Sailing Conspiratorial Seas

272 thoughts on “Sailing Conspiratorial Seas”

1. All for involvement being sending more missiles to Ukraine via various means, and for going back to being an Oil/Gas Exporting nation driving down prices so to hurt both Putin, and Opec. I’d love for Russia’s economy to crash further, but right now most of its assistance is our economy being trash as well (made the mistake of looking deep at my 401k this morning…FJB!).

   1. I suspect you ain’t seen nothin yet.

2. Holy Mole, Sarah, I’m ready to go all Braveheart and charge into, well, somewhere after that one. Whew!

   You nailed it.

   Yours truly, from a long-time reader and a first-time replyer.

   PS – I love the late-night Hoyt edition of Instapundit too. A little habenero-like heat to spice up late night.

3. Well, life is indeed profoundly weird. Switzerland, SWITZERLAND! has frozen Russian accounts. Germany claims to be funding its military. I don’t think the expected pivot to glow bull warming was working out, but I don’t see how the Ukrainian war helps that with all the countries (except us) trying to reset energy policy to sanity (nuclear and natural gas), not praying vainly to the gods of sun and wind.

   As your mom said, “When the alms are too big, the beggar gets suspicious.” But even if there is a conspiracy, I don’t think knowing it gives me any advantage at frustrating it. I think the best course is personal resistance to liberty encroachment. I try to do my part, first with my inside my company public resistance to the absurd vaccine mandate, and now with my attempt to call attention to the Fidel Tru-doh banking disaster. May God have mercy on all our souls.

   1. The Switzerland thing is Swiss banks, which probably means “I’m the young guy who’s now old enough to be in charge of the bank, and I spent a lot of time at Davos and World Economic Forum and drank the Kool-Aid… but also they have incriminating pictures of me, and my drugdealer turned out to be working for Them.”

      Because honestly, unmarked accounts were the Swiss banks’ bread and butter for a long time. They’ve been floating the idea of bending to international bank rules, but not seriously. So it’s weird that they are doing this suddenly and together, and by weird I mean “obviously the blackmail is extensive.”

      1. Putin is putting a squeeze play on the banks, for the purpose of shutting the Russian oligarchs (his rivals) out of cash. He plans to force a fire sale. https://rau-tng.blogspot.com/2022/03/fighting-visceral-response.html

4. That social media is still trying to lock down ‘harmful misinformation’ that can cause ‘societal harm’, ‘violent extremism’ or ‘public health harm’ means that there is intent to take advantage of that censorship, later.

   1. Tyrants always love new ways to control a population. Censorship has ever been popular with such men. And always will be.

   2. “Russian propaganda” now.

5. The fact that the United States returned to being a net energy exporter was a world historic event. The fact that we are no longer a net energy exporter is all that is necessary to expose the rot at the center of the regime.

   The regime is insane. These are people who will speak with a straight face about blocking the sun to appease their goddess. The problem is they’ve been getting away with it. Before two years ago the fact that people would seriously mask their children was absurd, now it’s the status quo.

   1. While it’s the status quo, more people are realizing it’s insane. And where I am no one masks their kids.

      1. Alas, they still mask them here. Jacques Ellul, a leftist but not a communist, in his Propaganda talks of how the intellectual is particularly susceptible to propaganda. So it has been with the WuFlu. Masks are definitely a class marker and my family are marked out as class traitors.

         Now they’re all flying Ukrainian flags. Not one in fifty of them could have found Ukraine on a map before last week and not more than one in ten could do it now. Still, it’s good to know that hate has no place here and that someone’s name will be said, whose they don’t say but it must be someone. Ah, the very discrete charms of the bourgeoisie.

         1. Intellectuals? LOL! Sheep that think they’re made of silk when they’ve been fleeced.

            A long-ago girlfriend whose friends apparently fancied themselves intellectuals once told me, with a tone of faint surprise, “You’re not intellectual, but you’re really smart.”

            It’s possible that she meant it as a veiled insult (she was not a nice person), but at the time I took it as a compliment. The 18 years I worked in academia verified that it was very much a compliment.

      2. It’s mixed in Flyover Falls. The Fred Meyer (Kroger) tends to have the highest percentage of masked people, and some of the mommies will mask their kids. Fewer than when OMGicron got whipped up. The big independent has some people masked; staff is supposed to, but I saw a worker bee smiling. Yay!

         Despicable Kate Brown is magnanimously ending the mask mandate 3/12. (All praise to Cthulu-ette!) OTOH, health care settings (including the pharmacy department of box stores) still have the requirement, and will do so until bureaucrat, bureaucrat a la lanterne or hell freezes over, or it’s hurting the radical left wing of the Fusion party.

         Great-nephew turned 1 not too long ago. Niece elected to be a stay-at-home Mom, so he’s pretty much used to real faces. He hates masked faces, emphatically and loudly, I’m told. It’s too far to visit, but we’re fond of the boy.

         1. It’s March 12 here in Washington too, including King County which had it’s own vaccine-and-mask regime.

            It will be interesting to see how many businesses keep their signs up, and how many people continue to mask after they officially don’t have to. I’m heading back to my goth club just as soon as I don’t have to wear a mask, but I know people who are still afraid to be in a crowded room so even if they go they’ll still wear one.

            /rolleyes

         2. It’s mixed in Flyover Falls. The Fred Meyer (Kroger) tends to have the highest percentage

            –
            Surprise. Surprise. My local Fred Meyer, on Division, has ALL “Mask Required” signs down as of last Monday, 2/28. Surprised the heck out of me. Figured they’d be one of the last minute ones. Still a lot of masked patrons, and of coarse the employees. Got one funny look from a fellow customer. I shrugged and said “Hey. Signs are down. Who am I to argue?” Masks came off her and her older children. Then I tried to play innocent at Papa Murphy’s … Didn’t work. However did play “when does the mask removal occur”. It keeps marching back (April Fools Day, 3/19, 3/11, …). I think current edict is 3/10. But with feds shutting it down Monday before the SOTU dumpster fire speech by the idiot in chief (sigh) Go Brandon (sigh) what his name (okay, fine) President’s speech, figured despicable might have announced it was done … no such luck.

            1. Haven’t paid attention to mask signs, so no idea of Fred Meyer still has them.

               I think it’s demographics. Fred’s draws more white collar people than the independent (partly due to being more like an upscale Walmart), while the independent draws ranchers, blue collar workers, and curmudgeons like me. (Hell, I shop at multiple places each market day. No collars on my shirts, so I’m honestly a red neck. [grin]).

               I don’t go to Wally World any more, (nor Albertson’s) so no idea on mask usage. It’s low at the restaurant supply, but not quite zero among customers.

               1. I avoid Wally too. Albertson’s avoid because generally higher prices; and by the time I’ve stopped at Costco, Petsmart, Freds, Pet Mart, I don’t want to stop at one more store that has something I can do without that none the others carry. We’ll see what happens when the new WinCo opens up on Chad Drive. That gives me Costco, Petsmart, and WinCo, all on the same block. Shop Costco, drive across street (heck sometimes I park across street depending on how nuts parking at Costco is), shop Petsmart, then walk to WinCo. Problem with WinCo, is they don’t take credit (over time that 1% adds up 🙂 kidding JIC). Don’t go to the existing WinCo stores because, in general, way out of the way. Not that big of savings over Freddies.

                  1. I’m in the Northeast Ohio region, very few stores are requiring the mask, most have taken their signs down. I don’t even bother to carry a mask anymore. I’m traveling to Chicago this weekend, will have to bring one along, but I plan to leave it in my pocket, unless someone makes a major fuss.

                  2. That gives me Costco, Petsmart, and WinCo, all on the same block.

                     :jealous:

                     I like hyvee, but wow do I miss WinCo.

                     1. WinCo is going into the abandoned ShopKo building on Chad Drive. Puts WinCo and Petsmart on the NE corner or Chad and Coburg Road, and Costco on the SE corner. Almost didn’t happen. The neighborhoods on the eest side of Coburg, and east side of the business complex, complained the current “road infrastructure couldn’t handle the extensive extra traffic WinCo would cause”. Blink? What the heck? That is the Costco location, for the southern Willamette Valley!!!

                        1. Ooh, nice. My MiL mostly relies on BiMart (she’s up in JC just north of you), but she likes WinCo when she visits here. I suspect my SiLs will be the one to use it more, though, since they’re the ones that go to Costco a lot.

                           1. We already have a WinCo (Barger & Beltline) not that far away. But that is really all there is. I don’t drive that way much, since we are done with Willamette HS. IDK if that other WinCo is being kept open or not. There is an hiring employees sign for the new location. But that could be because of secondary location, or the new location is bigger.

                              Junction City isn’t that far from us (10 miles). We live on the north side of Eugene.

               2. Yesterday, Fred Meyer had the mask sign, but people seem to be celebrating the March 12 Free to Breathe* day by skipping the face diapers. Perhaps a third of the FM customers were masked, perhaps less. The independent, a bit lower.

                  (*) The end of Despicable Kate’s indoor mask mandate for non-school settings.

         3. “All praise to Cthulu-ette!”

            Regrettably, TinaTheK will be Kate v2.0. (Murray would be appalled.)

            Just at Costco/Chad today – still maskirovka in most, but no horrified reactions to the few scoff-idiocy folks. Then went to Walgreens, down here and they’re still masky, especially at pharmacy. Local Walmart was about 50/50 a few days ago.

            1. I hit the Costco in Medford in January. I had the mask on when I entered, and immediately dropped it. No complaints. In fact, the only complaint was at an Abby’s pizzeria in White City by the boss worker-bee. They may have been bullied by OR-OSHA/OHA* into enforcing it. No reaction at the Chinese place I bought dinner at.

               (*) I noticed this when Kate’s edict was a bit more stringent. A small chain of stores and the places with firearms counters had to enforce it. The big boxes, not so much after the first “two weeks” in March-May 2020.

               1. small chain of stores and the places with firearms counters had to enforce it

                  –
                  Yes. I understand why too. Not fair. But … Small chain stores have to fear OHSA, they don’t have other options. Places with firearm counters have both OHSA, and Feds to worry about. While the other big chain stores? An empty big box does not look good. Just ask the locations with still empty huge ex-Sears and ShopKo buildings (although one of our empty ShopKo buildings is being retro fitted by WinCo). None of these empty buildings are the result of COVID. But can you imagine Kroger saying “fine” and closing Fred Meyers state wide? That is 3 huge empty buildings and not working fuel areas in Springfield and Eugene, alone. Albertson’s/Safeway would be worse (smaller buildings, more of them).

                  1. If we lost Fred Meyer, it wouldn’t be catastrophic, but it’d leave the notch above Walmart empty. Didn’t get a Costco here because of really stupid reasons. A then big employer objected. The owner (of Jelf-Wen window and door company) objected and killed the deal due to potential wage competition. He’s gone to his reward (toasty, I think), taking much of the company with him. Idiot. No WinCo, just Fred’s, Albertsons, Walmart and the big independent for big grocers. No big department stores any more.

                     1. No. Loosing FM wouldn’t be catastrophic locally. We still have Safeway/Albertson’s, WinCo, Wally, BiMart, and Costco. But would leave big empty stores (3 in Eugene/Springfield). Safeway/Albertson’s removals the empty stores wouldn’t be as big, but more of them. Not a good look for a city/town.

                        BTW. Fuel at FM today … Reg $4.49 a $0.60 jump over night. Costco Gas Buddy reports at $3.99. We’ll see what it is tomorrow.

