Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[THE_WIZARD_]

Of course...

[Dr. Strangelove]

I'm curious where the drone was launched from because I thought we were completely out of the former-Soviet republics but maybe not. Does Pakistan allow us to use their airspace for stuff like this?

And it kinda seems like if someone ratted him out, it might've been the Taliban.

[Mike]

We’ll know for sure if there’s an uptick in “humanitarian aid” to Afghanistan.

EDIT: And none of the Stans are going to turn down American $. They’re the Baltic Ave. on Monopoly. You can rent them by the hour.

[Jeff Buchanan]

My take on the killing of Ayman al-Zawahri was that it was a completely black, covert operation long time in the planning - at least a year, probably more. It would take that long, once the guy was geo-located to get the munitions and delivery vehicles in place. The "Reaper" as it is known is big. It has an unclassified range of 1000 miles. Draw a 1000 mile circle around Kabul and both the Gulf of Oman and Qatar are within it. There is a recently updated version of the Reaper that is assumed can be deck launched from an aircraft carrier. I think that's likely.

The Hellfire mounted on the Reaper drone and used in this mission does not carry an explosive war head. It is very precise, arrives at the target being piloted remotely, bore sights it, then expands at a high rate slicing the victim into small pieces. It's called the Ninja Bomb and has been used previously in targeted assassination of high value people.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Pelosi is supposed to land in Taiwan around roughly 10:30 EST. The call sign for the flight she's believed to be on is SPAR19 if you want to try and track it but so many people were trying to use FlightRadar24 that it crashed, heh. FlightAware is working for the moment -- the plane is currently off the southeast coast of the Philippines, taking a pretty circuitous flight from Singapore to Taiwan instead of across the South China Sea.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I'm for the visit but, man, it's risky. We appeased Putin for a decade. Look where that got us. Can't let Xi dictate us fp.

[Da Geezer]

I'm for the visit but, man, it's risky. We appeased Putin for a decade. Look where that got us. Can't let Xi dictate us..

She should have kept it secret until she left Taiwan. At that point, all China could do is bitch about it.

[Obi-Jon]

Agreed. But it probably was also a test to see if the US is officially cowed to the Xi and Chicoms. New world order and all that rot.

[Tom W]

Seems like a lot of unnecessary saber rattling - And, considering that this administration lacks both a global strategy and a spine to back anything up, it seems a bit dangerous.

[Jeff Buchanan]

She should have kept it secret until she left Taiwan. At that point, all China could do is bitch about it.

You could track her flight on Flight Aware software in the public domain. I can guarantee you the Chinese were watching the entire fleet of aircraft that US dignitaries might use. I suppose we could have come up with some elaborate feint but I'm pretty sure there was an element of "in your face" going down there.

I think what the GP is unaware of is how hot the South China Sea is. The US has been regularly challenging rights of navigation with naval combat ships and the Chicoms responding in kind with over-flights and close encounters with Chinese Navy combatant ships.

I'm just guessing but when I was aboard a US Aircraft Carrier transiting the straights of Malaga into the Gulf of Oman with accompanying Frigates and a sub (Battle Group) we were shadowed by two Soviets ships and two subs. A Russian sub surfaced about a quarter mile abeam us once we were in the Gulf. Our guys knew their position all along so no surprise.

This sort of cat and mouse stuff was common in the 80s at the height of the cold war. You may recall a USN Frigate colliding with a merchant ship at night in the Straights. It was an armed Soviet vessel that appeared to be a merchant ship. Different time, different adversary but not new.

BTW, Putin announced today that the US is involved in active warfare against Russia by it's material support of the Zelenski government in Ukraine. This is a step up in terms. Previously, Putin described US involvement in Ukraine as support involving arming a proxy combatant.

