Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Shoigu, on Wednesday over the downing of the US MQ-9 Reaper drone in the Black Sea.

It marked the first time since October that the two military leaders spoke, as high-level engagement between the US and Russia has been rare since the invasion of Ukraine was launched in February 2022.

“I just got off the phone with my Russian counterpart, Minister Shoigu,” Austin told reporters at a press conference alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley.

Officials with the Russian oil company Transneft say they've uncovered a failed bomb plot to sabotage the Druzhba oil pipeline and maim civilians in the western Bryansk region of Russia. 

Transneft spokesman Igor Demin told TASS on Wednesday that two explosive devices were found at a pumping station. The devices, while they didn't detonate, had some degree of damage due to the likelihood they were dropped from drones, he explained.

"The character of the explosive parts — metal balls — indicates that the organizers of this sabotage did not intend to damage equipment, but rather to kill people, namely civilian workers at a pumping station on the Druzhba [pipeline]. Investigations are underway," Demin said. 

The station in question, identified in Bloomberg as the Novozybkov station, "hasn’t been used for oil pumping so far this year; its reservoirs are empty," according to reports. Demin noted that no part of the station was damaged.

So the DC media will just ignore this whopper of a lie?! @JoeBiden said gay people were national security threats when he was a Senator. He also campaigned against gay marriage as VP.

Preppers have a term for the civil unrest and chaos that could follow an SHTF scenario, and it is “WROL.” WROL stands for “Without Rule of Law” and is the thing that survivalists prepare for especially. Images of ‘Mad Max’ come to mind, in a society where the society has broken down and it’s every man for himself.

However, what about all the places on the continuum that are this side of WROL, which are far more likely to be experienced? What about a scenario where the economy collapses or is on the verge of collapse and crime skyrockets, but we still have police trying their best to keep order?

Whatever situation we find ourselves in, we all want to know how to stay safe, and only the young studs among us are naive enough to think that they can be vigilant enough with their stockpile of guns to not have to worry.

There are two main strategies that I advocate for wiser men to employ in order to stay safe when the SHTF happens and you realize that you can’t walk around with a gun in your hand 24/7.

Multiple federal authorities have launched investigations into the fall of Silicon Valley Bank, the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history, as lawmakers and officials point fingers over who and what to blame for the collapse.

Federal regulators took over Silicon Valley last week after depositors flocked to the firm to pull funds after executives said they needed to raise billions in capital to secure the bank’s balance sheet.

The separate probes from federal authorities, which were reported by a number of outlets, will examine the background of the event, including the actions of bank executives in the days leading up to the failure.

Here is what you need to know about the federal investigations into Silicon Valley Bank.

Congressional Democrats of the Homeland Security Committee will reportedly not be joining a field hearing to be held in McAllen, Texas on March 15 where U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz is scheduled to testify.

The Republican leadership of the committee sharply criticized the decision in statements released Monday.

“It’s deeply disappointing that the Minority members of the Committee have chosen to bail on this week’s full committee field hearing in Texas, only after they invited and confirmed a minority witness for one of the panels,” Committee chairman Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee told Fox News in a statement.

Former House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff has been accused of leaking classified information so frequently that former CIA Director Mike Pompeo wants the Democrat lawmaker to no longer to have access to it.

“During my time as CIA director and secretary of state, I know that he leaked classified information that had been provided to him,” Pompeo said, noting that Schiff played a crucial role in the Trump-Russia investigation, which was plagued with leaks to the media for years.

“It’s a complicated process, right? It’s difficult to pin down precisely what happened,” Pompeo said. “But I could tell you that when we provided information to him and to his staff, it ended up in places it shouldn’t have been with alarming regularity. We could see it. In the end, I decided I held back information from them as a result.”

Following the release of President Joe Biden’s budget proposal, House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Jodey Arrington, R- Texas, is proposing a means for voters to have a say about rising debt and soaring inflation.

Arrington introduced a resolution calling for an Article V convention of states. More than the required two-thirds of states previously called for either a fiscal responsibility amendment or a balanced budget amendment in the 1970s. Arrington’s legislation says, Congress "appears to have failed in its constitutional duty to count applications and call a ‘convention for proposing amendments.’" He introduced a similar measure last year, but now Republicans hold the majority in the House.

