OT subject but worth a main-stream read- OT News Feeds...

lousubcap

dbCooper said:

Given the venue I'd think this is catch-as-catch-can, so Gavin should insist on stipulating barefoot.

That would settle the speculation about DeSantis and his boots/shoes and lifts.  Newsom is listed at 6'3" and DeStantis anywhere from5'8"-5'11" depending on inserts. 

HeavyG

JohnInCarolina said:

Botch said:

JohnInCarolina said:

lousubcap said:

"Fox News has announced details of its planned debate between Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis later this month.

This will be a dumpster fire.

With Hannity moderating, probably.
With no live audience, mebbe not.  
I will be watching it, if it happens.  

Why though?  Just catch the highlights (lowlights?) on EweTube the day after.

Agreed. I never watch those things myself but I do enjoy the live comments/snark that streams along from the folks on Twitter and the like who endure the suffering for me.

lousubcap

Tuesday Israel-Hamas update:

"The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it has surrounded the Jabalia region in northern Gaza and killed dozens of fighters in the area following their attacks on 250 Hamas targets using fighter jets and “remotely manned aircraft.” BBC News reports.

The Chief of Hamas said today that they are “close to reaching a truce agreement” with Israel and that the group has provided its response to Qatari mediators. While no further details were provided, another Hamas official said that negotiations are centering on the truce duration, arrangements for aid delivery into Gaza, and the exchange of hostages releases. Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Emily Rose report for Reuters.

Humanitarian aid, including 40 trucks carrying medical equipment for a Jordanian hospital field, as well as 180 medics and nurses, entered Gaza via the Rafah crossing yesterday. ABC News reports.

Hamas-run health ministry says more than 5,500 children have died since the war broke out. The WHO says the figures are reliable as U.N. Chief Antonio Guterres labeled the death toll as “staggering and unacceptable.” BBC News reports.

The foreign policy advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel’s firing into the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza which killed twelve people yesterday was “in complete compliance with international law.” Meanwhile, the WHO condemned the attack in a post on X, saying “health workers and civilians should never have to be exposed to such horror.” Philip Wang reports for CNN.

Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah exchanged fire with the IDF across the Lebanese border on Monday. The IDF said yesterday that it used artillery to strike Lebanon, while Hezbollah said it carried out four attacks against Israeli military targets. The IDF confirmed there were no Israeli casualties although a fire broke out at one of the sites. Sarah Dadouch and Annabelle Timsit report for the Washington Post."

lousubcap

Tuesday Russia-Ukraine update:

"Russia’s ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov claimed yesterday that the recent U.S. military aid package to Ukraine is “nothing more than a calming pill prepared for President Vladimir Zelenskyy by overseas benefactors.” Antonov’s comments come after the Biden administration announced yesterday that it would provide a $100 million security assistance package to Ukraine which will include anti-aircraft missiles, anti-armour systems, artillery rounds, and small arms ammunition, amongst others. Antanov added that the “Ukrainian government is on the verge of complete collapse.” Holly Ellyatt reports for CNBC News.

The Ukrainian army said it has pushed Russian forces back as far as 8km (5 miles) from the banks of Dnipro river in the southern Kherson region. Ukrainian and Russian forces have been entrenched on opposite sides of the Dnipro for more than a year after Russia withdrew its troops from the western bank last November. Ukraine said last week it had made a breakthrough. “Preliminary figures vary from 3 to 8 kilometres (2 to 5 miles), depending on the specifics, geography and landscape of the left bank,” army spokeswoman Natalia Gumenyuk told Ukrainian television when asked how much progress Kyiv had made. She added that there remained a “lot of work to do”.

The United Kingdom’s defence ministry said that there were “few immediate prospects of major changes in the front line,” saying neither Russia nor Ukraine had made meaningful progress on the battlefield. In a statement, it said that intense fighting was concentrated near Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, Avdiivka in the Dontesk region, and on the left bank of the Dnipro River.

