Sat - Dumb Guy Comes Up With Dumb Defense

This Isn't Exactly Compassionate Release

During the months of September-October, a record-breaking 23,000 inmates of Russian penitentiaries were drafted to serve in the war in Ukraine against the backdrop of recruitment conducted by the Wagner Group.

Whatever kind of sentences they had before, those prisoners have a death sentence now. Their role is to be part of one of the endless human waves Wagner has been directed at Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Pavlivka on the eastern front. Those prisoners surely understood that they were putting their lives at risk when they “volunteered” to pitch in with Wagner, or were force-marched out of their prisons. It’s unlikely that they understand their role is to run forward, catch bullets, and bleed out on streets where thousands of others have already died.

Of Course, A Lot of Them Will Desert

I Guess His Vows to His Wife Don't Count as "Oaths"

Oath Keeper founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes is on trial right now for his part in stoking the January 6 insurrection.

But now that I’ve read what Rhodes was like as a “husband" and “father", I realize that he is also a world-class abuser and an even shittier person than I had supposed.
Sequoia: We had no idea how delayed the divorce papers were going to be. We thought that they were going to be delivered that day. We thought that if he is here and we are here when they are delivered, he would kill all of us. We felt that we were running for our lives.

Sedona: I was worried that whatever animals were left behind, he would slaughter them.
Sequoia: He had a hoard of the most expensive survivalist gear available, but yeah, we never saw any money. He spent a lot of money on trips. He’d come home and there would be no food in the house, because my mom was struggling to figure out how to pay the bills, and she would always be selling silver or something like that, and he’d tell us about the fancy restaurants he had been to while he was away.

Sedona: … Most of the things he did were so he could get exposure. Everything ran on donations. Sometimes [he’d] be on the phone saying, “Oh, well I need money. We need to create an emergency.” And so they’d find something. That’s why they started doing disaster relief.

Sequoia: For my childhood and early middle school years, I did not think I had a future – he told us that the world was going to end.  We were home-schooled in theory, but I had to teach myself how to read and do math. But because the world was going to end, it was hard to even see a reason why I should learn to read. I had no future.

Sequoia: [Las Vegas is] a very high-turnover place. People are constantly pulling through, so when Stewart burned everyone around him, he could hop over to a whole new group of people who had never heard of him.

Sequoia: … when he was abusive to us, he’d say, “It’s not my fault, I was abused,” so it may have been exaggerated to some extent. It was always his excuse for being terrible, and then he would cry and we were supposed to apologize to him for whatever he had experienced.

New York is a BLUE State. WTF Can't They Get Their Act Together

The story is too long to excerpt, but worth reading

New York Democrats May Have Cost Their Party The House. What Happened?

Continuing Crazy

The board overseeing a southeastern Arizona county whose Republican leaders had hoped to recount all Election Day ballots on Friday delayed certifying the results of last week's vote after hearing from a trio of conspiracy theorists who alleged that counting machines were not certified.

The three men, or some combination of them, have filed at least four cases raising similar claims before the Arizona Supreme Court since 2021 seeking to have the state's 2020 election results thrown out. The court has dismissed all of them for lack of evidence, waiting too long after the election was certified or asking for relief that could not be granted, in increasingly harsh language.

But Tom Rice, Brian Steiner and Daniel Wood managed to persuade the two Republicans who control the Cochise County board of supervisors that their claims were valid enough for them to delay the certification until a Nov. 28 deadline.

They claimed the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission allowed certifications for testing companies to lapse, and that voided the certifications of vote tabulation equipment used across the state.

That came despite testimony from the state's elections director that the machines and the testing company were indeed certified.

Mexico Won't Pay For It

Construction of a planned barbed-wired fence along Finland's long border with Russia will start early next year, Finnish border guard officials said Friday, amid concerns in the Nordic country over the changing security environment in Europe.

The initial 1.8-mile stretch of the fence will be erected at a crossing point in the eastern town of Imatra by next summer. It will eventually extend to a maximum of 124 miles.

Finland’s 832-mile border with Russia is the longest of any European Union member.