rocketman

It’s most frequently used by frightened old white people who cannot properly shout, “Yo mama!” insults.

His stupid expression as the video featured image is the not-so-subtle indicator of pure tripeness.

Two locked threads related to that topic attest to that.
This thread needs to stay open, as it is the damn source for following this war on the internet.

Maybe they should make it illegal then to disrupt the electoral vote in Congress... oh wait..  🙃

The bottom line is that Mike Johnson's caucus at this point will be against anything they think will get Biden reelected. So...they are against  a border deal they support and similarly they are against a Ukraine deal that also most of them support. The countervailing weight is that most of the Senate GOP realizes this is a complete electoral disaster and is urging a better strategy. We'll see.

In an age of uber-industrialized addiction, lack of affordable & indigent housing, lack of any real systems of drug treatment, lack of adequate mental health support, WTF do we expect?  I see & hear lots of people s--ing on the homeless (not you, Bulletpoint), but this is not all just due to being lazy & immoral like many folks seem to think.  This is a symptom of our society's unaddressed problems, not the underlying disease.

UKR drone operator spotted with thermal camera wounded UKR soldier in grey zone. Because of evacuation team can't reach him, operators in next fly dropped him hot tea and a note "Pal, drink it and crawl follow the drone". They pointed him a way back. Soldier was resqued
 

I've read UKR tankers have very good opinion about Stridsvang 122 - Sweden version of Leo2 and many issues about German ones, because German Leo2 are "too tender", less stable for cold, dirt and to combat overload in that time that Sweden tanks are more appropriate for real war.  

Hi All!
During the Cold War one of the hottest places where the Baltic Sea, and still is to this day, Lot of tension.
Wouldn't it be interesting to see some DLC being about the Scandinavian country's and NATO VS Soviet/PACT? Say Mid 80's?
There's the Scandinavian peninsula, the islands of the Baltic sea. 
Maybe include some kind of naval action in some way?
 
Thoughts?
 
 

Turkey Follows China in Move Likely to Infuriate Putin (msn.com)
Turkish banks have started to refuse to work with Russian banks, according to a Russian media report, which follows a similar move by institutions in China to avoid secondary sanctions linked to Vladimir Putin's full-scale Ukraine invasion.
Russian business newspaper Kommersant reported on Wednesday that Turkish banks had terminated relationships with almost all Russian credit institutions and suspended payment processing, although there was an exception for foreign subsidiary banks in Russia.
Sources told the paper that dealings between Turkish banks and Russia were complicated by U.S. President Joe Biden's executive order in December imposing secondary sanctions against foreign firms that help Moscow in the war.
Biden's order allows U.S. authorities to disconnect foreign banks from the U.S. financial system that violate sanctions imposed against Moscow.
Logistics companies working with Turkey told Kommersant that cross-border payments have become much more complicated and that more data and documents were required to confirm that sanctions rules were not being violated.
A source in Turkey's banking sector told Russian state news agency Tass that Turkish institutions were "in a holding pattern." This was because Biden's order required additional clarification, as it was "very broadly worded" under the rules of the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Treasury Department.
 
 
Meanwhile, independent Russian language news outlet The Bell reported that the move by Western countries to block Russian firms from circumventing sanctions "so far looks strong" and that it now meant that "Russia was in trouble with its largest trading partners, China and Turkey."
The Bell said that "problems with international settlements should also be expected" in other countries that Russia terms "friendly" potentially adding to transaction costs and the prices of imported goods.
 
 
 

Does it count as biological warfare if you sell old food to a country?
Food is not even sanctioned. 
On the other hand, Russia will certainly buy the cheapest option to save money, and quality control is expensive. What's a little botulism if you can buy more ammo instead?
 
 

'Sabotage' as raging inferno rips through plant producing armour for Putin's troops (msn.com)
A massive fire near Moscow has destroyed a plant that supplies body armour for Vladimir Putin’s troops.
Video footage shows flames engulfing the plant on Entuziastov Avenue, Obukhovo, in the Moscow region this morning, and no casualties have been reported.
Law enforcement in Russia is investigating whether the inferno was caused by an act of sabotage or arson.
The fire has destroyed 86,000 feet of a warehouse and a workshop.
Workers were evacuated from the plant just as it took hold and more than 100 firefighters tried to save the key production line.
It has been sanctioned by Ukraine for its production of polymer products as well as body armour, helmets, protective shoes and other items.

