This guy gets it.
Okay, everybody close your eyes, touch your thumbs to your middle fingers facing up, and say “ooohhhhmmm”, and try not to kill the driver next to you.
Christmas is here, everyone should be pretty much ready for the holiday, it’s time to stand down, take a deep breath, and try and embrace as much happiness as you can. Seriously, it’s been yet another year of shit. Look around, and hug anyone who has meaning to you. I don’t expect it to get better year, so let’s enjoy what we have.
Links?
“Do you know what’s about to happen to Colorado?”
INCREASED IMMUNE EVASION!!! INCREASED IMMUNE EVASION!!!
Variety magazine makes proclamations.
“So about that kerfuffle in Ukraine.”
All right. That’s that about that. Enjoy the holiday folks. Breathe, relax, and spend time with loved ones.
We need a little Brian Setzer here.
JN-1? Jew N-1 is more like it!
You promised to keep it a secret.
A very late Happy Hanukkah to you buddy. I hope you were able to share some happy times with the family.
I need to go to the grocery store, but was unable to bestir myself. Maybe tomorrow. Otherwise, plan b.
I was planning to have ribs for Christmas dinner. I got some the other day- pre fab heat and eat packaged kind, and they were pretty tasty. I need to go grab some more. And maybe some beer, just in case/
“Otherwise, plan b.” I don’t see how aborting dinner will help.
He’s got other food in the fridge to make for Christmas?
Maybe blan p is the Golden Corral.
The Krusty Krab.
Merry Chrismakwanzukkah, Spud!
I may have one more ugly sweater in my closet. Join if/when you like. I’m not the boss of you.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87821224358?pwd=eW55MTRDbDNtQkh2aHd3M1Nmenlzdz09
*sips Evan Williams egg nog and opens Zoom*
Nice
Founder’s French Toast Bastard for me.
You folks enjoy. Not enough wifi from StarLink to get a Zoom going. I’ll be driving back home tomorrow so I will see you all later.
It must be just about time for this.
Always a good choice.
LOL that Jason Aldean is tops on Variety’s REEE list.
That whole list is cringe.
+1 pronoun play “they” this “they” that
Appalling that Newsom gets to play magnanimous, since he knows the result couldn’t be more in the bag, and without even cheating. Greasy fuck.
“Look how centrist I am!”
So much this.
No samurai saints unless they’re also teenage and also mutants.
Interesting twist in this that I didn’t realize – the drug itself isn’t patented, it is the drug-as-treatment that gets patent protection.
INCREASED IMMUNE EVASION!!! INCREASED IMMUNE EVASION!!!
Yep. No one saw that coming.
😷
I typically try not to envy….but, the title of the Lord’s katana… talk about a conversation starter.
California’s tax revenue has fallen 25% in the past year. I doubt budget cuts will be part of the solution.
My guess is a Biden bailout. Money printer go brrrr. In exchange for agreeing to bail out California and avoid a shutdown, Republicans will be given coupons for one free back rub by Middle Class Joe.
Yeah; assholes like Andrew Cuomo tried to keep the pandemic going until a Team Blue president could bail him out, and mostly got away with it.
I don’t know. Biden told NYC mayor Adams to drop dead when he went to Washington hat in hand.
https://nypost.com/2023/12/23/news/lindsey-graham-vows-war-on-ny-over-proposed-chick-fil-a-bill/
NY state can compel your labor and fuck your religious beliefs. News at 11.
Meh, they want a concession at a 2nd party’s establishment the 2nd party can make set the conditions of that concession.
“Pray we don’t alter the conditions further.”
I am fairly certain a contract was signed by both parties, and this is an attempt to override a previous agreement. Kinda shitty. If you don’t like it, renegotiate contracts or change vendors when contract is up.
Fair enough. If there is a contract the state should honor it. However nothing in Sean’s linked article mentions prior agreements. “Compelling your labor” in this case is a tad hyperbolic.
