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It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war 

US Minister Charles Francis Adams to British Foreign Minister Lord John Russell on the construction of Confederate Ships in England 1863

This story leaped out at me:

The Kremlin is saying this was a drone strike to hit Putin and are apparently yelling “Terrorism”. If this was a drone strike by the Ukraine there are plenty of important implications that should scare the hell out of everyone:

  1. While 200 years ago this might have been considered bad form when two countries are at war it is a legitimate target so the cry of “terrorism” is BS.
  2. If the Kremlin in general and Putin in particular are legitimate targets of war then by definition if the Russians launch drones vs the Ukrainian parliament in general and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in particular those would also be considered legitimate attacks on legitimate targets of war.
  3. Given that both Europe and the US are supplying Ukraine with arms any of those shipments would become legitimate targets of Drone or any other type of strikes by Russia as soon as they enter the war zone, that is Ukraine.
  4. This suggests that any US or European pol who enters Ukraine does so at their own risk and may in fact be considered legitimate targets of a drone strike by Russia if they are from a country supplying arms to Ukraine.
  5. What is to stop Russia from “outsourcing” such attacks by commissioning individuals to conduct such attacks in the name of Russia basically “privateering”.

And if that doesn’t scare you let’s take the next logical step:

  1. What is to stop Russia from declaring a “blockade” of Ukraine and thus making shipments of war materials legitimate targets of war?
  2. If a ship is transporting arms to the Ukraine, what is to stop Russia from claiming the contents of that ship contraband of war and either seizing it on the high seas or sinking it as a legitimate target of war?
  3. What is to stop Russia from either directly or using the “Privateering” example to target
    • arms shipments to Ukraine
    • infastructure used to transport arms shipments to Ukraine
    • leaders or parliaments of nations that vote to provide arms shipments to Ukraine

Nobody seems to be considering these possibilities all of which have the potential to not just drag us into war with Russia but to begin World War 3.

And for those fools who have not bothered to study history let’s remind everyone of what was going on for months before Japan Bombed Pearl Harbor.

All of this is not only very possible but becomes more so by the day and if it does come then no amount of clever remarks or tut tuts by folks on Twitter are going to stop it.

Given that our nation is bleeding recruits faster than Bud Light is bleeding customers the only logical and sensible move is for us to do all we can to stop this war and broker a peace because the longer it goes on the more likely those who are making a buck off the fighting will end up dragging us into a shooting war that we are not equipped nor motivated to win and against a nuclear power no less and believe me this administration and those who are getting their 10% will continue to move in that direction as long as they see cash coming their way without worrying about the cost.

I call these people “shot-committed”, a play on “pot-committed” in poker — a situation where you have too much money in the pot to fold, even if you know you’re behind.

Simulation Commander in comments:

I read this piece On Friendship With Self Righteous Cowards concerning those who still three years will not only not admit they were wrong about the COVID shots but still look down upon those who were right.

The piece was very good but the comments were where the action was to wit (all spelling retained):

Its sad. My pulmonary doctor brother in law has never reached out, Apologized or acknowledged anything…even after they required/demanded myself and my unvaxxed family take tests prior to our gathering for Christmas only for they themselves to all come down ill with covid that following February after their 3 plus shots. I honestly I dont ignore them…we pretend nothing happened but they are sort of dead to me now in a general sense…I feel nothing for them…ambivalent at best if only for the sake of my in laws and keeping the peace. They want us to visit but I can not bring myself to bother …plus it’s San Fran which is not real inviting either. They were willing to make our ailing in laws be alone for every holiday and then insisted on making us feel like dirty disease spreaders even when science and common sense contradicted this plainly and that in my opinion became clear very early on..my family had covid in early 2021 prior to vax so our risk of spread was at par with vaxxed. They are both doctors as well….and my brother in law even pushed us to vax our healthy 16 year old who had already had covid. I can’t. They were supposed to be smart but I lost all respect for doctors and the medical community after this. I am a CPA and could follow the freaking logic better than them….totally blind to their own politically driven group think. Yeah I can’t really go back…the emperor has no clothes. (Reference to a childhood fairy-tale)

I’m reminded of the hoops that my wife had to jump through including at one point getting a job in another state turning a 15 min drive to work to a 45 minute drive over her request for a religious exemption before she was able to find a place that accepted her religious exemption just before a deadline that not only required the shot but required all boosters if you got the shot.

It reminded me of this commentator:

My un-jabbed son was banished from his NYC office in Dec 2021 by government decree because he was un-jabbed. He was exiled to New Jersey. When the jab mandate was lifted, his NYC office asked when he would return. He said “never” because he found NJ to be a better place to work – no mandate and a new group of co-workers who didn’t recoil when he entered a room. Walking away can be the best choice in matters of principle.

We were lucky in one sense, neither me nor my retired brothers, nor my sons got the shot. My wife and oldest son got religious exemptions and my youngest and I both worked places where it was not required. This created a social circle, furthermore while at my church the people I shared daily mass people were a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated the judgement that others faced it not surface.