Russia again launched several waves of drone attacks on Kyiv, triggering air raid warnings. Ukraine’s Air Force said its air defence systems destroyed 15 of the 20 Shahed kamikaze drones targeting the Kyiv, Poltava and Cherkasy regions. There were no initial reports of “critical damage” or casualties. On Saturday, Russian drone attacks caused power outages in more than 400 towns and villages in the south, southeast and north of Ukraine."

HeavyG

https://twitter.com/SpencerGuard/status/1725697544712311154?s=20

Yet again, another article that makes no mention of flooding the tunnels. A few commenters on the Twitter thread do suggest flooding. 

JohnInCarolina

HeavyG said:

Yet again, another article that makes no mention of flooding the tunnels. A few commenters on the Twitter thread do suggest flooding. 

Have any of them estimated the volume of water that would require?  

Gulfcoastguy

Flooding the tunnels doesn’t necessarily collapse them . Fire or explosives can do that but they have to make sure no hostages are in those sections or count them lost and say Kaddish for them.

HeavyG

JohnInCarolina said:

HeavyG said:

Yet again, another article that makes no mention of flooding the tunnels. A few commenters on the Twitter thread do suggest flooding. 

Have any of them estimated the volume of water that would require?  

I've not seen anyone seriously mentioning flooding so no volume estimates. However, I think the Mediterranean can handle it.

Given the vast network, that article says "hundreds of miles some large enough for cars to drive thru", pumping could easily take weeks which is fine - no need to rush. In fact, a slower fill time would be likely of more use in flushing them out.

One of the comments on Twitter suggested doing some directional drilling from within the Mediterranean which would perhaps eliminate the need for pumps. That would of course depend upon just how interconnected that whole network is. If Hamas were smart their network would not be completely interconnected.

JohnInCarolina

HeavyG said:

JohnInCarolina said:

HeavyG said:

Yet again, another article that makes no mention of flooding the tunnels. A few commenters on the Twitter thread do suggest flooding. 

Have any of them estimated the volume of water that would require?  

I've not seen anyone seriously mentioning flooding so no volume estimates. However, I think the Mediterranean can handle it.

Given the vast network, that article says "hundreds of miles some large enough for cars to drive thru", pumping could easily take weeks which is fine - no need to rush. In fact, a slower fill time would be likely of more use in flushing them out.

One of the comments on Twitter suggested doing some directional drilling from within the Mediterranean which would perhaps eliminate the need for pumps. That would of course depend upon just how interconnected that whole network is. If Hamas were smart their network would not be completely interconnected.

Yes, there is plenty of sea water locally, but the logistics of getting it from the ocean into the tunnels is not trivial, especially when what you're talking about is a potentially very large volume of fluid.

I suspect the practical issues of actually flooding the tunnels rule it out as an option, never mind the fact that there may be hostages down there.  

Gulfcoastguy

You know automobile tunnels usually have drainage systems. Filling them full of natural gas and setting off a few blasting caps could collapse them and definitely clear them. The blast wave could reveal other tunnels and set off armories.

lousubcap

@Gulfcoastguy has a broad range of civil (hope I got that right) engineering expertise based on his history of posts.  But given what appears to be an unknown but large volume of tunnels the question of gas like the above regarding water comes into play.  Definitely a tough issue to address.  Whatever the solution will be second guessed. 

lousubcap

Ukraine and winter preps:

WINTER CYBER PREP: Ukraine has imported custom-built U.S. equipment designed to withstand Russian electronic warfare attacks over the winter, potentially offering a lifeline to the country’s energy grid, CNN’s SEAN LYNGAAS reports.

American tech giant Cisco spent weeks testing the equipment in Texas before sending it aboard a U.S. plane carrying humanitarian aid, the company said. About $1 million worth of the hardware kits, which worked through Russian attacks on Kyiv’s GPS systems, have been installed across the country.

The pizza-box-sized tech “allows an electric substation — which has the crucial task of converting power from high to low voltage — to communicate with other parts of a power grid. Critically, these switches needed to be outfitted with their own internal clocks … giving grid operators visibility even when GPS systems are down,” Lyngaas writes.

UKRAINE’S WISHLIST: Kyiv wants short-range radars from the U.S. for the holiday season as officials there brace for a difficult season of Russian missile strikes against civilian sites and energy infrastructure, our friends at Morning Defense (for Pros!) report.