Well, I will say this is one issue Lindsay Graham jumped on like a tranquilized hooker. He should fuck off. Chick Fil A can handle themselves around a civil courtroom. They don’t need him sticking his shriveled member in the middle.
This is common business practice, Shopping malls for instance require they outlets in them to be open during certain hours. I’ll get my outrage on when the state tells chick-fil-a that they have to keep their independent stores open on Sundays.
Used to be that banks were open on Saturday until noon. Closed Wednesday.
/fuck your pickles
I was actually rooting for the Steelers today, the first time that’s ever happened.
I recently learned mail used to be delivered 7 days a week.
Yeah, but the liquor stores were closed on Sundays.
Fine, NYS governmental offices should be open all Mondays through Fridays. No closures for holidays.
They thought this was a real article.
New Seventh-Day Adventist Chick-fil-A Closed Saturday, Open Sunday
*cough*cough* bullshit *cough*cough*
These are rest stops along highways, right? And the highways never close? So why not just force all vendors to be open 24/7 with no holidays?
“the one terrorist I kill and he has feet smaller than my sister”
And by Ben-girls got killed by Pittsburgh. Which Ill argue was by design.
Ben-girls get killed in Milledgeville, GA.
Is that like Ben Gay for straight girls?
I like “Bungles” better.
+1 Bungles
Kind of hindsight bias at play here. South Korea’s government was established by the Western powers. The South Korean forces were completely demolished when America stepped in and drove back the commies. What legitimacy did South Korea have? And they were an authoritarian dictatorship for the most part for the first few decades of their existence.
Where’s the “legitimacy?” There was none. But the difference between Korea and Vietnam is that America maintained a large troop presence in one and warded off future attacks where as domestic politics prevented the same from happening in Vietnam. We inf act did succeed at nation building, we did establish democracy where there was no history of such, and we did it militarily.
The arguments that Vietnam was somehow this unwinnable quagmire are historically illiterate. And I see it pushed by a lot of historians because it’s politically favored to push that narrative.
How many threads are you going to pull this argument over from?
Why do you care?
Look- I did not lose a leg in Afghanistan to listen to your selfish diatribes over why we could have won over shitty wars in Asia. Sorry your mail-order wife has you cuckolded into beating off in a corner while you watch that tiny pinay get railed by some BBC that looks like a radiator hose. And despite what she tells you, you cant buy land in the PI.
Cracked, covered with grey road dust, and bent at odd angles?
hawt
You crushed your leg when a 350 lb whore lost her balance while pegging you in the ass and rolled onto it, you piece of shit.
You aren’t a piece of shit because of anything you say to me. Just the general vibe I get from you.
Peak US troop strength in Korea during the war was 327,000. It was 543,000 during the Vietnam War, four years before they were mostly withdrawn in 1973. There were 20 million South Koreans in 1952 vs 16 million South Vietnamese in 1968. So more US troops led to a worse result with a smaller population.
It’s a mistake to assume the strategy that led to a draw in Korea would have led to the same outcome or better in Vietnam. Guerilla warfare was a much more important factor in Vietnam. Also, there was far less resentment toward the US and its allies in Korea because the US did not help reinstate the Koreans’ former oppressors.
It was also easier to defend South Korea because there was only one border to worry about.
I never called for a replay of Korea in Japan. Every war, and every battle within a war is unique and calls for a unique approach.
But when Juris’s argument stems entirely around some nebulous concept such as “legitimacy,” and he then claims that South Korea’s government which was completely propped up by foreign powers and whose military was steamrolled just as easily as South Vietnam’s had said legitimacy, I’m going to question the logic.
For my part, I would have expanded the war and cut off the supply lines of the guerillas. But even then, let the North wage constant low level warfare against the South. There was no invasion of the South as long as the North feared America reentering the conflict. They did not because of the domestic political situation in the US.
So, yes, some quasi stalemate situation could have worked in Vietnam. We’ll never know. The lack of any said legitimacy of the South’s government is really irrelevant.
The VC were done after Tet and it was almost completely an NVA show after that. Not that the VC wasn’t a puppet of the North from the start.
