Free Republic

One of Biden’s rare moments of good judgment. The banks have enough funny money on their balance sheets. They don’t need an overt Ponzi stacked on top of everything else.

Ukraine ping

Jumper: [Those Russians in Syria were Wagner contractors. With 30,000 Russian headed to Syria in July and August, do you really think gloating about killing 300 Russians in Syria is something to wave in Putin’s face or to taunt Russia over?
I am sure with 30,000 additional Russia troops in Syria (20,000 more in Africa), that the US illegally occupying part of Syria they are going to be repaid. Now that Biden has decided to send targeting data and technicans to attack Russia directly, don’t whine if Russia gives the US a black eye in Syria and runs us out. Then too there is the issue of Israel.

There is also the issue of taking two or three radars in Russia - open source analysis states this was done to allow the fleet in Bahrain open access to launch missiles undetected against Russia. Do you really think that fleet is going to be allowed to sit there with the Russian homeland blinded by US strikes under the guise of Ukraine with their nuclear missiles?

I really think we are headed to a day when Britian wakes up and their North Sea Oil platforms are all disabled or destroyed. The day when France’s remaining colonies’ are under assault by proxies, and the US is overwhelemed rushing the remnants of the survivors in Syria and Iraq home.

The day is coming when NATO sends their troops and Russia brings in Afghanis, Iranians, Syrians, North Koreans, etc.

NATO will economically implode because they thought they could make Russia economically implode - it is actually too funny watching the woke DNC mind try to push it’s BS at the world level.]

---

I was merely addressing the threat of a Russian nuclear first strike. We are in an era where national leaders are nuclear hostages. The metaphorical shotgun pointed at Putin’s head that is attached to his nuclear trigger keeps him from striking NATO with nukes.

Wagner was and is an arm of the Russian government. Its criminal rackets simply do not cover its expenses.

---

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_Group
[On 27 June 2023, President Putin, while declaring an investigation into Wagner Group spending, confirmed that the Russian state fully funded it from the country’s defense budget and state budget. From May 2022 to May 2023 alone, the Russian state paid 86.262 billion RUB to the group, approximately $1 billion.[157] Putin in the past frequently denied any links between Russian state and “Wagner” and insisted it’s a “private military company”.[158][159]

Before that, many Russian and Western observers[who?] believed that the organization does not actually exist as a private military company but is in reality a disguised branch of the Russian MoD that ultimately reports to the Russian government.[160][161][162][163] The company shares bases with the Russian military,[164] is transported by Russian military aircraft,[165][166][167] and uses Russia’s military health care services.[168][169][66] The Russian state is also documented supporting the Wagner Group with passports.[66][170]

The legal status of private military companies in Russia is vague: on one hand, Russian legislation explicitly prohibits “illegal armed formations and mercenary groups”, but at the same time the Russian state does not prosecute numerous PMCs employing Russians and operating in Russia, including but not limited to Wagner. Viktor Ozerov once hinted that this ban does not apply for companies “registered abroad” and in such case “Russia is not legally responsible for anything”. This vagueness was interpreted as a tool that enables the Russian state to selectively allow operations of PMCs it needs, while preventing creation of any PMCs that would create a risk for Putin and at the same time manage plausible deniability for their actions.[171][172]

As result, a number of PMCs appear to have been operating in Russia, and in April 2012 Vladimir Putin, speaking in the State Duma as Russian prime minister, endorsed the idea of setting up PMCs in Russia.[173][174] Several military analysts described Wagner as a “pseudo-private” military company that offers the Russian military establishment certain advantages such as ensuring plausible deniability, public secrecy about Russia’s military operations abroad, as well as about the number of losses.[175][173][176] Thus, Wagner contractors have been described as “ghost soldiers”, due to the Russian government not officially acknowledging them.[177]]

---

The fig leaves is for PR purposes. When Wagner carries out atrocities, they aren’t associated with the Russian government.

But the fact remains - a nuclear attack on the West means not just Putin’s demise, but Russia’s extinction. No people, no country. Russia can recover from conquest and occupation. It certainly survived the Mongols. It will never recover from the physical extermination will follow a nuclear attack on the US. Hence, no Russian nuclear first strike.

Just another gang beef mischaracterized as a mass shooting. The Vegas incident was a mass shooting. This is clearly something else.

Ukraine ping

Phoenix8: [The risk of escalation to a nuclear war is not worth the dubious value of bleeding Russia dry.

Ukraine isn’t part of NATO, if we are going to all die let’s die for something we legally have a duty to protect.]