   2. Not insane. Just paid off. And treasonous.

6. I believe Brother Occam would hold that Putin isn’t “in on it”.

   If you were in Putin’s shoes, an amoral bleepard, and you wanted to unite old Russia, little Russia, and white Russia…
   When you looked at the array of Western leaders you were facing, all of which are facing civil unrest at home, in the dramatic aftermath of the Afghanistan auto de fe…
   Wouldn’t you make your move?

   I think the Covid thing worked because it tapped into something real.
   The baby boomers were hitting average life expectancy.
   How do self-obsessed, materialistic, youth-oriented people deal when their friends are rapidly dying off, and they know it’ll soon be their turn?
   Not well.
   Add in that they were about the only ones facing a significant threat from the disease…

7. Wouldn’t it be funny to find out the entire invasion of Ukraine didn’t happen?

   Not saying it isn’t, but it’s so weird we’re not seeing any fighting. And the only air battle was made in DCS…

8. Yes. I’ve been asking myself for days, as each “brave Ukrainian” propaganda story falls, what is going on? The beautiful Ukrainian Miss Universe photo? She is holding an airsoft gun. The Zelensky photo of him in body armor is from a trip several years ago. The “Ghost of Kiev” is unconfirmed. The Russian tank rolling over a car is actually a Ukrainian tank.

   I’m not buying the media drumbeat about brave Ukraine and evil Russia. I’m not sure what’s happening, but things aren’t what they seem. I’m worried.

   1. We can be pretty sure that the Russians are expansionist. I mean, that’s Russia for you. But the rest? Who knows

   2. ILOH had a post on Facebook about this issue. His solution was to rely on fellow (and co-) author Mike Kupari, who apparently has the ability to look at a picture of fighting or devastation, and instantly say, “That was originally shot four years ago in Syria.”

      There’s a lot of stuff from earlier conflicts floating around with captions claiming it’s from the current fighting in Ukraine. However, some of those pictures are indeed new, and show wrecked Russian equipment.

      1. Faking stuff to discredit sources you don’t want folks to listen to is pretty standard tactic– I have noticed slightly fewer debunkings that were a self-own this time, though. (Think like factcheck websites that say “false” but you read it and it says “totally true, we don’t like it, though.)

         1. It’s a slippery Snopes.

            1. Transmitting ICBCarp targeting data to TXRed. TXRed to the big red button, please…

            2. :snickers:

   3. I believe that the evil tyrant Putin forcing his conscripted soldiers to invade the Ukraine, and that the Ukrainians are resisting as best they can, and that many thousands of refugees have begun fleeing to neighboring countries. Beyond that? Who knows. As you say, most of the hero Ukrainian stories are either unconfirmed or been proven to be fabricated. The best sources I’ve seen readily admit to fog of war making accurate reporting difficult; available satellite imagery and outage reports give some idea of the extent of the Russian advances but little more.

   4. As I recall, the only reported combat footage of the Ghost of Kiev were found to have been generated using DCS.

   5. I’ve read that the Ghost pilot’s name was a Ukrainian version of a popular internet meme (in English, Sam Hyde). I’m not familiar with the meme, but the Ghost of Kiev seems to be one of a piece with the famous Snake Island bit.

      I have to limit my exposure to run of the mill conservative content; why aren’t they wondering why they’re siding with George Soros, Obama and the Hildabeast?

      1. If the Snake Island troops were really taken prisoner and are being held in a camp outside Sevastopol, wouldn’t it be a propaganda coup for Russia to show them on TV?

         What’s Russian for “habeas corpus, motherf***er”?

         1. Somebody on PJ Media had a Thank God post on the survival of troops. (Can’t recall who, but it was a regular writer. Charlie Martin?) I haven’t been following things that much this week. Too much stuff going on IRL.

   6. Oh, we’re being played all right – by all the parties involved: the Ukrainians for the best of reasons, by the Russians because it’s what they’ve been doing for almost a hundred years, and by own own government and media for the worst of reasons.
      And yes – good reason to worry; I’m pretty certain now that the Brandon administration’s flunkies took the opportunity to walk into this, just so they have an excuse to go all Wilson on us with charges of subversion and treason.

9. Sucks for Ukraine. I’ve relatives (well, in laws) there, and haven’t heard from them yet. But the maskirovka is heavy just now, and a lot of big interests are swamping the little interests that could be heard in more peaceable times.

   What concerns me is, what is this smoke masking in the background? Yeah, Pooty would like to have Ukraine as a Russian province, and Kyiv and all. While the sycophants in the media breathlessly report on news half the world away, what’s the Biden kleptocracy doing domestically? What’s going on here, while they’re trying to tempt our attention away?

   Nothing good, I’ll warrant.

   1. Well, we know they seized the excuse to deploy a contingent of Border Patrol to Poland drawing from the Mexican border.

      1. Perhaps we could hire an extra few thousand Ukrainians to patrol our border with Mexico.

         1. I’m up for that.

      2. Because that makes sense — NOT.

         1. From the Junta’s perspective? It makes too much sense.

      3. A friend made an excellent point — were he or I border patrol agents, we’d jump at the opportunity to go to Ukraine, simply for a chance to do the job and be treated as, if not a hero, then at least a respectable person doing an important and necessary job.

         1. Turns out the actual story is that they asked for Customs agents to volunteer to go to Poland to help process the paperwork for folks who fled there.

            1. So why pull them from the busiest border? Pretty sure there’s enough not patrolling other places that the announcement would have excluded southern border sectors.

               1. They *asked* the entire, nation-wide department, if there were any volunteers to go un-F the paperwork (“provide guidance” and resolve “problems” with US gov’t agencies) after the state department made some stupid, lazy decisions like refusing to expedite folks trying to leave before there was an emergency if they had pets.
                  “Hey, hurry up and get out of there before stuff gets nasty– but if you have a pet, you’re going to have to abandon them.”

                  Since they’re already doing non-option rotations to the southern border to try to un-F other screwups from the Biden* admin, this isn’t going to seriously impact the border, much less the patrolling agents.

                  1. With that plus Afghanistan, I ‘m starting to wonder if someone in charge of State Department policy used to work for PeTA

                  2. Of course they did. No one has seen anything that remotely hints that Biden is sending agents from areas where they can be spared instead of away from the southern border is true; all we know is that Joe Biden has been handicapping border enforcement in any way he could since the Obama Administration, and sending agents to take care of Poland’s borders while refusing to enforce our own.

                     I’m SURE he’s operating only from the best motives.

                     1. Since the entire story is about volunteers , thus nobody is being *sent* at all, that statement is both true and irrelevant.

                        But hey, you once again get to saddle up to charge at your chosen strawmen rather than dealing with either a few minutes of research or thought, because heaven forbid that the conclusion you have chosen might be poorly supported or even flatly contradicted by the facts. Much easier when you get to make things up to suit your claims.

                        1. “Why should you believe reality when I’m telling you different?”

                           1. From the guy who keeps making claims and accusations, then either changing the subject or running away when the facts are found show he has been stating falsehoods, that is almost impressive.

                              Nearly on par with when you admitted that you avoid giving details for your claims because I kept actually going and doing the research, and finding the story didn’t align with the one you wanted to tell.

   2. Absolutely nothing good.
      Read this post from Melanie Phillips about what’s happening in the “negotiations” with Iran – aka the selling out of the Free World to the ayatollah.
      https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/perfidy-in-vienna?s=r

   3. Can something be less-than-nothing good?
      Check out Melanie Phillips’s new post “Perfidy in Vienna.”
      While Ukraine burns, Brandon is selling out the Wes completely to Iran.

      1. “West” – don’t know who Wes is, but maybe Biden should go get him.

         1. Meh. Obama also tried that. Fortunately Iran is too stupid to take advantage of it.

10. If you want to see why I the “woke” left can be described as Communazis, there is this:

    https://www.thecollegefix.com/video-uc-berkeley-professor-under-fire-for-abolish-white-people-comments/

    They state very explicitly that they view achievement of their goal ultimately the genocide of entire racial groups of people:

    I don’t want to hear one word about “:well its just the loons on the college campuses” given how much of that lunacy has spread throughout society Mao’s Cultural Revolution style..

    The CRT left are aspiring genocidal totalitarians, and they are disregarded at all our own risk.

11. Do you suppose that they want to ship as many young people over there in harm’s way as they can? They aren’t drawing down the military as fast as they would like, maybe? Getting rid of a few border patrol officers might not be enough of a purge for them.

    I know that seems very conspiratorial, but how weird is it that they sent border patrol off to Europe? What’s up with that?

    1. Simply a pretext to ramp up the open borders policy and to destroy any sort of immigration enforcement whatsoever; that is unless you are fleeing Cuba, because that is already communist and the Democrats aggressively enforce borders when people fleeing communism try to enter the country as genuine refugees.

    2. No. I also thought that.

12. A few things here:

    1. See Ukraine’s Deadly Gamble. According to this analysis, the Democrats were using Ukraine for the usual graft and money laundering, for short-term “annoy Russia” brownie points, and to Get Trump, and the Ukrainian government at the time foolishly jumped in and cooperated with them (unstated, but probably because like everyone else they thought Hillary! would win and they wanted to be in good with them, just like they did with Biden). And then Biden foolishly said they should join NATO without any intention of actually letting them do so and that was Putin’s last red line.

    2. Russia for the last four hundred years at least has been a psychotic bully nation. Individual Russians are fine, and Russian literature and music and culture yadda yadda yadda, but the nation acts like someone who was abused as a child and now only knows how to threaten and lash out. Yes, they’ve been invaded multiple times — sometimes by themselves — and are very touchy about it, but that should translate to making themselves impregnable, not having to dominate satellites, and then satellites of satellites, and then… The problem is how do you punch the bully in the nose when he has nuclear weapons. But the other way of defeating a bully is to be so tough he doesn’t see you as a target, which is why I want a neutral Ukraine that is armed to the teeth.

    3. Beware what I’ve started calling the Illuminati Fallacy. Yes, things that look like conspiracy theories have been coming true at a remarkable rate lately, but I still think that attributing everything to the machinations of the Secret Masters is going way too far. I remember some conspiracy-theory rpg supplement that pointed out that the US Government is immensely powerful, but it’s not behind your paperboy always throwing the paper into your flowerpot. Given that Putin has been building up forces on the border with Ukraine for months and months, it’s entirely possible that you’re reversing cause and effect: It’s not that the Secret Masters ginned up the invasion just when Covid was running out of steam; rather, maybe Covid was running out of steam and therefore the government stopped emphasizing it knowing that an invasion was imminent. Or that they’re actually totally unrelated and the timing is coincidental. Not everything is being run by Klaus Schwab or George Soros or Xi Jinping, and insisting that they are is a declaration that no human beings other than the Secret Master of your choice has any agency, which normally we call “being black pilled” or “mental illness”.

    4. There’s a whole lot of right-wing trolls out there right now cheering for Russia. I believe their thinking goes like this:

    a. The Democrats claim Russia is bad in order to tie Trump to Russia and so claim that Trump is bad.
    b. The Democrats are always wrong.
    c. Therefore Russia is good and conversely Ukraine must be bad.

    Or possibly:

    a. Ukraine was bribing Biden via Hunter.*
    b. We hate Biden.
    c. Therefore Ukraine is bad and conversely Russia must be good.

    Both, obviously, are illogical. Ukraine are no saints (see point 1 above), but they didn’t start a war of international aggression. They’ve been fighting an armed rebellion/secession for eight years, but never to my knowledge crossed into sanctuaries across the Russian border. As far as I’m concerned, the Donbass was always a Russian catspaw to eventually enable the domination of Ukraine as a whole (see point 2 above).

