Last week had two days over 90F on the deck, now nice 80s but so very dry a half inch rain disappears quick no help. Hopland is first podunk north from here, in Mendocino.
Grass fire in Hopland Tuesday was ‘burning like it’s July’

... “It was burning very well.”

Franklin said crews were dispatched to the fire in the 10000 block of Old River Road around 2:30 p.m. March 22, a day when the temperature reached 90 degrees in Hopland.

“It’s scary,” Franklin said of the mix of heat and dry vegetation.

Yah. Speaking of fireworks, Cloverdale is last city council to ban the sale of, so they punted of course. Too divisive, so "All Glory to the Hypnotoad!" of course. LOL
Cloverdale council supports sending fireworks to the ballot

“We had 84 homeless fires in two years on our own river just within the Cloverdale area. If we are so afraid of fires, why aren’t we combatting that this hard to where we want to actually do something more for them? It would be the same with things like outdoor fire pits, outdoor barbecues. If those are really truly a problem and we’re truly afraid of fire, why aren’t we combatting those and trying to get rid of those?” Lands said.

Palla said that, while Cloverdale hasn’t seen any fires caused by fireworks, the National Fire Protection Association has calculated an estimated 19,500 fires started by fireworks in 2018, causing five deaths, 46 injuries and $105 million in property damage throughout the United States.

In 2020, the Cloverdale Police Department had 34 calls related to fireworks and in 2021, it received 43 firework-related calls.

Twelve steppers call dysfunctional priorities "stinkin' thinkin'". Too bad wine cave leadership never ever points their Behaviorial Health cannons at their own fine colleagues, and themselves. Behavioral Health Selfies For All
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Rockets red glare? Bombs bursting in air?
PTSD!
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Fuck that shit, I have always hated The Star Spangled Banner song, war glorification.
Thanks, two minutes are up. Ding!

Thanks for the OT soe!
Always intriguing.

Ol' 55 Tom Waits

It depends on who gets to run the show. Biden and the pentagon are trying to keep NATO out of Ukraine. Congress and the deep state neocons are trying to make sure that they go in. Biden has come late to the party since it was his and Obama’s decision to regime change Ukraine and put in a friendly puppet government. Democrats have been doing all they can to make sure that there will be troops in Ukraine. Of course they are doing their donors bidding as have many republicans. More weapons sold, more kickbacks to congress.

NATO wants a ground war

These are the three strategic policies that are fueling the war. They only relate to Ukraine inasmuch as Ukraine is the unfortunate staging-ground for the “Great Power Conflict” which is steadily gaining momentum. Tuesday’s recommendation, by Polish political leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynsk, that he would recommend that peacekeepers be sent to Ukraine shows that NATO is planning a major escalation of the conflict in the very near future. According to Reuters, Kaczynsk, will propose that:

“An international peacekeeping mission should be sent to Ukraine and be given the means to defend itself….

“I think that it is necessary to have a peace mission – NATO, possibly some wider international structure – but a mission that will be able to defend itself, which will operate on Ukrainian territory,” Kaczynski told a news conference.”

“It will be a mission that will strive for peace, to give humanitarian aid, but at the same time it will also be protected by appropriate forces, armed forces,” said Kaczynski, who is seen as the main decision-maker in Poland.” (“Top Polish politician calls for peacekeeping mission in Ukraine”, Reuters)

Think about that for a minute. Think about what it would mean. The peacekeeping mission:

“will operate on Ukrainian territory (where Russia is carrying out its military operation)
will be able to defend itself. (which means they will be armed.)
will be (protected by) “some wider international structure” (NATO)
Does anyone think this sounds like a good idea? Won’t this will force Russia to treat the NATO personnel as enemy belligerents that are interfering with their military operation?

Of course, it will. So, what are they trying to achieve; WW3? Is that the point? And what does this tell us about Washington’s strategy for Ukraine?

It also tells us that NATO is preparing to engage Russia militarily within Ukraine. That’s what it tells us. Until today, most people had assumed that NATO would not engage Russia militarily because they believed that would greatly increase the prospects of a nuclear exchange. But that is not how the foreign policy establishment sees things. After dealing with Putin for over 20 years, they see Putin as a rational actor who will not escalate unless Russia faces an imminent existence-threat. (A nuclear attack) In other words, the foreign policy mandarins have made the calculation that they can engage Putin in a bloody and protracted ground-war– that will drain Russia’s resources and destroy its economy– without Putin using his nuclear arsenal. It is a risky strategy but not entirely unreasonable given Putin’s behavior in the past. Putin has always been extremely cautious and never impulsive. The foreign policy wonks think they can use that against him. Like we said, it is a high-risk strategy.

