Today is 09/02/2026

Next









by me, Kerry Burgess, 09/02/2026 08:09 AM

Well, I am not laughing.

Why would they joke about something like this?



That was also the day he broke the H.O.M.E.S. acronym with 'Ontario'









https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2026/08/27/trump-russia-putin-attack-nato/91492968007

USA TODAY

Trump says Putin won't attack NATO after CIA director's Moscow visit

Francesca Chambers Zac Anderson USA TODAY Aug. 27, 2026

WASHINGTON − President Donald Trump ruled out a Russian assault on NATO territory after his CIA director, John Ratcliffe, visited Moscow and reportedly warned Russian President Vladimir Putin against attacking the alliance.

"I've had good talks with him. He's not going to be attacking a NATO territory," Trump said of Putin on Aug. 27 in the Oval Office.

Trump declined to say whether he directed Ratcliffe to deliver a warning to Putin during the visit to not attack NATO. "I don't want to comment on that, but they're not going to attack," Trump said.









IMDb

Mission: Impossible (1996)

Quotes

Cosplay Maverick Ethan Hunt: [over a pay phone in Prague] They're dead.

Eugene Kittridge: What? Who's dead?

Ethan Hunt: My team. My team is DEAD.









From 6/8/1961 ( first public demonstration of the Bell Rocket Belt ) To 12/25/1991 ( an aviator in non-aviator related duties boots on the ground as United States Marine Corps chief warrant officer Kerry Wayne Burgess I was prisoner of war in Croatia ) is 11157 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 5/20/1996 ( ) is 11157 days









https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117060/releaseinfo/

IMDb

Mission: Impossible

Release info

United States May 20, 1996 (Westwood, California, premiere)

Tom Cruise ... Ethan Hunt









IMDb

Mission: Impossible

Quotes

Eugene Kittridge: I can understand you're very upset.

Ethan Hunt: Kittridge, you've never seen me very upset.









Broken Arrow (1996) Movie Script

And everyone get a fix!
They're about to turn out the lights!
Ready, Captain?
On your command, Major.
Go to war.
Initiating Stealth mode.
River valley approach, here we go.
Colonel, they've gone to Stealth mode.
We lost them on the radar!



Flying doesn't mean
what it used to mean to me.
No, not the flying. Carrying the nukes.
I know you love
having the power of God at your fingertips.
You get off on it.
Look out your window.
There's something wrong
with the terrain following.
Shouldn't that starboard ridge
be on our port side?









From 2/9/1996 ( ) To 8/27/2026 ( ) is 11157 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 5/20/1996 ( ) is 11157 days









https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115759/releaseinfo/

IMDb

Broken Arrow

Release info

United States February 9, 1996









IMDb

Broken Arrow (1996)

Quotes

Riley Hale: There's no difference between you and a guy who shoots up a schoolyard. You've both got a-a head full of bad wiring.

Vic Deakins: What was that?

Riley Hale: You're fucked in the head, Deak.









From 8/7/1986 ( ) To 8/27/2026 ( ) is 14630 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 11/22/2005 ( ) is 14630 days









http://www.amazon.com/Red-Storm-Rising-Tom-Clancy/dp/0399131493

amazon

Red Storm Rising Hardcover – August 7, 1986

by Tom Clancy (Author)

Product Details

Hardcover: 656 pages

Publisher: G. P. Putnam Sons; 1st edition (August 7, 1986)

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1385857.Red_Storm_Rising

goodreads

Red Storm Rising

by Tom Clancy

Hardcover, 656 pages

Published August 7th 1986 by Putnam Publishing Group

http://www.book-info.com/isbn/0-399-13149-3.htm

archINFORM

authors

Tom Clancy

Year: August 7, 1986









The Seattle Times

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

A history of theft, but not of violence

By Maureen O'Hagan and Christine Clarridge

Seattle Times staff reporters

At 11:58 a.m., she received a text message from Maldonado in which he said "today is the day the world will feel my pain."