Juris’s argument has a lot of flaws. The war was winnable. It’s all I’m saying.
My argument about the actual result being inevitable versus your “it was winnable” with zero evidence in favor. Right.
Congress cut military aid to South Vietnam in half in 1974. That was surely a factor when the North invaded in 1975.
LBJ and Nixon tried to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail. LBJ’s men tried cloud seeding to extend the monsoon season (Project Popeye), in what was probably the craziest scheme of the war besides Operation Wandering Soul (blasting the VC with spooky ghost noises to demoralize them). Nixon sent troops to invade Cambodia.
All kinds of things were tried at an enormous cost in money and lives, and none of it worked.
Perhaps if Nixon had invaded North Vietnam instead, the war would have ended with South Vietnam keeping its independence. Given the unpopularity of the war at the time, that would have most likely cost him the election of 1972.
95% of the Army’s inductees during the Vietnam War were drafted. When the draft was ended in 1973, that was a clear signal to all that the US no longer had any intention of winning. It took eight years and 58,000 dead American troops to get the government and military to come to its senses.
Since we are no longer forcing Americans to go to war, perhaps it is time to stop forcing them to pay for wars.
Define “try” because both were desperately scared of expanding the war and the guy who developed the plan himself called their attempts a “caricature” of his initial plan. Used a fraction of the men and resources it called for.
People need to separate the argument for whether we should have fought Vietnam with whether it was winnable. Because they are very different arguments. People like to make the argument that it wasn’t winnable as another reason it shouldn’t have been fought which isn’t necessary at all.
I presume you are referring to Curtis Lemay.
***
Thus in 1964 Lemay presented Johnson with a plan to bomb the ports of North Vietnam, and mine the harbors through which Soviet and other Communist-bloc aid poured into North Vietnam. Lemay advised mining the coastline to prevent infiltration. Lemay also advised destroying North Vietnamese oil supplies at the storage facilities.
Johnson did none of this. Instead, Johnson’s operational plan was to bomb the jungle trails, through which North Vietnamese supplies and troops poured south. At the end of the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail, Johnson’s operational plan was to “disrupt” North Vietnamese efforts via direct action against an armed invasion force. It was as if someone was squirting you with a fire hose. But rather than turn off the hose at the source, you stood there trying to soak up the water with a towel.
***
It was clear from the beginning the US was pulling its punches. Wars become unwinnable when that happens.
We can win this war – if we expand it to the entire region! Cool argument bro.
Post Paris Ho Chi Minh Trail was a different beast. Paved four lane road.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh_trail#Road_to_PAVN_victory_(1971–1975)
95% seems a bit high. I think that’s the Army took 95% of draftees. As I recall, the volunteer vs draft rate was much higher than comparable WWII ratio ( where “everyone” joined and served).
I must have misread the figure. Here’s the context from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_the_United_States
***
The policy of using the draft to incentivize voluntary enlistment was unique in American history. Previous drafts had not aimed to encourage individuals to enlist in order to gain preferential placement or less dangerous postings. However, the incremental buildup of the Vietnam War without a clear threat to the country bolstered this focus.[27] Some estimates suggest that almost one-third of all eligible men were conscripted during the period of 1965–69.[49][50] This group represented those without exemption or resources to avoid military service. During the active combat phase, the possibility of avoiding combat by selecting their service and military specialty led as many as four out of 11 eligible men to enlist.[51][52] The military relied upon draft-induced volunteerism to meet its quotas, especially for the Army, which accounted for nearly 95 percent of all inductees during the Vietnam War era. For example, defense recruiting reports show that 34% of the recruits in 1964, up to 50% in 1970, indicated that they had joined voluntarily in order to avoid placement uncertainty via the draft.
***
Elsewhere, I read 2/3 of Vietnam troops were volunteers. So the Army was 1/3 draftees at the time, roughly.
It makes sense that the Army would get almost all the draftees as men were volunteering for other branches to avoid being drafted into the Army.
Yep. I joined the AF to avoid being drafted into the Army.
