Darwin Awards. They Are Gutless.

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What's Driving Putin?

by Zachary Shore via Discourse Magazine

From a Western perspective, Russia is losing the war in Ukraine. But that’s just a Western view.

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Sounds like they could be Democrats?

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THE NEW DARWIN AWARDS ARE HERE!!

The Darwin Awards are finally out. The annual honor given to the persons who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way. Last year's winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out. 

This year's winner was a real rocket scientist ... HONEST!

Read on ... And remember that each and every one of these is TRUE.

And the nominees were: -

Semifinalist #1

A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply, because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with milk… Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he vomited into the fireplace in his house. The resulting explosion and fire burned his house down, killing both him and his sister.

Semifinalist #2

Three Brazilian men were flying in a light aircraft at low altitude when another plane approached. It a appears that they decided to moon the occupants of the other plane, but lost control of their own aircraft and crashed ... They were all found dead in the wreckage with their pants around their ankles.

Semifinalist #3

A 22-year-old Reston, VA, man was found dead after he tried to use octopus straps to bungee jump off a 70-foot railroad trestle. Fairfax County police said Eric Barcia, a fast food worker, taped a bunch of these straps together, wrapped an end around one foot, anchored the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park , jumped and hit the pavement. Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators think Barcia was alone because his car was found nearby. 'The length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the ground,' Carmichael said. Police say the apparent cause of death was 'Major trauma.'

Semifinalist #4

A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. It seems that he and a friend were playing a game of catch, using the rattlesnake as a ball. The friend - no doubt a future Darwin Awards candidate - was hospitalized. 

Semifinalist #5

Employees in a medium-sized warehouse in west Texas noticed the smell of a gas. Sensibly, management evacuated the building extinguishing all potential sources of ignition; lights, power, etc. After the building had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas company were dispatched. Upon entering the building, they found they had difficulty navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the lights worked. Witnesses later described the sight of one of the technicians reaching into his pocket and retrieving an object that resembled a cigarette lighter!

Upon operation of the lighter-like object, the gas in the warehouse exploded, sending pieces of it up to three miles away. Nothing was found of the technicians, but the lighter was virtually untouched by the explosion. The technician suspected of causing the blast had never been thought of as ''bright'' by their peers. 

Now the winner of this year's Darwin Award (awarded, as always, posthumously): -

The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car.

The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. Police investigators finally pieced together the mystery. An amateur rocket scientist.... Had somehow gotten hold of a JATO bottle (Jet Assisted Take Off, actually a solid fuel rocket) that is used to give heavy military transport planes an extra 'push' for taking off from short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. He attached the JATO unit to the car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO!

The facts as best as could be determined are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0 miles from the crash site. This was established by the scorched and melted asphalt at that location. 

The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mph and continuing at full power for an additional 20 -25 seconds. 

The driver, and soon to be pilot, would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog fighting F -14 jocks under full afterburners, causing him to become irrelevant for the remainder of the event. 

However, the automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a height of 125 feet leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock.

Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable. However, small fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater, and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.

Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron attained a ground speed of approximately 420-mph, though much of his voyage was not actually on the ground.

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Jonathan always worth reading because he is always at the top of his game in assessing trends:

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Jordan Has an Iran Problem. Can Israel and Saudi Arabia Unite to Combat It?

by Jonathan Schanzer The Dispatch

In a conversation last week with former U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Jordan's King Abdullah II expressed concerns that Iranian forces in Syria could soon destabilize his country. Russia may soon redeploy assets and forces from Syria to their mired war effort in Ukraine, and Iran seeks to fill the void.

The Jordanian monarch asserted, "That vacuum [left by the Russians] will be filled by the Iranians and their proxies. So unfortunately, we are looking at maybe an escalation of problems on our borders."

But challenges can also yield opportunity. In this case, Jordan's security woes can help to cement an emerging alliance between Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. These two unlikely partners both view Iran as a mortal enemy that threatens the broader Middle East. They both share borders with Jordan. And they both view Jordanian stability as critical to their national security.

Saudi Arabia is already mulling a move in this direction, particularly after the signing of the Abraham Accords in September 2020. When its neighbors United Arab Emirates and Bahrain normalized relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia seemed next in line. However, the leadership in Riyadh moves more slowly and deliberately than its Gulf partners.

A Saudi-Israeli agreement was widely expected in Donald Trump's second term. But that second term was not to be.

When the Biden administration came in, the winds shifted significantly. For months, the White House refused to acknowledge the Trump administration's normalization achievements (the State Department spokesman wouldn't utter the words "Abraham Accords"). New pacts were clearly not a priority.

