[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Getting nominated is slightly more difficult than falling off a log. Only time will tell if anything comes of this nomination. See Obama.
[Substack] "Have you had the COVID JABS?? ...As it turns out...if you have, they want to know if you’ve had one in the 12 months...and if you have...they don’t want your blood."
It would appear the Red Cross is no longer following the science:
#2
There is no deferral time for eligible blood donors who are vaccinated with a non-replicating inactivated or RNA-based COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by AstraZeneca, Janssen/J&J, Moderna, Novavax, or Pfizer.
#6
I applaud everyone who held out. At the time I subjected myself it looked like a vax card was going to be required to do pretty much anything outside your house. That was my calculus at the time.
Again, I feel very lucky, all considered.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/21/2024 9:09 Comments ||
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#9
i may be stupid but i dont take a shot that gives me a small dose of the thing it supposedly prevents. as a youth i got the smallpox and polio shots and in the military i got a whole bunch of i dont know what. i am 87 in fairly good health and was a sickly child.
#10
Sadly, I had to get it to keep my job at the time. So I got the first two original Moderna ones and have ignored everything since. Haven't noticed issues so far but we'll see.
#11
Mom was in hospice - and jab was required for visits. Got the JnJ as lesser of the evils. Many other family members held out against the jab, understandably. Blackmail pretty much.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
02/21/2024 10:30 Comments ||
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#12
It's a fact that without the heavy hand of the gummint, many, many fewer people would have gotten it.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/21/2024 10:32 Comments ||
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#13
Same identical story as Silentbrick's #10. Got the flu shot in October, but Kaiser isn't even pushing Covid shots any more
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2024 10:40 Comments ||
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#14
I think #12 is spot on.
We still don't know the long term effects of C19 or the vaccinations.
#16
^ But it has fizzled much faster than they had hoped. And they sorta shot their wad. Anything short of a bubonic plague level threat is not going to garner anywhere near the sheeplike compliance.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/21/2024 11:47 Comments ||
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#17
No JAB here. I was in to see my Doctor a few weeks ago and he told me he is not pushing it after I mentioned I'm not taking it. (kaiser)
#18
I am 99% sure I had COVID-19 in 12/2019 after exposure to multiple folks returning from China and other parts of Asia. I got the 2 Moderna vaccines as soon as possible after reading the now redacted Indian article on the presence of nucleic acid chains in Covid-19 similar to those in HIV messenger RNA. I trust the Chinese less than our government, and at that stage I will choose to believe that our efforts might have been imperfect but at least well-meaning. It eventually was required in one of my lines of work, but I have had no adverse reactions. Interestingly that DOD associated "hobby" did not push the subsequent vaccinations. I have also been taking 5000 IUs of vitamin D3 since 2007, which may modulate immune responses.
#21
My son and I are donating tonight. I refused vaccination because my blood is sometimes used for premmies. I was told that vaxed blood would be good for premmies. I didn’t trust them.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/21/2024 15:32 Comments ||
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[ZMan] The Hemingway line about bankruptcy happening gradually then suddenly is a great line because it applies to many things. The suddenly part is what everyone can see and what everyone remembers. It is the gradually part that is overlooked. It is the important part of the dynamic because it explains why the event occurred. Landslides are not random events but the accumulation of many small, unobserved events that eventually reach a tipping point and we get the big event.
That is something to keep in mind as the military struggles to both meet its recruitment numbers and maintain the human capital needed for its operations. Fifty years ago, after the Vietnam war, the military put an emphasis on quality over quantity in both its arms and the men using those arms. The lesson of the Vietnam and post-Vietnam era, the so-called Stripes period, was that the modern military needed to be smarter, relying on intelligence rather than just brute force.
There is a lot more to the renaissance of the American military that began fifty years ago, but the salient factor today is the emphasis on intelligence. The reason for that is the military is suffering from a brain-drain. The overall intelligence of the military is in decline and it is most acute among the officer class. According to that linked report from National Defense Press, "Two-thirds of the new officers commissioned in 2014 would be in the bottom one-third of the class of 1980."
As one would expect in this age of censorship, certain factors are left out of the discussion, but they hover over it like a fog. In fact, this reality hangs over everything in American society, despite the rules against acknowledging it. The highly complex machine that is the modern high tech American society is in a race. Will the robots reach the point where they can run things for us before the general intelligence of the population declines below a sustainable threshold?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/21/2024 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[35 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I would caution against confusing a "problem" with a plan.