And this, at least on the face of it, gives the US a huge edge ... it is a net exporter of food (and even with climate change probably won't end up suffering from famines) while China is a net importer and could well end up, demographic cliff or not, in serious food shortage territory due to climate disasters.
And buying up agricultural land in far off places will do them no good since the locals have actual physical proximity to said lands and China has no realistic way of forcing them to starve so China can be fed.

I'll pile on. My sense is the West made China over the last 20 years, the West can unmake (de-couple from) China over the next 20. 
Thank God for President Xi.
If it weren't for him revealing the true face of China under the CCP, the West might have sleep walked into a 2040 Chinese world order. We should all thank Xi for the brutal crackdown in Hong Kong, the brutal forced assimilation of the uyghurs, zero COVID policy supply chain disruptions, crippling Belt and Suspenders loans, ignoring the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague 2016 ruling, building up the Chinese navy, modernizing the PLA, continued South China Sea aggression, constant military harassment of Taiwan, and stifling China's business elites, particularly the tech titans, etc.
https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/measuring-us-chinas-conscious-decoupling-2023-11-16/
 

This is fabulously wrong headed.
"Somehow", those effete slow liberal democracies managed to win WWII, Korea, Cold War, Gulf War, etc against those superlative and efficient autocracies and dictatorships.

🤣  yep any day now!

No, this is way more complex than you make it look here. There are a lot of things we don't like about US politics and things related to that (note: most of us actually like the country itself). Put wars like Vietnam and Iraq '03 right on top of that list. We also don't like US-style capitalism and we certainly don't like Mr. Trump. But if anything this is because of "the strength of the United States". Noone doubts US strength.
This all is basically the beef the more left leaning (as opposed to the far left who still see historical ties with Russia) people have with the US.
The recent trend towards more Russia-friendly parties has more or less nothing to do with this. Those are populist parties who are usually more leaning towards authoritarianism and therefore admire Putin (but also Trump... who... also admires Putin). What they like is the money they received from Russia. How much real friendship and loyalty that bought Putin remains to be seen (I'd say none, they will drop him like a hot potatoe if there is no more to gain). But those parties usually get elected because of all the things people don't like about "the established parties", not (or not that much) because they like Putin. They like Putin as a symbol, as the underdog who puts the powers that be into their place. But not really the person Putin or Russia.
Then of course we fear Trump or whomever his spiritual successor might be. Not because we doubt US strength but because we fear unchecked US strength. We don't like Russia or China because of that but we see the necessity to get along with them.

Quite unfortunate. Faulty insulation is one of the most common causes of accidental electric fires. 
 

A little bit of somewhat positive news:
230 Ukrainian prisoners of war coming home, in exchange for 248 Russians.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67872417

14th separate UAV regiment destroyed for several days already fifth Russian "Buk" system.
This one was destroyed on the waste heap of "Kuibyshevskaya" coal mine on westerm outskirt of Donetsk.
 

https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy/cm-battle-for-normandy-campaigns/the-road-to-montebourg-revised-for-v4-0/
Don't worry, this won't overwrite or otherwise delete the original campaign that came on the disk. IIt's a completely different file. This is substantially different from the vanilla campaign and the number of changes made is huge but the most important one to note is that you will need both the Market Garden module and the Vehicle Pack to play this.
 
Other important highlights are that the 2/8 INF core units are now mostly Green with High morale which means you'll need to manage them more carefully in a firefight.
All-new AI plans using triggers and most of the tricks that came with later versions of the game.
Flamethrowers are included in some missions.
Some maps have been revised, most notably the map for Turnbull's Stand which veterans of the original campaign will probably notice quite quickly.
A 'new' mission has been added although those of you who found and played the earlier revised version that was uploaded to BFC's old Scenario Depot will recognise it. The campaign has a prelude phase consisting of the new mission and then the old campaign opener Beau Guillot. You should notice quite a few changes made to that mission as well - some extra help to make up for the drop in experience.
There is air support in quite a few missions now and less artillery, at least the bigger guns anyway.
 
