Jump to content

atomheartbevo

Certifiably Surly
  • Posts

    62004
  • Joined

  • Days Won

    163

Everything posted by atomheartbevo

  1. Europe thinks the unthinkable: “Retailiating against Russia“ I have been shouting this from the roof for decades and it is starting to sink in to more and more European officials. They realize that doing nothing is always the greatest risk. Allowing Russia to wage a hybrid war against the West without a proper response was always losing game. There must be costs for aggression and they have been well overdue. https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-thinks-the-unthinkable-retaliating-against-russia-nato-cyber-hybrid/ Russian drones have buzzed Poland and Romania in recent weeks and months, while mysterious drones have caused havoc at airports and military bases across the continent. Other incidents include GPS jamming, incursions by fighter aircraft and naval vessels, and an explosion on a key Polish rail link ferrying military aid to Ukraine. “Overall, Europe and the alliance must ask themselves how long we are willing to tolerate this type of hybrid warfare ... [and] whether we should consider becoming more active ourselves in this area,” German State Secretary for Defense Florian Hahn told Welt TV last week. Hybrid attacks are nothing new. Russia has in recent years sent assassins to murder political enemies in the U.K., been accused of blowing up arms storage facilities in Central Europe, attempted to destabilize the EU by financing far-right political parties, engaged in social media warfare, and tried to upend elections in countries like Romania and Moldova.
  2. This sums it up: https://x.com/Tendar/status/1994097988730540135 We can be absolutely certain that the Witkoff leak shows only a very tiny portion of the exchange. Witkoff is not experienced in SIGINT. He is a realtor, out of his depth and an easy mark for any intelligence service. There are certainly recordings.
  3. No, but you shop at Krogers, so this is exactly what you should have expected.
  4. This came up with my mom earlier this year, and she was going on about all of the problems with illegals and drugs and trafficking, and I mentioned that for a good 10-15 years, her lawn guy was here illegally, and she had her roof and siding redone by people she probably knew were here illegally (she never checked papers, and they all only took cash), and that if she really cared about the illegals, she'd stop giving them money to fund drug trafficking or whatever Trump claims they do with their money. She hasn't mentioned them even one time around me since then.
  5. We fought on the wrong side of WWII? At least he's being honest that he hates the Jews.
  6. Trump tried to rename the Gulf of Mexico, so watch him try and rename this.
  7. No way RFK Jr ate McDonalds. They do try and cook their food.
  8. They are losing the ability to raise money through exports (they need that cash), they are having problems getting imported high-end stuff (outside of Iran which that will have to slow down at some point, Iran can’t accept that many IOUs), they are having to bail out large industries (railroad), they are having to import artillery shells which is crazy given that the manufacturing is not close to that of a cruise missile, they are losing air defenses faster than they can make them, their power grid is starting to feel the effects. And they just burned through 180,000 men over a few months for a town of formerly 60,000 people. That is something they are unequipped to do again, so not the best use of men, And they can’t just print a shitload of money to try and keep the lights on or the manufacturing going, at least not for the long term. Are they at the point the Germans were in the fall of 1944? Hard to say, but they are well on the way there. Ukraine doesn’t have to devastate Moscow directly, they just have to make it unlivable for the poors and middle-class by way of fuel and electricity shortages,
  9. We had a chill Thanksgiving, probably because we had our “political” discussions over the last few weeks. One, my anti-vaccine in-law started to say some bullshit at our nephew’s party whenever it came up that he had had some vaccines at his yearly checkup the week before. My wife shut her down with “you don’t have kids, you’ve never had to make life-or-death decisions for kids, and you’re never going to have kids, so you keep on deciding not to give your non-existent kids vaccines and leave those of us with kids alone!” The other, a boomer relative started to go on with some MAGA talking points about drugs and illegals in a conversation last weekend that featured neither of those, and I point blank asked him why we needed to invade Venezuela and why didn’t Trump release all of the Epstein files last spring, why do we need an act of Congress to get a chance at them, and why Trump is protecting pedophiles. So yeah, it didn’t come up today. I was a dick, but I figured better to get it out last weekend. I would hope more people would push back against relatives. And both my wife and I never brought up party affiliation or anything close to it, she was sticking to the fact that her relative never had to make such decisions so she has no history from which to pull from, and I made the boomer’s conversation all about Trump (he knows I was a Republican until the early 2000s).
  10. And a Subaru owner. The entire meal will be taken up by a conversation touting the benefits of CrossFit and owning a Subaru and political discussions will not be able to happen.
  11. People are making fun of him, and when people make fun of Trump’s choices, he thinks they are making fun of him (they are) so Kash is out within a few months. Not sure who Trump will replace him with. Maybe add to Duffy’s duties.
  12. Penthouse Letters, 1992 Collection, Volume I Probably Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but The Hobbit would be right there in the mix.
  13. Seems busier than normal. Crazy how you can see where Russia has no air defense. Those hits on those aircraft from a few days ago were precise as hell, and probably will make Russia move some aircraft a little more to the rear.
  14. POKROVSK: Russia once again claims complete control of the city. UKR reports ~50% still under control. Cumulative Russian losses since the main offensive toward Pokrovsk began in earnest in July–August 2024 are staggering. Western and Ukrainian estimates place total Russian casualties (killed, wounded, missing) in the Pokrovsk axis alone at approximately 110,000 men, with well over 18,000 confirmed killed in the last two months of fighting. Hundreds of Russian tanks, armored vehicles, artillery pieces and thousands of drones have also been destroyed, making Pokrovsk the single most expensive operation for Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion.
  15. Interesting timing Ukraine may have hit one of Kadryov’s units. In Chechnya.
  16. Patriot doing what it was designed to do.
  17. Don Bacon is considering it as well.
  18. Are we talking about The William Howard Taft?
  19. re-election. Also, he promised again not to go for world domination or genocide.
  20. Yesterday. People are claiming 30% of the Navy's combat ships are deployed in the Caribbean. I find that hard to believe.
  21. I've bitched in this very thread, and they have toned it down a bit, but they really need to move the religious stuff to optional in terms of Cub Scout advancements. In our pack and troops (and a previous pack I was involved with), we have basically made it one of those things the kids do at home. We don't keep it out of the official language we use at our meetings obviously. Unfortunately, it would probably get shot down for now at the national level, but I have a nephew and niece that would be in scouts right now if it was there (and we tell their parents that our pack doesn't put it in your face, but the language and it being a requirement still turns them off), and I've known others who were turned off by it. I've seen several packs and troops that were majority non-Christian/Jewish, so hopefully leadership will address it at some point. There are a lot of parents that are looking for alternatives to sports and getting the kids out of the house and away from screens.
  22. A friend who is a higher-up at one of the Texas councils pointed to this being a sign that those types are on their way out: Combined Troop Pilot | Scouting America It's a third option (boys troop, girls troop, combined troop). The idea of a combined boys and girls troop is something that those types would have opposed. It doesn't touch the current single-sex troops. On a side note, I do think a lot more LDSers stayed within scouting than people realize, but we are picking up a lot of non-Christian scouts in a lot of packs/troops as well. I can't tell you if scouting as a whole is growing, but the pack and troops I'm involved with are. If I were starting a new troop, it's an option I would consider, especially if said new troop was partnered up with a pack (new or existing) that had both boys and girls).
  23. Some of my best friends I've met in the past 10 years were other scout parents, and I've watched both of my kids grow through it.
×
×
  • Create New...