TBH, I've been hot and cold on engaging the Russians via NATO forces. I seriously doubt key NATO members would agree to doing that but, man, I think we'd crush them conventionally. The problem is that it is likely that Putin would at the very least, sensing a deteriorating advantage in the battle space, demonstrate the use of a tactical nuke either on the battlefield or somewhere in Siberia, threatening the next one will target Kiev. Restraint is probably the byword right now but the risk of a nuclear exchange is probably higher now than it has been since the mid 80s and certainly close to what went down over the Cuban missile crisis.

In a related note on Ukraine, the Ukrainians are threatening Russian occupation of the Kherson province. They've already blown up 3 key bridges the Russians use for resupply and retaken some outlying villages near Kherson. They done some well documented damage with HIMARs in Russian rear areas. The last two weeks has seen redeployment of Russian forces previously in the Donetsk region to Kherson to beef up their defenses there. Putin wants to hold that key province. In so doing, they've probably abandoned the idea of an assault on Slovyansk and Bhakmut. The number of bombardments throughout the Donbas has slowed.

This reveals two things: The Russians are using up personnel and material reserves through inefficient offensive and defensive operations or through destruction by Ukrainian forces playing wack-a-mole. The Russians lack the resources in combat power to fight on two fronts. It's not like Ukraine is "winning" though. It's a given that Putin is not going to quit until he's achieved his objective and that is the elimination of Ukraine as a sovereign and independent state. He doesn't care how long it takes, how many lives are lost or his political standing inside Russia or for that matter the world. As to the former he's become a well placed and internally defended fascist dictator. He's backed away from any semblance of democratic principals in governing Russia. He's managed to silence his critics and has an effective propaganda program rivaling that of Hitler. Russia is a full-out fascist petro-state with nukes. As to the latter, Putin's cozying up with China and Iran signals the potential for a new set of modern day axis powers who's main goal is to eliminate western ability to dictate global outcomes - the establishment of the new world order. It's really concerning where we're headed with all this.

[Hannibal]

Seems like a lot of unnecessary saber rattling - And, considering that this administration lacks both a global strategy and a spine to back anything up, it seems a bit dangerous.

It's all part of the strategy to strategy to mobilize trunalimunumaprzure.

[THE_WIZARD_]

I'm just glad that we are about to spend a couple more trillion dollars to reduce inflation...makes me feel all fuzzy inside...GO CHAIRMAN BG POOPYPANTS!!!

[Jeff Buchanan]

Here's some stuff I've read in the last couple of days on COVID:

Very little in the way of COVID spread that might overwhelm hospitals has occurred since the recognition of Ba.5 as the dominant Omicron variant globally and in the US. Health agencies world wide with a few exceptions (China and Hong Kong) have implemented any kind of obligatory preventative measures. The net result of this approach? Latest global figures show new infections declining by 4%.

Anecdotally, my wife and I recently traveled through multiple crowded airports, rode on multiple transportation modes, ate at crowded restaurants and generally behaved as we had on pre-pandemic travel. Study of two ...... but if I was going to contract COVID during this 27d European travel spree, via the Ba.5 Omicron variant, I would have caught it. Neither of us did.

We're waaaay better prepared than March of '20 on multiple levels so, that's a consideration. Will we learn from this in dealing with the certainty of new viral diseases going forward? I doubt it.

On reading some of the medical and scientific literature, it is astounding on how well the medical and scientific research community have advanced their knowledge of treatments for ambulatory and hospitalized patients with COVID over the last 28 months or so. That is a very short time frame for doing such things. It is demonstrative of the human ability to innovate under appropriate pressure. What seems to me to be the most disturbing aspect of this rapid growth in knowledge is that governments have failed to optimize it in formulating PH policy. What we've seen is just plain bungling incompetence in both messaging and actual application of policy and it's not just in the US although you would have expected a lot more from our country's leadership.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Coming this November...from the makers of Chairman BG Poopypants...it's COVID the sequel...

[Hannibal]

Jeff — I have seen some people looking back on ventilators and saying that they did more harm than good. Do you agree with this?