Free Republic

[When I hear of a company even mentioning this as food, that company, and everything associated with them, gets crossed off my list. I’m sure they’ll try to sneak it in somewhere, but my spidey sense is pretty good about such things.]

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Soy fillers are used in all kinds of things, including beef patties and chicken nuggets. They sell very well. The key is the products taste like meat and are not only not more expensive, they are cheaper than products without the filler. That’s the niche - a lower-priced product, not Impossible Burger patties 2x the price of the real thing.

[I remember early in 2020 when pandemic hoarding got started, the toilet paper and meat cases were bare.
However, guess which, erm, food couldn’t be given away??!?]

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Note how the picture doesn’t show price tags. That gives the game away. Fake beef is twice the price of the real thing. Used to be 3x. Needs to be the same price or lower. Meat eaters might pay the same price for fake meat. A premium is out of the question, except for vegans.

The g word here is greed. Without a DOJ prosecution, their monetary claims are limited. If the DOJ jumps in, the drawings for further rounds of lawsuit lottery get going.

[Isn’t truth a positive defense against libel?

Or is that concept also gone from this turd-world country?]

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Third World would be an upgrade. In the Third World, politicians are indicted for real crimes. This is Clown World, Democrat World. Nowhere else in the world are theft and murder crimes for which people without connections can get away scot free. But in Democrat world, a carjacker who shoots a fire chief in the head somehow gets acquitted.

https://www.blufftontoday.com/story/news/2021/06/04/man-found-not-guilty-former-hardeeville-fire-chiefs-murder/7510076002/

Not a well-connected perp, just another random thug in South Carolina. In Africa, they’d douse him with gasoline, set him on fire. Here, he walks, is received like a conquering hero. That’s Clown World, Democrat World.

[Merely campaigning is not enough to win the unwinnable. Otherwise Biden could win Texas and Ohio simply by campaigning there a lot. Trump could campaign in New York for a 1000 years and not win it.]

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The bombast and bravado are for making lemonade out of the lemon he got. He’s in NYC out of necessity. Why not do a couple of events, see if he can hook in looky loos and energize tristate GOP voters who don’t normally bother because NY’s a lost cause? The tristate media complex and the circus around the trial means it’s a way to get free media. People want to see if he’s depressed, resigned to his fate, whatever. An obvious persecution like this is a good chance to brandish and shake his shackles, protest the injustice of it all.

Trump understands good PR. It’s just that his spur of the moment brain farts often get in the way. This isn’t one of those moments.

[At this point in 1980 Carter was still well ahead of Reagan.

But the killer was that ~80 percent of people felt that the USA was on the wrong track, and they eventually decided Carter was hopeless and couldn’t fix it. All Carter had was doubts about Reagan.

In Trump’s case, people know that he can do the job, and do it better than what has been since 2001.

The wrong track number is more like 70 percent already.]

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The key here is both men are known quantities, have done the job before, and we have comparables for the major pollsters for the same points in the election cycle. For Quinnipiac, Marist, Yougov, we have like for like polls for each pollster. And in each case, Biden’s margin is down by high single digits in 2024 as compared to 2020. Biden was up high single digits consistently in 2020. He is about even now. Given that weeks before the election, the pollsters overestimated Biden’s 4.5% victory margin by 4%, polling even with Trump now is not a good place to be.

Biden polled much higher in 04/2020 than he did close to the election. If 2024 follows that pattern, Biden’s numbers could start going underwater consistently. Trump’s decent showing in the polls is likely what’s driving his fundraising numbers. No one wants to give to a losing campaign. A winning one is a different proposition.

[Biden will easily win 310 EVs. Trump has no chance.]

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Two points

1) In 04/2020, Quinnipiac showed Biden up by 8 points. So a tie in 04/2024 is a big comedown for Biden.
2) Quinnipiac’s final 2020 poll showed Biden up by 11%. Biden won by 4.5%. That’s a 6.5% overestimate of Biden’s margin. Apply it to this poll, and Trump is up by 6.5%.

However you slice it, Biden is sailing into rough waters.

https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2020/trump-vs-biden
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden

[The Wall Street bombing plus other immigrant criminal [anarchists of the early 1920’s was the trigger for the 1924 Immigration Act.]

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Indeed. We need a mass deportations of all illegals, and an immediate end to border entries by people without valid visas - the pre-Biden policy. Instead, Biden is swamping Border Patrol in paperwork by making them process millions of illegal border crossers. The only silver lining is that his policy is leading some who would previously have voted Biden to either stay home or vote Trump. In April 2020, Biden was comfortably ahead of Trump. It’s April 2024. They’re even. Emerson 4/2020 had Biden up by 6. Emerson 4/2024 has Trump up by 3.

https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2020/trump-vs-biden
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden

Note that Emerson nailed Biden’s 2020 margin of victory, pegging it at 5% in its final pre-election poll. Biden won by 4.5%.

