Challengers and Uber Updates

Greetings Me Droogs N Droogettes!
As you can see, Ye Olde Header has a new picture, courtesy of WiscoDave. There’s a group of us who email back and forth, sharing, commenting and whatnot, and Wisco is at the center of it. He sources a lot of great stuff and this A.M. he did not disappoint!

Here I was thinking I had the majority of -good- ‘Clockwork Orange’ pics in my collection already. That new one? Oh yeah… as soon as I saw it it was like >BOOM!< “That’s the new header!!!”

Now, as to poly-ticks today, the mugshot of OrangeManBad has been making it’s rounds. I’m not going to poast it, as everyone has already seen it, unless they’re in the middle of the Kalahari Desert without a signal, and even then, I’m pretty sure that a mass push via Iridium went out with it.

All this to preserve “Muh Democracy!”
Heh.
The thing of it is, alllll these morons have done is open themselves up to cross examination and discovery. Got me a hunch or three that discovery is the last thing they want. So, since this opens an entirely new can o’worms for them, they’re going to have to do something, and do it fast. Ain’t no way can any of the Georgia Bullshit that went on undergo and real scrutiny. I mean for real…

But that’s here at home.
In the Kraine, a couple of days ago, Simplicius76 poasted that the latest, and possibly last effort was being pushed out against Ivan. In this case, according to him, the last of the 82nd Air Assault brigade, the one that was equipped primarily with ‘Western Wunderwaffen’? has been committed and rolling out.

This includes the Challenger 2 Tanks that the Brits had ‘donated to the cause’. BTW, quick aside, does anyone else think the pic above looks like a “Sanford and Son” Challenger? Jes’ Sayin’…

So, to continue: Up til now, the Challenger has not been on the scene, as the reasoning/excuses are in two parts:
1) They lacked ammunition.
Now, I can tell you, from personal experience this’s a load of shytte. The Challenger 2 uses the same ammo as the Leopard 2 (both variants), as well as the M1A1/2… those being the ‘caseless’ smoothbore 120mm rounds.

Now at one point there was a shortage of ammo… that was when a Kalibur Missile hit a warehouse that blew up spectacularly which had everyone going “Huh… must have had some ammo in there that went up!” It was the next day when the Nuclear Monitoring services and sensors all over the EU and Russia (put in place ever since Chernobyl ‘back in the day’) started ‘pinging’ with higher-than-normal’ radioactivity, that the analysts realized what probably went all kinetic was the Depleted Uranium Rounds destined to the various tanks out there, to include the Challenger 2.

Not much radiation or radioactivity, but…
I know of what I speak. They found a teeny-tiny-itty-bitty bit of what they think was DU (depleted uranium) that I had breathed in, which lodged in the lower left Airbag, which, as y’all know ain’t there no more. So… to continue…

2) The Brits didn’t want the Russians to Get Ahold of it’s “Sooper Secret Chobham Armor”.
Now, the DotMils, being DotMils, I might say maybe a valid reason. However, the reality is the Challenger has been around forever. The original Challenger 1 came out in 1983, and was upgraded in 1986 to the 2 Model. Couple of upgrades from Chobham One to Model Two, but still… it’s been running around for 40 years at this point.

I’m pretty sure that Ivan knows ALLLLL about what needs to be known about Chobham. In fact, it (the Challenger Series) has been around long enough that I pulled out my old Armor ID cards that we used to drill with back in the day. I mean I was an Anti-Armor Dude, so I used to have these cards memorized.

Pretty sure some of y’all had them too.
I also pulled and scanned the Challenger Card for Shits N Grins:

Yeah baby.
Anyone else get flashbacks?
So, no, I don’t think they held them back because of ammo… more than likely the whole “bad for biddness” issue, hence ALSO why we haven’t sent any Abrams over. As seen in Yemen, M1A2s cook up really nice if hit properly, and even those have been hit by some rag-tag militiamen as opposed to a tank-on-tank peer force.

Not for nothing, but personally, I’d love to see the latest T series Russian Tank, crewed with someone other than 3rd world fucking shithead conscripts manning them. Of course ain’t no way in hell can the GloboHomoDotCorpDotMil allow that to happen.

Stock prices have already taken a hit and no one wants the Leopard 2 at this point. Fucking Steel Coffins man… how the Mighty have fallen… from a country that gave us the Panther Tank, the preeminent tanker’s tank of WW2 to that fucking cardboard and aluminum hunk of treaded deathtrap they have now…
Sheesh.
So yeah, haven’t heard anything about this “Great Last Gasp”

Even the Russians have gone quiet, but what with the internal weirdness and reshuffling? I don’t expect anything concrete out of them at all in the near future, unless they start running that quarter-million troops westward… and at that point even the West will be squawking about it as the “New Invasion of Western Europe!!!” Meh… they should be so lucky.

