COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

[mkm5]

Here's an interesting up north current events story; my younger brother and I went to the Fred Bear store in Grayling Michigan around 50 years ago, and we both got a long bow and arrows, we practiced with them target shooting for years.

Last week, my brother was driving a long road trip back up north, and the tire pressure monitor showed a fast leak. He pulled off the highway in Grayling to the tire shop to check it out, right across from the Fred Bear statue recently placed there.

The mechanic pulled out a nearly entirely intact indian arrowhead from the tire! Lots of counties here excavate beach sand for dumping on the icy winter roads, but what a coincidence!

Anyway, we're supposed to get another 12-16" of snow here tonight, should be interesting!

Here's crazy uncle Ted, aka the Motor City Madman:

https://youtu.be/gyNYzcXAPf4?si=GvE0totv4RUBL2oc

Here's an old video interview of Fred, hope you enjoy it!:

https://youtu.be/JEaaESlTJog?si=ochTcXXHF7JF0cur

[Jason Donaldson]

I'm not saying you're not doing well, but rather how much more could you give of yourself if the government didn't take so much from you and waste it.

It is very hard to overestimate the importance of this statement.

Case in point, from just last week up here:

Charities prepare to scale back, rely more on donations without COVID relief | Politics | wkow.com

Wisconsin charities are turning to asking the public for more help this holiday season as federal pandemic aid, which once allowed food banks and homelessness service providers to offer more help, runs dry.

As if those multiple levels of bureaucracy don't inherently siphon off paychecks and operation expenses all the way up and all the way back down...

Not to mention the question of how much more effective can face-to-face relationships be at guiding the particulars of actually HELPING someone vs. throwing unaccountable money in their general direction from 900 miles away? Perhaps even more important: what degree of human beings' dignity (for ALL parties) is either preserved or destroyed between individual interactions centered on personal senses of love, duty, and gratitude vs. it all being outsourced and forced into to an administrative bureaucracy and faceless automation devoid of interaction?

[Johnsonville]

Can anyone explain the difference in real terms between Israel's "buffer zone" and Russia's "Invasion"?

Also, please keep me updated as to which organisations are in fact the "terrorists" and which ones are "allies" of the West. Hamas are big fans of the new guys in Syria, apparently. Those Al-Qaeda guys.

Didn’t Russia try to take the capital of Ukraine? That sounds different than a buffer zone to me

[wal]

I'm not saying you're not doing well, but rather how much more could you give of yourself if the government didn't take so much from you and waste it.

I have been in a state emergency service for about 11 years as a volunteer as I said before, but about 2 years ago the authority decided to go down the diversity and all inclusive road and appointed folk to make sure gay folk and various ethnic folk were given priority in employment allowing muslims to wear religious garb in the the standard uniform colors, openly promoted gay culture within the organization and requested folk such as I to participate in gay parades and wear a special badge supporting gays, painted various emergency vehicle's in rainbow colors, allowed them to put up the gay flag in our offices and so forth. That is were this state government wasted my good intention over the years and burnt up more of my enthusiasm to commit more time to this type of volunteer work if you get what I mean.

[smokeyjones]

Can anyone explain the difference in real terms between Israel's "buffer zone" and Russia's "Invasion"?

The buffer zone already existed. It's been extended yeah. Could be Israel seizing an opportunity to invade more of the Middle East. Could be them preemptively removing Iranian and Russian weapons from the hands of an unstable new neighbor. Could be a bit of both. At the very least, they have the context of multiple countries attacking them over the last year and a bit.

Vs Russia. Where Putin has not only yapped on live TV that his motivation is the fact that Ukraine was historically, and his eyes, still is part of Russia.

But - also operates on the paradox that the West was simultaneously hungry for a war with a 300 million+ population, nuclear superpower. And were actively preparing to use Ukraine as a conduit to strike Russia at some point in the foreseeable future. Yet, also, that Europe had been neglecting military spending for decades. That they'd become a bunch of soft, woke bitches. That Kyiv, the apparent staging area for an imminent attack on Russia. Would fall within a week. That openly threatening to Nuke the West would give them the deterrent to invade Ukraine with no real retaliation. Aka Schrodinger's mutually assured destruction

[Matt Jackson]

The buffer zone already existed. It's been extended yeah. Could be Israel seizing an opportunity to invade more of the Middle East. Could be them preemptively removing Iranian and Russian weapons from the hands of an unstable new neighbor.

You will be aware of the "Clean Break" report presented to Netanyahu in 1996.

Putin isn't alone with his historical ambitions. While the idea of pursuing this "Greater Israel" is mocked and dismissed as a conspiracy theory by people defending the Israeli government, the IDF themselves are wearing the patch on their arms at the moment.

[IlPrincipeBrutto]

Vs Russia. Where Putin has not only yapped on live TV that his motivation is the fact that Ukraine was historically, and his eyes, still is part of Russia.

That's nothing; some people demand free rein over a specific piece of land because allegedly they inhabited it about 2000 years ago.

IPB

[Mark Rippetoe]

Most amazing thing you'll see today: https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status...80996028362828

DHS Whistleblower reports Biden and Mayorkas are selling off border wall construction materials before Trump takes office.

Hard to imagine bigger pieces of shit than the Current Administration.

President Joe Biden commutes sentences for two of Chicago area’s most notorious fraudsters

[Bluefan75]

As if those multiple levels of bureaucracy don't inherently siphon off paychecks and operation expenses all the way up and all the way back down...

Up here in Canada, friends of ours have a son who started high school, and his school was just starting a curling team. We thought we would look into making a donation to help the curling team (need to buy uniforms, etc.). Turns out that the "process" is not so simple as "here we would like to give this to be used for your curling team." You must give the donation to the school board, who forwards it to the school, where a suit or suits decide where the money "could best be used." Before we got an official explanation as to the policy, but were simply told we couldn't donate directly to the team, my wife was saying "yeah it probably goes through some levels and everyone grabs a piece for themselves."

We did not donate there and told them why. We did have the option of donating equipment, as it cannot be "handled" in the same way, but frankly, to hell with them. We'll help the kid out directly if need be.

[Mark Rippetoe]

An excellent column by VDH: The Evaporation of the Obama Mystique - VDH’s Blade of Perseus

The Obamas ignored or withheld from the public their own firsthand knowledge that Biden was suffering from signs of dementia.

Instead, they found Biden’s cognitive decline and his former concocted reputation as workingman’s Joe useful as a veneer for a veritable Obama third-term, “phone it in” administration. Or as wistful Obama once conditioned his dream of a third term—”If I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a front man or front woman, and they had an earpiece in.”

The Obamaites then got their wish for four years of enacted hard-left directives that they could only have dreamed of while in actual power.

But their radical menu since 2021 had divided and nearly wrecked the nation—hyperinflation, 12 million illegal aliens, a ruined border, spiraling crime, a shattered foreign policy of appeasement, the popular backlash against DEI/Woke/trans chauvinism, partisan lawfare, and weaponization of the government.

And the ruling radicalism beneath the Biden facade eventually cost the Democrats nearly everything—the presidency, the House, and the Senate.