In his famous essay “The value of science is in the foresight“, Russian Army General Valery Gerasimov declared that international conflicts had taken on a new character, where wars are not declared, where assymetric means can support military objectives, and where actual “boots on the ground” engagement is limited to later stages in the conflict, often under the guise of humanitarian causes. Gerasimov said: “Frontal engagements of large formations of forces at the strategic and operational level are gradually becoming a thing of the past. Long-distance, contactless actions against the enemy are becoming the main means of achieving combat and operational goals. The defeat of the enemy’s objects [objectives] is conducted throughout the entire depth of his territory. The differences between strategic, operational, and tactical levels, as well as between offensive and defensive operations, are being erased.”

A tour bus overturned Saturday afternoon on the New York State Thruway in upstate New York as the vehicle traveled to Niagara Falls, and all 57 people on board were taken to area hospitals with injuries, the Washington Post reports.

No cause for the accident was identified.  The bus apparently went off the road while traveling west about 25 west of Syracuse.  Originating in Poughkeepsie, the bus had started its trip at 6 a.m. local time.  While the majority of passengers were adults, there were children, including a one-month old infant, on board.

Tropical Depression Fred weakened slightly as it passed over Cuba last night and earlier today. A forecast issued by the NOAA predicts the tropical depression will strengthen as it passes over the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and then hit the Alabama and Mississippi coastline as a Tropical storm. The storm is currently traveling west by northwest at around 13 miles per hour. There is still some concern that this storm could behave similar to Hurricane Michael which hit the Florida Panhandle in October of 2018. That storm slowed considerably as it turned North, and then gained an incredible amount of strength as it slogged North over the warm water of the Gulf of Mexico in late summer, eventually hitting the Florida coastline as a Category 5 storm.

“President Biden on Saturday authorized the deployment of 5,000 troops to Afghanistan amid a U.S. pullout that has emboldened the Taliban to take over multiple cities,” reports NBC News. “‘I have authorized the deployment of approximately 5,000 US troops to make sure we can have an orderly and safe drawdown of US personnel and other allied personnel and an orderly and safe evacuation of Afghans who helped our troops during our mission and those at special risk from the Taliban advance,’ Biden said in a statement.”

Pillow entrepreneur and fascism enthusiast Mike Lindell provided details to the site Gateway Pundit on how he was allegedly attacked by three radical antifa liberals trying to silence him and his campaign to have the former guy declared the winner of the 2020 Presidential election. Lindell insists the attack occurred in the lobby of the Sioux Falls Sheraton hotel.  Strangely, there is no security camera footage or police report to back up any of Lindell’s claims. Also, at the time Lindell made the claim onstage, he did not have any apparent bruising on his face, nor was he wearing any kind of cast, which you would expect of someone who was physically attacked by three people.

“A massive 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on Saturday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey said, raising fears of destruction similar to the devastating 2010 quake that shattered the country. At least 227 deaths have been reported, according to Haiti’s civil protection service. The USGS predicts the death toll could reach into the thousands,” reports NPR.

“USGS geophysicist Paul Caruso told NPR that Saturday’s quake is on par with the 2010 quake, because of its similar magnitude and that it occurred along the same fault line – the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone. ‘It looks like it’s really bad,’ Caruso said. ‘There could be a lot of casualties.’ The mechanism of the latest earthquake, however, is different. This one had a thrust mechanism, whereas the 2010 quake had a strike slip type mechanism, Caruso said.”

“Ariel Henry, Haiti’s new prime minister, in a translated tweet extended his sympathies ‘to the parents of the victims of this violent earthquake which caused several losses of human and material lives in several geographical departments of the country,’ Henry said he will declare a state of emergency for one month as the country assesses the damage from the disaster and sends teams to the area for search and rescue missions.”

Aiken Standard: “The Aiken County Republican Party has overwhelmingly voted to censure U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, citing his support of the behemoth infrastructure bill that recently passed the Senate. The local party this week accused the powerful South Carolina Republican of playing both sides of the political aisle to his advantage, consciously violating Republican principles, backing bills ‘that target our freedoms,’ and, ultimately, wandering too far to the left. Requests for comment made to Graham’s office and the SC Republican Party were not immediately answered Friday night.”

