HMM: Russia may need 10 years to rebuild military after Ukraine war.

Just 14 months into Russia’s war on Ukraine, Moscow’s military has become so degraded that it could take up to 10 years for its forces to recover, US intelligence officials told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday.

“The reorganization that the Russian military took in the early 2000s … to be better, faster, smaller from what they were in the Soviet era – that army largely is gone,” said Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt. Gen. Scott D. Berrier.

“And they’re relying on reserve [troops] and reserve equipment, older, Soviet-era kinds of [equipment.]”

I don’t put much stock in anything the US intelligence community spouts, but I do know that an army that’s increasingly relying on tanks that went obsolete in the ’70s isn’t really a near-peer force at the moment.

YOU AREN’T PARANOID, YOU’RE JUST AHEAD OF THE NEWS CYCLE: Today It’s Your Gas Stove, Tomorrow It’s Your Dishwasher. “In yet another notorious Friday afternoon news dump, Biden’s Department of Energy proposed new efficiency rules for dishwashers sold in the U.S.”

TYLER O’NEIL: What Are They Hiding? Pro-Transgender Groups Refuse to Hand Over Internal Documents Even as They Move to Oppose Florida’s Medicaid Rule. “Amid this larger Medicaid case, the Florida agency subpoenaed AAP, WPATH, the Endocrine Society, and the other organizations cited by Lambda Legal. The Agency for Health Care Administration requested documents related to their standards of care, what studies they examined to support ‘gender-affirming care,’ any considerations of side effects and risks from these interventions, and communications with membership about these matters, among other things.”

G.I.G.O: Techno-Hell: Using AI to ‘Identify People at Risk of Mental Illness’?

GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: California panel approves $800 billion reparations package. “California is still wrestling with the whole reparations question and has been for quite a while now. But yesterday, the task force assigned to look into the matter took a series of votes and approved several recommendations. None of these are moving immediately into law, but they are intended to inform the legislature so that final proposals can be voted on. They agreed on some form of apology and cash reparations. They didn’t specify an amount, but an earlier version of the proposal called for payments of at least $360,000. Of course, this plan would only apply to Black residents and not any other minorities. And the total bill would add up to more than two and a half times the state’s entire annual budget, even as California faces a significant budget shortfall.”

People who never held slaves in a state that never allowed slavery will pay reparations to people who were never slaves.

SAY ANYTHING: Old Joe Biden Says With a Straight Face: ‘I’ve Proven Myself to Be Honorable.’

COVID IS SO OVER: The job crunch hits the White House as Biden searches for a new pandemic czar. “A week before Biden is set to declare an end to the nation’s public health emergency and dissolve his current Covid team, the White House still hasn’t found a director to run the new office charged with keeping up the fight, four people with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Evil Leftist Media Could Be Big Winner in Looming Tucker Carlson/FNC Fight. “Carlson has already started one media company (The Daily Caller), so why not go bigger now that he’s created a juggernaut brand for himself?”

STEVE SAILER: Rounding Up The 500 Most Dangerous Psychos In NYC Could Make The Streets And Subways A Lot Less Chaotic.

Statistically, NYC still isn’t all that dangerous. But because the point of NYC is to take public transportation, even a small amount of chaos on the sidewalks and in transit imposes huge psychological stresses on innocent commuters, compared to cities where everybody commutes in locked Ford F-150s.

But making commuting in NYC more civilized doesn’t sound that hard.
…
I live 3000 miles away, but a woman I know was punched in the head by Jeremy in the 42nd St. subway station. The NYPD said in effect, “Whaddaya whaddaya, we already arrested him 15 times. They’ll just let him out again.”

Similarly, the paranoid schizophrenic who punched out 5’4″ 67-year-old retired comic actor Rick Moranis whilewalking down the street in Manhattan had been arrested six times previously just in 2020 for attacking random people.

My impression is that the number of egregious random attacks on pedestrians and transit passengers in Manhattan could be lowered significantly just by rounding up a few hundred of the most well-known psychos and putting them in a lunatic asylum.

Well, sure. But the Left has made all kinds of mental illness into a human right, and it’s the duty of sane people to take whatever is dished out.