#2
Maybe its [well past] time to reconsider being the 'world's policeman'. As we've posted, why are we defending someone else's border way over there on the globe and [other than Texas] absolutely unwilling to defend our own right here. You have one job and you are failing it.
#3
The Trump administration's policy makes sense to me: demand that allied countries take primary responsibility for defense in their region and then the US will back them up.
#13
^ They have been told since pre-K there will be no math...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/21/2024 16:29 Comments ||
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#14
Too difficult? Ok, we'll ghettoize it.
If your Glock magazine contains 17 rounds. You fire 5/17th's of the ammo in your mag. You remove the magazine and give a half dozen rounds to a brother. How many rounds remain until you must reload ?
#15
B, when I studied for my first MS certification, the instructor explained how to read the questions. He said there would be irrelevant details intended to mask what was really being asked. I bring that up because in your first example, I couldn't understand what the size of the bottle (half-filled means 16 oz bottle) had to do with the fact that there would be 6.4 oz left after reducing by 20%.
If I got it wrong, I missed what the question actually asked because I couldn't grasp what the 16 oz bottle had to do with it.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/21/2024 16:59 Comments ||
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#16
Relevant? Yes, 16 oz is total bottle capacity. Total capacity after fluid reduction is the question.
.20 x 8 oz = 1.6 oz
8 - 1.6 = 6.4
16 - 6.4 = 9.6 oz
9.6 = remaining total capacity
#21
The question didn't ask how many additional ounces, it just asked how many ounces a bottle half full at 8 ounces, it will hold 16 ounces when full. Evaporation is immaterial. In psych there is an old term called functional fixedness, which blinds reasoning to non-traditional pathways.
The classic is the question about how to make a box. In the premise, the reader is told he is presented with a 4x4 ft sheet of plywood, two saws, a hammer, a 90 steel degree measure, a wedge, a can of red paint a box of 10p nails and a tape measure. The challenge is to produce, in any form, in any style, a simple box, in 1 hour.
The actual solution is merely to dump out the nails and voila, challenge completed. But the box of nails is rarely seen as a "box" rather it is nails and the challenge shadows thinking into formatting the components into something.
#22
Yes, I felt the question was ambiguous. Frank supplied the missing piece.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/21/2024 19:38 Comments ||
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#23
Had a math teacher who, at the end of the week, would put up a problem which was sometimes mathematical and sometimes a riddle. Great teacher.
Eldest got a fantastic history lesson the other day. Put nine hours into a project, quotes, citations, bibliography, the works. Gets to class and teacher says don't turn it in, everyone gets an 85%. Called a Buffer Student to ease classroom disruptions, knows for a fact nobody around even cracked a book. Talk about pissed. off.
"Why even do the work?! What is the motivation?"
"So...what you really got was a history lesson on Communism?"
#24
*unfortunately, that was not the history lesson exercise.
"Pretty sure I would have pulled a strong A."
"Your points have been redistributed to those who didn't work, Komrade. What do you think of Equity?"
"fuuuuuk."
Truss gets it.
[FoxNews] We are in for a serious struggle to free ourselves from the shackles of the global left, Liz Truss says.
Across the free world, those of us who define ourselves politically as conservatives share common values.
These include: a love of liberty; a belief in the importance of the family as a building block for society; pride in our nation; distrust of unnecessary state intervention in our lives; and an expectation that our police and armed forces will protect us from harm and defend our borders.
As I head to Washington, D.C., this week to address the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), I am concerned that these values are being undermined in the United States of America – thanks to left-wing ideas propagated across American cities and in the Biden White House.
The rest can be seen if your browser has a Reader view — but the video is not behind the subscription paywall and available to all. A sneak preview of her CPAC speech.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/21/2024 15:28 Comments ||
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#4
Re the inline, she just reinforces my perception that CPAC is a grift and has little to do with the rejuvenation of the conservative movement.
Trump is doing all the rejuvenating.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/21/2024 16:26 Comments ||
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#5
Our garden was kind of a dump
Until put back in order by Trump...
Well, it hasn't been, yet,
But he's got his feet wet...
And he's better than Benjamin Crump.
[Fisted by Foucault] Vladimir Putler has gone and done it now!
Most of you haven’t heard the news yet, but Russia’s most popular political figure, Alexei Navalny, was murdered this past weekend by the brutal dictator temporarily residing in the Kremlin. Well-placed sources say that this hit was ordered by the weak (and little) man known as "Vladimir Putin" because Navalny’s crack team of anti-corruption activists had found child porn on his laptop, and were about to publish this bombshell in media across the globe.