---

For the longest time it was held that Russians could field thousands of Russian servicemen, kill thousands of US troops, as they did in Korea and Vietnam, but the reverse would trigger a Russian nuclear first strike. Then Trump killed hundreds of Russians in Syria, and **crickets**.

The issue for Putin is that his nuclear trigger is attached to a metaphorical shotgun pointed at his own head. Pull it and the ensuing retaliation kills him and his entire clan. Hitler wasn’t, in principle, against gassing people. Hence Treblinka and Sobibor. Fear of retaliation in kind kept his chemical arsenal untouched, except against civilians who could not retaliate. For much the same reason, Putin is unlikely to authorize a nuclear attack on a nuclear state with good early-warning systems and a robust counterstrike capability - a finely-honed sense of self-preservation.

Trump said he’d send ballistic missile subs to the Baltic Sea if the Russians made any more nuclear threats. Flight time to Moscow? Single digit minutes. The point was to emphasize to Putin that if he nukes the US, he will join his fellow Muscovites in a gigantic funeral pyre.

I’ve never been convinced that any other US president would try to kill every last Russian in exchange for a Russian nuclear strike. Trump is the exception. When he said the US could win in Afghanistan by exterminating its people, it’s clear that the thought had occurred to him as a live option, but the level of offense (3,000 dead on 9/11) made such an option unacceptable to most Americans. But tens of millions of dead Americans? With apologies to Halsey, if that occurs under Trump, Russian will be spoken only in hell.

Most US presidents are New Testament, turn the other cheek leaders. Trump is one of the few exceptions, an old Testament leader. That is why Putin fears Trump.

For Putin, this war is about historical legacy, personal glory. The nuclear extinction of Russia and its relegation to the status of Amalekites, a people killed to the last, known to the world only through the accounts of their mortal enemies, would go against those goals. That is why, as Hitler eschewed chemical attacks against the Allies, while gassing millions of helpless civilians, Putin will not initiate a nuclear attack on NATO - the metaphorical shotgun shell aimed at his own head that is attached to his nuclear trigger.

[He does. Also, he seems to have had a miraculous mental healing just before one of these events. That’s why I’ve become suspicious about his alleged demented state, and that it’s all an act.

Hubby and I call him “Donnie” after an episode of “Just Shoot Me!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7dkaU_qP8k]

---

Biden’s great talent, perhaps learned from his used car salesman dad, is to be a jerk while seeming like a nice guy. Trump’s problem is that when he’s being a jerk, he comes off as a jerk.

I’m impervious to superior presentation, but people who otherwise prefer Trump to Biden have said Trump is a lousy debater. Debates are essentially a duel between rival sales pitches. Biden might be selling hemlock, but he sells it better.

[I read here that Somerville, TN is basically East Memphis and has deteriorated over time to a dangerous condition to be visiting. One poster here described that when they crossed the Mississippi into Memphis, it was pedal to the metal until they were clear of the town for fear of their safety. Anyone here familiar with Memphis? I remember it being mentioned in songs and they made it sound kind of nice and normal....]

---

Demography. In Elvis’s time, blacks were 40%. They are now almost 65%. Blacks are very tolerant of crime. They vote in municipal pols who share their views, Whites flee the subsequent crime and disorder, and it spirals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis,_Tennessee#:~:text=In%201970%2C%20the%20Census%20Bureau,%25%20white%20and%2038.9%25%20black.

It’s completely rational for black voters to vote the way they do. The black population is criminal to an extent incomprehensible to other demographics. As Biden’s White House put it:

---

https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2022/05/09/expanding-economic-opportunity-for-formerly-incarcerated-persons/#:~:text=All%20told%2C%20as%20of%202010,rate%20from%201970%20to%202007.
[All told, as of 2010, nearly 1 in 3 Black men have felony convictions. These astronomical figures are largely due to the nearly four-fold increase in the incarceration rate from 1970 to 2007.]

---

And these are merely the ones with felony convictions. What about the felons who pled down to misdemeanors? What about the felons who got off on technicalities? And the ones who were never caught or charged for lack of evidence?

George Soros has been an enemy of Israel for literally decades.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-16/how-george-soros-threatens-to-make-israel-a-pariah

[When I was young back in the 60’s, it was a rare event for my family to go to a fast food place because of the cost. For trips, my mother made peanut butter sandwiches, bologna sandwiches and Kool-Aid for us which was kept in a cooler.]

---

Fairly universal back then, AFAIK.

This is a healthy development. A good number of these postop kids commit suicide. The new motto might be: “Don’t kill yourself - take your doctor for every penny he’s ever earned”.