Was air force a wise choice? I always thought I would do the same. The few air force vets I have worked with were uniformly smarter and better than the guys I worked with from other branches (despite one of my best friends being a Navy guy… and really brilliant to boot. I didn’t work with him though. )
My father chose Air Force ROTC to avoid being drafted as a grunt being shot at in Korea on the ground. Put in 20 years without ever getting within a few thousand miles of the shooting.
Toward the end of his life, he told me he regretted never having a chance at being a general because that required having combat service.
I replied, “You regret being smart enough to have never had the ‘chance’ to have a bunch of well armed people to try to kill you?”
“Son, you have an unnerving propensity for putting things in perspective.”
“Turning Japanese” with 80% more upskirt shots! Merry Xmas! https://youtu.be/n13hHaSeOdQ
That is a glorious cover. Without the video I doubt I’d ever listen to it, but…mmmmmm
I wanted to drop in and wish you all the most Merry Christmas. As I am want to do, I will gift you a beautiful song for your listening pleasure.
Correction: “as I am wont to do”
On the topic of ribs above…
My heritage is of the poor south. As such, mom cooked anything from a pig half to death, for fear of trichinella. So her ribs were a dry affair, if tasty with crusty caramelized barbecue sauce. She cooked them on the grill for… I dunno, hours.
It wasn’t until just recently (recently for a guy who counts “Green Day) as really new stuff) learned the ease and joy of cooking ribs in the oven.
When I was a kid, the fancy neighbor would boil his ribs in beer, start them in the oven and finish them on the grill. They were way better than mom’s, but also an all day affair.
Then I found allrecipies. There are several dry rub oven slow cooked rib recipes that are easy and fantastic.
Basically, you get your rack of ribs, put it on a big sheet of aluminum foil in an oven pan, rub it down with a brown sugar based BBQ rub, seal it up and pop it in the oven for a couple of hours… low and slow. Liquid smoke is an optional and tasty addition.
Open up and finish with baked on sauce for added style points, or just serve drenched in your favorite BBQ sauce.
Whenever ribs go on super sale (like 99 cents a pound), we have them at casa de Cyto. Cheap, easy and delicious. Prep work is less than 15 minutes. I don’t even bother peeling of the membrane.
The wife likes Smokey Bones restaurant BBQ, so I buy a quart of sauce from them to make her happy.
Not really christmasy, but it does work well for “appetizer dinner” if you separate the ribs and let people serve themselves 1 at a time. I have done this along with chicken wings and a bunch of appetizer crap for super bowl parties.
I’m a fan of 3-2-1 for ribs on the grill. 3 hours indirect smoke, 2 hours foiled and basically steaming in their own juices (reverse of the boil and broil technique above), then last hour or less to crisp and sauce.
I do like baby backs over St Louis/spareribs.
“We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas…”
Come and trim my Christmas tree.
Merry Christmas Eve!
Today, i present I Am Santa Claus.
Share and enjoy!
Merry Christmas Eve to you, too, Beau! And good morning!
Morning GT, RJ, and Beau wherever you are.
Good morning, ji!
Morning and Merry Christmas!
Eve!
Merry Christmas Eve, R.J.! Are you back home from your cruise?
Just docked at Galveston, getting off the ship in about an two hours. Glad to be back. I missed driving and stuff like that.
👍 Hope traffic is light on your way home!
It’s a mess, but I should still be home by afternoon. There is a Texas-sized rainstorm from Galveston to DFW. My daughter wants her bedroom back and wants to see the kitties so we will probably only stop at rest stops.
Happy Christmas Eve! 🎄
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HIRNdveLnJI
🎶🎶
No seasonal music, straight up hard rock. 👍
Holy crap that is an ugly car.
https://www.theautopian.com/wait-until-you-see-whats-under-that-ghastly-russian-car-cotd/
You should know about ugly. 😉
To women, I am a sensuous Brussel Sprout. Triggered, I am.
Translation: “No worries, we got this bitch fortified to the hilt.”