Specifically, Kyiv is looking for Sentinel short-range radars that are designed to track ballistic missiles, slower-moving drones and fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft — and a lot in-between, a person familiar with the U.S.-Ukraine discussions told Paul.

The request — though a far cry from the Abrams tanks, F-16s and Army Tactical Missile Systems that have led the list since the start of the war — is critical to getting through the winter, Ukraine says. The new radars would provide more coverage for parts of the country being battered by daily Russian strikes, and could be used to protect factories where Ukrainians intend to build their own weapons, rather than import them, once they enlist the help of Western defense firms.

Edit in an attempt to remove the excessive spacing-failed the attempt!

lousubcap

A cold war insight from the mid '80-90's.  Tom Nichols-worth a read and an appreciation for the stakes at play then:

(I can't manage the friggin spacing.)

Tom Nichols STAFF WRITER

The ABC made-for-television movie The Day After premiered on November 20, 1983. It changed the way many Americans thought about nuclear war—but the fear now seems forgotten.

A Preview of Hell We live in an anxious time. Some days, it can feel like the wheels are coming off and the planet is careening out of control. But at least it’s not 1983, the year that the Cold War seemed to be in its final trajectory toward disaster. Forty years ago today, it was the morning after The Day After, the ABC TV movie about a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. Roughly 100 million people tuned in on Sunday night, November 20, 1983, and The Day After holds the record as the most-watched made-for-television movie in history. I remember the movie, and the year, vividly. I was 22 and in graduate school at Columbia University, studying the Soviet Union. It’s hard to explain to people who worry about, say, climate change—a perfectly legitimate concern—what it was like to live with the fear not that many people could die over the course of 20 or 50 or 100 years but that the decision to end life on most of the planet in flames and agony could happen in less time than it would take you to finish reading this article. I will not recount the movie for you; there isn’t much of a plot beyond the stories of people who survive the fictional destruction of Kansas City. There is no detailed scenario, no explanation of what started the war. (This was by design; the filmmakers wanted to avoid making any political points.) But in scenes as graphic as U.S. television would allow, Americans finally got a look at what the last moments of peace, and the first moments of hell, might look like. Understanding the impact of The Day After is difficult without a sense of the tense Cold War situation during the previous few years. There was an unease (or “a growing feeling of hysteria,” as Sting would sing a few years later in “Russians”) in both East and West that the gears of war were turning and locking, a doomsday ratchet tightening click by click. The Soviet-American détente of the 1970s was brief and ended quickly. By 1980, President Jimmy Carter was facing severe criticism about national defense even within his own party. He responded by approving a number of new nuclear programs, and unveiling a new and highly aggressive nuclear strategy. The Soviets thought Carter had lost his mind, and they were actually more hopeful about working with the Republican nominee, Ronald Reagan. Soviet fears intensified when Reagan, once in office, took Carter’s decisions and put them on steroids, and in May 1981 the KGB went on alert looking for signs of impending nuclear attack from the United States. In November 1982, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev died and was replaced by the KGB boss, Yuri Andropov. The chill in relations between Washington and Moscow became a hard frost. And then came 1983. In early March, Reagan gave his famous speech in which he called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and accused it of being “the focus of evil in the modern world.” Only a few weeks after that, he gave a major televised address to the nation in which he announced plans for space-based missile defenses, soon mocked