    5. Boy I’ve been hearing a lot of innuendo about US “bioweapons” sites in Ukraine. I have literally never heard about that before the invasion started, and I actually read comments sections where the loonies come out. My hypothesis on that point is that people succumbing to the Illuminati Fallacy and the “Russia must be good because reasons” fallacy are imputing bioweapons labs solely because of Covid and the Wuhan lab.

    6. I don’t think that the Biden administration is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the CCP. Sorry, I just don’t. I think Biden specifically and the Democrats generally are soft on China, largely due to the blandishments of crony capitalism and because doing something about China would require doing things that would offend their base.† But I certainly don’t think that Xi says “jump” and Biden says “how high”.

    *(Can that really be tied to the Ukraine government, though, or was it just an oligarch-controlled corporation looking to get favorable treatment in the West for their capital flight and graft?)

    †(See, e.g., Eric Weinstein’s podcasts about how the National Science Foundation colluded with other parts of the government to encourage Chinese scientists to come to the US knowing that they would spy for China, because it would depress the cost of US research by forcing wages down for homegrown scientists. He has the receipts.)

    1. 1.) Something to keep in mind is that the Ukrainian president “then” got voted out of office in a populist surge that installed the current president. I keep seeing comments that ignore or even blatantly lie about this. And the current president attempting to investigate corruption was what triggered the first Trump impeachment.

       5.). There are (or were) biolabs in Ukraine that have links to the US. The US embassy’s own website apparently mentions them. But from what I’ve heard, they’re fairly boring things like university labs and the like. They’re not the sort of place one studies the really nasty bio stuff.

       1. There are (or were) biolabs in Ukraine that have links to the US

          Ah, the ever-suspicious “links”. Well, that proves it then. 😀

          Seriously, I’m so very tired of the rumor-and-conspiracy chain that (and I’m making this one up but I see things like this all the time) goes like:

          1. US is providing supplemental funding to universities
          2. US is paying for research
          3. US is paying for biology research
          4. DARPA is paying for biology research
          5. DARPA is running biolabs
          6. DARPA is secretly running bioweapons labs

          And then due to events that last one suddenly floats to the top and everyone panics.

          Sigh.

          1. It’s like an evil and stupid version of Wordle.

          2. The problem is that the average layman tends to associate “biolabs” with nasty bacterial and viral stuff. But in reality, a biolab could be an old farmer who’s got a greenhouse where he’s been breeding a new kind of tomato for the last ten years.

             1. I read the standards for the upgraded labs.

                They rang a bell…because I saw it a few weeks ago, when I went in to get blood work done.

                No food or drink, don’t put anything in your mouth, wash your hands before leaving, when taking off gloves, or after touching samples.

          3. Gain of function really is bioweapons research and development.

          4. It’s a level 2 lab. No gain of function, etc.

             1. The Chinese were doing gain of function in the level 2 section of the Wuhan lab. I hear the level 4 section had all the structural stuff it needed, but the procedures were so sloppy it was no better than level 3, if that. The Wuhan lab has a long history of viruses escaping. The Chinese don’t care. There are always more peasants.
                ———————————
                The ‘natural origin’ explanation requires you to believe that a bat corona virus traveled a thousand miles all on its own, without leaving any trace of its passage along the way, and when it reached Wuhan, but not before, it suddenly and spontaneously mutated from a virus exclusive to bats into a virus exclusive to humans and then, purely by coincidence, the first people it affected just happened to work in the Wuhan virology lab where they were experimenting on that exact same virus.

                1. Ace had a post up a while back with evidence that the Wuhan lab was actually in the process of fixing some physical safeguards that were supposed to prevent an escape right around the time when SARS-2 got loose.

                2. Bats have wings.

                   If you beleive that ‘bats have wings’ is necessarily the correct explanation, you may believe that Pangolins also have wings.

                   Chinese mysticism records that tigers can grow wings. Why not Pangolins?

                   1. Winged tigers would be awesome, ngl.

                      1. Winged hippos, too.

                         https://sluggoonthestreet.tumblr.com/post/677160561985961984/first-meeting-of-the-ashley-street-support-group

       2. We spent a lot on post-Soviet cleanup there, too– there’s pre-2020 documents talking about it.

          One of the spendy things for the labs was upgrading them from basic to able to deal with non-air-borne pathogens! Where you wash your hands before and after!

    2. On #2, I would argue that is the best framework to view the Russian state, and in effect, they were. Russia was one of the areas under the Mongol dominion the longest, and its concept of government by stabbing seems to have most deeply embedded itself there.

       I’ve separately noticed that they, as a culture, have absolutely no concept of civic life. I’ve referenced Masha and the Bear before, but if you watch them, and pay attention to the society that the characters live it, it’s just a basic anarchy that is only (barely) functional because none of the characters living in it have any burning need to rule over or dominate their neighbors.

       And its not just their children’s cartoons. Stalker, the Metro series, just about any game or story written there, does not have any concept of there being any sort of civil society.

       There’s just nothing there.

       1. It was there pretty early, and not from the Mongols. Alexandr Nevskiy (1200s, Novgorod) made peace with the Mongols because he was fighting a 2 front civil war on top of them and he could buy off the Mongols. he couldn’t buy off his rebellious brothers.

          I’ve less information about Kievan Russ. St Vladimir/Vladimir the great died in 1015, and was a back to the old ways pagan before he converted. There’s a lot of tribalism in Russia. From what I’ve seen they’ve got a strong ‘you’re not the boss of me’ streak that extends until they hit the one person who they think IS the boss of them. (usually a Tsar style figure.) They may love this person, hate this person, or any number of other reactions, but once you hit that ‘authority’ button it’s hit. Russian nobles have had issues with their peasantry for centuries (probably at least a millennium). But the resistance to the Tsar is much… wierder. So no, they really don’t know how to act in a civil society. They’re still very much the same motley bunch of peasant tribes that they were under the Tsars. They went from that to communists. When did they have a time to learn about what we’d consider a civil society? Under the Tsars family was very important. The communists knifed that in the back as hard as they could.

          1. TBH, i don’t *remember* what i am supposed to know about the Kievan Rus. Russian I was 33 years ago…

             1. Eh, I came at a lot of it via trying to track down folk lore. Specifically St. Vladimir and his Reitsar. Which fill the same rough legendary niche as King Arthur and his Knights of the round Table.

          2. Lenin’s widow, in good Marxist fashion, regarded Sunday family reunions as good enough reason to abolish the day.

       2. For a really good insider SF portrait of this, circa late Soviet era, I recommend The Doomed City, by the Strugatsky brothers (also responsible for Roadside Picnic, the source material of Stalker). One of those books that are funny and deeply sad at once.

    3. On 3) I suspect the more terrifying prospect is these sorts of mass groupthink events aren’t run by some secret cabal, but instead are the natural and unavoidable spontaneous results of the bureaucracies and systems we’ve established.

       If it was just a dozen ring leaders pulling the strings, you could cut if off at the head. But what do you do if it is really the perverse incentives of tens or hundreds of millions instead?

       What do you do then?

       1. I think a lot of the bandwagoning we see in the media, the public, and the government is driven by an offline distributed version of “the algorithm”.

          1. An event happens.

          2. Media begins to report on it.

          3. All the media watches all the other media and tracks ratings for themselves and competitors in real time (likewise for clickthrough rates online). So the take with the highest engagement gets immediately imitated and now all the media is blaring the same exact take on the event.

          4. People consume the media’s collective take and start commenting on news sites and social media. Most news sites default to “best” — i.e. most liked or upvoted — first, so most people see the most popular comments and then repeat them on other sites. Social media algorithms drive views to what matches what is now the consensus view which just magnifies the ongoing bandwagon.

          5. Government sticks its finger up in the wind and starts releasing communiques matching the popular and media consensus and then policy follows.

          6. Media, the populace, and government are now locked in and can only change course if a new event happens to shock them out of their rut.

          7. Contrary voices are de-emphasized, maligned, or even censored.

          8. All based on the hottest, most-watched report that has a minimal chance of being true and complete.

          Yay modern democracy.

          1. On reflection, if you take out the “media” and substitute “rumors and gossip and trader’s tales” you can see the same exact process in classical Athens. Yay modern democracy.

             1. What impresses me is the unanimity, and yes, you see the same in ancient Athens.

          2. Also look at their biases. The media gets clicks for wars, so they’ve got a bias to support war.

             A lot of the Congress critters receive a lot of lobbying from defense contractors, so they have a bias towards anything that sells more hardware.

             Right now all the branch covidian leaders have had their rice bowl run out of steam and are looking for the new hotness to agitate for. Wokism is destroying things as fast as it can take them over, so that’s a dead end, so what else do they have to go for?

             Throw in a lot of stray energy that doesn’t have anywhere to go, and plunk it at the end of two years of dehumanizing people in the name of “The Greater Good!” and you’ve got a witches brew ready to explode.

          3. This, and your earlier list of things, makes a lot of sense to me when it comes to all this craziness.

       2. THIS

    4. but that should translate to making themselves impregnable, not having to dominate satellites

       The Russian problem is that their geography is indefensible.

       1. ICBMs make up for geography. “It is enough, Ivan. Go home.”

    5. On number 2, the only reason it hasn’t been longer (and it’s closer to 5 centuries than 4) is before about 1550ish, there were MANY little countries calling themselves ‘Russ’. And by and large they preyed on each other more than their neighbors because most of them couldn’t get at their non-Russ neighbors (there were too many other countries of ‘Russ’ in the way.)

       1. Sounds a bit like a more contentious version of “the Germanies” before the Thirty Years War, but without a nominal emperor.

          1. A bit. It was very city-state centric, mostly due to Mongolian invasions. Lone households tended to be very tough or very dead.

             1. I can see how hordes of Mongols might require stout walls and a host of defenders to man them.

       2. …Why am I suddenly thinking of that Monty Python skit where everyone is named Bruce?

          1. Do you mind if we call you Bruce to keep it clear?

             1. That, except with entire nations being called ‘Russ.’

                Scott Adams once said he favored bombing every country with a hard-to-pronounce name out of existence to make discussing world events easier. We may have just found another use for that policy.

                1. Follow-up thought: maybe that’s the REAL reason they all wanted to conquer each other. They just didn’t have bombs back then…

                2. I want us to stop changing the names of places in English whenever the geography challenged get ahold of them. In English, the capital of Ukraine is Kiev. This drives me crazy going back to NEECARAAAAGUA when the Sandinista were there. Alternatively, we should stop calling the capital of Austria Vienna but rather Wien (veen). and stop with Austria too. We should call the capital of the UK Lunnon. My home town would be New Yawk and the capital of Georgia (state) should be lanna.

                   1. Given that the Russians/Soviets keep trying to abolish the Ukrainian language, I feel that Kyiv is just fine.

                      Ukrainian uses h for most of the g sounds in other Slavic languages, so it’s pretty easy to adjust for it.

                      1. I’m just super-annoyed that “minor rooting interest in Ukraine” is suddenly superseded by “PLUCKY LITTLE UKRAINE EVERYWHERE”. What next?

                   2. In English, one of Russia’s greatest Caesars was John the Awesome. And the last Caesar of Russia was the first cousin of the Ceasar of Germany. Both were descendants of Queen Winning of the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

                      At what point are people allowed to use their own names?

                      1. Left-field digression, I’m having a *lot* of fun writing sketches with a “universal translator” that is in near-real time but doesn’t have Star Trek’s mind reading stuff.