Unclear if the Aiken County GOP were just waiting for an “official” reason for officially condemning Graham, and have disliked him all along for the person everyone’s pretty sure he is.

We are all in this together. Don't be a #maskhole. pic.twitter.com/uIpJA5Yp2o

— Mark Hamill (@MarkHamill) August 14, 2021

To really understand what’s happening in Afghanistan requires one to have studied the nature of mass movements. The rapid advance of the Taliban across Afghanistan as US Forces withdraw has demonstrated that without decisive action like that shown by President Biden, the US would have had to remain in the country forever. Ultimately, the only way to defeat groups like the Taliban and Al Quaeda in the Middle East may be to pull out of those countries, and allow the people to develop a healthy disgust for the behavior of radicalized Islamist groups.

“The resurgent coronavirus is quickly showing up in Tampa Bay area public schools, far exceeding last year’s levels as classes get underway, according to official tallies. In the first week of the new school year, the Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando county school districts reported 961 cases of COVID-19 among students and staff. That’s dramatically higher than the 116 cases the four systems recorded during the first two weeks of last school year,” reports the Tampa Bay Times.

“As Mississippi faces a ‘skyrocketing’ surge in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations – its highest increase on record – health officials are sounding the alarm about a state hospital system on the brink of collapse. The University of Mississippi Medical Center, in partnership with state officials, will reopen a surge facility Friday in the medical center’s parking lot, with help from the federal government,” ABC News reports.

Friday was a rough day for the MAGA kids as their Orange Messiah did not return as prophesied. Not to let an opportunity go by, the liberals on The Hill had a lot of fun with their anguish

Turbotastic • 16 hours ago
️I’d also like to apologize for my conduct at Trump’s reinstatement today. I asked Trump to walk up a slight ramp, and he got so upset that he cancelled the whole thing. Sorry, folks.
Fri, 8/13/2021 6:23 PM on ‘Erykah Badu apologizes for being a “terrible guest” at Obama’s birthday party’

AreYouPreparedToGoToCourt? • 17 hours ago
️And I would have thought Rubio would be busy today attending Trumps inauguration.
Fri, 8/13/2021 5:48 PM on ‘Menendez, Rubio ask Yellen to probe meatpacker JBS’

ASAP Bread • 17 hours ago
️When is Trump being sworn in?
Fri, 8/13/2021 5:51 PM on ‘Census data shows LGBT Americans hit harder by economic, food insecurity amid pandemic’

AP: “A 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Haiti on Saturday, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The epicenter of the quake was 7.5 miles northeast Saint-Louis du Sud, according to USGS. People in the capital of Port-au-Prince felt the tremor and many rushed into the streets.”

“Over the past two weeks, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents have seized at least three batches of counterfeit COVID-19 vaccination cards that were being shipped to New Orleans. The blank cards, created to mimic those provided by the Centers for Disease Control, were seized at the port of Memphis between Aug. 4 and Aug. 10 after being sent from Shenzhen, China, according to U.S. Customs spokesperson Matthew Dyman. The phonies, on their face, look remarkably similar to the CDC vaccine cards, with spaces for the recipient’s name, personal information, vaccine maker and lot number. They even have the CDC logo in the right corner. But Customs officials described them as ‘low-quality.’ ‘There were typos, unfinished words and some of the Spanish verbiage on the back was misspelled,’ Dyman said” – New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Politico: “It was their best chance in a decade to claw back control of Albany: An incumbent governor crippled by scandal, under state and federal investigation and haunted by the same ‘Cuomo fatigue’ his father faced a quarter century earlier. Instead, New York Republicans might face a history-making woman with a moderate record, upstate birth certificate and thick Rolodex built up over six years working politicians, business owners and local leaders all over the state. Even the party says its new opponent is formidable.”

“The implosion of Andrew Cuomo – the three-term governor who went from national stardom to unemployed and possibly homeless in less than a year – further damaged an already-fractured Democratic Party in New York. It could be equally jarring for the state’s Republicans, who had an unlikely but conceivable path to victory with Cuomo facing a bruising primary in 2022. Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, set to become governor on Aug. 24, announced on Thursday she intends to run for reelection next year. Many think she can win. And even the GOP state party chair, Nick Langworthy, thinks Hochul should be taken seriously. He says she has a knack for on the ground campaigning that others – Cuomo included – lack. ‘She shouldn’t be underestimated in terms of her skills as a politician,’ Langworthy said in an interview Thursday. ‘She’s one of the best retail politicians I’ve ever seen. She will go places that other elected leaders will not.'”

