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  • The Swagger #16 — Sunday Wildcard Edition

The Swagger #16 — Sunday Wildcard Edition

Looking On The Bright Side

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Greetings from sunny, hot, and humid Pattaya, where I need to renew my commitment to getting my ass to the gym in the early morning, before... (so hot, so humid). I get caught up in something. Just one more thing. Just this, then I'll go. And before I know it, it's high noon and I'm working out in the peak heat of the day.

I love that it sucks so much, though.

And that's the subject of this last post at FreeTheAnimal, if you didn't catch it, and you're curious about looking at body conditioning from a whole new perspective. Ask yourself why so much stuff these days is marketed for easy easy easy. Haven't we seen the results of that all over society and culture? The constant, endless pursuit of the easy, effortless, and quick?

Ever think about really earning your rewards for a change, seeking to do so the hard way? In a way you can truly be proud of?

"Hard won" should truly mean something special.

Give it a thought.

What’s the secret to staying ahead of the curve in the world of AI? Information. Luckily, you can join early adopters reading The Rundown– the free newsletter that makes you smarter on AI with just a 5-minute read per day.

... None of us is any stranger to bad news. That's where the money is, of course, but over some years now, it tuly has been bad, with little in the way of good stuff to at least think about hanging a hat on, some day.

Let's take a random review.

The Japanese Aren't Having It

For this and other things like it, I have no interest in finding out the details of their beef, wondering how effective it will be, making any predictions, or any such thing.

Lots of people, lots of video in the comments to that one xweet.

All I really care about, wherever and however it crops up worldwide, is that people are waking up to the global horror that was Covidiocy and everything associated with it, when the whole world went batshit crazy overnight, losing all personal agency while cheering for more, and that list goes on.

Other than that, that the world demands Nuremberg II.

For healing.

Capital punishment must be on the table.

There are hundreds of thousands who should be prosecuted.

OJ Dies; What Everyone Knew All Along Finally Comes Out

I watched very little of the whole spectacle as it was going on, what, like 30 years ago?

Why?

Because this was totally obvious to me.

Why I'm including it on a supposed list of bright spots is 1) it demonstrates that eventually, something resembling the truth in matters eventually gets out there, and 2) it ought to make us skeptical of official stories at all times far and wide, including those that come out of courts of law or anywhere else where there's anything much at stake.

Regrets Will Be Piling Up For Years

One of millions of folks reduced to the realization that their wherewithal as humans is laid bare, as, not much more than common deer in headlights.

Accordingly, I will not be counted amongst those who let people off the hook.

Not on this one. I judge others by the same standards I abide for myself, and I can say unequivocally that not only are the 100 posts I wrote during the covidiocy beginning in March 2020 still on the money, but it was never even a question for a microsecond whether I'd line up with all the other sheep and get that silly shot.

Steve here gets to the crux of the fundamental reason, overshadowing all others: "didn't need it." And that's even if it had been "safe and effective."

At best, it was just a superfluous money grab, at worst, a death or maiming sentence for millions.

While I wish him well and normal dispensations, one human to another, apply, he and millions of others were fucking stupid on this and ought to have known better. It exposes a deep and serious flaw in their makeup and agency as people.

What I will wish them all it that this lesson is well learned and applied very widely and generally, especially with anything emanating out of the Big State-Big Corp fascist partnership.

Trump Fundraiser Secures Historic $50.5 Million

I'm not highlighting this as a positive sign because Trump, per se.

Co-chairs of the event include Robert Bigelow, head of Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace; Howard Lutnick, chairman and CEO of financial services company Cantor Fitzgerald LP; Robert Mercer, former co-leader of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies; Phil Ruffin, owner of Las Vegas’s Treasure Island and Circus Circus hotel-casinos; and Wynn Resorts Ltd. founder Steve Wynn, who served as the RNC’s finance chair from 2017 to 2018.

My hopeiest of hopes here is that given the big business names unafraid to be seen, the Woke's grip on the corporate-head, no-integrity pussies running big companies in American and around the globe is drawing to some measure of diminishment or close.

There's nothing I hate more that heads of companies being water boys for the current narrative and the current thing. All the greenie and LGBTIDGAF crap are the starkest examples I can think of, right now.