as “Star Wars.” Two months later, I graduated from college and headed over to the Soviet Union to study Russian for the summer. Everywhere I went, the question was the same: “Why does your president want a nuclear war?” Soviet citizens, bombarded by propaganda, were certain the end was near. So was I, but I blamed their leaders, not mine. When I returned, I packed my car in Massachusetts and began a road trip to begin graduate school in New York City on September 1, 1983. As I drove, news reports on the radio kept alluding to a missing Korean airliner. The jet was Korean Air Lines Flight 007. It was downed by Soviet fighter jets for trespassing in Soviet airspace, killing all 269 souls aboard. The shoot down produced an immense outpouring of rage at the Soviet Union that shocked Kremlin leaders. Soviet sources later claimed that this was the moment when Andropov gave up—forever—on any hope of better relations with the West, and as the fall weather of 1983 got colder, the Cold War got hotter. We didn’t know it at the time, but in late September, Soviet air defenses falsely reported a U.S. nuclear attack against the Soviet Union: We’re all still alive thanks to a Soviet officer on duty that day who refused to believe the erroneous alert. On October 10, Reagan watched The Day After in a private screening and noted in his diary that it “greatly depressed” him. On October 23, a truck bomber killed 241 U.S. military personnel in the Marine barracks in Beirut. Two days after that, the United States invaded Grenada and deposed its Marxist-Leninist regime, an act the Soviets thought could be the prelude to overthrowing other pro-Soviet regimes—even in Europe. On November 7, the U.S. and NATO began a military communications exercise code-named Able Archer, exactly the sort of traffic and activity the Soviets were looking for. Moscow definitely noticed, but fortunately, the exercise wound down in time to prevent any further confusion. This was the global situation when, on November 20, The Day After aired. Three days later, on November 23, Soviet negotiators walked out of nuclear-arms talks in Geneva. War began to feel—at least to me—inevitable. In today’s Bulwark newsletter, the writer A. B. Stoddard remembers how her father, ABC’s motion-picture president Brandon Stoddard, came up with the idea for The Day After. “He wanted Americans, not politicians, to grapple with what nuclear war would mean, and he felt ‘fear had really paralyzed people.’ So the movie was meant to force the issue.” And so it did, perhaps not always productively. Some of the immediate commentary bordered on panic. (In New York, I recall listening to the antinuclear activist Helen Caldicott on talk radio after the broadcast, and she said nuclear war was a mathematical certainty if Reagan was reelected.) Henry Kissinger, for his part, asked if we should make policy by “scaring ourselves to death.” Reagan, according to the scholar Beth Fischer, was in “shock and disbelief” that the Soviets really thought he was headed for war, and in late 1983 “took the reins” and began to redirect policy. He found no takers in the Kremlin for his new line until the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, and both men soon affirmed that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought—a principle that in theory still guides U.S. and Russian policy. In the end, we got through 1983 mostly by dumb luck. If you’d asked me back then as a young student whether I’d be around to talk about any of this 40 years later, I would have called the chances a coin toss. But although we might feel safer, I wonder if Americans really understand that thousands of those weapons remain on station in the United States, Russia, and other nations, ready to launch in a matter of minutes. The Day After wasn’t the scariest nuclear-war film—that honor goes to the BBC’s Threads—but perhaps more Americans should take the time to watch it. It’s not exactly a holiday movie, but it’s a good reminder at Thanksgiving that we are fortunate for the changes over the past 40 years that allow us to give thanks in our homes instead of in shelters made from the remnants of our cities and towns—and to recommit to making sure that future generations don’t have to live with that same fear."