Just after noon, according to charging papers, he called police and said he was armed and ready to shoot. When the dispatcher asked where, he responded, "just follow the screams."

Seconds later, the shooting began.

Wearing a black trench coat, white shirt with tie and carrying a guitar case, Maldonado approached a T-Mobile kiosk at the mall and spoke to an employee, charging papers say. He removed his coat, displaying two guns — an assault rifle and a high-capacity, semiautomatic machine pistol — which he began firing.

Maldonado then turned and began firing down the length of the mall, police say, striking six people in all. One remains hospitalized in critical condition and is suffering paralysis, charging papers say. The rest were treated and released.

He also allegedly shot at but missed two other people.

Maldonado then took hostages, including a young boy, at the Sam Goody store, according to charging papers. He forced them to build a barricade using display racks to block the store's front door, then ordered some of his captives to reload his weapons. At some point, a hostage negotiator who reached Maldonado by phone persuaded him to let the boy go, the papers say.

Throughout the ordeal, Maldonado was on the telephone — with reporters, with hostage negotiators and with Robison.

She said he told her, "I just shot the mall up. I'm at the Sam Goody and I'm holding people hostage."









Red Storm Rising (1986) - by Tom Clancy, author

excerpt, Chapter 10

Lowe held up a telex sheet. "We pirated this off the Reuters wire half an hour ago, and CIA confirms-meaning they probably stole it, too-that the KGB has arrested one Gerhardt Falken, a West German national, and accused him of setting off a bomb in the fuckin' Kremlin!" The Marine let out a long breath. "He missed the big shots, but now they're saying that among the victims are six Young Octobrists -from Pskov, by God!-who were making a presentation to the Politburo. Kids. There's going to be hell to pay."

Toland shook his head. It couldn't get much worse than that. "And they say a German did it?"

"A West German," Lowe corrected. "NATO intel services are already going ape trying to run him down. The official Soviet statement gives his name and address-some suburb of Bremen-and business, a small import-export house. Nothing else yet on that subject, but the Russian Foreign Ministry did go on to say that they expect 'this despicable act of international terrorism' to have no effect on the Vienna Arms Talks, that while they do not believe at this time that Falken was acting on his own, they 'have no wish' to believe that we had anything to do with it."

"Cute. It's going to be a shame to lose you back to your regiment, Chuck. You have such a nice way of finding the important quotes."

"Commander, we just might need that regiment soon. This whole thing smells like dead fish to me. Last night: the final film in the Eisenstein film festival, Alexander Nevsky, a new digitalized print, a new soundtrack-and what's the message? 'Arise, ye Russian people,' the Germans are coming! This morning, we have six dead Russian kids, from Pskovl and a German is supposed to have planted the bomb. The only thing that doesn't fit is that it ain't exactly subtle."

"Maybe," Toland said speculatively. He spoke like a halfhearted devil's advocate. "You think we could sell this combination of factors to the papers or anybody in Washington? It's too crazy, too coincidental-what if it is subtle, but backwards subtle? Besides, the object of the exercise wouldn't be to convince us, it would be to convince their own citizens. You could say it works both ways. That make sense, Chuck?"

Lowe nodded. "Enough to check out. Let's do some sniffing around. First thing, I want you to call CNN in Atlanta and find out how long this Suddler guy's been trying to tape his story about the Kremlin. How much lead time did he have, when was this approved, who he worked through to get it, and if someone other than his regular press contact finally did approve it."

"Setup." Toland said it out loud. He wondered if they were being clever-or clinically paranoid. He knew what most people would think.

"You can't smuggle a Penthouse into Russia without using the diplomatic bag, and now we're supposed to believe a German smuggled a bomb in? Then tries to blow up the Politburo?"

"Could we do it?" Toland wondered aloud.

