Silence from the China hawks, though...

Commercial flights were diverted between Australia and New Zealand on Friday, officials and airlines said, amid fears that Chinese naval vessels were conducting live-fire military drills in an incident some security experts called a “show of force” unusually far from China’s shores.

The Chinese naval exercises, in international waters off Australia’s eastern coast, are legal, but they nonetheless sparked expressions of alarm from officials in Australia and New Zealand.

“It’s a wake-up call,” New Zealand Defense Minister Judith Collins said in an interview with Radio New Zealand’s “Morning Report” on Thursday. She said the Chinese exercises were legal but “unusual” and involved “the most significant and sophisticated [vessels] that we have seen this far south.”

This was no freedom of navigation display, either, but a live fire gunnery exercise. Definitely a flex. Just the thing our tip-o'-the-spear, warrior ethos, all-teeth-no-tail Nu Perfect military is supposed to be ready to react to thanks to our pivot to Asia. 

However, it looks like we're pretty much leaving this one to the Aussies and the Kiwis. Good luck, mates!

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Meme Dump...

Mitch Punches Out

Mitch McConnell announced he won't be seeking reelection in '26.

“Seven times my fellow Kentuckians have sent me to the Senate,” McConnell said. “Every day in between, I’ve been humbled by the trust they placed in me to do their business right here. Representing our commonwealth has been the honor of a lifetime. I will not seek this honor an eighth time. My current term in the Senate will be my last.”

He probably stuck around a term too long, or at the very least should have considered resigning when he started having the deer-in-the-headlights.

Still, say what you will about the dude, the role he played in the current 6-3 composition of the Supreme Court makes him probably the single key player in the security your Second Amendment rights enjoy today. Certainly more of a bulwark than Mr. "due process later" Bump Stock Donnie.

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Midweek Memes...

Tab Clearing...

• Lithuanian Adtech Firm And Florida Data Broker Trafficked In Sensitive U.S. Military And Intelligence Worker Location Data


• No, 150-Year-Olds Aren’t Collecting Social Security Benefits: Script kiddies don't know COBOL.


• The Sahel, that part of Africa sometimes referred to these days as the "Coup Belt", is seeing a serious spike in jihadist activity.

Today's Meme Selection...

Monday Meme Dump...

Elsewhere...

• 1952 Bentley Mark VI


• Revisiting an old favorite strategy game...


• 2011 vs. 1911: Half again as much fun?

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New Week, New Memes...

It's Huck!

A rather dramatically-lit Huck is lounging in a platform halfway up the cat tree in the living room.

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That's Not How That Works...

I'm watching the old Steve McQueen western Wanted Dead or Alive on MeTV and McQueen's character, Josh Randall, is confronting the lady who did the criming.

She says to him:

"At least I have a clean conscience, Randall. I did what I did to save my life. You're a man; you can use a gun. I'm a woman."

I was like "That's not how that works, lady! I've read probably thousands of instruction manuals for guns and not one of them contained a sentence that began 'Using the penis...'."

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Tab Clearing...

• There's a faction in Pakistan that would love to get us back in Afghanistan. Apparently a weakened Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is causing second-order effects in Pakistan that they didn't really anticipate.


• Millions of people watching "True Crime" YouTube channel consisting of entirely fake, AI-generated content. The internet was a mistake.


• Crypto-loving weirdos shutting down Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that the bureau is in charge of getting people their money back from shady crypto scams.

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Weekend Memes...

Meme Dump...

I'm about to palm my face off.

First this:

The United States will increase military sales to India starting in 2025 and will eventually provide F-35 fighter jets, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday.

Hey, why not just send them to Beijing via Moscow and eliminate the middlemen? This is absolutely feckless. Fortunately some responsible adults are giving that statement the whole "Well, it's just a proposal to initiate a study and we'll look into it" treatment. Hopefully they can slow walk it for long enough for POTUS to get bored and find another shiny object.

Then this:

All probationary NNSA employees terminated

Word came down this afternoon

That's 300-some people. A sixth of the National Nuclear Security Agency. The people who, among other things, guard warheads being transported and are tasked with keeping the Super Bowl from glowing in the dark like in one of Clancy's later, too-long novels.

But don't worry! This is all in the hands of DOGE, who is running their server with an unsecured database on a service being hosted by one of Elon's broccoli-headed minions like it was Hillary's emails or something.

thisisfine.jpeg

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An Army About Five Minutes After Sunup

Most pop culture understanding of the Battle of Kasserine Pass comes from the movie Patton or the book An Army at Dawn.

This in-depth Substack essay offers a counterpoint to the typical narratives...

This article explores those characterizations, and while the Battle of Kasserine Pass is often remembered as a humiliating defeat for the U.S. Army, this perspective oversimplifies a far more complex and dynamic engagement. The battle, part of the larger Tunisia Campaign, exposed flaws in American leadership, coordination, and combat experience, but it also showcased the resilience, adaptability, and sheer firepower that would define the U.S. military in later battles. Although initial German advances created chaos and forced American forces to retreat, the tide soon turned as U.S. artillery and infantry stiffened their resistance, ultimately repelling the Axis offensive. The battle was not a catastrophic failure but rather a painful learning experience—one that forced the U.S. Army to rapidly evolve into the battle-hardened force that would go on to liberate Europe.

Oh, come on...

SEE EDIT AT BOTTOM...

The Cybertruck... also known as the "Wankpanzer" or "Incel Camino" ...from Tesla has been one of the most spectacular flops since the Edsel, bedeviled by recalls & production issues, and with unsold units piling up.

That's okay, though, because the First Buddy found someone to take $400,000,000 worth of the lemons off his hands. You, the taxpayer.

Don't worry, though, they'll make up the cost by slashing the budget at the VA or maybe grandma's health care.

So, a reporter for Gizmodo dug into this story:

The saga of the Armored Teslas is important. It’s a story where multiple things are true at the same time and a warning about how we consume information over the next four years.

Here are the four conflicting truths. The first is that State buying $400 million worth of armored Teslas is not strange. The second is that most of us don’t know how to read a federal budgeting document. The third is that Musk is the richest man on the planet with billions in government contracts. The fourth is that editing an innocuous budget document after someone notices “Tesla” has a line item is weird and speaks volumes about how the federal government is operating under the Trump-Musk presidency.

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Sorry

I spent the day with the most amazing technicolor headache and it shows no signs of wanting to go anywhere.

Hopefully I'll feel better in the morning.

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Missed A Day Memes

Meme Dump...