Posted by: KBK ||
02/21/2024 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[32 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life,
#2
Never any mention of all the Chinese dissidents who disappear, or even former members of the CCP suddenly going missing. And then there was that Khashoggi fellow who was supposedly murdered by Saudi operatives. Any sanctions then against the Saudis? No? How many people get whacked every day in other countries all over the world and Joe Biden sleeps right through it?
Don't get me wrong. I've always been aware that Putin is a ruthless dictator. But right now I'm a little more concerned about the dictator in the White House and the political persecution of the man who would be in the White House if our last election wasn't rigged.
So we have double standards, hypocrisy and an ugly American trying to be the world's policeman. And what has being the world's policemancrooked cop ever since WWII gotten us? We certainly don't get paid for it. People hate us for it. They take our money and kick us in the shins.
We should leave them to their own devices and mind our own business.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/21/2024 12:40 Comments ||
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Dmitry Taratorin
[REGNUM] Ukrainian historical politics is characterized not only by the abolition of those characters that its organizers and propagandists do not like, but also by the completely shameless privatization of those who are recognized as suitable for their own national building.
You can especially explore the expanses of the history of the so-called Ancient or Kievan Rus. And here it’s high time to dot the e’s or dot the i’s, depending on national self-determination.
Probably, most people even without special education vaguely realize that a state with such names has never existed. But in reality there was Rus', or Russian land.
All historians know very well that it is under these names that the state of our distant ancestors appears in the chronicles. And “Kievan” and “Ancient” Rus' are all products of the creativity of the historians themselves. Absolutely conditional designations. Note, extremely unsuccessful. “Ancient” is simply ridiculous, since it refers to a state that existed during the Middle Ages.
But if for the time being it was possible to put up with these conventions, now it’s no longer possible. Because a false picture of the past forms an inadequate vision of the present. And besides, from the concept of “Kiev” there is one step to “Ukrainian”. And such steps are recorded even on monuments.
For example, in Hungary, with the assistance of the Ukrainian Embassy, a monument was erected to the royal couple - Andras I and the “Ukrainian princess” Anastasia Yaroslavna. And in France, Yushchenko himself unveiled a monument to her famous sister Anna, where she is listed as “Hanna of Kiev.”
And if the second, although she was not Hanna, can probably be considered Kyiv based on her place of birth, then Anastasia cannot in any way be a “Ukrainian princess”. Simply because, as was said above, the state from which she arrived in Hungary was called Russia.
The most interesting thing is that Anastasia, apparently, was personally present in the Church of Hagia Sophia when Metropolitan Hilarion read out his famous (revered as the most important monument of that era) sermon “The Sermon on Law and Grace” to Prince Yaroslav the Wise and his relatives. And in it there are these wonderful words dedicated to Vladimir the Baptist, Yaroslav’s father: “It is not in the worst and unknown of the land that you rule, but in Russia, which is known and heard, there are all four ends of the earth.”
So, the Russian Land is “known and heard to all four ends of the earth,” and the princess who came from it is “Ukrainian”? Amazing logic!
We will not go into detail here about the ethnic origin of the heroine, but her blood is approximately three-quarters Scandinavian.
The above-described “Ukrainianness” of the princess is an absurdity carved in stone, and those written “with a pen, but you can’t cut it down with an ax,” of course, are countless. For example, there is a well-known formula that circulates on the Internet: “Kiev Prince Yuri Dolgoruky founded Moscow.” From it, depending on the degree of thoughtfulness of the people presenting it, conclusions of varying lengths are drawn.
Let's take a very short look at this completely absurd formula. Firstly, in 1147, when Moscow was first mentioned in the chronicle, Yuri did not own the Kyiv throne, he was the Prince of Rostov-Suzdal. And secondly, he was also born not in Kyiv, but in Pereyaslavl, where his father Vladimir Monomakh then reigned.
Kyiv at that time retained the status of the “capital city” of Rus'. But the status is already deeply symbolic. Having taken possession of this center, the prince could amuse his vanity, but this did not give him any real supreme power. He could, of course, try, as a formal “senior”, to become an arbiter in the feuds of numerous relatives. But this usually did not bode well.
And the city passed from hand to hand within the Rurik family according to the “right of the ladder,” that is, not to the eldest son of the deceased prince, but to the eldest in the family, that is, to the brother of the deceased, for example. In short, the system was very difficult and provoked constant strife.
And Yuri, as an ambitious person, always strived to gain high status in a fierce struggle with other contenders. He succeeded three times. He first captured Kyiv in 1149, but the very next year he was expelled from there by his nephew Izyaslav Mstislavich.
