Saab 35 Draken - Rahal Racing - Miller Beer

Saab 35 Draken - Rahal Racing in town for a Indy 500 race back in the 90's.

The Saab Draken is a 1950's era jet fighter. Rahal Racing has become Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. It is co-owned by 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Rahal, former television talk show host David Letterman, and businessman Mike Lanigan. This paint job is obviously a promotion for Miller Beer. 

Here's an old Miller ad that includes the jet.

Bobby Rahal Miller Genuine Draft IndyCar Commercial (1994)
gamblour
Don't know what happened to this airplane. It was registered to one James R. Merizan in California, but he passed away in 2021.

Marching Towards War with Russia & General Mis-Management

USS Mississippi

Links:

• Biden Stumbles Toward War - Russians Move On U.S. Submarine - Sam Faddis
• War with Russia Can Explode - Michael Yon
• “Our Democracy” is Rule by a Hidden Cabal - JMSmith

I'm not sure about any of this. I don't doubt that the men behind the curtain are calling the shots, but the chaotic orders coming out of Washington tells me that not all of those guys behind the curtain are in agreement about what should be done, which means there is probably some vicious in-fighting going on. Or it's possible that the guys who are actually running the show are too busy with other more important matters and don't have time to to be bothered with whatever shenanigans Biden and his staff are getting up to.

Urup Island, part of the Kiril Islands
The big island in the center is Hokkaido, the northernmost main Japanese island
Vladivostok, Russia, is on the left

Urup island is where the Russians claim to have chased off a US submarine.

Evacuation of Industry: That Time the Soviet Union Moved 1,500 Factories

This video starts with an ad, the video proper doesn't really start until 1:20 mark. Pressing the right arrow key should jump you ahead by five seconds, and pressing it 15 or 16 times should get you to the start of the video.

I've heard about this mass migration of factories before, but not just how massive this project was. And the whole context thing was helpful. I have only a rough idea of Soviet history. The first 20 years of the 20th Century seem to be particularly jumbled with WW1, civil war and the Bolshevik revolution all happening in the same time period. It's hard to imagine the amount of progress they made crammed into just the few decades between WW1 and WW2, stuff that the West had been developing for Centuries.

Bear Dream

Sun Bear

We're driving on the freeway, on our way to some event. We go through a built up area where the freeway is higher than the surrounding area, kind of like central Beaverton, but not. There are several overpasses where surface streets cross under the freeway. These intersections have on and off ramps, some on, some off, some both. We miss our exit, but the next several intersections only have on ramps, so we have go on past this area to where we can turn around.

Flash forward. We are in an open area and there is a man with a small bear, looks like he might be a sun bear, showing him to people. There is a cage but the bear is out and there is a small crowd of people around him. The man seems to have him under control. I think about stopping to visit with bear, but I am reluctant, so we go on by. Shortly thereafter we see the man driving by, pulling the cage with the bear inside. They are not going very fast. The bear's paw is half protruding through the bars of his cage and I reach out and touch it. Evidently the man notices because, flash forward, the bear is out of his cage, I have some heavy work gloves on and I am petting the bear. My first move is to offer him the back of my hand which he sniffs. It must be the most interesting thing he has ever smelt because he holds that position, nose to my glove, for several seconds. I then commence to caressing his head and muzzle. He start nibbling on my fingers. I let the glove slide off of my fingers just before he chomps down on the fingers of the glove. I get the glove back and put it back on. Now I am rubbing the sides of his muzzle with my fists. He must have a small mouth because he cannot open it wide enough to get my fist inside.

Ukraine

Russian military engineers install a pontoon bridge over the Oka River

This photo is from a Russian military exercise on the Oka River. The closest it comes to Ukraine is about 200 miles when it goes through Volgograd on the way south to the Caspian sea. It looks cold. The photo accompanied a Defense Blog post about a similar bridge being setup on the the Pripyat river in Belarus. That river runs by the Chernobyl disaster zone which is only about 70 miles north of Kiev. Belarus and Russia are allies, so if you were a paranoid conspiracy theorist (or even just an amateur war gamer) you might take this as evidence that the Russians are indeed preparing to invade Ukraine.

For a while I was taking Putin at his word that he had no intention of invading Ukraine, but then I heard from California Bob who studied Russian in college and worked in Eastern Europe for a year or two. He says Russians are liars. Duh (smacks forhead). Of course they are. The ones we are hearing from are politicians and diplomats and you know the old saw about how to tell if a politician is lying? His lips are moving. Why should we expect eastern politicians to be any different than western ones? Of course he is lying.