"If CIA was crazy enough to try it? God, that's more than just crazy." Lowe shook his head. "I don't think anybody could do it, even the Russians themselves. It's got to be a layered defense. X-ray machines. Sniffer dogs. A couple of hundred guards, all from three different commands, the Army, KGB, MVD, probably their militia, too. Hell, Bob, you know how paranoid they are against their own people. How do you suppose they feel about Germans?"

"So they can't say he was a crazy operating on his own."

"Which leaves . . ."

"Yeah." Toland reached for his phone to call CNN.

KIEV, THE UKRAINE

"Children!" Alekseyev barely said aloud. "For our maskirovka the Party murders children! Our own children. What have we come to?"

What have I come to? If I can rationalize the judicial murder of our colonels and some privates, why shouldn't the Politburo blow up a few children . . . ? Alekseyev told himself there was a difference.

His General was also pale as he switched off the television set. "'Arise, ye Russian people. We must set these thoughts aside, Pasha. It is hard, but we must. The State is not perfect, but it is the State we must serve."

Alekseyev eyed his commander closely. The General had almost choked on those words; he was already practicing how to use them on the crucial few who would know of this outrage, yet had to perform their duties as though it never existed. There will come a day of reckoning, Pasha told himself, a day of reckoning for all the crimes committed in the name of Socialist Progress. He wondered if he'd live to see it and decided he probably wouldn't.









by me, Kerry Wayne Burgess, posted by me: 9:30 PM October 18, 2024

The channel 4 KOMO tv news studio is across the street from the Space Needle in downtown Seattle

On May 9, 2006, as I watched the tv from a few miles away, the weather guy gesturing to a video image on the sidewalk below where he was standing and there was a guy standing there on the sidewalk with a canvas on an easel and he seemed to be painting a picture of the Space Needle across the street from him

The next morning, May 10, 2006, I awoke in that grungy homeless shelter on the waterfront in downtown Seattle and I knew with absolute certainty everything I remember about my past was wrong.









by me, Kerry Burgess, posted by me: H.V.O.M at 11:15 PM Sunday, May 08, 2011

I have thought several times about a dream I had before waking up earlier today in the morning. I think about it again now, especially considering how my dreams are relevant to observations I made later in the day after having the dream, after watching on television the scene I reference now. The scene only lasted for probably a second or two of dreaming but I have thought of it several times today because of the good feeling I had during the dream. I cannot recall how it started out but the part I remember is that I seemed to be entering an office building and I got a pass to clip to my uniform shirt and I had full access to the building. What I did though is sit in a chair in the lobby, which I can only partially visualize and I could have gone on in but I was just sitting there watching people enter and leave and I think that is what I wanted to do. I looked at my watch. I cannot recall the precise time I saw in the dream but my watch might have read 12:38 PM. I sat there for a while and if I would have wrote about this dream back in early 2006 I would have wrote about how the narrator was talking to me in the dream but in the dream, no one spoke to me during that series of scenes. There almost seemed to be comments about why I was sitting there when I could go in to the office area and I had full access to that building. I was wearing a United States military uniform in the dream and after waking up I decided I was wearing a dress white United States Marine Corps officers uniform that is no longer in service. The uniform was very similar to the United States Navy officers ceremonial dress uniform but what I read earlier today is that uniform was phased in 1998, or maybe 2000. So anyway I was clearly wearing a United States military uniform and I got up from the chair in the lobby and I started walking through the office section and I was very glad to be there. I have been left with the sense all day about how I was back home. I have also been thinking that was some kind of office that I worked out of and that is here in the United States and I had been gone for a while and I was glad to be back and I was walking around and no one had realized yet that I was back. That was how the dream ended. I was walking around through the office and I noted that someone I knew didn't work in the same place. I was going somewhere specific but that was where the dream ended and I woke up and I think that was when I got up out of bed.