That may be changing now, with reports that the Biden administration is helping to broker the transfer of two Egyptian islands in the Red Sea (Tiran and Sanafir) to Saudi Arabia. The deal requires Israeli buy-in, pursuant to the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement of 1979. The transaction could amount to a first step toward normalization.

For Saudi Arabia, this is all welcome change. On the campaign trail, Joe Biden not only ignored the possibility of brokering a normalization agreement—he openly vowed to blackball the Saudis in Washington. Once sworn in, Biden followed up to the delight of a handful of anti-Saudi lawmakers, releasing known information about the Saudi killing of journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi. After that, the White House pulled support for the Saudi war in Yemen, and it removed the Houthi terrorist group from the State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organization list, even as the Houthis were firing rockets at Saudi civilian and oil infrastructure.

Things appeared to hit rock bottom before the war in Ukraine. The resulting energy crisis, however, prompted the Biden administration to rekindle ties with the government sitting atop the world's largest proven oil reserves. According to Saudi officials, the relationship is getting back on track.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to demonstrate its value to Saudi Arabia as an ally. In recent years, the Israelis have been slugging it out with the Iranians in Syria, in cyberspace, on the high seas, and beyond. It's an asymmetric campaign that the Israelis call "the war between wars." It has proved two things to the Arab states. First, Israel is not afraid to battle Riyadh's mortal enemy. Second, the Islamic Republic is not as strong as many believed.

All eyes are now on Syria, where Israel has been stepping up strikes on Iranian assets. The tempo is expected to increase if and when Russian redeploys forces and assets to Ukraine. Freedom of operation could yield new opportunities, even as Iran seeks to expand operations in the war-torn territory.

Part of Iran's expansion effort, as the Jordanian monarch noted, includes the destabilization of Jordan from the north, where drug smugglers are already wreaking havoc. Jordan also faces a threat from the south, with Iranian assets reportedly operating in the Red Sea. This all amounts to a direct threat to both Saudi Arabia and Israel. Both view the Hashemite Kingdom as a valuable asset. Stability on their respective borders is something both countries will protect at great cost.

Building on the momentum of the Red Sea islands negotiations, the White House has an opportunity to push the two sides in the right direction. After Abdullah's recent visit to Washington, the Biden administration has renewed its commitment to Jordanian security. Enlisting the help of Riyadh and Jerusalem, separately and together, is the next logical step.

Admittedly, both Saudi Arabia and Israel remain wary of Biden's declared intent to re-enter the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran. Talks have stalled in Vienna over the regime's demands to remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the U.S. terrorism list. Biden has refused, which comes as a relief to the Israelis and Saudis. But the White House has not given up yet on a deal. Should an accord be reached, the Israelis and Saudis both worry that the accompanying sanctions relief would yield hundreds of billions of dollars to the regime in Tehran. That windfall would only help Iran destabilize Jordan, not to mention other countries around the region.

This is a message that Riyadh and Jerusalem can now convey to Washington. They can also offer the Biden administration an alternative. They can offer the White House an opportunity to broker a new defense pact, leveraging their participation in CENTCOM. Israel was recently added to this strategic region, and this has already afforded the Saudis and Israelis opportunities to work together.

Saudi Arabia and Israel can take things a step further, too. Building upon the Red Sea talks, they can now enter into the most important normalization agreement yet. Such an agreement would be viewed as an unparalleled diplomatic achievement in the region, given Saudi Arabia's prominent role in the Arab world.

For a White House that still seeks to differentiate itself from the previous administration, this is the moment they have been waiting for. And given Saudi Arabia's leadership role in the Arab and Muslim worlds, it's not difficult to imagine a domino effect, with other countries looking to follow suit.

Does the road to regional peace run through Jordan? It's time for President Biden to find out.

Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the United States Department of the Treasury, is senior vice president for the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.

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Put this in your pipe and smoke it!

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 Here are six Conundrums of socialism in the United States of America:     

1. America is capitalist and greedy - yet half of the population is subsidized.       

2. Half of the population is subsidized - yet they think they are victims.       

3. They think they are victims - yet their representatives run the government.       

4. Their representatives run the government - yet the poor keep getting poorer.       

5. The poor keep getting poorer - yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.       

6. They have things that people in other countries only dream about - yet they want America to be more like those other countries.  

And:

I would add:

They want America to be more like other countries but refuse to leave America. 

Finally:

They refuse to leave America because they are gutless.

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