Gulfcoastguy

lousubcap said:

@Gulfcoastguy has a broad range of civil (hope I got that right) engineering expertise based on his history of posts.  But given what appears to be an unknown but large volume of tunnels the question of gas like the above regarding water comes into play.  Definitely a tough issue to address.  Whatever the solution will be second guessed. 

Far less natural gas by volume, you actually need it mixed with air. Israel has a number of natural gas wells in the water close to Gaza. Plug the central nodes to isolate sections that have been cleared of hostages ( remote cameras). Besides the blast wave , the thermal pulse should cause the concrete to spall . And yes civil. 

As a coincidence two hobos were fighting for territory under the I 110 elevated concrete road. The winner decided to burn the loser’s possessions. Th fire spread and caught a large trailer of orange traffic cones on fire, flames 40 feet high. Anyhow my former coworkers are having to replace the concrete deck and prestressed beams now. Sometimes I miss my job , that would have been a useful and non routine project.

Botch

lousubcap said:

A cold war insight from the mid '80-90's.  Tom Nichols-worth a read and an appreciation for the stakes at play then:

Thanks for posting that, Cap'n.  I graduated from college in May '83 but didn't report to duty (to Dayton/WPAFB, via ROTC) until Oct 16.  That summer I wasn't too aware of World events, didn't have a TV or newspaper subscription.  I first learned of the Korean airliner getting shot down during rehearsal of a bluegrass band I was in that summer.  
When The Day After was broadcast, a coworker invited a few of us to his place to watch it.  I seem to remember that when the blasts started happening in the movie, the screen went dark, for a long time (no commercial breaks) and I remember everyone in the room was dead-silent.  The movie from that point on reminded me of too many "zombie apocalypse" type films, but the film up to that point scared the sh*t out of me.  Given the other things that happened that year, I started reading the newspaper at the base library before going home, and got a subscription as soon as I could afford one.   
Thanks for the memory-tweak.  

JohnInCarolina

@lousubcap - I was pretty young when “The Day After” played on TV, but I remember it.  For whatever reason, my parents let me watch it.  

HeavyG

I'm surprised that article made no mention of the movie "Testament" which came oout a couple weeks before "The Day After". One of my all time favorite films and a real heartbreaker.

lousubcap

Wednesday Israel-Hamas update:

"Israel and Hamas have reached a deal allowing a four-day pause in the fighting and the release of 50 women and children hostages in Gaza, marking the biggest diplomatic breakthrough since the war broke out on Oct.7. The deal was brokered by Qatar and will also allow the entry of “a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid.” No start time of the fighting pause has been announced yet, but this will be confirmed in the next 24 hours, according to a Qatar government  statement. Qatar’s lead negotiator Minister of State Mohammed Al-Khulaifi said the international community should “seize this brief window of opportunity to generate further momentum for the diplomatic track.” Simone McCarthy, Rob Picheta, and David Shortell report for CNN.

Israel released a statement saying “the release of every additional 10 hostages will result in one additional day in the pause,” adding that “the government of Israel, the IDF and the security services will continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza.” BBC News reports.

One hundred and fifty women and children Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails will be released as part of the hostage deal with Israel. An IDF spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus said the full list of the relevant prisoners will be released and that these individuals were not involved in the Oct. 7 attacks, unlike previous hostage release details. “What I know is that the Palestinians that are being freed from prisons are not at all that caliber of terrorists that we were talking about before, not serious offenders,” Conricus said. Kareem El Damanhoury reports for CNN.

A senior U.S. official said they expect at least three American citizens – including a three-year old child –  to be released as part of the hostage deal. The official said the child will turn four on Friday and that both her parents were killed in the Oct. 7 attack. Matt Murphy reports for BBC News.

Israeli troops have exposed and destroyed approximately 400 Hamas tunnel shafts since the start of the conflict, many of which were located within civilian hospitals, homes, and schools, according to the IDF. BBC News reports. "

lousubcap

Wednesday Russia-Ukraine update:

"Russia is sending fewer troops and less equipment into Avdiivka, according to Ukrainian officials. “Russian occupying forces have reduced the number of ground and air attacks, though they still violate the rules of war by shooting at medical teams and evacuation vehicles,” said a Ukrainian military spokesperson. They added, “the invaders are not abandoning their plans to surround Avdiivka. Eight attacks were repelled today.” The head of Avdiivka’s military administration said Ukrainian forces were holding their positions in the region. Ron Popeski and Oleksandr Kozhukhar report for Reuters.

Russia’s defence ministry said its marines were “stopping all attempts by the Armed Forces of Ukraine to carry out amphibious landings on the Dnipro islands and the left [eastern] bank of the Dnipro River” in the southern Kherson region. Pro-Russian bloggers said Russian forces had been harrying Ukrainian forces near the village of Krynky, on the eastern bank upriver from the city of Kherson. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed Kyiv had suffered “colossal losses”.