                         Names are wonderful for making fun of that, and I need to steal Winning for “Victoria.” 😀

                         1. There’s a meme about how far does the Universal Translator go, with the example of deserts. “On Terra, we have the Sahara desert, the Gobi desert, and the Kalahari desert.” “The Desert desert, the Desert desert, and the Desert desert?”

                            And regarding names, one of the best examples I’ve seen was in the Star Trek TNG novel “Balance of Power,” in which the Ferengi referred to the Federation flagship as the “Business Venture.”

                            1. And regarding names, one of the best examples I’ve seen was in the Star Trek TNG novel “Balance of Power,” in which the Ferengi referred to the Federation flagship as the “Business Venture.”

                               Not gonna lie, I’d be tempted to do that just to screw with the Federation….

                            2. >> “Business Venture”

                               [snerk]

                               I love this.

                            3. >> “Not gonna lie, I’d be tempted to do that just to screw with the Federation….”

                               Give in to the dark side, Fox. Let the snark flow through you…

                               No, seriously, I’d read that.

                            4. >> “The Desert desert, the Desert desert, and the Desert desert?”

                               Now I’m remembering that joke I made earlier about all the different nations named “Russ” wanting to conquer each other just to make discussing world events easier. And I’m imaging universal translator technology making it a hundred times WORSE.

                               Imagine THAT being the trigger for a nuclear WW3… Eat your heart out, Dr. Strangelove.

    6. THere’s a suspicious series of coincidences wrt to the Democratic Party in general, and the PRC.

       PElosi’s California faction of Democrats in particular has some extreme coincidences that are hard to explain otherwise.

       PRC influence at US universities is a definite problem.

       1. See Confucius Institutes.

          1. Hopefully rather than the Great Reset we see the Great Purge, in which Communists are driven from positions of power and influence.

          2. Exactly.

             Some of the US persons involved in ‘approving’ this stuff are definitely malicious.

             There are curiosities that one notices if one observes both modern universities, and modern US politics.

             What causes the correlation between University lunatic talking points, and Democrat lunatic talking points? Democrats blindly following ‘scholarship’, researchers stump broke by federal grant disbursement, University administrators who are partisan Democrats, everyone is a religious Marxist, or a behind the scenes organization coordinating?

             One thing that might argue against a PRC influence explanation is the degree to which insanity studies major fields are not staffing the graduate students with international students from the PRC. OTOH, those are population facing disciplines, and might need native english speakers to have the PR seem plausible.

             If a foreign intelligence effort is clumsy and broad enough, it gets implicated, whether or not it is actually the core cause.

             If the child sex blackmail of Hunter isn’t a valid handle of PRC influence, were the Democrats just being stupidly reflexive?

             2020 was weird decision making. Domestically speaking, it might have been a single powerful lunatic working behind the scenes of the Democratic party. It might have been a committee of powerful lunatics. It might have been blind reflexive behavior by Democrats. If a committee, the PRC may well have a seat on the committee.

             1. “One thing that might argue against a PRC influence explanation is the degree to which insanity studies major fields are not staffing the graduate students with international students from the PRC. OTOH, those are population facing disciplines, and might need native english speakers to have the PR seem plausible.“
                I would say the opposite – when launching a memetic bomb like this, you want as few of your own and as many of the enemy in its path as possible

    7. Related to #3–
       China is very obviously eyeing Taiwan, same way Russia’s been eyeing Ukraine.
       Putin’s behavior makes sense if you assume that both of them were going “You go first. Then I’ll do the grab I’m looking at.” “No, YOU go first!”

       Grabbing it for The Big Huge Distraction makes sense, yes.

    8. #6-
       being willing to be bought, and having the guys already in the shop so to speak, seems much more likely than theorizing that the Biden etc is the infamous Honest Politician that stays bought!

    9. Beware what I’ve started calling the Illuminati Fallacy. Yes, things that look like conspiracy theories have been coming true at a remarkable rate lately, but I still think that attributing everything to the machinations of the Secret Masters is going way too far.

       THIS. The problem with most Illuminati-type conspiracy theories is that they assume competence on the part of the people running the government. Look around at the past fifty years. Do you see anything that suggests that competence in government is anything more than a brief interlude, lasting no more than a few years before returning to the status quo of snafu-land? (Remember the meaning of the SNAFU acronum: Situation Normal — All F’ed Up).

       The only conspiracy theories I’ll believe are the ones where the conspirators could be incompetent and the theory would still match the facts. For example, murdering Epstein in his prison cell was incompetent: they left way too many clues that something hinky was going on. (The cameras all happened to malfunction just when his cellmate was absent and the guards who were supposed to be watching him weren’t? No competent conspirator would leave so much evidence behind). That kind of conspiracy theory has the ring of truth. But anything that assumes competence on the part of the Biden administration? No, the past year should have proven that that’s outside the realm of possibility.

       1. yes, the best argument against conspiracy is that were the conspirators that smart they’d already have won everything so there’d be no conspiracy.

          1. Um…. what I see is retarded conspiracy and even more retarded patching up, over and over again.

             1. Less retarded than short-sighted. They see some Shiny Thing they want, and a way to get it, they grab it. There is no consideration beyond the immediate Shiny Thing. Then they see another Shiny Thing, and make another isolated plan to grab that. They operate at the smallest tactical level, with a lack of overall strategy and a complete ignorance of logistics. They will do or say anything to grab the moment’s Shiny Thing, tell any outrageous lie, without the least care for the consequences.

                Smarter people can’t believe anybody would act like that.

                1. Which is exactly why theories of how $SECRET_MASTER is manipulating nation states and political factions and news organizations and social forces are dumb. It’s Kissinger’s “Who do I call, if I want to call Europe?” question writ large: there are no single points of control for any of those things. And utterly secret, totally loyal, totally malign covert organizations infiltrating the world are the stuff of comic books and Marvel movies.

          2. There’s a difference between keeping the conspiracy secret forever and keeping it secret long enough to be effective. I think many of these conspirators don’t mind being found out because they’ve already moved to their next scheme.

    10. Objection: There aren’t a lot of right wing trolls proclaiming love for Russia. There are a lot of RUSSIAN trolls pretending to be right wingers. Has been going on since 2015.

    11. This. Remember, Poland was conquered and dismembered by a conspiracy… between two powers who hated each other’s guts but who over the course of a few short months immediately beforehand came together to work out a deal that neither intended to honor in the long run. We are seeing similar things today, as different parties and powers and powerful individuals all scheme their own schemes and bump into each other in different ways, some of which are more explosive than others. Each thinks that they’re the protagonist of their own story, and none of them are capable of imagining themselves as being someone else’s NPC. The result can be something of a Twenty-Xanatos Pileup, but with each side only *thinking* that they’re a Xanatos.

        On Ukraine, I would point out that some folks (particularly Peter Zeihan) have been predicting a Russian invasion for over a decade now, on the basis that Russia’s demographics are collapsing and wiping out its manpower pool, and Russia wants more buffer states and better geography (i.e., the Carpathians) to deal with that issue (and doesn’t care about the peoples it has to slaughter or enslave to achieve those aims any more than it did 80 years ago). This was almost certainly always going to happen, but Trump probably delayed it a few years because of his unpredictability, willingness to throw down rather than back down, and of course because his energy policy robbed Russia of many of its best cards.

        A channel named Real Life Lore on the ‘tubes has probably the best backgrounder that I’ve seen on the whole situation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE). It covers the geographic aims, a bunch of energy stuff (I hadn’t realized just how much gas had been discovered in the Black Sea), and a few other issues, as well.

        As for the fighting itself, I’ve been surprised as to how little cell phone footage has been produced, but that may be because both sides have learned the hard way not to let their troops have cell phones that could get them droned or counterbatteryed. There *is* some data coming out, just not as much as you’d expect after the video-fest that was Syria. One site (https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html) in particular has started saving copies of pics of every destroyed or captured vehicle that pops up online and tallying them up (including 60 Russian tanks and 67 IFVs… so far). And ISW (https://www.understandingwar.org/), which has been around for quite some time now, has had some of the best maps and summaries of the conflict.

        Right now, I’d say it’s a race. Can Russia complete its military conquest before the economic damage becomes so great that Putin’s oligarch supporters knife him in the back to protect their lifestyles? I never would have predicted the latter to even be a possibility, but so far the Red Army has been so inept that I actually hold out a sliver of hope for the people of Ukraine. Once again, perhaps evil will shall evil mar.

        1. Right now, I’d say it’s a race.

           I commented over at Instapundit that I would lay decent odds that if the war goes on another week or especially two, we’re going to start seeing smuggled video from Belarus and Russia of crowds of cold, starving Russian troops who have fragged their officers and decided to walk home.

           The high-priority, well-supplied units that matter most will still be up at the sharp end shelling and rocketing everything in sight, but the army behind them will start dissolving.

           And the last two times that happened, Russia had a revolution.

    12. Re: #3

        I don’t think we’re dealing with conspiracies, and I wish we were. Conspiracies are easy: you grab the conspirators and problem solved. I fear we’re dealing with murmurations; that is, hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of people each finding it in their best interests to flock with all the others in the murmuration. You can’t just eliminate a few ringleaders to eliminate the problem. Instead, you have convince most of the members of the flock to change direction, knowing that unless the whole flock changes direction, very few birds indeed will leave the safety of the flock to go the better way.

        1. What we’re dealing with is 60 plus years of indoctrination that you aren’t responsible for your own life, and if you don’t have the life you like, some -ism by THEM is responsible.

        2. Amy,

           I don’t know if you’ve read this before, but you might be thinking of what ESR calls a prospiracy: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=67

           Perhaps not the best name for it, but I think he describes an important concept.

           1. I think ESR’s definition of “prospiracy” is actually a little too narrow.

              There was a German word for “anticipating what the Führer would want and doing it without having to be ordered” that I can’t remember right now, but it encompasses the “consensus” requirement without needing the “secret doctrine” requirement. For instance, did Lois Lerner get explicit orders to harass the Tea Parties, or did she just do it on her own hook knowing that it was what the Dear Leader would want anyway? Did she explicitly cross-coordinate with OSHA and FEC and FBI, or did they also just know that the Dear Leader would want them to jump in as well?

              1. “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”

                 Obama was an expert at it.

           2. I haven’t read it that piece, but yeah, that’s the concept. No mastermind giving orders, but untold numbers of minions manipulating the system in concert to help achieve their goals. And the problem is that it’s a system, so replacing the ones who get caught isn’t effective. You’d have to replace the whole system simultaneously.

              Our system of government and a free market economy are built on the idea of everyone doing what they think best for themselves. Each branch of government is supposed to guard its power vigorously. The prosecutors, plaintiffs, and defendants are supposed to advocate for their side zealously. Business people are supposed to compete for customers.

              The system breaks down when people stop doing this. When Congress cedes power to the executive, when states’ attorneys general fail to advocate for the positions their states demand because they don’t agree with the state, when businesses refuse customers and customers refuse businesses on non-economic factors. (I’m not saying that people don’t have or shouldn’t exercise their right of free association, just that too many people doing so all in the same way causes problems.)

              1. >> “No mastermind giving orders, but untold numbers of minions manipulating the system in concert to help achieve their goals. And the problem is that it’s a system, so replacing the ones who get caught isn’t effective. You’d have to replace the whole system simultaneously.”

                 It’s not the system you’d have to replace, but the culture. As long as you have the same people believing the same things they’ll find a way to corrupt whatever new system you put in place.

    13. they’ve been invaded multiple times — sometimes by themselves — and are very touchy about it,

        Their western border was always the hardest one to keep secure in Risk.

        They shouldha’ started in Australia like a proper board-game strategist would.