• Did I miss the reinstallation?  Or has it been rescheduled… again. 
• My empathy for current coronavirus patients who opted not to get vaccinated is nil.  You refused to take medical advice.  You have no one to blame for your situation but yourself, and your asinine stubbornness will cost people their lives.  
• Democrats forced Cuomo out of office for his sexual harassment.  A day before, Republicans in Florida proposed naming a highway after Trump.  That tells you how morally corrupt the GOP is.  
• If you spent thousands of dollars to go to Lindell’s conference only to hear that there’s no evidence (let alone conclusive evidence), you should be pissed you were forced to spend four days in Sioux Falls for nothing.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume XXXII”

Reported Friday night by Rachel Maddow:  Fulton County, Georgia district attorney Fani Willis finds the letter drafted by Department of Justice attorney Jeffrey Clark, using weak legal reasoning to allow the Republican Georgia legislature to overturn the popular vote in the November presidential election, “relevant and useful” to the investigation into Donald Trump criminally interfering in the election.

Clark’s letter outlined a false legal rationale by which the Georgia legislation could reject the slate of pro-Biden electors to the Electoral College and assign pro-Trump electors.

Patriot Mobile, a wireless carrier we’ve never heard of before until we came across a sponsored listing when trying to find out if the Freedom Phone’s price has dropped yet, bills itself as “America’s ONLY Christian conservative wireless provider” on its website but doesn’t actually explain what makes the mobile phone service it offers so Christian and Conservative.

True, the marketing is heavy on touting their contributions to charitable causes aligned with the Conservative movement, like veterans’ support groups and Wayne LaPierre’s gun-themed slush fund, but that’s just what Patriot Mobile the company does. There’s nothing evident in the actual service itself that differentiates it from Cricket Wireless, the gold standard in shitty off-brand wireless service advertised on Fox News in the daytime. It’s not like Patriot Mobile blocks out secular, leftist content like PornHub or Grindr or CNN. Users can watch all the smut and “fake news” they want, and arrange anonymous homosexual encounters just as if it were AT&T or Verizon.

Worse, the phones they offer are just regular iPhones, Samsungs, and Motorolas, none of which come preloaded with Parler, GETTR, Rumble, or the OANN or Newsmax apps or even an American flag background. There’s no Freedom Phone, unless you want to buy it separately (use discount code “FreedomPhone” or “JohnSolomon” or “CharlieKirk” for $50 off) and have Patriot Mobile mail you a SIM card to install yourself if you want the full blown MAGA mobile experience. So lame.

“A 20 year-old Clackamas County employee has been charged with a hate crime after police say he painted a swastika on the sidewalk beside a memorial display for a Black man who died after being held at the county’s jail. Collin Michael Williams, who is white, was arrested Thursday and charged with a bias crime, criminal mischief and abuse of a memorial. On Wednesday, Oregon City police received a report that a memorial display near the county’s developmental services building had been vandalized. The memorial display was the result of a vigil held days earlier for Jermelle Madison, who had been found unresponsive in the county’s jail in June and later died.”

“Police asked businesses in the area for any surveillance footage of people buying spray paint around the time the memorial was thought to have been destroyed. On Thursday, that led police to their suspect, Williams, and his vehicle. They also found a social media post of the suspect videotaping himself defacing the memorial. Police were able to identify the suspect as Williams and also determined he worked for Clackamas County” – Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Houston Chronicle: “A Travis County judge on Friday granted Harris County a temporary restraining order, blocking Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on local COVID-19 restrictions. The decision by Judge Jan Soifer of the 345th Civil District Court provides legal cover for the county health department, which on Thursday issued a mask mandate for schools and daycares at the direction of County Judge Lina Hidalgo. ‘While this decision is temporary, it’s a victory for residents in Harris County who are concerned about this public health crisis,’ County Attorney Christian Menefee said in a statement. ‘We need every tool at our disposal to stop the spread of COVID-19, including masks and other measures that are proven to slow the spread.'”