Royals— DILLIGAF?

Prince Harry defended his decision to publish a memoir that lays bare rifts inside Britain’s royal family, saying it’s an attempt to “own my story” after 38 years of “spin and distortion” by others.

We fought two wars between 1775 and 1815 so that we would not have to live under the system where our head of state was from generations of inbred cousins. So no, I most assuredly don't get why so many people are shocked, shocked to find out that the British royal family is as dysfunctional as a lot of other families, if not soap-opera-worthy dysfunctional.

Get back to me if the Spare Kid renounces his titles (unlikely, because then who will care past two news cycles) or applies for American citizenship (ditto).

Until then, as to this topic: Six two and even, over and out!

Зберігай спокій і продовжуй

As Kyiv settles into its first winter since Russia invaded last February, residents are coping with the harsh realities of the grinding war: a constant threat of airstrikes, regular power outages, fears of nuclear attack.

They are also carrying on. Dance studios and nail salons are open — having learned to operate with battery-powered lights even when Russian attacks on infrastructure cut power. Cafes and restaurants, often running on generators, are packed.

The resilience of Kyiv residents is proof that Russian President Vladimir Putin has largely failed in his plans to make life unbearable by depriving their homes and businesses of heat and power this winter.

The resiliency of the Ukranian people was foreseeable by anyone with half of a functioning cortex which has not been addled by Russian propaganda, or by lying to one's self.

The TOFF's Export

Election chaos.

Brazilian authorities were picking up the pieces and investigating Monday after thousands of ex-President Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and presidential palace then trashed the nation’s highest seats of power.

The protesters were seeking military intervention to either restore the far-right Bolsonaro to power or oust the newly inaugurated leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in scenes of chaos and destruction reminiscent of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Rioters donning the green and yellow of the national flag on Sunday broke windows, toppled furniture, hurled computers and printers to the ground. They punctured a massive Emiliano Di Cavalcanti painting in five places, overturned the U-shaped table at which Supreme Court justices convene, ripped a door off one justice’s office and vandalized an iconic statue outside the court. The monumental buildings’ interiors were left in states of ruin.

CBS News is reporting this morning that Bolsonaro and Trump's people have been talking to each other since Bolsonaro lost his election. So it should not be a surprise that Bolsonaro took the same tack to try to regain power. Because that's what the dictatorship-loving right will do, every chance they get.

Aerial Lessons from the Ukraine War

There's eight of them. You can read them, here.

One of the unspoken lessons is that this war is a close to a large near-peer war as there has been since 1945. Lessons from older wars, such as the "shell crisis" of the First World War, keep being retaught.

The thing is, though, that it's expensive to keep up a large wartime stock of munitions in peacetime, for most of them have to be recycled or destroyed at the end of their shelf life. Keeping them pas their "best-by" date ensures lots of duds. As the Russians are finding out.

Your Sunday Morning Prop Noise

Lancasters!

Perfect Reading Material During the Floor Votes for Kevin the Neutered

Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) was passing the time with a good book.

Let the Hand-Wringing Begin; Dead Perp Ed.

A customer at Ranchito Taqueria shot and killed a man who robbed the restaurant in southwest Houston late Thursday night, according to the Houston Police Department.

It happened just before 11:30 p.m. Thursday at the restaurant on S. Gessner near Bellaire Boulevard.

Houston police said the armed man in a mask came inside the restaurant, demanding money and wallets from customers. However, as he was leaving, one of those customers shot the suspect.

The customer left, likely because he discovered that the perp's gun was fake (BB gun or Airsoft). Which, of course, he had no way of knowing at the time.

Bet that there will be stories about how the Dead Perp was on the cusp of turning his life around and wanted to do the robbery to get some money for his mother before he entered the seminary.

The Problem With the GOP is That a Goodly Fraction of Them Hate This Country

Well, that's not exactly correct. What they want is a time in the past, a time that few, if any of them, experienced as adults.

They want to turn the clock back to the 1950s, a time when almost all of the good jobs were held by white men. Women were nurses, teachers, waitresses, secretaries and hoousewives. Minorities were doing low/no-skill work, they knew their place, had their own crappy schools, and they didn't/couldn't vote. Gays were aggressively kept in the closet and any queer or person of color who stepped out of line got a hickory-shampoo from the cops (or came down with a sudden case of bullet wounds).

The problem is that a large majority of the people in this country are not interested in going back seventy years. So the only way they can get to where they want to be is through overthrowing the government and installing a dictatorship.

That is why Tuckyo Rose and the rest of his ilk worship Putin.

Use IV Drugs, Chop Your Limbs Off

That is what is happening, as drug suppliers are cutting an animal tranquilizer called xylazine with fentanyl, to make a street drug called "tranq" or "zombie drug". The effects are not good.

Xylazine causes wounds that erupt with a scaly dead tissue called eschar; untreated, they can lead to amputation. It induces a blackout stupor for hours, rendering users vulnerable to rape and robbery. When people come to, the high from the fentanyl has long since faded and they immediately crave more. Because xylazine is a sedative and not an opioid, it resists standard opioid overdose reversal treatments.

More than 90 percent of Philadelphia’s lab-tested dope samples were positive for xylazine, according to the most recent data.

Xylazine is approved for use in animals, so it's not a controlled substance. But that may change.

At some point, far in the future, we're going to figure out that this goddamned War on Drugs has been an utter failure.

But not anytime soon. You're going to hear the same sort of smug shit from the moralists that was heard when people were drinking methanol during Prohibition.

McCarthy Falls to His Knees, Gives Matt Gaetz a Hummer on the House Floor and, In Turn, Is Elected Speaker of the House

Well, OK, it didn't happen exactly that way. But it was close to that.

Since he gave away a lot of power and about half of his spine, one wonderswhat is going to happen.

Here is my prediction: We are going to be in for two years of Leglislation by Terrorism. The spoiled children of the Trumpanzee wing of the GOP will thraten to shut down the government at every turn. There will be a default on the debt, leading to a massive downgrading of the creditwortiness of the U.S., which will greatly increase borrowing costs, which we will have to pay. Weapons, roads, you name it, all of that will need to be reduced because the government will have to pay more to service the debt.