But for others the denial is strong to wit:

Had this text exchange with friends last week. Context was RFJ Jr. being correct on Covid shots.

Friend: 10X more people would have died without the shots. Vaccines are the new modern science.

Me: Who here got the shot and still caught Covid?

Friend 2: Vax is not preventative. Purpose is to mitigate symptoms.

Friend: Shorten illness and contagion so less are exposed (with a link to Harvard article).

Friend: But anti-vaxxers only care about themselves not humanity.

Me (feeling like I was in a 2021 time warp): Remind me why we had vax mandates. It was to prevent us from killing Grandma. Fauci told us if we got the shot we would not catch it and not spread it.

Friend: False.

Me: Why did we have mandates then?

Friend: We did not have mandates.

Of course, he made the shot mandatory for his employees.

I was incredulous that after everyone in the group caught Covid, they still felt this way about the shot, including the fellow R in the group (Friend 2).

The real question to many is: Why don’t they just take the “L” and move on? I think Ruth :

I haven’t gotten an apology or even an ACKNOWLEDGMENT that the shots didn’t work. They still say it prevented you from having a bad case and dying🙄. I think it’s PRIDE. people cannot admit they were wrong because then they would have to face the fact the government (which they all trust) lied to them. And that would open up a entire can of worms that they cannot deal with. That’s a biggy, my government lies!😳

And the woman who replied to her

Yes, and admitting the government lied to you whilst simultaneously holding a worldview where total government control will bring about equity and utopia means letting go of said worldview = total psychic collapse. So you see, you’ll be waiting a long time for an apology.

have it down pat.

It’s like being in Germany after the war we’re all living in a revival of Judgement at Nuremburg:

Mrs. Bertholt: I saw Mr. Perkins today. He told me they’d showed those pictures in the courtroom. Col. Lawson’s favorite pictures. He drags them out at any pretext, doesn’t he? Col. Lawson’s private chamber of horrors. Is that what you think we are? Do you think we knew of those things? Do you think we wanted to murder women and children? Do you believe that? Do you?

Judge Dan Haywood: Mrs. Bertholt, I don’t know what to believe.

Mrs. Bertholt: Good God. We’re sitting here drinking. How could you think that we knew? We did not know. We did not know!

Judge Dan Haywood: As far as I can make out, no one in this country knew.

The moment they admit they were wrong is the moment they have to accept responsibility and see themselves in the light of truth. I’ll close with the closing exchange from Judgement at Nuremburg:

Ernst Janning: Judge Haywood… the reason I asked you to come: Those people, those millions of people… I never knew it would come to that. You *must* believe it, *You must* believe it!

Judge Dan Haywood: Herr Janning, it “came to that” the *first time* you sentenced a man to death you *knew* to be innocent.

Remember if you want someone included in next month’s Calendar you can leave the name as a comment to this post.

And of course if you want the blank one so you can fill in the names you want that’s here

I’ve noted in the past that the biggest problem for Anheuser Busch is that it’s very very easy to boycott Bud Light so if they want to stop the bleeding in the US they will have to take actual pro-active action to do so.

Everyone knows this but nobody knows this more than the folks at the LGBTQ community so called “human rights campaign” who realize that their ability to push their agenda through cooperate intimidation can come to a screeching halt if companies decide that the potential cost of keeping the professional protester class appeased is outweighed by the cost to the bottom line, particularly for companies where there are easy alternatives to their product available.

So they are keeping the pressure on Anheuser Bush not only to just stay silent on the matter but to double down:

The Human Rights Campaign is calling on Anheuser-Busch, the maker of Bud Light, to publicly reaffirm its support for the transgender community following weeks of right-wing pushback over the brewing company’s recent partnership with transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

In a letter sent this week to Anheuser-Busch’s head of human resources, Jay Brown, a senior vice president at the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, slammed the company’s response to the controversy as insufficient and cowardly.

“In this moment, it is absolutely critical for Anheuser-Busch to stand in solidarity with Dylan and the trans community,” reads the April 26 letter obtained by The Hill.

So far Anheuser Busch has declined to meet with these folks as they understand how it would be received by a customer base already walking away. The real danger for the Bud folks is that one people start getting used to buying another brand it becomes easier for them to continue to do so, that’s marketing 101.

It all comes down to this: Is the potential permanent damage the Mulvaney business has caused greater than the damage the HRC folks can do, or to put it another way. Are the HRC crowd Anheuser Bush drinkers in general and/or Bud Light drinkers in particular?

If the answer is “yes” then Anheuser Bush will likely at best wait this out and take the hit they’ve gotten or at worse cave and risk a 2nd drop.

If the answer is “no” and I suspect it is, then our best move is to keep the pressure on because many other companies are watching to see how this plays out.

Those companies are the real target of the HRC letter and those companies are the reason why we need to dramatically demonstrate that caving has a price and until they are more scared of us then they are of them, nothing will change.