        1. Ukraine specifically is completely indefensible in Risk. I tried, multiple times. Too many borders.

        2. >> “They shouldha’ started in Australia like a proper board-game strategist would.”

           That’s why you ALWAYS choose to draw Australia cards at the beginning. Gotta practice those top-decking skills, gamers.

        3. South America works even better. Not quite as strong a position, but the other players are much less likely to freak out and go for broke to stop you from holding it.

           1. I don’t think I’ve been in a game where South America was able to overcome Australia’s advantages.

13. News re Wisconsin; the investigator, a former state Supreme Court justice, found that the 2020 presidential election was so corrupt it should be decertified:

    https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/03/01/2020-wisconsin-vote-should-be-decertified-investigator-says-n1562797

14. There is at complete minimum a ridiculous level of attempted stampede going on, and as much as I’ve really wanted to admire the sheer storycraft from Ukraine (which is impressive almost regardless of how much is made up), as the drums build for depersoning every Russian in every Western thing and all the sacrifices we in the West are supposed to undertake for these people who are Losing Everything, I get super leery about what all of this is meant to accomplish.

    I’m not sure I get quite to the Putin’s-in-on-it level, but there is at least an awful lot of hay being made while the sun is shining. And dear goodness, but the “a minor incursion wouldn’t count” bit was all but an engraved invitation, no secret communication required. >.<

    1. I put “a minor incursion wouldn’t hurt” right up there with Dean Acheson forgetting to include Korea in the Asian Defense Perimeter.

       Acheson at least was competent. I think Biden just ran off at the mouth. I would have liked to see a camera pointed at his minders when he said that to see if eyebrows went up and they started furiously typing into their phones.

       1. At some point they are going to have to put some sort of shock collar on the guy so they can shut him up.

          Although training him not to bark when they shock him a bit might take longer than he has left.

       2. There was Bush Senior’s comment on Kuwait that may have caused Saddam to think he had a green light to go in.

          1. That wasn’t Bush, that was April Glaspie from the State Department.

             Totally OK, though, she said ‘Oopsie’ afterward.

    2. Alfred didn’t burn the cakes, Robert Bruce didn’t watch a spider rebuild its web, Washington didn’t cut down the cherry tree. It’s not by facts we are moved, but by stories,

       1. Funny thing– that cherry tree debunking might be a myth itself– it was definitely not created decades later, as the debunking claimed.
          They set a standard that was abnormally high for a family story– sometimes including exact phrasing– and there *are* records of family friends telling the story about how Washington had taken an ax to his dad’s tree, and then admitting it when asked.

          1. I thought it was in Parson Weems but I never actually read Parson Weems. A myth about a myth. Ha. that’s so meta.

             1. But wait, what if the myth being a myth is ITSELF the myth?

                My God, are we in mythception?

                1. Take an Asprin and write us in the morning about your mythadventures.

                   1. I have no headache and no need of aspirin, sir; you are mythtaken.

                      1. So, were the cherry tree debunkers mything the point?

                         1. I think they latched onto a red herring and got mythled, yes.

                   2. …that was hideous.

                      1. Not sure if it was good or bad that the carpapult wasn’t deployed. 🙂

                         1. I’m hoping we can keep it up long enough to drive Sarah crazy. If we run out of puns before she snaps, it’ll be a mythed opportunity. 😉

                2. Mazes are properly mythic.

       2. Washington DID cut down the cherry tree, seemingly. The other ones? Who knows.

15. c4c

16. Yes, it is entirely possible that my son lost his mind and dyed the cat strange colors. But it’s probably less likely that this happened than that some creature with fur yet unknown came in through the back door, for purposes unexplained.

    :A large, tuxedo pattern cat walks by, dragging a truly hideous stuffed toy:
    :You do not have a tuxedo cat:

    1. But…but…the cat *said* he was a tuxedo cat…

       1. One of our boys is obviously a ninja, disguised as a tuxedo cat.

          He even has an Evil Goatee.

          He’d probably draft his big dummy brother to do anything obvious like sneak into Sarah’s house with a toy….

          1. My two (late great) orange guys would have teamed up to do something like that. They spent a lot of time plotting.

             1. Our orange twins used to open locked doors as a tag team effort.

       2. He just had a formal kitty ball to attend, the tuxedo cat did. Just a rental.

          1. Of course. He’s going to the Jellicle Ball.

             *SIGH* T.S. Elliott spilled the beans on that one.

    2. >> “:You do not have a tuxedo cat:”

       Correction: you do NOW. By the time you see him, that sort of cat’s already picked out his room. 😛

17. They will get rid of Putin the way they got rid of Stalin. (Put off calling the doctor until the stroke he’s having kills him.)

18. That it’s passingly bizarre that the Russians are losing the part of the war they’re really good at (making up shit and propaganda) to Ukraine?

    At least part of this is change is because people have spent the last two years watching the levers get pulled– folks who NEVER thought about it before were largely isolated from the a lot of the pressures, folks’ stories weren’t organized.

    And the Russian bots have been obvious enough that I’m starting to think the “everyone who disagrees with me is a Nazi” thing wasn’t just folks being lazy, it was misinformation’s strings showing.

    1. And it’s clearly wrong, because everybody who disagrees with me is a Commie, except for a few Nazis. ;-p

       1. So sayeth Mooselini Trudeau.

          1. Edit-yes, Trudeau actually asserted that either yesterday or today. Again,

          2. Can’t be. I refuse to believe that Trudeau accused people of being Commies! He’d consider that a compliment!

    2. Yeah, I’m not surprised that Ukraine can beat Russia at its own propaganda game. Yes, with tech Russian trolls have a much further reach, but their tactics in terms of *what* they say and to whom are the same. And, Foxfier is right, the last two years have opened up eyes all over the place.

19. I suspect Ukraine involvement may well be the ‘wedge’ that divides the opposition and allows the left to retain power through 2022 and beyond.

    1. I doubt it. I very seriously doubt it.

20. Thank you Mrs Hoyt for a quite good view of current events.
    As for kung flu, I have been at my mother’s bedside, well, outside the building anyway, for 2 weeks now. Between being socially isolated for 2 years with the kung flu and then the hurricane in August, my mother has lost her grip on reality it seems. I am afraid to even contemplate what the not-a-vax and boosters may have done to accelerate and/or cause this.
    My anger had been simmering since this all began and it is now fiery hot.

    1. I am so sorry. That’s a really rough place to be.

    2. I’m so sorry.

    3. I understand. Sorry.

    4. That’s very difficult, I’m so sorry.
       We lost my mom to the clot shot–she got a stroke.
       One of the last things she ever said to me was “Don’t lecture me!” about the mask.
       There is a lot of anger in our hearts, that cold simmer has turned fiery for a lot of us.

    5. That is super-rough.

       Just for paranoia and hope’s sake, check what meds and vitamins she’s taking. When older people seem to be going downhill mentally, it is very often a case of medicines interacting, too large of doses, weird vitamin stuff, and so on.

       Also it could be sensory problems, like the hearing aids not working right.

       Even if it’s not everything, these things can make a big bad difference, and sometimes they can be fixed.

       1. Oh, yeah, and also oxygen levels. Obviously it’s hard to think straight if you’re not getting enough air, having sleep apnea, etc.

       2. Pain medications that make a new doctor walking in go “What the [bleep]!!!”

21. We now know that the Ukrainian armed forces had already been incorporated into NATO, and therefore NATO membership was assured, and therefore NATO weapons on the Russian border, which the Russians had long said would not be allowed–any more than we allowed missiles in Cuba….So the simple explanation is that Russia wouldn’t allow something that neither China nor the US would allow either…And it’s curious, if a lot of fighting is going on, why we’re not seeing any videos of it, and Kiev appears untouched…IOW…Fake crisis…

    1. Ukraine has had partnership agreements with NATO since 1991. As a lot of other countries do. It’s not news and the information has been available via NATO since then.
       https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_37750.htm

       1. There is also the treaty by which the integrity of Ukraine’s borders was guaranteed by both Russia and the USA in exchange for their surrendering their Soviet era nukes after the fall of the Soviet Union. Yet another treaty that has been proven to be a worthless peace of paper.

          1. It was an agreement, but not actually a treaty. And arguably bad. If the Ukrainians had kept a few nukes, would they be suffering a Russian invasion right now?

             1. Probably they would. Nukes don’t maintain themselves, and the Ukrainian military budget wasn’t even enough to issue working ammo to all their riflemen. At one point, as I have recently read, their combat-effective strength was down to about 6,000 from a nominal strength of something like 400,000.

                1. Pretty sure they could have kept maintenance going on a couple dozen.

                   1. Junior’s objection is probably stronger than mine.

                      But with the paltry sums Ukraine had available for defence, I doubt they could have kept any of the necessary engineers and technicians to keep the warheads tuned up. Such skills command high prices on the open market, and the number of people required does not scale linearly with the number of weapons – there is a minimum establishment you would need to keep going at all.

                      In fact, fiscal necessity probably was a big reason why they let the nukes go.

                   2. Depends.

                      We all have a Los Alamos Primer/Tom Clancy/basic physics understanding of the first principles, quiaf?

                      Very precise timing of the triggering and progression of the explosions, to get the right compression of the fissile material.

                      From first principles, we can see that technicians can do ordinary maintenance of the devices, over a short period of time.

                      I’ve just checked the half lives of likely isotopes, and it looks like I was wrong to suspect that the degradation of the fissile material might be important over thirty years. Wait, I’m not sure how chemically reactive those isotopes are, I’m back to uncertain again.

                      The explosives are very unlikely to be chemically stable over thirty years. At the very least, there should be a loss of potency. Which means it isn’t just technicians, it is also engineers who understand the physics of the design, and a plant to produce the explosive.

                      A lot of maintenance gets costly in engineering as you start talking about sustaining decades of service life.

                      1. I believe there’s also an issue where the radiation over time degrades the HE itself, not to mention the electronic fusing. As in, it’s only good for a few decades, and then basically has to be disassembled and a new warhead built around the pit.

                2. Also, when this topic came up during the Russian invasion of Georgia, someone in the conversation at the time noted that the Soviets had probably put various safety codes on the missiles. So if Ukraine had decided to seize the missiles and hold onto them for their own security, they would have had to figure out how to undo the codes while simultaneously dealing with the Russian invasion (to get the missiles back) that would have almost certainly resulted. Remember that the people sitting in the silos at the time of the treaty were members of the Russian military, not Ukrainians.

                   1. It isn’t just a question of “safety codes”, as if it were a password on the warhead.

                      The “nuclear codes”, or “launch codes” are the instructions that tell a warhead how to assemble itself from something which does nothing, into a functioning warhead which is capable of detonating. If there is a mistake at any point in the sequence the 3d puzzle jams and you have to take apart the entire warhead.

                      1. Plus, I wouldn’t be surprised if the targeting data is also encrypted when fed to the missile. So if you want to change the target from Hoboken to Moscow, it’s a bit trickier than inputting a few numbers.

    2. And, no. Being in NATO’s Partnership for Peace program does not assure full NATO membership.

       1. Thank you.

          1. My understanding is that nobody new is allowed to join NATO unless they’ve signed treaties with all their bordering neighbors to respect their sovereignty, and are on good terms with them. Among other requirements.

    3. Sources? Cites? Because you’re on probation for paucity with veracity, dude.

22. c4c

23. I find the near unanimity of reaction by both the usual suspects and others who are normally opposed to them rather troubling in some ways. I can’t imagine the reaction is all genuine, because Russia’s been darn near this blatant before, but I don’t think it is all counterfeit either. A few scenarios suggest themselves.