Mensch Musk

This is great.

On the Lord’s Day yesterday, apparently not observing the Sabbath, Brazil’s enraged Supreme Court declared Elon Musk of being a “criminal instrumentality” and obstructing justice by refusing to hand over identities behind certain social media profiles. They have opened a criminal investigation of the billionaire.

Whatever. LOL.

You Can't Fool Mother Nature

The New York Times ran a reluctant story yesterday headlined, “Vatican Document Casts Gender Change and Fluidity as Threat to Human Dignity.” The sub-headline fretted, “The statement is likely to be embraced by conservatives and stir consternation among L.G.B.T.Q. advocates who fear it will be used as a cudgel against transgender people.” [...]

The new document, issued by the Vatican yesterday and titled Dignitas Infinita (Infinite Dignity), explained a person’s birth sex is an “irrevocable gift” from God and “any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.” People who want “personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes,” risk succumbing “to the age-old temptation to make oneself God.”

Amen.

Positive News: Russia Tightening The Noose

I made little pretense over the last couple of years that not only did I fully understand Russia'a role in the conflict, but generally supported it. At the same time, I judged America, Western Europe, and NATO's roles as utterly evil.

Yes, the US is the evil player in this whole affair and has been since the fall of the Soviets in 1993. The moral course of action was to help Russia and former satellite states join the world of free trade. But America needs a perpetual enemy. Both presidents Johnson and Kennedy saw this and warned against it, to no avail. I'm going to quote this whole section from Coffee & Covid:

But Biden’s foreign policy, if you can call a foreign policy resembling a drunken bar fight a “policy,” is faring even worse than his domestic policy. Specifically, the broad outlines of Russia’s punchback strategy are beginning to emerge so clearly and so obviously they can now be seen from the International Space Station, nevermind by a lawyer like me, who never attended military college or took political science at Harvard.

Bloomberg ran a breaking story this morning with the understated headline, “Russia Targets Ukraine Power System With Ballistic Missiles.” It appears the Russians are in fact preparing for something big, a major offensive action, something bigger perhaps than we’ve ever seen before in the Proxy War. That’s what this looks like. Whatever it is, however big for Ukraine, it’s the tiniest part of Russia’s strategy, a tiny wooden doll in the middle of all the other dolls.

Bloomberg reported that last night Russia used over 40 of its top-end hypersonic missiles against at least five of Ukraine’s biggest cities, including its capitol Kiev, plus top cities Kharkov, Odessa, Zaporizhzhia, and even Lviv, which is far from the front lines in Western Ukraine. Russia’s attacks were carefully-planned, and despite reports that Ukraine’s biggest power plants have now been irreparably damaged, no deaths have been reported so far this morning.

For comparison, it was like someone permanently disabling the power in New York, DC, Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeles in one night.

There was a short period back at the beginning of the war when I was skeptical the Russians were serious, since they didn’t wipe out Ukraine’s power infrastructure — something that was obviously within Russia’s power. It seemed to me that if Russia really wanted to win, it would first switch off the lights.

Well. That predictable strategy now seems finally to be the strategy the Russians are employing. But that’s not even close to all. The strategy that is emerging is breathtaking and hideous. Let’s dig in.

First, in an otherwise poorly-covered story, on Monday Bloomberg published this headline:

It was a big deal. Putin signed an executive order nationalizing a US-based conglomeration that had bought up 650,000 acres of Russian farmland. Russia just took it all, placing all that acreage under the “temporary management” of Rosimushchestvo, Russia’s federal property management agency.

Setting aside the obvious wisdom of reclaiming Russia’s strategically-critical farmland from their murky, opaque U.S. corporate owners, it was an entirely predictable response, one that Russia waited two long years to trigger. As you may recall, the U.S. sanctions war against Russia began with America seizing the personal property of “Russian oligarchs,” like their yachts and houses.

Biden stupidly bragged the seizures would lead to regime change, since the Russian billionaires would thow out Putin to placate America and get all their stuff back.