A year later he takes it again - and very soon he loses it again. And finally, in 1155 it captures for the third and last time. And two years later he dies, according to one version, poisoned by the local elite, who never accepted him.
That is, “Kiev Prince Yuri founded Moscow” - is this statement even in the slightest degree adequate?
It should be noted that Yuri’s son Andrei Bogolyubsky, remembering the fruitless efforts of his father, apparently decided to firmly and unequivocally put an end to the strife for the symbolic center.
He was already thinking completely differently. In the northeast, in the Rostov-Suzdal land inherited from his father, he begins to build a state of a new, strictly centralized type. Founds the city of Vladimir, turning it into his capital. And even to the new sacred center. After all, while his father was still alive, he secretly took away from Kyiv a great shrine - an icon, which we now know as the Mother of God of Vladimir.
And he sent an impressive army to the old center - Kyiv, which he did not even lead personally (in order to emphasize that he was not interested in the throne), but put his son Mstislav at the head. He is joined by the forces of more than a dozen princes. The city was taken by storm in 1169 and subjected to destruction, which none of the Rurikovichs had allowed themselves to do before.
This was a completely demonstrative gesture, emphasizing that for the most powerful prince of the Earth at that time, the Russian capital was his own project - Vladimir. And from there, from the “Zalessky” land, he is going to dictate his will to the other princes.
The importance of Kyiv as a political center after the campaign of Andreeva’s army begins to steadily decline. And after Batu took it 70 years later, it completely fell into disrepair. It is characteristic that the city again reached its pre-Mongol population only in the 19th century, being part of the Russian Empire.
And all of the above are bare facts. Without judgment. Only historical dreamers who try to rather clumsily wield names taken out of context like a flail deserve assessment, and the most impartial one at that. However, this is an insidious weapon: if handled carelessly, it can even fly into the forehead.
[ZERO] A record 7.3 million illegal aliens have crossed the southwest border under President Biden's watch, a number which according to Fox News.is greater than the population of 36 individual states.
That figure is sourced from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which has already reported 961,537 Southwest land border encounters in the current fiscal year, which runs from October through September, and if the current pace of illegal immigration does not slow down, fiscal year 2024 will break last year's record of 2,475,669 southwest border encounters — a number that by itself exceeds the population of New Mexico.
The total number of southwest land border encounters since Biden assumed office in 2021 is 7,298,486, CBP data shows.
#8
Make all employers, regardless of size, re-run all employees through e-verify.
We all know that's what should happen but I think we all know just as well that it won't.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/21/2024 12:44 Comments ||
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#9
^ The fact that an obvious, in place system to deal with this is being bypassed puts the lie to the "nothing can be done" argument. Same as all the calls for more gun laws while nobody (of a particular background) is ever arrested for illegal gun possession.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/21/2024 12:49 Comments ||
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#13
/\ An Irishman walks into the Dragon. He orders three pints. He takes them to a table and takes a drink from each one, alternating cups until all of them are empty.
He comes back the next week and does the same. Three pints and takes a drink from each until they are all gone.
The third time he comes in the barman, curious, asks why he drinks like that.
"Oh it's for my brother's. We live all over the world and don't get to see each other very often. Doing this feels like we are all together once a week."
"That's lovely." Says the barman and wishes him well.
This continues for several years and the Irishman becomes something of a celebrity as the story circulates among the other regulars.
Until one night, the man comes in and orders two pints. A hush falls over the bar as they watch him take his drinks and continue alternating like always but with a pint missing.
The barman, who first asked him about the tradition feels compelled to go over.
"I'm so sorry for your loss," he says pointing at the pints.
Confused the Irishman looks at him before laughing and saying, "No, we're all fine. I just gave up drinking."
#14
EVerify will do much of the work as well as rescinding the Covid boondoggle that is funding illegal immigrant welfare. The wall is needed to block fentanyl. The deportation army idea is just a scary monster to hasten the self deportation process.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/21/2024 15:26 Comments ||
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#2
"We threw everything we could to wreck your election, we're trying to screw you right this second and will continue to do so, but help us out now..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/21/2024 14:39 Comments ||
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#3
Biden’s crew is Obama’s crew. They hate Israel and would like to destroy it, but they talk nice to mollify Jewish voters. The nice talk irritates the Moslems and communists. He is seeking a policy that splits the baby. Netanyahu knows exactly where he stands with the Obama crowd and has calculated a path accordingly.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/21/2024 15:21 Comments ||
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#4
^I don't think this is exact. We're back to multipolar world - which turns Israel from an embarassment of Obama's era to strategic asset. Plus, Saudis may be pro-palestinian as all hell publicaly, but pravitely happy somebody smashes Iran's proxy.