Anyway, let's post this and then I'll see what needs to be 'fixed' or not in good time. This is an old campaign so i'm not expecting a ton of feedback for it for quite a while but let me know and I'll fix things. Now I'm taking a break from CMBN. I haven't quite decided what comes next - finishing Hasrabit or a new version of Gung Ho! for the German forces. Later, I'll get to work on the two Scottish campaigns I'd mentioned elswhere.
 
Have a Happy New year.

Ah, so that is what happened?  I guess from that particular layman’s perspective the trajectory of the RA does appear upwards.  They sucked in the initial invasion and have been sucking less and less up through the summer offensive.
The problem with a layman’s assessment is that it ignores the deeper causal issues.  So here is a quick  and dirty professional assessment:
- Russian operational and strategic quality has been a factor in this war but it is secondary.
- The primary factor driving outcomes is fundamental shifts in the character of warfare in the modern age.  Primarily the fact that evidence is becoming nearly insurmountable that we have shifted from offensive primacy through concentrated mass to defensive primacy through denial.
- At Kyiv in Feb of ‘22, the RA had massive mass superiority against an opponent who had not even time to dig in.  RUSI reports show upwards of 12:1 concentrations of RA spearheads to local UA defence, which was largely distributed.  Even accounting for Russian failings, those sort of mass ratios should have blown through whatever defence the UA could mount..and initially it did.
- And then friction kicked in.  Modern warfare, enabled by ubiquitous C4ISR, PGM and deep strike has created friction pressures that in effect break mass.  The ability to project and sustain it in particular.  This combined with a baffling Air Denial dynamic essentially broke the traditional mass concentration ratios.  The UA’s ability to deny air superiority with disparate and ad hoc capability plugged into another ad hoc C4ISR architecture will be studied for decades.  These conditions ensured that however the RA sucked, they had no offsets in the one strength they did have - overwhelming force advantages.
- The northern axis collapsed when the RA was unable to sustain itself.  Russia may suck but no modern army on the planet is built to have its entire LOC infrastructure lit up from space and hit with precision artillery and ATGMs at the ranges experienced.  The fact that the RA undersubscribed the logistic requirement is a combination of sucking and warfare changing.
- Kharkiv was very similar.  The RA was over extended…by emerging modern standard.  They experience corrosive warfare at is zenith as HIMARs got into the game and essentially broke what was left of a logistical system built for another era…Jan ‘22.  The operational collapse at Kharkiv is one for the history books.  How it was established and conducted points to new forms of tactical manoeuvre and exploitation.
- Kherson was a collapse before a full collapse.  In this Russia did learn (after two failures) what collapse was starting to look like.  The pull out may have proceeded in good order but it was also a major operational failure.  Why?  Because of what did not happen (something layman also are prone to miss).  The RA should have been able to turn Kherson into a reverse Mariupol and break the UA on a grinding urban fight.  But they could not…because they were collapsing.  And they still could not establish operational conditions to do otherwise.
- The RA now is benefiting from the shift in character of warfare…not sucking less.  The one thing they did right was put in minefields everywhere.  This multiplied the friction of modern systems dramatically.  To the point that UA mass…wait for it….did not work as it was supposed to.
The RA of today is a shadow of its former self.  Beyond the body count, the high end operational enablers have seen significant attrition.  They are able to hold on and will continue to make tactical offensive just to make a point but they are in no shape for major operational offensive action in their current state.  They are not sucking less, they are better suited to fight in line with what war has become.  Unless the UA buckles and walks away, the RA is able to hold on (maybe) but will take a decade to rebuild itself back to where it was in Feb ‘22.
So “Russia Sux” is only half the story and not even the most important half.   Warfare has fundamentally changed and both sides are grappling with that is why any predictions on what will happen are nearly useless at this point.
But hey we are just guys in a bar talking….

Eric Hoffer put it best: 
"Propaganda doesn't deceive people; it merely helps them deceive themselves."