At least two people were killed after Russia fired a new barrage of missiles and drones hitting a hospital in the town of Selydove in the eastern Donetsk region, and a mine nearby. The air force said it destroyed nine out of 10 drones and a cruise missile launched by Russia. Moscow also targeted Ukraine with four guided missiles."

lousubcap

An eye-opening (at least for me) view into the US garment industry:

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/made-in-america-never-meant-more-ethical/?utm_

lousubcap

Since it is Thanksgiving I thought I would offer up an article about Canadian wild pigs-

https://apnews.com/article/wild-pigs-feral-swine-canada-minnesota-border-e59a542efb3c64d5f4b136fc137b7665

lousubcap

Some thoughts on power and how it influences today's world  (not my writing):

"Understand the nature of power – who possesses it and why, how it is wielded, and for what purposes. Power is the ability to direct or influence the behavior of others. On a large scale, power is the capacity to set the public agenda – to frame big choices, to influence legislators, and to get laws enacted or prevent them from being enacted, to assert one’s will on the world.

Power has been leached out of conventional discussions about what is occurring. Power doesn’t show up in standard economics texts, finance courses, or even political science and law. But you cannot understand American capitalism today without confronting power head on. It is the most important subterranean force.

Power is exercised through institutions -- big Wall Street banks, global corporations, the executive and legislative branches of government, the Federal Reserve and the Supreme Court, the military, elite universities, and the media (including social media as organized by Big Tech).

But these institutions don’t wield power on their own. Particular people have outsized influence over them. As Greta Thunberg observes, “if everyone is guilty then no one is to blame. And someone is to blame. Some people – some companies and some decision-makers in particular – have known exactly what priceless values they are sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money.”

To comprehend who has influence over the system you’ll need to understand the role of wealth. Power and wealth are inseparable. Great wealth flows from great power; great power depends on great wealth. Wealth and power have become one and the same.""

lousubcap

From Bloomberg on the Israel-Hamas ceasefire:

"The fighting in Gaza stopped on Friday, the first major letup in six weeks of ferocious warfare. Just hours later, Hamas released 24 hostages: 13 Israelis, some with dual citizenship and all women and minors, as well as 10 Thai nationals and one from the Philippines. In exchange, Israel released 39 Palestinian prisoners, also women and minors. If all goes as planned over the next three days, Hamas will release a total of 50 of the roughly 240 hostages Israel said it took amid the slaughter of 1,200 people on Oct. 7 and Israel will free a total of 150 prisoners. But Benjamin Netanyahu says the exchange doesn’t signal a change in his pledge not to stop attacking until Hamas is destroyed, despite international outcry over the more than 13,000 people Gaza health authorities said Israel has killed. 

An exchange was not inevitable. Families of the hostages have been loudly pushing for their release, forcing it high onto Netanyahu’s agenda. US officials said three Americans would be among those released, though it didn’t appear they were among the first to be let go. Each side will likely use the pause, assuming it holds, to rest their forces, resupply, plan and gather intelligence. But there seems little longer-term hope, given the prime minister’s statements. With Israel now pushing into the south of Gaza—where it told Palestinians to flee—after destroying much of the north, and no indication of Hamas willing to lay down its arms, the threat of a wider war persists. “Don’t hold your breath, given the maximalist goals on both sides,” Marc Champion writes in Bloomberg Opinion. “Even assuming this halt in hostilities can last its intended duration, expect more war.”"

JohnInCarolina

Pretty neat story in the NYT about a quiet millionaire living in a small town in NH (gift link):

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/23/us/new-hampshire-hinsdale-millionaire-geoffrey-holt.html?unlocked_article_code=1.BE0.yjKS.hA4cNIbKl_ee&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

It's making the rounds among people from NH.  Enjoy.

JohnInCarolina

Kind of interesting:

lousubcap

@JohnInCarolina - I read that article thru a gifted link but could not fool the system into letting me post it.  Thanks for sharing. 

lousubcap

From Politico today regarding George Santos and a bit more-

"SANTOS’ SWAN SONG — The end of Rep. GEORGE SANTOS’political career is right around the corner — and last night, for the first time, the New York Republican seemed to acknowledge it.

In a three-hour rant on X Spaces, Santos lashed out at lawmakers on the House Ethics Committee and admitted that he would probably be expelled from the House after the Thanksgiving recess. Why? Because “I can do math” and count votes, he said, per Reese Gorman at the Washington Examiner.

