Voltaire

Congrats Don. That's a lethal enemy in need of defeat.

Hamas isn't going to be wiped out in 48 hours. That's nasty urban combat in a rats nest full of booby traps, bunkers, and secret tunnels. It's about the worst combat duty imaginable. Edit: storming the beach at Normandy is teh worst combat duty imaginable... this is less unpleasant but still hugely undesireable.

Also our "Liberals are being protected by MikeFFT" thread has been deleted. Maybe good riddance.

Maybe so. Justin talks nukes all the time, it doesn't have to be that like you say. It does seem to me that if something were to happen from a destabilizing hostile force, the situation is ripest right now to get the most mileage out of carrying it out for reasons I made in my last post.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and we don't have that. Don't you think that if some bad actor had smuggled a bomb into the US, right now would be the ideal time to detonate it? You got Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, and potentially China/Taiwan going on. Domestically things are a mess and coming apart. You have an unpopular feeble president dealing with impeachment, no House Speaker, and a major party nominee under political investigations, no trust in the media or government, and blue and red America deeply hating each other.

Good luck to him then. Dealing with the various factions makes that majority is hard to lead.

We were fed two totally different stories about the effectiveness or not of the vaccine and I never did figure it out. When I returned to the US, I was going to get the Novavax vaccine since it was developed using standard method rather than the controversial mRNA method. But my wife didn't want it, the kids didn't need it and I didn't have a car. By the time I got a car, I just stopped caring; COVID has been pretty much been a non-factor since I got back and each strand gets milder and milder. When Peter Hotez refused to debate RFK about it, that spoke volumes about where the truth likely lies but who knows. Anyway, we've got a bajillion page thread about that. This thread was supposed to be about the lab leak theory.

If Zach Wilson was an Islamic terrorist.

He can run but that's where it ends. California will never vote Republican again in our lifetimes.

Wordle 844 4/6 🟩 🟩🟨 🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Meh. Swung and missed on three, learned almost nothing, got it on four.

It was almost surely accidental. Chinese lab workers taking shortcuts with lax safety protocols would not surprise me. In China, when things go screwy, the first thing to do is cover it up and don't tell your boss. If the boss finds out, holy hell, and her first response is to not let her ("her" because the top researcher is a woman) boss find out. The first strand of COVID was a nightmare killer version with no cure, that they would have done that to themselves intentionally seems preposterous.

People have to have both be interested in learning the truth and have the time to pay attention because there's a lot of smoke and coverup out there to sort through. People on the left are particularly disinclined to try, that's why it's important that a guy like Wade with impeccable MSM credentials be the lead journalist on a story like this.

Mike, gain of function research is/was banned in the US but proponents of it, chiefly Fauci backdoored funding to the Chinese lab. The guy the US appointed to determine the origins of COVID19 was the same middleman Fauci had used to get the funding to the lab. The reporter (Nicholas Wade) who broke the story two years ago is very credible, he use to be the science editor at the New York Times. Earlier this year, the US Energy department has concluded that the lab leak hypothesis is the most valid. Here is Wade's original report that laid everything bare (its very long): Origin of Covid — Following the Clues | by Nicholas Wade | Medium The cae just gets stronger and stronger with each piece of evidence that has come to light since then.

This was already rather clear where the truth was when the former science editor at the NYTimes dropped his original report. Since then, it has only been getting more and more obvious as each new piece of evidence arrives. Assuming Rand Paul has the evidence, I'm glad they finally found the smoking gun.

I know, really. Yes and Yes again. Good grief.

Long before the border crisis or these recent wars, the benefits of smuggling one in would be enormous. When it detonates, you have Iran, Russia, and China pointing their fingers at each other, whereas a missile could be traced back to its point of origin. The first/only nuclear warhead I looked up is 250 pounds and looks like the Stanley Cup if you took the bowl off the top. It'd fit in the trunk of a sedan. There's a picture at the link. W80 (nuclear warhead) - Wikipedia It took a roomful of Oppenheimer/Bohr/Feynman/Teller level geniuses to figure out how to build one and guys like that are hard to come by. In Iran's case any budding physicist with potential winds up getting killed, but having 2020s rather than 1940s level technology available would certainly help. No matter, acquiring a bomb presupposes the ability to detonate it, not necessarily manufacture it. And you could teach Forrest Gump how to detonate it. You get your Ukraine war going at the same time as a Middle East Sh*thole war, and China invading Taiwan... if you were inclined to try, that the best time. Justin's not wrong about that.

Not everything he says is whack. He's not wrong when he points out that if some hostile actor were inclined to smuggle a nuclear warhead into the US, it wouldn't be very difficult. I mean, look at how much drugs get in.

As far as I know, these clashing protestors in Western countries have only been involved in minor skirmishes so far, I've seen fights but if anybody has been killed, I am not aware of it. Is that right? Does somebody know of any serious casualties outside of the Israel / Palestine war zone? I hope these protests remain peaceful.

I forgave kutulu long ago and don't appreciate you always stirring the pot, ed Happy Birthday to KSB and kutulu. RIP to the Brit John Lennon on his birthday

That's the worry. I imagine both Hamas and the Israeli military commanders have spent a great deal of thought, energy, prepping, and planning for what to do in case the Israelis ever needed to swim in the hostile toilet. What a focked up assignment, I couldn't imagine.

During the Gulf War, the first time I heard explosions nearby BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! I was scared to death and dove under a truck, which may not have been terribly smart as it had a fuel tank that could explode, but I didn't want any flying shrapnel either. I soon realized that nothing around me was exploding, nobody was shouting, the ground wasn't shaking. No, what I'd heard was us shooting at them for the first time. Fortunately, I never did find out what it was like to be on the receiving end of a missile, only the sending end. Those of us in maintenance were a mile or three behind the M1A2s and Bradleys on the front line. Nearby, making all that noise, was the field artillery.

I dunno. Whenever my mother-in-law makes a meal, I don't rightly know what it is. Fortunately I have this neighbor, he had a good gig fifteen years ago performing rectal feeding for the CIA in Iraqi prison. Sadly, there's not much demand for people in his line of work anymore, so he's down on his luck. Anyway, whenever my MIL cooks something, I give him $5 to grind it up, stick a tube into my ass, and drip it in while my hands are free to type on the computer.

He changed the course of human civilization like few others, leading a small fleet into the unknown without a map or modern navigational instruments, with bravery and determination. He was the catalyst that incorporated an entire hemisphere into the global system of migration and economics... ... but no he wasn't great because some jealous racist DEI professor at your college that turns on a GPS to go to the grocery store five blocks away told you focused on the bad things he did instead and he wasn't a very effective governor of the new territory.

I thought they looked decent when they played the Lions this week. They moved the ball decently, It was a few bad turnovers deep on their side of the field that ran up the score.