🇺🇸 🇨🇳 🇺🇦 Senator Josh Hawley “China and Ukraine: A Time for Truth.” PT2:

⬛️ "We have carrier strike groups. But it’s not clear how they’ll help us defeat a Chinese invasion. China has built up defenses designed to neutralize them early in a fight, or keep them so far away they won’t be useful." 

⬛️ "We do have an undersea advantage. But we’ve only got so many submarines, we’ve only got so many torpedoes and other weapons to fire from them, and we’ve only got so many places to reload or refit them. Those are hard limits." 

⬛️ "We’re also at risk in Guam. Guam isn’t well defended against China’s missiles. And I haven’t even mentioned China’s nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile, our own military space architecture is dangerously vulnerable, and our logistics forces are already overstretched." 

⬛️ "So let’s suppose the worst happens. Suppose China invades and seizes Taiwan. We try to stop it, but our forces are defeated and the island is lost.

What would that mean?" 

⬛️ "Americans will confront a terrifying reality. The price hikes ve seen in recent years will pale in comparison. Product shortages will be commonplace—shortages of everything from basic medicine to consumer electronics. But the economic consequences are just the start." 

⬛️ "As Asia’s new reigning power, China could restrict U.S. trade in the region—perhaps block it altogether. Maybe we’ll be allowed in, but only on terms favorable to China.

China exploited the trade system once before. They can do it again." 

⬛️ "Imagine a world where Chinese warships patrol Hawaiian waters and the West Coast. A world where the PLA has military bases in Latin America. A world where Chinese forces operate freely in the Gulf of Mexico. This is a dark future. And an increasingly plausible one." 

⬛️ "There may still be time to chart a different course—if our leaders have the resolve to do so. Deterring China from seizing Taiwan should be America’s top priority. That means our defense spending should be concentrated on deterrence in the Pacific." 

⬛️ "No more “divest to invest” in the Indo-Pacific. No more unfunded priorities from INDOPACOM. We should be stockpiling weapons, dispersing our forces, and accelerating late-stage development of space, cyber, and other critical capabilities, like the B-21 strategic bomber." 

⬛️ "None of this is news, but we’re years behind schedule." 

https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-delivers-national-security-speech-china-and-ukraine-time-truth

Insightful: https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/all-seeing-eye-can-russia-break-through

Remember, every NPC is a potential agent.

https://youtu.be/IJrjcHx9nDA

The beauty of Niagara Falls knows no season, as it transforms into a magical winter wonderland when the colder months arrive. The city, famous for its liveliness during the summer, transforms into a frozen landscape with ice formations that make the falls appear as if they are frozen and surrounded by sparkling icicles. A blanket of frozen mist adds to the picturesque scenery, creating a truly breathtaking winter wonderland.

📍Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada 🇨🇦

National Geographic

🇬🇧 People from Oxford demonstrated this afternoon against a planned scheme by the city council to impose authoritarian travel restrictions on its residents. The plan has been dubbed as the West's first "climate lockdown."

🌍 @European_Insider | 🕊 Retweet

<deploraBot> News from vox: She Has to Go Back <https://voxday.net/2023/02/18/she-has-to-go-back/>

In case you ever wondered what were the last words of someone who didn't realize goose danger is rated on a five-point scale...

https://twitter.com/AetherCzar/status/1627081882969206784

NEW - UK counterterrorism program says interest in great literature is a sign of "far-right extremism."

The taxpayer-funded document included references to The Lord Of The Rings by JRR Tolkien, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, 1984 by George Orwell and the poems of GK Chesterton.

Works by Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Tennyson, Kipling, and Edmund Burke were also included.

https://www.disclose.tv/id/100065/

@disclosetv

Danish Chamber Orchestra performing #Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, with Conductor Ádám Fischer. https://ept.ms/BeethovenSymphNo3

BREAKING: Former President Jimmy Carter has entered hospice care.

He’s lived a long life. He’s lucky. He got to live long enough to see a Democrat in the White House who was more destructive than he was.

He should feel blessed.

Ford stops production of electric F-150 after battery fire

“The fire happened at an outdoor lot nearby in Dearborn where vehicles are held for quality checks. The truck with the battery problem and two nearby vehicles were damaged by the fire”

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/ford-stops-production-electric-150-after-battery-fire-97244070

@ChiefNerd

Of course.

DR3 event for self proclaimed based brown Conservative woman Nikki Haley requires proof of vaccination lmfao.

I don’t care about politics at all anymore but this is just too funny not to mention. I can’t imagine the kind of cognitive dissonance required to parse this.


@AltSkull48

Good morning, enjoy your Sunday.

Almost every Roald Dahl story is about adults abusing, neglecting, mistreating or exploiting children in some form or another, contrasted with the intervention of heroic adults that have profoundly loving influences on the journey of the characters in his stories.

There is nothing more evil in the history of political correctness than eliminating offensive words to appease grown adults at the expense of the children who Dahl wrote his stories for.

The only creatures who would want to poison this imaginative medicine are the kinds of people that Dahl would have memorialised as cruel aunts, witches, despotic school principles, or giants that eat children's bones.

Why is that the censors are trying to teach children to mind hurt feelings at the expense of identifying and conquering these kinds of villains?