    1. The globalists decided to create this situation for their own ends. They use Biden to provoke Putin by offering the Ukraine NATO membership, remarking that minor incursions were of no great concern, and then doing nothing effective to deter an invasion.
    2. The globalists decided to take advantage of Biden’s stumbles for their own purposes. Perhaps the EU has finally decided they’ve had enough of Putin’s shit, and figure a Ukrainian proxy war is safer and cheaper than directly fighting Russia. Perhaps the corruption running through the Ukraine is of great importance and they need it to continue, or they want resistance to be strong enough that the evidence is thoroughly destroyed in the fighting.
    3. Xi wants to get the world focused on the Ukraine situation and hopefully committed militarily, to reduce the forces available to counter a ChiCom assault on Taiwan.
    4. Xi wants Russia weakened enough and enough of a pariah that a ChiCom conquest of Siberia would be irresistible by Russia and accepted by the the other nations.

    1. Number 4 is similar to the basis of Heinlein’s Sixth Column

24. Pingback: Not just me. | Dio's Workshop

25. I don’t have any fool-proof way to sort out all the real from the fake news. I can say that I’m hearing the same words in the clips of Ukrainians berating Russian soldiers that I heard from my Ukrainian ex-wife when she was mad at me.

    I don’t think anyone expected the popular resistance by Ukrainian civilians to be as strong as it has been. Joe Biden even tried to con Zelensky into fleeing the country like Putin wanted. Whatever Machiavellian plans may have been intended, I don’t think they are working as planned.

26. John 16:33, Amplified Bible, Classic Edition

    I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have [perfect] peace and confidence. In the world you have tribulation and trials and distress and frustration; but be of good cheer [take courage; be confident, certain, undaunted]! For I have overcome the world. [I have deprived it of power to harm you and have conquered it for you.]

27. And speaking of the weird going pro, check out what I just found over at Ace of Spades:

    Who did this? pic.twitter.com/lzupCh54YK

    — Figen (@TheFigen) March 2, 2022

    I agree with the person making the tweet: who IS responsible for this?

    1. It’s almost hypnotic…

    2. LOL! What the hell…?

28. My take is that it’s a whole lot of opportunism. The Left keeps doubling down on “never let a crisis go to waste” and they’ve been having a run of good luck with that. To the extent there’s a conspiracy, it’s a tacit agreement to oppose anything that might bring an exploited crisis to an end.

    The Left initially disparaged the threat of the Wuhan Virus, because they believed Trump would use it as a crisis to advance his policies. Then when they saw that they could take advantage of it for their own purposes, they did an about-face.

    The Left also originally disparaged the ‘vaccine,’ partly because it had Trump cooties, but also because it threatened to end the crisis if it worked as advertised. But when the jab flopped – and it became an opportunity to keep the crisis going – they did an about-face to support the jab and jab mandates.

    There’s also the disparagement of early treatment, which they saw as a threat to the crisis. When it looked like early treatment would pan out, they jumped in to actively prohibit it. It threatened to end the crisis and thus cause it to go to waste, and they couldn’t have that.

    As for Ukraine, they didn’t plan for Putin to invade and get bogged down, and they probably didn’t even plan for Putin to invade. But once Putin did launch an invasion that got bogged down, it was another glorious crisis for them to double down on, because “never let a crisis go to waste” has been such a successful strategy for them.

    1. Indeed. Well said.

    2. Yep, this. You and balzacq earlier both said what I was thinking better than I could.

29. I’m reading various bits of news on the internet, but I’m skipping TV news except for local weather reports. My brain is just DONE.

30. I don’t know what is going on.

    Additionally, my mood is often ‘freaked out’.

    There are a lot of alleged details. Trying to sort them into patterns results in churning, ATM.

    Almost certainly the explanation includes that people are lying, and that people are malicious.

    The specifics? Who is lying for what reason, and what information was exchanged in private?

    Russia and the PRC seem to be calculating on Biden regime weakness. There may be private assurances, but I’m not sure that anyone sane would put any real trust in those.

    A given explanation for the behavior may be incorrect. It seems very likely that the folks are aligned Crooked-Nuts, and that their own wantonly false words have opened the room for the speculation that they deem misinformation as soon as it looks too harmful to their interests.

31. In December, Russia sent a couple of draft treaties to the US (technically one was directed to NATO, but it would have mostly affected the US). I looked through them a little bit ago. Amusing things that no sane American would ever agree to (they would have forced the US to basically pull all troops out of any former Warsaw Pact nation, forced the USAF and USN to stay home, and pulled our nuclear boomers back to our coasts). But the timing makes me suspect that they were intended for propaganda purposes, since much to-do is made about setting up mutual contact lines, avoiding incidents, etc…

32. Our March book is The End is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses by Dan Carlin

    https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/22180935-march-2022—-the-end-is-always-near

33. At the beginning of this insanity, I took a look at the average age of the Diamond Princess dead (roughly – somehow, that obvious and critical piece of information wasn’t readily available). The 14 attributed deaths took place over 3+ months. Actuarial tables predict some percentage of people over 75, will, on average, die per year; 25% of that percentage, on average, dies every 3 months; there was something over a thousand such elderly people on that ship. The net result of these (heavily caveated, back of the envelope, but not unreasonable) calculations were that about 11 people out of that age group among the passengers would have died over 3 months just in the normal course of things, on average. The Coof, therefore, maybe accounted for about 3 deaths. Or, perhaps, the treatment for the Coof – intubation, panic, terror – killed about 3 people.

    But I’m a terrorist, officially, for thinking this.

34. Apology for not having read all the comments yet, but y’all do know this sounds like you’re playing that weird RPG from the eighties, Illuminati? In other words, y’all sound nuttier than a fruitcake.

    What’s beginning to worry me is two things. One, I don’t think our hostess needs a 72 hour rest in the nearest psychiatric facility; and two, you’re starting to make sense.

    Goodnight.

    1. 80s– so before those document drops out of the USSR, right? I know they were making it over to the US in the early 90s, so….

       Ever notice how a lot of the crazy stuff from the 80s wasn’t actually crazy?

       There really WERE a bunch of Russian plots. Most of ’em didn’t work, but some of them, like… Seriously, “Hey, the Pope has morality. That cramps the USSR’s style. Let’s write a play that says he’s a Nazi!”

       And IT FREAKING WORKED. Folks ignored tons of evidence from the time, things they’d SEEN, and adopted the insanity of “Hitler’s Pope.”

       There’s a lot of plots that are solidly in the Too Crazy To Possibly Work that somehow work.

       1. At least Russian propagandists, and their Leftist comrades elsewhere, are consistent in this regards. Some of the Russian propagandists are claiming the purpose their invasion of Ukraine, a nation whose elected leader is Jewish, is de-Nazification. Democrats threw the label Nazi at Trump because of synagogue attacks committed by people who hated Trump. Trudeau’s recents remarks cited elsewhere in comments are another example. It just won’t end with these Commie scum until we end these Commie scum.

          1. Humans find excuses to be vile– go figure.

             Much rather focus on actual behavior rather than labels, and specific people rather than trying to end a problem for all time.
             …that this would result in pointing out that hey, Nazis only became a problem when their slightly different flavor of collectivist totalitarianism made Stalin feel second-class. (OK, more like 90th class, but relative to the Nazis.) They’re a badly done paintjob, but folks keep listening to them– and then you hear the same arguments, with the same level of evidence, from supposed opponents.
             “Just do this obviously bad and extreme thing on a large, poorly defined group, it’ll fix humans so they never can do this thing you don’t like again.”

             To paraphrase: “Do you want commies? because that’s how you get commies.”

             1. Communists must be purged from all positions of power and influence as expeditiously as possible. They don’t necessarily need to be killed, but if they insist on trying to retain power and influence, then that should be their fate.

                1. Ah yes, to counter the [bad group] we must directly copy their tactics, even though we have been watching them use it in the stinkin’ obvious manner of declaring anyone they don’t like to be part of whatever group.

                   You don’t stop people from doing stupid stuff based on irrelevant considerations– the usual “hiring and promoting on politics,” among other prog expansion tactics– by doing it yourself. You stop it by punishing in response to specific examples of the bad behavior.

                   You can’t simply invert a stupid idea and expect it to be good– that’s as crazy as the folks who are demanding why folks who haven’t changed their arguments and evidence in 30 years are now “siding” with wind-vane idiots.

                   1. FRactally wrong.

                      One inversion of “kill everyone who abuses substance x” is “kill everyone who does not abuse substance x”.

                      “be very cautious and careful when curating the tests you use before killing someone” is probably the sanest rule, but it doesn’t satisfy very angry people who just want the world simplified, and are trying to find a good excuse. Well, sanest when combined with the implication that the caution and care is erring in the direction of preserving human life and welfare.

                      1. it doesn’t satisfy very angry people who just want the world simplified, and are trying to find a good excuse

                         Which are the real baseline problem with any of the rules– “issues” with application.

                   2. And this is why American conservatives keep losing. Too many either let themselves get stabbed in the back by the GOPe, or else insist on fighting by Marquis of Queensbury rules while the Communists throws out the rulebook.

                      Your strategy of forcing them to follow the rules presupposes functional mechanisms for doing so. The justice system is broken. Congress is corrupt and partially communist held, and some of the state legislatures are even worse. In too many states and key counties, the election process is clearly corrupt as well. There have been some moves made to try to address the electoral corruption; much effect they have will be tested in a few months.

                      Communism is responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths. If the elections of 2022 are just as corrupt as 2020, I see no point in continuing to pretending that the corruption can be peacefully addressed. At that point, we simply begin purging the government, media, academia, and industry of Communists by any means necessary.

                      1. My position is somewhat GFY.

                         Certain needs are obvious, but they do /not/ need to be discussed on insecure channels prior to implementation.

                         Yes, establishment GOP go along to get alongs have been very bad.

                         No, “don’t talk about actionable actions on an insecure channel” is in fact a valid and legitimate position. My slight level of caution does not make me a traitor to whatever group that I am supposed to be a traitor to.

                         I don’t owe you anything, and you don’t owe me anything.

                         If our agendas happen to line up, that is maybe useful.

                         There is no reason to trust that we will vote our way out.

                         There is no reason to trust that we will litigate our way out.

                         There are also sharp bounds on our reasons to think that we will fight our way out, or kill our way out.

                         All these “if X action, then Y result” things are theoretical models. We have predictions, we have guesswork, but we do not really have perfect knowledge of the future.

                         Theoretical models are necessarily based in past events. They do not hold in cases where a ‘change in system behavior’ causes future events to have a fundamental difference from the past events. Human behavior would be a textbook example of a case where such can occur, if Academia weren’t stupidly blind to the study of such flaws.

                         Would be totalitarians who are disconnected from reality due to seeing everything in terms of theoretical symbols are precisely the sort of people whose behavior would tend to motivate others to change behavior in an unpredictable way.

                         The Honkening was one such behavior change. It wound up having effect, without being a deliberate attempt to slaughter a bunch of totalitarian fools.

                         On some paths, we slaughter a bunch of fools. But, we cannot theoretically exclude the possibility of paths that are relatively peaceful.

                         The only way we exclude the low slaughter paths is by an emotional process, because we are so stressed and angry, that we will not consider peaceful options even if potentially viable. My own personal baggage drives me, emotionally, to try to reject the emotional decision making process. So, I am unpersuadable.

                      2. And this is why American conservatives keep losing.

                         When one defines “losing” as “fail to reform human nature to obey the current desires of the person speaking,” there is ALWAYS going to be an excuse.