David M. Walker, former U.S. comptroller general under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, was set to testify in favor of a convention in the House Budget Committee in March.

According to attorney Joe McBride who uncovered the report, the government knew MAGA was coming to DC and so they entrapped them. It was all a setup.

The report is included in the first tweet below from Jan 6 attorney Joe McBride.

President Biden is set to formally propose an array of tax increases on wealthy individuals and corporations in a budget plan that he says will reduce the deficit by $2 trillion over the next decade, setting up a battle royal with Republicans on Capitol Hill.  

Biden told lawmakers during his State of the Union address last month that his budget will lower the deficit and extend the solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund “by making the wealthy and big corporations begin to pay their fair share.”

He has pledged not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000 annually.  

The White House on Tuesday unveiled a proposal to raise the Medicare surtax on earned and unearned income above $400,000 from 3.8 percent to 5 percent.  

Webmaster addition: This sort of things happen when elections are stolen!

President Joe Biden on Tuesday issued an executive order that would bring America “as close to universal background checks as possible without additional legislation.”

The president is also calling for a restoration of the so-called “assault weapons ban.” Biden’s executive order has the stated goal of “increasing the number of background checks conducted before firearm sales, moving the U.S. as close to universal background checks as possible without additional legislation.”

“The Executive Order will also keep more guns out of dangerous hands by increasing the effective use of ‘red flag’ laws, strengthen efforts to hold the gun industry accountable, and accelerate law enforcement efforts to identify and apprehend the shooters menacing our communities,” the executive order adds. “President Biden is also encouraging the Federal Trade Commission to issue a public report analyzing how gun manufacturers market firearms to minors.”

Joe Biden left out a very important point this morning about the bailouts he and his Administration are taking to rescue the Silicon Valley Bank. 

Biden lies through omission.

This morning, Joe Biden tried to reassure the nation about the banking segment of the economy as his Administration announced over the weekend that it was bailing out two banks – Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank.

 A transgender, U.K. doctor known for being a fatness advocate expressed outrage that thin people were being celebrated for "The Whale" movie at the Oscar awards ceremony on Sunday.

Even WaPo and NYT aren’t buying this load of malarky.

During a recent appearance on The Daily Show, President Biden told guest host Kal Penn his now-infamous story about how he had an “epiphany” about same-sex marriage.

“I can remember exactly when my epiphany was,” Biden told Penn. “I hadn’t thought about it much, to tell you the truth. I was a senior in high school and my dad was dropping me off. I remember about to get out of the car, and I looked to my right and two well-dressed men in suits kissed each other.”

Biden claims, in this version of the tall tale, that his father said “Joey, it’s simple. They love each other.”

But Biden has told this whopper before —and sometimes, he’s the father character.

From Fox News:

The Post’s Glenn Kessler wrote that there were three reasons to “be skeptical of this story as Biden retells it,” the first being that gay men were “largely closeted at the time.”

The fact-check also notes that Biden told the New York Times a version of the story in which he was the father.

Biden told the outlet about how one of his children “looked up at him quizzically after seeing two men headed off to work kiss each other goodbye on a busy street corner” and added that he said, ‘They love each other, honey,’ and that was it.”

Republican Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri believes that the U.S. government should temporarily offer blanket insurance for all bank deposits in a bid to prevent massive flows of funds from smaller banks to larger institutions amid widespread panic surrounding the financial system.

Webmaster addition: That will create a climate in which bankers will engage in more profitable but riskier investments, knowing that if they make money they can keep it, but if they lose money, the taxpayers will pay for it. This is the essence of the fascist economic model.

The Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board (NHIB) is the latest European body to announce that the so-called “affirmative model of care” for gender dysphoric minors is not supported by evidence and is advising against the use of cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and “sex change” surgeries for minors. The NHIB recommended that these “treatments” be classified as experimental and noted that the spike in children identifying as transgender is concerning.  

Webmaster addition: Children are being sold that being transgender is cool and trendy, while the medical-industrial complex drools over the potential for profit!