Not only did that not happen, but on Monday Putin began doing it back to us. Corporate media, which celebrated the seizures of Russia assets at the sanction war’s beginning, pretty much had nothing to say about the much bigger and more meaningful nationalization of 650,000 acres of U.S.-owned property in Russia. But it was a totally predictable tit-for-tat response.

What did Biden think would happen?

In other words, after two patient years, Russia has just begun to fight back economically. And Putin is fighting against DEI-promoted morons.

The military part of Russia’s emerging strategy is its — again, predictable — strengthening of America’s enemies. Also on Monday, in the Eurasian Times, we learned Russia has given nuclear North Korea access to hypersonic technology:

Remember: the U.S. currently lacks any effective answer to hypersonic missile technology. The missiles are so fast they defeat our air defenses. The hypersonics can easily take out an aircraft carrier. They could also be used effectively in a first strike. Now North Korea has them, since North Korea has been supplying Russia with artillary shells.

Thanks, Joe Biden!

Also Monday, the Chatham House published a story about Russia which for the first time used its Security Council veto to stop sanctions against North Korea:

Our ally South Korea is freaking out, creating a whole new major strategic demand on U.S. military resources, spreading our efforts and forces even more thinly.

Last month, media quietly informed us that somehow, the pesky Houthis — who Biden have given up trying to beat and is now trying to bribe — have also acquired indefensible hypersonic technology. Somehow.

Five months ago in November, Iran — which has been supplying Russia with drones for Ukraine — announced it had also acquired hypersonic missile technology:

Hypersonic missiles could defeat Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system. Like South Korea, our ally Israel is also freaking out, requiring — as we’ve seen — massive amounts of U.S. military resources staged in the Middle East. Where’d Iran get that hypersonic technology? Russia, obviously.

Yesterday — yesterday! — the Biden Administration seemed to finally awaken to the awful possiblity that, instead of being isolated by sanctions, Russia had created a massive military alliance instead, composed of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea:

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that China has just sent its highest-ranking diplomat to North Korea since before the pandemic:

So that’s what we know. Now I will speculate some. What I think is happening is that Russia has been carefully preparing a global anti-NATO strategy for two years now, and it is now begining to pull the trigger. The tragedy is that the Russian strategy was completely obvious and utterly predictable, unless your pugnacious president has dementia and always wants to challenge everyone to pathetic push-up contests.

Russia began this war with one obvious advantage. It had developed a game-changing military technology, hypersonic missiles, which surpassed U.S. military technology — even though America’s woke generals pridefully believed they owned the category of high-tech weaponry. But in the face of existential threats from Biden’s reckless administration and escalatory rhetoric, Russia responded by arming all the U.S.’s biggest enemies, trading its high-tech missile system for other, more mundane war material that it needed in Ukraine.

Biden, Blinken, Nuland, Sullivan — without even an hour of real military experience between them — were drunk on their own self-esteem but were too stupid to envision this perfectly predictable eventuality.

We used to talk about America’s woke, diminished military needing the ability to fight wars on two fronts or three fronts. Well, how about four fronts? Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and South Korea — each an ally the U.S. has committed to defending. How about that? Are we prepared for four fronts?

I think we will soon find out, at least if Biden and his team of incompetent neocons are stupid enough to continue pushing the Russians. Give them Ukraine before you get us all killed, morons.

Meanwhile, back in Ukraine, as described in yesterday’s UK Times headline, they are running out of irreplaceable Ukrainians:

They are going to make an army of Amazonian female fighters! That’s the plan! I bet Russia is terrified.

According to democrats, if only the Republicans would get out of the way and approve that $61 billion, it would solve everything. It would solve everything, if by “everything” they mean “nothing at all.” The Russians have outfoxed us. We can’t possibly fight a four-front war, never mind a kinetic war against a China-Russia-North Korean nuclear axis.

Now what, Joe?

Don’t take this as defeatist. We can come out of this fine. The proper path through this treacherous quagmire is the path of humility and standing down. Get NATO and the CIA out of Ukraine. Quit poking the Russian bear.

Bill Maher Ball Park

Knocks it out of, though I don't get his irrational hatred of Trump.

… And that’ll do it for today. The even better news is that the foregoing is only a small sample of the pendulum swing-back to more rational times.

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