back, went Unaffiliated as well. Both ballots, Dem side is all losers, R side is basically empty save for Trump and Haley…but this being Colorado was curious where 39 year old unmarried Griswold put his name…at the bottom as expected.
The “Noncommitted Delegate” is a sham-wow asinine way they could install anyone at anytime between now and whenever the month-long ballot harvesting/counting occurs. The long list of ballot box locations is infuriating…nah, nothing to see there (as the Dem’s always somehow curiously win the cheat…every time).
Oh, and no privacy envelope this year, and the Ballot envelope is…I kid you not…pink (easily id’d in the mail). I always deliver mine directly to the Clerk’s Office drop box.
Ah, wrong spot…in reply to WSF, who I forgot was Colorado as well.
My envelope is purple and no sleeve. I always use a drop box.
Curious.
I would conjecture that the registered Democrats envelopes are blue. They will do the same in the general election so the counters can better sort out the “correct” votes from the others and dispose of a large number of the pink or purple or whatever color is a non-Democrat vote to get the winner of Colorado.
Exactly. Trust no one in government (Bongino’s emphatic admonition yesterday, not that we didn’t already know).
Ours came in a white envelope with an orange box clearly stating “Official Ballot Enclosed”. Since we’re in FoCo, we hand-carry them to the County Courthouse during business hours.
Yeah, they just scream “STEAL ME!” if you’re of that mind.
Enjoyed the short, let’s see more on that theme.
Don’t count out the Chupacabra. She’s thinking, “If that senile pedo can run for president at 81 years old, then I can run too and I want what’s mine.” Could happen.