[No wonder the wife left him.]

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Whether Fidel or Pierre, both were big time philanderers. My guess? The apple doesn’t fall far from either tree. It’s the usual reason for these breakups.

LOL. Trudeau seems like a really nice guy. But his policies are every bit as nutty as his dad’s, whether Fidel or Pierre. Given the matinee idol looks, my guess is Fidel.

[Diversity is our greatest strength !

Import millions from low-trust societies in the Third World, and become the Third World.]

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If the worst they get up to is this penny ante stuff, that’s not so bad and a big upgrade from the last batch’s shenanigans.

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder,_Inc.
[Murder, Inc. (Murder, Incorporated) was an organized crime group active from 1929 to 1941 that acted as the enforcement arm of the National Crime Syndicate – a closely connected criminal organization that included the Italian-American Mafia, the Jewish Mob, and other criminal organizations in New York City and elsewhere.[1] Murder, Inc. was composed of Jewish and Italian-American gangsters, and members were mainly recruited from poor and working-class Jewish and Italian neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn. It was initially headed by Louis “Lepke” Buchalter and later by Albert “Mad Hatter” Anastasia.

Murder, Inc. was believed to be responsible for between 400 and 1,000 contract killings,[3] until the group was exposed in 1941 by former member Abe “Kid Twist” Reles.[2] In the trials that followed, many members were convicted and executed, and Abe Reles himself died after suspiciously falling from a window. Thomas E. Dewey first came to prominence as a prosecutor of Murder, Inc. and other organized crime cases, before being elected to become the 47th governor of New York.[4]]

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And that’s just the money-grubbing sociopaths. The political nutjobs were something to behold.

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacco_and_Vanzetti
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_bombing
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Zangara

Ukraine ping

Sauron: [We can have 18 year old privates as long as they have 25 year old sergeants providing mature judgement, something teens lack.

How is Ukraine’s experienced NCO corps holding up?]

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With these things, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. In a recent article, at one point in the line, what the Ukrainians call a brigade, basically a reinforced battalion of 2,000 men, was holding back a Russian division 6 to 12 times its size, despite Russia’s 10 to 1 howitzer shell advantage. That the Ukrainian line did not pull back a dozen miles is testament to a blend of something that’s preventing superior Russian numbers, firepower and close air support from gaining more than incremental ground. Whether grit, creativity or sheer luck, it held in the face of ammo starvation.

Whatever the reason, it suggests that man for man, the Ukrainian soldier is more than a match for several of his Russian counterparts. The problem is Biden’s deliberate starvation of Ukrainian equipment and ammo flows. Until he stops the micromanagement, Ukraine’s road will not be an easy one. The US gave Russia as much as 6% of 1941’s economic output (also 6x the 1% pre-WW2 US military budget). It is giving Ukraine 0.2% of 2024’s economic output, or 1/30 what it gave Russia in WW2. That difference, combined with Biden’s deliberate dispatch of mostly junkyard grade equipment and light over heavy weaponry, is why the Ukrainian recovery of its prewar territory isn’t a sure thing.

I don’t know if a Trump administration would find a way to indict the state and local prosecutors and judges who went after him, but I’d like to see him try. While ideally, they’d get serious prison time, even years of expensive legal limbo would deter future abuses of power.

[I started watching Veep and had to stop.

Seeing it play out in real time is already too much.]

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Numerous people who have worked on Capitol Hill have commented on how true-to-life its depiction of big league politics is. It’s understandable. How many people have the financial means to put their lives on hold for years to take up an at-will position? Only a saint would take it up without thought of self-aggrandizement. If saints ever existed, they don’t today.

Ukraine ping

OH: [are holding back

lol 😂]

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Don’t take my word for it. Ukraine’s draft age is 25 and up.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/11/ukraine-mobilization-law-russia-war/
[Last week, Zelensky signed a law lowering the draft age to 25 from 27]

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Whereas the US draft age bracket is now 18-25.

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https://www.sss.gov/register/who-needs-to-register/
[Almost all male US citizens and male immigrants, who are 18 through 25, are required to register with Selective Service.]

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For whatever reason, Ukraine’s pols have decided to spare their under-25s the rigors of an otherwise universal draft.

