Random News and Notes 14 February

Today is St. Valentines day. I discussed the religious connotations in yesterday’s Friday Fun. Today, we discuss a darker side of the day: the St. Valentines day massacre. On this date in 1929, 7 guys from Bugs Moran’s North Side crew were lined up against a wall of a garage and gunned down.

Those killed were Albert Kachellek (alias James Clark), Moran’s second in command and brother-in-law; Adam Heyer, the North Side Gang’s bookkeeper and business manager; Albert Weinshank, who managed several cleaning and dyeing operations for Moran; and gang enforcers Frank Gusenberg and his brother Peter. Two unlucky non-North Siders were also present, garage employee mechanic John May, and itinerant gambler Reinhardt H. Schwimmer.

Suspicion immediately fell on one Alphonse Capone. Al and Bugs were rivals in the liquor business. While there is little dispute that Capone ordered the hit – Bugs was supposed to be there when the shooting occurred – who the actual shooters were is unknown, at least officially. Nobody was ever charged in connection with the St.Valentines Day Massacre.

The U.S. Army Counterintelligence Command posted an AI-generated cartoon on Valentine’s eve to alert troops about espionage honeytraps, where foreign agents use romantic lures to steal secrets from service members. The meme features the math pun ’10 + 5 = honeytrap,’.

The Soviets had entire sections in the KGB and GRU devoted to this. If you think those programs don’t still exist or that the CCP doesn’t have an equivalent of Mozhno girls, I got a bridge you might be interested in. . .

Staying with the military for this next one. President Trump visited Ft. Bragg yesterday. He specifically visited with troops from USASOC. During his remarks he announced the award of the Medal of Honor for one participant of the Maduro raid. He praised Delta Force warriors as ‘great patriots’ and joked about M1 Abrams tanks being named after Stacey Abrams.

First Lady Melania Trump also addressed those assembled.

Now for a quick Olympic update. Norway still leads in the medal count with 10 golds and 20 total medals. It should be noted that 13 of their 20 total medals and 6 of the 10 golds come from two disciplines, cross country skiing and biathlon. Host country Italy is in 2nd with 4 and 18 respectively. The US is currently in the third spot with 4 gold and 16 total medals. Canada seems to not be fairing all that week this year. They’re currently sitting in 18th with no golds and 7 total medals.

I should note that this is the official Olympic medal table scoring/placement. This method weights the medals in such a way that a country with a single gold – say Kazakhstan, Mikhail Shaidorov won the gold in men’s figure skating – would rank higher than a country – Canada – with 3 silver and 4 bronze medals.

Kinda like the Jamaican Bobsled team eh? Speaking of, the Jamaicans qualified for this years games  in the men’s two-man, four-man, and women’s monobob events.

Japan is based. Not only did they elect the Asian Maggie Thatcher as PM and give her party a comfortable supermajority in the Kokkai , they can play Pokemon Go with illegals. And no, I am not kidding.

Is the payment thing true? Yup, or at least it seems to be as far as I could find. By the by, ¥50,000 is about $325 USD. I mean I’d turn them in for a buck fiddy so $325 seems like a good deal.

There is also word from Japan that they are going to amend their constitution now that the conservatives have the 2/3rds vote needed to do so. For the first time since the Douglas MacArthur penned constitution was forced on them, the Japanese Self Defense Forces won’t be strictly for self defense.