Ukraine (via Reddit - NSFW)

Isn't there something in the Russian manual that says even if it's obvious the guy is dead, you should take a moment to get his dog tag or whatever?

To be clear, I don't want in on these fights, but if I did, I sure as hell wouldn't want any of these guys "on my side".

Today's Tweet

And today's Trae 

On conspiracy theories pic.twitter.com/iF6IWVlE8h

— ‏ًً (@politicalplayer) January 25, 2023

Overheard

Mass shootings in the US

• 2014: 273
• 2015: 336
• 2016: 383
• 2017: 348
• 2018: 336
• 2019: 417
• 2020: 610
• 2021: 690
• 2022: 647

In the first three weeks of 2023: 39

We don't have to live like this.

No other country on the planet lives like this.

Again?

Jesus H Fuq. Pretty goddamned sloppy.

Can we please stop fucking up the whole State Secrets thing?

It has to be obvious now that several somebodies in various places at various levels of government either aren't paying attention, or are actively fucking with things they're not allowed to fuck with.

Classified Documents Found at Pence’s Home in Indiana

The documents were “inadvertently boxed and transported” to the former vice president’s home at the end of the Trump administration, Mr. Pence’s representative wrote in a letter to the National Archives.

Aides to former Vice President Mike Pence found a small number of documents with classified markings at his home in Indiana during a search last week, according to an adviser to Mr. Pence.

The documents were “inadvertently boxed and transported” to Mr. Pence’s home at the end of President Donald J. Trump’s administration, Greg Jacob, Mr. Pence’s representative for dealing with records related to the presidency, wrote in a letter to the National Archives.

The letter, dated Jan. 18, 2023, said that the former vice president was unaware of the existence of the documents and reiterated that he took seriously the handling of classified materials and wanted to help.

Mr. Jacob wrote that Mr. Pence relied on an outside lawyer after classified documents were found in recent days at the residence and former private office of President Biden. Mr. Jacob also said the lawyer could not specify anything more about the documents because the lawyer had stopped looking once it was clear the documents had classified markings.

The disclosure adds more questions about how classified material is handled at the top levels of government at a moment when Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are both subjects of special counsel investigations on the matter.

Mr. Trump has been under federal investigation for nearly a year for how hundreds of documents with classified markings, as well as hundreds of pages of presidential records, wound up at his private club and residence, Mar-a-Lago.

Mr. Trump resisted the urging of aides to give boxes of documents with unknown contents to the National Archives. When he eventually turned over 15 boxes, archives officials found hundreds of pages with classified markings. Mr. Trump later faced a grand jury subpoena to turn over any remaining documents, and one of his lawyers wrote a statement saying everything had been turned over. When investigators found evidence that was not the case, the F.B.I. searched his club in August.

Mr. Biden, by contrast, has cooperated since the discovery of documents at his nonprofit offices and then his home. Mr. Jacob, who was Mr. Pence’s general counsel while he was vice president, stressed cooperation in the letter to the National Archives.

Still, aides to Mr. Pence had previously said they were confident that the vice president had not retained any classified documents after he left office.

Doomsday

It's 90 seconds til midnight

Reminder

COVID-19 Update

Even though numbers are "pretty low" right now, in the time since Jan 2020, we've averaged more than 1,000 dead Americans every day for 3 years.

Utah doctor charged with destroying COVID-19 vaccines, giving fake shots to children at their parents' request

Dr. Michael Kirk Moore, three others accused of administering bogus CDC vaccine cards in exchange for $50 'donations'

A Utah plastic surgeon has been accused of destroying COVID-19 vaccines -- and giving saline shots to children upon their parents’ request – as part of an alleged scheme to peddle fraudulent CDC cards.

Dr. Michael Kirk Moore Jr., 58, of Salt Lake County, Utah, was indicted by a federal grand jury this month on charges alleging he disposed of more than $28,000 worth of COVID-19 vaccines and fraudulently completed and distributed hundreds of vaccination record cards.

Prosecutors say Moore and his three co-defendants, including his neighbor, allegedly ran a scheme Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah Inc. to "defraud the United States and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)."

The doctor and co-defendants Kari Dee Burgoyne, 52, Kristin Jackson Andersen, 59, and Sandra Flores, 31, destroyed at least $28,028.50 worth of government-provided COVID-19 vaccines and distributed at least 1,937 doses’ worth of fraudulently completed vaccination record cards to others in exchange for either direct cash payments or required "donations" to a specified charitable organization, without administering a COVID-19 vaccine to the card recipient, U.S. Attorney Trina A. Higgins for the District of Utah announced on Wednesday.

As charged in court documents, the defendants also allegedly administered saline shots to minors – at the request of their parents – so children would think they were receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.

The indictment, obtained by Fox News Digital Sunday, says Moore, a then-board-certified surgeon, and his neighbor, Andersen, belong to a secret organization that aims to "‘liberate’ the medical profession from government and industry conflicts of interest." They joined forces with Burgoyne, the office manager, and Flores, the receptionist, to pour the legitimate vaccines down the drain with syringes, according to the indictment. They allegedly charged a $50 "donation" per fake vaccination card.

The American Board of Plastic Surgery tells Fox News Digital that Moore is no longer certified as of Dec. 31.