                         Your strategy of forcing them to follow the rules presupposes functional mechanisms for doing so.

                         Functions rather well, in spite of quite a bit of damage. Better than the “remove all group” option has ever managed.

                         Thing is, it takes WORK.

                         And, worse, it may get in your way.

                         Of course, when your methods turn around to bite you– that never means anything. But the faintest failure of perfect function accused against the justice system is proof it must all be torn down.

                         /eyeroll

       2. Let me explain how that worked.

          1. Produce play. (Or movie, or whatever.) Probably with grant money ultimately from USSR or friends.

          2. Tell your hardcore people to go see the play, and to repeat various lines of talk about it. Everywhere. To everyone they know. Also have them write newspaper articles, etc. Lots of times, these people wrote under various pseudonyms, and had editor friends or paid off editors who would print everything they wrote.

          3. Tell your hardcore people to do this around all the useful idiots they know, especially if they’re anti-Catholic or really really gullible. Maybe get some of these people free tickets to the play, next to your hardcore people.

          4. Let simmer. Throw in more rumors and talk to keep the pot boiling.

    2. Well, we’ve recently had a flap over “Jewish Space Lasers”, so evidently the Nephews of Zion are upstream from the Orbital Mind Control Lasers. But who controls the Nephews of Zion?

       1. Their mothers.

    3. Most persons put some of their sanity into the people they have contact with. You can drive them partly nuts, by manipulating them through their sense of community, etc.

       There are at least three mechanisms by which this is relevant to the current situation.

    4. Honestly, I don’t think they’re some grand, ultra-bright conspiracy.
       I think it’s a “You know what would be neat” by senile *ssoles with the mental prowess of college freshmen.

35. I’m not a big believer in Great Conspiracy theories – mostly because our opponents are too stupid to run a secret conspiracy. There IS an open collusion of the rabid Left. But it’s not secret.

    My read of the Ukranian situation: Putin, probably egged on by the Chinese, figured that NATO was gutless enough and the Ukranians weak enough to let him snap up the eastern part of the country, make the Dniepr River the border, and install a puppet regime to run the rest as directed. Putin discovered, to his chagrin, that he had a Potemkin Army. Not nearly as effective as he thought. I’d REALLY like to get an intelligence team looking over the vehicles, to see if they were carrying full ammunition loads.

    Current status: The Left is trying to use this as a political hammer, of course. The Right is trying to do much the same, but with a different slant. The Ukranians want help…and are trying to play the “lets you and him fight” game.

    Pro Tip: The American military is NOT monocultural on this. The Army is salivating at the opportunity to play Cold War II games – big budgets, plus the chance to deploy to Europe. The Air Force is OK with that. The Navy is NOT OK…every dollar spent in Europe is a dollar NOT spent counter the Chinese.

    Which was, of course, why the CCP was quietly egging Putin on.

    Outcomes: I expect that Putin will shut off oil/gas exports to the West by the end of this week. This will impact the USA, but hit Europe much harder. Biden is too beholden to the Communist wing of the Democrats to do the sensible thing and reverse his energy policies. Putin is faced with a problem…either take the major cities by storm (meaning a very messy urban fight that negates most of his hardware advantages), or by siege (takes time). His own economy will be quietly sinking in the meantime. As will ours.

    What am I doing? Why, I’m trying to figure out just how long to wait before stuffing money into the stock market! As Baron Rothschild once said, “Buy when there’s blood in the streets.” A policy that has worked quite well for me.

    1. I can’t recall the source, but somebody had a post with the opinion that Putin was baited into it by various Ukrainian and other nations’ actions. If true (maybe?), it could explain the convenient timing of the invasion.

       1. There are a lot of those opinions.

          Psychotic ex model of this iteration of Russia is an explanation of where those opinions could have come from.

          Russia: Look what you made me do.
          Others: Hmm. Look what we made Russia do. Makes as much sense as anything else going on.

          Feb., 2021, was too early for Russia to invade the Ukraine. Invasions have a lead time. To have invaded in Feb. 2021, would have needed to commit when Trump was still a possibility. So, wait for this year.

          Too early this year, and it would be cold enough to be a problem. Tanks can run on roads, but a road can have limited tanks before it crumbles unless it has been specially prepared. Wait too long, the ground unfreezes and gets soft. So, the timing is set by weather.

          If Putin had waited for next year, there is a chance that congressional shift might throw things back into the realm of impossible.

          Left seems to be pretty tied to the IC establishment, who seems to have actually known about the invasion.

          Furthermore, Left pols include a lot of rote symbol manipulators, who see themselves as cynical manipulators wrt to foreign policy. Especially in the legislature. “We push this, and it will happen that way, the same as what we saw of it happening before.” They are NOT thinking about the extent to which the more hawkish Americans have thought to themselves “After Afghanistan, I have zero trust that Biden would not turn the fight against the Krasnovians into the Gallipolli Campaign.”

          PRC may have similar weather and political considerations driving things.

          From the Russian or PRC perspective, what on earth is going on with US politics? Even if they have compromised officials, they do not know that those officials will retain power. We don’t know what kind of analytical framework their intelligence has developed to understand opportunities resulting from US politics. Do they see Presidential terms as most significant? Congresses? Specific officers in senior positions? They could be missing details that Americans are very aware of, or focusing on things that Americans do not know about, and would not think are important.

          1. Some commentary online also suggesting late winter/early spring is a bad time to attack because it’s “mud season,” in Ukraine and those heavy vehicles sFWIWink axle-deep at the first opportunity. FWIW.

    2. RE: Potemkin Army

       Bill Rogio has a series of posts up suggesting that the Russian invasion is proceeding as more or less as intended, and explaining the Russian army’s progress. Insty had a link late yesterday.

36. Last night there was one truly bizarre moment, when the FICUS went on for a bit about ‘smoke from the burn pits’ in Iraq and MaligNancy rubbed both fists together and stood up. As one YooToob commenter remarked, “Like a hungry fly”.

    So that’s how I’ll always see MalgNancy from now on. A hungry fly, rubbing its front feet together before digging into a big steaming pile of crap.
    ———————————
    Most days, I suspect that we could get a better government by picking 537 people at random. On bad days, I’m certain we’d get a better government by picking 537 people at random from lunatic asylums.

    1. Ah, but the asylums were all picked over by Ivy League universities and the inmates were given tenure.

37. This is not a conspiracy-related topic. This was posted a few hours ago by a friend of mine here in Seattle, and the incident has been confirmed to be an attack by Russian paratroopers on a hospital in Kharkiv. I feel kind of sick.

    Her name was Irena Marishkova.

    I met her maybe 20 years ago in the Goth community. We became on again off again friends.

    She got her MD and went back to Ukraine and we stayed in touch via the internet. I got a video call from her early this morning, She was calling people to let people know she was ok.

    We were talking when russian solders came in and shot her multiple times, I watched her die, it was very visceral.

    I have since learned that russian paratroopers murdered everyone in the hospital, patients, staff, orderlies, everyone.

    I am not well, I am in shock, pain.

    And I am filled with hatred, so much hatred for Putin and his lackys.

    And those who would go in supporting murdering civilians.

    There is no curse in yiddish or russian that will do justice to the fire of my hatred.

    .
    Confirmation: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/russians-attack-kharkiv-hospital-take-kherson-port-and-railway-station-ukraine/

    1. What in the heck???

       I mean, I believe it happened, it seems to be confirmed, but why? Who attacks a hospital inside a big city? I mean, I could see some fighting around it, or some looting of one, but why go inside and shoot people?

       This isn’t Doom. You don’t find treasure or get points by clearing a hospital full of noncombatants. Even if there were combatants shooting out the windows or something, it would be more efficient to keep the place cordoned off from others, rather than go inside and just randomly shoot chicks in offices on video calls.

       It suggests that the Russian Army is totally out of control, or off its rocker.

       1. Or they’ve been trained to do the stuff that was SOP a century ago.

          Which is functionally the same as insane and out of control.

          1. Well, one could argue that immunity for medical personal is implicitly contingent on behavior according to a standard of medical ethics.

             One can further argue that by being complicit in covid lockdown nonsense, the whole of the medical professional world have waived that protection.

             But, if your armed forces have come to that conclusion, and are so behaving, failure to announce that in advance makes it simply seem like you are committing war crimes.

             Between ‘Russians are super advanced thinkers’ and ‘Culturally, Russians are often nuts’, I would think the second is more likely.

             1. It wasn’t doctors and nurses who went around arresting people for violating the lockdowns.

                1. No, just called the cops.

                   Not to mention reinforcing the Science! imposing mask and vaccine mandates rather than stating openly that they were nonsense, staffing the medical boards that were yanking licenses for prescribing HCQ and Ivermectin, and in general backing up the fascism.

    2. Subsequent searching turns up that Russian paras attacked a military hospital in Karkhiv, and Ukraine says they took it back.

       But even if this woman were working for the army, attacks on medical personnel is still a Geneva Convention/Hague Convention violation.

       So yes, at least parts of the Russian Army are out of control. Presumably (a) the more motivated, “elite” parts are now past “doing their job” and fully on to “angry”, and (b) Russian troops don’t get the constant “war crimes ‘r’ bad, mmkay” indoctrination that US troops do.

    3. Please convey my sympathies– and if it won’t make him feel worse, our prayers.

38. Sarah, be of cheer and read this. Mr. High has been nailing his predictions based on his data gathering algorithms. Is the following too good to be true? Possibly. I have heard inklings of like thought a few other places. The thing is, if true we will never know until after the fact ( fog of war and all that ), but I have some hope here. Anyway….

    Vox Populi – Legislator Be Advised #12
    Save YOUR life!

    clif high
    Mar 2

    Comment
    Share
    Vox Populi – Legislator Be Advised #12
    March 2, 2022

    Legislator, it is important that you recognize these missives are NOT bullshit political pamphleteering, but are information bulletins that can SAVE YOUR LIFE by giving you knowledge to allow you to change your behavior in time.

    ALL politicians are now suspected of being involved with the globalist / WEF attempt to take over humanity.

    Repeating this for clarity: We, the People, SUSPECT YOU of being a duplicitous criminal working for the WEF.

    Given the pace of events, you have only a very limited time to convince us to the contrary.

    The Enemy of the People, the World Economic Forum, is now under continuous, daily, and increasing exposure. The attacks against the false narrative of respectability of the WEF are being successful in reducing the effectiveness of the organization, as well as destroying the ability to recover any reputation.

    The attacks on the Ukraine are NOT an invasion, but rather are an anti crime effort by Russia. The incursion will end over this Spring, but the reverberations rocking the WEF will destroy the organization before the end of Summer as the Russians, and patriotic Ukranians continue to release information recovered in this policing action.

    The trifecta of exposure of election fraud in the USA, the collapse of the central banking system, including the Federal Reserve Bank, and the policing action releasing information on crimes from the Ukraine, will dominate the news cycle this Spring and Summer. It is giant cake of corruption being frosted with the collapse, and exposure, of the Covid narrative.

    All the records of the money laundering, and involvement in human, drug, weapons, and OTHER trafficking in the Ukraine are being recovered, and will be released to the public. AS MAY BE EXPECTED, many USA politicians are being shown to be criminally complicit with these major, capital, crimes.

    The election cycle this year will be overwhelmed by the exposure, and consequences, of criminality. Many more politicians will decide to retire as the charges, arrests, and trials begin. Every action you take IS BEING scrutinized.

    The collapse of the Covid narrative is nearing completion in which all the deadly effects of the Big Pharma products labeled as vaccines will be exposed. The People WILL BLAME THE POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT FOR POISONING THEM. Legislator, Be Advised! YOU WILL BE HELD TO ACCOUNT FOR YOUR PART IN THESE DEATHS & MAIMING.