Now
To clarify. Too many people think that I was raising funds for a new KB. Uhhh… try not to be so literal guys… as I said it was an excuse as I’m currently trying to pay bills, but the breaking of the lease in Tennessee, the cost of emergency-rental of a truck and car carrier, then the gas? Yeah. I’m about to go Chapter 7 here. The power bill this month was a bit better. Only $440. That’s with cutting waaaaaay down and making sure Gretchen (who’s a prime culprit) shuts shit off when she leaves a room. So far? two people have entered the Raffle.

That ain’t even gonna cover mailing it, but hey, it is what it is.

OTOH:
Uber… to give you an idea of how fucked it is? I decided to try and do the Uber Eats/Delivery stuff today. Logged in, and hey, had an “Opportunity” as shown here:

That came up when I logged in after punching from Peoples Glorious Tractor Factory. The ‘offer’? A pickup at Walgreens… at 10 minutes of Six, on a Friday…that’s nightmare time as far as traffic in Tampa. Not only that, but it was like 19 miles away from my starting point…

For a $3.02 payout

Not only that, but that Walgreens? In the Hood… like Hood-Hood? Where Whyttemen fear to tread… Which also means that more than likely, the person who needs this delivery? A blaq folk, who as we ALL know are oh-so-famous for their generosity in tipping… /sarc off.

Any wonder that Uber can’t get folks to work for them?
Not at $3.75 a gallon currently here.
I personally think the whole Uber/Lyft thing has run its course.

There was a LOT of ‘social consciousness/contagion’ when it first came out… “ride sharing” to “save the environment” as I recall… It was great when you had a bunch of hipster fuckwads who had money-to-burn who wanted to be ‘ecologically sound’ and not own a car and get around their blue-hive… ‘save da erf’ and all that… now? Economic reality has kicked the fuck in, along with their financial teeth so to speak, and they can’t afford to spend $30 to get chauffeured 5 blocks. Better to walk and save the 30.

Uber also had taken over some of the monopoly service on cab service after it was introduced. “Taxi Medallions” in NYC, a highly coveted item, crashed hard in valuation, as the monopoly was broken. From a millyun dollars to about $76000 now… Taxi Medallions or Shields being a placard that was a License so to speak, with a limited number issued to legal cabs…

Daaaaaayum!
Each One was worth over a Million Smackers in 2013.
Oops.
So, yeah, I personally think the whole thing has shot it’s wad so to speak. Depending on where you live and what municipality rules there are, a Cab Company -can- be a profitable venture, provided that the rules and regulations and taxes aren’t too onerous. Again, I know of what I speak.

I was the youngest person to hold a Hackney License in the State of NH waaay back in the day at age 16. Worked for a cab company, on of two in town, but we offered limo service on the weekends. I started ‘driving a hack’ as I loved to drive and I made great bank for a 16 year old. The adventures and stories there alone would make a great book/movie…dunno if anyone else ever went and got in on it (being a 16 year old cab driver) , but it was my ‘secret weapon’ to NOT work at McDs again… BT-DT hated it. Driving Cab during the summer week days/nights, and then putting on a suit, and driving a HUUUUGE 1986 Lincoln Stretch Limousine on the weekends? Oh fuck yeah!!!

My boss was the shit. We even had some code-phrases when I had ‘issues’ with drunks, rowdies and jagoffs… only happened a few times… BUT if it happened, I’d call in and say “I got ‘X’ candidates that need a secondary pickup!” on the Radio. Dude would come back and say “Is it a Graybar Hotel drop off?”

If I said yes, he’d phone ahead to the local Police, who’d have the bully-boys outside… I’d get “pulled over” by a dude in the street waving a flashlight for a “safety inspection” where then, said miscreants would be cuffed and stuffed quickly and quietly without me tender pink carcass being in danger…

Loads of good times.
Lots of hot naked broads too… and lots of not-so-hot-naked broads as well… Jes’ Sayin’

SO on that note, I’m AGAIN making Molasses Cookies. I owe ScouterGregg a BIG thank you, so I might have to ship him some, which ALSO allows me to test my air-shrink-wrapper thingy that MomUnit gave me on my last visit… I’ll poast pics on how that goes…
So More Later
Big Country