But anyway, as I read back through the scene I remember that before that scene was something about me being trapped in someplace that seemed to be a deep well. I was aware that I was perched on a surface and there was very dark water just below me in reach and I was worried about what was under that surface. But I was definitely trapped in a well, a long vertical cylinder of a wall made of stones and there seemed to be just enough lighting to see my surroundings. At one point I caught a frog. I was keeping it because I might have had to use it for food. But I didn't have to because I was only trapped down there for eight days without food and water and I didn't want to eat the frog, which was the only source of possible food that presented itself to me during that time I was trapped in the well. So then the part in the office building seemed to happen.









https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/us-urges-nato-allies-prepare-070057828.html

Yahoo! News

USA TODAY

US urges NATO allies to prepare in case Russia attacks

Francesca Chambers and Miles J. Herszenhorn, USA TODAY

Wed, September 2, 2026 at 12:00 AM PDT 8 min read

BRUSSELS – Russian President Vladimir Putin may not be planning an imminent assault on NATO nations, but the United States says its military allies need to train and invest like he is, so they're ready to fend off a sudden attack.

After leaked U.S. intelligence reportedly revealed that Russia could launch a limited assault, such as a land incursion or cyberattack, on a member country within the next few years, America's allies have been on high alert.

The warning contradicted assessments that Putin would not attempt to draw NATO into a fight while he's battling Ukraine – and came amid concerns about a U.S. weapons shortage, as the Trump administration wages war on Iran.

Advertisement

In an exclusive interview with USA TODAY at the military alliance's headquarters in Brussels, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker declined to comment directly on the leaked intelligence, while stressing a need for allies to be vigilant in their defense spending and weapons production.

"You can't predict what Vladimir Putin's going to do or any adversary. All you can do is be prepared for it and deter and make it not worth their time to make that move," Whitaker said. "And I think we are preparing every single day to prevent that from happening, and if it does happen, to be ready for it.

"We should know that our adversary invaded Ukraine, and so we should all be pretty clear-eyed," Whitaker added.

Without commenting directly on the classified information, which first appeared in The Wall Street Journal, people with knowledge of the assessments described allies as having been startled to learn that Putin could have the ability to attack NATO nations sooner than they thought.

It's much quicker than the 10-15 years the alliance anticipated, one European official said, which is what the alliance had in mind when it set its most recent spending targets.

Last year, NATO allies agreed to allocate 5% of their annual GDP toward defense by 2035. At least 3.5% has to go directly to military spending. The rest can go toward constructing roads, bridges, airports and other infrastructure projects.

Russia is now battle-weary and isn't operating on the same timeline to ramp up its defense spending, the official said.

Advertisement

This was why some in the NATO alliance, including the United States, have been pushing allies to significantly speed up defense spending and production capacity.

"We need to exercise like it matters. We need to prepare, we need to invest in capabilities," Whitaker said in the USA TODAY interview.

Russia has had a rapid expansion of its defense production capabilities, while America and its allies have largely operated in a peacetime economy, experts and officials from allied nations said.

Putin has transformed Russia's economy to support the country's war against Ukraine. Nearly 40% of Russia's federal spending is allocated to defense and security, supporting the production of bombs and tanks that are sent directly to the frontlines.

Advertisement

"Where there's an asymmetry between Russia and NATO is that they are on a war footing and we're not," said Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "They can produce a thousand cruise missiles. Our ability to provide air defense interceptors or produce them is just inept."

CIA director's visit to Moscow stirs concern

An unannounced visit late last week to Moscow by CIA Director John Ratcliffe stoked concern that Putin could move from taunting to testing the mutual defense pact of the NATO alliance sooner rather than later.

The spy chief reportedly warned Russia against an attack on NATO territory. He's also said to have told Russia it was losing the war against Ukraine and warned Moscow it should cut ties with Iran.

Russia denied Aug. 27 that it was planning to attack NATO. "These reports have no basis in reality and do not reflect Russia's intentions," Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to Russian state media publication TASS.

Advertisement

President Donald Trump declined to say whether Ratcliffe delivered a message about an attack on NATO when pressed on the visit. "He's not going to be attacking a NATO territory," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Aug. 27.

The denials did not persuade everyone in the alliance.