Ukraine ping

Webheart: [The key takeaway here is that there are still Ukrainian soldiers.]

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By definition. Without them Russia would border Poland. Russia’s draft age bracket is 18-55. Ukraine’s is 25-60. It’s like Ukraine followed the adage that wars would be less frequent if old men had to fight them. That Ukraine’s old men are holding back Russia’s youth is pretty impressive. The old saying about age and cunning beating, or at least stalemating youth and energy may not be too far wrong.

Ukraine ping

OVERTIME: [How about this: Start an atomic war.
They have repeatedly said they would if they were cornered.
A document leaked by a US offical to the New York Times claimed that the CIA assessed the probaility to be “50-50”.
.
In war ganes, when one side sues an atomic bomb the other side escalates, until they both destroy the world.]

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But they’re not cornered. They can retreat into Russia. Even if they were cornered and we were about to overrun Russia in its entirety, it wouldn’t make sense for them to commit suicide. Russia was once overrun by the Mongols, who weren’t exactly gentle overlords. But Russia survived, turned the tables and conquered much of the old Mongol empire.

A Russia completely overrun can come back, maybe even take over the lower 48. A Russia killed to the last, because its leaders used nukes against a peer nuclear power, will never again be anything, except a depopulated province of the Mongols in the neighboring Stans.

Russian first use nuclear threats are empty ones not because the leaders are nice guys but because at minimum the Friends and Family nuclear targeting plan will take care of anyone remotely associated with them, permanently. Jimmy Carter was a mega dove, but even in his time, retaliatory nuclear targeting emphasized the elimination of ethnic Russians by default, an objective Zbig, Carter’s NSA, made sure to emphasize.

If you love Russia and hate Ukraine, nothing but the destruction of Ukraine and its incorporation into the Russian empire will make you happy. For others indifferent between the two, there is no possibility of Russia using nukes. It did not when it lost half its territory with the collapse of the original Russian empire in the 90s. Why would it do so over a loss in Ukraine that’s not even 10% of that earlier loss, that it did not even own at the beginning of the invasion?

Especially when a nuclear first strike would mean the end of Russia for the rest of time? Russia can come back even from foreign occupation. It will never come back from a pile of ashes. To put this in terms you can understand, Russia will not use nukes for the same reason not even the biggest Ukraine-hating Russophile has tried to take out his Congressman for his Ukraine vote. His fear of the personal consequences keeps his weapon holstered.

Not a fan of Jim Hoft or Gateway Pundit because of excessive click-baiting, but the lawfare against this and other outlets really needs to end, preferably with a large financial judgment against the plaintiffs.

[“”””President Putin was a spook just like President GHW Bush.”””

Not even close, Bush was appointed head of the CIA for just under one year but had lived a real life in business and the military and elected politics.

Putin was an actual spook who later ran the FSB and basically went from KGB spook to secretly and then openly running Russia after his USSR collapsed, in other words a spook his entire life and what many people think is the richest man on earth.]

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Putin was an insignificant paper pusher in Dresden. That’s like a CIA guy posted to Alberta, Canada. The guy was a minnow in the KGB. However, his political skills were obviously first rate - he came up from essentially nothing.

Bush Senior was a civilian with no intelligence background put in place to clean up the wreckage from James Jesus Angleton’s abortive mole hunt, and the Church Committee’s inquisition into CIA activities that bound it hand and foot. Bush is a footnote in CIA history, like a management consultant who does the grand tour of a corporation, but knows little more about it after leaving than he did going in. Angleton, however was a fascinating guy about whom numerous books and articles have been written, including in fictional form. Le Carre claims otherwise, but Angleton was, perhaps, the real life George Smiley.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Jesus_Angleton

If only British watchers were as diligent as Angleton - the Cambridge Five would never have reached their positions of influence.

Ukraine ping

MacGregor obviously has a distinguished military record. But his crystal ball is cloudy and yet another illustration of the Yogi Berra truism “Predictions are hard, especially about the future”. Like most people on all sides of the conflict, at the outset, he predicted a Russian victory in days or, at worst, weeks.

Instead of repeating ad nauseam Russian hopes for victory, it would be nice if he could explore the nuts and bolts of individual engagements, not as cheerleader, but as dispassionate analyst. Of course, the problem is that his pro-Ruasian audience tunes in not for edification, but for encouragement. They are looking for hosannas describing Russia’s inevitable triumph, not neutral, dry as dust enumerations of the factors that resulted in seesaw battles where the same hamlets changed hands repeatedly over the course of months, even years. So he gives them what they want, and we get these hallelujah choruses about how Russian victory is all but written in the stars.