Santos is probably right. After the ethics panel found in mid-November that he’d used campaign money for personal expenses like Botox, spending splurges in the Hamptons and Atlantic City and even on OnlyFans, a website known for selling porn, several Republicans who opposed previous efforts to oust him have come around. And Ethics Chair MICHAEL GUEST (R-Miss.) has now introduced another resolution to expel Santos based on the findings of his probe — though he has yet to begin the process of forcing a vote on the matter.

But that doesn’t mean Santos is going to go quietly. In fact, we should all probably think of last night as a prelude to how Congress’ own FRANK ABAGNALE JR. will spend his final weeks in the spotlight. His X Spaces performance included accusing lawmakers of voting while drunk (we can confirm this does often happen …) and daring Guest to file his expulsion resolution and “be a man and stop being a ****.”

Here’s a taste: “Within the ranks of the United States Congress, there’s felons galore, there’s people with all sorts of sheisty backgrounds … I have colleagues who are more worried about getting drunk every night with the next lobbyists that they’re going to screw and pretend like none of us know what’s going on and sell off the American people. … Not show up to vote because they’re too hungover or whatever the reason is, or not show up to vote at all and just give their card out like **** candy for someone else to vote for them. This **** happens every single week. Where are the ethics investigations?”"

HeavyG

Everything in Santos' rant could well be true (and my guess likely is) but given his past behavior not a soul will believe him.
Kinda funny.

lousubcap

Monday Russia-Ukraine update:

"Russia has foiled more than 20 Ukrainian drone attacks over Russian territory in the past day, including on the capital, Moscow, officials said Sunday, a day after it launched its largest drone attack against the Ukrainian capital since the full-scale invasion began.

According to Russia’s Ministry of Defense, 24 Ukrainian drones have been destroyed over the territories of Moscow, Tula, Kaluga, Bryansk and Smolensk oblasts in the past 24 hours.

In addition, Russian air defenses intercepted 53 Ukrainian drones during the same period over Ukrainian areas under Russian control, according to the ministry. They included Kharkiv, Kherson, the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR).

Ukraine launched one of the biggest drone attacks on the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula since the full-scale war that started with Russia’s invasion 21 months ago, Russian officials said Friday. They did not mention any casualties or damage.

At the same time, Ukrainian officials reported that the Kremlin’s forces escalated their weekslong and costly attempt to storm Avdiivka, a strategically important city in eastern Ukraine.

The stepped-up efforts came as both sides are keen to show they are not deadlocked as the fighting approaches 2024. Neither side has gained much ground despite a Ukrainian counteroffensive that began in June, and analysts predict the war will be a long one."

lousubcap

Monday Israel-Hamas update:

"Fifty eight hostages have been released by Hamas over the first three days of the temporary pause to fighting reached with Israel. “Thirteen Israeli women and children have been freed each day, per the deal’s terms, along with varying numbers of other nationals, including citizens of Thailand, Poland, the Philippines, and Russia.” Tara John,Lauren Izso, Tamar Michaelis, Sophie Tanno, and Jerome Taylor report for CNN.

The next group of hostages held by Hamas, around a dozen women and children, are expected to be released today. So far, for every Israeli citizen freed, three Palestinian prisoners — women and children — have been released from Israeli prisons. Israel’s offer to extend the temporary pause a further day for every 10 additional captives released remains open, and Hamas says it could agree to an extension, marking early indications that the temporary pause may be extended. Around 180 people remain captive in Gaza by Hamas, and a Palestinian official said that between 20 to 40 additional Israeli hostages could be freed, requiring a possible further two to four days’ extension of the temporary pause. Hugo Bachega reports for BBC News.

Over 1.7 million people — nearly 80 percent of the population — have been displaced across the Gaza strip since the war began, with over one million sheltering in installations across all five governorates of the Gaza Strip, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). In a statement yesterday, the UNRWA said that 129,000 liters of fuel entered Gaza from Egypt for the second consecutive day; the fuel has been distributed for food resources, generators at hospitals, and water and sanitation facilities. The statement added that as of Nov. 25, Israeli Authorities had not allowed fuel to reach areas north of Wadi Gaza.

At least 120 aid trucks carrying fuel and cooking gas entered Gaza through the Rafah crossing yesterday, according to the Egyptian government. CNN reports."