Invoking former CIA Director Nicholas Burns' visit to Moscow before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish minister of foreign affairs wrote in an Aug. 27 social media post: "Apparently, Putin's spooks told @CIA Director he would not provoke @NATO. Putin had told president Biden's CIA Director that he would not invade Ukraine. We should accelerate defence preparations."

A European official with knowledge of the conversations around Putin's capabilities told USA TODAY said that Ratcliffe's visit appeared on its face to be intended to send a strong, public signal to Putin. Ratcliffe arrived on a C-17 military jet, the official pointed out, that was able to be tracked.

Advertisement

That doesn't mean a military attack is imminent, the person said, discouraging comparisons to Putin's reassurances before he amassed troops on Ukraine's border in 2021, saying they were different circumstances.

Putin already attacking NATO, experts say

European officials believe Russia has already been testing NATO and is responsible for a series of hybrid attacks on member nations, including the discovery of explosive drones near a Ukrainian cargo plane at an airport in Germany and the presence of a naval drone near an offshore gas facility off the Romania's Black Sea coast.

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt publicly said on Sept. 1 that the attempted drone attack at the Leipzig airport last month follows a pattern of "Russian hybrid operations."

Romanian President Nicușor Dan explicitly blamed Russia for the naval drone in a statement posted on social media, condemning "these types of irresponsible incidents on the part of the Russian Federation."

Advertisement

Air raids in Estonia were activated overnight on Sept. 1 after drones entered the country's air space, according to Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna, who attributed the incident to Russia.

"These acts of sabotage are pretty significant, and they are acts of war," said Fiona Hill, the senior director for Russian and European affairs on the National Security Council during the first Trump administration.

"People are constantly saying, 'Well, we're not at war. War is kinetic. They're not lobbing missiles on us,'" she added. "But that is exactly what Putin wants because it leaves everybody else defenseless and vulnerable."

While Putin is certainly testing the NATO alliance with what European officials view as increasingly reckless attacks on countries close to Ukraine, they do not believe he is baiting NATO into a fight. They view Putin as trying to scare NATO nations into ending support for Ukraine, because they fear being pulled into the war.

Citing intelligence, Finnish President Alexander Stubb said in a weekend interview that Russia is suffering too many losses to open up a second front in the war.

In reality, Putin is too bogged down to make good on that kind of threat, said Kurt Volker, special representative to Ukraine in Trump's first term and U.S. ambassador to NATO under George W. Bush.

"Take an end to fighting in Ukraine and add three to five years. That's your timeline," Volker said.

Bergmann said he doesn't believe Putin would attack a NATO country while Russian forces are "battered and bruised and bleeding" from the war in Ukraine. But if the fighting starts to slow down and the Russian military is able to regroup, Bergmann said Russia could theoretically develop the capabilities to attack one of the Baltic states by 2028.

Russia's willingness to accept a large number of casualties would be another advantage in a potential large-scale attack against a NATO ally, according to Bergmann.

"It would be, I think, a bad war for Russia, but their tolerance level for death and for casualties is just really both sickening and worrying," he said.

In its war against Ukraine, Russia has also demonstrated a high tolerance for military casualties. More than 1.4 million Russian troops have been killed or wounded since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to a recent study by CSIS.

Pointing to the losses, Whitaker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, said that currently, "Russia is pretty occupied with the situation in Ukraine."

"It's not going well. And it would take, even if an immediate pivot, it would still take years to reconstitute, to return to the pre–2022, pre-Ukraine invasion Russian army," Whitaker added.

The growing concern is that Russian forces now incorporate drone formations, large numbers of precision strike capabilities and millions of tactical drones, allowing it to conduct strikes or small, but painful, operations more effectively, said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow who specializes in Russian warfare at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Russian military reconstitution "is not a matter of if but of when," said Kofman.



- by me, Kerry Wayne Burgess, posted by me: 08:42 AM Pacific-timezone USA Wednesday 09/02/2026