#METOO: Richard Dreyfuss Says Hollywood’s New ‘Inclusion’ Standards Make Him ‘Vomit.’

THE OFFICIAL FIGURES ARE OFFICIALLY BUNK: Job Market Is Cracking As Birth-Death Model ‘Adds’ Near Record 378,000 Jobs. “The birth-death model has added 1.84 million jobs since last March, or a whopping 43% of all payrolls added during this period. This means that almost half of all “job gains” in the past year are from an excel spreadsheet which assumes 1.84 million new jobs were created from new businesses.”

CORN, POPPED: Tucker Carlson Is About to Go to War With Fox News.

ROBERT SPENCER: Confused Old Man Pretending to Be President Announces ‘Major Press Conference’ When There Isn’t One.

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY: He Won the Women’s Poker Tournament. This week we have the man who won the women’s poker tourney, Karen would like to speak to the manager of the naked gay beach club, and the most exciting Tchaikovsky performance in a very long time.

DOWN ON YOUR KNEES: KISS musician grovels before social media mob after being mobbed for speaking the truth about child sex changes.

DISPATCHES FROM A FAILING STATE: South Africa’s only driver’s licence card printing machine has broken down — again.

That’s OK, people can just take the train, instead.

South Africa’s collapse — previously in slow motion but now accelerating — doesn’t get much notice in the news, but it’s been all over Twitter.

THE “MATH IS RACIST” ENDGAME: Chicago-Area High School Offers Racially Segregated Math Classes.

FILM LADD: The Onion Wants To Crowbar You To Death With LAUGHTER.

LAUGHING WOLF: About That ‘Attack’ On The Kremlin. “Let’s get a few things out of the way. Someone raised on my timeline on Twitter that this could have been a Doolittle-type raid to raise morale. In terms of U.S. and Western culture, possibly. However, in terms of Russian (and Ukrainian) culture, NO. It is far more likely to keep things going in Russia in support of the invasion, and even cause escalation. I can’t stress enough how different Russian culture is from our own. They are not ‘just like us but talk funny.’”

Much more at the link.

THEY HAVE NO INTENTION OF BEING READY: The Administration Is Nowhere Near Ready for the Surge at the Border Next Week.

INDEED: Evangeline Lilly Asks Why Our Modern Society Villainizes Femininity In Women But Not In Men: ‘Let Each Be Who They Are.’

“Why are we only applauding masculinity in women and villainizing it in men? And why are we only applauding femininity in men and debasing it in women? Why can’t we just allow for all of it?” Evangeline writes in the caption of her photo. “Why do we feel the need to vilify a man wearing shit-kicker boots, driving a pick-up truck who’s not afraid to punch someone in the face, but if they were a woman, they would be the epitome of cool? Why is a man who loves make-up, cries easily and stays at home to tend to the domestic responsibilities valiant, but a woman who does the same is pathetic?”

This is billed as another of Lilly’s “controversial takes.”

LIES, TALKING POINT, WHATEVER: Intel Officials’ Letter Was Pitched to Provide Joe Biden With Debate ‘Talking Point.’

TEXAS: Lina Hidalgo’s Continued Contempt for Transparency. “Remember Democratic County Judge and de-facto Queen of Harris County Lina Hidalgo, she of the numerous staff corruption charges? There have been a lot of Freedom of Information Act requests coming her way over all the alleged crooked dealings, so she went to her legal counsel to thwart transparency.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (RUSSIA EDITION): Russia’s Mercenary Chief Prigozhin Screams ‘NOT MY FAULT’ Over Massive Losses. “Prigozhin is right to think that his Wagner mercs are being wasted as Putin’s cannon fodder because Kyiv’s cannons have left a whole lot of Russian fodder at Bakhmut.”

ROUTINE BUT NEVER BORING: SpaceX rockets past 4,000 Starlink satellites in orbit with another Falcon 9 launch. “Landing of the first stage on Thursday’s mission occurred just as the Falcon 9’s second stage engine cut off to deliver the Starlink satellites into a preliminary parking orbit.”