"By allegedly falsifying vaccine cards and administering saline shots to children instead of COVID-19 vaccines, not only did this provider endanger the health and well-being of a vulnerable population but also undermined public trust and the integrity of federal health care programs," Curt L. Muller, Special Agent in Charge with the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Inspector General, said in a statement. "HHS-OIG remains committed to working with our law enforcement partners to hold accountable bad actors who attempt to illegally profit from the pandemic."

"This defendant allegedly used his medical profession to administer bogus vaccines to unsuspecting people, to include children falsifying a sense of security," Acting Special Agent in Charge Chris Miller, HSI Las Vegas added. "HSI remains committed to working with our partners to bring those who seek to take advantage of the pandemic to deliberately harm and deceive others for their own profit to justice."

The quartet was indicted by a federal grand jury on Jan. 11.

Moore, his medical corporation, and the three co-defendants are charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to convert, sell, convey, and dispose of government property; and conversion, sale, conveyance, and disposal of government property and aiding and abetting.

Today's Oxymoron

"Congressional ethics"

Politics Girl - Leigh McGowan

The Office of Congressional Ethics. And let's not be too flippant about this - we've got problems.

More Ukraine

One of the things humans fear most is being forgotten - thinking we don't count for much when we're alive, and that our passing will mean little to anyone. All we have is a few close friends and family to carry on when we're dead and gone.

There's more than just a possibility that lots of Russians are being forgotten - deprived even of the tiny solace that someone will know of their passing and will mourn them - as they're casually tossed into the meat grinder in eastern Ukraine by a regime in the Kremlin that obviously doesn't give one empty fuck about them.

In Russia, the third wave of recruitment of prisoners to participate in the war against Ukraine has already begun.

Of the first thousand prisoners recruited by the Wagner Group to participate in the war against Ukraine, only 20 returned home. This was stated by the head of the public organization "Seated Russia" Olga Romanova in an interview with the publication "Current Time" .

According to her, the third wave of recruitment of prisoners into the "Wagner group" is now underway in Russia. The first wave came out of the prisons of central Russia from June 26 to September 21, the second - in the Urals and the Far East from September 21 to the end of December. Now the third one has begun, which already covers the whole country, including Chechnya.

“Naturally, for Prigozhin there is also a great convenience in the fact that there is actually no extradition from Chechnya. There he can do some things that he cannot do in the Ryazan region, in the Smolensk region or somewhere else. This is actually extraterritorial education. Therefore, recruitment began in Chechen prisons,” Romanova said.

"I think that they do not count the number of dead - nothing. I think there is no one there. But let's look at the results of the first recruitment. In the very first days of July, about a thousand people were recruited from the Leningrad and Novgorod regions in the zones, but returned 20. Look at the statistics,” she said.

Participation of Russian prisoners in the war against Ukraine

Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin personally traveled to Russian prisons and recruited prisoners into his private army, known as the "Wagner Group" or "PMC Wagner". According to experts , the Wagnerites, among whom the majority are former prisoners, may make up about a quarter of all Russian forces in Ukraine.

At the front, the "Wagner Group" became famous primarily for the fact that it does not spare its soldiers at all and sends them into suicidal attacks for the sake of minimal progress.

The dead Wagnerites are transported around Russia by ordinary truckers, after which they are buried "without too much noise . "

We hear very little about the casualty numbers on either side because governments don't want to give out any information about its wars that it doesn't absolutely have to give out, but the Russians seem to be taking the opportunity to ignore their own losses in order to feel a bit less embarrassed by this latest colossal fuckup in a lengthening series of colossal fuckups.

Ukraine

I'm going on some very loose numbers because it's all so fucking big now, nobody really knows what the numbers actually are, but it seems we're getting a lot of bang for our buck sending aid to Ukraine.

Looking at it from the Geopolitics standpoint, it's an excellent investment.

We should keep in mind that geopolitics is a global poker game where everybody's cheating, everybody knows everybody's cheating, and nobody's playing with their own money. Seeing everything through that filter tends to give us the kind of skewed perspective that's led us to make some unbelievably stoopid decisions.

So far, I think what we're doing in Ukraine is beyond the simple calculus of "what's in it for me", and goes to a place where we're actually thinking in broader terms, and considering a lot more than just waiting for it to play out and then making a deal with the conqueror.

We still have to look at the "business" aspects, though.

We've spent about $50B, which is about 5% of the total US defense budget. And that's a shitload of money that I'd rather spend on practically anything other than war, but this is what we've got so this is what we have to deal with.

The good news is that we get to draw down some excess stocks of equipment, weapons and ammo. Most of that stock is nearing its expiration date, and will be replaced with newer and better stuff. Plus, we get to train the Ukrainians in NATO tactics and test the whole shebang to see if it works the way we've been thinking it'd work. (so far so good)

"The Bottom Line" = each American family is spending about one dollar a day on Ukraine out of a total of 20 dollars we all spend every day on things that blow shit up.

That ain't cheap, but considering the total aid package is less than 0.25% of US GDP, we're getting a pretty good deal.

Of course, let's always be mindful, and never get too casual in our use of words like "good" when we're talking about the bloody truth of war.

"Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all."