#5
All the actors other than Joe have many motivations. Biden’s single political motivation is to do what Barrack tells him to do. Everything else is just family grift, the taste of ice cream and the pleasant odor of baby shampoo.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/21/2024 17:36 Comments ||
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[FoxNews] Space plane, missile early warning system and GPS all threatened by Putin's nuke strategy in space.
You heard Russian President Vladimir Putin is working on a nasty, new nuclear anti-satellite weapon. Leaders in Congress were briefed last week in a highly secret session, but it left me wondering: exactly what is Putin targeting?
Putin could make a real mess if he detonates a nuclear weapon on orbit.
I doubt Putin wants to take out all the 8,377 worldwide satellites in orbit, especially since some are Russian. More likely, he wants to threaten specific American systems. Here are three top possibilities, and they’re all pretty scary.
First is the missile warning Space-Based Infrared System or SBIRS. The big satellites essentially perch 22,000 miles up and peer at the earth to detect the heat flare from missile launches. Infrared detection is crucial to missile warning and defense – over Kyiv or South Korea or the USA. It’s a 24/7 mission and there are only a handful of the big SBIRS satellites. Lockheed Martin delivered the sixth and last one in 2022. If Putin blinded SBIRS, goodbye missile warning.
Then, of course, there is the Global Positioning System that keeps your daily life and America’s economy humming. Over 30 GPS satellites triangulate a radio signal to give you your location (latitude, longitude and altitude) anywhere, anytime. GPS also emits a precision timing signal.
Every day you are surrounded by this magic, invisible mesh of data transport run via space. GPS data is used by cellphone towers, electric grids, ATMs, airplanes, the New York Stock Exchange, credit card transactions and, of course, your smartphone. No GPS means no maps or apps. And no precision all-weather bombing by the Air Force and Navy, either.
The GPS constellation lives 12,000 miles up in medium earth orbit and runs on solar panels. Former NASA administrator Michael Griffin warned as far back as 2017 that GPS was vulnerable. Most worry about jamming of the GPS signal, but a nuke on orbit could fry the solar panels. Both Russia and China have their own separate GPS-like navigation constellations, so maybe Putin wouldn’t care. His oligarch buddies could still make phone calls. Not outside Russia, though.
What if Putin isn’t after a satellite, but a space plane? There’s a chance Putin wants to shake his fist at America’s X-37 unmanned spaceplane. For sure, Russia has nothing like it. The X-37 is a secretive, orbital test vehicle about the size of UPS brown van. No one will say exactly what it does, but for sure, Russia has nothing like it. The X-37B stayed up in orbit for 908 days on its last mission.
Another X-37 mission just launched Dec. 28 on the SpaceX Falcon Heavy – that’s an Elon Musk rocket. Aloft, it will be "experimenting with space domain awareness technologies and investigating the radiation effects to NASA materials," the Space Force said in December.
Space domain awareness is code for figuring out what everybody else is up to on orbit.
Putin’s fishy space nuke may have two other goals. First, rattle the U.S. After all, American prowess in the space domain helps give Ukraine the information edge against Russia.
Second, Putin wants to impress China. Every day, Russia becomes more and more the junior partner in the horrid, no-limits friendship with China.
ortunately, the United States Space Force has been tracking Putin’s nonsense for quite some time now. The Pentagon is racing to build and launch a completely new architecture of smaller, networked satellites. In a few years, they will take over the key military functions which older, bigger satellites perform today, and the whole American space architecture will be much less vulnerable.
#1
...Our intel couldn't see the disaster in Afghanistan with thousands of bodies on the ground, but we know for a fact that somewhere in the darkened and mostly inaccessible enigma that is Soviet Russian weapons tech, they're building freaking Goldeneye.
#2
I wonder if Putin's threat will be aimed at the satellites that steer drones into his Black Sea ships.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/21/2024 8:01 Comments ||
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#3
The entire human race is in for bad times if an antisat nuke is used at the altitude most intermediate orbit sats operate. There'd be so much debris that simply deploying more sats wouldn't cut it.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/21/2024 8:05 Comments ||
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#4
The Russians have long been of the "if we can't have it, neither can you" school of thought.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
02/21/2024 10:09 Comments ||
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#5
Oh no Fox! Not Dah Koolest Tech! Za Roooshins kabloowy all the com and weather sats I can't play Escape from Epstein Island!?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[NY Post]