Naturally, Russia is appalled by the ‘peacekeeper idea’ as it makes a clash between the two nuclear-armed superpowers almost unavoidable. Here’s what Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in response to the news:

“Our Polish colleagues have already stated that there will be a NATO summit now, and peacekeepers should be deployed. I hope they understand what is at stake. This will be a direct clash between the Russian and NATO armed forces, which everyone not only wanted to avoid but said that it should never take place in principle.”

Is Lavrov is being overly courteous?

Yes, he is. If the United States had issued the warning, they would have said something much more ominous, like this:

“Any armed formations will be treated as legitimate enemy targets and destroyed. Full stop.”

That’s how you deliver a warning. You don’t try to ingratiate yourself with the person who wants to kill your soldiers and erase your country from the map. That doesn’t make any sense at all. If there was ever a time for straight talk, this is it. Lives are at stake.

The “peacekeeper” incident suggests something I’ve suspected for quite a while; that Washington is itching for a land-war in Ukraine, and to some extent, it makes sense. It further polarizes and weakens Russia, it unites the allies around a common cause, and it reinforces NATO’s role as guarantor of regional security. The downside, of course, is that the conflict could quickly escalate leading to a full-blown nuclear war. I believe the neocons at the State Department do not see that as a plausible scenario, so they are pushing as hard as they can to intensify the fighting. Here’s a short clip from the piece by veteran Jacob Dreizin who appears to see things the same way:

“I am confident that, out of impotent rage if nothing else, NATO forces will move into western Ukraine from Poland by mid-April at the latest, if the war is still on by then. The heavy equipment is already there near the border; bringing in the personnel to link up with it is the easy part. With the recent Russian bombing of the U.S./UK “Ho Chi Minh trail” hub at the Yavorov base near the Polish border, they will get in on the ground … to make a statement like, “Not again, because we’re here openly now.”

No, Brandon doesn’t want to do it, but the hawks in Congress and the MSM are running the show now. There will be escalation. It is baked into the cake. In fact, I predicted before the invasion that Poland would take advantage of the war to create a protectorate in western Ukraine, and I stand by my prediction…” (“Dreizin Report–Poland prepares to intervene, Ukraine slides into dictatorship”, Jacob Dreizin, The Son of a New American Revolution)

Worth a full read. Links left out.

This is what I thought too when the Times confirmed that the Hunter story was true after all.

I think Dreizin is onto something here. Brandon is not on board with the planned escalation, but it might not matter, because the State Department is a hotbed of neocons that are doing whatever they can to grease the skids for a scorched earth, no-holds-barred cage-match with their most-reviled rival, Vladimir Putin. It’s the State Department, the Intel agencies, the Congress and the media that are steering the ship of state now, not Biden. Perhaps, you wondered why the NY Times suddenly decided to ‘come clean’ on the Hunter Biden laptop story? You probably know that it’s not because the Times editors had a change-of-heart and wanted to inform the public or “speak truth to power”. Of course, not. The Times trotted out the laptop dossier to let Biden know that they “got him by the shorthairs” and if he doesn’t play ball, he’s toast.

From the comments m

“Start a nuclear war, kill billions, and destroy civilization—or we’ll plaster Hunter’s kiddie porn selfies on the front page of the New York Times!” Poor Brandon. That’s a real Sophie’s Choice.

fucking clown https://t.co/jwlKyDwNuw

— -- GEROMAN -- - (@GeromanAT) March 26, 2022

Biden: we are pumping weapons into Ukraine as fast as we can, it's a bonanza for our arms merchants
13/

— Z ~ a special military operation (@Navsteva) March 26, 2022

Edited to add the following:

The White House later explained that Biden did not mean a change of government in the Russian Federation.

— Spriter (@spriter99880) March 26, 2022

It seems that the precondition to joining NATO was to provoke a war with Russia.

Pause for a second and think about this. Could it be possible that the US Govt is conspiring with Zelenskyy to sacrifice Ukrainians to isolate Russia and to make the EU more dependent on the US?

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) March 26, 2022