This morning it finally struck me why Russia would want to invade Ukraine. Up till now it made no sense to me. Why would he want to start a war over this place? But now I realize that it is the continuous provocation by the USA that has prompted this response. They asked us to leave the Ukraine alone, but we keep pushing to align Ukraine with the west. You keep poking the bear and eventually the bear is going to come out of his cave swinging his big bear paws.

I don't quite understand why we (the USA) are pushing NATO on Ukraine, other that we want to pick a fight with Russia. It's kind of weird. Maybe somebody is thinking long-term strategic planning for world domination, but then I read other reports that say Russia is on the ropes with a falling population and GDP. I suspect there are some people who just can't bear the thought of having a competitor. Kind of reminds me of the mean old son-of-a-bitch from There Will Be Blood - "I have a competition in me. I want no-one else to succeed." It's not enough to just beat them, you have to stomp them into the ground.

Major Russian Gas Pipelines to Europe

Then there's the whole natural gas pipeline thing. Ukraine is getting roughly $3 billion in tariffs on the natural gas being piped from Russia, across Ukraine to Europe. Rumor has it that the younger Biden had something to do with that and that's why Ukraine paid him so much money. This is just nit compared to the $200 billion* that Europe pays for Russian natural gas. 

Ukraine, Chernobyl (red marker) and Volgograd (far right)
Black line shows 820 mile east-west distance across Ukraine
Click to embigenate

Russia built a new pipeline, Nord Stream 2, to supply western Europe with natural gas. The pipeline is complete but has not been 'certified', which, near as I can tell, is political doublespeak for Biden doesn't want his commissions from Ukraine impacted. Okay, the slightly better reason is that Ukraine depends on that gas tariff revenue and any reduction is going to have a negative effect on their economy which could lead to political instability. Maybe they ought to figure out how to do something useful besides sucking up Champagne, caviar and cocaine. Meanwhile winters in Europe are cold and natural gas prices are soaring, which, I dunno, might lead to political instability in western Europe. Nord Stream 2 might alleviate that, but hey, let's poke the bear with another stick. Maybe we can get him to come out of his cave and take a swipe at us. Frigging morons.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has squashed an Israeli proposal to build a natural gas pipeline across the Mediterranean Sea to supply Europe with natural gas. There is an existing natural gas pipeline from the Middle East to Europe that goes through Turkey. The proposed pipeline would probably have a negative impact on the tariffs Turkey is collecting. 

If Ukraine and Turkey could put their people to work in productive employment maybe they wouldn't be so desperate for these tariff revenues. But that's not how politicians work, especially pack animals. All they are looking for is a way to squeeze more money out of the masses. If the masses get squashed, well who cares? They were just peasants anyway.

If this goes the way it looks like it is going, Ukraine is liable to become another Syria. Won't that be just wonderful.

* that's my best guess. I did some calculations, but putting them into a coherent format would take time and I have other things I need to do. That's also why there is a shortage of links in the last half of this post.

Update January 2024 add distance caption to last map.

Janet Airlines

The US Government's Secret Airline
Half as Interesting

The US government operates a secret airline to transport workers to their weapon development test sites around the southwest US. Seems like they are still trying to keep secrets. Don't they know that in today's world there is no privacy? Seems like operating a no name airline attracts the curious, and they have pretty much figured out just what this airline is doing. Wikipedia has a big article about it.

Via IAman

Prester John

"Preste" as the Emperor of Ethiopia, enthroned on a map of East Africa. From an atlas by the Portuguese cartographer Diogo Homem for Queen Mary, c. 1555–1559. (British Library)

I'm reading The Verge about European exploration from around 1490 to 1530. Seems that one of ideas that inspired the Portuguese to venture around the Cape Horn was the legend of the Christian King Prester John ruling over a kingdom somewhere in Central Asia. Or Africa. Or India. Nobody seems to have pinned it down, nor are we even sure he existed. It may just have been a case of Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers passed down over the centuries. But Robert Silvergberg wrote a book about him. Robert Silverberg, the prolific science fiction writer, though this one was non-fiction. I read a bunch of his stuff a long time ago though I can't remember a single one. I did read one of his stories not too long ago.