[Joe Biden - or rather, his handlers - have the reason they need to pull out of any presidential debates now. Biden can swell up and pontificate that he’s not going to debate a “convicted felon,” and Democrats will line up to bark and clap like trained seals; this works to the Democrats’ advantage, as any debate performance by the clearly-impaired president was bound to be a disaster.]

---

That’s ridiculous. Biden is behind by 4% in the polls. He needs the debates. He also debates better than Trump. Unlike Trump, he preps and sticks to a well-planned and well-rehearsed game plan. Unlike Trump, he comes off as, at worst, an occasionally cranky nice guy. If Trump had a bigger lead, he’d be well-advised not to debate. It certainly worked for him in the primaries.

If a human had done the same thing to the kid, they would have shot the human, too. A weird strain of misanthropy seems to have infected animal lovers of a certain stripe.

[Like most of the others, Siebel slept with Weinstein in order to get ahead in Hollywood. That’s not rape, that’s just being a slut.]

---

A slut sleeps with men for pleasure. These “victims” weren’t sluts - they were high dollar call girls. They got a chance at multi-million dollar paydays.

Sleeping with him gave them an entre into the rarefied world of A list directors and executive producers. The rest was up to them. Like talent, introductions are necessary, but not sufficient to make it in the business. Audiences have to like you. That they flamed out wasn’t Weinstein’s fault.

[One solution I saw on an unrelated post was the AirFuel Bomb the Ruskes are using in Ukraine.]

---

LOL. Or they could wall it off, turn it into a gigantic maximum security prison. Escape from New York with a Southern twang.

[In case you think there’s a time you don’t need to CCW....]

---

Not living in 80% black Jackson MS would probably obviate this need. It is the nation’s murder capital.

https://www.wlbt.com/2023/01/07/analysis-second-straight-year-jacksons-homicide-rate-ranks-highest-us-among-major-cities/

Jackson MS is 80% black.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Mississippi#Demographics

Its population has shrunk by 1/4 since 1980. The family moved in 3 months ago. There’s a level of naivete here that’s frankly unworldly.

The good news is that a state takeover of the local criminal justice system is in the works. The state will basically bypass Jackson’s pro-criminal municipal pols voted in by its black electorate. The bad news? It will take a while for that to filter into safer streets.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/21/us/jackson-mississippi-judicial-system/index.html

MS isn’t El Salvador. The governor can’t just lock up repeat offenders and throw away the key.

[And are they a victim?
Yes!]

---

They weren’t victims. They received a shot at becoming major movie stars. That’s worth a lot more than what even a high dollar call girl gets. Do call girls usually want to sleep with their clients if no consideration (money or services) is received in exchange? No. But that doesn’t make the interaction between call girl and client rape.

These women were paid at levels way above high dollar escorts - with the opportunity to become major movie stars. If they were raped, all call girls should file rape charges. Their customers had a great deal of power over them - they had the money that these call girls needed to put food on the table.

[I thought Texas was no nonsense conservative.]

---

Texas is majority Hispanic. At best, the Hispanic vote is 40% GOP. And Hispanic GOP voters don’t agree with every GOP plank - they tend to be what I call Peronists, welfare state conservatives.

The long-term solution, convert or die, is not possible, hemmed in as it is by both internal and external constraints. Maybe in a free-for-all when US power in the region is non-existent, no outside power replaces it and Israel somehow becomes strong and self-sufficient enough economically and in terms of military hardware. Until then, a really comprehensive lawn-mowing operation is the best it can do.

And the destruction of entire terror clans is a good thing. Zealotry is at least partly hereditary. Part of the reason post-war Germany and Japan were tame? 12% and 5% of their populations were killed off, including the most fanatical soldiers, many of whom never got to pass on their genes.

[I went there for the original old time recipes.
I don’t need arugula, brioche bread, aioli infused mayo etc.....

Ill take the chicken fried steak and mashed like the 1960’s recipe was.

Thank you,]

---

It’s not that no one goes there any more. Or even that people have abandoned it for hyper refined entres. Instead, customers are spreading their dining-out dollars among crowd-pleasing entres that include tacos, pad thais, phos, gyros, pizzas and tapas. Where Cracker Barrel might have gotten 50% of a family’s dining-out budget in world where it competed mostly with me-too joints serving similar food, it might be getting far less today. Its marketing budget has prevented it from sharing the fate of so many diners. But you can bet management is sweating. It doesn’t just compete with ethnic foods for wallet share - it also goes head-to-head with established chains like Waffle House, Denny’s and IHOP, and up-and-coming ones like Texas Roadhouse and Darden subsidiary Longhorn Steakhouse.