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It's not like he banned K-Y Jelly, Mr.concerned about Biden's behind. Reaching around to a more topical area of concern did you notice, in your excitement, how masterfully Biden played Putin in the lead up to the Russian invasion? Instead of constantly thinking that guys nuts you might have noticed that when everyone else was buying Putins legerdemain Biden consistently stated that the Russians were in fact going to attack. By doing so he denied Putin his own Überfall auf den Sender Gleiwitz pretense and coalesced international opinion against Putin at the get go. So, in that sense he most definitely took Putin from behind.

Well, no. Putin didn’t invade Ukraine just for a domestic message, he did it for (what he thinks are) legitimate strategic and economic objectives. Now the war is going badly he still doesn’t need a distraction for the populace because he has instead used it as cover for going Full Soviet on state control of the media. On the flip side, as the world turns against him Ukraine is even more strategically valuable as (in his paranoid fantasies) a buffer against invasion, and the huge oil and gas reserves even more crucial to their economy as the only thing left they’re able to sell.

That's a pretty low bar! But I agree. I'd take his opinion of Kamala Harris about as seriously as I'd take BrentHutch's.

Not the first time this has happened. Back during the late 1990s, I remember one know drug dealer accusing a TI of selling drugs. Yes, the accusee had done prison time for drug-related crimes, but that was years earlier and I had not seen him do any recreational drugs (stronger than alcohol) during the 2 or 3 years that I knew him. "Mr. Kettle, may I introduce you to Mr. Pot?"

Yep. Been that way for a long long time. For example, The RAF recognizes seven aircrew personnel who were from the United States as having taken part in the Battle of Britain. American citizens were prohibited from serving under the various U.S. Neutrality Acts: if an American citizen had defied the neutrality laws, there was a risk of losing their citizenship and imprisonment.

It's not 2 grand a day for joining their legion. It's a normal military base pay. They have requirements. If you're not prior service (and have documentation) or law enforcement then they really don't want you and are communicating that. I understand this violates your core, but there are people that believe in helping to stop what Russia is doing.

Texas bar seeks disciplinary action against Trump’s ‘Kraken’ ex-lawyer Sidney Powell Another feel-good story. :-)

It's a philosophical position. The Russians hire the Wagner Group, the Ukrainians hire others. If I were the Ukrainians I'd hire whoever I could afford. I simply think coming up with a cutesy name like "mercs" is slippery. We're normalizing a terrible thing:the outsourcing of the bloody end of the stick.

Cooper probably ordered from a drink menu like this.. he had the option of a beer but picked Bourbon. What does that indicate about Cooper. back in 1971 Bourbon was the #2 hard liquor drink.. This is the Northwest inflight drink menu.. several years earlier. There are many Bourbons available and several soft drinks including 7up.. no straight soda

What are you talking about? Belarus has a Russian puppet government. Russia literally invaded Ukraine through Belarus. The convoy attempting to reach Kyiv was staged out of Belarus. To most intents and purposes Belarus is already part of Russia.

Lots of cheap shots lately.

FBI part 68 is up.. https://vault.fbi.gov/D-B-Cooper /d.b.-cooper-part-68-of-68/view

It seems that politicians like to talk and they keep on talking even when they have nothing to say and end up saying things that make no sense. They don't seem to know when to stop talking.

You think he would stop at Ukraine?

Nothing we do here will change the outcome. The only reason anyone should post here is because they enjoy doing so. In terms of outcomes I see a few options: 1) Putin wins, kills Zelensky, takes over the Ukraine government, announces he has rid Ukraine of the Nazi threat and sits back to bask in his victory. The rest of the world complains but does nothing. In the US, outrage is the order of the day until Kim Kardashian announces she is marrying Kate McKinnon, and there's a new thing to be outraged about. 2) Putin wins, misses Zelensky, takes over the government, announces victory. The rebellion grows and continues to be fed by European and US efforts. Thousands, then tens of thousands of Russian soldiers die. At home Russian mothers speak via clandestine recordings about how much they hate Putin. Russian people continue to lose infrastructure as the world's infrastructure providers shut them down. Putin then (within a few years) announces that he has won, withdraws all his troops, Zelensky retakes power, things return to more or less normal. 3) Putin loses; he cannot maintain the troop levels in the Ukraine against increasing rebel attacks and economic problems at home. He withdraws. 4) Putin is losing and he decides to make a dramatic move to "end the war and save civilians." It might be firebombing a city, it might be a low-yield nuclear device in Kiev - but whatever it is it will be an attempt at "shock and awe" to get the Ukranians to stop fighting. The neighboring countries escalate to open resistance out of fear that he will not stop at Ukraine. 2 is, I think, the most likely. 4 is becoming more likely by the day, which is scary.

Series of tweets from a PolSci professor explaining the relationship between Putin and the toadies who keep him in power. The situation she describes is not what I thought it was.

More evidence Cossey got Cooper's chutes wrong.. He either lied or assumed. His first and consistent description of the chute Cooper took was sage green nylon container and sage green nylon harness model NB6. Cossey's description. Cossey describes Cooper's chute. He claims he actually made it for Hayden. Later, he claimed he never heard of Hayden and it was his personally chute. That doesn't match what Hayden claimed.. Cossey re-packed the chute but Hayden bought it at a surplus shop. He said the pilot chute was type A-3 "soft top".. Anybody know what a pilot chute type A-3 "soft top" is? Here, the FBI states Cooper's chute was olive drab container and tan cotton harness. This description is consistent in FBI files and predates Cossey's initial description. Further, Cossey explains the dummy chute, he cut it in half, sewed it together and no mention of daisy chaining. Cossey said he had the serial numbers in his records but he never produced them.. My conclusion is Cossey initially assumed the chute was his sage nylon/sage nylon NB6 chute then lied about it to cover up his error. For the chutes, Cossey was the go to for the FBI and to admit he was wrong would have undermined the case and completely discredited Cossey. There was never any corroboration for Cossey's description. That means the FBI was looking for the wrong chute and potentially eliminated chutes found that may have been Cooper's.

As this drags on, I am starting to think the Russian conventional military is a bit of a paper tiger. The much reported “40 mile convoy” is stalled and likely to remain so as it runs out of fuel, food, water, maintenance… all the while being harried by Ukrainian forces. In the south they simply don’t have the manpower to occupy a belligerent populous. Personal and weapons continue to flood into Ukraine while the Russian forces continue to be attrited by a motivated and increasingly well supplied insurgency.

You worked with people whose cars were vandalised in Singapore in the early ‘90s (allegedly) by a kid whose subsequent caning was an international incident? Of course you did. We’re they your Ukrainian colleagues who were working with you on an Asian project at just the time this happened? Jesus, it’s like talking to Jay from The Inbetweeners.