    You have very little time to recognize that the world as you knew it has gone.

    Resources
    Again, to repeat:

    During a time of War, all actions taken by Officials will be viewed and judged against the larger background of the Conflict. Legislators and other officials, in all capacities, including supporting personnel, would be well advised to obtain, and read, the DOD Law of War Manual.

    To download a PDF copy of the DOD LAW of War Manual:

    https://tjaglcspublic.army.mil/documents/27431/61281/DoD+Law+of+War+Manual+-+June+2015+Updated+Dec+2016/5a02f6f8-eff3-4e79-a46f-9cd7aac74a95

    Here is a link to encapsulated description of Devolution that may assist your thinking for the Immediate, and Long term future. We are at War. Every action and decision and Vote will have significant and serious consequences.

    Patel Patriot’s Devolution Series

39. I thought you might like the below, as food for thought on an alternate take. Mr. High has been nailing his predictions for some time throughout the last couple of years and has some degree of credibility with me.

    Vox Populi – Legislator Be Advised #12
    Save YOUR life!

    clif high
    Mar 2

    Comment
    Share
    Vox Populi – Legislator Be Advised #12
    March 2, 2022

    Legislator, it is important that you recognize these missives are NOT bullshit political pamphleteering, but are information bulletins that can SAVE YOUR LIFE by giving you knowledge to allow you to change your behavior in time.

    ALL politicians are now suspected of being involved with the globalist / WEF attempt to take over humanity.

    Repeating this for clarity: We, the People, SUSPECT YOU of being a duplicitous criminal working for the WEF.

    Given the pace of events, you have only a very limited time to convince us to the contrary.

    The Enemy of the People, the World Economic Forum, is now under continuous, daily, and increasing exposure. The attacks against the false narrative of respectability of the WEF are being successful in reducing the effectiveness of the organization, as well as destroying the ability to recover any reputation.

    The attacks on the Ukraine are NOT an invasion, but rather are an anti crime effort by Russia. The incursion will end over this Spring, but the reverberations rocking the WEF will destroy the organization before the end of Summer as the Russians, and patriotic Ukranians continue to release information recovered in this policing action.

    The trifecta of exposure of election fraud in the USA, the collapse of the central banking system, including the Federal Reserve Bank, and the policing action releasing information on crimes from the Ukraine, will dominate the news cycle this Spring and Summer. It is giant cake of corruption being frosted with the collapse, and exposure, of the Covid narrative.

    All the records of the money laundering, and involvement in human, drug, weapons, and OTHER trafficking in the Ukraine are being recovered, and will be released to the public. AS MAY BE EXPECTED, many USA politicians are being shown to be criminally complicit with these major, capital, crimes.

    The election cycle this year will be overwhelmed by the exposure, and consequences, of criminality. Many more politicians will decide to retire as the charges, arrests, and trials begin. Every action you take IS BEING scrutinized.

    The collapse of the Covid narrative is nearing completion in which all the deadly effects of the Big Pharma products labeled as vaccines will be exposed. The People WILL BLAME THE POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT FOR POISONING THEM. Legislator, Be Advised! YOU WILL BE HELD TO ACCOUNT FOR YOUR PART IN THESE DEATHS & MAIMING.

    You have very little time to recognize that the world as you knew it has gone.

    Resources
    Again, to repeat:

    During a time of War, all actions taken by Officials will be viewed and judged against the larger background of the Conflict. Legislators and other officials, in all capacities, including supporting personnel, would be well advised to obtain, and read, the DOD Law of War Manual.

    To download a PDF copy of the DOD LAW of War Manual:

    https://tjaglcspublic.army.mil/documents/27431/61281/DoD+Law+of+War+Manual+-+June+2015+Updated+Dec+2016/5a02f6f8-eff3-4e79-a46f-9cd7aac74a95

    Here is a link to encapsulated description of Devolution that may assist your thinking for the Immediate, and Long term future. We are at War. Every action and decision and Vote will have significant and serious consequences.

    Patel Patriot’s Devolution Series

    1. Anti. Crime.

       Yeahhhh. Suuuuuure.

40. But what if the many conspiracy theories (they do conflict with each other) are a key part of the sideshow? Back when the internet and Google made digging into JFK and other such theories much easier, I was surprised at how weak much of the conspiracy theory stuff was. Then along came 9/11 Truthers and it occurred to me, jokingly at first, that perhaps conspiracy theories were made up by the CIA or NSA or whatever agency in orders to discredit those who might catch on to the REAL conspiracy.

    1. Not to support it being from the CIA or whatever– but this is a related tactic, called DARVO. Deny, Accuse, Reverse Victim and Offender.

       It gets the accusations out there, so that when stuff turns up, there is a ready-made defense that it’s fake.

       For an example from current events– Russia has accused the Ukraine (and others) of working on bioweapons for the US government.
       It is open knowledge that the Soviets had nearly Chinese-lab level control on their major biohazards– that’s part of why a major portion of those with small pox vaccination were first responders or military members after 9/11– and that various elements of Russia are, ahem, not opposed to making easy money if there’s access to something with demand.

       So, Russia is effectively saying “We would never use bio-weapons– but the guys we’re attacking are! Totally!” So when people get sick (and it’s spring, they’re moving around, kung-flu-related paranoia, they WILL be seeing a spike in illness) they can say “see? I said THOSE GUYS did it, not us!”

       On a more immediate scale, the guy who constantly reports that new cashiers have been lightening the cash-drawers usually ends up caught with his hand in the till.

       1. It is quite possible that Russian leadership has honestly gone crazy crazy with bioweapon paranoia.

          a) They were already nuts.

          b) Covid lockdown and vaccination related information warfare has quite thoroughly poisoned the well.

          c) Putin may ‘know’ that the Russian ‘vaccine’ is not a bioweapon. He absolutely does not have information he would trust showing that the other ‘vaccines’, or ordinary colds, are not bioweapons that will kill all the Russians.

          d) Murdering everyone in a hospital would make sense in this sort of crazy world thinking.

          e) Of course, ‘ordinary sane’ Putin is plenty nuts, and might murder a hospital that he knew was innocent as part of an overly complicated frame job.

          1. I think that you’re correct. The Russian leadership has through a combination of paranoia and hubris, gone nuts. They did demand the disbanding of NATO, and a return to the Warsaw Pact order of things after all. Were I commanding, oh I don’t know, a squadron of A10’s or F15E’s and I had a 41 mile long Russian attack convoy bogged down on a road running out of patrol because their corrupt procurement officers bought knock off Chinese tires and their lesders decided to invade during the muddy season I might fancy my chances. Those Chinese knockoff tires have to be encouraging too. Would you fancy being a Chinese infantryman making an opposed landing on a Chinese made boat backed by Chinese made missles?

41. OK just saw this; add this little gem to the working theory presented in my above post.

    The Russian ambassador to the UN just said that Trump was the legitimate president and that he was ousted (by election fraud). pic.twitter.com/rOo1iIBB9u

    — Let's see what happens (@HTTP_404_NotF) March 2, 2022

    1. Even a broken clock…

    2. Support from the Russians is the LAST thing Trump needs. The Democrats spent 5 years lying about links between Trump and Russia, this will just set them all off again.
       ———————————
       They’re the Experts! They only sound stupid to you because you’re not as Educated as they are.

       1. It is probably being deliberately done for that express purpose.

          The Russians don’t care about the actual legitimacy of US political outcomes.

          They 1) want weakness 2) want strife 3) are salty about the Magnitsky Act.

          Weak Biden? Fine with them, they will take advantage.

          They want a civil war in the US, they have been among those fanning on the race war that never ignited, and want the US split up into separate entities.

          From their perspective, encouraging the fraud narrative implicates Trump in Democrat eyes, maybe radicalizes Republican voters, and maybe peels off some folks to act as pro-Russia apologists once the ramifications of Putin being an atrocitarian come out via Russian army behavior.

    3. He spent most of his diplomatic training in the Siberian troll factories?

42. Also, everything balzacq says.

43. Sarah – you are not the only one baffled why our fellow citizens cannot see the obvious.

    I am a board-certified academic physician. When there 7 cases reported in the US i told a colleague “This won’t be over until we all get it and reach herd immunity.” He agreed.

    Masks are worse than useless. Frequently washing your hands and staying six feet from symptomatic people are the best ways to avoid any viral infection.

    Lockdowns and mandates were NEVER about public health. They killed more people that the SARS-COV-2 virus (the illness is called COVID-19, not the virus).

44. It doesn’t have to be a conspiracy when it’s a consensus.

    https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/academics-underestimate-willingness-phds-use-fake-data

    “Around one in 12 postgraduate researchers would publish fraudulent results if it helped them get ahead, says study”

    And those were the ones who admitted it.

    1. a) soft sciences
       b) this isn’t the wider political issue. The studies apparently showed students a dataset with detectable buggering, and asked them if they would proceed with publication.
       c) Of course the academic leaders purport to expect zero percent willingness to fraud. Their whole job is pretending that they haven’t contributed to the ruin of academia.
       d) The issue here is that 1) graduate school and academia are deeply broken industries 2) ethics in a graduate student is built on a foundation of early childhood training, largely invisible to bureaucracies, and all the bureaucracy is oriented around the visible stuff, from other parts of the student’s life, assuming that is all that matters.
       e) This cluster intersects with the cluster that you talk about, but is not inherently the same phenomena. The cluster you talk about, is largely that Marxists are not inherently able to peacefully coexist with Jews and Christians. This cluster has a lot to do with people who have been led to emotionally invest too much in academic progress, and don’t go do something else when they hit the limits of their ability and interest.
       f) It should have gone without saying, before the latest meta research, that no academic is owed unconditional trust by everyone. i) The point of academia, theoretically, is a tedious debating society that can orient to truth, if you have truthful people in it. ii) ‘respect my authoriteh’ is anti-scholarship. (Real scholarship, not the various wannabe counterfeits) iii) the ‘not properly trained’ argument for excluding laymen from the debate is nullified by the degree to which the number and structure of the fields has been screwed up. Nobody is properly trained, nobody is a qualified expert, and the whole thing has kinda become a comprehensive argumentum ad cartmann. The layman has a perfect right to conclude that trusting academia is much more trouble than it can possible be worth.

    2. Faked results that support the authorities’ prejudices are acceptable. Truth that contradicts them is unacceptable. That corruption runs all through academia. I’ve got two things to say about that:

       “If reality doesn’t conform to your theories, it’s not the universe that’s wrong.”

       and

       “Politics perverts science. Scientists are rewarded not for finding and reporting the truth, but for telling those in charge of doling out the money whatever they want to hear. Play the approved tune and you get government grants, you get consulting fees, you get published. Make the wrong waves, and you don’t. Such measures do not produce good science, or good scientists.”

    3. THIS.

45. Pingback: Links and Comments | Rockport Conservatives

46. Evidence for the ower of distraction. A 1A group sent me an e -mail in which they are properly distrssed at Russian government supression of free speech, that is, arresting anti-war protesters.

    No mention of this: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/vivek-calls-for-a-new-mccarthyism?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozNDQ2NjMzNSwicG9zdF9pZCI6NDk3MDEzMjQsIl8iOiJtdk01TCIsImlhdCI6MTY0NjM3NjIxMywiZXhwIjoxNjQ2Mzc5ODEzLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMzIzOTE0Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.ju55k-LJGjLQqJr4kmrYBhS4JYOOtgYUFVQRwW7LGSw&s=r

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